FAMILY

January 14, 2018

Christmas Gift Giving

We’ve just lived through another season of shopping for others. A season where we pore over lists full of the names of people for whom we must find one or more gifts. Gifts which we buy to show how we value them, our love, appreciation…… (insert the appropriate emotion.) But what lies beneath all the frantic shopping? What are we really trying to achieve with our gifts and what are we hoping to receive in return? And why do we find some gifts so disappointing?

CHRISTMAS GIFTS - The system

So I have been thinking about a way to make this seasonal process more meaningful, useful and hopefully more enjoyable for everyone.

What I want from the gift giving process is to feel understood and appreciated by those I have a real connection with. I want to give others something that will similarly please them. Something that will increase their happiness, even if only momentarily. I believe most of us feel the same. But how do we achieve this result?

Our family go through the seasonal ritual of searching for gift inspiration, asking each other what we would like to receive and often buying too many things (because we really don’t feel sure we’ve hit the mark yet). To make matters even more complicated most of us already have more things than we really need (look at all the shows and books etc about people overwhelmed by the amount of stuff they own and the opposing movement towards minimalist lifestyles.) The gift giving ritual often concludes with our trying to deceive the giver into believing we wanted and/or liked the gift received far more than we really did. Frankly I find this last part the most stressful and unnecessary of all. Increasingly I find myself getting more enjoyment from gift finding and giving than the receiving.

CHRISTMAS GIFTS - Returns.jpg

A common alternative is to give gift vouchers or actual cash. There are several problems with the above alternatives for me. Firstly, it puts a dollar amount on our value of this person. How we assign this value being based on a series of complex interactions between factors such as our own resources; our perception of the receivers need and/or how it will impact how they regard us; what we see as appropriate to the nature of the relationship and/or what we can expect from them in return.   Secondly, I really I don’t want to put a dollar value on people and my relationships with them. Finally, I don’t see the point of giving vouchers or cash backwards and forwards between family and friends. (Of course all of this discussion doesn’t apply to children and those who live with incomes that are too low to allow them common luxuries. I believe we should expect less from them and give more.)

CHRISTMAS GIFTS - VOUCHERS & JUNK.jpg

There’s a saying ‘it’s the thought that counts’. I take this to mean the thought that went into finding, making or selecting an appropriate gift. Of selecting gifts that show how well the giver knows us and what they think of us.

But what if we thought more laterally around the concept of gifts. What if we thought about how to show gifts for these people all year, not just at Christmas, birthdays or similar occasions, and planned ahead. If we see an appropriate gift we could get it for them when we see it, put their name on it and put it away (maybe write an electronic reminder that will pop up at Christmas, eg. ‘umbrella for mum, stored in bedroom cupboard’) Also, we could think beyond buying new things. Second hand items are called antiques or vintage when they are valued. We could be brave enough to give and receive things second hand items, as long as they’re in good condition, fit for purpose and of value to the receiver.

CHRISTMAS GIFTS - Scientific equation.jpg

Finally, we could consider giving experiences. There are experiences that can be bought like theatre tickets, skydiving lessons, the hire of a status symbol car for a few hours. But there are also experiences we can’t buy as such. Experiences like helping an elderly relative in their garden; taking someone younger to an experience they wouldn’t be allowed to attend without an older person (like Melbourne’s ‘White Nights’)or a show; or planning and organising a gathering with their friends, so the receiver can enjoy the event without the stress. (I recently realised that since becoming an adult I had only had one party, that celebrated me, that I didn’t plan and organise myself.)

Maybe we could really think about what would show how we truly feel about each individual before committing to whatever ‘gift’ we decide to give them.

 

Alison

 

 

July 1, 2017

Parenting Adult Children

As children mature into adults it becomes increasingly clear that a lot of their behaviours are fixed, and some of these behaviours are less than ideal.  Unfortunately our adult children are unlikely to ‘grow out of it’ and it’s not a ‘phase’ they’re going through.

When I look back at the more troublesome behaviours I helped to fix in my own child I realise I’m still encouraging some of those behaviours. Talking to friends made it clear that I was not alone. In fact it’s very common for parents to continue to interact with their adult children in pretty much the same way they did when they were both younger. It’s partly because many of us haven’t markedly changed how we think about our children.

