It's a big bad world out there...

Instilling morals in my children is one of the most important things I can do as a mother. I teach them to treat others as they would like to be treated themselves, respect life, respect others, and live their lives as peaceful, reasonable, rational human beings.

I don’t allow them to watch violent movies or play violent video games. I teach them that violence, never, ever achieved anything except pain and heartache and a legacy of more violence. I do stop just short of having ‘Kumbaya’ themed evenings of song or sticking flowers in their hair, but I want my sons to grow up to be well-adjusted men.
Being a bit of pacifist, I remember having a big problem with them playing with toy guns. I remember the first time someone gave my oldest son one as a birthday present.
I smiled in an over-the-top way, shouted ‘thank you’ all the while trying to control an involuntary twitch in my eye. I hid the thing behind the fridge. But my boys seem drawn to them like moths to flame, alongside cars, trucks, wrestling, loud bodily function noises and stuff getting blown up on TV. They are just boys, and for as long as I’ll live I’ll probably never understand how their minds work.

I’ll try and keep them on the right track. However I cannot police what they see and what they hear 24 hours per day. The power of my preaching/nagging/teachings will be diluted by the outside world, by the television, by what they see on the streets.

This week it was difficult to escape the images of Colonel Gaddafi’s bloody death. The horrific pictures of him wounded, his life blood seeping onto the dusty streets of Sirte, were projected into our living rooms all day whether we liked it or not. Special news reports interrupted programmes, they were on almost every channel, they were on every front page in the shops, on the Internet. I was furious that my children were subjected to these disturbing pictures before I dug the remote control out from the depths of the sofa cushions. I switched the TV off and we watched DVDs for the rest of the day.

But there were questions. Why are they attacking that old man? Why did they shoot him in the head? Is this a film? Why are they standing over his dead body cheering? Why is someone filming him dying and not helping him? Why are those people watching his son bleed to death and not doing something?

Yes he was a bad man. I know he was a cruel and heartless man himself and caused many deaths of innocents. I’m sure the world will be a better place without him but regardless of that, the way he was dragged around the streets, shot and killed was shameful, shocking. It makes those who carried out the attack just as bad as him, just as brutal. The scenes played out that day did nothing more than teach young, impressionable minds that it’s perfectly acceptable to let anger and hatred take over your heart and your head. That it’s OK to treat a fellow human in a horrifically brutal way. To glorify and celebrate pain and death, as long as you think it’s justified.
Any prisoner of war who is injured and not resisting – which was clearly the case from the pictures – has the right not only to human treatment, but medical care. Not only the people who lynched him, when he was already severely injured should be ashamed, but elements of the media who normalised this behaviour by printing the pictures of his attack and showing the videos for our children to see in the afternoon are also at fault.
I fear for my children, for the world they are growing up in. A world were war, brutality and cruelty to fellow human beings is normal, celebrated, glorified. They will learn that live isn’t fair sometimes.
I look at them now, their innocence and light almost blinding. But beyond our front door, there’s a big bad world. They will have to grow tough skins to survive. As do we all.

Any wrongdoings will result in jail time....

A mother in England recently reported her son to the police after he stole her yacht and went for a joyride with his mates around the coast of Cornwall.
The 22-year-old university student, who went for the quick jaunt on the ocean in his mum's £10,000, 30ft boat, has now been jailed for nine months.
Last week his mum Annabel said she felt duty-bound to report her son but that taking the decision was 'absolute hell'.
'It's not what you want as a parent but you have to do what you feel is right,' she said. 'Every parent makes their own decision in how they are going to raise their child but I believed that what they did was wrong, and they had to know that.'
Amen to that sister.
It's hard teaching kids right from wrong. It's tough being the disciplinarian all the time. I seem to be always telling my children to stop doing something. And they seem to spend an awful lot of time simply ignoring me and doing it anyway. Sometimes I can't help but feel that I have no clout, that they think I'm a big softie and won't follow through on my threats to paint their rooms pink and force them to watch a Dora the Explorer marathon as punishment.
But then this brave mother went and done the rest of us parents a real favour. Kids need to be taught what's good and acceptable behaviour and what's not. And calling the cops in was a smart move on her part. I think the rest of us should follow suit.
Imagine the power we could wield with a threat of actual jail time for wrong doings. Not cleaning their room could incur a 'woeful neglect of property' charge and a six month suspended sentence. Whopping their brother with an Iron Man figure could land them with an 'aggravated assault' wrap and a £600 fine. Writing on the hall wall with indelible crayons, no matter how nice and colourful it is, could incur a 'wanton vandalism' charge and 12 weeks of community service. Nicking a packet of biscuits from the cupboard and then hiding out on the front step to eat them all with their mates could get them landed with a double whammy, a 'burglary and possession with intent to supply' charge.
And I'm thinking all three of my boys could be put away for life for the litany of criminal damage they have inflicted on my property. If I had of had my head screwed on properly I would have photographed and catalogued all the mobile phones they filled with toilet water after dunking them, the laptops with toast posted into the disc drives, the televisions which blew up because someone kept pressing the on/off button consistently for 20 minutes to see what happened, the car seats which needed industrial cleaning machinery to remove those blasted melted jelly sweets. I could have given all this evidence to the authorities to secure their case. They would have gone down for a long time.
Then again, on the flip side, they could also report me to the police. I could regularly be done for 'cooking with intent to endanger lives' for the burnt, hard as hell fish fingers I present to them sometimes masquerading as dinner. The threats to destroy or damage property - mainly the Playstation when they fail to do move away from it to do their homework - could be taken literally in a court of law. And I suppose the shouty, waving my fist thing that I do when they swing their sodden mucky shoes around their heads by the laces like helicopter blades, making vast mucky water designs on the kitchen walls, that could be taken as 'disturbing the peace'.
So maybe I'll keep my mouth shut, and none of us will get banged up.

