If children picked parents
September 30, 2008 by Megan · 6 Comments
…. If children could pick the parents they wanted would your children pick you? If no, what small changes do you need to make to your parenting to become a pickable parent?
Children love security, secure attachment, routine, safety and fun. While kids are exposed to media and marketing they will always want more physical comforts and trendy gear…however, their wants are superficial and under that is a desire, a right, to be kept safe. Knowing that they can act the goat, risk take and explore within the confines of a parental safety watch is something that develops autonomy, thinking and resilience…something that we all want for our children.
Child safety and child protection are a changed mind culture: a bias that enforces the overall safety of the child is addressed in every single thing you do. If you are hanging with people/family who interfere with your child protection bias then you are harming your children.
Is your child safe? Think child protection first and you will become a pickable parent.
Do not forget The Teddy Tour.
Why not involve the kids in making a Teddy to send in for a survivor to put their story tag on.
The development of empathy and helping kids to help others
is one of those things that make you a pickable parent.
How to stop children stealing, lying and hoarding
September 29, 2008 by Megan · 2 Comments
Do you have a child that hoards or steals? Are you struggling to understand why your child does those things? Are you struggling with ideas to break the behaviour? In the interest of child protection, DO NOT hit your child but rather, try to see behind the behaviour and hear what help it is asking you for.
Children do not have sophistication of vocabulary to explain how they are feeling inside so they use their behaviours to tell us. Just as play is children’s work so too is behaviour their communication. Lying, stealing and hoarding are juvenile emotional responses begging to be redeveloped, to be educated and to have someone meet the underlying psychological needs of the behaviour.
It is our job as adults and parents to read the unacceptable childhood behaviour of lying, stealing and hoarding and to offer some alternatives. Punitive measures of punishment do not help the behaviour. They instead escalate it because the child feels bad and therefore more emotional baggage is hidden away, dying to be listened to, understood and dealt with. Feeling bad and out of control, the child turns to familiar behaviours that make them feel better; lying, stealing or hoarding.
How can you create some alternative behaviours that help the child to feel good about themselves and therefore reduce the likelihood of stealing, lying and hoarding taking over? Here’s three simple and easy ideas to try:
- Investing heavily in developing emotional intelligence in our children is the first step of reversing the sneaky behaviours of lying, stealing and hoarding. Being mindful of who we are, how we feel and what makes us tick is a gift that I long for every parent to give their children. Self Knowledge is personal power. A sense of personal power cuts through many psychological responses to trauma or emotionally based unacceptable behaviours. Read about some emotional intelligence games and activities in the Intuition section of Parent Sense. Academic intelligence is not the only thing that helps get our kids through life you know. Knowing our emotions keeps us safe from harm and from harming other people. A pretty important piece of life intelligence I would say. Be warned though, Teaching Emotional Intelligence is a job for the Intelligent Parent.
- Increase the activity. For example: a hoarder of stones may be helped by enrolling in lapidary classes to learn more about stones and by organising their growing stone collection into a display case – you are not taking the need for collecting the stones away but rather normalising and depathologizing the hoarding behaviour.
- Guess how the child might be feeling and act to counteract the feeling before the child has to steal/hoard (this is re intuitive parenting). For example, child may be feeling insecure because another baby has come into the home or there has been another change in their routine. Guessing that child needs increased reassurance perhaps more hugs, one on one time, verbal assurances of future activities together or ever a name plate for the child’s bedroom door – TIM sleeps here – can be helpful in reversing the emotional and psychological need of the behaviour.
Lying, stealing and hoarding are behavioural reactions to an underlying emotional and psychological need. It is not a child’s job to magically stop stealing, lying or hoarding. It is our job to help develop a child’s sense of self, to keep them safe and to help them work through any trauma they may be experiencing. Do you have Parent Sense or are you as immature as the juvenile and needy behaviours of lying, stealing and hoarding?
Time for Tea, kids and a Thera Tea leaf reading
September 26, 2008 by Megan · 3 Comments
Family time is something that seems to have almost disappeared from the modern family. Two incomes needed to survive, many work outside of the home families struggle to intimately know each other or even keep in touch with each other. Kids in daycare while Mum and Dad work during school holidays doesn’t make knowing me knowing you time any easier. During the school week, merely getting necessary chores done leaves no time for Mum and Dad to discover how kids are growing, changing and developing. What to do? How to collapse time so that we can all spend a little time together???
Been there, done that. It is a regret that I have now changed to a positive point of survival for my last child (age 12). It is school holidays and I have to work some but I refuse to work the way I used to. I refuse to miss out on knowing my youngest son. I refuse to be a parent like every other stressed out full time working parent that I frequently see in my counselling room or trainings. I refuse to be a hypocritical therapist helping others when I do not help my own.
I’ll just make myself a cup of tea while I decide how to do things differently – how to further collapse time so that I spend time with the Boy and earn some income. Perhaps gazing at my tea leaves will reveal what I can do to keep Boy child off the computer and in conversation with me for the snippets of time that I am available.
