The Editor's Blog

I am a recent convert to the wonders of technology. As the editor of Sunny Days it’s important that I keep up to date with news and events – especially those which pertain to parents. One of the best ways to do this is by scouring the internet for information and trends that I can follow up on for our readers.


Part of my job is also helping to maintain this website, as well as flying the Sunny Days flag whenever I can so that as many parents as possible in our region will know that they have this free resource at their fingertips. I use social media such as Facebook and Twitter to promote what we are doing and to maintain a direct line to our readers. I’m proud of Sunny Days and reader feedback is one of the highlights of my job.


In my personal life I am an avid film and television buff. On high rotation at our place at the moment are episodes of the brilliant US TV drama Mad Men. I also recently sat down to watch a much darker film which captures a similar point in time: Revolutionary Road with Kate Winslet. I love what these visual stories tell us about the lives of men and women – and especially their lives as parents – in the not-too-distant past.


But my point in all of this is that my passion for the 'screen world' – and it is a passion – makes it very hard when it comes to leading my children towards a life in which screentime is a balanced part of their day. I’m not a particular fan of the ‘do as I say, not as I do’ form of parenting and try to avoid it if I can. But, while I spend a minimum of seven hours a day in front of a screen - some of it in the presence of my children, I have found that I need to restrict my kids when it comes to their own viewing and gaming habits.


As members of the ‘i-generation’ my kids use screen technologies as easily as I used my roller skates at the same age. But it wasn’t always that way. When I first became a mum I had some very particular views about viewing habits for my little ones. The TV would never be a babysitter; my children would only watch educational or enriching programs, and the time spent watching them would be extremely limited. At that stage I didn’t know how to send email so I hadn’t even factored in computer usage. And Playstation and Nintendo devices would cross our threshold over my dead body.


Oh, how far I have tumbled. I don’t know how it started. Possibly having two babies 16 months apart had something to do with it. There were days when I was home alone with two toddlers when I really, really needed a half hour relief from the relentlessness of their demands.


At first it was just ABC Kids. But, when we relinquish our principals we seem to do it incrementally – which is far kinder than suddenly catapulting from your high horse at breakneck speed. And so here I am today with a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old who are ardent admirers of a whole range of visual entertainments delivered via screens large and small.


One of the first stages in my (and their) journey to TV Land was when I acquiesced to my husband’s view that watching Spiderman would not hurt our son. After researching the issue for my first ever contribution to Sunny Days and finding that my long held views regarding hero narratives were not as black and white as I first imagined, I found that I was much more willing to loosen my hold on my kids.


And the discovery of social commentator and academic, Catherine Lumby, sealed the deal. In 2006, Lumby (with Duncan Fine) wrote a book called Why TV Is Good For Kids which suggested that, "TV, pop culture, toys and technology will not make your children a) fat, b) violent, or c) stupid". Being a fan of popular culture myself, it was an argument that resonated with me immediately. I stopped worrying about the kids and TV and pretty much gave them carte blanche over the remote. (Which, I might add, is not exactly what Ms Lumby recommends).

I tried to stay strong in my decision to allow my children to partake of pop culture. I staved off possible guilt by teaching them about the function of advertising and capitalist consumer culture; I coached them in ways to be savvy in the face of a mass media onslaught and I tried, as much as I could, not to give in to pester power or to peer influences which lead them to thinking that they constantly need the Next Big Thing.

Oh how clever I was, laughing in the face of common sense and extensive research which suggests that responsible parents limit their kids' TV viewing to a maximum of an hour a day. But recently, whenever I have happened across such research I have tried to ignore my maternal red flag, my guilty little secret. I knew that my children’s viewing exceeded this recommended limit, but I was always too scared to crunch the numbers and find out by exactly how much.

But my comeuppance has been a long time in the making – heralded as it was the day my son said to me, "Mum would you like a piece of gum? Now with a bonus free tattoo." Oops. That can’t be good.


