Penni Drysdale - P Plate Parenting

It’s not often that I will become anything close to animated after 8:30pm, but a certain Can of Worms did the job last week. Is it okay to smack your children?

We were smacked by our father and whether it is because of this or just plain common sense and morality stepping in, I am not a smacker myself. We were ‘punished’/'taught a lesson’ with all kinds of implements, including a bat tennis bat and wooden spoon. We had red marks to prove it. It’s interesting that I don’t recall why (surely I never did anything wrong as a child), but can clearly recall the situations in which the smacking took place. More so, I recall the emotions - largely fear and resentment. I don’t recall thinking, ‘Gosh, Daddy is right. I really did the wrong thing and because I now know that it was the wrong thing (thanks to my pounding heart and stinging thigh), I won’t do it again.’

I didn’t learn right from wrong because I was smacked – I learned, somewhat, to shut my mouth and do the ‘right thing’ for fear of the painful consequences. I learned that a parent could inflict physical pain and no one would stand up for me. I learned that talking was more risky than constructive…at the time. As an adult I have responded by avoiding getting ‘physical’ with my kids (the fleeting satisfaction from the release of pent up frustration or anger slides swiftly into a sickening guilt) and being big on communication and fair treatment. I also teach my kids that adults don’t always do or say the right thing.

What are we teaching our kids when we ‘smack’ them? We implore them to use their words rather than to bite or hit out or scream, and yet we use our hands to gain control or communicate. And as Josh suggested on the show, what do you do when your 16 year old realises that he can ‘smack’ back and is big enough to do so? Is it okay to hit someone to get the response that you want or to communicate to our kids that adults are allowed to be rough with kids simply because they are adults?

‘Lazy parenting’, is what our dear Dicko suggested, and I tend to agree. Sure, talking to and desperately attempting to reason with a young or not so young child can be exceedingly frustrating and time consuming and a smack would sure as hell get the ‘message’ across more swiftly, but once again, I come back to what message? Let me suggest ‘hypocracy’ and ‘control’.

What harm is a little smack on the hand? Start at the top.

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I suck at being sociable. It’s a wonder I still have contacts outside of my humble abode. I’m not readily available, I’m chronically fatigued and unable to construct a coherent thought in less than an hour. And that’s when the kids are not in tow.

Clipped sentences and insincere conversational fillers are not uncommon, which sits uncomfortably with me. I am a person who demands the full attention of my listener and I have a severely acute ear and eye for the slightest distraction or inattention. Do it properly, or politely inform me that you’re not in the slightest bit interested/too busy/too tired/too rude to genuinely engage at that time. Don’t pretend to listen or care – you’re wasting my time. A high standard, perhaps, and a little unattainable for anyone who enters my conversational realm.  And now here I am, being that hopeless conversationalist, forever distracted by myself or my kids.

But can I let you in on a little secret? For a social hack like myself, this is where one of the benefits of having kids comes in. Desperate to escape an awkward moment or dead-boring conversation? Oops! There he goes! Better go rescue him (and me) before he throws himself over the edge! Too tired or simply reluctant to attend an event?  Sorry, the kids aren’t well and I really ought not to shower you in their sticky, highly contagious germs – only thinking of you! Keen to remove guests from your lounge as the clock ticks towards crazy hour? Just disappear into the kitchen and start banging pots and pans together, mumbling a little too loudly about getting dinner ready for the kids. Or disappear down the hallway and run the bath, throwing plastic toys under the stream of tepid water for extra effect. You get the point.

So, in anticipation of our next interaction, this social hack sends her apologies…either way.

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We make decisions and then dig around for justifications to support them. To prove to others that we have chosen well? Perhaps. To cover ourselves in the case of a potentially dodgy decision? That’s more like it. We can justify any decision, no matter how ludicrous the justification, and go about our day feeling lighter, less responsible for repercussions. Everything is alright.

So how do we justify a decision to bear children?

I recall a discussion with my brother a couple of years ago, when we were in the decision-making phase of child number two, and wrestling justifications for either side of the to-have or not-to-have argument. He didn’t agree with some of my rationale, nor I with his…so who was right? Clearly, I was. I always am. I cited reasons such as having a sibling for child number one and wanting to see if I could cope better with those early days second time around.  Admittedly, the former justification weighed a little more heavily and probably sits more comfortably with most, but the latter is also truth.

And so I got to wondering about what justifications for having kids other people provide, either stated overtly or swimming silently through their minds. Is it a basic obligation to prop-up the population? An egotistical desire to see our genes laid before us? A desperate attempt to be needed, dependent upon and loved unconditionally? A mere excuse to escape paid employment for a period of time? A misguided decision to get enlarged breasts on the cheap or receive money from the government?

