How time flies when you’re busy and having fun! It’s been a while since my last post, and unfortunately more due to busyness than fun, although I have been having, if not fun, then some light-hearted and interesting conversations with Jamie and his friends.
At the end of my last post I said that I was going to work at opening up some dialogue with Jamie about sex and I am pleased to report that this has been happening. The breakthrough came a few days after I had written that last entry. It was a Friday night and Jamie’s three closest friends were all round at our house for a sleep-over. I’d been out all day and arrived back to find them all hanging out in the kitchen. They are all really great kids and I have a lot of time for them, so I stuck around and butted into their banter and conversation every now and again – being careful not to be too intrusive of course!
It occurred to me then, as they were all being so wonderfully chatty and communicative, to ask them for their thoughts on what I’d written about Sexting. So I asked them if they’d heard of it. They hadn’t. So I described what it was and once I had they knew what I was talking about. It turned out that they had all had pictures sent to their phones. So I asked them what they thought about it and whether they felt they were being overly exposed to sex. They thought the pictures were just a bit of a laugh, but agreed that they were exposed to a lot of sex. So I asked them what they thought about that and their responses were quite a surprise to me.
Whereas I, a 40-something parent who despite being reasonably open-minded still has an unfortunately predictable ‘it wasn’t like that in my day’ kind of attitude, (and of course it goes without saying that ‘my day’ was better than ‘their day’), clearly think that seeing all this sex is a bad thing, an unhealthy thing, that it must make sex less ‘special’, less ‘sacred’, less ‘meaningful’, they really didn’t see it that way at all.
Chris, probably the most outspoken and eloquent of the four boys, spoke up first and put his point of view across in a very thoughtful and considered way. The basic paraphrase of what he said was: I think it will make us more open-minded and knowledgeable about sex! Well, I have to be honest, the fact that it could be a positive thing had never, not once for even a second, crossed my mind! And this pretty well summed up the general viewpoint of all of them, that it would make them less hung up and more comfortable about sex.
However, slightly shocked though I was, I accepted their point of view and since that day they have begun to talk to me more openly about sex. I know now which one of them is no longer a virgin, I know which one is very sexually frustrated and I know that Jamie isn’t yet ready for sex. We have talked about the differing and sometimes conflicting needs of men and women and even, what they can do to be considerate and caring lovers to the women they are with (this presumes of course they will all be heterosexual, which I accept may not be the case).
It is this last bit that felt the best. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if all boys were taught how to be generous and considerate lovers? Jamie did get a little embarrassed at this point, hearing his mum speak about sex like this, but he said he could cope if I acted like I was talking only to his friend and made like he wasn’t there!
One other thing I found out was that the one of them who is no longer a virgin had that sexual interaction without a condom! Thankfully the other 3 had clearly given him his due amount of flak about this and told him how stupid it was, so I didn’t feel I needed to add anything. But what really shocked me was that here was a bright, well-educated boy, who has had his full quota of sex education, taking this kind of risk. So I had to ask why, as it certainly wasn’t ignorance! The reason he gave was that, in the moment, it was too awkward to broach. Amazing! Here we are in what we think is an enlightened society, with what we consider a high level education system and yet here is a teenage boy and girl for whom the primary considerations overriding all of this are those of romance and the sensibilities of innocent and tentative intimacy. It would seem that for all our education and rationality, we are still fully prey to the dictates of our hearts and our bodies.
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
Friday, 4 September 2009
Re-adjusting my assuptions of young people!
However ‘cool’ one thinks one is as a parent (am I saying I think I’m a ‘cool’ parent? Hmm, well, maybe I can be, but I’m using the term very loosely), there are times when we all get caught short and have to pause and review what we thought to be true, or let go of some belief or assumption we’d previously held about our child or about young people in general.
I told you that Jamie had been to Lyme Regis in August to stay with one of his school friends - creating a bit of a vacuum in my life. Well, eventually he did come home and I was able to resume my ‘normal’ motherly role letting him take up my time and energy with his needs, interests and desires (phew! breathe a sigh of relief….all that freedom can be a bit overwhelming after a while!)……making sure I have his favourite chocolate fudge brownie milkshake, driving him to obscure bike shops to buy a rare but absolutely necessary bolt, helping him with his paper-round, or fighting over the last age 15 long-sleeved school shirts with all the other parents in M&S the day before school starts – you know the kind of thing!
However, I’d just like to rewind to the journey home after I picked him up at the station after his time away. The usual conversation: Did you have a nice time? What did you do? Did you eat alright, sleep alright? During the somewhat monosyllabic responses and more determined interrogation from me for some kind of information, I was suddenly hit by a mystical moment of intuition! There was something he wasn’t telling me! Ok, so maybe not that mystical, we parents can be quite perceptive I know.
A moment’s consideration led me to the question I knew would get to the heart of it: did you meet any new people whilst you were there? Answer: yeah. Second question: Girls? Answer: (quiet and muffled under uncomfortable smile) yeah. Aha! That was what I’d suspected! I immediately turned into Interrogator Extraordinaire, Detective Tennison at her best! Who were these girls? Where were they from? When did he meet them? What did they do? And, as my grand finale……did one of them become more than a friend? In fact, I have to admit that I even succumbed to that incredibly embarrassing tendency that those of us who sometimes think we’re ‘cool’ parents have of using terms that were ‘in’ when we were teenagers. I asked him, and it makes me cringe now to remember it, if he ‘got off with her’! Bless him, he didn’t squirm or say ‘mum’ in that way, he just asked me what I meant, which was actually more embarrassing as I then had to explain what I meant!
