The Monkey Man and Monsters...and Audio-Visual Media

It all started with me. I introduced television to Bird Boy. Early. There was no getting out of it, really, Blondie used to watch it when Bird Boy was a baby, and Bird Boy just started watching. At first I would attempt to squirrel him away but then I hit a bad spot where it was easier just to let him watch. You know, the usual, Playschool, In the Night Garden, Bob the Builder, all that stuff on ABC.

Then we got rid of the TV. I had to for me as well as the children. I wanted to watch it all night and it wasn't good for me. Blondie wanted to watch it all day and I couldn't handle that. It wasn't about eradicating screen-time but about having more control over it.

The forward motion of the television is not conducive to turning off. With no more advertisements about exciting programmes coming up and no more non-stop programming it was easier to switch off. In our new audio-visual paradigm, the kids started watching more DVDs and using websites on the computer, they could choose what they wanted to watch, when they wanted to watch it, and when they turned it off.

Someone gave us Monsters Inc. It's not a bad movie. Blondie enjoyed it. But he was four and understood what was actually going on. It's a movie about Monsters who generate electricity in their city by collecting the screams of human children. In order to collect the screams they enter their bedrooms at night and scare them. The hero of the movie finds out that laughter actually generates more electricity and all is well in the end as they stop scaring children and start entertaining them. It's a feel good movie.

Bird Boy watched it. I shouldn't have let him. There are suspenseful scenes where monsters are in children's bedrooms and the children are frightened out of their wits. While the rest of us knew the monsters were actually good guys and very friendly and sometimes a bit silly, Bird Boy was internalising the dark, the shapes, the shadows, the suspenseful music, the scary-looking monsters, the quivering children and the screams. I know. I was silly.

He started being afraid of the bedroom when I turned the light off at night (even though we had a nightlight). He would cling to me and ask me if it was scary. I hugged him and breastfed him to sleep as usual and all was fine as he fell asleep, but I felt really bad for him being scared of the dark like that. My parenting him to sleep every night is partly to avoid that 'scared of the dark' thing that a lot of kids go through. But it seems we haven't avoided it.

The hallway suddenly became a no-go zone. If Bird Boy happened to walk up the hallway in the night by himself (even if the light was on) he would be breathless and crying by the end.

Then he watched Brum. In some episodes of Brum there are men dressed up as apes. We didn't know they frightened him until Sebastian was talking about someone he knew who everyone called the 'Monkey Man'. Suddenly Bird Boy clung onto me. 'Monkey Man?!?! Where's the Monkey Man?!?!' Now when we went to bed he would tell me there was a Monkey Man. I started to think he was really seeing him when he pointed at the doorway. I asked him what he looked like and he said, 'Angry.' In answer to me asking what he was wearing he would say, 'Red.' Every night he would mention the Monkey Man. Every day he would ask us about him. We would try to reassure him but it made no difference. The whole thing wasn't helped by my feeling that an old man haunts our hallway. I was getting scared too.

By this time we were already making sure all possible things on screens that would scare him were avoided. Monsters Inc. was put away and so was Brum. I screened all DVDs carefully and rejected them if I thought they were scary in the slightest. After a while the obsession with the Monkey Man calmed down quite significantly...although he does still mention him, but in a sort of joking way:

Bird Boy: Is there a Monkey Man, Mummy? (said with a smirk)
Me: No
Bird Boy: Where's the Monkey Man? (said with a smirk)
Me: Erm, he doesn't exist.
Bird Boy: I'm the Monkey Man! (much laughter)

I stopped being so vigilant with the censorship. I was sure Bird Boy had got over it and I trusted the common and popular children's shows to be appropriate for him. Bad decision. He watched an episode of Roary yesterday. It's a much-loved show of his and he doesn't get to see it often as we don't have a DVD of it and, of course, no television. So I put it on for him and let him be. Bad decision. I console myself with the fact that even if I had been watching it with him I wouldn't have been able to turn it off without him feeling like he missed out and it would have been a huge issue.

