January 31st, 2008 §
Cas obeys many things. He puts stuff in the bin, he sits down, he turns the telly off. He dances, jumps, spins around, and “goes upside down.”
But he doesn’t “come here”.
While it is very amusing to watch him do the silly things I tell him to, I’m pretty sure that for his safety and well-being “Come here” is important. And to teach him? I’ve found myself saying, One… Two… Three…
This must be one of those subconscious motherese type things because, really, it makes no sense. He just looks at me, his head cocked to one side, and when I hit 3, I go and get him. Surely the only thing that teaches him is that if he doesn’t come to me, I will come to him when I’ve finished counting? Why do I do that?
Then again, why do I now speak in the 3rd person? Why do I speak in a higher pitch? Why do I lapse into Yoda-like grammar? Yup. Motherhood changes you.
Anyway, as I’ve come to understand that 123 is a ridiculous instinct, and possibly counterproductive, I’ve been trying to figure out how to teach him to come when I call. My solution isn’t highbrow, but if it’s okay for domestic pets it should be okay for kids, right?
My solution is treats. More specifically, chocolate freckles.
Like I said, its kind of low. But it seems to be working.
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January 30th, 2008 §
I’ve done a fair bit of work on the site design and only have a few things left to tweak. I found a theme I absolutely adore but the layout is fairly image based so I had to do a lot of editing in Fireworks to change the colours.
But, boy, do I love the colours now! So here is a sneak preview…
(Note: I’ve compressed the image so it looks a little blurry here, but at least I’ve saved you some time on page load.)
The base theme had no header image so it took some work to build that in, although the hardest part was finding the right image to begin with and then blending it so that it would work full width while the content itself was fixed width.
I also incorporated a more website-style menu, rather than the usual blog-like list of pages beecause the blog isn’t the most important feature of the site: Making sure people have access to all the information they need to help us out is. I couldn’t take a screen shot with the hover effect – because I had to use my mouse to get the screen shot, but on hover the menu item changes to a lilac background, also with the little arrow indent.
Like I said, the CSS is a little image based but I haven’t created something like this before so I’m quite pleased. The 3 pictures there will change. I’ve just used stock images while working on the layout. Unfortunately my mother’s external hard drive got stolen so I don’t have access to all her photographs from Afghanistan.
It was a horrible loss for her after a decade of working overseas and travelling to exotic places and meeting so many wonderful people. Unfortunately her laptop only has thumbnails so everything is gone. It’s a good reminder to backup, I guess. But what an awful reminder!
I also switched the theme to left sidebar instead of right, again, so it appears more as a website than a blog, and I removed the top navigation bar all together.
I’ll probably write more about it the base theme later – and bore you all to tears – but I just wanted to show you a little bit of what I’ve been doing while abandoning this blog to hurried, un-proofread posts.
And when I finally have some free time? Boy, is this blog’s design in for a major overhaul!
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January 29th, 2008 §
He has understood Yes and No for quite a while so I’m not sure why he has taken so long to use it. I ask him questions a lot.
Do you want to go for a walk?
Are you ready for a bottle?
Would you like a story?
Do you want to draw?
Are you clever?
He nods when the answer is yes, but just stares when he isn’t that interested. Until recently. Now I’m getting the shaking of the head every now and then. A picture of things to come, I’m sure. At the moment, however, this appears to be less of an emphatic statement and more of a joke. He seems to think it is funny to shake no when he means yes, the same way he likes to hold things out to me and then snatch them back.
Now when I put him to bed and say, Lie down on your pillow, he gets all snuggly and tucked in and then shakes his head at me with a big grin on his face as though he doesn’t want to go to sleep even though he is obviously happy and looking forward to his bottle.
He’s a comedian, my Cas.
I wonder how long it will be before No no longer amuses me?
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January 28th, 2008 §
I was tagged by Child Person From the South for the 7 Random Things meme.
Last time I did it, it was fairly lighthearted but I think in order to respect the tags that have made their way to me this time, this one will need to cover some less fluffy details.
Number One
As a child abuse survivor, I don’t like to call myself a survivor. I think when I left home and began to deal with my childhood, the idea that I could be a survivor and not a victim was a powerful one, and one that helped me. But after a while it became something that felt restrictive as a label, that gave too much prominence to just one aspect of my history. It made me feel shrunken and defined, not just by myself but by the baggage of the assumptions people make when they know “what happened”.
