Mary Poppins

An evening walk - my stubborn sunshine girl insists on bringing an umbrella, putting all our eyes at risk with her wild swinging. 

"I'm Mary Poppins!" she tells us. Mary Poppins does have strong connections to our area - the author was born not so very far away. 

The girls run and play with the umbrella until we finally confiscate it after she hurts her hand in the mechanism - shocked at the small pain despite our warnings. 

My daughters run and play, light-footed and so very free in the fading light. 

 

Sisters (and a schooling rant)

 

My youngest daughters are best friends. 

The eldest doesn't admit that they are, but they are. 

When the eldest isn't at school they spend their time playing and talking together, or at least near each other, their imaginations taking them on wonderful journeys together. They share toys and clothes, fall asleep next to each other and wake up next to each other most mornings. They squabble (constantly) but they work it out. Watching them play and learn together is one of my greatest joys. Reading to them, watching them draw and paint, listening to their wild and fantastical stories is a constant delight. 

I took these photos on a recent weekend at the beach, when they were drawing together on the back verandah of the beach house. And I remember that happy, quiet, involved state of play, with the sound of the sea in the background, with goannas close by and birds trilling, darting and gliding.

I remembered it particularly during a school meeting this week, discussing how to help the future schooling of one of my other, more challenging, children. 

And one of the liaison teachers said that it was important for my child's socialisation that they attend a physical school. (As opposed to the distance education one I've been looking into for one of the kids.) 

And I tilted my head and considered. I didn't say anything at the time (although I expect my expression might have said it for me) but I thought that was rubbish. 

And, what's more, it was very hard not to withhold my respect for her as an educator. Which is somewhat unfair, as I'm sure she works hard in a very difficult area. 

However. 

However. Like my kid, I'm neurodivergent person and I vividly remember what torture much of my school years were - despite the fact I adore learning. (The rush of discovery and research, the thrill of a new book. I'm presently doing a Masters of Ancient History for the joy of it, and I hanker to get to do a phd. Not because I think it'll end in a job - quite the reverse - but for the sheer exhilaration of the knowledge unearthed and stretching my brain.)

However. Much as I try I can't separate the history-obsessive within me from the everyday person. I just can't. It's itching to get out and correct her. 

And historically, the idea of corralling hundreds of children away from their families and educating them on a government set curriculum is, to say the least, exceptionally new, with many, many examples to be found of its massive flaws. 

The very last thing it teaches is socialisation. At least for kids who already come from a settled family where learning is honoured. 

In general, I have a lot of respect for teachers. Especially at the moment. They care, teach, guide, protect, spark the imagination, harness potential... but... 

They are hampered by a system and a framework that's too big and unwieldy. Too many of them are suffering from burnout, overloaded with paperwork and classes that are unrelenting and challenging.

And not every child will be able to cope with the size and stresses of a school, of being forcibly detained in crowded rooms with a hoard of loud peers, many of whom will try to bait them. 

The present schooling system is one of the best we can come up with, within the constraints of parents working outside the home, budget, lack of community and family supports and governments that don't take educational research on board. 

But 'one of the best we can come up with' isn't going to work with every kid, and it particularly isn't going to work well with neurodivergent or traumatised kids who spend the entire time at school in flight or fight mode. 

I should know. I was one of those kids. I chose flight. And flew into my own imagination and the world of stories and books. I had some brilliant, dedicated teachers. But being around my peers? 

To be honest, kids, and particularly tweens and teenagers need some diluting. Lumping hundreds of them together when they're hormonal, irrational, intense and angsty, doesn't make much sense. (And yes, I remember thinking that back in school, trying to navigate crowded hallways full of loud and screaming girls. Each of whom was fine as an individual, but as part of a group was like a barrage of sound and fury.) 

Unless you go into teaching, precisely what workplace does a school prepare you for? 

A battlefield? 

Maybe politics? 

(I admit it, my kids going to school has brought back a LOT of PTSD. I greatly disliked it the first time around, and I'm not liking it any better going through it with my kids.) 

