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  It probably won’t come as a shock to you, but there’s a good chance no one will ever use the words ‘easygoing’ or ‘relaxed’ when describing my character. Full confession? I’m the mum who jogs alongside my daughter on her bike or scooter to make sure she doesn’t ride onto the road, or get snatched by that evil paedophile I just know is lurking behind the toilet block. Got a pool and want to throw a couple of kids around it and call it a party? I will spend my whole time patrolling the death trap.

  For the record, I hate that I’m like this, I really do. For one thing, being a helicopter parent is spirit-crushingly exhausting because you’re literally incapable of making a single move without conducting a detailed risk assessment. ‘Party time!’ arrives the fairy princess invitation in the mail. ‘Parents drop kids off at 2pm and pick them up at 5pm.’ You look at it, entertain the briefest possibility you might take the afternoon off and get your hair done, but then, imagining all the things that can harm your child if you are not in the immediate vicinity at all times, you shudder and send a text. ‘Thanks for the invitation. Cella and I will be there.’ That’s how you find yourself spending weekends schlepping from one kids’ party to the next as your daughter’s ‘plus-one’, assisting with chocolate bar extraction from the piñata and trying hard not to strangle the kids who clearly do not understand the rules of pass the parcel. I simply cannot relax.

  Helicopter and free-style parents are bitterly divided over the best way to raise children of course, each team firing bitter online missives every time a parent or researcher of note goes public with their choices. When New York Sun columnist Lenore Skenazy wrote a piece on why she lets her nine-year-old son ride the subway alone, she was immediately labelled ‘the worst mother in America’ – a pretty big stretch of the imagination in anyone’s language. Skenazy insisted she was all about fostering a sense of independence in her little boy, but according to some media outlets (and a hell of a lot of over-parenters), her actions were tantamount to child abuse. For an alleged child abuser, it’s worth noting Skenazy did pretty well out of ‘abandoning her child’. She started a blog about raising free-range kids, scored herself a book deal and got a gig presenting reality shows such as World’s Worst Mom.

  Helicopter parents don’t get off lightly, either. A recent Australian study found parents who are overprotective and constantly monitor their child’s progress could be making their children more anxious. Among the findings: children whose mothers showed signs of anxiety and depressive disorders were found to be at higher risk of becoming anxious later on in life; children who displayed signs of anxiety as preschoolers were more likely to have mothers who helped too much; and how you behave in front of your child affects how your child will behave when they’re older. For example, if a child encounters a dog in the park and she sees her mother is frightened, that fear and anxiety will be transmitted to her child. If that’s not enough, they also reckon this anxiety is not something your child will grow out of, but something that’s likely to persist as they get older, which can have a negative impact on their quality of life.

  Of course the irony here is that these studies are likely to make anxious parents even more concerned (they can’t help it, it’s in their very nature), but researchers say they’re intended to be helpful. Bring this up with my tightly wound friend Emily however and the proverbial hits the fan. ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ She spits into her decaf soy chai latte (caffeine sends her out of her mind with jitters) as she mulls over the possibility of at least three more major things she now has to worry about. ‘You mean to tell me that by pushing out these press releases, they somehow think they’re soothing some of our fears that we’re screwing our kids up?’ You see, I have friends in both camps, the free-style and the helicopter. While other friends are happy to leave their toddlers at home to duck across the road and get some milk, Emily spends her spare time attending ‘How to better understand your child’ classes, such is her fear she’s not doing a good enough job as a mother. Her anxiety over her child’s safety keeps her up at night and she spends long hours in front of the internet, always seeking better parenting methods. I’ve heard people say motherhood is a full-time job, but never have I seen it in action until I met Emily. Of course, the researchers could be onto something about anxiety transmitting from mothers to children because her son is already displaying the same tendencies as his mother. I don’t bother telling Emily about the study that maintains children of helicopter parents grow up to be dependent, neurotic and less open to new ideas (on the bright side, maybe that means they won’t get into smack?).

