I don’t post much about Flossy’s interests like I did with Sol. I’m not sure if this is gender bias or a second child been-there-done-that attitude. So to address this problem, here is Flossy’s current favourite song The Wiggles, Shimmy Shake in which they do a rather amusing Beatles tribute.
Flossy really loves dancing to all kinds of music and has a good sense of rhythm.
Sol and I went to the Circus Royale today which was at the Sale showgrounds under a rather hot and humid big top. After a getting lost on the way and having to phone my boss to get directions (because he’s one of the few locals I know who can tell me where stuff is) we arrived, picked up our tickets, walked past the jumping castle and rotating clowns head game and entered the dark noisy tent. Once in our seats we had a good look around, the big top was about a quarter full and there were not many people coming in, a few families grabbing popcorn and drinks at the kiosk.
The show started with some floor acrobatics and continued with a series of acts which roughly alternated between animals and acrobats. There was very little dialogue apart from introducing the acts as they came on. There were about nine performers and the animals included geese, cows, ponies, horses, camels, lamas and a poodle in approximately that order.
Some may recall that last year, Sol and I saw Ashton’s Circus which had the “wheel of death”. I was disappointed that Circus Royale didn’t have this but they did have a boy acrobat genius who did some cool stuff on a trapeze and the lady from “Scandinavia” who swung about on a rope and kind of jumped off it only to catch herself with her ankles but it was well done because she gave a rather convincing scream during some of the stunts which made you think she was going to fall. She also had a pretty rocking soundtrack but I couldn’t pick the band, could have been early Faith No More.
After seeing Ashton’s last year, I did some poking around online and found some articles about how circuses are in decline, partly due to animal protection activists. I was looking at the animals at this circus carefully: they seemed well fed and groomed to me and I find it hard to rationalise that they might be happier standing under a tree in a paddock. On the other hand, they are subjected to the God-aweful sound system during the shows which just about drew blood from my ears so I can’t imagine that the animals have any hearing left at all. But seriously, I don’t know what to think on this issue.
Other observations about the circus: the women were pretty buxom: no skinny waifs on the trapeze yet they were obviously fit and toned – not what movies and TV would choose to show us. The performers were all from overseas and especially South America: Argentina and Brazil and then the animal trainer from NZ and a trapeze-ist from “Scandinavia” (It’s like me saying All the way from the pacific region, the amazing Matt Smith!). As per the article on dwindling circus culture in Australia, the troupe was quite small: only nine performers and a handful of supporting staff: a sound guy, lighting guy, a couple of runners, some people on the doors and in the ticket booth and a few people running the side shows. As noted before, the crowd was pretty sparse, I would have thought the afternoon session on a Saturday would be a big one but maybe they do better at nights or maybe it is just that there is not the population in this area to get a big crowd at anything.
After the stomach churning man in a bottle act, the performers took their final bows and we filed out of the sweating big top into the roasting afternoon heat and Sol gave me his thoughts on the show. He was pretty impressed with the contortionist because he liked his clothes and he also enjoyed the clown. The highlight for him was when the clown threw a giant beach ball into the audience and it went over his head. So circus organisers take note: for young kids, forget about training specialist trapeze artists, animals trainers and other performers, just buy a big beach ball and throw it around and they’ll be just as happy.
As for me, apart from some of the things I’ve picked on above, I really enjoy live performance when I can get to it and especially when it’s people doing stuff that I can’t imagine to begin attempting myself. It’s one thing to watch world class performers on TV or to see really polished acts but I am attracted to this kind of show because it’s raw and completely depends on the direct connection between performer and audience. In this small venue I was close enough to see sequins falling from the costumes as the performers leapt about in the tent and to hear the ropes creaking and even smell the animals. It does really sadden me to think that this kind of show could die out.
Reading back I’ve been a bit negative on the blog posts of late and that is because we have been in a pretty low mood with homesickness and boredom and second guessing ourselves even though we’ve had lots to be happy about as well.
I may have already mentioned we’ve sent Sol to a state school due to the modified prep offering and our feeling about his readiness for institutional education. Part of this decision was when we enrolled him in a private school and after talking to his would be prep teacher who eventually admitted to us that if Sol was his own kid, he would put him in the modified prep at the state school.
