The government has released its Green Paper on Vulnerable Children, outlining problems and possible approaches to tackling child abuse in New Zealand, and wants everyone’s feedback. A special web site (www.saysomething.org.nz) has been set up, which allows people to comment on specific issues, or on the whole paper, and making a submission is a lot less tedious. The deadline for this is 28 February.
Father & Child believes that the government is genuinely interested in hearing people’s voices about this, and they have expressed that they’re keen to get more submissions from dads (or males) than they usually get.

Children After the Shock

Peter R Walker has collected some children’s voices from the Christchurch earthquakes.

“Kids say the darndest things” don’t they? Darndest meaning funny, cute, profound. Sometimes, “from the mouths of babes” comes the most honest commentary, and on such occasions adults could learn a lesson.

In the wake of the Christchurch earthquakes, everyone had something to say. For weeks there was little else we talked about. No matter what the circumstances, people who met together, strangers or friends, quickly got on to the subject of the earthquake. In September it was somewhat light-hearted and frequently focused on how fortunate we were that nobody was seriously hurt or killed. We talked about the damage to our houses, the roads, and how long it would be before we could use the toilet again.

After the February earthquake the conversations were significantly darker. In a small town like Christchurch, few people were more than two or three degrees of separation from someone who had died. Everyone knew shortly after it happened that this quake was far more serious. And the conversations reflected it.

Kids, too, talked about it. Even one and two year olds knew something was up and talked about it; something extraordinary had happened. Perhaps they saw it in their parents’ faces, heard it in their voices, and, of course, they could not ignore the fact that every now and then the house moved and the plates in the pantry rattled.

In the shadow of the first earthquake, children bought into the game of guess the magnitude. Joshua (6) would be sitting in his bedroom and, when an aftershock had settled, he would yell “what number was that? A four point two?” He didn’t (I guess) understand about magnitude, but he realised that there were certain numbers associated with the aftershocks. Who says kids don’t listen to what their parents talk about?

One of the most interesting phenomena post-September was not so much the bubbling up of grey/green silt from the depths of the earth, but rather that it actually had a name. Who knew? Now there’s nothing cuter than a three year old throwing the word “liquefaction” into the most mundane of conversations. It just rolls off the tongue and sounds so grown up.

Citywide there are reports of children’s responses to the earthquakes. We would be remiss to think that children, too, did not have real, emotional reactions. On February 22, most Christchurch kids were at school. It was lunch time. Many were on the field. Now, says year 1-2 teacher Maureen Armstrong, the kids play on the field more because they feel it is the safest place. When school returned, she says, many of the girls followed the duty teacher around, making sure she knew what to do in the event of another earthquake.

Christchurch children were asked to write down their stories, their feelings. Many of these have been published online and in the newspapers. Every household with children has stories and utterances that bring smiles to the lips of proud parents everywhere. Gill says, after one aftershock, Amber (2) proclaimed “I was a good girl mummy, I ran under the doorframe.”

Sam (7) looked at the earthquakes two ways. First, he said, “When I grow up and become an inventor, I’m going to invent a machine that stops earthquakes from happening.” But then, in typical seven year old style, he was “glad the liquefaction pushed up our driveway. It’s made good hills to drive my hot wheels cars on.”

At an even more reflective moment, Sam, in a conversation about the Bands of Hope asked what they meant. They mean we care about Christchurch, he was told.
Sam’s mum Karen relates the following: “Sam got all tearful (quite unusual) and said, “I care about Christchurch. Every time I think about Christchurch I feel like crying.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because of the earthquake.”
“What part of it makes you sad?”
“People got killed, and lots of buildings fell down, and homes got destroyed.” Then, as we went over a bump in the road, “And the roads are a mess.””

Lara (5) said she didn’t like the earthquake because “it was shaking and the floor was moving. I cried a little bit.”

Jack (5), says his mum, Vanessa, “said to me one night out of the blue (after my cell phone beeped) “is that a tweet about the aftershock?””

Older children are no less reflective and wise. Hope (12) was “terrified and scared… ran to the door frame and screamed.” Now she’s a little more calm, and “still jumpy when there is an aftershock, but I don’t run to the doorway now.”

Mikayla (11) “freaked out.” At Sumner school at the time of the February earthquake, “I thought it was a landslide from the hills. I thought the rocks were going to fall down. I’m still just freaked out.”

Jasmine (13): “Before the earthquakes I felt safe, I could walk the streets without the fear of the earth shaking underneath my feet. I went to school, hung out with my friends and didn’t realise how great my life really was.  I could go home and not expect anything to be different. Christchurch was a place I could proudly call my home.”

