Alphabet Soup

by Melissa Doyle

  And we have to be. The Fox I was talking about earlier ended up leaving our mothers’ group because he didn’t feel comfortable. My dad talks of a time before parents’ rooms where he struggled to take me to a public toilet. He couldn’t go into the ladies and he said he wasn’t comfortable taking me into the gents.

  Mind you, he was happy to take me shopping. I can remember once calling for attention from the change room as the shop assistants fawned over my handsome single father. No wonder I was spoilt.

  In our world, it’s the mums who take the kids to training and the dads who take them to the games on Saturday; the mums who natter on the sidelines and the dads who hold team ‘strategy’ meetings at the pub; the mums who wash the boots and the dads who direct the kids how to use them; the mums who cut up the oranges and the dads who sneak in the Red Frogs. And don’t we love them for it.

  Divorce

  Only in Hollywood is it ever an amicable separation where former couples vow to remain friends and respect one another’s privacy.

  In real life it’s usually a painful, devastating, sometimes nasty and usually long, drawn-out process. When there are kids involved, it’s even more complicated.

  Imagine if those kids have superstar parents and every aspect of their split is splashed all over the weekly mags for the consumption of readers the world over. Every little detail analysed, quoted, misquoted or simply made up. How hard it must be to not only have to survive what is arguably one of the most traumatic experiences for a child, but to do it in the eye of a storm with a world watching on and clamouring for some dirt—true or untrue—about their mummy and daddy.

  Divorce can be brutal on kids. I know because I was that kid. It can be confusing, unsettling and most of all just very, very sad. And whether or not your parents are celebrities, it’s no different.

  One of my best friends has just gone through it. It was a tough process for everyone and it broke my heart to watch. I wanted them to stay together; when it was obvious they couldn’t, I just wanted them both to be happy. But more than anything I wanted their two girls to come through unscathed.

  As a friend, all I could do was listen. No one knows what goes on in someone else’s marriage. It took maturity and my own relationship to work that out.

  With the naivety of a child, I spent years wishing my parents had stayed together, but now with the wisdom of age I see they weren’t meant to be. I couldn’t see them as the individuals they were, but rather the figureheads of the perfect family I wanted but didn’t have.

  Watching my friends go through it, I could recognise the point of no return.

  Anyone going through a split needs a good support network around them—one for the parents but one also for the children. Every kid needs somewhere to go and feel safe.

  So I just told my friend to remind her kids every day she loved them. Tell them the split was nothing to do with them and make sure she always kept their bedroom intact so they had their own sacred space. I also told her I loved her and I supported her because she needed it.

  Thankfully, many a child has survived and come out the other end, stronger and resilient for the experience. And very, very loved.

  I know I did.

  Eating

  Since the age of nine, Nick has eaten more than me. His legs are long and obviously hollow. He has not an inch of fat on him, can run like the wind, and has an appetite that needs feeding roughly every two hours.

  Like a farmer trucking in hay during a drought, I’m constantly trying to keep up with demand. If only our backyard could produce apples and cheese.

  When he was a baby I used to worry if he was getting enough milk. At six months I did my best to manage the mushy transition to solids, and from then on the worry continued: is he eating enough? Too much? The right stuff? At the right times?

  It seems everyone has an opinion: experts, the media, well-meaning grandparents, the community nurse and other mothers. It can all get pretty confusing.

  As a journalist I’ve done stories on Australia’s alarming rates of childhood obesity, then in the next breath I’ve told viewers about the rise in eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. I’ve reported on the debate to take seriously overweight kids away from their families, proposals to weigh kids at school and send home health report cards, and also the issue of bullying when kids take these matters into their own hands.

  So how do we as parents take a step back from all the hype, fear and conflicting messages and raise healthy children with normal attitudes to food?

  I’m trying to take the cue from my kids.

  Nick is built like a racehorse—always has been and probably always will be. Since birth he’s been long and lean and prompted plenty of people to ask if I was feeding him enough.

  So I went and saw my lovely GP, herself a mum and one of those calming people who make everything simple. She assured me as long as he was growing, active and happy, he would be ok.

  It’s interesting to observe how his body works. For him, food is merely fuel. He is still young enough that his appetite is dictated only by his energy requirements and not yet by bad habits. When he’s growing he eats us out of house and home. He eats enough to keep up his stamina on the AFL field and when he’s not hungry, he’s not hungry. My daughter is similar. When she’s undergoing a growth spurt, she eats more. When she’s not, I have to nag her to finish her meal.

  But then I worry that I am forcing them to eat more than their little bodies need. I don’t want them growing up and losing their own natural mechanism that stops them eating when they are full. I was always told to eat everything on my plate, a habit probably not ideal for my waistline.

  We sit down together as a family for our evening meal and I want it to be an enjoyable conclusion to our busy day. It’s where we chat without the distraction of the TV (switched off) or the phone (ignored). It’s enough to get the kids to stop mucking around and eat nicely, without me having to make threats if they don’t eat.

