red mum

RM Column June 13 – Early to bed

One thing I don’t like about the summer months now that the Young Wan is a big grown-up 16-year-old is the later bedtimes. For the last number of years it has been increasingly hard to get her to bed. On school nights I might say to her at about 10pm ‘right time for bed’. She’ll disappear into the bathroom before emerging about an hour later have flaffed about the place.

This is an ongoing battle. Because whether teenagers like it or not, they need more sleep probably than they did when they were just a few years younger, however, I would imagine in most cases they don’t get it.

After all they are big grown-ups and they want to stay up watching telly, well thats how it is in my house.

Now that it is the summer holidays I am fighting an even bigger battle.

Herself will sit in the living room with her eyes popping out of her head in tiredness and she still won’t concede to bed. Once she starts to lay her head back or down that is the moment when I tell her ‘RIGHT bed NOW’.

I don’t want her to have a summer of late night and even later mornings, where half of her day is slept away.

To make matters worse herself and her gang of mates seem to text each other throughout the night which cannot be healthy.

During one of her long excursions to the bathroom/diversions from bed she can be heard click, click, clicking text messages on her mobile phone, at whatever time.

I know there comes a time at night when I do not want phonecalls and if I am brutally honest I can view phonecalls at home at night quite intrusive.

Course there are exceptions to the rules such as close friends, who, in most circumstances, can call me at whatever time. Partly because if they call at that time, something is probably up.
Thats one good thing about the internet, we are in touch all the time so it is a different scenario from years ago when either letters and/or phonecalls were our primary methods of communication.

Young people however don’t follow the ‘not before 8am or after 10pm’ communication rule.
Just recently the Young Wan was complaining that she didn’t sleep well before admitting that she was texting on and off all night. Are they mad?

I don’t want to be confiscating her phone at night, but it looks like that might be the only way forward.

New research presented at a recent conference on sleep found that young people feel they need to be at their phones around the clock. I wouldn’t say this is just confined to young people, I know many grown-ups who feel the same. However we are old and ugly enough to take care of ourselves and make decisions that we have to live by.

Our young people are still being guided by us and we have to look after their best interests even if they do not agree.

The research also found that teenagers who used their phones more were prone to disrupted sleep, restlessness, stress and fatigue than other young people.

So maybe it is time to lock up those phones over night, at least it would give them a good night’s sleep, of course they may bend your ear, but aren’t we used to that.

RM column June 6 – Exam coverage in the media – good or bad

By the time this column goes to print we will have already had many post-mortems on the various exams in the Junior and Leaving Cert. From the daily television news slot, to radio reports to the daily full page in the national papers dismantling the previous day’s papers.

You certainly don’t get this amount of news stories about people sitting university exams. The fact that nearly everyone who has sat the Leaving Cert agrees that no other exams taken after the Leaving Cert are as stressful. I know people in their 50s who still have nightmares about being back in school sitting these important state tests.

The deluge of media coverage isn’t really something that I thought much about before until recently when a couple of people have commented on how this is overdrive, stressful to students and completely over the top.

I don’t really agree with the comments completely but there is certainly some merit to their arguments.

On one level it is certainly gratifying that our media cover the exams so thoroughly when I was growing up there would be a small mention when exams started and when the results came out, other than that there wasn’t much else.

I wouldn’t have thought all this coverage would put more pressure on already pressurised and stressed students but then I am not sitting exams so I can’t say that for sure.
I do know that this time last year when the Young Wan sat her Junior Cert I was living on the last nerve I had as was she.

If I missed any pre-exam supplements on the Junior Cert I felt that I had failed to get her a study guide that might have made the difference between passing and not. So I suppose I fell prey to the pressure myself.

It could also be argued that covering exams in the way they are shows another side to our kids as opposed to the normal negative news story we are used to in the media.

Given the fact that a significant number of young people leave school without a Leaving Cert, isn’t it also a good thing that so much media time is spent on the Junior and Leaving Cert? It normalises the exams as something that everyone should have.

I understand that not every child is academic but there are still options for them to leave school with some kind of qualification in their back pocket.

Given the impending economic downturn I for one want my daughter armed with qualifications. The first people hit in times like that are those without exams behind them except for the exceptional few.

As an aside if you are a student and feel that things are getting on top of you a new text helpline has been set up which will help you get information from a range of helplines and support services such as the Samaritans, the Gardai and Parentline to name a few. To find out more text ‘headsup’ to 50424 or check out their website at headsup.ie.