Anyway, I got the information I needed and so began the process of eroding my assumptions about my son that I mentioned above and subsequently, as I will go on to explain, the erosion of my assumptions about young people in general.
One piece of information you need to know is that whilst he was in Lyme Regis, Jamie went in the sea with his mobile phone in the pocket of his shorts! (The second time this summer it has to be said – he also did it on holiday in Spain). When he came back he was desperate for the use of a phone so he could text ‘the girl’, so I lent him mine until I could afford to get him a new one.
So, first assumption: Jamie was not particularly interested in girls, he was too caught up in general ‘boy’ pursuits, riding his bike, taking it apart and putting it together again, and hanging out with the ‘lads’. When had girls arrived in his consciousness? Had I missed something? Been neglectful? Too caught up in work and single-handedly keeping us fed, clothed and housed? In my defence, I think definitely the latter.
But here he was, spending every minute of every day texting ‘the girl’ (luckily I have unlimited texts on my phone contract). And this is where my other assumption came in for a battering – an assumption based on my own level of sexual understanding and upfrontness when I was the age Jamie is now.
I’m going to have to make a shameful admission here: when I borrowed my phone back a few days later I happened to notice one or two of the texts she had sent him in the inbox and caught by the words used in some of them I had a look at a few more. I consider myself very open-minded but I was a bit taken aback by some of the words used and the fairly extensive use of sexual innuendo. I have to say, it wasn’t awful, but it was certainly to a degree of explicitness that I would never have engaged in with a boy when I was 14, particularly one I had only known a few days.
It certainly challenged my assumptions about ‘nice’ boys and girls. Here were these young people who would generally be considered quite respectable, engaging in dialogue that would certainly surprise many of the adults who knew him, his teachers for example. How could this be? What was going on?
It didn’t take long to come up with some answers. That evening Jamie and I were sat watching our favourite programme together, Friends – the endless run of repeated series on E4 – it’s a sad fact that we both love it! And with my now increased sensibility I noticed how often there are quite overt sexual references to things like ‘girl on girl action’, jokes that refer to anal sex and other sexual practices but all done in a jokey innocent way! It didn’t take me long after this to notice that this was also common on other, particularly American, programmes and that this was all before 9pm! After 9 it was much worse – on programmes like Big Brother, live comedy shows and overtly sexually based programmes like Sexcetera (don’t ask!). All easily accessible by any teenager with a TV in their room.
Maybe I sound a little naïve, (and I’ve definitely always been a bit of a romantic which I suppose doesn’t help), but I was beginning to fully awaken to what a sexualised culture we live in. I kind of knew this, you only need to look at the way many young women dress and even girls as young as 7 or 8 wanting to wear clothes that copy women’s sexually provocative clothing, but I hadn’t quite appreciated how much it has seeped into the simple ways that young men and women communicate and considered in this context, it’s really no surprise that they are much more casual about ‘sexy’ talk than my generation were.
However, I was to have my eyes opened even more when I investigated a little further. Are you aware of Sexting? Sexting is the practice of sending semi-nude, nude or sexually explicit pictures of yourself to others via your mobile phone. It is mostly, but not always, teenage girls sending pictures to boys and can also include pictures of sexual acts. These pictures often then get passed around and shared between many different people and even uploaded onto social networking sites. In one article I read, the author spoke to some teenagers and this was the comment of one of them: “It’s nothing to do with how you are brought up, it’s just out there now”.
According to this article 90 children in the UK have so far been cautioned as a result of posting sexual material of themselves or underage friends online or on their mobile phones. This suggests that it is a relatively small number of young people who will be affected by it, but I think it shows the kind of things that our youngsters are potentially going to be exposed to. Things that perhaps we are blissfully unaware of because our assumptions about their behaviour are based on our own teenage years.
I like to believe that every cloud has a silver lining and it has made me take steps to open up a dialogue with Jamie about sex and related issues, something I know I have been guilty of putting off. This is partly because I know that Jamie finds these kind of conversations uncomfortable (my eldest son, Dan, on the other hand, would gladly talk about anything), but also I know, because of being too caught up in work and single-handedly keeping us fed, clothed and housed………
I told you that Jamie had been to Lyme Regis in August to stay with one of his school friends - creating a bit of a vacuum in my life. Well, eventually he did come home and I was able to resume my ‘normal’ motherly role letting him take up my time and energy with his needs, interests and desires (phew! breathe a sigh of relief….all that freedom can be a bit overwhelming after a while!)……making sure I have his favourite chocolate fudge brownie milkshake, driving him to obscure bike shops to buy a rare but absolutely necessary bolt, helping him with his paper-round, or fighting over the last age 15 long-sleeved school shirts with all the other parents in M&S the day before school starts – you know the kind of thing!
