Ceasar should have learnt to look behind him!

I’ve been reading a book called “Divas and Dictators” by Charlie Taylor (great book if you want to get some clarity) and apart from trying to implement every single suggestion made in the book, much to the dismay of Mrs Mango, it’s given me a lot of explanations about why we do a lot of things we already do. See, as Mrs Mango is a teacher and has always been in childcare, she knew all these techniques already, and for the most of it I just went along with the ride. Half because I trusted what she said was probably right, and half because it seems to make a lot of sense. But I can’t just blindly follow anymore because now, they outnumber us. At any time, their struggle for power could topple our fragile kingdom. I’ll wake up one morning with a knife in my back and Mrs Mango held prisoner by the conspirators that have finally taken control. And the new world will see people picking their clothes from the cleanest of whatever is lying on the floor, the best place write something down is whatever bench or appliance is closest with the messiest, hardest to clean, paint brush they can find; a flag will fly high made up of the underwear they refuse to wear; and our diet will consist of full cream milk, roll-ups, three-flavoured ice-cream and that ointment you find underneath a baby’s change table. So, before this inevitably happens, I have to learn to fortify our position – there’s nothing as defensive as cutting off your opponents’ heads before they can attack – so to speak.

Coming out of the blur that was nine months of Mrs Mango being pregnant and Little Mango 3’s birth, I think we now have enough clarity and forward momentum to start putting things into practice again. So I’ve been taking a lot of notice lately about different types of behaviour, different types of parenting; what is effective and what is damaging, and trying to pick and choose the bits that I like. It’s a big world out there, with lots of different opinions and options, some that work, some that don’t, but luckily everyone else seems to be in the same boat.

I was sitting down at school today after taking Little Mango 1 in (a pleasant trip it was I must say, I think maybe we’ve finally broken him) and on the seat next to me was one of his friends. Something then happened that made me think I wasn’t such a horrible parent, and also that I wasn’t the only one struggling with an impassionate child.
The boy said to his mother, ‘Mum, I’m thirsty.’
Without a breath, as if she had the answer waiting, ever since she stepped out of the car and noticed the boy hadn’t picked up his water bottle, ‘Well, I told you to get it out of the car, so if you forgot it then you will just have to go thirsty for the rest of the day!’
And I sat back and thought – perhaps that was a little too far. Probably the point where you deprive your child of the basic needs of life is teaching them a very harsh lesson. I saw her intention, it was the same as mine, but she took a step I probably could not. I could hear in her voice the same frustration and desperation that I have in my voice usually and I could feel where she was coming from. She seemed like she cared for her boy to the point where she wanted him to be able to look after himself, and I respect that. Still, he is five.

But it brought me to the whole nature versus nurture argument, and tried the forsee the logical evolution of these ideas into reality. If you did get to the point where the basic needs of your child are their own responsibility, what would happen to them? Would they turn truly independent or just a little bit wild and unloved? I like putting my share of responsibility on the boy, but at what point am I just not doing my job? I know generations past have had a higher level of independence, whether through situations of financial stress, isolation or parents lost in various wars, but is that necessarily a good thing to have these days? Should we continue practices of the past just because people can get through them?

On the other hand, as I was leaving the school I got into an animated conversation with another father (mainly listened to an animated monologue as I couldn’t really get a word in if I tried) about the teacher and how she didn’t really like his child. It all happened in the first week of school, he said, and she just didn’t like his daughter because she is a little wild but mostly because they didn’t have much money. Not to speak against working class, because I am one of them, but why do some of them think that everything always come back to people treating you differently because of your financial situation? It’s a shame that there is so many hard working people out there and unfortunately they have to clumped together with these people who believe everything is always against them. For them, apparently being poor is the reason for all bad things to happen – if a tiny comet came hurtling down from space and blew up a working man’s house, who lived next door to a rich man – it wouldn’t just be that a coincidence of unbelievable odds, greater than that of winning the lottery, had occurred as simply as it might have to anyone else; it would only be because the cosmos, in all it’s infinite size and incredible wonder, obviously is still petty enough to hate people because they’re poor. Anyway, this was his reasoning, and thinking back to the first week I remember Little Mango 1 getting in trouble one day because he followed this girl out of bounds where he shouldn’t have and the teacher telling me she was a bit of a wild child. So, I took it as, yes perhaps she did have a bit of a bias towards the girl, I had seen she was a little crazy and so maybe he was speaking part truth. So, I asked Little Mango 1 about her that night, if she had a good day. He said, ‘No she got two frowny faces.’ So I said, ‘Oh no, what happened?’ And he said, ‘Oh, she was just hitting people, and kicking and spitting on people,’ as if it was something that happened all the time, ‘She’s always getting into trouble.’
Right. I think perhaps the teacher has a point. Once again, I could tell the man had a definite love for his daughter, wanted what was best for her and didn’t want her personality destroyed by what he saw was a biased educator. I think only that his expectations of the teacher and his inability for objective analysis is what was the problem. As a parent, it is a very hard spot you find yourself in, where you cannot detach yourself enough to see things for how they truly are. You can see how they are coming along, how the kids have changed from who they were, but you cannot get an outside perspective that easily. And yes, perhaps one person’s opinion may be biased – they may have predisposed feelings towars your child that you cannot control, so surely it must come down to simple statistics. If the opinions against stack higher than those for, then there may be a problem.
So as far as that goes, I think we are pretty safe at the moment. They’re a little wild at home, but mostly quite well behaved when around other people – stastically they are still in the “good” pile. So I suppose if we just keep trying to do the same thing, watch them as they grow and adapt accordingly to the different problems that arise, we should be ok. As long as I don’t go too crazy with the rules (we might end up with this) and stress our kids to the point of explosion. Although, that would perhaps confuse them enough to keep them in submission. Hail Emperor!