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A palindrome reads the same backwards as forward: tit, dad, mum, did, etc. The below video text reads backwards as if does forward. Not only does it read in the opposite but the meaning is the exact opposite as well.
This short video, Lost Generation, was submitted to an AARP contest by a 20-year old male. This young man’s entry to “u @ 50″ won second place.
When first shown, everyone in the room was awe-struck and broke into spontaneous applause. The message is so simple and yet so brilliant.
Author of the BITSS model of Protective Behaviours and Bitss of Caramel Marmalade on Toast, Megan Bayliss, facilitates a one day, not to be missed, training for professionals and parents: BITSS of Protective Behaviours in Cairns, 24th May 2010.
Learn how to keep your children safe through play and repetition of five simple personal safety concepts: Body Ownership, Intuition, Touch, Say No and Support Networks.
Professional or parent, this practical workshop is packed with play ideas and skills to assist you in keeping your kids safe from predators. You will learn how to use everyday items, items your children are surrounded by, to embed safety messages and prompts for seeking help.
No Go Tell, Stranger Danger, Personal Safety; what ever you call it, the BITSS model of Protective Behaviours is clear, easy and replicable in your own home.
Escape the creeping winter chills and visit Cairns to learn how to keep kids safe. Register NOW before there are no places left at Cominos House: BITSS Registration package
BITSS of Protective Behaviours is a play program designed by Megan Bayliss from Imaginif.
Visiting Cairns for the BITSS training with Megan Bayliss?
Stay the weekend before. Book through FNQ Apartments for fantastic booking assistance and local knowledge. Let Brenda know you are coming to one of Megan’s trainings at Cominos House. She will get you the best possible deal at a venue close to the training room.
Pregnant woman and child compliments of Sepi at SXCIn every geographic reach of our planet, an ancient and predatory species has juggled its way through evolution. Often hunted for its ability to become domesticated, the Octomumus Protectus is discerning, fertile in its choice of partner, and focused on its rearing of offspring.
Appearing in a variety of shapes and colours, this adaptive, now domestic animal, shares some common traits wherever found.
The eight arms of Octomumus Protectus are used for juggling the different factors peculiar to its chosen environment. However, interbreeding within domestic spheres has forced Octomumus to remain vigilant and open to new ways of juggling adaptation.
Octomumus has long protected its young from sun, water, poison, road and farm dangers. The protective nature and adaptive survival of this animal is a force to reckon with. In 2006, Octomumus was filmed in the practice of a novel behaviour as they adapted to an environment where baby Protectus are more likely to be harmed in their den than in the greater environment. Renewing its juggling ability to include personal safety on its list of “will do’s” almost every Octomumus on the planet has begun to hold their arms open to juggle the five protective factors of domestic safety: Body ownership, Intuition, Touch, Say no, and Support network. Fiercely protective of its young, the eight arms reach out and join with other Octomumus worldwide. The joined hands form a protective ring around planet earth and give a message of evolutionary hope. The Octomumus refuses to be separated from its kind and its common language of protection screams out to competing species in a warning against hurting the young.
By touching the hands of its sisters world wide, a process of contact osmosis transfers personal safety knowledge from one to the other. Each Octomumus then retreats to her lair and hand feeds the acquired change behaviours to her offspring. This novel behaviour has resulted in an increase of self-reports of harm from deep within the dens that the competing species drag Octomumus off to. The increased reporting has allowed us to undertake Octomumus research previously unequaled. These studies will ultimately protect the survival of this amazing animal and her beloved offspring
Few people know of my immense personal pain over the last decade plus. Very good at separating my personal and professional only my inner circle knew of the ongoing pain associated with the loss of a child through divorce and subsequent Parental Alienation (for information on what this is see Parental Alienation Syndrome and Divorced Parents and Parental Alienation Syndrome).
This week, my pain turned to joy when my sixteen year old daughter came home. We had not seen or spoken to her for three and a half years (below photo is the last photo of all of us together, three and a half years ago). I’m not really a crier, but, when I saw her at the door, I immediately cried. I cried tears of joy and bewilderment and frustration and grief and anger. I cried because my child had finally returned home and I was overwhelmed with relief and happiness.
For years now I have pondered her daily: what colour hair does she have, what size clothes does she wear, does she like smoked salmon and yoghurt like I do? I have yearned for her return and for contact. Oh my God….she looks like me, is short like me, has the same colour hair as her older sister, has my toes and fingers, LOVES Smoked Salmon and is HOME.