However, I’d just like to rewind to the journey home after I picked him up at the station after his time away. The usual conversation: Did you have a nice time? What did you do? Did you eat alright, sleep alright? During the somewhat monosyllabic responses and more determined interrogation from me for some kind of information, I was suddenly hit by a mystical moment of intuition! There was something he wasn’t telling me! Ok, so maybe not that mystical, we parents can be quite perceptive I know.
A moment’s consideration led me to the question I knew would get to the heart of it: did you meet any new people whilst you were there? Answer: yeah. Second question: Girls? Answer: (quiet and muffled under uncomfortable smile) yeah. Aha! That was what I’d suspected! I immediately turned into Interrogator Extraordinaire, Detective Tennison at her best! Who were these girls? Where were they from? When did he meet them? What did they do? And, as my grand finale……did one of them become more than a friend? In fact, I have to admit that I even succumbed to that incredibly embarrassing tendency that those of us who sometimes think we’re ‘cool’ parents have of using terms that were ‘in’ when we were teenagers. I asked him, and it makes me cringe now to remember it, if he ‘got off with her’! Bless him, he didn’t squirm or say ‘mum’ in that way, he just asked me what I meant, which was actually more embarrassing as I then had to explain what I meant!
Anyway, I got the information I needed and so began the process of eroding my assumptions about my son that I mentioned above and subsequently, as I will go on to explain, the erosion of my assumptions about young people in general.
One piece of information you need to know is that whilst he was in Lyme Regis, Jamie went in the sea with his mobile phone in the pocket of his shorts! (The second time this summer it has to be said – he also did it on holiday in Spain). When he came back he was desperate for the use of a phone so he could text ‘the girl’, so I lent him mine until I could afford to get him a new one.
So, first assumption: Jamie was not particularly interested in girls, he was too caught up in general ‘boy’ pursuits, riding his bike, taking it apart and putting it together again, and hanging out with the ‘lads’. When had girls arrived in his consciousness? Had I missed something? Been neglectful? Too caught up in work and single-handedly keeping us fed, clothed and housed? In my defence, I think definitely the latter.
But here he was, spending every minute of every day texting ‘the girl’ (luckily I have unlimited texts on my phone contract). And this is where my other assumption came in for a battering – an assumption based on my own level of sexual understanding and upfrontness when I was the age Jamie is now.
I’m going to have to make a shameful admission here: when I borrowed my phone back a few days later I happened to notice one or two of the texts she had sent him in the inbox and caught by the words used in some of them I had a look at a few more. I consider myself very open-minded but I was a bit taken aback by some of the words used and the fairly extensive use of sexual innuendo. I have to say, it wasn’t awful, but it was certainly to a degree of explicitness that I would never have engaged in with a boy when I was 14, particularly one I had only known a few days.
It certainly challenged my assumptions about ‘nice’ boys and girls. Here were these young people who would generally be considered quite respectable, engaging in dialogue that would certainly surprise many of the adults who knew him, his teachers for example. How could this be? What was going on?
It didn’t take long to come up with some answers. That evening Jamie and I were sat watching our favourite programme together, Friends – the endless run of repeated series on E4 – it’s a sad fact that we both love it! And with my now increased sensibility I noticed how often there are quite overt sexual references to things like ‘girl on girl action’, jokes that refer to anal sex and other sexual practices but all done in a jokey innocent way! It didn’t take me long after this to notice that this was also common on other, particularly American, programmes and that this was all before 9pm! After 9 it was much worse – on programmes like Big Brother, live comedy shows and overtly sexually based programmes like Sexcetera (don’t ask!). All easily accessible by any teenager with a TV in their room.
Maybe I sound a little naïve, (and I’ve definitely always been a bit of a romantic which I suppose doesn’t help), but I was beginning to fully awaken to what a sexualised culture we live in. I kind of knew this, you only need to look at the way many young women dress and even girls as young as 7 or 8 wanting to wear clothes that copy women’s sexually provocative clothing, but I hadn’t quite appreciated how much it has seeped into the simple ways that young men and women communicate and considered in this context, it’s really no surprise that they are much more casual about ‘sexy’ talk than my generation were.
However, I was to have my eyes opened even more when I investigated a little further. Are you aware of Sexting? Sexting is the practice of sending semi-nude, nude or sexually explicit pictures of yourself to others via your mobile phone. It is mostly, but not always, teenage girls sending pictures to boys and can also include pictures of sexual acts. These pictures often then get passed around and shared between many different people and even uploaded onto social networking sites. In one article I read, the author spoke to some teenagers and this was the comment of one of them: “It’s nothing to do with how you are brought up, it’s just out there now”.
According to this article 90 children in the UK have so far been cautioned as a result of posting sexual material of themselves or underage friends online or on their mobile phones. This suggests that it is a relatively small number of young people who will be affected by it, but I think it shows the kind of things that our youngsters are potentially going to be exposed to. Things that perhaps we are blissfully unaware of because our assumptions about their behaviour are based on our own teenage years.