It turns out the show was about monsters. Roary and his friends Cici and Flat Bed go up a dark tunnel and get spooked by the Flash the rabbit who is pretending to be a monster. Looks harmless enough (it's very obvious that it is Flash being the monster) but it seems Bird Boy has now been reminded of creepy things in the dark again. Last night as soon as I turned the light off he clung to me for dear life, asked me breathlessly if there were monsters and fell asleep on my shoulder, forgetting even to breastfeed to sleep as he usually does.

I know I am responsible. I ruined it all for him by leaving him to watch Monsters Inc., a movie totally inappropriate for him. That's what started it off.

But what about the actual programmes? I've long had a feeling that children's programmes are often inappropriately trying to teach a lesson or moral. It's a normal thing to run with an overall theme and, of course, film and television makers should be free to express themselves, but it seems that every children's show I watch is trying to educate my child in a way I wouldn't try to educate him myself. I see in children's shows a penchant for telling children what to do, telling them what to think and telling them how to be. In allowing screen media into my house I let them do that. I escape to the land of non-responsibility and let shows entertain my children; keep them busy. It's convenient, I admit and accept that.

But why is it that all these show producers feel the need to morally educate my children? I feel like it is lazy storytelling, lazy entertainment and unoriginal. I've lost count of the amount of times I've seen 'monsters/ogres/etc. etc. are scary but they don't exist' theme in children's programming. Also themes like 'don't tell lies' and 'share with your friends' are rampant. My children don't need to be told not to tell lies. It's normal for kids to be honest. Besides, they have parents who are connected with them and encourage honesty in all sorts of everyday life ways. Likewise with sharing. The concept of 'teaching' children to share is overrated. See this article on sharing from fellow blogger, Majikfaerie. I totally agree.

It seems like children's show writers have a list of themes to pick from and they simply run their finger down with their eyes closed and pick the one they indiscriminantly land on. How about some originality, programmers? How about some real storytelling? How about some subtlety? Children are people, too, they're not just receptacles for our moralistic hang-ups. They're not just containers for our preconceived judgements about what they think and how they feel. If you can't be original or non-moralistic, how about a heads-up on the DVD cover or TV programme about what themes you push in the episode or movie we are about to buy/see? That would help me a lot, thanks.

Granted, I do believe that Monsters Inc. is an original movie challenging the age-old 'scary monster in the bedroom' scenario. I also must admit that Brum is usually funny and original too, just unfortunately caught up in this whole 'Monkey Man' matter. It does have a little too much good guys versus bad guys for my liking, though. Okay. A lot. In any case, thank the Universe for Peep.

It is obvious to me that monsters and the like are an adult construct and that children would never be frightened of them (or even know about them) if not for children's television shows and movies (in our case), children's books (authors are often guilty of the same lazyness and unoriginality) and/or adults actions (like forcing children to sleep alone from a young age and refusing to parent them at night).

Hopefully Bird Boy will get through this latest monster problem, but I'm afraid it's already ingrained in him. I guess the only thing we can do is try to support him in dealing with it and think seriously about making children's television ourselves.

Safe or unsafe - that isn't the issue!

By now most Australians would know a little about the current homebirth crisis in Australia. For those who don't know, the Government is trying to bring in legislation that effectively makes independent midwifery illegal. Independent midwives can't get indemnity insurance and aren't supported by the Government to do so and the new law states that health practitioners can't operate if they don't have it. If an independent midwife does attend a birth post July 2010, they and the person who put them up to it could both be up for a $30,000 fine.

The homebirthing community of Australia is shocked and dismayed that from July 2010 onwards they won't be able to birth at home supported by a known and trusted midwife, except if they live near one of very few homebirth programmes operating out of hospital and are deemed 'low-risk'. This means that even if you happen to live near a hospital-homebirth programme but have a breech position baby, twins, labour for too long, had a previous caesarean or two, too-high or too-low blood pressure and a myriad of other conditions, you'll be forced to birth in hospital too.