And there were other warning signs. I was finding that my children, particularly my son, were having emotional outbursts when asked to stop watching TV or playing on the computer which would sometimes last long enough for me to lose my temper and generally upset the harmony in our home. One of my online friends explained how visual media stimulate the frontal lobe and may be responsible for my son’s emotional outbursts when he has overdone his viewing for the day. In our house we don’t need scientific research to prove that fact – we can see it for ourselves.


My instinct told me that I would need to implement something more than the ad hoc approach we had going. So, with the kids and their dad, we decided we would make a list of Screentime Rules.


I hadn’t counted on the list becoming quite so convoluted with clauses and sub-clauses and special conditions for sick days and holidays and weekends, and the confiscation of hand-held gaming devices (or the more common threat of ‘smashing them to a thousand pieces’) or trade-offs where an hour of outside play can earn 15 minutes of screentime or discussions about what chores around the house are non-transferrable for screentime… Man, it was complicated.


But it’s working.


In its most basic form the kids are allowed a half hour on school days which may be used on any screen they like.


They can have an hour each weekend day, although this is flexible. After all, if we want to watch a movie together as a family that’s usually an hour and a half.


Oh, and I have also made an allowance for extra time on SingStar. Well, that’s music and that’s different.


Wondering where other mums and dads stood when it came to screentime I had a chat with some of the parents in my online communities. I found that lots of parents have very strong and definite views on screentime for their kids. Lots of kids are watching just a couple of hours per week. One mum even told me that her family does not have a television at all. I am intrigued by this choice and sometimes wish I had tried it with my family.


Some parents (like me) admitted that restricting screentime was a battle, especially as the kids got older.


But, while many of us differed in our approach or our final choices, we are all mindful of what our children are watching or engaging with, and how much time they spend doing it. And, as I often say, intentional parenting - being a mum or dad who takes time to consider the choices made with regard to our kids - is my favourite kind.


As a fan of visual entertainment as well as technology and the online world, I don’t think we will ever be a screen-free family. And, as a friend reminded me, it’s important to stay flexible – especially when it comes to “rainy days, sick days and heatwaves.” Oh indeed!


But these days I am feeling much more in control of my children and their viewing habits. And I love watching them reconnect with other childhood joys now that they have all this new free time. Lego is big for us right now. Long discarded books are getting a rerun. The backyard has regained its appeal. Monopoly, card-games – yep, we’re becoming one for those families. And I kinda like it.


Do you limit your kids' TV viewing? How do you implement restricted screentime at your place?



Some links on the topic that you might like:


http://www.smh.com.au/national/its-time-to-tune-into-big-screen-dilemma-20091114-ifj5.html

http://sunnymummyaus.blogspot.com/2010/02/tv-free.html

http://www.youngmedia.org.au/

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So, The Sunday Telegraph has discovered that there is a new 'witching hour' for mums of school-aged children. Well I couldn't agree with them more. In fact, I wrote about it on my Web Child blog eight months ago.

Now, I know it's a few days until most of our kids return to school so I don't want to thrust any of our readers into a premature nightmare, but perhaps my cautionary tale will actually help you to be a little more organised once that first day arrives. I know I'm going to try my darnedest to have the uniforms ironed the night before. Wish me luck.

Double, Double Toil And Trouble

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I’m just back from my summer holiday - the necessary punctuation mark at the end of a busy year - my first full one as editor of Sunny Days.

This is a job I love. I love the community which we are gradually building together. I love preparing our pages each month (right now we’re getting our February Back To School issue ready - and it’s looking good) and I love immersing myself in the puzzling, exasperating and thrilling world of parenting.

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It's that time of year again. The time when, in the aftermath of an indulgent silly season, we make ridiculous promises about the changes we are going to make to our daily lives. But for parents, pie-in-the-sky idealism is never a once-a-year proposition. Sometimes we need the promise of better times ahead just to get us through -whether through the crying-baby sleepless nights, the toddler tantrum days, the newly-discovered moods of our usually sweet-natured pre-teen or simply through the times when we know we have not reached the parenting bar we have set for ourselves.