I like to believe that every cloud has a silver lining and it has made me take steps to open up a dialogue with Jamie about sex and related issues, something I know I have been guilty of putting off. This is partly because I know that Jamie finds these kind of conversations uncomfortable (my eldest son, Dan, on the other hand, would gladly talk about anything), but also I know, because of being too caught up in work and single-handedly keeping us fed, clothed and housed………
Tuesday, 11 August 2009
July for me was a month full of people and activity (and rain, but the less said about that the better!). My eldest son Dan was back from University, his girlfriend came to stay for a while, Sarah was here before moving to her new flat, my brothers, both of whom live abroad, and their families came over to stay, we all went camping for a fun-filled and wet week (and no, I’m not just being stoic here, it is possible for camping, fun and rain to go in the same sentence!) and then it was my dad’s 80th birthday party with what seemed like an endless round of meetings with long-lost relatives and family friends.
Now, today I am sitting feeling strangely lonely, in an empty quiet house. I say strangely because although it would seem obvious that the aftermath of all this frenzied and sociable activity would seem a bit flat, I know that that isn’t what this is about. In fact, it’s a bit of a relief that it’s over, - some of the time was lovely but some of it, well you know what families can be like, not so lovely! No, this feels like one of those moments in parenting life when you suddenly realize something’s shifted and has been shifting for a while but you’ve only just noticed!
For the last week Jamie (my youngest, 14, just in case you’ve forgotten) has been in Lyme Regis. He and a friend from school are staying with another school friend and his family as they have a house there (a fact of which I am extremely jealous!). I have rung him twice since he’s been away and both times the conversation has roughly gone: Hello, how are you? Fine. What have you been doing? Uh, dunno, lots of things but mum, I’ve got to go now because we’re about to……..Hmmm, not missing me then, that’s obvious. In fact, he’s now staying on for a bit longer.
I did manage to get a little more information out of him during our conversations….. they’ve been going for early evening swims in the sea every day even when it’s been raining, they’ve been sea-kayaking, roaming the cliffs, shrimping and fishing and in the evenings playing games. And so, despite the jealousy and feelings of abandonment, I think it’s absolutely bloody marvelous. For a boy, like many other boys his age, who spends inordinate amounts of time either watching TV or on his computer playing Counterstrike (which if you’ve not come across it think yourself lucky – it basically involves shooting, stabbing and generally ending the lives of ‘terrorists’!), to have the balance between virtual reality and natural reality shift so dramatically, even if only temporarily, can only be good.
Incidentally, I read an interesting article recently in a magazine1 about how computers and television are hijacking childhood and creating the ecological equivalent of an attachment disorder with nature. Not only that but research has linked children spending many hours in virtual space with an array of health problems, including obesity and sleep disorders, and many others which don’t develop until many years later. Screen viewing suppresses Melatonin which is our sleep-inducing hormone and is also a powerful antioxidant that can prevent cancer-causing mutations of cell DNA. I don’t want to scare you (or myself for that matter!), but I’m sure we all know instinctively that it’s not good for our kids, and it’s good to be reminded - I just thank God for friends with holiday homes!
Anyway, to get back to my lonely and abandoned state…..so, Jamie is in Lyme having mucho fun and Dan, who was going to be home for the whole summer, decided to go to Edinburgh to stay with his uncle who lives up there and get work at the Edinburgh Festival so that he can earn some money to travel with friends to Morocco in September, and then straight back to Uni at the beginning of October. Great for him, but for me it sucks - summer hols is the time I have to look forward to him being around.
Sarah, as you may know from my previous posting is now living, in her pregnant state, in a flat with her boyfriend 200 miles away. I went to visit them last week and well, what can I say? The flat is nice enough, clean, light, airy, they have begun to sort themselves out, shop, cook, feed themselves, but for me it’s really hard, she’s my little girl, still so young, having to take on so much responsibility – and doing brilliantly I have to say, but that doesn’t make it any easier.
And that leaves me (and Pudding, curled up in my lap purring as I type), sat here in this quiet and empty house knowing that all my children are out there in the world independently, doing their own thing, getting on with lives that don’t include me and don’t need me, and although that’s just as it should be, it’s, well, a little challenging to say the least.
So, as I said, I’ve suddenly realized that, although Jamie’s going to be back soon and will be around for a 2 or 3 years yet, something has shifted in all our relationships and that leaves me………
FREE!
I had to say that because I was beginning to feel a little sad and so an injection of positivity was needed I felt.
And as part of this new liberation and with Jamie being away, I went up to Yorkshire last week to a place called Learning to Listen run by a wonderfully inspiring woman called Sarah Kreutzer who works with troubled horses and children using ‘horse whispering’ techniques. She has just developed a 5 day course called the Warrior Programme which she runs for individuals and corporate groups and uses these same techniques, and includes work with the horses to look at personal, leadership, team-building and conflict-resolution skills. So I am now officially a Warrior and I have to say, it was absolutely brilliant, incredibly powerful stuff – the horses are great teachers and have this awe-inspiring ability to mirror back to you with absolute honesty and clarity where you’re at, which is not always a comfortable experience to say the least. I would definitely recommend it, – see www.learningtolisten.co.uk
So what’s to be done about my aloneness? I have to admit to being a little jealous of Half Mum, Half Biscuit (www.onespace.org.uk/blogs) when she talks about Alan, the new man in her life, so I think my first positive Warrior action is going to be getting on that internet dating malarkey……watch this space!
