Cookie Monster did not make us fat.

This afternoon I was thinking about how people blame children’s TV for the problems of a generation...or perhaps excuses or reasons for personal choices or problems.
(But then there are people whose job it is to look for reasons and excuses…)

I was thinking how this attitude is both amusing and alarming.

Amusing; because it is ridiculous to think that kids don’t know the difference between reality and imagination. This is where kids rule!!! They are masters of the imagination and totally get that TV is not real.

“Yeah, mum, don’t worry, I know that is not real blood and the actor is ok…duh!”

Alarming; because it highlights the depth of the lack of responsibility for self that is dominant in our culture.

Blame the politicians, the media, the doctors, the teachers, the capitalist bastards and if all else fails blame the kids TV shows!

When I think back to the media I watched as a kid, before there was so much political correctness in TV programming, before there were ratings on movies, I really don’t see how watching any of it damaged me or formed my opinions.

We were exposed to the whole gamut of TV and movies; blood and guts (Mad Max,  Jaws,) really sexist attitudes (The Brady Bunch, The Dukes of Hazard ), racism(Love thy Neighbour, Benny Hill), homophobia etc and we didn’t grow up believing all that shit!

I loved Bert and Ernie but they didn't make me Gay. In fact I thought they were a lovely couple.

BUT Elmo shits me!!!

Friggen talk like a real kid, Elmo!

None of my kids talked about themselves in third person or talked like a pathetic moron…actually, come to think about it… Elmo wasn’t even on Sesame Street when I used to watch it…maybe he’s the problem and should be banned!!!

My kids watch heaps of TV and play heaps of computer games and they are not fat or violent or stupid.

It's not the show's our kids watch, or even the amount of screen time that's affecting them.

It's the other influences in their lives.

What are our kids’ biggest influences?

That’d be us!

Their parents.
And if they go to school their teachers and peers…

My parents taught me that racism sucks!

They taught me that homophobia sucks!
I heard my parents more than I ever heard the stupid messages broadcast from the box. But the exposure to the “other” messages made me aware of the choices that other people made.

I also educated myself about most things.
I wasn’t going to be a rat in a cage responding to the stimuli of scientists, I was going to be a free-thinking, self-determining, indi-fucking-vidual!

No babe is born with fear ruling their lives. They come into this world trusting, knowing that they will be loved and cared for.
They are not born with hate coursing through their veins. They are born in a state of love.
Any negative, hateful, fear based reaction that our children show has been taught.

It's time for adults to take self-responsibility for their choices, time to let kids make their own decisions without our fears guiding/ shaping/ teaching / hurting them.

Sex made me Pregnant and Pregnancy has made me a Lunatic.

Yes, I am expecting!
I am expecting many things. I am expecting that the Sun will rise tomorrow morning; I am expecting that I will get a home-made card and a nice lunch on Mothers Day and I am expecting to give birth to another child later in the year.

I am also expecting that being Pregnant will change my sense of being for awhile.

I find the hormones coursing through my body will change my focus in life and direct my attention inward. They will make me have awesome, awareness-promoting pregnancy dreams and also make me more likely to lay awake at night pondering things I never usually stop to think about.

I expect that I will also ramble on a bit about things that have very little interest to others.

Tonight I have been pondering how I really dislike the term “Expecting”.

Whenever I hear the phrase “Expectant Mother” I find an image of a woman waiting at a Train Station pops unbidden into my head. I imagine her with an expectant look on her face…she is waiting; sometimes she looks excited, sometimes a bit apprehensive, a bit impatient. Her kids running around her feet as she taps her foot and glances at her watch every now and then…

Another thing that bugs me about Pregnancy terminology is the 40 week pregnancy thing. I prefer the old fashioned women’s terminology.
I am pregnant for 9 months. And by months I do not mean an arbitrary amount of days written on a calendar designed by the Romans, I mean a proper Moon-th, based on a Lunar Cycle… and when I say “Lunar Cycle” I am not talking about the bike I ride around on naked when celebrating the full moon… but the length of time between one full moon and the next.  

A Lunar month is approx. 29.53 days x 9 = 265.77 days.

This equates to 37.96 weeks…close enough to 38 weeks for me.

The whole 40 week thing seems to have been designed by the medical profession to round things off to a nice even number but as a side-effect it is just another falsity that takes away from our femininity, our connection with Earth and Moon, our innate Women’s wisdom.

