Is eight too young for a Facebook account?

So, my reputation as a Parenting Expert is growing and I have received an email from a confused parent looking for some advice.

What tha?

My response was, in a nutshell, "Have you met me?"

Now, we all know that I'm just plain lucky the Tsunamis appear to be nourished, unbroken and, well, alive... so Dave and I decided that the best approach would be to harness the collective parenting might of the Maxabella lovelies instead. And, naturally, I get to put in my own two cents as well.

See, Dave's eight year old son wants a Facebook account. His friend has one so he wants one. He already likes playing Farmville on his Mum's account (so that's who's out there throwing pigs at each other). His Mum is happy for her son to have a Facebook account of his own, provided that it is heavily sanctioned and monitored. Dave's concern is that starting the boy up when he is too young risks exposing him to to cyber-bulling and adult content that might kill his interest in social networking forever.

My two cents is that if you have to heavily sanitise or monitor a product before giving it to your kids, the product is too old for your kids. Full stop. Why start them up so young on a product that was obviously made for an older audience (and admits that's the case by requiring that you have to be older than 13 to use it).

And Dave, it starts with Facebook at eight and then where does it go?

Over the course of three generations, 'being a child' has been squeezed down by canny marketers from being 0 - 18 (up to the 1950s) to being 0 - 12 (up to 1952 when Bill Haley and those busy American marketers invented the concept of the 'teenager') to being 0 - 7 (in the nineties when the 'tweenager' came along). There's not a lot of time allocated to just being young anymore; not involved in or even knowing about what 'society' even is. And I stress that during that time of rapid social change, it has been no secret that physically, emotionally and mentally our children have struggled to keep up with the marketers*. Keeping up with this 'society' we've created is literally killing our kids.

We know all of this as parents, yet we continue to allow our children to do things to 'keep up' with the other kids. Big corporations who want to sell our kids stuff are pretty much deciding what the rules of 'up' are and 'other parents let their kids follow those rules, so it must be okay.'  But while we're freely handing over the responsibility of raising our children to 'other parents', they are ironically thinking they are handing over the responsibility to us. The net result is that the peer group is raising itself, following rules made up by some company wanting to make a profit out of them, while we foolishly judge the success of our parenting on whether our children are an accepted part of this ungodly mess. Like deers caught in headlights, what a trap we have found ourselves in.

Because, oh, we know that there are worse things than not fitting in. There are worse things than not keeping up with a society gone mad.

This debate has, of course, been going on for generations and each generation has upped the ante on their parents. And as much as we remember the manipulative techniques we used to pull on our own parents, we remember even more strongly that desperate longing to fit in when we were kids / teens / tweens ourselves. The outcome is that more than ever, our generation has a struggle on our hands to resist the 'but she's doing it' pleas and just say no to our kids. It's unbelievably hard because our immediate reaction is that our child will be lonely and bereft if we don't let them do what everyone else is doing.

But what if everyone else decided that enough was enough as well?  What if we all got together at our individual schools and agreed an array of things that we promised we won't allow our children to do? A formal manifesto that we promise we will do everything we can to abide by. A difficult manifesto to agree on, of course, but if we could manage it, wouldn't it take away a little bit of the steering power of the peer group and those marketers... just a little?**

While I genuinely think that most of our children are going to grow up just fine despite what our superficial, materialistic, sexualised, celebrity-obsessed society is doing to them, more and more of them won't. We need to use our brains, not our hearts on this one. Think beyond the immediate gratification of our darling children and look at what's on the road ahead. Because right now it looks to me that there's a massive pile of deranged bullshit on the road ahead and we're all in danger of hurtling right into it.

What do you think about Dave's dilemma? Is an eight year old too young?

Would you create an agreement with parents on some values you'd all agree to for your group of kids?

* This is just one article siting the damage that our society it doing to our kids. There are so many out there, it's frightening.

** I made this up, but I'm liking this idea more and more. If you agree that it's got legs, I'll expand on it and get something together that we can work on as a group. I would then be more than happy to be 'Patient X' and try out our manifesto on the P&C at my children's school... please let me know what you think of the idea.

[Image found here, source unknown.]

A nostalgic Breakfast

When I was a teenage misfit in my beachy-country-westie hometown, I got really into Cold Chisel in a big way. (Okay, so maybe not such a misfit after all.) Their music grabbed me at sixteen and it's still grabbing me today.

I think when I was a squeaky-clean youngster it was all about the promise of a life that seemed so grown-up and a bit grubby. It appealed to my Vader Side - that reckless, wandering side of me that has always been there and would later be brightened occasionally by hard drink and loud music and late, late nights.

