red mum

RM column May 1 – Closing doors

SOME of you will remember that we have moved recently from a small, cramped and totally inadequate two-bedroom(ish) flat we lived in for far too many years. We have gone from cold, drafty, old and nearly dilapidated accommodation to a snazzy, warm, well-maintained and newly decorated two-bedroom cottage and we love it.

I don’t know whether it is down to a manic-amount of washing machine loads, the thrill of having a washing machine still has not waned and when we first moved in I would say every item we possess has been washed, but our electricity bills have been too high for my liking. As a result I find myself pulling out plugs on phone charges, turning off lights, turning off the electric shower at the main when not in use and saying things that would make my Dad proud.

Things like ‘it is like Piccadilly Circus in here’ in reference to the fact that every conceivable light has been switched on in the house. My Dad said that to us all the time when we were kids and I laughed out loud the first time I heard it pass from my lips.

One of the other amazing things we have gained since moving has been cupboard/storage space.
Now I can buy the more economic bulk items because we have places to store them. For years I was unable to do anything like that, there just wasn’t the room to put it anywhere in the last place.

The funny thing is we have twice as many cupboards in the kitchen than in the previous flat and somehow, God knows how, the stuff I had somehow has filled up the twice as many cupboards with little room to spare.

I have no idea how that happened because I took the opportunity to cull so much during the move, yet somehow my kitchen stuff has reproduced with a population explosion spreading to filling out all the available space.

It would also appear that we have a poltergeist because every time I walk into the kitchen all the cupboard doors are open, so I close them all up again.

This happens a couple of times a night, of course the poltergeist is a 16-year-old who seems to find the closing of doors abhorrent. The battle cry at night time when she goes to her bedroom is ‘shut the door after you’ or ‘this isn’t the star ship Enterprise’ or ‘were you born in a hospital with revolving doors?’ so I suppose it makes sense this ‘born in a field’ mentality follows through to the kitchen as well as her bedroom.

One of the worst things about the other flat was the fact that the first thing you saw when you walked in was her room in all its filthy glory. Now you see into her room as you leave the house and straight into the outrageously messy build-in wardrobe in her room.

Whether I like it or not, the cupboard pulls me like a siren (without the pleasure of course) and before I know it I am tut-tutting at how messy her new room is.

So I offered her a little advice last night, if you even want to pretend that your room isn’t the cess-pit that it is, either close the bloody door or at the very least close the wardrobe door. Then I won’t get pulled in and what I don’t know what hurt me. However I think that is being too sensible so for now I will just keep closing doors.

Just going to post up some columns, I’m somewhat behind.

RM column April 24 – Bullying

An OECD survey which is the largest ever conducted in Ireland and researching students’ performance in particular subjects uncovered a staggering 43 per cent of 15 year olds who said they were bullied during the school term in which the survey was carried out.

The bullying part of the survey was not the main leaning as to why the survey was carried out but obviously stood out as something very important that needs to be attended too immediately.
Most parents will be very concerned by these findings and despite the high profile campaigns around bullying the problem seems to be getting worse.

The Young Wan has had her own experiences of this with ex-friends who mounted a vicious and constant attack on her through her bebo pages and on the phone. One of the things that struck me about it at the time was the complete and utter ferocious cruelty in their actions.

Fair enough that they didn’t want to be friends with her anymore, they are teenagers and will drift in and out of friendships but their behaviour around it was just plain wicked.

Personally I was quite happy the friendship was gone with this gang. While I witnessed some of their behaviour I was completely thrown when they constantly rang our house with nonsense messages. We both laughed at most of them until I heard one that made me stop in my tracks. This particular message said that they hoped she died.

The Young Wan was getting more and more upset and I wouldn’t let her answer the phone. While she was trying to be brave and handle it herself, thats my job. At the very least she watched me deal with the calls and at various points she even managed to laugh out loud at my side of the conversation. I felt this was important, that somehow I was taking the power those horrible kids had over her and helping her cope with it.

I found it startlingly that they didn’t care that they talked to me, instead they put on dopey Belfast accents trying to imitate me as brazen as you like. They knew I knew who they were so my tact at the end was to keep them on the phone to waste their credit while saying nothing. No point in adding oxygen to their bullying fire.

For the day or so during the climax of their relentless bullying campaign the Young Wan walked around the house holding her tummy complaining of stomach pains. She was dreadfully unhappy and I loathed seeing my normally happy and bubbly daughter like that. Were all these incidents related, you bet they were.

As they were not friends/ex-friends from school, I couldn’t go through the school but I did approach the parents of one of them who were wonderful and supportive and talked to their child. It didn’t stop completely at that moment but petered out over the following days and by that stage herself was less affected by it. Since then the ringleader has apologised and wanted to be friends again. Thankfully the Young Wan has more sense and while accepting of his apology she now knows the cut of their gib as they say and won’t be going there again.

Do I think those lads wanted something bad to happen to herself? Mostly I don’t, but if anything had happened to her, I would have bayed for their blood and would have probably had to be restrained from killing them myself; I saw the effects in the Young Wan to their behaviour and would have happily kicked them up and down the road.

There seems to be a bit of a mob-mentality about it all and little empathy. That’s one thing that I hope I have instilled in herself; being considerate of other people. She may be my princess but I want her to treat people with the respect they deserve.

I think it is very easy to bully now. We have seen how people react on the internet, in fact there is a wonderful cartoon explaining just how over the top people behave, which you can see by going to this link.

While the cartoon is humorously done, the message is the same people lose all sense of manners and decorum on the internet and I would not be surprised if some/a lot of the bullying has been carried out on bebo and by texting. It is easy for messages in these mediums to read worse than intended or easily misconstrued, it is also easy to lose the run of yourself and possibly overreact and become aggressive in ways you wouldn’t in real life.

Now it is time for more to be done to tackle this problem, children are suffering, their education is suffering and in many cases the mental (and physical) scars will remain with them throughout adulthood.

Offenders need to realise the impact of their actions and more must be done to penalise those behaving in this way. Schools must be given the right tools to deal with it, it is clear from this survey that despite everything that is happening in schools to tackle bullying it is clearly not enough.

I JUST received this text from the Young Wan:

“gusse who shortlisted in student of the year!? x.X.x.X.”

Herself and four others were put up for student of the year by the teachers, I’m delighted, I will have to have a word about spelling though

It certainly makes a change from ‘can do better’ Well done honey.

I’M watching Eastenders and Everything but the Girl’s ‘Missing’ is playing and I just remembered a wonderful memory from years ago. The Young Wan asked me one of those inquisitive sweet questions that only a young child can ask. She was about just about three at the time and thinking about it, it is a pretty big question for that age. She was so smart (still is) I never thought anything of her asking me it at the time other than it being deadly cute.

She asked me ‘do deserts miss the rain?

I RECENTLY bought the Young Wan a new ipod and the sound level has not only been driving me nuts and can be heard via her ear-plug plugged ears from the next room, not to mention from outside the house, but must also be doing damage, serious damage to her ears.

It has been one of those times where I know she pacifies me and turns it down before slowly and surely turning it back up again.

Her last ipod had the volume set and I could not remember where or how I did it, but I discovered it this evening. So the maximum volume has been turned down by a third and I locked it with a combination number, one she doesn’t know! I am actually laughing to myself that she didn’t get there before me. Excellent and thank god for that.