A common issue for ‘Baby Boomer’ parents is the tendency to over rescue their children. We rescue them from the consequences of their own behaviour so they don’t really have to learn to deal with these consequences themselves. We hope that by ‘fixing’ their problems our children will learn from our example; because of course we talk, endlessly, to them about what we’re doing and what they should do. This is despite all the evidence that what is really happening is that they have learned to rely on us rescuing them and fixing everything. Listening (or pretending to listen) to our advice being the price they have to pay for this help.

PARENTING ADULT CHILD - THEIR KIDS.jpg

It’s common for us to assist our adult children with money matters in particular. We lend money, without interest, and often on a very elastic system for repayment. In many instances the borrowers know it only needs to be repaid if a big fuss is made over the money.

So why is this a problem? Well two things spring instantly to mind. Firstly we won’t be there forever to rescue our babies. Our adult children need to learn how to change their behaviours so they can become fully functioning adults.  For example they should be able to manage their own money effectively.

PARENTING ADULT CHILD - THERAPY.jpg

Secondly we aren’t the only people our children will have family relationships with. Our adult children have to respect their obligations to family and to understand that a commitment to family is important and needs to be followed through. Interestingly they often understand that these things are important in relation to strangers, but fail where family are concerned.

Realigning family relationships as children move through the process of growing up requires quite a lot of work. Parenting relationships with children need to be redefined and renegotiated again and again. We need to recognise our children’s increasing need for independence. The support we provide should increasingly allow our maturing children to take more and more control of their own lives. Hopefully as parents we change and grow too, assisting us to meet this challenge.

I often think about the importance of taking the long term view when parenting. I mean it’s important to think about what’s best in the long term rather than what’s easiest now. I’m not saying we must be conscious and do the ‘right’ thing every time, but if we could be mostly consistent. If we could be conscious of both our long term relationships with our children and their relationships to the rest of the world ….. wouldn’t it be better for our adult children and for us?

 

Alison

PARENTING ADULT CHILD - INTERVIEW.jpg

 

August 6, 2016

Two Simple Ideas for Raising Children

John Cleese (yes, the Monty Python Cleese) and family therapist Robin Skynner have written a book titled ‘Families and how to Survive Them’. It’s an easy read being written in the form of a conversation between the two authors.

51Qa8d6o44L

This book contains ideas I often refer to.

Using limits – for children, especially the younger they are, life can feel like being left in a dark room, where they don’t know where, or if, there are walls to contain them. Children need to know where the limits are so they can feel safe. When children feel safe they are able to freely explore, because they know someone else is looking after them. This is why putting limits on children is very important, and in fact a very loving thing to do, like holding them in your arms but still giving them some freedom to explore.

As children get older they need to be able to show their increasing independence by breaking some of the rules, exploring the edges of, and venture outside the limits. Do you want that to be a small thing like staying out late, or a big thing like burning down the house? When my daughter was a teen we brought those limits in tight so she could bend and break them without coming to any real harm.

The Good Enough Parent – No-one is a perfect parent.  It’s much easier for everyone if  we aim to be a ‘good enough’ parent and don’t beat ourselves up for failing occasionally. From entirely different sources (ie not the Cleese, Skynner book above), here are a couple of ways of rethinking about those failures when we do feel we’ve failed :

  • I heard a mother say of her parenting, “I’m putting money in a jar every time I think I’ve stuffed up, so I can give it to them at 21 and say – This is for your therapy. I did the best I could.”
  • In an interview I heard Prof Brian Cox quote someone, (sorry I could not find the original reference) saying, “We should celebrate being wrong because it means we have learnt something new.”

 

 

If only we could feel excited about learning from our failures all the time, but often we feel sad, angry, frustrated or even defensive about our previous position and refuse to learn at all.  Imagine the world we would live in if we could all let go of our old ideas when new evidence is presented to us.  Instead many of us cling on to our old ideas and refuse to believe anything that disproves our current thinking.

 

Alison

 

PS.