These days it's just that I know their music so well that I think I'm in the band.

What music makes you nostalgic for your youth?

[Image via weheartit and previous to that lost somewhere on one of those tumblr sites full of shoes and teenage angst]

Daisy Dukes and fairy floss

This year the Sydney Royal Easter Show wasn't about the rides or the show bags or even the wood chopping. The fairy floss, the demented fairies on sticks, the cheese sticks... all those fairies and sticks, they all took a back seat.

Because this year, the Sydney Royal Easter Show was all about the Daisy Dukes.

Pack after pack after pack of teenage girl gangs sauntered past in little, bitty denim cut-offs showing lashings and lashings of suddenly very large thigh. Seriously, do those pants look good on anyone?

It was easily less than 16 degrees in the cattle yard, thrumming with rain and still the Easter shorts parade went on. That darn Katy Perry, this was all her fault. Slashed shorts with the pockets hanging down the regulation 3cm lower than the actual short. The chain-store examples even had beading and studs on the inside-out pockets, thereby removing any semblance of nonchalance from the outfit.

The result was a line of Katys who were all so samey-same-same that I was surprised all the little Biebers running around could actually tell them apart. Did they find all those purplish, dimpled thighs hot, hot, hot or like me did they wish the Katys would swap their very-shorts for something a little more... flattering. Even the one girl in a million who could carry off the Dukes would have looked better in a cute little mini or a pair of skinnies.

Next time I'm tempted to indulge in foolish 'back when I was young and could wear absolutely anything' nostalgia, I will remind myself of those masses of short-challenged girls (and my own ill-advised green denim extra-mini skirt circa 1986).  Trust me, thighs that need ample coverage can happen at any age and Daisy Dukes are not our friends.

Do I sound like I'm eighty? Or just from the eighties?

What was the most unflattering garment you wore as a teen? Did you think you looked hot?

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Today's the last day for votes in the Sydney Writers' Centre People's Choice Awards.

I would be ever-so grateful for your vote so please click the banner below and head to 'page 2'.

Thank you!

[Image found via weheartit. What can I say? I'm weak.]

The Liary

Whenever someone learns that I have a blog they say, "oh, you must keep a diary too, huh?"  Do you get that too? Let me see. Writing one's heart's desires confidentially versus broadcasting useless opinions to the world? Same-same?

The truth is, I'm a hopeless diary keeper. I just don't trust myself to be the only reader of my innermost thoughts. When unchecked by others, I lie, I cheat, I steal other people's good stuff. I've done it before. I was given a diary when I was an early teen and it had the date stamped on every page. The pressure. By the time I got the diary it was already mid-Feb so what was I going to do with all those blank date-stamped pages?

I made up a life and pretended that it was mine, that's what. Sadly, this was no outlandishly crazy and wonderful existence. Not for me rides on wild ponies in the desert and cocktails at dawn... no, I was much more inclined to pretend that I had blonde hair, was short and petitie, good at maths and played the guitar. A big Sweet Dreams-style yawn, but no less a lie for its dullness.

My sister called this journal The Liary.

The truth is (and this is the truth, trust me), I did this sort of thing for real when I was in my very early twenties and a drunken night at a bar turned me into a lie-whore who pretended to be a med student at uni because I was embarrassed that I was actually just a waitress at a function centre at the time. I kept up the lie for months. I don't even know why it was so important to me that people thought I was a brainiac rather than just a maniac. I made up a boyfriend who was a model too... so it was obviously important at the time that not only was I a smart one, I was also hot enough to attract a dumb boyfriend.

I kept a journal during those ill-fated months too. It was Liary The Sequel because embarrassingly I even wrote to myself that I was a med-student with hot boyfriend. For shame. I clearly remember the desperation to be different, to be other than myself, that drove me to lie like this. I think most teenagers / young adults have been there. I try always to remember what that self-loathing, despairing feeling was like and consequently I have always been indulgent with both my time for and manners towards angst-ridden teens.

One of my great life lessons towards accepting myself for just being me was when it all went pear-shaped and I had to explain to some of my dearest friends just why I had made this stupid stuff up. At the time I had no explanation (but see above, perceptive reasoning kicked in later). Most importantly, my friends were at a loss to explain it also. They were shocked beyond belief. But not for the reasons I dreaded. It wasn't the fact that I had lied to their faces that shocked them so much, it was that they couldn't believe that I didn't realise that I was good enough without the lies. I was good enough.

