 (Original image via www.allday.com) |
Dear
Reader, or as Elizabeth Gilbert would say: Dear Ones,
Well, it’s
been quite a busy week since we last spoke. I went to a 3 year olds party,
which proved to be one of the most fun parties I’ve ever attended. I was served
pink gin and who knew toddler tutus could be worn in such innovative ways? I’m
also in the early stages of growing out my hair and all I can say is thank
heavens we’re headed for beanie season.
On a more
sombre note, I’ve recently been at the sharp end of some barbed parental
criticism. This, I confess, has not been fun. It’s been the opposite. Quite
unfun, actually. Although the critique was general, rather than personal, I
took it upon myself to feel personally attacked. As one does. As a parent, you
know.
Anyhow, it
got me thinking: Just who. THE fuck. Do people think they are to point fingers?
This isn’t
the first time I’ve contemplated this. In fact, not long after Mr Chilled was
born I started writing a little handbook called “The A-Z of Motherly Madness.” Whilst
you might think that this is a book that’s filled with stories of sleepless
nights, poopey nappies and how your breast pads leaked, it isn’t. It’s mostly
filled with stories about how utterly painful it is having to deal with other
adults, other parents and know-it-all society members in general.
From the
moment you’re pregnant it’s as if you’re wearing a huge neon sign on your
forehead that says “ARSEHOLE COMMENTARY WELCOME”. I had everyone, from grannies
wagging their fingers at me saying, “Just wait until you see what’s coming” to
single, childless men reminding me that “Boys don’t wear pink”.
But if I
thought that unwelcome comments and wanky advice was a pain in the arse back
then, you can only imagine my horror, when, upon the advent of Facebook,
people saw fit to adopt their very own virtual soapboxes and spout enough
advisory and judgmental rhetoric to sink a ship. Don't they know that in order to have a real virtual soapbox you need a blog?
Once you
become a parent, you’re directly in the line of fire of the opposite of
Facebook likes. The unlike end, if you will. If Facebook had icons for finger-wagging
and pointing fingers, they would surely be the most used. “Pam checked in at
Sanctimoniousville and is feeling finger-waggy”, “Simon checked in at Holier-than-thou-Hoek
and is feeling “finger-pointy”, and “Dave checked in at I’mTooAmazingVlei and is
feeling self-righteous”. You get the picture. I feel it’s a tragic oversight
that Facebook hasn’t made an icon for the middle finger.
But I think
we need to look at this dishing-out-of-parenting-advice from two angles. First,
from the angle of childless people, and then from the angle of people who
actually have children.
Childless people.
What. The. Fuck? Just shut up, truly. You’re making a git of yourself. If
you’re struggling with this concept let me explain it to you in simple terms, by
means of an analogy. Let’s pretend that I’m the kind of person who watches a
lot of tennis and, because I watch tennis, I start believing that I know how to
play tennis. I become so convinced of my tennis abilities that I start
commenting on how other people should be playing tennis. However, I’ve never actually
played tennis myself. In fact, I don’t even know how to hold a racquet. I start
chatting with other tennis enthusiasts who also watch tennis but don’t know how
to play it either. Between ourselves we decide that there’s lots of room for
improvement as far as tennis playing is concerned and so we decide to tell
those, who actually ARE playing tennis, how to play tennis.
Do you see
the problem here? Whereas I might be an expert at observing tennis and may even
have done some reading up on “How to be the PERFECT Tennis Player”, my interest in tennis doesn’t make me invested in tennis. And how do you
become invested in tennis? There’s only one way: play tennis yourself. Until
then, just know that whatever knowledge you think you have about tennis is
irrelevant until such time that you yourself get onto the court. #word.
Now for
parents. Seriously? WTF? You should know better.
I recently
got invited to a parenting group on Facebook. Being invited to a Facebook group
is like being asked to Like, Share, and type AMEN. You don’t really want to do
it, but you feel pressured into it, lest other people thing that you don’t
really care about the issue at hand. The
thing is, though, belonging to a parenting forum is the parental equivalent of
reading a beauty magazine: you just feel inadequate. Via a barrage of articles,
you get the feeling that your child is on the verge of getting scurvy due to
poor diet, that they spend too much time on their iPads, that they eat too much
sugar, that you’re the spawn of Satan for vaccinating, and that, in short, your
offspring are doomed to become psychopaths.
But what’s even
worse than the timeline on a parenting forum, is taking a scroll down your
Facebook feed. Here you will find people liking and sharing all manner of
crappy advice on parenting. Posters showing cute yellow minions saying things
like “If you got respect spanked into you, like and share”. (As a complete
aside, I’m quite, quite certain that minions would not subscribe to that
philosophy.)
Bit the thing that has me foxed about these kind of memes is the
person posting it doesn’t make it clear to whom it’s directed. The thought has crossed my mind that they’ve
in fact shared it as a reminder to themselves - as one might pin up your
favourite sayings on your pin-board at home – rather than as a comment that’s directed
towards others. But if it indeed is directed towards other parents, I have to
wonder: is it directed towards me? Or is it directed towards you? Just who
exactly is responsible for raising these belligerent, disrespectful, precocious
children? Do they walk amongst us, or are they in some other distant land where
disrespect, belligerence and precociousness are the norm? It’s all very
exhausting to figure out.
I really
have to hope it’s not directed at me. Coz, you know, fuck you and all your preachy
wankishness. Unless you have a tattoo on your forehead stating “PERFECT PARENT,
ALL MY KIDS ARE A SUCCESS STORY”, I just don’t think you should be bandying
around memes about other people’s parenting abilities.
Of couse, you also
get the intellectual types who won’t recycle playful memes, but instead will draw from an incredibly reliable knowledge base that has been entirely gleaned
from the archives of Facebook. Using recycled sensationalist columns that were
only ever intended to drive traffic to websites bearing the names of “Lentil
soup for your soul” and “Intuition for Conscious Enlightened Perfectpants
People” as ammunition, they tout themselves as “well read” and, without
employing any critical thinking, will take these “articles” as the gospel. It
would be funny if it weren’t so un-fucking-funny.
Some
parents are sneaky and use boasting as a way to wag their fingers at other
parents. They’ll say things like “I’m so glad my Sarah loves to read”. Subtext:
Your kid’s a reprobate because they don’t. Or, one of my favourites “I’m so
lucky that Lou-Lou knows how to play
and use her imagination”. Subtext: what kind of parent are you that you let
your kids watch TV? Hashtag ARSEHOLEPARENT.
The thing
is, most parents I know think that, most of the time, they’re fucking up
royally with this parenting thing. Still, they’re doing their best and, as the
saying goes, if you don’t have something positive to say, perhaps don’t say
anything at all. And for those people who are winning at parenting,
as my dad would say, Bravo!~ Bully for you! But there’s no need to be such a
dick about it (he never said the last bit, that’s all mine).
And on that
note I think I’m going to go and devise more ways that I can be the worst
parent possible and completely stuff up my children’s lives. I’m thinking
Ritalin might be the way to go. But that, dear ones, is a story for another
day.
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