God Lied

Do you remember the story in the bible about the Ark and the animals going in two by two etc? Well, my memory of the end of that story is that there was a promise that a flood as bad as that would never happen again. Look at these photos and tell me that he hasn't had a little memory lapse. These photos are taken from the street that leads to the boys school, which is closed. Hard to imagine why but there you go! We are OK because we are on top of a hill but the access road around us are flooded to we have to vary our route in to work depending on which road is currently open. My sister however has no water due to contamination of the reservoir by flood water so things could be a lot worse for us. On the basis that there is always a silver lining, ( and lets face it we have a lot of clouds, ha, ha) swimming is off tomorrow, see above, no water, and T's rugby match is also cancelled so we will have a very peaceful weekend.
Other than this life is much more peaceful. No recent criminal damage anyway! We went away for a few days over the Autumn mid term break and had a lovely time. Lots of walking, swimming and family time. We had to put down one of our dogs. She was a rescue dog that we had had for 11 years. We don't know how old she was when we got her. She developed a lymphoma that was untreatable. She got weaker and weaker and eventually couldn't eat or walk so we had to put her to sleep. We were all very upset but it was easier because we knew it was inevitable.
She had always been regarded as J's dog. He decided he wanted a Boxer pup for Christmas as his new dog so we organised an early Christmas present for him. We are now the proud owners of a 10 week old boxer pup who is adorable and has us all wrapped around her little finger, or claw, or whatever. The battery is gone in my camera so I can't show pictures. Take it from me though, she is gorgeous. Current roll call is therefore 3 dogs, 2 cats, 1 rabbit, 2 turtles, 1 lizard and 5 hens, none of which are laying currently by the way. I don't think they are impressed by the weather either! As I said, peaceful.

Starting Over

We are starting over with T tomorrow. His months grounding for the last escapade is now over. He had to hand over E266 to pay for his share of the damage to the trucks. Luckily he had his confirmation money or he would be indirectly grounded for a year paying back in installments from his pocket money as he would have no money to go anywhere! We are putting it behind us, moving on and really sincerely hoping that lessons have been learned. Actually I think E and I have as much to learn as he does in terms of what you can and can't expect from a teenager.
T started a new school in September. He knew no one at all in the school, other than his older brother and his friends who are probably a disadvantage if anything. He went from a small country school of 250 kids where he was the oldest,to a school in the city, all boys, with 1000 kids up to 19 years old. In fairness he seems to have handled the transition well and has made friends. Of course because he has been grounded for the past month he has not been able to meet any of these friends outside school and we have not met any of them. So tomorrow we are having an end of grounding party! Four boys from his class are coming over to ours for the afternoon and they can play playstation/Wii, watch DVDs, play soccer outside if the weather is good, whatever. I am really looking forward to meeting these kids and getting to know his new friends. Because we live a bit away from the school their parents will have to drop them out to us which means we will also get to meet them which is great. It's so hard to go from National School where you know everyone because it is small and there is so much parental involvement in the school, to secondary where they walk there from work themselves and we never meet anyone except in the corridor at parent teacher meetings once a year.
Here's to starting over, with hopefully everyone a little older and wiser. Wish us luck.

Trust and teens, turns out to be an oxymoron.