“After the earthquakes,” she writes, “everything has changed. I’ve had to move out of my house and try and find one that is safe enough for us to live in without severe damage. It has brought my family closer together and we say “I love you” and tell them where we are going before we leave. I can still go to school but not in the same place. I don’t feel safe anymore and whenever I hear a rumbling sound the next second I can hear my heart thudding.

Christchurch just isn’t the same anymore “

Kids say the darndest things. Perhaps the most telling thing spoken by a child recently – although, it has not been verified and may have taken on the status of urban myth already – was by the boy who, sitting at the dinner table on March 19th, and (in reference to Ken Ring’s March 20 prediction of another massive earthquake for Christchurch) asked his parents matter-of-factly “Are we all going to die tomorrow?”

The children who experienced the Christchurch earthquakes will talk about them for the rest of their lives. My grandmother, so I was often told by my mother, was in the Napier earthquake. Every generation has historical moments that affect them profoundly. Whether it’s JFK’s, Neil Armstrong’s or 9/11, there are moments in time we will never forget. The Christchurch earthquakes will be two such moments. We will have constant reminders of them for many, many years to come. Our children will remember and speak of them forever.

Shaken Parent Syndrome

A month or two after the 22nd February earthquake, Christchurch people are well and truly ‘quaked out’. Harald Breiding-Buss relates his own post-quake moments as well as the current thinking on helping children through.

A couple of months have passed since the ‘Big One’ has hit Christchurch. For a while there, when the news from Japan came in, it even seemed to be only a minor event when compared to the amount of destruction there. Living in the south-eastern suburb of South Brighton, the reminders are all around me, though, as I drive to and from work each day: half-collapsed or already torn-down buildings, the potholes, bumps and dips in the badly damaged roads. The huge mountain of silt that had been trucked in from all over the city and piled up on a paddock not far from us has all but disappeared in a landfill by now.

When something like that happens it’s really difficult to keep a clear head. When the shaking had stopped on the 22nd of February, we all went outside our office, which is just east of the CBD and could see not much else but a dust cloud in the direction of the city centre. My younger daughter goes to school in the central city, and although at that stage it didn’t occur to me that whole buildings could have collapsed I was quite frightened. Fortunately I got hold of her on the phone right away. She was on the fifth floor of the building which contains her school and said she was alright.

Much of the city erupted into chaos as everybody was trying to get home. A ten minute drive from my older daughter’s school took two hours, involving a scramble over the collapsed South Brighton bridge ramps, ankle-deep sewage running across the road and wading through a swamp (normally a perfectly dry area) to get home. My wife, who walked into town to get my younger daughter and then back to her car, ended up borrowing cycles to get through, and arrived at about six that night, five hours after the quake had struck.

The thought of possibly coming back to an uninhabitable house triggered a sickish feeling in the pit of my stomach, and as I made my way home with my older daughter in tow we walked over the carpark of our local community centre, which featured sinkholes the size of large cannonballs. Mud ran freely down the driveways of some of the adjacent homes. Not a good sign. Arriving home the front door was jammed, the chimney had come down and the mess was incredible, but the overall damage was minor. Amazingly, we still had somewhere to live!
There was no power or water, of course, just a relentless barrage of aftershocks throughout the night, some of the epicentres within 1-2 kilometres of where we lived. The kids wanted to get out, saying they didn’t feel safe in Christchurch anymore. It’s hard to argue with that when the ground keeps shaking and you start thinking that this has happened twice already, what’s stopping it from striking again?

Many people did run, of course. We spent a couple of days with friends in Rangiora, where we were exposed to the depressing 24/7 news coverage of the event, which made it hard to gather up the courage to return to what was portrayed as essentially a pile of rubble contaminated with sewage. Coming back home, though, it wasn’t all that bad. Without electronic entertainment, and with the need to go and get water several times a day, we got to know our neighbours a lot better. We were blessed with some mild nights where we sat outside with others, sharing our stories.
We were without power for 14 days and without water for ten. A lot of our ‘trauma counselling’ was done in that time, simply by talking with neighbours. As I’ve since learned it is actually not a good idea to run away from an event like this, much less so with children. Routines and ‘normality’ help children and ourselves through it. Even without power and water, and frequently rocked by blasted aftershocks, it was a great comfort to be able to be at home.

Children couldn’t understand a lot of what was happening, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. In our own hunger for information, many parents would have made the mistake of inadvertently exposing their children to the constant bad news coverage that did nothing but instil fear in them – and us. For little children most of the world is still pretty new, and many things happen for the first time. By themselves they would not recognise the significance of an earthquake like this, and the scale of damage caused. Unless they had experienced some pretty serious stuff first-hand their trauma would come from the reaction of the adults around them, not from the event itself.

