My Body My Rules

A long time ago, when I first started reading blogs, I came across the idea of bodily autonomy for children. The idea that children should never feel that they are not in control of what happens to their body, even as babies. My immediate reaction was that this was a great theory, but doomed to failure in practice. When I expressed this thought on blogs* I got various responses, but mostly variations around the idea that you teach kids what they need to know about looking after themselves and they mostly make sensible decisions. Also, most responses came with the caveat that in circumstances where the child was choosing to make completely inappropriate decisions about their body (like the 18 month old who is refusing to have the pooey nappy changed), the best way was to give them a choice between agreeing voluntarily or being forced. I can see that this is better than just forcing them, but it reminds me strongly of being told as a kid "Wipe that smile off your face or I'll wipe it off for you".

Anyway, as my kids grew up, I found the idea actually worked very well, especially with my eldest. He listened to advice and, apart from needing to be reminded about it, mostly followed it. I've helped him defend his right to wear his hair however he likes and other such things. He needs to be supported in asserting himself and this philosophy has worked very well. I'd almost completely forgotten my initial misgivings.

Then along came Second Born. I spent a lot more time defending other people's bodily autonomy from him than worrying about his bodily autonomy when he was little. In fact, we're still working on that. Then last year he was introduced to the phrase "My body, my rules" through the child protection stuff they did at school. It seems like such a sensible meme. But Charlie has an Aspergers brain, and therefore an amazing capacity for taking things literally - especially if it works in his favour. So now Charlie is using "My body, my rules" to justify not cleaning his teeth, not sleeping, not going to school, pretty much not doing anything he doesn't want to do at that moment. Or rather, he's trying to.

Reasoning with him doesn't work. If I explain these things are in his best interest, he claims he's thought it through, and decided the benefits are not worth it. His body, his rules. When they told him that, they didn't put any caveats on it. They didn't point out that his parents have a legal responsibility to ensure his health, education and so on. They didn't say that at some point his choices may be reduced to "do it by choice or be forced to do it." Because from a child protection point of view, that would completely undermine the whole thing. Unfortunately, from a Charlie point of view, he's been handed the ultimate pass. Or at least he thinks he has.

So in the end, I'm almost back where I started. Respecting children's bodily autonomy is definitely a good theory. I'm surprised to find that it works better in practice than I thought, with some children. Other children, however, have more than enough understanding of their own autonomy and need to be reminded that they are not yet adults, and as such need to have some decisions made for them. It all depends whether you have a child who will clean their teeth once they understand its importance, or you have a child who will refuse to clean their teeth just because they can.

*I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to all the bloggers on whose corners of the web I said ignorant things and asked stupid questions. I would also like to thank all those who responded with patience that was above and beyond. 

Missing You

People pretty commonly say they miss someone every day, even many years after they've died. I think I've said it myself, but for me it's not true. I don't miss Dad every day, and it's a good thing too. When I do miss him, my chest starts to implode, my throat tightens and I sob hopelessly. After the tears is the inevitable headache. It's exactly like I'm back in that Thursday in November fifteen years ago. If I missed him every day, I'd be of no use to anyone.

Time hasn't softened or mellowed the pain, it's just allowed me to put it away most of the time. For some reason, though, I've been missing him a lot lately. Maybe it's because he's got four grandchildren now. The youngest is starting to talk. It's such a cool thing to watch language happen. The eldest is shaping up to be a pretty good musician. Dad would have been so proud, and probably claimed the credit somehow. The next oldest, I think, would have adored him. Their senses of humour would have connected and I suspect Charlie would have just been comfortable in his company. Grandchild number three is starting school and the journey to being a real person. They all have to do it without him. I think this is the bit where I shout "It's not fair!" and shake my fist at the universe.

Maybe also, it's because the kids are getting older. I don't need to be constantly alert to where they all are and what they're doing, so I have more brainspace for thoughts not entirely connected to keeping all the balls in the air. I'm not sure I've got the emotional reserves to keep this up though.

It's not that I can't think of him or talk about him, it's that I can't miss him. Not too often. I want to just wish him back into our lives. Granted, Mum & David (her partner) might find adjusting to a poly relationship a little tricky, but while I'm wishing people back from the dead, I think this is a minor detail.

Dad, I'm missing you, and it hurts.

Cultural diversity vs feminism

[Cross posted at Hoyden About Town]

The global coverage of the horrific death of a woman from Delhi has certainly shone the light on the difficulties of navigating universal women's rights in a world where cultures are not all the same, and are certainly not equal in power. As usual the Oz has lead the way in how not to discuss women's rights in cultures other than one's own. 