Like I said, a huge life lesson and one that has kept me truthful and grounded ever since. I've never lied with quite such bravado again. Just a little white one here and there. To stop the whining or to save face. Ironically.

Phew. Lying is hard to admit to. Have you always been truthful?

Do you think lies like these matter? What's the difference between a 'white' lie and a whopper?

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[Image found here]

You've come a long way, Bunsen

Today is Robert Bunsen's 200th Birthday.

He is the chemist who invented the bunsen burner which lead to the invention of the Bialetti stove-top coffee maker, so as far as LOML’s concerned he is the best inventor ever.

But that’s not why I noticed his birthday.

We all have a Mean Girls story from our school days. Mine happens to be a Mean Boys story, but we all know how these things play out. Group of kids makes life a misery for single kid for reasons known and unknown to themselves only.

I guess being nicknamed Bunsen and having a large group of boys call out ‘heeeeey BUUUNNNSEEEN’ every single time you walked past them isn’t the end of the world. I’ll take that any day of the week over so much of the teenage warfare a lot of kids endure.

But still.

Ground-opening humiliation for a teenager desperately wanting to fit in, even if the boys only came up to my armpit and, like all teenage boys, had absolutely nothing to offer. On and on and on it went. I went from laughing it off with a sweep of my offensive tresses, to attempting to ignore it, to only ever walking in the centre of a gang of girls, to going miles out of my way to avoid them altogether.

The burden of the peer group.

You know, once those boys stopped being a peer group, many turned out to be very nice indeed. I was oddly the only girl invited to every single one of those boys’ 21st birthday parties. I went along to a couple. To them it was ‘hey old mate!’ and I realised that as BUUUUNNNSSEEEEEN I was always a part of their gang; their quirky little mate who took teasing on the chin. They were boys and that’s just what boys do. Shudder.

The mystery of the peer group.

That’s what Robert Bunsen means to me. Happy birthday, clever man.

Were you picked on as a child? Do you think that Bunsen was bullied? What's the line between teasing and bullying? Is there one?

[Image by giac1061]

The interview

It's kinda funny. I did my first stint in the interviewer's chair last week interviewing Natasha. And today, it's my first stint as interviewee with Simone at Honey and Fizz interviewing me! Thank you for thinking me an interesting enough subject, Simone. After the actual answers came back, I am very impressed that you still hit publish! You're a good gal, you are.

It was so much fun. I love talking about myself. As teens my dorky friends and I interviewed each other incessantly, celebrity style. What's your favourite place in the world? How often do you brush your teeth? Why do you think the world is coming to? If you could have any dress which one would you have? All the important, thought-provoking questions that meant so much to us at 16.  Now it's all about my decorating style and my fave perfume.

I guess I grew up?

Well, kinda! Check me out and you tell me!

PS - Do you 'follow' yourself? It only just occurred to me that it would be nice to see myself in my Reader from time to time. I'm my newest follower.

[Image via weheartit. I gotta stop going there. I hate not knowing the real source. To high a price for a shortcut!]

Hanging out with my inner teen

True confession: I adore teenage movies. It seems I just never grew out of my John Hughes phase. Forget the fact that I'm a 39 year old mother of three. Actually, I think that's the main reason I still like these films - they let me forget that I'm a 39 year old mother of three.

Yesterday I settled in for Easy A. It's one of the best teen movies I've ever seen (and we're talking over 20 years of dedicated watching here, folks). I laughed, I cried, I winced, I cowered, I guffawed. It's that good. Emma Stone is a modern day Molly Ringwald, but fortunately wittier, prettier and much less pathetic. Her parents are to-die-for (I can't say I ever even noticed Molly's parents in any of her flicks... teen flick parents are clearly aimed at, well, parents).

Of course, the real charm of teen movies these days is getting to hang out with the real-life teens who go to see them. As I sat in the cinema surrounded by over 120 teenage girls yesterday, I couldn't help but get sucked into the effervescent fizz and pop of teen-girl life. The energy level in that cinema was of football stadium standard. Everywhere I looked there was a colourful display of hand flapping, lip smacking, hip-waggling, oh-mi-godding motion.

Do mums of teen girls feel the way I felt all the time? Alive with the spirit of what if. The rush of perfect dramas, the excitement of anything can happen, the raw possibilities of living. Being with those girls made me want to tap dance on a moon lit by dazzling stars. Forget the inner child, the inner teen, like, totally rocks.

So, do go see Easy A. It's a top little film and the teenage girl inside you will thank you for it. Then again... she probably won't!