There has recently been a lot of talk about homebirth in the media, much of it negative. 'Oh, but it's unsafe!' they say. 'Women should birth in hospitals where if something goes wrong, the equipment is right there to help!'

It is really annoying me. We live in a society that is ALL WRONG. We have been brought up to put our full trust in the doctor and surgeon and to take no responsibility for our own health. Everywhere I hear women say, 'But they won't let me' or 'I couldn't because they said...' and 'they said this pain relief would help me rest' and let birth professionals get away with threats and ultimatums that are not at all evidence-based but mostly seeking to adhere to hospital policy and thus satisfy their insurers. I let them do it too. My first birth was a complete sham. I was threatened and goaded (in the most lovely way) and made to lie in a completely stupid position for what 'they' deemed a failure to progress birth. I can't believe some of the things I let them do to me. All in the name of a 'healthy' baby. Yes, my baby didn't die. I didn't die. But if I had given birth at home, without intervention, we both wouldn't have died either. In fact, I'm almost certain we would have both ended up a whole lot healthier.

Let's get back to the 'homebirth is not safe' comment I hear all the time. Time to get our facts straight. There was a major study done in the Netherlands (where 30% of births are at home) that ended with this conclusion: 'The outcome of planned home births is at least as good as that of planned hospital births in women at low risk receiving midwifery care in the Netherlands.' What was also said that for births of subsequent children the outcomes were better in homebirths compared to hospital births. Another study done in North America came to this conclusion: 'Planned home birth for low risk women in North America using certified professional midwives was associated with lower rates of medical intervention but similar intrapartum and neonatal mortality to that of low risk hospital births in the United States.' So, in other words, homebirth was found to be as safe as hospital birth but with lower rates of intervention. I'll take homebirth, thanks!

Now to blow the fallacy that hospital birth is safe out of the water. Yes, according to the studies, the mortality rates are the same as home birth. So why not birth in hospital? Well, it depends on your understanding of the word 'safe'. If you call slowed labour caused by transfer from home to hospital, induction for no reason other than post-dates, encouraged position to labour often the 'lie in hospital bed with upper body at 45°' position that is the very worst for birthing as the coccix obstructs the birth canal, offering of water as pain relief unusual, fetal monitoring which forces the woman to stay in bed, wholesale pushing of epidurals known to have a chance of maternal death and a number of other side-effects, pushing of pethidine (a synthetic version of opium) of which only one side-effect is that it interferes with the baby's sucking reflex if given at the wrong time of labour (which it often is), babies with bruises all over their heads from forceps and ventouses and/or holes in their heads from scalp monitors, caesareans done on a 'failure to progress' basis, caesareans given for breech and twin births or because of previous caesarean or for no 'good' reason at all, babies with syntocinon-induced jaundice, enforced vaginal examinations causing undue stress, episiotomies, perineal tears from pushing too hard due to coached pushing, PTSD and PND of mothers caused by negative birth experiences or birth rape (YES, birth rape is very real) and compromised breastfeeding and bonding relationships caused by negative birthing experiences or caesareans SAFE then go ahead, birth in hospital. (Excuse me while I take a breath.)

It's pretty clear that I'm all for homebirth. I wouldn't birth anywhere else. But, of course, hospitals are needed. I would definitely transfer to a hospital if there was a complication that couldn't be dealt with by my midwife. That goes without saying. That's what hospitals are for. Of course I would have a caesarean if it was needed. I would ask my midwife for her advice if it got to that. She's an expert on normal birth and thus knows when something isn't normal and needs extra assistance.

There are a few studies negating the current thought on 'high'-risk births. But regardless of the studies, what's 'high'-risk to some is 'low'-risk to midwives who are experienced in normal birth. Take for example breech birth. A midwife trained and experienced in breech birth knows how to manage it safely. If you were a midwife used to breech birth being taken to theatre then the idea of it would freak you out. Also take for example 'post-dates'. There are studies to say that the current thought on the normal gestation of a pregnancy is incorrect and other studies to show the dangers of induction. If I had a breech baby or was 'overdue' in the eyes of the hospital birth world, then I would make the decision myself whether to have the baby vaginally or by caesarean, or be induced. I would weigh up the risks in my situation and make the decision myself.

