Month: March 2018

It’s not their fault

Following a post I put on Facebook at the weekend, I have realised that I am in mourning. The responses it generated left me feeling a little down, quite sad.

They’re calling our teens the ‘snowflake generation’ and I understand why. But it’s not them, it’s us.

It’s us who are the problem. They are just so often the passive receivers of our suffocating ways.

My post was suggesting that parents shouldn’t feel obliged to go to University open days with their kids. I said that they should let them find their own way there, to stand on their own two feet, to let them breathe.

Just like we did when we were young. We wouldn’t have dreamt of having a parent or two breathing down our necks, asking embarrassing questions. It’s bad enough at Parent’s evenings where we accompany our teens. Do you not find that everything you do/say/wear is met with a teenage shake of the head? An eyeball roll to the ceiling? An embarrassed, hushed ‘muuum’ uttered under their breath?

But it’s not their fault, it’s ours.

It’s a trend and we are all made to feel we must follow suit. At least initially we feel we should follow, but this initial parent angst at the thought of being ‘the only one who doesn’t’ soon develops into, ‘actually, I want to be there’ and quite frankly, ‘why shouldn’t I be there?’ Then dangerously becomes ‘you’re a bad parent if you don’t’.

Why is this dangerous? Because we are creating snowflakes – children who can no longer think for themselves. We’re all guilty of it. Because however much we rally against it, it will get us in the end. Institutions don’t help. Universities quickly realised that as Mum and Dad are paying they might want to see what they are paying for. Talks are organised specifically for parents, whilst education gurus shake their heads in dismay at what this is creating.

The media fuels our parental insecurities. Technology enables us to track our teenagers’ every move. I do it myself with the excuse that it’s useful to know where they are. But it’s not just that. It’s comforting in this seemingly terrifying world that the media build it up to be.

It’s not their fault, it’s ours.

We’re morphing their brains, through our own insecurities. By our own sense of guilt. By thinking that we ‘should’ because everyone else ‘is’. And everyone else ‘is’ because we are being allowed. We are being given the green light to enter our teenager’s world in a way that our parents weren’t. The media, technology and circumstance colliding to disempower our children.

Independence builds resilience. Yes, we were homesick away from our family those first days in halls. But we had something to fall back on. We had something that we didn’t even know we had until we needed it. Something that everyone took for granted, back then.

Back then we had space. Back then we had trust and with trust and space came confidence and a deep seated knowledge that we would be ok.

More teenagers than ever are not ok. The past few years have seen a huge rise in teen anxiety and suicides and we desperately ask ourselves why? Screen use? Social media pressures? Work load? Yes to all this and as parents we simply don’t know how to respond. We are terrified of what lurks on the Internet, but we cannot keep up and are left bewildered and ignorant. And our response? To protect. To draw them closer. To try to enter and to understand their world. Which quickly leads to us controlling their world. Picking them up from late night gigs to save the worry of them getting home alone. Doing their homework with them to prevent them from failure. Finding them work experience because by now we are hard-wired to help. To rescue.

It’s not their fault, it’s ours.

They are lapping up our support. They are wanting us there.

And why not? Time is precious and moves so fast. From newborn, to toddler to first day at school and then they are gone.

Why shouldn’t we hold them close? Why wouldn’t we want to protect them from harm? They are our babies after all. It’s our job.

No. It’s part of our job.

It’s also our job to let go. It’s also our job to allow them to take risks. It is our job to stand back and watch them fail.

Our job isn’t easy, but next time we hear our child being referred to as part of ‘the snowflake generation’, we must ask ourselves, whose fault is it?

 

 

The waiting game

It’s very easy as a parent of teens to worry that they are becoming distant. To grieve the absence of obvious love and to miss the spontaneous and unconditional adoration they showed when they were young.

We’re all so hard-wired to instant gratification nowadays. It’s not just our kids who crave it. We want Amazon Prime, Internet speed, Facebook rather than a real book – nearly every single one of us is guilty of wanting things now!

And we also want instant love.

