Controversial me?

It’s come to my attention that some of the beliefs I hold- despite seeming like basic common sense and justice/human rights in my own mind.  - go somewhat against the mainstream in this society. I don’t know if it’s related to a background of faith (don’t think so), or a love of Eastern culture (clashes with Western patriarchy and control?), or maybe it is something in my parent’s backgrounds and thus, how I was raised.

Either way, I’m starting to think I’m in a minority and my opinions are not always welcome

Maybe I need to write a creed of beliefs. This is a creed related to a few issues that have arisen lately…

I do believe in God. I don’t know what else surrounding God I really ascribe to these days in relation to the Christian church, but I believe in God who is creative and creating and good.

I believe that people are not born into equal opportunities in this world but are equally valuable.

I believe that whatever way you sugar-coat it, hitting/smacking/slapping a child is abusive to someone who is powerless and deserves protection.

I believe that people seeking safety and a chance at building a life are welcome here, no matter how they managed to get here.

I believe that breasts are made for breastfeeding where it is possible and those who choose not to breastfeed because boobs are for sexual pleasure only need to re-evaluate creation and the wonders of it.

I believe that friendship in it’s true form comes to life in times of isolation and need. Whatever the alternative is shows its face at the same time.

I believe that children have a need to be close to their primary care-givers and that our society obsession with individual rooms, cots, prams, car seats, bouncers etc (and ultimate “they need to learn” attitude) – undermine a child’s interaction and closeness that they so desperately require.

I believe that Facebook is fantastically helpful for connecting with friends and fantastically full of crap if the 200+ people I seem to have listed as “friends” really are friends. Half of them don’t know me or anything about me….we’ve not talked on there and are unlikely to. We also don’t share much or any of my creed in common! So I’m deleting Sorry. It’s liberating though.

In spite of loving my medical friends as valued friends, I believe Western medicine has it’s head up it’s bum on oh-so-many issues. It is NOT wholistic and does not serve a whole person, no matter how life-saving it can be in a crisis. I believe our Western medics need a revolution of mind-expansion out of the world of fear and control and into the world of wholeness and flexibility.

So. That’s me for the moment I’m sure I’ll come up with more of the creedal opinions of Rah very soon, LOL.

Calling

In a weird twist (well, for lately anyway) I’m going to get all “God-ly” on you. Well, you know what I mean. I read something tonight about that pivotal moment when your consciousness shifts, when you have been unsettled/searching/longing – and you reach the moment of clarity, of abandonment, when all becomes clear. Christians call this the call of God, and I’m sure there are many other ways of looking at this also. This makes me think of that moment in “Eat Pray Love” where she is on the bathroom floor in absolute despair, unable to sink lower…and there it is. There she finds it. Clarity. Future. Direction. And most of all…hope.

“God’s call is mysterious; it comes in the darkness of faith. It is so fine, so subtle, that it is only with the deepest silence we can hear it. And yet nothing is so decisive and overpowering for an individual, nothing surer or stronger. God is always calling us! But there are decisive moments in this call, moments which leave a permanent mark on us. In these moments, the soul has understood that it must let itself be carried, that it must abandon itself to [God], that  alone it can do nothing, that God can do everything. And if it remains still and motionless as though bound in the faithfulness of God, it will quickly realise that things have changed, and that progress, though still painful is in the right direction…”

Carlo Caretto, An Iona Prayer book p 121

Accidents happen.

Today has been a weird day for our little town. Bright is full of cyclists – those that live here and those that travel here for it. It’s a cycling culture – which, might I say, after all those morons deliberately running over cyclists in Sydney (some screwed up form of “get off our roads”) – it’s nice to be here. There’s been a certain sense of safety when thinking of Dave and the guys out riding around here. Drivers know about cyclists here.

Today a cyclist was hit by a bus and killed. Neither the bus nor the cyclist were from here but it has still really rocked the town. The cyclist had tri-bars on his bike, and only 3 people here use them…one of them is Dave! So people were trying to work out if it was him or not and he has received a lot of phone calls today! Those cycle-savvy people found out the bars were a different shape to Dave’s so figured it wasn’t him. In any case, it’s a hard bit of road where the sleeve just ends and the cyclists are forced onto the road. This happened at a time of morning, riding/driving into direct morning sun (yes the sun is even out!), and the driver simply didn’t see him apparently. It’s awful.