Notes
1. ‘Videophilia’, Aric Sigman, Resurgence magazine, No. 254, May/June 2009
Now, today I am sitting feeling strangely lonely, in an empty quiet house. I say strangely because although it would seem obvious that the aftermath of all this frenzied and sociable activity would seem a bit flat, I know that that isn’t what this is about. In fact, it’s a bit of a relief that it’s over, - some of the time was lovely but some of it, well you know what families can be like, not so lovely! No, this feels like one of those moments in parenting life when you suddenly realize something’s shifted and has been shifting for a while but you’ve only just noticed!
For the last week Jamie (my youngest, 14, just in case you’ve forgotten) has been in Lyme Regis. He and a friend from school are staying with another school friend and his family as they have a house there (a fact of which I am extremely jealous!). I have rung him twice since he’s been away and both times the conversation has roughly gone: Hello, how are you? Fine. What have you been doing? Uh, dunno, lots of things but mum, I’ve got to go now because we’re about to……..Hmmm, not missing me then, that’s obvious. In fact, he’s now staying on for a bit longer.
I did manage to get a little more information out of him during our conversations….. they’ve been going for early evening swims in the sea every day even when it’s been raining, they’ve been sea-kayaking, roaming the cliffs, shrimping and fishing and in the evenings playing games. And so, despite the jealousy and feelings of abandonment, I think it’s absolutely bloody marvelous. For a boy, like many other boys his age, who spends inordinate amounts of time either watching TV or on his computer playing Counterstrike (which if you’ve not come across it think yourself lucky – it basically involves shooting, stabbing and generally ending the lives of ‘terrorists’!), to have the balance between virtual reality and natural reality shift so dramatically, even if only temporarily, can only be good.
Incidentally, I read an interesting article recently in a magazine1 about how computers and television are hijacking childhood and creating the ecological equivalent of an attachment disorder with nature. Not only that but research has linked children spending many hours in virtual space with an array of health problems, including obesity and sleep disorders, and many others which don’t develop until many years later. Screen viewing suppresses Melatonin which is our sleep-inducing hormone and is also a powerful antioxidant that can prevent cancer-causing mutations of cell DNA. I don’t want to scare you (or myself for that matter!), but I’m sure we all know instinctively that it’s not good for our kids, and it’s good to be reminded - I just thank God for friends with holiday homes!
Anyway, to get back to my lonely and abandoned state…..so, Jamie is in Lyme having mucho fun and Dan, who was going to be home for the whole summer, decided to go to Edinburgh to stay with his uncle who lives up there and get work at the Edinburgh Festival so that he can earn some money to travel with friends to Morocco in September, and then straight back to Uni at the beginning of October. Great for him, but for me it sucks - summer hols is the time I have to look forward to him being around.
Sarah, as you may know from my previous posting is now living, in her pregnant state, in a flat with her boyfriend 200 miles away. I went to visit them last week and well, what can I say? The flat is nice enough, clean, light, airy, they have begun to sort themselves out, shop, cook, feed themselves, but for me it’s really hard, she’s my little girl, still so young, having to take on so much responsibility – and doing brilliantly I have to say, but that doesn’t make it any easier.
And that leaves me (and Pudding, curled up in my lap purring as I type), sat here in this quiet and empty house knowing that all my children are out there in the world independently, doing their own thing, getting on with lives that don’t include me and don’t need me, and although that’s just as it should be, it’s, well, a little challenging to say the least.
So, as I said, I’ve suddenly realized that, although Jamie’s going to be back soon and will be around for a 2 or 3 years yet, something has shifted in all our relationships and that leaves me………
FREE!
I had to say that because I was beginning to feel a little sad and so an injection of positivity was needed I felt.
And as part of this new liberation and with Jamie being away, I went up to Yorkshire last week to a place called Learning to Listen run by a wonderfully inspiring woman called Sarah Kreutzer who works with troubled horses and children using ‘horse whispering’ techniques. She has just developed a 5 day course called the Warrior Programme which she runs for individuals and corporate groups and uses these same techniques, and includes work with the horses to look at personal, leadership, team-building and conflict-resolution skills. So I am now officially a Warrior and I have to say, it was absolutely brilliant, incredibly powerful stuff – the horses are great teachers and have this awe-inspiring ability to mirror back to you with absolute honesty and clarity where you’re at, which is not always a comfortable experience to say the least. I would definitely recommend it, – see www.learningtolisten.co.uk
So what’s to be done about my aloneness? I have to admit to being a little jealous of Half Mum, Half Biscuit (www.onespace.org.uk/blogs) when she talks about Alan, the new man in her life, so I think my first positive Warrior action is going to be getting on that internet dating malarkey……watch this space!
Notes
1. ‘Videophilia’, Aric Sigman, Resurgence magazine, No. 254, May/June 2009
Friday, 17 July 2009
Well, I had definitely not meant to leave it so long before writing again but I’ve been suffering from writer’s block! I didn’t know that’s what it was at the time, all I knew was that for some unknown reason I just couldn’t seem to get down on paper (well, technically, on screen, but that doesn’t sound so writerly!) the grand piece I’d been planning about the demonisation of teenagers and Mosquitoes (intriguing huh?! All will be revealed in later instalments) as a follow-up to my first posting.