I don’t want to be a “survivor”. I don’t want all my emotions and opinions and character traits to be seen through that filter. I want to be seen as a whole and not just a part. Whether I’m a survivor or not, it is just not all of me and it does not colour all that I am as a human being.
Number Two
I’m not sure that this counts as a random factoid, so let’s call it a random opinion: The result of child abuse is a powerful knowledge. It’s knowledge that is gained in the worst of ways, but it is gained nonetheless. I have the ability to recognise abuse, to recognise it in it’s early creeping, insidious forms: In the danger zone, where the dynamics of a relationship can, even without intent, become harmful. My instincts are finely honed. And I respect them.
I don’t think I can fully explain it in this amount of space, but if a child abuse survivor defines something as abusive which you can’t see for yourself, their opinion should be listened to as one of authority, not disregarded as an overreaction based of their personal history. Survivors are perfectly capable of distinguishing between their abreactions and their knowledge themselves. It is nobody else’s job to psychoanalyse them.
Number Three
And this leads us to something fairly obvious: I don’t like being psychoanalysed and I need to be respected. Those two things get in the way of me using the knowledge I have to help others and that seems selfish to me. I find it difficult to discriminate between my personal needs and a social obligation. I have not been able to find the defining line and I am pulled in opposite directions. I often feel guilty about it. About not doing enough.
Number Four
There is another dividing line I find difficult to define: I do not like the idea of Caspar ever having a step-father. This is purely theoretical of course, because at this stage I have no interest in having a relationship, but it is possible that this won’t be the case for the next 20 years. I’m not sure exactly how much this lack of openness is due to my statistical knowledge of the prevalence of abuse by non-biological parents, my own experience of abuse by a non-biological parent, my general lack of need for a relationship or my general parental protectiveness that allows no room for someone to take an important place in my son’s life without any guarantee that they will always be there for him.
The answer, of course, it that I can only make such choices if the situation arises, but I find it an interesting question nonetheless.
Number Five
I am not surprised by the prevalence of abuse but I am constantly surprised by people who read abuse statistics and disbelieve them. I won’t go into the statistical and data collection methods used because this is supposed to be about me, but leaving aside the big maths? All I have to do is add up how many people in my life – family and friends, young and old, male and female – who have been been victims of child abuse, child sexual abuse, who have been assaulted, beaten, or raped – to realise those numbers are not an overestimate.
Even taking into account that like attracts like, and that it isn’t surprising that my particular world would have an overpopulation of people who have had similar experiences and would talk about it with me, those numbers are not an overestimate. My personal numbers are far higher.
Number Six
Writing number five just then… I am angry. I’m angry at the level of ignorance there is about this issue. I’m angry at the head in the sand mentality. I’m angry at society’s inability to make the connections. I’m angry at the sensationalisation of the issues in the media which allows people to always see child abuse and sexual abuse as “Other”. I feel like ranting. I guess I am ranting. At who? I don’t know. But I still feel like smashing people over the head with some unpalatable facts.
Number Seven.
And writing number six just then… I feel powerless. No matter how I rant or what I do, I can not change things. Everything I know, everything I have learned both through experience and study, is useful only to help victims pick up the pieces. That’s something. But it isn’t enough.
It simply isn’t enough.
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January 24th, 2008 §
As I said yesterday, there were tears. And they weren’t because of the frustration of being without my glasses, although that might have contributed to my emotional state; along with the the heat, and the long journey, and Caspar’s boredom.
You see, I’ve already done 5 years of a Bachelor of Arts. Full time. After switching majors, I only had a few subjects left to get all my points and graduate before moving on to a Dip. Ed. Going to a different Uni, with a different course structure, I wasn’t expecting to get everything credited, but I was expecting to be finished pretty quickly. But this Uni has a policy. If it’s over 10 years old, it doesn’t count.
I have to start the whole bloody thing from scratch.
And what was my major? History! Has history changed in 10 years? I don’t think so.
So there I was, frustrated already by the enrolment process which is always an administrative nightmare, and being shuffled around to different buildings and people in order to get the advanced credit sorted out, only to end up with the kind of answer I least wanted to hear.
