I’m a bit over being a parent in today’s age. There’s so much pressure, and no matter what you do, you are WRONG! You’re not good enough. You’re a bad parent. I mean, they don’t say that outright, but rather in very passive-aggressive condescending ways.
“Oh, you’re going to feed your kids that packaged, processed food? I’ve heard it gives them all sorts of issues” they say.
In my observation, it’s less about parenting and more about ‘over-parenting’ and judging others. Parents have to do and be so much, and these expectations filter down to their children, and everyone is left feeling anxious, overwhelmed and unworthy. Expectations about healthy eating, eco-consciousness, after-school activities, social media and internet use, screen time limitations, information overload, not to mention cost-of-living increases, housing shortages, social inequalities, human rights issues, political correctness and lack of freedom of speech … fuck! It’s enough for anyone to want to run away and go off-grid!
Sorry, I should probably clarify who they are. It seems like everyone is a parenting expert. They are in blogs, books, and research articles. Not to mention the day-to-day interactions with other parents judging one another. There is also so much anecdotal evidence about this and that, and so much of it is contradictory. Take for example a survey of parents on the subject of ‘smacking’, on the Australian Institute of Family Studies website, which states;
Around half (51%) had used it [physical punishment] on their own children.
Around half (51%) believe it is never acceptable to use physical discipline with a child.
Hang on a minute. I’m not great at math, but I can work out that those two percentages add up to more than 100%. Over half of the parents had smacked their kids, AND over half believe it is never ok to smack their kids. Someone is not telling the truth here. This is the climate we’re trying to parent our children in. We can’t be real and honest about anything, for fear of vilification from the do-gooders and the righteousness police. God forbid you admit anything that doesn’t align with someone else’s values and belief system or you will be ripped to shreds!
“Off with their heads!” the angry mob cries from behind keyboards and computers with their taunts, insults and threats.
If you smack your child, you are causing irreparable damage.
If you do not use any discipline, you are going to end up with a generation of entitled little shits, without compassion for others or any understanding of consequences or accountability.
“Each to their own” has been my mantra for getting through.
I try to mind my own business and maintain the belief that everyone is just doing their best. It’s so hard to have an honest conversation about the harsh realities of parenting, due to fear around speaking the truth and admitting that… some days being a parent is fucked, and you just want to run away!
Flashback to the 90s…
I was fortunate growing up. My Mum and Dad cared about us kids. We didn’t have much money, but we always had what we needed (not always what we wanted). My parents did their best to provide a loving home for us, even after they separated. We went to school, played at friends’ houses after school, and rode our bikes or made our way on foot to find entertainment. When we were in high school we caught the train to school, or the city on the weekends, to stroll around Queen St Mall or South Bank Parklands. My older brothers and I lived in the Bayside suburbs of Brisbane (Wynnum what!?)
We dug huge holes in our backyard. My brothers built trenches and we all buried treasure. We walked down to the corner store and bought lollies and chips with our pocket money. We pissed off the old neighbour next door, playing loudly, jumping off our front balcony onto mattresses and pretending to be dead. She was an ‘old bitch’, (she actually was, I’m not being nasty) but our Mum raised us to treat older people with respect. So, we would ‘die more quietly’ when she would complain. We would never call her nasty names to her face until the day that we moved out. Mum told us, as we drove away for the last ever time from our house at Wynnum North, “You can each yell out a swear word as we leave”.
“See ya later, Elsie, you old bitch!” I yelled, feeling so liberated.
Our Mum was the best. She loved us unconditionally. She gave a shit about us, she set boundaries, and ground rules around being kind, and doing what is right. She also gave us freedom.
“Where are you going? Who are you going with? What will you be doing?” She’d ask. “Sure, you can go, but be back by…” She was firm. She would tell us when we couldn’t go to that party, because she didn’t know the parents or the kids, or it was too far away. She gave us reasons. We argued. She stayed firm.
We made a shit ton of mistakes. And then, we paid the consequences!
I had older friends, and on the odd occasion, I decided to sneak out and go to that party anyway. She found out because she was right. She wasn’t an idiot. She didn’t feel right about that household for good reason and sure enough, it was a very shady environment and I’d end up calling Mum to give us a lift home. Or one of my friends would call her when I’d drank too much and made myself sick and blacked out. Even when we knew we’d be in big trouble, she let us know that she was there NO MATTER WHAT!?