Summing up I can’t decide whether all this coverage is a good or a bad thing. Have you children doing exams, what do you think? Are you doing exams yourself, how does all the media coverage make you feel?

RM Column May 30th – In praise of Transitions

I have to admit I was not the slightest bit enthusiastic about the Young Wan doing Transition Year. I just couldn’t get my head around it, ‘WHAT, a year with no studying, real classes or exams! Is that wise?

For me it made little sense for students to stop in their tracks after the Junior Cert, surely they would get lazy, get out of the studying and working habit at a crucial age. However I was wrong and I am delighted to say that, for a load of reasons.

Firstly having a year without the stress of exams has been fantastic, seriously fantastic for both of us.

Given that the participants in Transition range are on average about 16 years old the year gives them the chance to grow up and mature, something that I have really noticed in herself.
Then, if the school has a good Transition Year programme, they get the chance to do all sorts of weird and wonderful things. I’m not saying there were not complaints from the Young Wan about the year but it wasn’t along the lines of what I would have imagined it to be.

She threw herself into everything, volunteered for everything and one of her complaints was down to this. She took part in an engineering open day in DCU and hated it. But the point is she did it.

One thing she loved was an open day in one of the hospitals, particularly the radiologist. Personally I think it has a lot to do with the fact they were x-rays of the more bizarre cases such as the man who swallowed a lighter.

She went on field trips, overnight hikes, media courses, she did all sorts.

This putting her hand up for everything paid off too. As a result she was asked by her year head along with two others to do a talk for the students coming into Transition Year to tell them what to expect. One piece of advice she said that I think was really important was that the students in her year who have complained about being bored are those who sat on their hands and did nothing.

She has flourished over the year; she has gained confidence in herself and in school. She knows more what she likes and what she doesn’t. On top of it she is a year older and a year wiser.
I’m not the only person who has noticed. A few months back when she was organising to take a media course, of which only three students took part, I was in contact with one of her teachers.
Up to now this meant she had been misbehaving or something negative. But not this time.
After her teacher and I sorted out the details of the course she then said that the Young Wan was really doing well and they were seriously impressed with her.

About time too, I thought, after all she is an amazing kid. Then the report came in and it was brilliant.

It was about this time I started to change my views on Transition Year, I could see all these amazing changes in the Young Wan, I may soon have to refer to her as the Young Woman!
At the end of the year they had a graduation for the year where they were presented with all the certificates of the things they took part in during the year and the Young Wan has an impressive folder following all her activities.

As usual I found out about it the night before and she was like ‘ach few parents are coming so don’t bother’ and I didn’t go.

Then I got an excited text from her saying that she was nominated by her teachers for student of the year, one of five students given the honour.

Of course I could have told them she was more than capable of this but I suppose this was something the school had to see for themselves and this year, finally, she has allowed herself to shine.

So I am very proud of her and delighted with how much she has enjoyed the year. If you are about to go into Transition Year be sure and take part in everything, you’ll enjoy the year more and you’ll learn more about yourself.

RM column May 23 – Half of all teenagers regular drinkers

It will come as no surprise to anyone really that a recent survey released during a conference in UCD on alcohol and drug abuse by young people has found that half of all young people use illegal drugs and binge drink regularly. This is the latest in a long line of similar surveys finding similar facts.

Of those 15 to 19 year olds taking part in the research conducted in the south and south east 19 per cent said they binge drink weekly, 51 per cent said they binge drink on at least one occasion a month and four per cent said they binge drink several times a week.

As the age group of those taking part ranges from 15 to 19 years old it would be safe to deduce that some of the older ones are probably working or in college where meeting up in the pub would be part of your social life.

The figures cannot come as a shock for some of those parents with younger teenagers because presumably for the younger ones in the four per cent who claim to drink a couple of times week the parents must catch them sometimes.

I have said previously that I have tried to de-mystify alcohol for the Young Wan, and so far, fingers crossed, it seems to have worked. (I am under no illusion this will always be the case.) When I say de-mystify I mean that she would occasionally be allowed a shandy (I would in no way allow her to drink those dreadful alcopops), if there are celebrations she gets to join in though if it is say wine it will be watered down or if it is champagne (a rare and lovely treat) with orange juice. I never wanted her getting a forbidden fruit feeling about drink.