John Cleese & Robin Skynner have also co-authored ‘Life and How to Survive it’0393037428.01.LZZZZZZZ

 

 

May 6, 2016

Relatively Speaking

Family gatherings – we all have expectations about them. Some of our expectations derive from past experiences and some from what we see around us in other people’s homes and in the stories we watch, read or are told. Many of us have unrealistic, almost ‘fairytale’ ideals of how these events will unfold – everyone gathered around the dinner table conversing amicably and bathing in the warm glow of affection and friendly conversation, or at least behaving as if we are. My own turbulent family experiences varied greatly, but generally there were disagreements. I remember the only time I hosted the Christmas gathering thinking ‘why can’t they just be polite to each for a few hours?’

Being Polite.jpg

A wise woman once said to me, in difficult social situations you can always fall back on good manners. I have found these words incredibly useful. It sits next to my thinking about when to be assertive and when to let an issue go. When the damage to others and future relationships would impact too many people, last too long into the future or end in a pyrrhic victory (yes you proved you were right or won the argument but the collateral damage meant you lost far more than you gained) this is when the argument isn’t worth having. These are the times when being polite is the best thing to do and often the hardest (‘but I’m right,’we often think to ourselves). However the up side is that you can look back and know you hurt no-one and have nothing to apologise for. If things take a turn for the worse it won’t be because of your actions.

It seems many of us come from an upbringing which includes the core belief that we can ‘relax and be ourselves’ at home or with our relatives and loved ones. This seems to include abandoning the good manners we display in public and treating the ones closest to us with the impoliteness we wouldn’t dream of using to a complete stranger, or indeed to someone we positively disliked! Our loved ones are supposed to understand and forgive, no matter how rude, cruel or mean we are to them. But some things are hard to forgive, especially if they are part of a pattern of bad behaviour.

Respect.jpg

This is the advice I would like to proffer for making family gatherings more successful. Be polite. If you need to, you can always vent to your friends outside the family circle, and you may not need to. (If you really do have an issue you need to pursue with a family member choose a time and place when you can talk privately without interruptions. Consider beforehand about why you want to pursue this issue and what you want to get out of this conversation.) Should there be occasions when others aren’t getting on, don’t add to the problem by jumping in and taking sides.  You may be pleasantly surprised by how much more enjoyable family gatherings are for you and everyone else.

 

Alison

 

 

April 15, 2016

What’s Funny About Being A New Parent? – or – Even Difficult Experiences become Good Anecdotes

I thought we might all like a break from the musical theme so today I’m sharing with you something that I’ve been carrying around for many years and still find funny. It’s a satirical guide for preparing for parenthood. I only had an old photocopy, with no details about where it came from. As I wanted to attribute it to the correct author, I spent a surprisingly small amount of time to find it on the internet. Below is an updated version of my old copy which acknowledge the author as Colin Falconer (AKA Colin Bowles). I found this version on the UK’s Daily Mail website, written by Bianca London for Mailonline. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

 

The Test For Future Parents by author Colin Falconer comprises 14 steps to follow before you have children and was originally printed in his book ‘A beginners guide to fatherhood’ in 1992 before finding its was on to parenting blogs in the UK, ……..

Think you’re ready for motherhood? Read this hilarious blog and reconsider thatMum & bub on sofa.jpg

ARE YOU READY FOR PARENTHOOD?
Test 1: Preparation

Women: To prepare for pregnancy

  1. Put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front.
  2. Leave it there.
  3. After 9 months remove 5% of the beans.

Men: To prepare for children

  1. Go to a local chemist, tip the contents of your wallet onto the counter and tell the pharmacist to help himself
  2. Go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
  3. Go home. Pick up the newspaper and read it for the last time.

Prepare for pregnancy by attaching a beanbag to your front says the blogMums tum.jpg

Test 2: Knowledge

Find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels and how they have allowed their children to run wild.

Suggest ways in which they might improve their child’s sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behaviour.

(I would add that you could criticise their personal presentation, neatness and cleanliness; how they have let the romance go out of their relationship and that they are failing to keep up with interests outside the home and childcare – Alison)

Enjoy it. It will be the last time in your life that you will have all the answers.