Then we’d get the silent treatment. That was the worst! Probably for good reason.
Better to cool off for a few days, before attempting to have a rational conversation about what happened and the consequences. In hindsight, she showed a lot of self-control in staying calm and silent. There were probably so many harsh things that she could have said. So many names that she could have called us when she was so angry and upset for putting ourselves into such bad situations. It also gave us time to reflect and learn from our mistakes. Well, as much as we could as stupid teenagers.
We learnt a lot. We still played outside as teenagers. We explored out in nature, we found fruit and nut trees all around our suburban neighbourhoods. We were entrepreneurs. We had to work for a living, we weren’t getting handouts from our parents. We lived in housing commission! So, we’d get avocados that were overhanging the fence next to the playground. We created a broom handle and wire coat hanger hook to remove the fruit from up high. Someone would be the fruit catcher.
“Shit, it fell inside the fence! Try again”. We’d say, as we had another go.
We’d go door to door and sell those avocadoes from beside the playground, as well as the macadamias we’d harvested from the trees growing in the cul-de-sac that one of our mates lived in. We’d catch guppies (small freshwater fish) with nets and buckets from the local streams and sell them as feeder fish to another neighbour who we knew had a big Oscar fish. We made some pocket money to buy junk food from the corner store and ciggies, sold for $1 each, from school. We passed the time. We sometimes got busted doing the wrong thing. We paid the consequences! In some of our households, we copped floggings! I probably could have been flogged a bit more, but Mum didn’t like to do it, and we didn’t live with our Dad, we just visited on weekends.
I feel for the kids these days in some ways. I can only imagine how much worse it would have been for these coming-of-age experiences to have been captured on video/photo and shared all over social media. How humiliating! I felt enough shame some mornings, remembering, or listening to my friends recall what had happened the night before, without re-living it all again on a public platform, along with all the nasty judgements of others! The level of bullying is that much worse when you can’t see the other person’s someone’s face, but rather your safely perched behind a computer screen.
I remember playing on MSN chat rooms when the internet first came out (or when I first had access to it at one of my friend’s places). We were probably some of the first internet trolls, even back then. Stirring up people on the other side of the world, in chatrooms, just for fun, and when it would get too heated, we’d just exit out of there, never to return. We thought it was fun. We were ratbags! Now that I think about it when someone is mean on the internet, it probably is just some teenager being an asshole. Don’t take it personally!
My mum had no idea that I was doing this and would have been mortified if she’d found out. Some of the most important values that my parents instilled in me, were to treat other people how you want to be treated and to be accountable and responsible for your actions. Yeah, cyberbullying is neither of these things.
I would never have told her because a lot of the time I knew what I was doing wasn’t right, but I was either trying to fit in or more often wasn’t thinking at all. At times I was a bully, and I’ve regretted this in my adulthood. As my kids get older, I sometimes share stories of the mistakes I’ve made.
The other day Big Boy was telling me about an app he’d seen that makes prank calls (not sure how that works?) We laughed about one of the classics he read in one of his joke books…
“Have you checked if your refrigerator is running…? Then you better go catch it!”
I told him about the time an older friend and I prank-called a random phone number (remember landlines?) and a lady answered the phone. My friend and I put on fake accents and tricked her into believing that we were from B105 radio station and that she’d one some huge prize money. She was ecstatic. We did not think anyone would believe us! Then we had the awkward and horrible task of fessing up to her that it was a prank call and crushing her dreams. We hung up and tried to laugh, but both ended up feeling super bad about it.
He stopped laughing, looked at me and said “Mum that was really mean!”
“Yep”, I agreed, “it was really mean. We didn’t think it through. We also didn’t do it again after that. I hope that you won’t be mean to others like that? It doesn’t feel nice for anyone involved”.
“No way, Mum,” he tells me confidently. Judging me with his blue eyes. I believe him too.
I am so grateful for my 90s childhood. Exactly as it was, mistakes and all. I hope that my kids can have the freedom to make their own mistakes, learn from them AND be accountable for their actions. Mostly, I hope that they will be kind to, and considerate of others. We’re all in this together. It’s too much to ask that we get along and keep our judgements to ourselves.
Give yourself a break, and do what’s right for you and your family. As long as you’re not being unkind or inconsiderate of others, it’s no one else’s business.
Sorry, got to go. I can hear the angry mob tapping away furiously on their keyboards about something I said…