Modelling happiness for our children

How often do you hear parents of grown-up children say, "I just want you to be happy"?

Last week on SBS's "Insight" (a discussion forum with audience participation), the topic of discussion was "Pushing for Success". On stage was a mother and her 15 year old daughter whom she was grooming for academic success; a father with a 12 year old daughter whom he was grooming for tennis success; and Liesel Jones, swimming gold medallist. The host of the show, Jenny Brockie interviewed a number of youth (and their parents), some who lauded their parents' push for success and others who have been seemingly burnt by it.

There was the usual debate on what "success" means, what "pushing" means and the cost of pushing children towards this success. But one comment that caught my ear was from the psychologist in the audience. She said,

"[A]ny time you have a child carrying the responsibility of fulfilling the adult in the room's happiness, or trying to meet that perceived expectation, I think that's completely debilitating. A child is not equipped to make other people happy and my own personal belief, as a mother, is that my role is to role model being happy. (emphasis added)"

My role as a mother is to role model being happy. Interesting. Is that an oxymoron in today's society, when books like "All joy and no fun" tell us that a child's happiness is at the expense of a parent's happiness? That after a child's birth, marital satisfaction declines?

Before we ask whether parental happiness is possible, let's put the claim to the test by imagining the results. I think there are few who would argue that children learn through modelling. For example, we don't have to teach our boys to like noodles. They love noodles because Daddy loves noodles and Daddy's delight when he crams in a mouthful of noodles is contagious. On the flipside, have you noticed the more you demand of a trait from your child that you yourself don't have, the less inclined they are to produce your desired results? If you truly desire your children to be happy, then role modelling happiness is important. It is also why post natal depression is not just bad for mothers, it is bad for children.

It has often been said that the best gift you can give your children is a happy marriage. When children experience love and happiness outside of themselves, they have a secure place to base their world on. We do our children a great disservice when we tell them that life is only ever as good as they are.

It is not a long stretch then to say that the best gift to your children is your own happiness. Parents, it is squarely back in our court to inhabit a happiness that is independent of the enjoyment we receive from our children. That happiness can be founded on many things of course - our marriage (as discussed already), our friendships, our work, our hobbies, our faith. It is no help to our children to neglect all these things if we become miserable and visit our resentment on the children.

Isn't it liberating to know that our happiness is good for ourselves and for our children?

Toronto

Ten years ago I didn't have any family in Toronto. Now I have two.

The first I gained through adoption, or more precisely “god-adoption”. Back in 2001, after I finished my exchange semester in Berkeley, I made a trip to Toronto to visit my childhood friend who had emigrated there with her family. Growing up, I had always loved spending time with her and her family. They were fun and generous people and threw the best sleepover parties. And her parents had an inexplicable fondness for me that one has for young people you've watched grow up, a fondness I can only describe as, parental.

This trip was no different. They drove me everywhere, encouraged us to go visit Quebec. One day, my childhood friend jokingly said, 'why don't you “kai” Susan?' (“Kai” is the Chinese word which means to 'make a godchild’ but it does not have religious connotations.) We laughed it off, but sure enough at our next meeting, they presented me with as gold necklace (a tradition) and asked my dad to grant permission. And so I became their “kai-daughter” or goddaughter. They take my children as their god-grandchildren. This year, when I was staying in Ohio for a month with my family, they drove six hours from Toronto just to see us.

The second family in Toronto I married into. Remember the boyfriend of the long-ago Canadian trip? As it happened, his grandmother and aunt live just a few minutes’ drive away from my godparents. I have since spent many happy weeks staying with my husbands’ aunt and grandmother, always with extended outings and meals with my godparents. Each time we go to Toronto, we are overwhelmed by the love and hospitality we receive from these two families.

When I reflect on the rich relationships I have in Toronto, I cannot but marvel at the providence of God in putting these two dear families in the same suburb so we can reach them. More than that, I see a parallel with my spiritual adoption into God's family. Perhaps you, like me, struggle to understand why someone who aren’t your biological family would choose to love you, for no other reason than that 'now, you are family.'

And God knows the hardness and the unloveliness of our hearts and still chose to love us. He loves us like He loves his own son. Loving us is a delight to him. Next time I doubt why on earth God should love me, I can take him at his word: because you are family.

Crafting around: Nature picture

Here is another craft idea I picked up from the same worksheet mentioned in my previous post. I loved doing it because it encouraged my child to get outdoors and explore the flora.

 

Material needed:

Collect gum nuts, flowers, leaves, pebbles and any other goodies from the backyard or a park.
A sheet of paper

We spent twenty minutes in the beautiful spring sun picking up interesting bits of leaves and nuts. Then we simply came in and arranged our bits and pieces on a sheet of paper into a crocodile, a fish and a turtle and stuck on some googly eyes.

Can you spot them?

 



Crafting around: Shaving cream painting

I came cross this idea of finger painting with a twist from a worksheet that my son brought home from the children's program at BSF. It seemed so simple and so fun that we got to work straightaway!

 

Material needed:

Shaving cream
Food colouring
Sheet of paper

On a large plate, spray a generous dollop of shaving cream. A tiny drop of food colouring will be enough to colour the whole dollop. Then, get your fingers in there and start painting!