Tea; the most common beverage in the world after water. I drink tea. I drink a lot of tea. I spend a lot of time making and drinking tea. Ummmm…how can I involve Master 12 in the tea making, to keep him occupied and interested in being with me while I indulge my beloved drug of choice?
I recently won a book in a competition that Carole over at Rejuvenation Lounge ran. Time for Tea arrived the morning that I flew out to help my two ex foster kids bury their mother. With air time and some spare time on my hands, I drank every page in that little book three times over. I simply loved it and I learnt things about tea that I had always taken for granted. More splendidly, I learnt about the symbolism of tea leaf reading. This was of great interest to me because I use symbol work (expressive therapies) in my therapeutic work with families and children.
Whether it be grown on a lofty mountin ridge, by a crystal-clear stream, or in a cool green valley, each tea embodies the place where it was grown and the people who made it. Tjok Gde Kerthyasa, Tea Master, p10, Time for Tea, Lindel Barker-Revell, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2007.
A long time evangelist of Fair Trade products, the tea, coffee and chocolate in our home embodies ethics and child protection. No children were harmed in the making of caffeine products in our home and no child will be harmed in the serving and partaking of those products either. Boy child drinks tea and coffee on occasion: herb tea and no caffeine coffee. Taking it all one step further, Boy 12 is now involved in the mysteries of tea leaf reading (pictured) thanks to the gems of delight discovered in Time for Tea.
What a fun and therapeutic way to start conversations, explore the symbolism in a person’s life and learn what they aspire for the future….only problem is that Boy child is now driving me batty asking when step father will be home so that Boy can read step father’s tea leaves. Oh well, at least I have today leaned about the bullies at school and how Boy wants to climb mountains when he’s older. Using his own symbolism and meanings I was able to deal with the bully situation without sounding like a therapist – I was just his Mum, drinking tea and having fun with him.
I think I’ll call this Thera Tea. Cuppa anyone? I promise I won’t analyse your tea leaves too much 
Time for Tea by Linda Barker-Revell is published by Allen and Unwin and can be purchased from book stores or through Linda’s web site: Tea Wise. It would make a beautiful present for the Goddess in your life or for the interested and intelligent person who enjoys looking behind the obvious to learn history and meanings of ritual. I’ll be buying copies for Christmas gifts for the women in my life that I care to share tea with.
One million pieces of clothing for Aboriginal families
September 25, 2008 by Megan · 3 Comments
Nai-Beguta Agama Aboriginal Corporation in New Mapoon, an isolated Aboriginal community on the Northern Peninsula Area of Cape York Peninsula (Australia), desperately requires some fund raising assistance. They want to extend their Community Building to include a room for a Youth worker, a training space and two private counselling/office/meeting rooms. Their quote is $1,000,000.00. Imaginif… they could raise that much money!
Aware that they can increase their credibility and external funding viability by raising some funds themselves, they have opted to up the anti on the recycled clothes that they already make available for sale.
Quality used clothing is now required to help raise funds for the new center. Men’s, women’s, children and teens clothing/accessories are something that we can each give without any financial strain to ourselves. Can you imagine1,000,000 pieces of clothing sold at just one dollar a piece! Who needs funding when community is prepared to support community! Imaginif!
To give quality recycled clothing and accessories to Nai-Beguta please drop at or forward to: Imaginif, 30 James St, North Cairns, 4870. Clothes will be shipped to Nai-Beguta at New Mapoon via Sea Swift.
Any Social Work students out there who may want to do a placement at New Mapoon? I am prepared to be your external social work supervisor. The centre needs some assistance with planning and fund raising for the new building. There’s no free accommodation available so you will need to self fund your stay.
For more information about Nai-Beguta and their building fund raising needs:
Lizzy Bond/Services Coordinator
Nai-Beguta Agama Aboriginal Corporation
New Mapoon Community
P.O. Box 23
BAMAGA Q 4876
Fax: (07) 40693191
Email: lizzy@nbaac.org.au
Are you looking for easy ways to help the community?
The Teddy Tour desperately needs your help too.
Megan in Bamaga following funeral
September 23, 2008 by Megan · 3 Comments
I’ve been home but a day and am again off. I am heading to the tip of Cape York, the most northern point of Australia: Bamaga. I return to Cairns late on Thursday in time for my grand motherly duties on Friday.
Many people have contacted to ensure my positive mental health following the death of my foster children’s mother. I am fine and both kids are doing well. Saying our goodbyes in person was a most therapeutic thing to do. Their mother’s funeral is this morning and Dayle is still in Brisbane so that she can attend and bring any belongings home with her. Richard and I both returned home earlier because there was nothing further we could do.
Just to prove that it was not all doom, gloom and heart break while we were away, here’s a couple of pics of myself and then Richard (my ex foster son who is now 20) playing Captain Kangaroo in the park where their mother was found deceased.
Even in the midst of grief, abandonment, revisited attachment disordered behaviour and despair, positive interactions with others and a little fun is paramount to recovery and ongoing functional mental health. However, you do not want to see the pics of us all shortly after these photos were taken. When we came upon the spot where the kids mother was found in the park, the mood was entirely different to that pictured here.
Do not forget that The Teddy Tour needs help. Teddies help heal those affected by sexual abuse.
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