And there I was, having to look through the course guide and sign up for first year classes I hadn’t even considered. Which I had to do myself. Online. It made me wonder why I had bothered to take a 5 hour trip to enrol. So I could use their computer labs? I have a computer.
But there was a coffee shop and after stripping Caspar off because he had poured his entire bottle of water over himself while I was in the lab, and after a latte and a babycino, the future didn’t look so bleak.
Because I love studying.
Because life doesn’t have a strict timetable.
Because the Uni is situated on a direct tram route from where I most want to live when I get my house sorted out.
Because the campus is really nice and they had a great looking child care centre.
Because I think I’ll now be a little self indulgent and do Philosophy, which my old Uni didn’t have.
So look forward to posts with big, wanky words and big, wanky ideas. And meet the almost 35 year old “Freshman”.
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January 23rd, 2008 §
Of course, I couldn’t find that one piece of paper I needed, my old transcripts so I could apply for advanced credit and skip the 2/3rds of the degree I had already done. So I was late.
There was much swearing and agitation until I bit the bullet and called to see if me getting there 2 hours after the allotted time would be a problem. Apparently, it wasn’t. Yay for me. Apparently, it also wasn’t a problem that I didn’t have my transcripts: The enrolment officers could access them on their computers. Yay for me.
The weather, of course, was Melbourne. Biting cold wind with promises of an almost scorching day, so Cas and I left all rugged up, with just enough room in the bottom of the pram to shove all the clothes we would inevitably have to remove.
Prams on trams are not the greatest thing. They’re even worse, when you catch them in the city and they are mostly full. They are even worse when you’re half blind and don’t really have any idea where you are supposed to get off. But the university was large enough for me to see in time. All was well.
Until I got off and realised that to get out of the tram stop in the middle of the road and across to the Uni, I had to go via an underpass, the only access to which was a very steep set of stairs. I guess trams are not designed for prams. Or disabled people.
Anyway, after the gargantuan effort of navigating the stairwell with my heavy load of winter coats and a bored baby, I was actually standing there at the entrance of the university. I was almost a student again! But the campus was large.
And I couldn’t see.
I learned a few things on Tuesday I think. Having that “disability” was disorienting and confusing. It made being somewhere unfamiliar very uncomfortable. I eventually managed to find my way around, and I did ask for help when I needed it, but I noticed when I did how much I “faked” being able to follow where specifically people were pointing. I used to do Adult Literacy tutoring. My students got through their whole lives to that point “faking it”.
It’s not a nice feeling and I wonder what deep recesses of my psyche prevented me from just saying, “I’ve lost my glasses and can’t see very clearly.” Because nodding as though I understood them fully was very much a lie. And I’m not a liar. And I hate the idea of being a liar.
There is no shame in having a minor visual impairment but the only thing I can think of that could motivate that dishonest behaviour is shame. The shame of not being able to manage everything for yourself. But that didn’t seem to fit. I think it was almost an evolutionary, defensive instinct; covering up a weakness.
But it made me uncomfortable when talking to people, and by the time I actually got to processing my enrolment, my eyes were so strained that making eye contact was difficult and I was unable to pick up on the non-verbal cues I am normally sensitive to. I felt disconnected. I felt frustrated. And I even felt angry.
I’ll tell you more about my enrolment tomorrow – and there were tears! – but right now, I’m just thinking back to my students, and wondering how isolated they felt for so many years. And I’m wondering at the bravery it took for them to sign up for classes to learn to read. And I’m wondering how much that early, instinctive pretending got in the way of them receiving the support they deserved as children and young adults. Not just in reading, but in life.
My experience can not in any way compare to anyone’s with a real disability, but I think on enrolment day I had an insight into how it can restrict so much more than just the obvious, mechanical things.
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January 21st, 2008 §
I had a girlfriend over for the weekend, which rocked, and we went out to Direct Factory Outlets shopping, as girls do. I got a lovely dress as a very early birthday present.
Yup. That’s the end of this post. I’ve got to get everything sorted for enrolment tomorrow. It will probably be about a 5 hour round trip and enrolment will take around 3. I’m taking Cas, so it will require some organising to be up and out of here when we need to be.
But it’s Monday, anyway. You’re only here so you can look upon the most amazing person in the history of the universe, right? Oh, that’s my friend with him. She’s pretty cool too.
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