The main issue is not intellectual capacity but his ability to socialise. At a very young age, the differences of even half a year can be much bigger than when they get older. In the prep class at the private school, he was noticeably physically smaller and physically behind the other kids. This would have led to him being left behind by his peers a lot which could detract from his feeling like he truly belongs in the class. With the modified prep class, he is amongst smaller kids and kids who are not as socially advanced so he has a better chance to be heard and to get amongst it rather than being pushed to the back seat.
So we’re really happy and relieved that he has loved every day of his school experience so far and is taking it all in his (small but growing) stride. He is already bonding with his teacher and getting to know the other kids. He is obviously an introvert but he gets a lot out of being with the other kids and loves to interact with them when he’s in his comfort zone.
The only down side is that we have less time now to work on The Adventures of Flossy and Sol but we hope to still hold to a production schedule of one episode a month.
You know how I sometimes go on in this blog about how I want Sol to mix with a diversity of people and not be locked into the mindset of valuing wealth above all things and being a snob? Well recently we’ve had a few social engagement that have really challenged that whole notion. It’s not just yesterdays morning tea during which our guests disclosed to us that they’ve had court orders against them from the state child protection system, who claim that the whole thing was a bungle and they’re totally innocent even while their children display some telltale signs of exposure to violent parenting, it’s not just that.
It’s not the way Sol made a friend at the park who I pushed on the swing and we later found out he was on a contact visit with his Mum after being removed by DHS because his parents are druggies.
Maybe the clincher is the kid who adopted Sol today and came over to play with him. As we ate lunch, he told us all about the day his Dad was made to go away because he was an al-caw-holic and he got really mad at mum and his sisters so she got a stick and poked him in the balls. Holy crap, we couldn’t change the subject fast enough!
Our impression of country Victoria after just a couple of weeks is that it’s the place where all the druggies, pedophiles and wife beaters come to get away from it all.
Maybe we’ll make some nice friends at school tomorrow – but at this rate I think I’ll be doing mandatory police checks before any after school play dates are entered into.
Just as we are gearing up for Sol’s first day of school and talking to friends who’ve sent their kids to prep this week, the government has launched myschool.com.au, a website for benchmarking schools. The idea of the site is to just provide information for parents that will help them make decisions about what school they send their kids to (those that have a choice) but there are many concerns about the way this information can be abused or mislead parents who just look at the numbers without an understanding of the nature of statistics.
I’ve been reading The Memes of Production – Transparency and Equity at MySchool and specifically section 5 of the linked paper critiquing the government’s approach to education.
In short, the argument against this system is that it makes us compare schools based on a narrow set of assessments that can be manipulated ie. schools can just target themselves at these assessments to the detriment of other important qualities like having a positive school community – it encourages short sighted thinking. It doesn’t measure the actual quality of the teaching, only the results of the students which vary wildly with the demographic involved. It will be used as a stick to beat schools with ie. bad schools will have their head staff sacked while good schools will get more resources – this amounts to poor areas getting shafted and rich areas getting the good stuff.
I checked out Richlands East in Inala, it has mostly red bars, an ICSEA of 804 (where the range is 900-1100) and 20% indigenous. Obviously the headmaster here should be shot because he/she is crap. Their website says the school values creating a safe learning environment – in other words, the kids here are struggling with family violence, entrenched poverty and racial tensions in the community. What is the federal government going to do about that? In this case I don’t think myschool is going to make a difference, everyone knows who goes to this school. The school for it’s part, promotes a positive learning experience, embracing diversity and enhancing cultural identity, the success of which is not measured by ACARA but is arguably of long term educational benefit for this community.
UPDATE:
I also talked to Steph this morning about our local school and we discussed how it is an apparent success having gone from a bad reputation and having bad results just a few years ago compared to today where it has a good reputation and scores well on My School. Yet we’ve also heard that one way the school principle achieved this was through being tough on parents of under-performing children and possibly and allegedly driving them off to other schools. It is interesting that other previously good state schools in the area have had a decline in the same period. Could it be that our school has improved its benchmarks simply by expelling the students that were bringing it down? That’s good for the remaining students and the school but there is a huge moral issue right there.
I think My School is a fascinating website and it will be really interesting to see how this information affects things if at all but I can’t see how it could have a positive impact: it will just make elite schools more elite, make poor communities more ashamed and increase gaming of the figures. I support making this information available but I’d like to see a more positive approach than just naming and shaming.