We found the foam surprisingly easy to move around the paper (much smoother and fulsome than finger paint). The texture of the foam was wonderful to little fingers and as a bonus, my house smelt nice and fragrant afterwards!

To create a painting twice over, whilst you are spraying the shaving cream out of the can, do it slowly and try to 'draw' simple shapes like a flower or a circle with the foam. The resulting white drawing will be a nice contrast to your child's colourful smears.

The Scheherazade Experiment

You might remember a TV commercial a few years back promoting Telstra broadband.

The commercial opens with an eager looking, primary school-aged boy in the back of the car, asking his father,

“Dad, why did they build the Great Wall of China?”

The tough-guy dad looked blankly ahead, and then said, with deadly seriousness, “That was during the time of Emperor Nasi Goreng... they wanted to... keep the rabbits out,” and then repeated, as if to consolidate his answer, “yes, too many rabbits in China.”

The scene then cuts to the boy standing in front of his class getting ready to give his presentation on China. We all know what happens next!

We’ve all been there before. Called upon to answer a difficult question, or to explain yourself for some misdeed, you freeze – and then the imagination kicks into overdrive – and out comes a tall tale that surprises even yourself with its outlandishness!

And if you happen to be parent to a toddler who loves stories, you might frequently find yourself in a similar position of having to make up some wonderfully outlandish stories (though not with such dastardly consequences)!

Over the last few months, I must have easily told ten, twelve stories each day. The criteria: they must not be stories “from a book” but “from your mouth” (as one author calls). Bad stories will not be accepted no matter how many times you say “The End” and must be continued and retold to the audience’s satisfaction. Unless you are a Roald Dahl or Enid Blyton, this is a very challenging brief indeed!

True, most of them last less than a minute; and almost all are conveniently ended by potty runs, baby screams and usually by Karsten himself short circuiting my plot with his favourite one and only happy ending. Well, when you are only two years old with an unyielding obsession with cars and diggers, there really isn’t a lot of creative licence to tell a really good story. To be honest, most of the time, he just wants us to join in his pretend-play narrative (or his “recitative” as one radio presenter calls it).

So whilst my son’s interest in these “stories” dwindle as quickly as it’s kindled, I toy with them long afterwards to amuse and challenge myself as to the genesis of these un-premeditated stories. Where do our stories come from? I think of parents everywhere, doing exactly the same thing – where do they get their inspiration? Do they draw upon the fairytales, fables and folklore of their own childhoods? Are their stories moralistic? Or are they whimsical and surrealist? Do they plagiarise from books they have read, or are they pure and original? What if we could harness this creative energy that is being expended everywhere, every day?

So here is my invitation to you: to add to the collective wealth of spontaneous story-telling by submitting your own un-premeditated tales of an outlandish nature to “The Scheherazade Experiment”. They may be a minute long, they may be an hour long, they may be revised or unabridged, they may have been told to a real child or not at all, so long as they retain the spirit of the “make-it-up-as-you-go-along”. Sort of a written theatre sport.

The title of this experiment pays homage to the heroine in the story of the Arabian Nights, Scheherazade (pronounced "Sha-hair-ra-zard"). The story goes that a king, spurned by an unfaithful wife, vowed to spend each night with a new maiden and execute her in the morning. Soon there were no virgins left in the kingdom. Scheherazade bravely offered herself to the king. Each night, to delay her own execution, she would spin tale after tale after tale, but withhold the ending until the next night to keep the king hanging, until the king eventually relented from his vow. Hence, legend goes, the collection of stories that became “A Thousand and One Nights”.

Our storytelling motives may not be so macabre, but they are, to an extent, born of necessity. And necessity is the mother of all invention. So mothers must invent the best stories, right?

Crafting around

The wet weather has meant lots of indoor time lately. Karsten, our two year old, loves making craft (or perhaps more accurately, watching Mummy make craft and occasionally assisting). Here are a few crafts that we recently enjoyed.

Ocean animals

Last week, Karsten became fascinated with sharks after a visit to the aquarium. So we indulged liberally in this new fascination with this little piece of sea...

Material:
Clear plastic takeaway container (we used the lid of a takeaway sushi box)
Water
Agar jelly
Blue food colouring
White cardboard




To make the deep blue sea, I boiled some water (enough to fill the plastic container) and sprinkled lots of agar jelly powder into it. Once it's cooled, but not set, I poured the warm mixture into the plastic container. Then we dribbled a little bit of blue food colouring into the mixture and gave it a swirl - but not too much! - to give it a marble blue appearance.


Whilst the mixture was setting, we drew and cut out different sea creatures onto cardboard - octopus, fish, and of course, sharks. Then as the mixture solidified, we put the various animals into the ocean (best done whilst the mixture has started to harden but not completely set). An origami boat completes the scene. Now, let the hunting begin...

Flower pots

 

Neither my husband nor I have a green thumb. But I live in hope that our children might be more diligent gardeners than I am. Here's what we did to plant that seed of curiosity...