  Suddenly, it seems, the whole world has gone mad with hyper-parenting – and coming from me, that’s really saying something. In recent years Australian schools have banned handstands, cartwheels, hugging (hugging!), touch football and even high fives (I’m assuming you can accidentally poke someone in the eye when a ninja-quick high five move goes awry). And we’re teaching our babies to grow up to be afraid of everything. At work, every week I’m sent new and exciting products for babies that feed on our vulnerabilities, such as knee pads for those who’ve just begun to crawl, and helmets for those who’ve just begun to walk (because an unprotected kid could fall over and end up with serious, life-threatening brain injury, reads the rather alarming press release). We don’t take our kids to the beach unless it’s between 8am and 10am and only if they’re wearing a hat and head-to-toe rashie, along with a good slathering of SPF50+ sunscreen. They don’t go to the playground unless the floor covering is made of that strange spongy stuff and even then you’re likely to hear parents talking about how concerned they are that the artificial grass the council is using will cause hormonal problems in their children later on. If they have a ‘playdate’ (you never just ride your bike over to someone’s house unannounced anymore), it’s always organised and supervised – particularly those for children under five.

  But it’s not just affecting playtime – there are education fads, too. Many educational institutions are now either phasing out or banning the ‘failure’ word to ensure all kids feel like winners, even when they’re far from it. There are prizes for everything from best and fairest to 12th runner-up, and it’s all in the name of nurturing self-esteem, say the education experts, but what about the very real fear these kids may all grow up believing they’re so perfect that they’ll never work hard to go that extra mile, or even try something remotely out of their comfort zone? In a recent poll Australians were asked if they thought today’s parents were too overprotective and 89.01 per cent said yes. However, more and more of us are going that very way.

  Between you and me, I know I can’t really protect my daughter. Yes, my over-parenting might be saving her from a childhood of cuts, scrapes, bruises and the odd trip to the emergency room, but I’m also shamefully aware that by doing so, I’m taking away her opportunities for joy, adventure and self-discovery. And these aren’t even the things that matter most. When she’s older I know there are going to be times when her heart will be irreparably broken and her innocence will be lost. I know the cruelty of life will bring her to her knees at times and as I watch my little girl sleeping all tucked up at night in her pink princess sheets, that’s what kills me the most; I will never be able to protect her from these things and as her mother, I can’t help but feel it’s my biological right to want to. I want her to stay perfect forever. But I know I have to loosen my hold. I know she will need to learn to cope without me and learn competence and confidence by tackling things on her own. That’s probably the greatest gift I can give her, so I’m going to try. And as my (free-style) friend said to me the other day, ‘The toughest trees grow in the windiest conditions.’

  The truth behind helicopter parenting

  Q&A with Carl Honoré, author of Under Pressure: Rescuing our Children from the Culture of Hyper-parenting

  Hyper versus free – what’s right and wrong?

  There is no ideal parenting model because there are lots of ways to grow up. But there are some basi
c ingredients that all children need: healthy food, enough sleep, time to play and get bored, freedom to think and explore the world, the right to choose their own path in life, love, security and affection with no conditions attached.

  So should we just let our kids grow like tumbleweed in the wild to ensure parenting success?

  Not at all! It’s certainly possible for parents to do too little for children. That is a problem for many lower-income households where kids are completely left to their own devices and given no structure, encouragement or challenges. I am certainly not advocating that! Children definitely need to be pushed and they need to compete – just not all the time. Remember that childhood is all about finding out who you are and what you’re good at, gradually, without pressure and without someone else deciding for you.

  How the hell did this helicopter parenting culture become so popular?

  Today we seem to be living through our children more than ever. We are more deeply invested in their success. We look to them to make us proud, to make us happy, to make up for our failure. We are so bound up in their lives that we even talk of our children in the third person plural, such as, ‘We have lots of homework,’ and ‘We’re applying to Harvard’.

