F&C manager Harald Breiding-Buss was on Radio NZ today (25 Nov), talking about parenting issues for separated fathers. See here for audio file.

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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Mauri Ora Father’s 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 do usually 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 022 697 7026 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

Parenting: Attention Span

By Harald Breiding-Buss

At a training session for a previous job, some five or so years ago, about learning and memory in pre-school children, the tutor made us memorise a sequence of unrelated numbers and then try to recall them.
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Young Musicians

Encouraging your child to learn an instrument is one thing—pushing them to perform on one quite another. But where is the boundary between bringing out a child’s natural talent and asking them to do something they may not really enjoy? Kevin Albertson thought about what he wants for his own son.
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Parenting: Babies and Movement

by Harald Breiding-Buss

Compared to all other mammals, human babies are exceptionally underdeveloped and helpless—so much so that it seems amazing that the human species has survived at all, what with our low reproduction rate and the kind of effort required to raise a child to maturity. There must be a pretty strong biological advantage that outweighs those drawbacks.

That advantage is the human propensity to learn, which is strongest in babies and toddlers. It is our underdeveloped brain at birth that gives us the ability to grow into the most diverse natural and social environments; no other mammal species managed to spread around the whole world on its own volition, being able to manage to survive in almost every ecosystem.

Babies are wired to learn about the environment they are being born into, and it is the parents who are doing the teaching, most of it without realising it.

The key to early learning is movement. Movement triggers those all-important brain connections, and it has a lot of more obvious effects as well: a baby that can move around can explore their environment much better than one that can’t, learning in the process. And it is the fine motor skills in baby’s hands that let them explore and manipulate objects.

But babies are born with neither the ability to move around or to hold an object in their hands, so the exposure to opportunities to move around, and things to explore, has a lot to do with how ‘natural’ you are with those physical skills for the rest of your life, and what your problem-solving abilities are going to look like.

A whole small industry has sprung up around baby movement. I remember taking my children to ‘kindy gym’ for 2-4 year olds, where they basically set up a little obstacle course with tunnels to crawl through and low benches to jump off from (remember the ‘motorbike landing’?). One theory holds that crawling is essential to make connections between the two hemispheres of the brain, and they advocate that babies crawl for at least 3,000 hours in total before moving on to walking.

All that creates quite a bit of performance pressure: A colleague once broke out into tears at a baby movement seminar after confessing that her kids had been ‘bum-shufflers’. Therefore, the Early Childhood Development experts with the Ministry of Education warn against ‘forced development’, ie pushing your baby beyond what they are ready for. At least one of them is highly skeptical even of the now widely promoted ‘tummy time’, believing this is not a natural position for babies to be in.
One thing is certain, however: whatever you do or don’t do has a very big impact on that ballooning brain of your baby. Getting conflicting advice in this area simply makes decision-making all the more nerve-racking.

For an average middle-class family there is very little danger of physically over-extending your baby. The opposite is generally the problem: babies are surrounded by toys within arms reach, providing little motivation to reach out further. There are baby rockers and other devices that will keep baby comfortable in a largely stationery position. Much of that has to do with attempting to keep the baby safe—it’s that very drive to learn and explore that causes a lot of accidents. So parents are told that unless you can give junior your full and undivided attention, baby needs to be put somewhere safe—and constricted.

Babies and toddlers are also often not given a suitable range of things to explore: toys for littlies tend to be made of plastic because of baby’s propensity to suck on everything they can get their hands on, but plastic is the material you are using least often to build or manipulate things with later in life. Plastic is hygienic—but otherwise pretty useless.

One of the advantages in helping babies and toddlers to build their physical skills is that it is so much fun for everyone involved. You’ll get lots of laughs and giggles when you play-fight, jump, roll on the floor or walk backwards together. It’s quality time at its best and can make for an excellent distraction tool as well for those times of the day when junior seems a bit grumpier.

In a lot of more working class families babies are stimulated far more and, generally, have more rapidly initial development. There is a lot more coming and going in those households, more men as well as women interacting with baby, fewer toys and gadgets and also usually less focus on safety. That exposes the youngsters to more risks, but also vastly increases their range of experiences.