Then, the other day, whilst struggling yet again to try to get on with it, it dawned on me in one of those flashy moments of seemingly divine wisdom, when you wonder suddenly how you could have been so dense, that I’d got so attached to this particular idea of what I was going to write that I was completely overlooking the completely obvious thing to write about!
Part of the reason for this, I have to tell you, is that I thought that if I wrote about what was really going on people would be sure to think I’d made it up…..here’s this woman, just started a blog about single parenting teenagers and how convenient and how wonderfully dramatic, her daughter just happens to be suddenly pregnant! Yes, that’s right, pregnant, my just-turned 17 year old daughter is pregnant, shock, horror…..well, not now but we have had our fair share of shock and horror moments these last few weeks.
But no word of a lie, that, in a nutshell, is what’s really been going on in my life – my lovely daughter has kindly presented me with some fabulously dramatic material! So, in my moment of God-given insight, it was clear that this is what I should be writing about, especially as I’d pledged to be honest, and from then on the creative juices have been abundantly flowing.
So at this point, a few more details of the story, although it will still be a very long story cut short.
The plot:
Daughter (16) announces she is pregnant. Surprise (and maybe a bit of shock and horror) from everyone (except me, her very perceptive mother, of course). After some thought Daughter decides to have a termination (Boyfriend’s influence). The night before Dad tells her he’s been a lousy father and that he wants to be better and he will be there for her. Daughter (and Dad and Boyfriend) arrives at hospital 8.00am, speaks to nurse, leaves 8.05am and goes home. Mum very happy (always knew it wasn’t what she wanted). Boyfriend comes round to the idea. Dad tells her to leave home by end of following month. Daughter upset, Mum happy because Daughter will have to come and live with her. Daughter goes to Boyfriend’s house for the weekend. Comes home and Dad’s girlfriend tells her she has 30minutes to pack her things and leave! General chaos and upset – much anger from Yours Truly. Daughter comes to live with Mum. Week later Boyfriend comes to join her. Boyfriend decides he doesn’t like city where Mum lives. Boyfriend finds flat in town they’ve come from (Mum unhappy). 17 year old Daughter living independently in flat with Boyfriend (Daughter scared but brave, Mum anxious, NO contact from Dad).
That’s the general plot and pretty much where we are now. There are various sub-plots running through it, the two main ones being that her dad has a new girlfriend who moved in only 3 months ago with 2 children, and the fact that Sarah has wanted a baby of her own since she was about 5. It’s the first of these which has caused most of the trouble and upset, but the second one I particularly want to talk about at the moment.
It’s lovely that she really wants the baby but she is only 17. And there are many people who would say that that is exactly what makes it not right.
Teenage pregnancy is a bit of a hot topic at the moment. Barack Obama is dealing with the fact that the USA has the highest level of teenage pregnancy in the world despite millions of dollars that were pumped into supporting President Bush’s abstinence programmes which clearly didn’t work. Britain has the highest level of teenage pregnancy in Europe. A £6m government programme aimed at reducing teenage pregnancy through education and support hit the news last week when it was reported that research showed that young women taking part in the programme were significantly more likely to get pregnant. Clearly neither of these quite different approaches worked.
So what is the answer? Why are so many teenage girls getting pregnant? Well, I can’t answer for the bulk of teenagers but I do know why Sarah got pregnant. It’s really a combination of 3 things:
1) She was sexually active (obvious really)
2) She didn’t get on with any of the contraception methods she tried (and she tried most of them)
3) And most importantly, as I said, she’s been mad about babies as long as I can remember
Number 2 is a whole issue in itself, the unsatisfactory nature of available contraception. It’s the last one I want to focus on. At the last minute Sarah was able to be true to herself and made a clear choice and I’m proud of her for that. I think a lot of people would find that a surprising view to have. Surely teenage pregnancy is bad, nothing to be proud of! I ran a teenage parents project a few years back and that experience convinced me that most of the ‘problem’ with teenage parenthood is simply that we’ve made it a problem.
A young woman is biologically able to procreate from the onset of puberty and it is those biological changes in a woman’s body which generate the urge to have a baby, what we generally call broodiness. Yet we think it is ok for a 36 year old woman to feel broody, but not a 16 year old? Why is that? Because our cultural norms tell us so. Our cultural norms tell us that a young woman shouldn’t feel broody until she is at least 20 and probably not even then. What is the magic age after which it is ok? And when are we going to tell our bodies? Consequently, Sarah couldn’t be honest about her broodiness even to herself in case it was frowned upon.
During my years at the teenage parents’ project many young parents crossed my path, some were lousy parents, some were ok parents and some were great parents – in the grand scheme of parenting nothing unusual there, I think we’d all agree. Teenage pregnancy good? Teenage pregnancy bad? You know what? Nothing’s ever quite that simple.
Then, the other day, whilst struggling yet again to try to get on with it, it dawned on me in one of those flashy moments of seemingly divine wisdom, when you wonder suddenly how you could have been so dense, that I’d got so attached to this particular idea of what I was going to write that I was completely overlooking the completely obvious thing to write about!