Where are the beacons of truth and light to save Aboriginal women? Why do Aboriginal spokespeople persist in the same policies that have failed to civilise Aboriginal violence? (Like India, we must end misogyny - behind the paywall, but Googlable)

It's tricky ground. On the one hand, if the white, Western world speaks up to condemn the violence (and by implication, the aspects of the culture that produce it), it's the voice of the cultural hegemony. On the other hand, not speaking up is implicitly condoning the appalling status quo. I quite firmly believe that it's not anyone's job to force change on other cultures, but it is our job to enable the changes that are being called for from within. This is a rather grand and delightfully vague statement of position, I realise. It needs some practicality about it. The first step is one that people from all minorities have been asking for for the longest time - to listen. To hear the voices of the women oppressed, and when appropriate, repeat and amplify them, but not editorialise them. Not a big ask, but apparently one that Gary Johns from the Australian has grasped. In answer to your question, Mr John, the "beacons of truth and light to save Aboriginal women" are right in front of you. They are Aboriginal women. The rest of Australia's job is to empower them to save themselves.

Which brings me to the point of this post - I've been meaning to write about this for years. That empowering thing is also very vague, and it requires a lot more than listening. I doubt there is one approach that will work everywhere, but I'm sure it doesn't come from policies. People always resist change imposed from more powerful groups - whether it's from a dominant culture or government that has little daily relevance to the cultures it governs. However, that doesn't mean that external cultures and governments can't assist change. One model for this sort of change comes from Monique Deveaux. In a paper she wrote in 2003^[1], she outlines a deliberative democratic approach to helping cultures change themselves. The rest of the world only helps provide the framework, not the agenda.

One of the most significant issues in interculture relations is whose voices are heard. A government may attempt to enable multiculturalism by granting or denying cultures specific rights, but Deveaux argues (fairly uncontroversially I would have thought) that this can’t be democratically legitimate unless cultural group members are involved in the decision making process. Further, acknowledging the importance of intragroup relationships, representative members of all sub-groups must also be involved. Deveaux offers a complex model, in which pragmatism is more important than idealism. Representatives must argue on the basis of their own stakes rather than for the common good, to ensure that motives aren't hidden. As a result, compromise and bargaining are encouraged over moral consensus.

This approach addresses a number of issues. With each party coming to the debate with a personal position, rather than a moral one, there is less chance of oppressed minorities perceiving the negotiations as a threat to their moral identity. With each sub- group personally represented, the decisions about cultural practices will be made on the basis of the “lived form of these practices” rather than that represented by group spokespersons or majority members. It also allows for each group to determine their own idea of gender equity - so there are no pointless arguments about whether an item of clothing is oppressive, for example.

Deveaux specifies that three criteria must be met for the process to be valid and effective: nondomination, political equality, and revisability. Very briefly, nondomination requires that no participants are co-erced in any way, political equality means “real opportunity for all citizens to participate” and revisability means that any decisions made may be subject to revision at a later date. Revisabilty acknowledges that change generally takes place gradually, and makes compromise more possible. Political equality clearly presents the greatest difficulty in a multicultural context, as Deveaux acknowledges.

Who can participate in political life is, for many, culturally determined. Often it is precisely the role and status of certain subgroups – for example, whether women ought to have a political voice – that is at issue. (p.793)

She proposes a range of solutions, such as state funding for cultural support groups and independent media to improve the general conditions for democratic involvement, as well as culturally specific solutions on a case by case basis. For example, in negotiations with cultural groups who specifically exclude women from political life, external women’s advocacy groups, preferably with demonstrable cultural understanding, may stand in place of the group’s women themselves. All of this seems eminently sensible, and importantly, quite achievable to me.

Deveaux was involved in implementing this in South Africa, where the process was used to negotiate dramatic change in customary marriage law. The process was designed primarily for the purpose of improving women's rights. In the first round, amazing change was achieved, but nobody got everything they wanted. They were able to compromise, because testing and revision is built in. Women were afforded the right to own property, to initiate divorce and violence against women in marriage was outlawed. They didn't win the right to take family law matters to the mainstream courts. Nevertheless, for a process of less than a few years, that's amazing progress.

 I really like the idea that no-one gets to claim the moral high ground, and that the process recognises both ongoing identity, and evolution of culture. I'm sure it won't work in all circumstances, and needs a lot of support to work where it will - but it seems to me like a good way for external, probably dominant cultures, to assist oppressed groups within cultures improve their lives, without imposing ideas of what that improvement should look like.
I'd suggest this kind of approach could work very well within Aboriginal communities - the women know what they need, they just need a framework to enact change. It may work within the various subcultures in India too. It'll certainly work better than white folks tut tutting at them.