One of the drawbacks of growing up in a busier environment like this is a much shorter attention span, which in our world is the biggest stumbling block to a decent career and gets you into all sorts of trouble. The key here is one-on-one time, with no radio or TV, where baby has the parents’ full attention for at least 15 minutes (more when older) at a time, and preferably several times a day.

So what about those ‘music and movement’, ’baby yoga’ and other classes. Do they deliver what they promise?

Probably not unless they complement what you are doing at home anyway. It is exceptionally difficult to try and bring out skills in your child that are not otherwise a part of your life, unless you consciously work on it several times every day. You are most likely to succeed if you do something that you yourself enjoy very much, because then it will become part of your daily life.

Next: Taking on Government Departments

How Old Do You Have to Be?

by Jonathan Young

Someone asked me the other day “when do you stop walking around in front of your kids in your underwear”.  The answer’s simple… “When either you, or they, feel uncomfortable”…. Or when you go outside.

I’ve done a bit of research on legal ages for things in New Zealand, and discovered that there’s a lot of conflicting information on the internet.  There are also many odd laws in New Zealand about what your kids can and can’t do. 

You can’t really do anything until you’re 14.  Oddly enough, the age that you can be left alone at home, is also the age that you’re supposedly responsible enough to look after other kids.  It’s also the age to buy fireworks.  Is that wise? 

Make sure you don’t kill anyone with the fireworks though, because you can be prosecuted for murder or manslaughter at 10. 

At ‘any age’ you can get information about contraception, get contraception, use contraception, and even have an abortion.  However, you can’t have sex until you’re 16. 

I guess there’s also a lot of “I didn’t do that when I was your age” going on.  I grew up with the impression that my mother was some kind of angel.  She was never naughty, never got told off, was never rude, always tidied her room etc. 

It was only when I was a little bit older that I started to wonder if all of these things were true… considering she was pregnant at 16. 

At 17 you can join the Army, Navy or Airforce.   Now obviously you’re not responsible enough to vote for another year, but you can shoot people with guns and tanks.  If you shoot someone and you’re not in the military, you can also be tried as an adult in district court (rather than youth court). 

Alcohol is a funny one.  At ‘any age’ you can be given alcohol by your parent or legal guardian at home, in most pubs, or pretty much anywhere else. 

You can also be served alcohol at a ‘private function’ at someone’s house.  This is sure to be the downfall of more than one 15th birthday party. 

18 is the magic age for most things.  As well as getting drunk in a pub without your mum or dad, getting addicted to cigarettes and voting; you can get a tattoo without anyone else’s consent.  This law needs to be changed!  Before anyone of any age gets a tattoo, they should consult with a psychic. 

I’ve met too many people with tattoos of somebody’s name who they’d rather forget.  You should NEVER get a tattoo of your favourite singer or rock band.  How many grown men can’t go swimming now because they’ve got a Kylie Minogue tattoo? 

We all remember our parents (or grand parents) hugging or kissing us at inappropriate times in front of inappropriate people. 

So at what age do you stop hugging or kissing your kids good-bye?  The answer to this is simple.  You don’t!  It merely changes from an exchange of emotion, to a threat or a punishment.

Legally, you can do pretty much anything at 20 (except adopt a child that isn’t related to you).  In reality, you should be 20 before you’re allowed a car stereo.

Nobody under the age of 25 should be allowed to comment on my jeans.  These people are always wrong.  One will say they’re too flared, one will say they’re too tight; one will say they’re too old fashioned, and another will say I’m too old to wear jeans like that. 

I’m wondering if evolution will eventually move humans hips lower so that they’re pants don’t fall down so often.

For more information on legal ages in New Zealand, check out www.cab.org.nz, but you might also want to google legal ages, because there’s lots of contradictory information out there.
 
 

Next: Parenting: Achievement

Parenting: Achievement

By Harald Breiding-Buss

There are few issues where parents’ opinions are as divided as over encouraging (or discouraging) competition and achievement in their children.

For some, competition is the root of all evil for children, especially when encouraged early in life. Things should be about the joy of taking part and having fun along the way, not about winning or losing.

Competitiveness, they would say, is the source of much grief and destroys friendly relationships between children.

For others, competition and personal achievement are the core to creating a grounded personality. Without achievement and competition, life becomes a meaningless string of ‘fun’ experiences, and older children especially are cast adrift by a hollow quest for the ultimate fun experience.

