This one’s for you!

I was listening to a podcast by Wil Anderson the other day in which he was chatting to Charlie Pickering. Anderson starts the conversation with a rather direct and tricky question.

“Who are you? “ he asks.

Charlie replies very hesitantly with lots of pauses and ums and ahs “I’m Charlie Pickering, I’m a comedian from Australia. How about that is that a good start.” And then immediately he adds “Did you sit there quiet just seeing how uncomfortable I got and what other things I kept added … I’m a dog lover, I ride bikes, I think Picasso’s good and I really like the Doobie brothers.”

It’s the question that Anderson asks because he likes to see what people will say. He says most people on the show tend to qualify themselves by their career or by their profession but he admits that clearly not the whole world defines themselves by what they do.

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The “graphic” photos of newborns

There are some news stories that prompt outrage from me in mere milliseconds. Okay most do. But obviously when I read something that strikes me at a personal level it creates a different level of outrage. It is the kind of thing that in the old days would make me shout, but now that I am so mature I just write.

NBC Chicago reports

A suburban Chicago family, overwhelmed by medical bills from their infant son who was born prematurely, alleges the popular crowdfunding website GoFundMe did not make their donation page available to the public because the photo of their ill baby was deemed offensive.

According to the family, Baby Jacob’s fundraising page was originally only accessible to those who had a direct link, making it difficult to raise the needed funds to help offset the mounting medical expenses that come with his condition.

When the organizer of the page, a close family friend, contacted GoFundMe, they claim the popular crowdfunding site told them the photo of the young boy was “graphic” and may be deemed offensive to some viewers.

“They responded right away and said, ‘Unfortunately, we never published it because your son’s image [was] too graphic and too inappropriate for our viewers to look at,” said Jacob’s mother Christina Hinks.

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The 21 things regular parents do

When my son was younger I classified myself as a helicopter mum. The label carried no negative implications for me, I believed (and I still do) that my parenting was appropriate for his age. Imagine my horror when I discovered that it wasn’t actual helicopter parenting because “proper” helicoptering means doing his uni assignments and stalking him, er I mean watching him play with this friends when he is at school, at least according to this column that appeared in the weekend newspaper.

Stuck without a label (bonsai, tiger, extreme, dolphin and free-range aren’t doing it for me) I decided to give myself one. From now on in I will go for the “regular parent” label.

To avoid any issues with you calling yourself a regular parent only to discover that you aren’t (although your child is perfectly fine) let me help you with a list of things that regular parents do.

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Won’t somebody think of the children?

Maybe it is because I have the emotional maturity of a child that I can’t help seeing most things through the eye of a child. Some would counter that’s why I enjoyed Spelling Bee so much, others would point to my pre sugar-free sherbet addiction, others would just acknowledge my predisposition to the tantrum.

Perhaps it is this immaturity (or ability to see things through the eyes of the child) that reacted so badly to some advice given to women recently in a post headed Habits of Successful Women. Juanita Phillips was quoted as saying that she didn’t allow her children to do weekend sport because “it’s too hard”. “Weekends are for no schedule, fun, frivolity, flexibility and a slower pace” the article maintains.

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Why I make lunch for my son (and your new favourite bread recipe)

bread recipe 1

Let them eat bread

It’s been a while since my parenting has been brought into question by anyone other than my son. Or maybe I just haven’t cared for a while. That’s one of the best things about getting older you stop worrying what everyone thinks about your parenting. Or about you in general. And, to be honest, as your children grow up you begin to realise that it doesn’t really matter what the books or the playgroups or anyone else says – you’ve lost enough sleep and established enough love to know that it’s going to work out okay if you go with your gut, remember to feed them and show a lot of love.
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The one thing about parenting you’ll never miss

When you have a new baby and you haven’t slept more than three hours in a night for days on end, you are forgiven for thinking it will never end. It seems impossible to believe that months (okay maybe years) later you will find yourself creeping into your child’s room at night to watch them sleeping peacefully. But you will.

When your toddler wont go to sleep without being patted, rocked or without you lying next to his side so you can’t breathe or perform any other “insignificant” acts, it’s hard to believe that a time will come when you desperately want to feel the warmth of your child’s body next to yours.

When you are in the midst of nappies and multiple outfit changes you’ll get to the day you swear you never want to be in charge of another outfit change again. Then, one day when your child appears in shorts that show her bum cheeks and a top that is actually just a bra with sleeves, you will wish it was you who got to choose their clothes in the morning.

When you are forced to play another game of hide-and-seek or even worse, made to sit through a game of monopoly you’ll probably want to claw out your own eyeballs, but one day when your teenager is refusing to talk to you because he’s too busy with his own friends and not interested in “lame” games, you will wish that just once more, he would ask you to play a game with him.
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It’s the truism we all grudgingly acknowledge, the days are long but the years are short. The passage of time will taint the memories and apply a rose coloured tint. One day everything will seem so much more bearable and you will miss the day to day of kids. Trust me. It will happen

Except for homework. There is no tint that can be applied to the hideous reality of overseeing or even signing off homework. There will never be a time when you sit down and idly wish you could go through the last minute panic of an assignment not ready by the day of completion, or be asked to source green cardboard of a certain thickness no later than ten minutes ago. There is no time in your future life that you will ever think “I wish I could nag my child to do homework just one more time.”

Homework is the scourge of childhood and I am never ever going to miss it.

Apparently people with servants cannot be “proper” mothers

Princess CharlotteI might be sounding like a Royal apologist or even a great lover and admirer of the Royal family soon, it seems I can’t stop writing about them or defending them. I wrote a piece recently for Kidspot in favour of the Duchess of Cambridge before she had her baby and I wrote a rant that I needed to get off my head on my Facebook page the day after she appeared on the steps of the hospital.

Here’s what I said in case you missed it [Read more…]

#5minutes with Kerri and Lana : The Ugly Child Edition

Recently there was a post on Reddit from a woman who wrote saying that she was aware that her child was ugly or, er not conventionally attractive. Kerri wrote a post about it on Essential Kids and caused a few people to say things that were quite ugly or, er not conventionally attractive.

We chatted about ugly kids here. But far and away the best part is how antsy Kerri gets at the end. And my facial reaction to her snippy farewell.
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This is what they need to be learning at school

domestic violenceIt’s become almost just words now we hear it so often. 31 women killed in Australia this year, 32 women killed in Australia this year – and now we are at 33. April has not yet ended.

It’s not the total amount of women that have died in Australia, it’s not the number of people dead from freak accidents or hideous diseases. It’s the number of women killed as a result of violence inflicted on them by men, sometimes their partners, sometimes strangers.

It was in March of this year after Masa Vukotic was stabbed to death in suburban Melbourne that Victorian Homicide Squad Inspector, Mick Hughes told Fairfax “I suggest to people, particularly females, they shouldn’t be alone in parks.”

Of course there was an outcry. Why on earth should women have to live their lives any differently than men? And why is it their fault?
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The compromising photos we probably shouldn’t see

You know that a post may be terribly misinterpreted when you start to write the disclaimer before you’ve even really clarified your thoughts… but here it is. This post is not meant to stand in judgement of anyone who reads it, it’s my view which may be different to yours at best or wrong at worst.
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