  We all probably have some sort of issue with food. Whether we eat because we are bored, hungry, tired, miserable, or craving sugar or comfort, the challenge to us as parents is to get our children to eat the right things at the right times and for the right reasons.

  We need to teach them to find their own balance.

  Einstein

  One of the best bits of advice I ever received was when I rang our local primary school to enrol my then four-year-old son.

  Mrs Stewart answered the phone and started chuckling when I told her Nick was about eighteen months away from starting. In a very kind voice and with the gentle tone of experience, she told me to relax and call back in a year. But before hanging up she gave me a few words of wisdom. She said not to give school another thought until his first day. She told me to forget about teaching him to read or add up or learn each country’s capital city—that’s what school is for. My job, she said, was simply to let him be a kid.

  Socialise him by all means, she advised. Make sure he can use a toilet, eat his lunch alone and ask for assistance, but leave teaching to the experts. She said just have fun, teach him to be friendly, play nicely and handle separation from his mum and dad, and leave the rest to them. Don’t wear him out before he’s even begun. Let him be a little boy. It was unexpected but astute advice that I took on board.

  We all think our baby is the cutest and smartest ever born. That’s natural, and probably just as well, really. But current thinking is that we could be doing more harm than good by trying to put them ahead of the curve.

  It probably happens more with our firstborn, because (let’s be frank) we simply have more time and more to prove; however, child psychologists are now telling parents to ease up. Teaching children the theory of relativity before they can even say the word is causing too much stress, for them and us.

  There are warnings that too many gadgets can overload young minds and fancy educational flash cards and language DVDs can actually have the opposite effect. When stressed, little kids turn off t
heir thinking processes.

  I even once covered a story on the growing number of kids who were as young as eight turning to sports psychologists to get the edge on their rivals.

  Why do we want them to grow up so fast? Are we simply keen to skip a few vital steps along the way? What’s the rush?

  Don’t peak too early, I say. Don’t hire Buckingham Palace for their twelfth birthday because then what do you do for their eighteenth? Maybe sometimes we need to remember to give them a book instead of an iPad.

  Or is it that we are so keen to have them ahead of the pack? We want them to have every advantage, assistance and head start we can possibly find in the misguided belief this will make them high achievers.

  Now that my kids are a little older, it’s overloading their schedule that I struggle with the most. My son wants to try everything, be involved in everything. He loves sport and music and being with his mates and will put his name up for most activities that take his young fancy. I admire and encourage him and can see why he was voted school captain.

  But I also acknowledge that sometimes we reach the end of the week and we’re all as tired and worn out as each other. I really try to get him to slow down and pile a little less on his plate, but I also realise that primary school is the time to try it all out. Firstly, failure is a little less daunting and embarrassing at this age; secondly, I know once he starts high school he’ll be working a lot harder. He’ll struggle to play summer soccer, weekend basketball, club cricket and AFL, as well as school sport. Oh, and find the time to learn.

  It’s a constant struggle to find a comfortable balance between encouraging Nick to give everything a go and not wearing him out completely so he gives it all away.

  Amid all this, as a parent, I also need to make the time to reinforce a few things he needs to learn above and beyond school. And they’re pretty similar to the things I focused on when he was four: he must have the time to be a kid, play nicely, have manners and be friendly.

  Thank goodness he can use a toilet.

  Embarrassing

  Most kids reach a moment in time when their parents embarrass them. Maybe it’s when they hit the dance floor at a family wedding—seeing your dad bust a move can be mortifying. Or when mum kisses you in front of your mates.

  Throw in a job where you get recognised on the street and the humiliation is compounded. Or when you’re trying to learn about cyber safety at school and your mum pops up in the Healthy Harold video. Yeah, I’d probably cringe too.

  It was once spelt out to me in pretty clear terms: ‘I wish you had a normal job.’

  It is an unusual experience to have a job where some people know who you are and what you do before you have met them yourself. While I love meeting new people in this way, I can see why at times my kids have been mortified.

  So, I asked them, what is a normal job? Eric, our neighbour, the paediatric surgeon who saves lives, or Amy’s dad, Pete, the international pilot, or Timmy’s mum, Marg, our local GP?

  I get that when you’re a kid you just want to blend into the crowd. And no parent wants to make that any harder for their children than it already is.

  I once sat at a dinner with a famous international actor who said his son asks him to pick him up from school around the corner. It’s a tricky balance when you’re a kid between wanting to be known as your own person and muddying that with who your parents are.

  When I was a kid, my dad was the local real estate agent. Everyone in our suburb knew him. We couldn’t walk through the local shopping centre without him being stopped every ten minutes and asked for advice or an update on how a sale or a house hunt was going. I can clearly remember hating it. I tugged on his trouser legs so we could get out of there and I could have him all to myself.

  But then it changed. I don’t remember when my dislike of sharing him with the neighbourhood turned to pride, but I started to realise that he was pretty important to a lot of people. I also saw he was kind and relied upon in a way that made me really happy he was my dad.

