Conscious Children

This afternoon I took the kids to the park behind our house. It’s a great set up as I take my laptop and write. It’s a beautiful park, lots of things to look at and discover, plenty of dirt to chuck around and sticks to pick up and whack each other with. There is a creek running behind it but the rumours of bunyips have as yet kept them away from it.. oh and there is the play equipment.

Before we left I had to download Pink Flyods "Another brick in the wall" from Youtube. It was the prompt for Mondays Music Musings and I wanted to get a head start on my ideas for it. Instead of running off to the helicopter or dashing down the slide, both Morgan and Lilly sat with me and watched the clip several times. For me it’s a chilling piece of music , masterfully layered with meaning and symbology. Morgan asked lots of questions about the clip and of the words – which in my true style, I explained as simply as I could – but didn’t hold back. Sociology lesson over, they were content to bury each other in the deep pinebark and bark at each other.

I want my kids to grow up always questioning. Never to accept what is dished to them just on face value. Morgan agreed he didn’t want to be a sausage or a faceless student and promised with his big blue sincere eyes that he would question everything. By the second viewing he was cheering on the students as they smashed up there wall and their school.

“Why don’t other kids ask questions Mummy?”

Parents don’t mean to be bad. We just get caught up with everything and fail to recognize a bright light desperate to feed on the mountains of information around them , seeing some sort of guidance system, some sort of framework to make sense of it all. Many of us grew up with the concept of seen and not heard or had the answer – “don’t worry about that” or “you don’t need to know that just now” – or “be quiet!” I have caught myself a few times nearly coming out with these dreadful words, taking a deep breath and getting to the questioners level and taking the time to answer the question in as much detail as I can.

We have already done the Death thing, the God thing, the baby thing ( but not how it gets there.. yet) I really believe that if I stop communicating, if I brush them off now, when the time comes that either of them need an ear, need help , then their trust in a parent will be long gone. I theoretically know that my importance in their lives is even now beginning to slip. However, thankfully… I once was a teacher so still have some sort of credibility in Morgans eyes….

"Mummy, teachers are so smart. They know everything.” “Humm.. well not everything, but they are pretty smart yes” I said.

“But you are extra smart Mummy. you are a mummy and you were a teacher.”

Bless his little dirty, smelly socks…