Lots of people are asking questions now and wondering what to do etc. The cycle shop guy who Dave rides with said to me today that he’s thinking nows the time to get those bits of roads widened for cyclists, since our town is promoted to them. It needs to be safe. Dave wondered today what more he could possibly do to be safer cycling? But you know, in the end, this was a horrible accident. And accidents really just do happen.

Yesterday Kaden fell over a door mat and split his head on the sliding door tracks. It was awful. He’ll have a good scar for a while but is otherwise ok (better than his mother!)…but you don’t see me trying to ban door mats or sliding doors or suing the friend whose house we were at. Sometimes there just is no blame. Things just happen.

I hope that the bus driver and family of the deceased can come to that too. Probably that poor bus driver (who by all accounts was pretty messy today) will suffer the “what-ifs” from this day for ever to come.

Jon – Kate plus eight

I don’t know if you’ve seen the doco about “Jon and Kate plus eight” or not – but there seriously is a family who had twins, wanted “one more” and got sextuplets. It turns out that they have a reality tv show in the US which has been partly funding the upbringing of eight similarly-aged children. I was quite  astonished by their situation and what an incredible task it must be. After all, child care centres in Australia have a 1-5 ration (carer-children) so it is not even reasonable to have one adult at home with EIGHT toddlers and expect any level of functionality. I would wonder how the children’s needs are even being met? Where are grandparents? Neighbours? Friends? Where is the government supporting home-help for the family? Anything at all!?

Well I just learnt that Jon and Kate have finally cracked under the pressure and Jon has asked for divorce. For some reason, this has really stuck with me. In no way do I have any right to judge them or what they have been through – I can’t even imagine! – but I can’t help my crankiness with a man walking out on a family like this! He’s been off holidaying with the 23 yo babysitter. What the!

Despite the pressures of their lives and the fact that they probably don’t have sex, are very critical of each other and may well have disintegrated any sense of friendship between them, he also chose to create this family and in the extreme situation of 8 kids all at once, he doesn’t have a right to leave. He doesn’t have a right to put himself before his 8 children.

Fair enough, why is it more ok for someone with 2 kids to leave an unhappy marriage as oppose to 8? I don’t know. I just can’t see how he expects single parenting to work with twins AND sextuplets. Sure it must be very hard for him. But what the hell is he doing? Hmph.

Loving a person

I must have mentioned at some stage over the years on this blog: Sara Groves. I love her. She’s a Christian singer, although I generally don’t think much of Christian music so she’s not terribly overt. She got me through a big time in my life once and I’ve just remembered how soothing and thoughtful her lyrics and music is…

“Loving a person just the way they are

that’s no small thing.

It’s the beauty of seeing things through…”

I just love that quote. For all parents, friends, partners…anybody with anybody in their lives… we could all do with a little more unconditional love, right?

child’s play

There is something lovely about doing child like things with children. We had the company of a 5 year old the other day and managed to make a great mess of colour and sugar throughout our kitchen! It took us hours! But what fun. Kaden of course, wasn’t too much use – but he certainly ate more sugar than he’s ever had in his life

Pediatric whatever.

I’ve just seen the following excerpt from a blog that I’m not going to give the honour of linking to…

 

Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics. 12(5):308-14, 1991

            “…extinction is an effective, reasonably rapid, and durable treatment for infant sleep disturbance…mothers became less anxious as the study proceeded… (The data show that extinction) is consistent with previous reports on improvements in parental self-esteem, depression, marital satisfaction, and sense of control following extinction-based treatments of sleep disturbances (cites two additional supporting studies)

            Some have argued, sometimes forcefully, against the use of extinction procedures with infants, on the grounds that such procedures will damage the infant-caregiver (mother) bond and impair the infant’s sense of security.  A measure of infant security was explicitly included in this study to test this hypothesis, and again, the results are clear.  Infant security improved significantly over the course of the study…we can reject the hypothesis that exposure to extinction…will impair security.”