  What your parents do for work is often the great unknown. It takes mum or dad out of the house into some vast office where they get to talk on the telephone, have lunch and generally look busy. It can take years for a kid to actually work out what it is their parent does, apart from wear nice clothes and talk to people.

  And for years my job has been no different. Despite the visual proof each day of where I was and what I was doing, it was merely a job that took Mummy away in the wee small hours.

  When anyone would stop me in the street for a bit of a chat or to talk about Sunrise, Nick would tug at my arm to drag me away, just as I once did as a child. He was embarrassed and hated sharing me with complete strangers in the supermarket. He would tell everyone with such pride that his dad worked in an office and was a big boss, but would barely answer when asked what his mum did.

  I think it was interviewing the likes of Justin Bieber and One Direction that finally turned the tide. I gained me a bit of street cred and my children some major playground currency.

  So when Nick had exhausted every item in our house for his weekly class news item and decided to take his mother, I was flattered.

  Not because I’d have a group of attentive primary school kids in front of me lapping up behind-the-scenes stories, but because my son finally decided my job was cool.

  The questions came thick and fast: ‘How does a television actually work?’ (Like I’d know!); ‘What time do you get up?’ (3 a.m.); ‘What happens if you have to go to the toilet in the middle of the show?’ (Hang on or hope for a long commercial break). Suddenly I was the one embarrassed and tugging on Nick’s arm.

  And as for my dad, well, he spent years embarrassing me in front of my friends by insisting he pick me up from every party, and was always there fifteen minutes early. Or I’d catch him dad-dancing to Air Supply at full volume, or frightening the hell out of any boy that stopped by. But now I understand that was his job too.

  Just like it’s mine now that I’m a parent.

  Empty Nest

  In Year Five Nick went to school camp. Band camp, actually, but don’t bother making the joke, the parents already did!

  While he was off on his little adventure, the dynamic at home became so different with only one child. Talia’s generally the noisy one but without her chief antagonist there was no one to fight with or yell at, so it was calm and silent—for a time.

  I’m not sure why kids need to pick a fight but it seems they just can’t go without it sometimes. Devoid of a brother to argue with, Talia slowly circled her dad. She was looking for an opening to rile him up, to get a reaction. Talia and her father are two peas in a pod—she may look like me but she shares his personality traits. So it’s never long before she gets a result.

  For the most part, though, it was quiet. I can only imagine what it will be like when they leave home.

  When it comes to leaving home, our kids have very different views on venturing out into the world. Nick says he never will. I’m sure he’ll change his mind once he’s older (please, let him change his mind once he’s older!) but for now he’s determined he will stay forever.

  Talia on the other hand would leave tomorrow . . . well, maybe not so soon but certainly once she’s finished school. She wants to head out into the world and explore it. ‘Oh, I’m sure I’ll miss you, but I’m gone,’ she says. She has romantic visions of Europe and Asia and somehow the thought of either staying home or travelling with us seems remote.

  So, in a way, I hope they’re both a bit wrong. We want Nick to stay for a while but we know once he’s older he’ll head out and do his own thing. Likewise, for all Talia’s posturing about her independence, we know she’ll always come back and will probably be around longer than either of us thinks!

  It’s funny how two kids, given the same upbringing and same opportunities to travel, have such vastly different views of the world in which they live.

  Having only recently taken our first ever holiday without the kids
, John and I are now looking forward to when we can be grey nomads. Well, maybe not so much the ‘grey’ part, but we plan to travel a lot! Travel is one of my favourite things to do, and I can’t wait to explore the world when we have the time and our trips aren’t dictated by school terms and television ratings schedules.

  Life is strange the way we cycle through stages: as newlyweds you love the freedom and independence; with kids you can’t remember a time without them and want to spend all your time with them; teenagers you can take or leave; then, when the kids leave home, it comes full circle. I hope we’re still happy and healthy enough to do all that travel and maybe the kids can stay home and look after the pets.

  Escaping

  Such anguish is universal to any parent who travels for work. The guilt of leaving home and the sweet little voices that tug at your heartstrings down the phone line.

  Throw in a different time zone and a busy schedule and it’s always when I am in a hurry or falling into bed that the kids are up for a chat. Talia has to tell me about each of her friends at kindy, what they wore, what they ate for lunch, and on an expensive international call Nick insists on giving me a hole-by-hole description of his round of putt putt golf!

  But as any busy parent will tell you, a hotel room can also be a sweet capsule of silence. And hey, sometimes you’ve got to grab any moment of escape that you can.

  You’re guaranteed a good night’s sleep. There’s no ‘Mum, I’m busting!’ from down the hall at 1 a.m. When we’ve taken Sunrise interstate, I’ve found myself checking into my room late afternoon, sliding into the hotel slippers and spending the next few hours watching a cheesy in-house movie and ordering room service.

  Bliss.

  As much as I miss my family when I’m away, it’s so nice to have some time alone; to shower without someone knocking on the door and to go to the toilet without Talia bringing in Teddy for a chat.