Schools are equally divided.

Our neighbourhood primary school runs with the motto ‘pride in achievement’, a statement many schools would find too bold. However, many schools not only have their own everyday uniforms, but special uniforms and equipment for sporting events.

One P.E. teacher at the school my children go to told me that he is reluctant to enter students into inter-school athletics at High School level, because the competition between schools is so fierce, and many hire highly professional coaches to make sure their students do well.

On the other hand there is an increasing number of ‘alternative’ schools who quite consciously opt out of a competition model in education in favour of a ‘cooperation’ model. Christchurch, for example, has ‘Tamariki’, ‘Discovery’ and Rudolf Steiner schools, all applying an alternative model of education.

A while ago I saw a bumper sticker proclaiming ‘a kid in sport stays out of court’.

That statement has statistics in its favour: very few youths having to stand before a judge for various misdemeanors are involved in sports clubs, or competitive sport in general. This seems to go for both, boys and girls. But what is behind this concept?

Is it just a matter of keeping them busy?

Competitions are actually great bonding exercises, and not just between the members of a team. Even in individual sports such as tennis many close friendships have been formed out of an initial desire to beat the other person.

Perhaps more importantly they are great family bonding experiences. You simply cannot help feeling proud if your kid has won something, as a member of a team or individually.

Kids will bask in that pride, and it is this moment of closeness and the great feeling that comes with it that will spurn them on to keep doing it. The disappointments, too, bring you closer.

Competition is often a part of family life as well. Video games are something where siblings often compete, or where children compete with their parents. I was genuinely shocked when my older daughter first beat me at some Playstation game, and it has been downhill from there.

Conveying pride in our children’s achievements includes some subtle messages, which quite possibly are responsible for that ‘grounding’ effect that proponents of competitiveness cite in their favour.

Most of all it shows our children that achievements are important to us.

It is important to us to be good at something, and it implies that being good at something makes us feel that we are useful members of society.

It is something that will be acknowledged by others, and others may come to us for advice about something we’re good at.

This is quite an essential part of a functioning community, and it embeds us in it. Even if you’re good at something that is not really of direct benefit to the community—such as sports—it gets acknowledged nevertheless.

And how often have you come home with your child after a sports game to announce to the rest of the family that ‘we won’ or ‘we lost’. It was not the All Blacks that lost vs France in the World Cup—it was us!

These things are obviously more important for older children than for younger ones. For pre-school children, competitiveness more often than not is bad news.

This is because young children are much more defined by their attachment to caregivers, which is an absolutely crucial component of their development.

If they feel they need to earn close moments with their parents through being better than another child, it will kill the emergence of traits such as altruism or empathy.

‘Community’ means nothing for a pre-schooler, whose world revolves around himself and his family.

Nevertheless, even pre-schoolers quickly cotton on to the idea of achievements, and dad especially has a lot to do with it. Dads tend to give praise a little less freely than mums, but often react rather exuberantly for really big achievements.

It seems to go against our grain as men to praise something that we don’t really think is that good for the sole purpose of making someone else feel good. After all, the time will come where that someone will have to be weaned from the idea that absolutely everything they do is ‘great’.

The Importance of Touch

Kiwi culture is a low-touch culture, according to the experts. But touch is vital for the wellbeing of young children. Brendon Smith didn’t need much convincing.

Eva Scherer + Brendon Smith at 'Toddlers Day Out'

Manning the Father & Child stall at the recent Toddlers Day Out in Waitakere, I was drawn to the stall of massage therapist Eva Scherer. We got to talk, and she told me that she has been in NZ for over ten years.

She has seen how we have a low touch culture, from remote farm upbringings or male stereotypes. I had already heard, with a grimace, how rugby thrived in early NZ, partly as body contact was otherwise rare.

So when Eva was telling me how kiwi fathers now are reluctant to touch their own children, let alone any others, I could relate.

She does admit exceptions, Eva noted that she often sees Kiwi Dads all over their kids, especially at pools and beaches. However, her belief is that too many kiwi children feel disconnected, partly at least because they don’t get enough touch, hug or massage.

Eva Scherer is the creator of the Child Connection organisation, a massage therapist and teacher.