 

First of all. All those things in the first paragraph about the mother are no doubt true. I find it bloody hard responding to my child’s consistent wakefulness all the time. No doubt I would improve no end with more sleep – not to mention that apparently I’d get less wrinkles too if my sleep wasn’t disturbed – and of course, I’d have a greater sense of control. Because that’s ultimately what sleep training is all about: control. By force. Luckily for my son we have a perspective (and a lack of PND) that means that we parent in a way that is best for him even though it does cost us.

The second paragraph annoys me senseless because it is no good quoting that “a measure of infant security was used” as if that is enough to prove the point. What measure? Psychology rejects cry-it-out with children because of longitudinal studies that show disorganized or disrupted attachment from those early years – but let’s be clear, these things may not often be clear until years later. They may, they may not. Paeds have a particularly narrow view of well being if you ask me, so the fact that it is from a Pediatric journal somehow doesn’t help me at all. So don’t blog this to prove a point without backing it up. Please. The well being of children is too important.

Sexting?

Has anyone heard of this?

As someone who has generally worked in youth and childrens work for a while I’m a little surprised at myself that this is a new term to me…I was listening to the ABC (yeah definitely gettin’ old) on the way to work on Friday and they were discussing the troubles of ’sexting’: where teenagers are taking naked pictures of themselves and texting them to others. This is problematic on a number of levels – but especially in the case of under-agers. I wouldn’t have thought of this, had I not been listening to it, but say a 14 yo girl takes a naked pic of herself and sends it via text…if the police catch up with her she can be charged with child pornography, and she will stay on the sex offenders list for the rest of her life. The law doesn’t discriminate between age or technology. This means she wouldn’t ever be able to work as a teacher or a nurse…she wouldn’t be able to get a passport…

It’s serious business. And my guess is that most teenagers wouldn’t have a clue. It’s a pretty dangerous thing to do anyway, because it’s so easy to upload photos on the net – why would anyone think that photo would stay private?

Maybe that’s not the point. Maybe the bigger question is – why do our kids have so little respect for themselves? Or is it that society has just made sex and sexualisation SO normal that it doesn’t seem like a big deal?

This one has me thinking…

Community vs privacy

Yikes, it’s been ages. 

I might’ve posted about this before but again I am thinking about how much our society has created “aloneness”. We do it ourselves to a large degree. My parents have been staying with us recently and it was so delightful having them around – not just because of all the cleaning and jobs that get done when they are here but for the general support. I loved watching Kaden trust other people apart from us. It is a beautiful thing. Part of me wonders if we would have seen that had we not moved before his 1st birthday – maybe our close friends who he was getting to know would have become trusted friends of his too. I guess building trusted relationships takes a while for babies as much as adults. It was quite magical for Dave and I to both go to work and have Kaden with his grandparents for a day – that’s a new scenario! And I have worried about him as they left…he’s lost his playmates! 

Anyway, this morning I watched a thing about an American family who had twins and decided to “try for one more” and ended up with sextuplets. Yes…8 kids from two pregnancies! The woman is something of a control freak which probably is a good thing to keep some sort of order in the house…but her husband works from 7-7pm each day. 12 hours every day with 8 kids. It’s like a kindy!

In Australia, child care centres have a ratio of 1 adult to 5 kids. And I’m pretty sure there are things in place here where the govt helps out those with so many young kids with carers or nannies or something for support. I don’t know if America has those sort of services in place (probably not) but it just seems WRONG that one woman is in a house with 8 young kids day after day like that. Where is her support? It reminds me that we are doing just fine here, despite the fact that it would be nice to have family closer. 

But the above scenario seems to go against how we were designed – to live in community. Tribal. Connecting. Or something.

Having said all that, we had a discussion the other day about “just dropping in” to see people from church, vs ringing first. I have always hated surprise visits and still do. But why? Why am I trying to protect “my space”/”my privacy” when what I’m really saying is that we should be in each other’s faces more? We should be supporting more? We should be closer in communities and all that that means (tolerating annoyances included)…

Novel ways to shop

I’m loving this idea. Rather than shopping by “size”, BIRDSNEST has links to shop by personality, colour and body shape. How awesome is that.

I’m loving that idea. Hmm, I feel like RED today…