Parenting is full of dodgy decisions and even more appalling justifications. But the eased guilt or remedied indecision is justification enough. Right?

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It’s a been a while between drinks here at P Plate Parenting. I could name a number of excuses or reasons (the usual stuff, like life’s just too damned busy to justify sitting at a laptop and indulging myself in self expression, I’ve been working more…paid work, that is etc etc). Or I could try to explain… Oh, God, don your apron, this could get messy…thoughts splattered all over the page and possibly flicking into your eye.

We went away recently. Up north, to the Daintree to spend five nights  in the rainforest. A stunning house amid spectacular scenery, surrounded by real wildlife and only a short trip to the (crocodile-infested) beach. It was luxury. It was time off work. It was warm… But this pause on the ‘real’, everyday life was what did it for me. No hurry. No chaos. No cleaning or packing school lunches. Just me and the boys, being a family.

I think what struck me most was that I found myself being a little more patient, more understanding, more engaged. I whinged less, raised my voice less often and smoothed out the constant crease on my brow. My jaw relaxed giving my back teeth a break, my shoulders inched their way down from up near my ears and the morning habits resumed their proper function (who knew that tension/stress/life, whatever you want to call it, can seriously block you up?).

I could connect with my kids in a real way, that wasn’t governed by routine or a necessity to hurry the hell up! I could be there to hold the Toddler’s hand while he navigated his way around (yes, now that he’s walking, I’ve heard that I should be calling him a ‘toddler’ ); I could listen to the School Boy’s bizarre stories, uninterrupted by my own nagging thoughts of tasks I really ought to be getting on with. I could cuddle more and argue less. And this change found a way into my wee mind, causing me to pause and reflect on what I believed was My Experience of parenting.

My experience of parenting is a construct of circumstance and mind set. When life is busy and there really are things that have to be done in order to function adequately and survive, the perfect parenting model cannot co-exist. I now recognise that it is not that I am an Impatient Person (though some would argue…I reason that I can be patient if I choose to be, such as when working with people who have dementia), a Grump or digestively challenged. I am a person – a working adult, a wife, a mum – who lives a real life that pulls me in many directions and I cannot do it all perfectly.

And so, back to the point of this post. Many of my posts so far have had a touch of the whinge about them. They have been an opportunity to de-brief, get things off my now non-existent breast, I mean chest, and this blog has served a brilliant therapeutic purpose. But somehow I find it harder (at present, anyhow) to get back into that mind set, that identity. So I am pausing, to think, to reflect, to deconstruct and then reconstruct. Stay with me – I’ll see you on the other side.

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There are times that I have to remind myself (and my husband) that our kids have not been put here for our entertainment. And that it is our job to lie sometimes.

You have probably gathered that our parenting style is not of the gently, gently, cotton wool type approach. There is little sheltering from truths, shying away from awkward discussions or just plain lying about stuff to ‘protect’ them (within reason… I haven’t yet explained to the School Boy that his existence contributes to mummy’s insanity..a lie of omission I guess). We are honest, mostly. But I can’t help get all childish in my enthusiasm to play with their little minds when it comes to these fictional characters that we introduce them to.

The School Boy recently lost his first tooth in the most hilarious of situations. He showed me the bloody tooth, hanging on by a  thread of gum, to which I responded, ‘ew, it’s bleeding.’  His response was to suck hard to get rid of said blood, and dislodge and inhale his baby tooth in the process. He doubled over, struggling to take a breath, then coughed and heaved until this little piece of enamel flew across the kitchen floor. He wasn’t too traumatised, and so I indulged in a side-splitting, semi-subdued fit of laughter.

The conversation that ensued, lead by my husband, included reference to the Tooth Fairy and money. A pang of guilt hit – I’d forgotten all about the Tooth Fairy, followed a pang of ‘oh crap, another lie to sustain’. We told him that we’d contact her by phone or email to tell her the news, but he insisted that there is a team of mixed-gender fairies who provide this service - my politically correct little man strikes again.

I just had to scratch my itch and probe a little into his ’knowledge’ of the Tooth Fairy (none of which has come from us). I asked him where the fairies live (‘with Santa’) how he thought a little fairy could carry a tooth (‘Magic, I guess’), where the fairies stored these teeth (shrug of the shoulders), and how they could possibly afford to put a coin under the pillow of every child, every time a tooth fell out (another shrug of the shoulders)? His inquisitive, perceptive mind didn’t once question the validity of the whole Tooth Fairy thing. But he’s more than happy to question us on matters that make much more sense. Maybe these kids are smarter than we think and they are actually deceiving us..they know the truth but fear that if they let on, all gifts, chocolate and monetary donations will dry up.

So what now?  I figure that if it is our job to sustain these parental lies, then we are entitled to a little fun along the way…

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