As for my family, I’m trying to be even handed about all these issues: Sol starts school next week at a public school which offers a program tailored for students at the younger end of the age cutoff that would be socially behind their peers in a standard prep class. After this year, we’ll decide whether to leave him at that school or move him. In choosing a school, I’m looking at the resources of the school, the culture of the school, the peer group in terms of whether his friends will be a positive influence (when I say I’m thinking about his peer group, I’m considering that I want him to understand diversity and value individual virtues over social status and wealth as social determinants ie. I don’t want him to be a snob) and probably now will look at the My School results. However, I strongly believe his experience of school has to be fun and I’ll be doing my best to encourage him to have fun. I see my participation in his education as just as important as the school he goes to.
But I’ll still probably agonise about all this for the rest of my life anyway…
It’s Australia Day eve and the kids are asleep, Steph is watching The Mentalist just because it’s on and I’ve just uploaded the second episode of The Adventures of Flossy and Sol in which we discuss the town of Sale, Victoria.
Notes:
Music is by You Am I: The Applecross Wing Commander from the Hi Fi Way album.
This episode marks my first use of iMovie 9’s greenscreen effect for the title stop motion sequence in which we make some little paper roulettes fly by. I used a small green sheet and some green cardboard which was a slightly different shade and you can see it pretty easily. I also had trouble wrestling a freeze frame of the green screened clip so ended up importing a still which iMovie rendered as a different colour blue. In short, while you can do greenscreen in iMovie 9, you have very little control and it turns out greenscreen needs very careful lighting to avoid shadows and also I probably should have used paint and used the exact same colour on everything.
Last year we bought a harddisk video camera and looking at footage from it here, it looks very blurry and over compressed. I’m not sure if it’s a fault with the camera, the Mac or if it’s just that the camera has always been poor quality – I think it is the latter. It is a pretty low end camera but I was expecting better – my iPhone gives better quality video!
It was a bit bloody hot today wasn’t it? Assuming you live in Victoria, if not, just take my word for it: it was hot and humid and mighty unpleasant but then we got a nice tropical storm which whipped up a cool breeze and brightened up the mood.
In other news, our kids had their first day with their family day carer here today. As I might have previously mentioned, I reluctantly went and got myself employed part time which means the kids need someone to look after them. At first we put them in a local day care centre but they hated it so Steph asked around and found us a decent family day carer (being in child protection is sometimes handy because you know people who you can trust with your kids as well as the downside of knowing about all of the people who are a danger to your kids).
I used to think that once Sol was talking, he would be able to tell us all his problems and things like this would go so much smoother. I’m coming to realise that this is not the case. It turns out kids can’t always articulate or have the reflective capacity to give you an evaluation of their situation.
So in this case, Sol was saying that he didn’t like day care. “It goes for too long”, “I go to the door a lot to see if you’ve come to pick me up”.
But how do you know that this isn’t just his reaction to being in day care in general. Surely he would say this no matter what day care arrangement he had because what he wants is to be home with his parents. So while I felt sad that he didn’t like day care, I tended to just ignore the problem. He wasn’t able to specifically tell me why he didn’t like it or to really explain what the problem was.
However, Steph was a bit more critical and I suppose things came to a head when she was having to go into the centre to pick up other peoples kids in her child protection work. Hence the move to family day care today.
Well, what a difference it was today with both the drop-off and the pick-up. We walked into a house where it was relatively quiet and our day carer gave us her full attention while we were there. I chatted with one of the other kids there and helped Sol get to know him and by the time I left, one of the other kids had taken Sol and Flossy under his wing and they were actually happy for Steph and me to leave. Flossy cried for about ten seconds when we handed her over which was a big contrast to still being able to hear her as we left the building at the centre.
When I picked them up, Sol was pretty relaxed and watching a bit of TV while Felicity was chilling with a milk arrowroot and smiling happily. Contrast this with when I usually walk in to the centre and Sol is just standing at the door waiting for me while Felicity is rocking back and forth staring with red rimmed eyes.
On the way home from day care, Sol informed me that he liked that day care and that it wasn’t too long and neither did he wait at the door. He also volunteered that he liked how he and Felicity weren’t separated.
So there you have it, oils aint oils and day cares aint day cares. Unfortunately I can’t say that family day care is always superior to centre based. With family day care, you can have issues if your carer is sick or has a holiday and it is even harder to get one that has the days you need. You also have to be in the know a bit to get the top-notch carers. There are some pretty slack carers about and others who just don’t get it. The whole reason we didn’t get a family day carer as our first option was because we felt it was rare to find a good one but our lesson learned today was that at least with our kids, it’s worth making the effort to track down some good day care so you can have a little peace of mind while you’re off being a wage slave.