1. Deveaux, M. ‘A Deliberative Approach to Conflicts of Culture’, Political Theory, 31(6), 2003: 780-807 

Yesterday in politics...

... we saw the best and worst of Julia Gillard and her government. Her 15 minute speech condemning the misogyny of Tony Abbott was amazing (transcript here). She was strong and clear and there is no doubt we needed it all to be said. And we will need it to be said again and again and again if the general response we've seen is any indication. I've seen Gillard called a hypocrite for calling Abbott "that man", on the basis that people are criticised for referring to Gillard as "that woman". Honestly, if "that woman" was the worst Gillard and the rest of us had to deal with, I'd throw my own post-feminism party and invite everyone. Gillard listed many hateful, misogynist things that Abbott has said or supported, and she didn't mention being called "that woman". It really doesn't rate.

On the other hand, on the same day, the senate passed Labor's (and therefore Gillard's) changes to the single parent payment, meaning that once their youngest child turns 8, a single parent is no longer eligible for the single parent payment. Apparently children 8 and up don't need parenting - or perhaps parenting them is not regarded as valuable work, or is something that can be squeezed in between working for a corporation. This is a disgusting move, it lets down kids and it lets down people (and let's face it, by numbers, we're still talking mostly women) doing their best to raise their kids. Apparently verbal misogyny is not on, and won't be tolerated (as it certainly shouldn't be) but institutionalised misogyny is just fine - especially if it's popular with right leaning voters.

Labor and Gillard continue to lurch to the right. While I welcome and acknowledge what Gillard has achieved with the carbon price and some semblance of a mining tax, there are so many other decisions that have been all about pandering to exactly the kind of fear and ignorance peddled by talk back radio hosts and Mr Abbott. It's deeply disappointing. I'd really like to see a great deal more of the passionate, progressive woman we saw in Question Time yesterday, and a great deal less of the popular vote chasing woman that's cutting support to some of society's most vulnerable. Yesterday was the whole Gillard government encapsulated. Moments of brilliance, interspersed with horrid politicking.

Torture? Really?

For days now my Twitter feed has been full of people asserting that I've tortured all of my kids. This cartoon was being retweeted all over, praising Leunig for identifying what controlled crying is all about. Since then I've seen a whole lot of commentary about how controlled crying is cruel and torturous, and about how it's used only by the ignorant or the poor victims of society. I'm sorry, but I call bullshit.

I understand that there are many ways to parent. I get that controlled crying, in any form, isn't going to work for some people. Attachment Parenting advocates, for example, are not going to find this helpful. However, we are not all AP people. AP would NEVER work for me, but it works for lots of people and produces happy, balanced kids. I've also seen AP fail badly - but that doesn't mean AP is a failure - it just means it didn't work for those people in their circumstances. It's not reasonable to condemn an approach because sometimes it doesn't work.

So WTF gives with equating controlled crying with torture, with our government's abominable treatment of asylum seekers, and with inevitable despair and hopelessness? Do any of these people seriously think those of us who used some variation of controlled crying did so by locking our kids in their rooms without support, without love, without a whole swag of strategies to teach our kids how to settle themselves and sleep? CC is one small part of how I'm living with, teaching and loving my kids. The way I used it varied considerably between each child, and at different ages for each child. I'm fairly confident none of my children are despairing, detached and hopeless.

My eldest child possibly owes his life to CC. A friend of mine told me she dealt with the endless screaming with earplugs. That's cool, but it wouldn't have worked for me. The details of his path to sleep and happiness are too tedious to go into, but I came close to losing my shit once, and I'm glad I had CC in my repertoire (along with lots of other stuff) to get through that stage. The other two were each very different kids, and I used different versions of CC with each of them. There was very little crying at all with second born, as it happens. We're now well past all that, although we're still working through teaching the youngest to deal with her nightmares on her own. I imagine we'll still be doing that for a year or two more.

I could go through all the complexities of the way sleep was managed in our family, what the benefits were for us, why those benefits matter a great deal to us, but may not matter so much for other people and so on, but ultimately, it doesn't matter. The point is, if you're condemning me for torturing my child, you are presumably not one of the people for whom CC can be a helpful tool. You are probably approaching much of your parenting from a very different angle. I salute you. I would not inflict my style of parenting on you any more than I would fuck up my family by attempting a parenting style that I would be doomed to fail with. However, if you want to pass judgement on the way other people do things, may I respectfully suggest you make sure you're not somewhere in the vicinity of the first bump in this graph? Please?