  The instinct to push our children has always been there but what has changed this past generation is the all-consuming pressure for perfection. The rise of globalisation has brought more competition and uncertainty to the workplace – which makes us more anxious about equipping our kids for adult life. The consumer culture has reached a kind of apotheosis in recent years and the net effect is to create a culture of soaring expectations: we now want perfect teeth, perfect hair, a perfect body, perfect home and perfect children to round off the portrait. As parents we feel immense pressure to give our children the best of everything and make them the best at everything to give them the perfect childhood.

  Where does this pressure come from?

  For a start, the media portrays children as fashion accessories. You see celebrity dads like David Beckham and Brad Pitt flaunting their kids for the paparazzi, and actresses lining up to show off their round tummies and later their newborn babies in gossip magazines. And of course all these images are air-brushed and perfect – everyone looks happy, healthy, rich and successful. This puts huge pressure on ordinary parents to make their own children just as perfect. It sets an impossible standard that everyone else feels they have to strive for.

  And how’s this working out for us?

  If we look at all the time, money and energy we’re putting into our children we should be witnessing the emergence of the happiest, healthiest, most able generation of kids the world has ever seen. But that’s not happening. Our kids are fatter than ever, depression and anxiety is becoming increasingly common across the board and kids are struggling to stand on their own feet. To give you an indication of what I mean, university counselling services are reporting kids falling to pieces at the first sign of adversity in record numbers.

  How do we learn to back off and let our kids be kids?

  First and foremost is to keep in mind that a child is not a project or product or a trophy or a piece of clay you can mould into a work of art. A child is a person who will thrive if allowed to be the protagonist of his own life. As parents we need to make sure our own neuroses and frustrations are not guiding our parenting. Ask yourself, ‘Am I doing this because it is in the best interests of my child, or do I have an ulterior motive?’

  Try to relax and trust your instincts. Even if you can’t believe it, your child will be absolutely fine.

  I constantly lie to my child to make life easier

  One evening as we walk home from childcare, Cella looks up at the moon and waves frantically. ‘Hi Monique! Hi!’ she yells out excitedly. ‘Monique? Monique? . . . Mummy, why isn’t she waving back? Why can’t I see her?’ She looks at me with those big blue eyes imploring me to set her free from her misery. I’m in a deep misery all of my own and can only smile as I blink back my tears. I cannot help her, you see; I’ve set her up to feel this way because I’ve lied to her. Again.

  When our feisty but ridiculously old family cat Monique died some six months ago, I was relieved when Cella didn’t notice her absence. We were all gutted, but Cella danced around the house in a tutu as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Now, she’s not completely nutty – the cat lived at my parents’ place so it’s not like the cat was part of our everyday lives or anything. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, she finally twigged that something was amiss.

  ‘Mama, where’s Monique?’ she asked out of the blue, all innocence and light. My smile freezing on my face, I stood bolted to the spot with shock and horror. Oh fuck! my internal dialogue screamed. What the hell am I going to tell her? Could I tell her she went away on a cat holiday? Christ, where would a cat even go on holiday? Maybe she’s got her fur drenched in tanning oil off the Bermuda coast somewhere? Hmm, Bermuda would be nice to visit. Crap, that will invite even more questions. Sigh . . . You need to just tell her the truth, Dilvin, she can handle it . . . My internal dialogue continued for a good three to four minutes (I’ll save you the details but rest assured they revolved around Bermuda). When I finished, Cella was still looking at me, her head cocked to the side, so I sat her down in my lap and gently said, ‘Monique got very sick and she died, darling.’ Right, that was easy enough, I thought, aside from that pesky knife stabbing through my heart. Cella looked at me for a moment, her brows furrowed. ‘But what does died mean, Mummy?’ Oh crap, wasn’t she supposed to just accept it and have a brief cry before we cuddled as the closing credits rolled, just like in those American sitcoms?

  ‘Er, erm,’ I splutter for a moment as I try to regain my composure. ‘Well, it means she’s gone to cat heaven where she’ll be with her mummy and daddy.’

  She thinks this over for a minute. ‘Oh . . . so can we go and visit her now?’