I should have known the S*** would hit the fan once I had two teenagers in the house.
I alluded to an issue with J over the summer involving a camping trip overnight unsupervised on the beach with a group of his friends, aged 15-17. We vetoed this, mainly actually the beach part. I was terrified that they would decide a midnight swim was a great plan and someone would drown! After much debate we agreed it could go ahead if it was in a field belonging to a friend of ours behind her house. Her son was involved in the trip too. When we went out to drop them off, where had the tents been set up? On the beach. We didn't even let J out of the car, just turned around and went straight home.
The other night T was invited to a friends house for a sleep over. This kid has been his best friend since they were in preschool. We are very good friends with his parents and I would completely trust both the kid and his parents. On Sunday morning we got a call from a total stranger asking us to come and pick up T from his house. He had been caught messing with this man's trucks which he keeps in a yard across the road from his house. E went down straight away and found T totally hysterical. Turns out T and 3 other kids, all of whom are good kids, had been walking through the woods behind T's friends house when they came upon this yard. In fairness to them the trucks look pretty old and broken down. This in no way excuses the fact that they decided to BREAK THE WINDOWS of one of the trucks! Can you believe it?
The owner heard the noise from across the road and came over. The others ran away but he caught T. The others say the didn't realise T had been caught and I have to believe this because otherwise I would be so upset to think they would run off and leave him behind.
Meanwhile the parents with whom he was staying didn't even know T was missing as they thought they were up in the woods. The first they heard was when we rang saying we were on the way down to collect T from this man's house and to see if they know what happening. I was really upset for them too because I don't blame them in the slightest. These kids are 13 years old. They should not need constant supervision. They were left off to play in the woods behind the house, which are owned by this family, and just got into trouble. Kids do this I know. You just think that you have done a better job and that your kids know right from wrong.
While I very freely admit to being open to being accused of hyper parenting I see a huge distinction between this and so called helicopter parenting. I firmly believe that kids need to learn to be independent. Obviously we weigh up risks and take precautions and have back up arrangements but we allow the older 2 to get the public buses home from town or from training. We allow then to go into town to meet their friends for an hour or two in the afternoon on Saturdays. They each have a ATM card and get E15/ week into their account which we expect them to manage themselves. They are responsible to having credit in their phone at all times and are also responsible for their bus fares, cinema tickets etc when the go and meet their friends. We have debated for ages getting parental control for the Internet and had decided not to. We have only one computer in the house. It's a desktop so obviously not mobile and it is in the study which has plenty of traffic. Our theory was that we should be able to trust them and not impose values on them. A recent check on browsing history blew that theory out of the water. Nothing too major but I guess when it is all over the popular media that there are naked photos of various teen idols out there the temptation is too much! Again I know this is normal at this level but it's not nice and not what I expected from them.
So some soul searching going on in our house. What's a reasonable amount of freedom for boys aged 13 and 15? What's a reasonable amount of trust? What's reasonable punishment? What is normal and what is the first sign of delinquency?!
Most importantly, what's the best cure for the parents?!!

Hyperparenting on Hormones

It's that time of year again. For some September means evenings drawing in, a nip in the air, leaves changing colour, the start of autumn programming on TV...
For the Hyperparent among us it only means one thing: scheduling after school activities. Trying to organise activities for 4 children and fit them in around each other, school and work is a nightmare and each year when we start this I get stressed until each child is organised and I have ensured that I can drop and collect each of them as necessary.
This year J1 is fairly straight forward. He only does hurling and football now and these are near home (about 1 mile) so he could walk if necessary. Certainly if I have to drop him early or collect him a bit late at 15 years of age this does not matter. In fact the main issue is that he would be delighted because he would get extra time in the club practising with his friends instead of studying. He has State Exams this year.
T is a nightmare this year. He has now started Secondary School so has a longer school day. His school is rugby playing and he wants to play this for a year anyway to see if he likes it and to make friends. This is all well and good but it is 1 1/2 hours Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, right on the other side of town and finishes at 5 pm Tuesday and Thursday. Yes, that's right, rush hour. So he will have to get the bus into town and walk up to work from there and come home with E. It's a long day for him but so be it. Monday he has violin. He also does Drama, his first love. This was just one hour/week BUT because he auditioned for individual classes as well as group classes this year, and got his place, he now has 2 hours/week, also on the other side of town, from 3.30 to 5.30 on Wednesday. He then has hurling at 6pm on Wednesday so this involves a mad dash across town, yes, once more at rush hour, to be at the club for 6. He has hurling again on Friday and matches at weekends.
M is nearly as bad. She has ballet on Tuesday and Friday. She was asked to audition for the Christmas panto again this year and got it so she will have extra rehearsals for this over November and December. On top of this she was also asked to audition for a place in another ballet school which is taught by Alan Foley. This would be for 1 1/2 hours on a Monday if she gets it. She has the audition today but am I very bad for secretly hoping she doesn't? This would be a "Master Class" that she would do as well as her usual classes. She swims for 4 hours/week on top of this, one hour on a tuesday night, one hour on a Thursday night and 2 hours on Saturday afternoon.
Finally we have J2 how is fairly calm. Violin on Monday, Ballet on Thursday, Swimming from 9-10 on Saturday morning and Camogie also on Saturday 12-1pm.
So do I win the hyperparenting madness?
It's so hard to strike a balance. I too started off saying I wouldn't get carried away and I just wanted them to try things out. But when they do try things out, and then really enjoy them, and then get better at them and so get more involved, what do you do then? It seems unfair to turn around at that point and say no way.
Actually I had fully intended saying no to the audition for an extra ballet class for M until J1 said how excited he would be if he had been picked out from his peers and given a chance to work with the best available. So there we go, hyperparenting on hormones

Quick Summer Summary

Tomorrow I have an extra teenager! T turns 13 tomorrow. He started secondary school last week. He had a "girlfriend" in Irish College. Did I ever think I would wish to have toddlers back again?!
We had a great holiday, in the most part. Some angst revolving, inevitably, around our 15 year old and limits. Anyone in favour of an unsupervised, mixed sex, overnight camping trip on the beach? If so J needs to move in with you. Did I ever think the best complication would be teenage sex? When the alternative is drowning if they decide to go swimming at 2 am I think it might be. Anyway we vetoed this and are still in the dog house.
Other than this lots of cuddles, baking, eating, sailing and boating as evidenced below. Enjoy!