Buster is no Mummy's Boy...

My middle son, Caolan, asked me the other day not to call him ‘Honey’ when his friends are around. He told me those are tough streets out there – in our quiet, leafy cul-de-sac – a boy has to fight to survive and that that particular term of endearment was doing nothing for the rough, tough reputation he had worked hard to build. I said I would refrain from the nice names and refer to him as Buster from this day forward.
I suppose there comes a time when every Mum has to let go of their little boy. Realise he is a young man. Unleash, I mean release, him into the world and hope that he’ll be OK on his own. That we, as mothers, taught that boy well and armed him with the power to make the right decisions, look after himself and be safe. There comes a time when we must allow him to fight his own battles.
There are times when he’ll come back and tell you that another boy smacked him hard in the face with a ball and you’ll have to physically restrain yourself from going out there, puncturing that ball and making that boy eat it.
We have to take a step back.
I answered the door to Caolan at the weekend. He didn’t knock, I could hear him shouting and screaming over the television as he staggered up the street. The child has a noise pollution court order-inducing holler and can unhinge his jaw for full dramatic effect and extra volume.
Neighbours were standing at their doors, other’s were twitching their curtains. The boy loves an audience. When I reached him I tried to ascertain what the problem was. Was anything broken? Where was he sore? He took his hand away from his head to reveal a black eye that would have frightened Mike Tyson.
It was a trampoline karate, wrestling-related accident, he sobbed. In between wails and sharp intakes of breath he informed me that his friend had been doing mid-air karate (is this some brand new extreme sport I am too old and uncool to know about?) and Caolan’s head got in the way because he and another boy were doing Triple H’s ‘finisher’ moves. But it was another boy’s fault because he was ‘spinning’.
At least I think that’s what was said.
As I stood with a bag of frozen peas on my boy’s eye head I fought an overwhelming urge to march down the street and confront these spinning, karate-kicking children. I wanted to know, without all the sobbing and confusing terms, who exactly was responsible for the huge swollen eye on my precious boy’s head. I wanted to shout at them that my beautiful, sweet and gentle boy will not be partaking in their spinny, wrestling, karate, boxing games any longer because they were too flipping rough and he was only a child.
Then I thought on what he had asked me not to call him the other day. I thought if I went scowling at his friends about being too rough they might think him weak, a mummy’s boy. He would never live it down.
So I said nothing. It was tough. Anyone who knows me knows I like to say what I see. But I’ll keep my mouth shut for my boy.
Caolan’s friends called for him the next day. His eye was completely closed over, black, purple and blue. They thought it was the coolest thing they had ever seen.
My little boy is becoming a young man. And there’s not one thing I can do about it, except embrace it.

Boys will be boys

It's a mother's natural instinct to protect her child. Sometimes that instinct can lead to us becoming over protective. Sometimes that can lead us to going to Tescos and buying two basket loads of cotton wool, cling film and double sided sticky tape with which to wrap said kids in so that they'll be safe from harm.
Not that I have done that, or anything. When I’m wrapping my kids up I always use bubblewrap. Less mess, less fuss.
But in these past eight years that I’ve been a mother I’ve learned that sometimes it's good to let go a little, let them make their own mistakes, bump their knees, scratch their elbows.
A bit of rough and tumble is fine; it’s good for their development. It teaches them life lessons, makes them hardy and gives them the tools to face life's challenges. It teaches them to know what their limits are and helps them figure out for themselves what is possibly hazardous to their health.
Truth be told I let them think they are doing all this stuff themselves, but I am normally stationed at the sidelines biting my lip hard so as not to involuntarily shout ‘Be Careful!’ every 10 seconds and gripping a First Aid Kit in one hand and a safety net in the other.
My boys are big fans of survivalist Bear Grylls. For those of you unfamiliar with the man, he has his own show where he gets dropped off in dire and dangerous places around the world – think the Amazon Rain Forest, the Sahara desert – ¬ for a week and survives on nothing but his wits and a few bugs for dinner. He climbs cliff faces using rope made from trees, fashions boats from twigs and sleeping bags from sheep carcases - a la sheeping bags.
Even before Bear Grylls was on the scene my boys and my husband would head out into the wilderness of the Donegal countryside at weekends. They would wander around for hours doing men stuff, like climbing trees and stream walking, hiking and, for all I know, seeing who knows the baddest swear words.
The husband has long nurtured the notion that arming them with the skills to catch a fish, climb a mountain and live off the land will empower them, give them the confidence to know that they are strong, capable boys who can push themselves and do anything in life. And I know they are safe in his hands.
The girls in the house are mostly left out of these adventures, partly because we would slow them down - what with wanting to stop and smell nice flowers and stuff - and partly because they all know that my mother instinct would render me a gibbering, blubbering wreck when I bore witness to their antics.
As a girl I don't see the attraction of climbing up a steep, rocky mountain just for fun when it's freezing and there's no Starbucks at the top. I don't really get the thrill of walking up the middle of a stream, getting soaked to the skin. I'm not big on bugs so I'm don't get the whole looking under big rocks for crawly stuff thing either.
The husband knows that if I was to accompany them on these adventures I'd be standing at the bottom of that mountain holding placards saying 'Careful now!', shouting warnings from the side of the stream about 'catching your death of cold' and pleas about not getting muck on their good shoes.
I’ll continue to stay out of their manly adventures and I’ll be here when they come home, with an abundance of dry clothes, plasters and hot mugs of tea.
My husband is creating very happy memories for them. I’ll just have to let boys be boys.