Part of the reason for this, I have to tell you, is that I thought that if I wrote about what was really going on people would be sure to think I’d made it up…..here’s this woman, just started a blog about single parenting teenagers and how convenient and how wonderfully dramatic, her daughter just happens to be suddenly pregnant! Yes, that’s right, pregnant, my just-turned 17 year old daughter is pregnant, shock, horror…..well, not now but we have had our fair share of shock and horror moments these last few weeks.
But no word of a lie, that, in a nutshell, is what’s really been going on in my life – my lovely daughter has kindly presented me with some fabulously dramatic material! So, in my moment of God-given insight, it was clear that this is what I should be writing about, especially as I’d pledged to be honest, and from then on the creative juices have been abundantly flowing.
So at this point, a few more details of the story, although it will still be a very long story cut short.
The plot:
Daughter (16) announces she is pregnant. Surprise (and maybe a bit of shock and horror) from everyone (except me, her very perceptive mother, of course). After some thought Daughter decides to have a termination (Boyfriend’s influence). The night before Dad tells her he’s been a lousy father and that he wants to be better and he will be there for her. Daughter (and Dad and Boyfriend) arrives at hospital 8.00am, speaks to nurse, leaves 8.05am and goes home. Mum very happy (always knew it wasn’t what she wanted). Boyfriend comes round to the idea. Dad tells her to leave home by end of following month. Daughter upset, Mum happy because Daughter will have to come and live with her. Daughter goes to Boyfriend’s house for the weekend. Comes home and Dad’s girlfriend tells her she has 30minutes to pack her things and leave! General chaos and upset – much anger from Yours Truly. Daughter comes to live with Mum. Week later Boyfriend comes to join her. Boyfriend decides he doesn’t like city where Mum lives. Boyfriend finds flat in town they’ve come from (Mum unhappy). 17 year old Daughter living independently in flat with Boyfriend (Daughter scared but brave, Mum anxious, NO contact from Dad).
That’s the general plot and pretty much where we are now. There are various sub-plots running through it, the two main ones being that her dad has a new girlfriend who moved in only 3 months ago with 2 children, and the fact that Sarah has wanted a baby of her own since she was about 5. It’s the first of these which has caused most of the trouble and upset, but the second one I particularly want to talk about at the moment.
It’s lovely that she really wants the baby but she is only 17. And there are many people who would say that that is exactly what makes it not right.
Teenage pregnancy is a bit of a hot topic at the moment. Barack Obama is dealing with the fact that the USA has the highest level of teenage pregnancy in the world despite millions of dollars that were pumped into supporting President Bush’s abstinence programmes which clearly didn’t work. Britain has the highest level of teenage pregnancy in Europe. A £6m government programme aimed at reducing teenage pregnancy through education and support hit the news last week when it was reported that research showed that young women taking part in the programme were significantly more likely to get pregnant. Clearly neither of these quite different approaches worked.
So what is the answer? Why are so many teenage girls getting pregnant? Well, I can’t answer for the bulk of teenagers but I do know why Sarah got pregnant. It’s really a combination of 3 things:
1) She was sexually active (obvious really)
2) She didn’t get on with any of the contraception methods she tried (and she tried most of them)
3) And most importantly, as I said, she’s been mad about babies as long as I can remember
Number 2 is a whole issue in itself, the unsatisfactory nature of available contraception. It’s the last one I want to focus on. At the last minute Sarah was able to be true to herself and made a clear choice and I’m proud of her for that. I think a lot of people would find that a surprising view to have. Surely teenage pregnancy is bad, nothing to be proud of! I ran a teenage parents project a few years back and that experience convinced me that most of the ‘problem’ with teenage parenthood is simply that we’ve made it a problem.
A young woman is biologically able to procreate from the onset of puberty and it is those biological changes in a woman’s body which generate the urge to have a baby, what we generally call broodiness. Yet we think it is ok for a 36 year old woman to feel broody, but not a 16 year old? Why is that? Because our cultural norms tell us so. Our cultural norms tell us that a young woman shouldn’t feel broody until she is at least 20 and probably not even then. What is the magic age after which it is ok? And when are we going to tell our bodies? Consequently, Sarah couldn’t be honest about her broodiness even to herself in case it was frowned upon.
During my years at the teenage parents’ project many young parents crossed my path, some were lousy parents, some were ok parents and some were great parents – in the grand scheme of parenting nothing unusual there, I think we’d all agree. Teenage pregnancy good? Teenage pregnancy bad? You know what? Nothing’s ever quite that simple.
Thursday, 21 May 2009
Hi there, I am the single mother of 3 teenage children. Whatever else I have or haven’t done with my life, that statement alone should bestow on me some kind of award for life achievement! Me, a lone woman, guiding and directing 3 young people/almost adults who are all taller than me, louder than me, more stubborn than me and, after 11am, all have more energy than me!!
I don’t think I’m going to get an award, any more than any of the other millions of single parents skilfully navigating the choppy and often stormy waters, of single-handedly parenting youths. However, what I have been given is the opportunity to write a regular blog about our lives as a family and hopefully share some thoughts and insights into the world of single parents and teenagers.