We are desperate for feedback from our teens. Just a sign that they actually love us. A flicker of emotion that shows they really do care.

The trouble is, some things – the teenage brain for example – never change.

With teenagers you need to see it as a long distance race and not a 100 metre sprint to love and respect.

Don’t expect a card on your birthday. Don’t presume that they will even remember your birthday. Gone are the days of the homemade card. Tell them, remind them. Amazon Prime they are not!

They may not laugh at your jokes, they won’t always say goodnight, and for much of the time they will act as if they don’t even want you there.

Stay strong. Be firm.

Remember, it’s a long distance race, not a 100 metre sprint. Set boundaries but be flexible. Listen but don’t fix. Communicate but don’t judge.

Their love is always there and sometime in the future you will know that. Occasionally on your marathon journey together, you will know that.

Sometimes we just have to wait.

Grass roots

Three things collided on my social media feed today: an article showing that despite girls outperforming boys at school, the statistics against them in terms of equality go steadily downhill from there. The second was a video from Finland that clearly depicts how young boys see girls as their equals and feel they should get the same rewards for doing the same job as they do and the third was a friend on Twitter, whose 11-year-old son had asked her what a feminist is and once she’d explained he replied, “oh, so I’m one then”.

All these elements can on one level give us hope, but at the same time they are extremely depressing. Because whilst girls are born equal to boys, there’s immediately a whole load of gender stereotyping that is shat right upon them.

It takes a huge amount of parenting in a particular way, a mountain of good teachers and a strong will to shovel your way out of the crap as a female.

In my book, ‘Raising girls who can Boss it’ I talk about the importance of bringing up our daughters to be confident, self-assured individuals. I teach Taekwon-do and when I have a girl in my class who is displaying a bit of attitude, I am pleased. It may challenge me as a teacher, but when channelled, it is exactly what she is going to need to boss life.

Of course the boys need strength of character developed and channelled too, but because of the patriarchal way society is set up, it’s vital that as teachers and parents we are hammering home to both sexes, that boys and girls are equal. It is too easy to get drawn into traps.

Parenting is bloody hard work and we don’t necessarily feel we have the mental capacity to be waging the equality battle. It’s so easy to not notice the gender stereotyping that underlines most things and is all set to sabotage us when we are knackered and wrung out.

I really do believe that the only way we are going to achieve gender equality is by mass education of the young. By the time they leave school the statistics are clearly telling us that it’s too late. The damage has already  been done.

I worry that we sense that little boys are emotionally vulnerable and want to protect their fragility, whilst simultaneously seeing their physicality and wanting to enhance it. Or perhaps we are suffocating boys’ emotions, as we perceive them to be weak. Either way it may leave the boys confused.

Boys, just like girls, are emotionally vulnerable, but the way society reacts to this is perhaps the crux of the problem with gender inequality in the adult world. Maybe boys just aren’t sure what they are supposed to be. So while we are telling girls to ‘boss it’, we aren’t quite sure how to deal with the boys and where there’s uncertainty, the familiarity of societal norms and stereotyping prevail.

We have to teach our boys at every opportunity that boys and girls are equal and our expectations of them must reflect it, in the same way as should our expectations of girls. I often get comments from young boys in my Taekwon-do classes that suggest that the girls in the class are weaker. I make sure that I use every comment made like this as an opportunity to educate .

We know that the task for parents and teachers is massive. It’s daunting too. The media is a force to be reckoned with and as it controls our society it is a huge beast to fight.

In sport the experts are always talking about, ‘grass roots’. That is the key to Olympic success. That is how our sports teams will win major tournaments. Train them young. This is how champions are made.

Well I think the same is true of the fight for gender equality. Grass roots is where it has to start for us to win and achieve success.

Born fighters

From the moment a female is conceived, she is already at a disadvantage. She is already labelled in pink: on the cards people buy to congratulate her parents, the clothes that she wears and the gifts that she’s given. From conception a fighter is born.

Women are born fighters. In fact, it’s so inbuilt that we don’t even notice we are fighting. Growing-up we take a lot on the chin. It takes a big hit to knock us down.