Material:

A plastic tray, preferably with compartments (we used the bottom of a sushi takeaway box)
Cupcakes patties
Collage paper
Straws
Blu-tack or play dough
Green paper, shredded
Brown rice, loose tea leaves



We made the flowers first by flattening the cupcake patties, and sticking a shiny piece of collage paper in the centre. A straw was stuck to the back of each flower with sticky tape (tip: different lengths of straws will look better). We put the flowers into the tray (one in each compartment if the tray has compartments) and used a lump of play dough at the end of each straw to keep the flower upright.


Now the fun (and messy) part! Into the tray, we sprinkled different kinds of "soil" (the tea leaves, brown rice, or anything else that looks similar) and then lots of grass (green paper).


The flowers bloomed for a whole day before over-enthusiastic handling saw it start to wilt.

Confessions of a spoilt brat

Recently, I had the occasion to live under my father’s roof again, for a few days, whilst on a short trip to Hong Kong.

My father lives on his own most of the time. So he employs a domestic helper to come once or twice a week to do the laundry, clean the apartment, and generally put things in order. I know very little about this lady, "Ah Jee" except that she is originally from China, has a son, and lives nearby. Whenever the “kids” (me and my siblings) stay, she would come a little more frequently, perhaps three times a week because, as you can imagine, the domestic workload explodes. During past stays, I, perhaps too embarrassed to be served, would try to clean up after myself as much as possible. But this time, time-poor and with a full house, we became lazier and lazier. It got so bad that at the end of the night, we wouldn’t even wash the three dirty dishes in the sink because alas, in the morning, Ah Jee would come and wash them! To the saying “many hands make light work”, should be added, “too many hands cause no work.” A phenomenon observed in every shared house in the country. But that’s a topic for another day.

Back in normality land, where the laundry basket is forever a work-in-progress, and the kitchen gets dirtier faster than it gets cleaned, I wonder why it has always been the case the wealthy (and increasingly, the middling rich) outsource their domestic duties to others. The arrangement takes many forms but inevitably, the master or mistress of the house will not be the ones dusting the photo frames, scrubbing down the shower recess, or replenishing the fridge with groceries. Is it because we feel compelled to free ourselves from manual work so that we can devote ourselves to “higher pursuits”, like being a professional, or running a business, or bettering society; something more "meaningful"?

So I surmise that therein the household unit is a microcosm of our international economies. Rich nations export jobs that are low-tech, labour-intensive (in domestic terms, housework) and aspire to jobs that are high-tech, value-added (in domestic terms, anything else really). So, in this market for domestic services, who are the Chinas and the Indias of the world who will offer their labour for a pittance? Sadly, they are often the elite from developing countries, attracted by the relatively higher wage. A job as a maid in a wealthy country pays better than being an unemployed university graduate in South East Asia, and feeds many more mouths back home. So go figure.

Growing up in Hong Kong, our family, like many others, employed live-in Filipino maids whilst my mum worked a full time job. Our maids would go back to their home country once a year to visit their family. One of them has a daughter who is my sister’s age. That maid stayed with us for at least 6 or 7 years. It is hard to miss the irony: a mother leaves her child - in order to look after someone else’s. If you are familiar with the film, Je t’aime Paris (Paris, I love you), you might remember this situation captured poignantly in one of the twelve vignettes. The phenomenon is spreading in Europe where Eastern European migrant workers are leaving behind a generation of “Euro-orphans” to be looked after by grandparents and extended family, for better paid work in Western Europe. Even in Scandinavia, where gender equality is one of the world's highest, and where it is socially taboo to leave your own children, there is a hidden underclass of migrant workers for whom, it seems, none of these social standards apply.

Will the invisible scissor-hands of market forces always win? I have heard arguments about how repatriated moneys from domestic workers stimulate the developing economies and help those countries lift themselves out of poverty. That might be so. But I cannot overlook the moral quandary in all of this. Are we, in innocently trawling the classifieds for domestic services, complicit in the larger phenomenon that is breaking up families? Because that is what will happen when someone, somewhere down the food chain, makes family togetherness secondary to economic survival.

I know too little about anything really to speak on every industry that uses foreign labour, but there is perhaps one partial antidote to the domestic help industry. Is it possible, just possible, that we are giving our best jobs away? Isn’t cleaning our home and cooking our food a core and intimate part of our life? Doesn’t doing it make us whole, authentic and consistent people? Isn’t it a joy to serve those you love? You might not get a pay rise, accolades, or even appreciation, but isn’t it fulfilling to make a home – not as large, clean or tasteful as the one next door, but a home you built with your personality and hard work. In economics, everything has a price and everything can be traded. But you can't trade your home and family away.

There is a happy irony in my case. As children, we hardly lifted a finger to make our own beds. Now, in my household, the buck stops with me. I am very blessed to have family members who make no complaints about my standards of tidiness and culinary ability. They are the ones whom I gladly work for. In fact, I have one last daggy confession to make. It is when my husband is at his busiest, most stressed, and least “useful” around the house, that I find a reinvigorated purpose and vigour to my homemaking.

And I hope, wherever they are, our dear maids, Vita and Gloria, you are happily reunited with your families now. At the tender age of thirty, I can finally manage to look after myself.