  ‘Well, honey, when cats die, we can never see them again. She’s gone for good.’

  ‘But where is cat heaven?’

  ‘It’s located on the moon and we can’t go there because we don’t have a spaceship since they haven’t been invented yet – that’s only something the animators came up with for Wall-E – but don’t worry because Monique is fine and if you wave to her, she can see you and she might even wave back.’

  For all those playing at home, I’ve just lied to my daughter EIGHT times over the course of that one conversation. I don’t mean to lie to her; I just don’t have the heart to tell her we chucked the cat in the ground under the house and that she’ll now become nothing but dust. You’d think that would be easier than making up elaborate stories about spaceships and feline afterlife, but as any mother will tell you, it just isn’t.

  Cella ponders my Wall-E rant very carefully. It sounds a little far-fetched but she would never think to question me. Parents don’t ever lie, do they? She’d certainly have no cause to think so, anyway, because I’ve never been caught out. Just as I think the storm has passed she asks, ‘But is it just cats who die, Mummy? People don’t die, do they? Mummies and daddies don’t ever die and go away to the moon?’ And you know what? Just like that, I’m done with lying. ‘CELLA, WOULD YOU LIKE A NUTELLA SANDWICH?’ I yell out a little too anxiously. ‘It’s like chocolate you can put on bread! ISN’T THAT EXCITING? Would you like some of that, honey?’ I quickly rush out of the room, my heart beating like a drum.

  This isn’t the only time I’ve lied to my daughter – oh no, I lie all the time. And the worst part of it is, the older she gets and the more questions she asks, the more I crank up the dial on the old deceit meter. I’ve busted out everything from, ‘Oh sweetheart, you look GORGEOUS in that torn lime green fairy dress and purple cape’ and ‘Mummy slipped over in the bath and Daddy was helping me up’ to ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about – the chicken on your plate has no relation to the chicken you were cuddling at the farm today’. And while I’m in full confession mode, it turns out my epic parental fail is not only li
mited to lying, I also put corrupt policemen worldwide to shame with my bribing techniques – all in an effort to get stuff done – nothing more, nothing less.

  It began innocently enough by introducing a basic reward system all parents are familiar with. Examples include: ‘Cella, if you listen to what your swimming instructor tells you today, I’ll let you wear your princess dress for the rest of the afternoon.’ ‘Eat all your vegetables and you can have a sweet treat afterwards’ and ‘If you tidy up all your toys for a whole month, I’ll buy you a new Barbie’. We’ve all been there – it’s a natural progression from the star chart we all seem to use as soon as our babies become testing toddlers. ‘A bright and colourful reward system is an effective way to teach your children important life tools’ according to the parenting books stacked up haphazardly on our shelves. Well, this may work when your two-year-old starts using the potty or pushing a piece of broccoli around a plate for hours, but it turns out it’s not such an effective tool once your toddler becomes a trying preschooler. So, in our house the system of rewarding has quickly been replaced with the system of threatening. ‘Cella, if you don’t listen to what your swimming instructor tells you, I’m going to take away all your princess dresses and you will not get them back until you start to swim without crying’ and ‘If you don’t tidy your toys up right now, I’m going to come around with a garbage bag and throw out anything that’s left on the floor’ (this is far more effective if you stand in the doorway clutching said garbage bag). Do I feel bad about it? Absolutely! But when I bring it up with my psychologist friend over drinks one night, she waves away my concerns. ‘Please! Don’t think of it as bribery or threats – it’s incentive and without incentive the modern world would cease to work,’ she tells me. ‘Would you go to work for free? No, you go because they pay you and keep the banks from taking your house and that’s an incentive for you to get your arse out of bed every morning.’ She’s one smart cookie, this woman, and by the time I leave the bar I’m not just tipsy, but convinced I’m the best parent in the world. By teaching Cella the merits of incentives, I’m actually giving her a valuable life lesson. I am awesome! And besides, my girlfriend does the garbage bag trick and she’s a top psychologist so she must know what she’s doing.