The school system as we know it today was largely started to keep kids off the streets so their parents could do factory work. And so kids could read the bible. While I'm glad my kids don't need to work in mills or down the mine, and have the opportunity for schooling (I'm making one of my girls read I am Malala so she has a better understanding of the importance of education, and how hard some people must, and do, fight for it,) my kids also have options to learn at home. And I never forget how lucky we are that they do. 

And while there are many reasons I'd like my kids to attend a physical school - their socialisation isn't one of them. 

Blurred

 

Taking photos as the light fades, movement is often too much for my camera. The photos are blurred, faces indistinct. Again, the dogs often pull at me, and I can't keep the camera still enough for a clear image. 

On reflection, I've come to enjoy the blurred image. Not everything has to be in sharp focus (indeed I wish the carpet and bathroom would blur themselves so I didn't have such constant reminders of vacuuming and scrubbing I need to do.) 

In the last few years, my eyesight, which has always been perfect, has become less than perfect. At present it is just the tiny writing of ingredients on small containers I cannot read without glasses, but I know that will change. 

I love the details of all that is hidden in the macro-world, all the little lives of spiders and insects busying themselves within leaves and grass stalks, but there is something soothing and restful about the indistinct. 

Mining & Childhood

 

As we neared home after walking the dogs, my younger girls saw some clay-dirt on the steep beside the road, and decided to do some mining. 

Like tens of millions of other children around the world, they're addicted to a computer game called Minecraft, in which you need to dig up coal, stone and various gemstones. The opportunity to do some real life 'mining' was alluring, and they immediately climbed up and began digging, using stones when the dirt proved to be backed hard. 

While I nearly called them on, with dinner to put on at home, and other chores to do, on reflection, I decided they might as well dig, so I went to the far side of the road to sit down with my somewhat confused dogs, and wait. 

As I waited, I couldn't help but reflect on children around the world, children their age, who are doing similar things, but because they have no choice, and not just for a few excited moments, but all day, all week, all year. Only recently I watched a documentary about how the glitter used in makeup is dug up in a remote barren area in India, how little the workers are paid, and how many of the workers are children. And many of the children sat in poses like my daughters. Were as young as my daughters. 

Not long ago - in the scheme of things, a hundred years, two hundred years - my forebears were working down coal mines. I've read about women, heavily pregnant, working in the cramped, dark conditions of the mine, and giving birth down in the dark. I've read about the children living out days in complete darkness, crawling through narrow tunnels on hands and knees. And of course about the mines collapsing. 

Even now 10,000 miners in China die every year. 

To be honest, I think about those lives often anyway, considering how quickly lives can change, ideas of what is acceptable can change, of what my life would have been in the near past, but seeing my children playing at mining reminded me again of the costs we pay, and who pays them, for the resources we take from the earth. 

three by sea

Sometime in the far-away of last summer, I took my three daughters to the shore, at a place caught between the Pumicestone Passage and a beloved playground on Bribie Island.

The light was waterlogged, impressionistic, and I sat above the tidemark while the welcome swallows swooped and darted around me, and took photos as my children played, watching as they came together and then moved apart, came together then moved apart, each caught in their own world.

The light caught and held them, so at times it seemed they moved within a painting and I watched the changing light and shifting reflections on the glassy water until my youngest daughter persuaded me it was time to be a dinosaur mummy and hatch some sand eggs.

That time is in the 'before' now. 

But this time of enforced inaction, with nowhere to go and no urgency to do anything. is bringing with it time for reflection, for looking back and remembering how silken and easy the air was that night, the joy of the children, the feel of complete content.

...to the Sea

The breakfast dishes were still piled high, half the living room chairs were covered in unsorted laundry, (although let's be honest, this is a usual state of affairs) and I stepped outside for a moment to hang out yet more washing and The Extravaganza hid under her sister's cot with an ipad to avoid her screen-time ban.

She's worked out how to find all her favourite youtubes (and those of the eight year old up the street) and having my baby girl say "Whatevs" and roll her eyes does not work for me. I suggested 'Playschool' to her and she looked at me like I had something nasty on my shoe. No, like I was something nasty on her shoe.

Being locked in combat with a pre-schooler over a few scraps of plastic and metal is lowering.
"That's it. Into the car, we're off."
When in doubt, leave the scene of the crime.
We headed to the beach.