I have tried to word describe my happiness, my peace, my relief but the words do not yet do justice to my feelings because I am still emotionally unstable with pure shock! My daughter has returned home and my greatest wish has been granted.
To other parents crippling with the pain of assumed Parental Alienation, I can only offer my most heartfelt understanding of your crushing reality: a cruel reality that impedes every moment of your life. What got me through the years was the knowledge that, one day, my daughter would begin to question what had been said and done and that she would hunger for a life different to the one offered her in small town. If my child had even one ounce of my tenacity, nature and curiosity I knew it would not be too long before she began to seek out difference.
My beautiful daughter is home and I am very, very grateful. I intend to spend much time with her. I had another two weeks to fill prior to my resignation being effective but I negotiated to end earlier. Yesterday was my last day at work and as of today I can stress less and play more (freelance work will come to me). My child is home, my baby is with me. Today we are going cat shopping because she wants a pet to love and cuddle. I am more than willing to fill her currently confused emotional needs in the way she needs, so, off to buy a cat we go (Oh God, I hope the dogs don’t eat it!).
Did you know that the original story of Mary Poppins is an extension of the author’s own life: a case of art imitating life for sure. Mary’s creator was nothing less than an Emo (short for emotional) and dear old Mary was created to be a twisted sister with an emotional and ulterior motive to looking after the rich people’s babies.
P.L.Travers, author of Mary Poppins, grew up in Maryborough, Queensland, Australia. Her growth though, her normal, safe, childhood, was damaged thanks to the abuse perpetrated by her loving parents. Miss Travers, and her Mary, were survivors of child abuse.
Mary Poppins was Written by a Child in Need of Protection: Mary Poppins was originally written as a parody – a spiteful poke at “good” families gone wrong. The central characters of the story, the Banks family, were a glossed up representation of Pamela’s family of origin and the story line reflected Pamela’s attachment disordered thinking and fear of abandonment.
Born Helen Goff, in Maryborough, Queensland, Australia in 1899, the celebrated author of Mary Poppins was the daughter of a bank manager who drank himself to death by the time Helen was seven. Helen’s mother, Margaret, dithered on for a few more years before also giving up on life and attempting suicide in a local river. One thundery night, Margaret Goff announced to her three children that she was off to kill herself. Helen, the oldest (age 10) was terrified. She was left, alone, to settle her younger siblings and she coped by putting them to bed, all three together, on the lounge room floor. In an effort to divert their attention from frantic thoughts around their mother’s impending violent death, Helen made up fantasy stories about magical flying horses in faraway lands that would ride them all to safety.
Although Margaret returned, unsuccessful in her suicide attempt, Helen withdrew from the hurt caused by her family and instead found solace in the strength of a spinster aunt. Helen’s dysfunctional family predicament haunted her for the rest of her life. She was never able to rid herself of images concerning the appalling fate of children whose parents were unable to care for them.
At 21 years of age, Helen changed her name to Pamela L. Travers. Soon after she moved to London to make a new life as a writer. She never married, wore trousers (totally unacceptable in those days) when she wanted, had an affair with an older married man and eventually entered into a long-term relationship with another woman. Ever desperate to protect children, at age 40, a single parent, she adopted and raised an Irish orphan.
Psychologically tortured by the accepted treatment of children at the hands of their loving families, Pamela Travers wrote Mary Poppins as a piece of anti-nanny propaganda. Angered by the middle classes who shunned their children, the Mary Poppins character was essentially a therapeutic catharsis for Travers wounded inner child. Mary was designed to bring the middle classes to their senses by reflecting their own weak ethics and inability to provide emotional stability to their children. The moral of the story was that the Nanny got the chop because she was no longer required: the middle classes awoke to their children’s needs and would forever more parent appropriately.
Walt Disney rewrote Mary Poppins, the book, as a screen play (1964) and created the now immortalised personification of Mary Poppins as the all rounded protector of children. His movie made Mary Poppins synonymous with love, magic and umbrellas – a protective accessory (Umbrellas and Parrots to Help Play Protect our Children. Thanks Mary Poppins). Travers reportedly sat through the opening night of the stage play with tears of despair running from her eyes. Her message to the middle classes had been turned around by Disney to now romanticize Nannies and ineffectual parenting. Such is the power of Hollywood and patriarchy.
No matter how diluted the original message became in the story of Mary Poppins, I remain grateful to Pamela Travers, an abused child, for writing a story that turned bad to good: first for her own healing and second as a classic piece of international children’s fiction.