But HOLD ON. Can we please just reverse all the paragraphs I just wrote? We don't need all that information! This issue isn't about safety at all. If it was about safety, the Government would also be seeking to regulate out of existence elective caesareans, abortion, smoking, drinking alcohol, eating unhealthy food, people who don't exercise, people who swim in the ocean, rock-fishing, swimming pools, driving motorcars, walking across the street, bike-riding, abseiling, rock-climbing, sky-diving etc., etc., etc. Aren't those things proven to be unsafe, at least to some degree? So why wouldn't the Government regulate them so they would become illegal? Well, it's simple, really. We get to choose what we do. This is a free country. If a woman can choose to have her baby cut out of her why wouldn't I be able to choose a homebirth, even if it was unsafe? If a guy can drink himself to distraction every day of his life, ending up with liver disease then why wouldn't I be able to choose homebirth? If I'm allowed to cross the six lanes of a busy highway at peak hour then why the hell can't I choose homebirth?!

We get to choose whether it's safe or not. There are so many reasons why birth should be left in the hands of the experts - the birthing women. Not doctors. Not Government. Not even midwives, but me and you. We can be instrumental in keeping our own health. It's important because most careproviders, especially hospitals, are not looking out for you, they are looking out for themselves. Seek information, find evidence, listen to stories, read articles, inform yourself on all sides and then consult with your care provider armed with everything you have found. Try to avoid the media or at least consume it with a grain of salt. Don't let care providers put fear into you. If you suspect something they say is not evidence-based and tailored to your personal situation then go and get another opinion (and then another and then another). Make your own decision. We are lucky enough in our country to be able to make it!

This legislative push against homebirth is a violation of every Australian woman's human rights, no matter where they plan to birth. If they can come after my choice, you'd better watch it, they may come after your choice too!

A Winter Solstice story

By me...for you and your children...





I hope you all have a snuggly day.

I hate cooking

I hate cooking. Not with a vengeance — just a quiet, bored, annoying sort of hate that hangs around every time I cook. I even hate cutting up stuff, simple things to eat, normal things like apples and oranges. A carrot will send me into a sweat. Which is really not a good thing because now I have two children and a husband who works A LOT, I am the main cook in the house. So, basically, I am hating something I have to do all the time, every day, sometimes every hour or so. I must admit that sometimes I can make yummy meals but I still dislike cooking them. It's been a challenge all my adult life.

I was complaining about it yet again with Sebastian last night after dinner. This was the crux of my argument: 'I hate cooking. It takes, like, an hour to cook dinner and it's gone in ten minutes!'

Then something occurred to me. Something was askew in my logic. Everyone had enjoyed the dinner. I mean, REALLY enjoyed it. It was fried chicken fillets crumbed with ground cornflakes (Blondie has gone wheat-free so I couldn't use bread crumbs), steamed corn on the cob, carrot and broccoli, and steamed beetroot mixed with lemon juice and feta cheese. It was yummy, I must admit. Sebastian is still going on about it.

Anyhow...something occurred to me and it was this: while we ate the meal and talked with each other and delighted in the taste and texture of the food and felt our tummies getting more full, there was a sort of light in the air surrounding us, an energy that bounced around and reflected its light in each of our eyes. This energy, these kind of points of light that flew between us in the moments that made up the short ten minutes it took us to eat our meal, outshone every dull, achy thud that my thoughts had made as I cut and sliced and dipped and filled and fried in preparation for our dinner. The brightness of those ten minutes multiplied to fill the empty space left behind by my negativity in the hour before. It was like a payment — but not a hard, sweaty payment as I automatically think of when I think of the word payment, it was a sweet, joyful offering to the drudgery of my hard labour. And in the moment I realised that, there was no choice but to accept such a sweet payment...in full.