Real life vs Virtual life

In my real life things are pretty tame at the moment. My Mum is doing well and we are just in "wait and see" mode. This can be tedious but when you stop to think of the alternative it suddenly doesn't seem so bad.
The kids are great. J spent 3 weeks in Irish College and had a ball. He came home for 10 days and then went to France on an exchange to the same family he went to last year. He gets on really well with the whole family and is close friends with the kid the same age as himself so it works out really well. He had 10 days in Versailles and 3 on the coast in Brittany which sounds pretty cool to me! He turned 15 the day he came home. Can you believe 15!
T has been in a different Irish College for the past 10 days. He was nervous going because he knew no one but has settled in really well and is loving it. He will be 13 in a few weeks so roll on more teen angst!
M did her dance camp for 2 weeks and loved every minute of it. She was 11 yesterday so we are in birthday season here. She had some friends over yesterday evening for pizza and a DVD. 2 of her friends arrived with make up on, eye shadow, lip gloss, blusher, the whole nine yards. I was stunned. Hard to imagine they are at this stage! The hormones can only be around the corner.
J2 is happy as always, bossing everyone around.
We are going on our holiday for 3 weeks tomorrow. Just down to the coast. It is pouring rain today! How much monopoly can a family play before there is blood on the floor?
The most drama I can conjure up here rests with the hens. We got 2 new ones a few weeks ago at T's request. It has been a serious mistake. The old ones objected strenuously. Hen pecked. pecking order etc are firmly based on reality. I maintain we have seen Darwin's Theory on the survival of the fittest played out in front of our eyes over the past few weeks. We have had one casualty despite splitting them up into separate coops and they have all stopped laying so I am seriously stressed!
Not so in the virtual world which seems to be crawling with drama at the moment. I have a few blogs I read daily. Some of those have been to Blogher recently. I had never even heard of Blogher until this weekend. Seems you get the same fighting when bloggers get together as when you bring hens together. I am getting very disillusioned with the whole thing. I have a few different categories of blogs I read. A few are very popular and are well written and entertaining. A few are people who read my blog and I feel I "know" them and there are one or two that I fell on through links etc that are so far from my reality that I find them entertaining. After all this bitching I am starting to feel that I really need to be more discerning and cut out a few and generally spend less time in the virtual world. Honestly, it's all completely facile and ridiculous and getting sucked into it vicariously is worse.
So, after the holidays I need to do some tidying up on the pages I have bookmarked and the side bar of my own blog and get out of virtual drama. Who needs it?

The horns of a dilema

"To quit or not to quit"
I write this for myself. No one I know in real life, other than E, knows anything about it. Ok, I have a few readers, but very few, and I am certain that they would get on just fine without me. I do not court readers. I have sometimes thought it would be lovely to have some because I have really enjoyed any comments I have got and I love the sense of connecting with people all over the world. Then other times I am restricted by the thought that anyone at all might read this and recognise me. Because of this I am not willing to discuss things that are not mine directly to discuss, or even their impact on me. As the kids get older, and as I read more around the whole topic of blogging, I am also somewhat reluctant to discuss them because they are entitled to their privacy. So what does this leave? Not a lot, which is why it has been very quiet around here lately! Maybe I should just make it private, and then use it as a plain old fashioned diary which was never intended to be read by anyone else. This brings me right back to the point that I do love connecting with people...
Most people in the blogging world probably read Tertia. She has being going through some stuff recently very similar to what I have. She writes really well, and this post especially really resonates with me. We all DO think our relationship with our parents is unique. At my age, obviously a lot of my friends have lost one or both parents. I would have gone to the funerals, and even cried if I had known them well.
I would have tried to help my friends in any way I could, but now, looking back, I never really felt like it was as bad for them as it would be for me. And of course it is, and I cannot believe how blithely insensitive I have been over the years. Hopefully, even with our recent scare, we have more years with my parents. Hopefully also I will remember exactly how scary it is when you are confronted with the very real possibility that you are about to lose someone very special to you.