The fact that she is not out and about at night probably helps a lot. But I do know some of this must have rubbed off because she was not impressed with drunk and puking friends during her Junior Cert results celebrations, particularly when she had to hold back a friend’s hair to facilitate them being sick and not covered in urrgghh. Not glamorous, not attractive, not fun and certainly not nice.

A pal in work just goes ‘yeah yeah’ when I say herself isn’t out and about drinking. But she isn’t. When she does hang out with pals at the weekend, she is home at a reasonable hour and I would notice if she had been drinking to say the least.

So it seems to make sense to me that parents must be catching their kids and I find it hard to believe they turn a blind eye and do nothing.

But what can you do to stop a teenager from doing what all their friends are.

I know of one family where the teenager who is the same age as the Young Wan is not allowed to drink under any circumstances and this seems to work for that particular family, I am under no illusions at all that this would work for everyone.

As I’ve said I made the choice to not ban alcohol and I know for other parents they would not want to do that either.

So now you have found the apple of your eye passed out drunk on the bathroom floor, what do you do?

Firstly it is probably best to send them to bed with a big pint of water. The next morning you should probably waken them early with a fog horn or something of a similar decibel preferably a song they love at a level they normally love too.

But joking aside probably the best thing a parent can do is to know exactly where their child is, to have an idea of what they will be doing and most of all to keep talking to your child about the dangers of alcohol without preaching.

Somewhere between our preach and it hitting their ears it turns into blah, blah, blah; they will just switch off.

Like so many things we have to keep talking to our young people and as honestly as we can. After all that is what we want from them, so it is the least we can do for them too.

I SHOULD say two things before I publish this next piece, firstly it would appear that the pregnancy pact story which was over the news was sensationalised rubbish and the only pact made was between young women who were pregnant who decided to help out each other. Still this is the column I wrote a few weeks ago when the story broke.

Secondly this is the last column I’ll be doing for the Echo having been told last week that they no longer require the column due to budgetary constraints. Course that frees me up for writing how I want when I want on the blog without thinking ‘I should keep that for the column’. Ah well it was good while it lasted, some two and a half years.

Lastly sorry for posting them all the recent columns at once, but I just wanted to get them up and over with

RM Column June 20th – Pregnancy Pact of Under 16s

I was pretty shocked to read recently about a pregnancy pact that has apparently been made between a group of teenagers (17 of them) in an English school.

According to Carolyn Kirk, the Mayor of the town where all this is happening it is because of a “deteriorating socio-economic environment” where the teenagers, who are all younger than 16, think a baby can give them love, filling an empty place in their life or give them status.

In fairness that is just the opinion of just one person but there is probably more than a grain of truth in this.

I mean what other reason would these young people have to get pregnant by a pact, so all their kids will have playmates?

Part of me wonders about stories like this and their origin, rather like the tired old argument that our girls/young women get pregnant to get a house.

It is used as a stick to beat them with and I have to say I despise that argument. I don’t know any mother who got pregnant because it would get them a house.

I am not saying it doesn’t happen of course it does, but I do question the type the type of society we live in where for some of our youngsters this is almost like a career-move, a way to gain independence.

It seems this pact has basis in this, what on earth are those young girls thinking if they believe that having a baby bring love and a fulfilment to their lives.

The town is now talking about raising awareness in contraception, sex education and while that is well and good and something that should be done, it goes much deeper than that.

What is also needed is that these girls need to be constantly told about their worth as individuals, to be encouraged and pushed in school, to have it ingrained in them that being a parent is wonderful at the right time and being under 16 years old is not the right time.

I feel so sad that these young people who should be out and about having fun, growing up, finishing school, are beginning the long and often hard road of parenting.

Certainly my daughter has no doubt brought me more love than I could imagine and in terms of fulfilment I cannot imagine my life without her. While I was not as young as they are, I was young enough and at times bringing her up was one of the hardest things I have ever done.

There are so many implications of this pregnancy pact (if its true), we can probably rightly guess that in most of those cases the girls will be raising their children on their own leaving them wide open to poverty and parenting without real support. It is just that for many having a child so young will present those young parents with more barriers in their lives than they could ever believe.

Course if the grandparents are rich, many of these barriers are easily overcome, sadly that isn’t the case in this instance. Children raised in poverty have a much harder fight on their hands to get anywhere in life, or indeed to have any real quality of life.

My heart goes out to those youngsters and I wish them all the very best in the years ahead. I also urge our young people to think long and hard about pregnancy. If you are going to have sex, use contraception and remember babies are wonderful, hard work and completely life-changing.