So...if ten minutes' joy between us can pay for my hour's painful monotony, what would it mean if that painful monotony was transformed into joy? Could it mean that the energy accumulated by the enjoyment of dinner would multiply tenfold as we actually eat the joy that I offer up as I prepare the dish?

These realisations don't take away my general dislike of all things in the kitchen. I still hate it. However, I would really like to start creating a new way to 'be' in the busiest part of my house. I spend so much time there, it's really a huge part of my life, so if I actively hate it while I'm doing it I'm hating a huge part of my life, right? I'm determined for it to change, one day at least. I can't go on hating my life like this. I have two boys who are bound to one day grow into teenagers and young men. They deserve a mother who fills their food with her love and who shows them they can love making food too.

My kitchen can become a place of bliss, I know it's possible!

Our Wall - day 6

I've been meaning to update the wall saga for a while now. This video was taken a long time ago and the wall has since been completely finished and the area has since been sitting waiting for concrete and drainage. We're a slow bunch, us tree-dwellers, we'll get around to the concrete soon. I thought I'd better keep going with the videos for the sake of consistency and to show off Seb's passion and talent for video editing.

This video is a little different to the wall videos prior to it. It contains a little side story about a bird we rescued as it had a broken wing. It also includes shots of a wall inhabitant (and Sebastian talking in a funny David Attenborough voice). It's a bit more fun than the other videos and I'm in it too!

It's better in high quality so if you feel like it, click the vid to go to Youtube and select the HQ feature. In fact, it's much better seen at Youtube because it's widescreen and my template cuts off the right edge of all my pics/vids. Gotta sort that out!

It is, after all, just a moment.

I caught myself in a moment of sheer panic this afternoon. Blondie was making one of his famous concoctions and spilt red food dye all over the kitchen cupboards and floor. In the same moment, I noticed Bird Boy drinking the water for dipping his paintbrush in. Embarrassingly, I freaked out and hollered at Bird Boy to stop drinking paint water while I swore about the red splatters all over my kitchen. In that moment I was lost.

Later on, when the boys were in the bath, I thought about a friend who said he had tried some sort of 'flying' in the bath when he was young and cracked his head open. I thought about his parents' reaction and realised that as I was in a 'moment' this afternoon, when my friend cracked his head open his parents also would have been in a 'moment'...except, of course, the circumstances were much more serious and that moment had passed more than 20 years ago. He's alive, seemingly well and unharmed.

In 20 years my children won't show any ill effects either. I'm sure Blondie won't have red hands and Bird Boy didn't die of paint poisoning (the paint was non-toxic). All is well. So why did I freak out so much? Why did I take a gorgeous, amazing, individual moment and pour my frustration and tension into it? Was it that it was just a good opportunity to dump my load? Or am I so used to the status quo that anything different rattles it?

When I compare the two scenarios, the head-splitting and the mess + paint-water, I see that every moment, whether viewed as 'good' or 'bad' in my well-worn psyche, is just that. A moment. And it will be followed by countless other moments with the potential of being seen as 'good' or 'bad'. And those moments themselves will be followed by others, ad infinitum. So, really, what does it matter? What is it in me that takes that moment so seriously, as if it means the end of the world for everyone because that moment existed? Why react so strongly when there is clearly no danger of death or serious injury? Isn't it better to preserve my relationship with my children and let the moment be as it is without reacting so negatively? Surely in that moment this afternoon, the only ill effects would have been due to me losing my temper!

Can I let it be and go with it rather than against it? How can I learn to let the moments flow into one another to become one whole existence, an existence where I actually experience the moments rather than judge them and react unconsciously to them?

I don't think those questions can be answered. I can only take each moment and do what I can for that infinitely small space in time. If I make mistakes, that is okay. The opportunity still exists in the next moment. Each moment is, after all, just a moment, and my life is full of them. It is amazing to think that I have infinite choice!

Reflections on my early parenting: Torture

Blondie was never a child to follow the sleep patterns that babies were supposed to, according to books. He never had that sleepy first two or three weeks of life that I read many babies have, and tended to sleep in twenty minute shifts during the day. He woke every two hours at night for a short while and then settle into four or five hour shifts which sometimes extended to seven or eight as he grew a little older, around 8 weeks or so.