It is, I feel, a dubious honour as it raises many questions for me, such as……Is our family interesting enough? Will my kids give me enough juicy material? Will people just expect tales of trauma and trouble?.......
These questions are particularly interesting in light of a recently published book. This book, called ‘Living With Teenagers’ was written by an anonymous author, but it has recently been revealed that it is the collected weekly newspaper columns of journalist and novelist Julie Myerson about her experiences of family life with teenagers. This revelation has brought her a lot of criticism, including from her own children, for portraying life with teenagers as a bit of a nightmare and her children like demons.
Now I’m guessing that nightmare tales make more sensationalist reading and help sell newspapers and books, and, it could be argued, are helpful to parents struggling in their own lives with unruly teenagers, but I definitely want to avoid portraying my experiences in that way or being in any way sensationalist. There are three reasons for this.
Firstly, in comparison to her nightmare experience, my experience of my children as teenagers has been a dream. Of course it’s had, and still has, its share of trauma, upset and drama, but it’s been a lot more than that. I’m not denying that having teenagers can be a nightmare at times and some parents go through extremely painful experiences. However, for most of us, I think, the reality is that there will be some difficult times, and at times our teenagers will be rude, disrespectful, stroppy etc, but on the whole, they are alright, and can be funny, interesting and even, dare I say it, delightful at times.
Which leads on to my second reason: if I want other parents to get anything from reading about my experiences, then it is that ultimately their kids are alright. I can’t help feeling that a column like Julie Myerson’s supports our society’s continual, and increasingly relentless, demonisation of teenagers and encourages parents to view the teenage years with fear and dread. As single parents we have experienced excessive demonisation over the years and continue to do so in some areas of life, so let’s not do the same to our young people.
And lastly, I want to be able to be honest and at the same time, write something that my children wouldn’t be upset to read and that they would consider a fair account of their lives.
‘They’ are Dan, who is 19, Sarah 16 and Jamie 14 and, not strictly a teenager, our bat-like and very vocal cat, Pudding, who would hate to be left out of any listing of ‘my youngsters’! There are only myself, Jamie and Pudding currently in the house as Dan is at University and Sarah is living with her Dad right now, although there are more than enough passing-through and sleeping-over youths to make up for their absence! I split up from Sarah and Jamie’s Dad 6 years ago and Dan’s dad, in the ever worthy cause of keeping my life simple, hasn’t been seen or heard from since I was pregnant.
So, that’s us, and you’ll hear more of the highs and the lows from me later……..
I don’t think I’m going to get an award, any more than any of the other millions of single parents skilfully navigating the choppy and often stormy waters, of single-handedly parenting youths. However, what I have been given is the opportunity to write a regular blog about our lives as a family and hopefully share some thoughts and insights into the world of single parents and teenagers.
It is, I feel, a dubious honour as it raises many questions for me, such as……Is our family interesting enough? Will my kids give me enough juicy material? Will people just expect tales of trauma and trouble?.......
These questions are particularly interesting in light of a recently published book. This book, called ‘Living With Teenagers’ was written by an anonymous author, but it has recently been revealed that it is the collected weekly newspaper columns of journalist and novelist Julie Myerson about her experiences of family life with teenagers. This revelation has brought her a lot of criticism, including from her own children, for portraying life with teenagers as a bit of a nightmare and her children like demons.
Now I’m guessing that nightmare tales make more sensationalist reading and help sell newspapers and books, and, it could be argued, are helpful to parents struggling in their own lives with unruly teenagers, but I definitely want to avoid portraying my experiences in that way or being in any way sensationalist. There are three reasons for this.
Firstly, in comparison to her nightmare experience, my experience of my children as teenagers has been a dream. Of course it’s had, and still has, its share of trauma, upset and drama, but it’s been a lot more than that. I’m not denying that having teenagers can be a nightmare at times and some parents go through extremely painful experiences. However, for most of us, I think, the reality is that there will be some difficult times, and at times our teenagers will be rude, disrespectful, stroppy etc, but on the whole, they are alright, and can be funny, interesting and even, dare I say it, delightful at times.
Which leads on to my second reason: if I want other parents to get anything from reading about my experiences, then it is that ultimately their kids are alright. I can’t help feeling that a column like Julie Myerson’s supports our society’s continual, and increasingly relentless, demonisation of teenagers and encourages parents to view the teenage years with fear and dread. As single parents we have experienced excessive demonisation over the years and continue to do so in some areas of life, so let’s not do the same to our young people.
And lastly, I want to be able to be honest and at the same time, write something that my children wouldn’t be upset to read and that they would consider a fair account of their lives.
‘They’ are Dan, who is 19, Sarah 16 and Jamie 14 and, not strictly a teenager, our bat-like and very vocal cat, Pudding, who would hate to be left out of any listing of ‘my youngsters’! There are only myself, Jamie and Pudding currently in the house as Dan is at University and Sarah is living with her Dad right now, although there are more than enough passing-through and sleeping-over youths to make up for their absence! I split up from Sarah and Jamie’s Dad 6 years ago and Dan’s dad, in the ever worthy cause of keeping my life simple, hasn’t been seen or heard from since I was pregnant.
So, that’s us, and you’ll hear more of the highs and the lows from me later……..
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