We call these knocks ‘life’ and we live our lives to the full. Perhaps to our detriment we put up with a lot. With harassment and discrimination, with being made to feel less worthy.

We fight on. We are emotional warriors. We wear our hearts on our sleeve. We feel compassion and anger. We feel empathy and pain.

Women are always fighting something. Even each other. Contrary to the weak, mild-mannered stereotype, we were born to fight. The irony of the label ‘the weaker sex’! We were not born weak.

Weakness is learnt. Weakness is a societal demand. Weakness is thrust upon us to make others feel strong and in control.

But we were born to fight. Women are fighters with their hearts and with their voices. This is what we want our girls to be.

It’s in our blood.

#InternationalWomensDay

#NoVictim

For anyone thinking that the #MeToo campaign is about women playing the victim card, implying that women are actually saying #PoorMe – I really do believe you are wrong!

There’s three main definitions of ‘victim’: one is being harmed/injured/ killed by an event/crime/accident, one is someone who’s tricked and one is someone who ‘feels helpless or passive in the face of ill-treatment’. Funnily enough, by the very nature of women sticking their heads above the sea of inequality that exists in this world and stating #MeToo, these women are not fulfilling the definition of the passive victim. Yes, they are victims, but not in the way that many are trying to suggest. They have felt harmed and are using their voices and actions to make people aware.

I’m getting really irritated by the negativity surrounding the #MeToo campaign. Today I read in the Times, the journalist Clare Foges mockingly referring to the Oscars as a ‘carnival of sanctimony in honour of #MeToo’. I’ve heard talk of the hypocrisy of actresses wearing black at award ceremonies, when they are happily profiteering from and exploiting their own sexuality. Last week Weinstein’s lawyer said women are deciding to have sex with producers to advance their careers and so on and so forth. Some people are trying to undermine the importance of the #MeToo campaign.

Well of course they are! Isn’t this just the normal run of things? A woman dares to use her voice and suddenly it’s not a perfectly valid point, it’s a hideous whine that needs silencing. Oh, it’s ok if she has actually been raped, comes the caveat, then she can legitimately complain. But if she is just feeling like a victim of some minor inequality or other, then she should shut the fuck up with her #MeToo drone.

#MeToo is, according to some, making all men feel bad. Tarnishing the male population with the same brush.  Making the male species afraid of asking a woman out for a coffee. Insinuating that women play no active part in sexual encounters. Lionel Shriver says it’s, ‘demonising all male desire’. Basically, they’re saying, it’s anti-male.

What a load of bollocks! I’m getting frustrated that people are trying to undermine the biggest campaign waged against sexual harassment and inequality in my lifetime, by choosing to focus on the grey areas.

I feel we need to see #MeToo as the big picture. Yes, women flirt and some may exploit men and use their sexuality to gain a advantage. Yes, a brush on the knee is not as bad as being raped. But the point of #MeToo as I see it, is the much bigger picture: the vast canvas of inequality that it is bringing to everyone’s attention. The wider, difficult issues that exist around male dominance and power.

#MeToo is giving us a wake up call, a non-sexual kick up the bum. It’s telling us that problems are endemic. It’s teaching us that we need to bring up our children to understand specific behaviours that they need to conform to. Undoubtedly the key to real change is to educate the young.

The #MeToo campaign is only ‘toxic’, ‘mass hysteria’, ‘man-bashing’ and ‘a narrative of victimised women’ if you fail to see it as representative of something much bigger even than the sum of all its parts.

Unfortunately, for all the grey areas and for all the negatives it has provoked, it is needed. It is needed for our children. It is needed so that the pendulum of inequality swings the other way and settles in the middle. Feminism isn’t achieving enough. Hashtags are indeed an irritating concept born out of social media, engulfing great swathes of thought into one phrase. But however much it is pissing people off, however much it can be ridiculed and picked apart and however much it can be seen as going too far, #MeToo is shining the spotlight on something that was previously lurking in the shadows and for my daughters’ sake, I’m pleased.