Although night sleeps at first were pretty by the book, day sleeps were always very short. I had read a lot of books before he was born and had on-hand many parenting books and they all said that babies should sleep two or three or four hours at a time, three times a day. Additionally, the midwife who ran our birth preparation classes said that very young babies only wake for an hour at a time and sleep the rest of the time. Well, he just never did that, and I automatically assumed it was because I was doing something wrong.

I remember when he was very young the visiting midwife from the hospital came to check on us and she attempted to show me the 'wrap and put down' method of baby sleep. She wrapped him very tightly in a cotton wrap and took him to his bed, where apparently he was going to grizzle a bit and then fall asleep naturally and peacefully. Well, of course, as soon as she put him down he started screaming and as she came out she looked at me as if to say, 'Okay, it hasn't worked, you'd better go and get him'. We had failed at sleep.

Although he slept quite well at night early on, at about four months of age he started waking every two hours again which sent me into acute meltdown (if I hadn't been there already from all the post-birth and new-parenting anxiety I was carrying). From this point he woke continually at night for at least 18 months, sometimes every hour, often 10 to 12 times a night. He fell asleep pretty quickly as long as a breast was available. I was a wreck.

People offered all sorts of advice. I don't blame them because I sought advice continually, hoping for the magic cure that would help my baby sleep in a continuous block again. Some people advised controlled crying (which, of course, was never on the list for me) and others tried to convince me it was normal for young babies to wake at night and what he was doing was completely natural (which, of course, is true, as I realised later). Others offered all sorts of dietary, sleep-training and behaviour-changing help, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The list of advice was massive, which served to confuse me more.

I was really worried, especially about the day sleeps. I saw that during the day he needed more sleep as he would get overtired and beside himself all the time. I felt like there was something wrong in what I was doing and that I wasn't bringing what he needed to him. It was awful inside my brain at that time. Guilt was the main ingredient.

On top of all the sleep advice, people offered me little tidbits of reassurance that were meant to make me feel better about it all. One of the most common tidbits of this sort of advice, meant to be reassuring and helpful, was

They use sleep-deprivation for torture, you know!

Rather than making me feel better, it served to make me feel more guilty about my child not sleeping.

I couldn't work out what it meant. Were people commenting about my sleep-deprivation or my baby's sleep-deprivation? Were they empathising with my own sleep troubles or were they accusing me of torture? My mind at the time inclined towards the latter. Did they think I was torturing my child by not offering the correct amount of sleep to him? I already thought I was most neglectful for not arranging for the correct circumstances for my child to sleep more than 20 minutes during the day or two hours at night. Now it seemed as though people were agreeing with me.

What I know now is that it was actually meant in an empathetic way. It is the sort of 'saying' that people shell out to new mothers to try to make them feel better about feeling so crap. It's meant to mean, 'Hey, you must feel really bad, almost as bad as the prisoners they torture with sleep-deprivation.' Unfortunately, I took it to mean, 'You're making your child feel totally crap, as crap as those prisoners feel who are tortured with sleep-deprivation'.

It took me a long, long time to realise it was meant as an empathetic, you-must-feel-really-bad response. It wasn't until Bird Boy was born and I did all the same things and found he was a babe who slept a little longer than my first. And it was after I had discovered babywearing for daytime sleeps. It was also after I discovered my babes sleep better when their noses are free from snot.

And after all my experience with babies and sleep, all six years of it, I am much more gentler on myself. Of course I wasn't torturing my baby! If I was, then I certainly tortured Bird Boy much more by waking him intentionally all the time for the sake of getting places on time for Blondie. Even though I understand now how it was meant as a support for me rather than pointing out what a bad job I've done, I will never say it to other mothers. What if they're in the same place I was? I know about that mother-guilt, it's all-encompassing and is actually the only torturous bit in the whole equation.

In any case, that saying is wrong. Sleep deprivation is not torture. Sometimes it can be sensational fun!