Image credit: Meanwhile In Canada

(I should point out I recognise Mount Stupid, I've climbed right to the top too many times to count, so I'm only asking people to slide on down the other side, no hard feelings.)

Eating - I can do this

My relationship with food has been fraught, to say the least. I don't do all the Oprah-y emotional eating, but I do some of it. Sometimes I eat because I deserve it. Sometimes (often?) I eat because the food is in front of me, even if I don't particularly like it. Sometimes I keep eating after I'm full because it's just so tasty, and who knows when I'll get to eat this again? (Answer: Whenever I want it - I'm a grown up, I can choose my own food! Duh!)

On the plus side, it's getting better. I do all those things less than I used to. However, I've been hearing about, and been interested in, health at every size (HAES) for a ages now, but never believed I could do it. I completely agreed with its philosophy - that weight is not what it's all about. We should forget that and focus on eating and moving to make our bodies work properly, not make our bodies look different. But I really didn't think that I could ever eat the way HAES recommends - to listen to your body's cues and not worry about anything else. Again, I was right there with the idea, but figured I had broken my body's cues so badly from decades of overriding what my body was telling me (ignoring hunger and ignoring fullness), that the whole system was beyond repair. I figured I could eat healthy, but it would require a conscious effort and control - so I set off trying to eat better and move more and gave no more thought to listening to my body.

Just recently though, I developed an inexplicable desire to massively increase the quantity and diversity of vegetables that I eat. Granted, this message is everywhere, and it's been everywhere for ages, but apparently my appetite just caught on. Could this be evidence of me being able to hear some of my body's signals? Maybe. Then today, a friend brought lunch and it amounted to bread, cheese & meat. It was tasty, I had what I wanted and stopped. An hour later I was hunting around the kitchen, looking for food. Conscious brain kicks in and says "You can't be hungry!" I was about to walk back out of the kitchen, and a revolutionary thought occurred to me. What am I actually looking for? Fruit, or something. Not an apple, too starchy. No mandarins, no oranges. Cucumber! I want a cucumber. I'm a grown-up, I can peel and eat a cucumber.

This is all kind of pathetic, but it feels vaguely like that intuitive eating thing might not be entirely out of reach. Of course, I may be 70 by the time I master it, but it's good to have a project to be going on with.

Understanding and excuses

Often when people say a kid has an attention problem, they really mean he has a problem pretending to give a shit about things that bore him

I saw this retweeted this morning, and at the time of writing, it had 48 retweets. It comes from @demand_euphoria. I don't follow her and I have no idea what the context of this tweet is, so I'm not writing this to engage with her or her intent, or to have a go at her. I'm more interested in the idea that it expresses, because I think it floats about a lot. I also think, when taken completely seriously, it's a huge problem.

The development of attention is really only about things one finds boring - paying attention to something you find fascinating is rarely a problem. (Although there might be great variability between how long different people can hold that attention. From a functional point of view, one needs only to be able to stay focussed for long enough to do something useful. I recognise that there may be conflict between the optimal attention span of any given person, and the requirements of classrooms.) The implication in the idea expressed above is that the fault lies with the material if it's boring. Last year, I heard so much about making classes interesting I was starting to wonder if we were being trained to be teachers, or circus performers. I do have some sympathy for the argument - if I had my druthers, I'd rip huge swathes of boring, unnecessary crap from the junior science syllabus in NSW.

However, we simply can't excise all boring stuff from our lives. There are excellent reasons to automate times tables, for example, but doing so is boring. Housework is boring. I can't imagine that there's ever been a profession anywhere that has no component which is life-suckingly dull. One of the main objectives of childhood is to learn how to apply yourself to stuff that needs to be done, in order to be able to get on with the genuinely interesting stuff. This isn't just a function of school, it's a property of life.

I would suggest that a child who has a problem giving a shit about stuff he/she finds boring has a lot to learn about life - which is ok, she/he is a child, learning is what it's all about. It's our job as parents to help them learn it, and not decide that the world needs to stop being dull for the sake our child. Explaining why boring stuff is important is the first step. Providing tricks to manage the boring can help too - like listening to music while cleaning, setting mini goals, or giving yourself personal rewards for ploughing through the dull stuff.

Learning to pretend to give a shit about the stuff you find boring IS what developing attention is all about. Understanding what kids have a problem with and supporting them where they are to get to where they need to be is what parenting and teaching is all about. Making excuses and blaming the world for being what it is doesn't help anyone.

(Please note, once again, that I'm not suggesting @demand_euphoria is making excuses or anything else, her tweet just triggered this more general observation.)