Test 3: Nights

To discover how the nights will feel:

  1. Walk around the living room from 5pm to 10pm carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 4 – 6kg, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly.
  2. At 10pm, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight and go to sleep.
  3. Get up at 11pm and walk the bag around the living room until 1am.
  4. Set the alarm for 3am.
  5. As you can’t get back to sleep, get up at 2am and make a cup of tea.
  6. Go to bed at 2.45am.
  7. Get up again at 3am when the alarm goes off.
  8. Sing songs in the dark until 4am.
  9. Put the alarm on for 5am. Get up when it goes off.
  10. Make breakfast.

Keep this up for 5 years. LOOK CHEERFUL.

You can kiss goodbye to precious beauty sleep as soon as you have a child

Mum sleeps

 
Test 4: Dressing Small Children

  1. Buy a live octopus and a string bag.
  2. Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that no arms hangout.

Time Allowed: 5 minutes.

 

Test 5: Cars

  1. Forget the BMW. Buy a practical 5-door wagon.
  2. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there.
  3. Get a coin. Insert it into the CD player.
  4. Take a box of chocolate biscuits; mash them into the back seat.
  5. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

 

Test 6: Going for a walk

The hilarious blog post details a new parent test for broody mothersMum & bub at sink.jpg

  1. Wait
  2. Go out the front door.
  3. Come back in again.
  4. Go out.
  5. Come back in again.
  6. Go out again.
  7. Walk down the front path.
  8. Walk back up it.
  9. Walk down it again.
  10. Walk very slowly down the road for five minutes.
  11. Stop, inspect minutely and ask at least 6 questions about every piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way.
  12. Retrace your steps.
  13. Scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbours come out and stare at you.
  14. Give up and go back into the house.

You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.

 

Test 7: Conversations with children

Repeat everything you say at least 5 times.

 

Test 8: Grocery Shopping

  1. Go to the local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child – a fully grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat.
  2. Buy your weekly groceries without letting the goat(s) out of your sight.
  3. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.

Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

 

Test 9: Feeding a 1 year-old

  1. Hollow out a melon
  2. Make a small hole in the side
  3. Suspend the melon from the ceiling and swing it side to side
  4. Now get a bowl of soggy cornflakes and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon while pretending to be an aeroplane.
  5. Continue until half the cornflakes are gone.
  6. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor.

mum & bub feeding.jpg

Test 10:TV

  1. Learn the names of every character from the Wiggles, Barney, Teletubbies and Disney.
  2. Watch nothing else on television for at least 5 years.

 

Test 11:  Mess

Can you stand the mess children make? To find out:

  1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains
  2. Hide a fish behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
  3. Stick your fingers in the flowerbeds and then rub them on clean walls. Cover the stains with crayon. How does that look?
  4. Empty every drawer/cupboard/storage box in your house onto the floor and proceed with step 5.
  5. Drag randomly items from one room to another room and leave them there.

 

Test 12: Long Trips with Toddlers

  1. Make a recording of someone shouting ‘Mummy’ repeatedly. Important Notes: No more than a 4 second delay between each Mummy. Include occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet.
  2. Play this tape in your car, everywhere you go for the next 4 years.

You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.
Test 13:Conversations

  1. Start talking to an adult of your choice.
  2. Have someone else continually tug on your shirt hem or shirt sleeve while playing the Mummy tape listed above.

You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

 

Test 14: Getting ready for work

  1. Pick a day on which you have an important meeting.
  2. Put on your finest work attire.
  3. Take a cup of cream and put 1 cup of lemon juice in it
  4. Stir
  5. Dump half of it on your nice silk shirt
  6. Saturate a towel with the other half of the mixture
  7. Attempt to clean your shirt with the same saturated towel
  8. Do not change (you have no time).
  9. Go directly to work

You are now ready to have children. ENJOY!!
Are you up to the challenge of parenthood asks this hilarious blog post

 

It only remains for me to add some details you might be interested in about the site where I got this article, Colin Falconer himself and details about another, similar site I found which was also fun.

 

Alison

 

Continue Reading