Her touch programmes have been presented in Australia and Poland and her Children Massaging Children (CMC) programme won a Community Award for Excellence in 2004.

From her upbringing, in Poland, she had learned of how touch deprivation could be bad for children, emphasising that in Poland, people were touch informed and she had never contemplated the sort of situation she sees here in NZ, where many are touch deprived.

Her main mission is for all children’s right to closeness and belonging – an essential and basic factor for their life, health and wellbeing.

This is also known as “secure attachment” and is largely created by touch and other sensory stimulation during childhood.

Eva Scherer had heard about Father and Child’s involvement with teenage fathers and was keen to offer her assistance. She told me how in a recent workshop with many teenagers, they all walked in wearing their slouches, baggies and made little eye contact.

Once she closed the door, she asked them to pair off and one of each pair to lie down. As the ‘well of yearning’ opened up, she said their eyes lit up. After a simple, supervised massage they were all beaming with big smiles all around when they left.

Her Child Connection programmes start with ‘Discovery’ – for children aged 1-5 years, then ‘Children Massaging Children’ (CMC) – for ages 5 -12 years and ‘Safe Touch – Healthy Touch’ – for adolescents aged 12 – 16 years.

All her programmes are based on the same principles, using touch/massage processes and games to drive proper brain and nervous system development. Eva says this is important in creating emotionally and socially mature adults, who make better parents.

She quotes from eminent doctors about how the structure of the brain is genetic, but it develops by adapting to sensory, emotional and later abstract symbolic ‘experiences’.

During infancy and all through life, we need a multitude of interactive experiences to enable our complete development. The interactive stimulation and pleasure derived, help us to recognise the benefits of good decisions, and good options should cause pleasure.

Movement is said to be as crucial as nutrition, while touch, especially during infancy, is so important that this is a big factor in breast feeding, which along with all it’s maternal bonding benefits, is recommended for up to 2 ½ years by UN conventions.

Studies on blind children have shown that they develop normally if they have plenty of body contact and movement stimulation. Premature babies gained weight and were discharged quicker in a swinging bassinet then if only on a mattress.

It was claimed that some animals would rather have touch or feel fur than eat, while some can die or suffer brain damage from complete isolation, but the use of a surrogate mother who moves and touches can repair many such cases.

Expert Michael Mendizza says, ‘I prefer the term sensory deprivation to neglect or abuse. Abuse and neglect produce images of a wounded psyche, transient feelings that are easily dismissed. Sensory deprivation is more concrete – starvation, malnutrition, torture.

Are parents and the adult culture meeting nature’s long term expectations at each age and stage of a child’s development or not? That is the basic question.’

He likens the absence of critical stimulation to a bombardment of emotional junk food.

A Formula One race car team leader claimed that since the 1980s, when 2D computer screens replaced many young children’s back yards as play zones, kids with 3D problem solving or full spectrum cognitive and symbolic imaginations have been hard to find.

This is the far end of a spectrum, but it is understandable that stimulation is important, and touch via playing, occasional hugs or focused massage invokes all sorts of good feelings.

Not that Eva Scherer is the first to know this. In new age 1970’s rural areas, as well as cities, many social workers and counsellors recognised a need for touch and massage in treatment for mental issues.

Practitioners of Reiki, Shiatsu and Swedish massage were arriving in New Zealand, many actively engaged with doctors and health initiatives.

Eva’s vision is, however, one of the latest to be backed by recent research, through a project at Ebbett Park Primary School in Hawkes Bay by Jill Morgan. In May 2006 Jill researched the effects of the Children Massaging Children (CMC) programme on 140 pupils over a 17 week period. A control school was used in the study.

The following findings were made:

• Improved relationship with their peers
• Improved ability to do school work
• Improved relationship with their father
• Improved physical ability

Since 1997 Eva has been promoting and practicing her therapy in shopping malls, at accredited schools and in her therapeutic Massage clinics.

Eva hopes her programmes will grow on a national and international scale, helping to prevent child abuse, depression, suicide and violence, building healthier families and hopefully societies.

I know that whenever I lie down in front of my TV, arch my back like my physiotherapist has told me to, my children like to climb on top of me.

I have trained them, as they have grown, to kneel slowly up and down each side of my spine, squeeze my shoulders hard and knuckle my neck. The only reward they get is a massage for them, by me, and they love it.

