Family Matters - by Jude Dobson

New window on the world
Steve Biddulph has written many books. Manhood and Raising Boys, in particular, are well known. He's talking in Auckland tonight and if you're lucky enough to be at the gathering, enjoy. In the 5.30 with Jude days I interviewed him and found him to be a delightful interviewee who possessed that appealing combination of inspiration and common sense.
We had a great ``raising boys' discussion all those years ago although, for me, it was academic, because I didn't actually have a boy to raise at that time. Now I have a 10-year-old son, and love discovering what makes a boy tick.
The thing about being mum to a daughter is that you can remember being a girl yourself. In fact, it's imperative that you do remember how it feels to be a child. It's easy to become caught up in the adult world and expect sense from our kids all the time, when the reality is that you, too, at 6, 8, 16 or 18, operated in the same silly, self-centred, mad mode at times.
With a son mothers get a window on a whole new world. As much as our 4-year-old first-born daughter would try to make her 1-year-old brother play with her Barbies, (his first words: mama, dada, bar-bar), she knew she'd lost the battle when she saw me helping him tie string round one of their (minuscule) waists so he could tow it round the lounge with his dump truck, making car noises. I'm not sure what messages I've subconsciously embedded in a young boy's brain in regard to treating women, but that game of towing the Barbies round the lounge to and from the houses his older sister had built for them made for great games.
I was number one in his world as a preschooler. I could fix everything, sometimes with a reassuring chat and cuddle, a sleep for a boy who didn't know he needed one, a bit of distraction or sometimes just a bikky did the trick. Dad could fix things too, but it was me who was at home with him most of the time and was quicker at calming the tears.
Things change, though, and his dad is really big in these middle years. Boys LOVE their dads. Not that I feel any less of a connection with my son, and neither do I mean that either parent is more important than the other at any one period. But, without a doubt, the doing together of ``stuff' when a little boy starts to gain enough coordination to kick a ball around, or wrestle on the floor, is fuel for the ever-growing father-son bond.
His dad and he love sport - practising it, playing it, watching it and discussing it. It is not my world. But it is theirs and I love seeing it blossom. The world opens up to them in these primary and intermediate school years. They make good buddies and, in doing so, are exposed to other families and how they operate. Teachers change year on year, new interests develop: sports teams, musical groups, solo endeavours, whatever it is they are into. They are all new experiences to make sense of - the successes, the disappointments. But now mum and dad can't fix everything, and neither should they. It's the dealing with things when they go pear-shaped that hones character.
At moments like that, I'm learning my womanly instinct to talk something to death is not always the right approach. Bless him that when he needs to he tells me, ``Mum, don't worry I'll work it out'.
That tells me nicely to back off because he's hurting and doesn't want to dissect it or discuss it and, at the same time, gives me a subtle wake up call that it's not my business, it's his. In those situations I find he might bring it up later while we're doing other things together - the old sideways discussion.
Sometimes conversation is really direct. It might be on the car ride home from school, and if I'm not ready to listen properly right now, then forget it. At other times, a cuddle and a chocolate biscuit still does the trick. It's a ``stand by to stand by' sort of job, this parenting.
You don't always get it right, and certainly mums and dads have different strengths and weaknesses. You just have to roll with it. Be ready to be all over it, be ready to suck back and hold your tongue, just be ready to be ready. I love this raising boys - it keeps a girl on her toes.
02 07 2009