It’s a different story for older children, where attitudes of friends and knowledge they may have themselves start to play a big role. The ‘news’ that some crackpot ‘scientist’ had predicted another major earthquake for the 20th of March was widely discussed amongst the friends of my teenage daughters. Add to this a little age-typical mistrust about your parents’ reassurances and you have the recipe for paranoia.

Older children or youths may understand some of the science around it which, in the case of earthquakes, is no comfort at all. A new ‘SKIP’ resource advises that ‘children want to try and make sense of what is happening, and when they don’t know they use their imagination to fill the gaps, which can make things more frightening.’
Ironically, a situation like this calls for the much condemned male trait of bottling up your own feelings so you can get on with it. The same SKIP resource advises ‘Try to act calm even when you are not feeling that way – it will reassure your children’. How many more people would have left Christchurch in panic, how many more children traumatised if there hadn’t been people in the house who were able to keep their cool – on the outside, at least. Men are good at this stuff.

Of course, many people in Christchurch have lost their home and face a long period of insecurity. For the children it is best, if at all possible, to establish a new base, avoid moving around too much, and keeping them at the school or pre-school they are used to.

It should go without saying that this is not the time to try and ‘correct’ unusual or timid behaviour. Many Christchurch dads have reported especially clingy children, some of which are getting the privilege of sleeping in their parents’ bed for the first time in their lives (although many families moved to the living room floor for a period of time after the quake and while the power was out). You don’t spoil them in doing this.

Adults in Christchurch and their older children will probably keep on suffering from what is known here as ‘quakebrain’ for months to come: difficulty concentrating, getting into useless arguments, interrupted sleep for no particular reason. It’s okay to indulge in a little more leniency than we normally would.

The Family Court is being reviewed by the Ministry of Justice and a consultation paper is now out and open for public submissions. See here.

Dan Brown, a young father being supported by the Father & Child Trust, was interviewed on TV3 about the new “In Your Hands” DVD produced by Great Fathers.

Daniel Brown TV3 13th July 2010

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Father’s Mauri Ora Circle

Looking for support from other fathers?

Looking to lend your support to other fathers?

Just want somewhere where you can grow in confidence in your role as a father?

Maybe you are looking for a male only environment where you can talk with other fathers?

Then our Mauri Ora Father’s Circle may be just what you are looking for.

Meeting every Wednesday evening from 7:00 – 9:00 pm in the Community Office 3 at the Onehunga Community Centre , 83 Church Street, (next to the library) the Fathers’ Mauri Ora Circle, embodying the principles of emotional, physical, intellectual and spiritual wellbeing, is a safe place where together we can discuss any fathering issues and collectively strengthen our fathering abilities.

Wednesday evenings – 7-9pm downstairs in Community Office 3 at the Onehunga Community Centre.

Facilitated by our Support Worker, Brendon Smith, what is discussed is determined by those who are there. Recently we’ve talked about topics like

• the need to inform children as soon as possible in the event of a separation
• deciding on the best school for your child
• the role our dads play in modelling how we father our children
• what happens when your ex partner wants to move to another town with your child
• children and sport

to name just a few.

Children are welcome, though we may leave them in front of a TV with a tin of biscuits!

You are welcome to “just turn up” any Wednesday or if you would like more information feel free to call Brendon on 525 1690 or 021 892 980 or email him at auckland@fatherandchild.org.nz

The funding support of the Maungakiekie and Tamaki Community Boards (Auckland City Council) is gratefully acknowledged.

Recent discussion topics

Children Teach Parents To Eat Fruit

Kids have trumped their parents by showing that they actually like fruit and vegetables. Plus they understand the importance of eating them better than their parents do.

Research by Colmar-Brunton shows 93% of children understand that 5+ a day means to eat five or more servings of fruit or veges every day, yet only 68% of parents understand this message.

And while children eat fruit and veges mainly because their parents tell them to (75%), they also eat them for their taste and health benefits more than their parents do.

Responding to a question that allowed multiple answers, 68% of children said they ate fruit and veges to keep their bodies healthy (parents also 68%), 65% said they ate them because they liked the taste (parents 31%) and 57% said they ate them because they were good for them in general (parents 42%).

In a healthy hat-trick, more children also wanted fruit instead of less healthy snacks than parents realised.

When asked what they would prefer as snacks, 33% of children chose fruit over biscuits, chippies, chocolate or veges.

Only 29% of parents thought their children would choose fruit.