In case you haven’t had enough of Christmas, our family has edited up a video for your viewing pleasure documenting our first Christmas away from home / at our new home. As I explain in the video, this is episode 1 of The Adventures of Flossy and Sol but carries on from Matt and Sol’s Favourite Things only Felicity now gets a mention in the title and has some lines (she says ‘that’ during the commentary if you listen carefully)
Watch it on youtube to get the full size.
Music is by Bing Crosby who remains the best Christmas Carols singer of all time.
This week marks the end of a two month period of being a full time dad. This is different from being unemployed because unlike many unemployed men, we made a decision that I would spend some time at home with the kids while Steph worked. If you’re thinking of doing The Dad thing or just curious to see how I coped, then read on.
For starters, don’t think that just because you spend time with the kids on weekends, that this is the same as being The Dad. Once your wife goes out the front door (or in our case, once we get back from dropping her at work), the rules change. Firstly, you can’t do anything, I mean ANYTHING, without taking the kids with you. No quick trips to the corner shop to pick up some morning tea. Every outing, no matter how small, involves packing the kids into the car, making sure you’ve got shoes and a dummy and some water and a spare nappy and some wipes. Then at the other end you have unload them and make sure they don’t get run over while you’re doing it. Then you have to put up with their winging and boredom if you take too long (but really this is not as bad as you’d think – I can usually get through a substantial grocery shop before they get restless). Anyway, this lack of mobility can create a feeling of being stuck at home.
Next there is the complete lack of structure. At work you have meetings and things you are supposed to be doing and a general idea of when they need to be done. At home you have laundry, dishes, food preparation and cleaning. You also have kids who want you to spend time with them and entertain them. You might dream that you’ll have a morning tea break where you can peacefully catch up on your Facebook without interruptions whilst sipping a coffee / tea. Good luck with that. What I find is you start doing a job but then you have to attend to the kids and then you forget what you were doing and start something else only to realise that the kids haven’t eaten anything or there’s a nappy needs changing and then you kind circle around in a lost fashion trying to think of what needs you most urgent attention until your wife rings to say she needs to be picked up from work.
Finally there is isolation: some of this is because we moved to a new town, but I think I’d have the same problem in Brisbane because I just didn’t know anyone with kids who I could go and hang out with during the day. Being a man makes this more difficult because most full time carers are mums and it’s a bit weird. I went to a few playgroups and that was ok but it’s draining for an introvert like me to make conversation. I would probably keep going but you need continuous involvement to get into your comfort zone and have some friends. I think this will become less of a problem over time but you need to make an effort to get past this as you’re not going to meet and get to know people just sitting at home.
But it’s not all bad. You actually get to really talk to your kids and enjoy them more than you do when you’re working and or course there are all the benefits of not having a boss and being the decision maker. When you make the time, it’s also actually fun to play with your kids and do different activities with them.
My way of coping with the lack of structure and lack of mobility was to plan ahead and create structure for myself. I had a todo list and tried to work through it as well as finding activities for the kids. Some easy activities that you can leave them with are drawing, play dough and general outside play or using toys. I found that things went more smoothly if I played with the kids first and got them involved in some activity. I could then leave them doing that while I did some housework. I would also plan outings and save up tasks to do when we went out so we weren’t making lots of trips. The kids seem to like going on an outing at least once a day and we could always go to the park and then head for the shops after that if we needed anything.
I also tried to do things that would involve the kids like baking with them and although we didn’t start a garden yet, Sol enjoys identifying appropriate materials for the compost.
Things mostly came unstuck if I couldn’t get them interested in anything or if I was too tired and lacking inspiration on things to do or if I just had no plan. Sometimes I’d try and do something with the kids and they’d just not be interested but I would keep persevering instead of moving on to something else. These days would be marked by winging, shouting and not getting anything done.
So as I mentioned, my time being a full time stay-at-home dad has come to an end because I’ve taken a part time job but I will still be The Dad for a couple of days a week so I’ll keep you posted on how that’s going.
Sol and I have played a lot of Star Wars over the last few days as he’s been allowed to watch a little bit of the movies on top of his Lego Star Wars Wii obsession. I think the following little web app I wrote illustrates the thought processes nicely: Star Wars According to Sol Plot Generator