Just as our Menstrual periods are correlated with the Moon so are our pregnancies.
I am not pregnant for 40 weeks. I did not become pregnant on the first day of my last period.
In fact it was sex a while after that that got me pregnant!

Yes! Sex…that old taboo subject…is that maybe why Dr’s would prefer to talk about our last period…so they don’t have to mention sex...regardless of the fact that this is how we got in this state?

So talking about Sex…the other day while driving with the three youngest kids in the car I was listening to a conversation they were having in the back seat.

4yr old…” What’s if X got pregnant and was going to have a baby?”
8yr old…” She doesn't have a boyfriend. And you need a boyfriend to have sex to get pregnant.”

4yr old…”I know that!”
8yr old…”Do you know what sex is?”

…at this point 13 yr old interrupted with…”I think she’s too young to tell her about sex.”

They went quiet for awhile.

After a minute I asked 13yr old…” Why do you think she’s too young? I mean she was created by sex. We all were.”

13yr old thought and said “I guess so.”

This lead to a long discussion about how talk about sex is taboo. How this has led to many peoples hang-ups and bang-ups about sex. How sex is why we all exists and is totally natural and how it is only culture, religion, media, the warped world we live in that makes sex a disturbing subject, makes it dirty. We talked about how sex is pure and natural and actually vital to the human race…after all, we are all a product of sex so how can it be bad?

I love being able and willing to have discussions like this with my kids. I love that they are not scared or worried to ask me about anything they are curious about.

I don’t think that talking about sex with children is in anyway damaging. In fact I believe the opposite; that not talking about it as if it’s the most natural thing in the world we should discuss while out for a drive, is much more likely to be damaging.

To refuse to discuss the topic, to do so uncomfortably would be to lead the kids to assuming that the misinformed images, the distortions of sexualised behaviour that are portrayed throughout society are correct.

So after we had finished the conversation everyone was quiet for a few minutes and then a little voice piped up from the back…

“Anyway… I do know what sex is!

 It’s when a man puts his penis in a woman's vagina. So there!”

So there, indeed!

And it is as simple as that…

Sex made me Pregnant and Pregnancy has made me a Lunatic.

Unschooling your relationship

I've been a participant in lots of real life and on line discussions about relationships lately and I really could go on and on and on about this topic.

Believe me, I don't have a perfect record on this score but I am learning.
 Yes, I am with my soul mate. We met 15 years ago and have had a very loving relationship for many of those years but as regular readers will know we separated almost two years ago to work on our differences and are now back living together. Right now am in the most loving, beautiful relationship I could ever imagine.

Sure, there are some relationships that can't be fixed (the differences are just too great or there is abuse or the unwillingness of one partner to learn) but there are also many who give up because it seems easier; because there seems to be some ideal love on the horizon that will come to them with no effort on their part at all.

I ask you to think about how hard it was to get from a traditional sense of parenting to an Unschooling perspective?  Especially if you had traditional parents and role models. Well, it might just take that same amount of effort to change your relationship.

One of the most important things I ever read about love said...
"Love is not a Noun, it is a Verb"

Love is not something that just happens (apart from the initial chemical, sexual attraction) it is something you do, something you commit to and create.

Here are some of my thoughts in brief :)

Unschooling your relationship

Think about how you treat your kids. Same principles apply!

It’s all about…

Love

- That’s got to be there

Communication skills

-learning how to speak without blaming or shaming

-learning to listen

-learning how to express your needs

Unconditional understanding

-understanding that we are all different

-understanding that another’s differences are not a threat to your beliefs

-actually putting yourself in someone’s shoes and understanding where they have walked from.

Relating without punishment

-at first glance it’s not socially acceptable to punish your partner as it is your kids (in some circles)
-do you tell you partner off for swearing, spank them when they displease you? Do you ground them and not let them go out when they have been naughty? Do you look at their report card from work and criticize them?
-Maybe you don’t do these things BUT do you hold a grudge for days? Do you refuse intimacy? Do you coerce or cajole them into tasks they don’t want to do?

Acceptance

-of yourself

-of your own perception and hang-ups clouding the problem

-of your partner as an evolving being

-of your own and your partners freedom

Self

-everything is a reflection of self

-address your own issues

-look at the relationships that were modeled in your own life

Open Heart

-be open to change, change is sometimes scary but change is also wondrous and and good

-love how you want to be loved