So it seems, you can have all the junk food or TV in the world, but with touch, you get love.

Next: A Day in the Life of a Dad

Parenting: The Y-Factor

The tides of opinon on whether or not boys really are inherently different from girls (and if so, is it nature or social conditioning) have ebbed and flowed for the better part of 50 years now. For the last 10 there has been a proliferation of books saying that boys are different, and in a world where education and health are dominated by females, boys miss out in those areas for that reason. As for the girls, feminist Sandra Coney explains girls’ huge lead in education by saying that their natural superior smartness is simply shining through now that barriers are removed.

Regardless of what causes the differences between boys and girls, trends are undeniable and dealing with them as a parent is quite real. The danger is that we fall into the trap of thinking “she does that because she’s a girl” or “that’s girl’s stuff, a guy can’t understand it”, when we look at our daughters. It can also be a cop-out – let’s concentrate on our sons; they’re the ones needing the role models, right?

Like boys, girls are quite dependent on a close relationship with their (natural) fathers. It has been shown that this relationship is the most important for girls’ development of a healthy sexual identity. Even more than for boys, father absence in the early years predicts bad outcomes: higher risks of teenage pregnancy, suicide, low self-esteem and low self-assessed happiness and quality of life.

Nevertheless as a society we are putting greater emphasis on the father-son than on the father-daughter relationship. Popular literature emphasises the point—as a culture we love the romantic notion of a boy following in his father’s footsteps, and there isn’t quite a similar image for fathers and daughters, or even mothers and daughters.

Men’s groups, a growing trend in New Zealand, unfortunately also focus solely on boys for their ‘men’s retreats’ and other events that foster the idea of male bonding, and introducing sons to other adult men. However, as for girls and fathers, a boy’s sexual identity is very strongly affected by his relationship with his mother. The vibes that we get through secure non-sexual relationships with the other sex are possibly more important for the formation of our sexual identity than the relationship we have with the parent of the same sex.

If the groundwork has been laid, father-daughter relationships often come into their own in the teenage years, and can become extremely productive partnerships. World tennis ace Steffi Graf is one example of a young woman whose career was ‘managed’ by her father, and there are many other examples in sport. At a time when a girl is trying to step out of the shadow of her mother, she might find it much less threatening to listen and talk to her father. Boys go through the same thing, and during the teenage years those same-sex relationships within the household can start to resemble war zones.

For young children, parenting experts tend to advocate a child-driven approach. Meaning: look what your child does, or wants to do, and follow along. It is a good way to find your child’s natural aptitudes and preferences, but the key to a child’s learning is the relationship with the person the child is learning from. Boys and girls find joy in doing something together with dad, regardless of what it is, and a ‘child-driven’ approach should not stop a parent from occasionally introducing their own activities that they like to do.

For all children it is important that they get some one-on-one time with either parent. Some studies have shown that men’s interaction with young children changes significantly once mum leaves the room. It may be a lack of confidence or worries that a more assertive parenting approach may somehow undermine the mother, but it seems that men talk more and are generally more responsive when they are around their children by themselves. This is invaluable time for a child to get to know their dad as the human being he is rather than the role he plays.

Most of us can remember stories from our own childhood where we basked in our father’s pride—or felt downcast by his disappointment. This, too, applies to boys and girls and depending on their personalities they develop different strategies to get the former and avoid the latter.

It is common for children to avoid competition altogether because they do not want to disappoint a parent (although they may never phrase it like that). It is hard to hide disappointment completely. Most of us try to cover it up with positive words (“great effort” – “how wonderful that you took part in it”), and that is important even if your body language disagrees.

If that is the case in your relationship with your child, it is possible that your child has to try too hard to get positive acknowledgement from you. Quality time is the answer to that: let them feel that you love them as they are in those special moments, so they can take your pride (and otherwise) in their achievements the right way.

It’s a classic weak point for fathers. From day one we like to brag. It is a rare father who does not tell me that his 6 months old baby is already ‘months ahead’ of the other babies he sees. We’re prone to try to put some of our own ambitions onto our children.

That’s not entirely bad, but it needs to be underpinned by a relationship that is genuinely loving towards the child as a person. Combine the two and father and child are an unbeatable team.