It's something I didn’t bargain for in my pre-parent days - the number of resolutions I would make. I’m talking daily resolutions; promises to myself every night as I go to sleep that I will try to do things differently the next day. So there’s nothing new about the following list. But I guess now is as good a time as any to put into writing the areas in which I aim to do better this year.

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It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Well around our place, at least, it’s beginning to look a lot like our own particular ramshackle brand of festive frivolity. And, I’m telling you, it aint nothin’ like a department store catalogue!

I have always hankered after a Christmas which resembles one of those gorgeous glossy delights which fill the letterbox at this time of year. I’m talking about the deluxe edition – the stapled catalogue, with the wide format pages and the premium models of a happy family. You know the ones. Visions splendid of outrageously relaxed looking mums and dads in casual but classy white outfits accompanied by elegant silver-haired grandparents who smile indulgently at gorgeous grandkids happily playing with a colour co-ordinated pile of gifts. It’s already sounding ridiculous isn’t it? But I love this image of Christmas. I go bananas for pictures of fabulously indulgent table settings resplendent with artfully arranged place mats, stylishly quirky centrepieces and glistening silverware. I want it all. But I know I’m not getting it – not this year anyway.

And please, don’t tell me it’s because this is an unrealistic version of Christmas - my best friend has one every year. Sharon is incredibly stylish with an impeccable sense of taste and originality. Her gifts are always picture book perfect and her decorations immaculate. She puts a lot of planning into the aesthetic appeal of the holiday season. She thought of a fuchsia and orange theme before the major retailers. She understands why blue and silver works so much better than red and gold. She knows how to offset a beautiful bon bon with a potted Poinsettia. And she ties a ribbon like a pro. She’s amazing.

I always thought my problem was that I didn’t have the budget for expensive decorations. When we were first married we had a wonky hand-me-down tree which came from my mum. I threw a bit of tinsel over it and called it Christmas. But, in the sales a couple of years ago I bought a fancy-pants, expensive tree. Unfortunately it is this exact tree which has made me realise that it’s not my budget which is the problem but my total lack of style.

Two weeks ago was our tree decorating day. Indy and Levi were so excited. “Whose turn is it to put the angel on the top?” they both wanted to know. Each year I promise myself that I will remember but I never do. So we had tears before the box was even opened. But, on seeing the glittery bounty they both settled down. There was so much stuff one angel didn’t matter. They threw themselves into the task with festive abandon. There were silver shoe ornaments from my Manolo Blahnik phase, red butterflies from my Mariah Carey moment, traditional golden balls from the year I thought I would try retro and all manner of weird and wonderful documents of Christmases past - including the grotesque nativity scene I bought from a discount store when Indy was a baby and we were in our new (for us) but humble little home. I think I was feeling a pretty strong kinship with Jesus’ mum that year.

And, yes, I know I’m supposed to say that the best ones are the little cardboard bells, santas and reindeer – messily cut out and painted by my two, long-gone toddlers who are now growing so big. And yes, I’d like to write something poignant about the nostalgic significance of this Christmas time capsule that sits on top of my wardrobe for most of the year. But I can’t help feeling that, if my best friend and I weren’t so insanely busy I’d turf the lot of it and ask her to do me a Christmas Makeover.

Or would I?

What does your Christmas look like?

Sunny Days Magazine would like to wish a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of our readers. We hope you have a restful and energising holiday season and we look forward to seeing you all again in 2010.

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As way of sharing some smiles this holiday season I simply must pass on something which I grabbed from my Twitter feed this morning.

There are lots of great mums and dads in my Twitter community and it's here that we share the minutiae of our parenting life. Maybe it's the funny thing our little one said, or the tantrum they threw or the small achievements they make. Sometimes we talk about how tired we are, what we're having for dinner, how the whole family has the 'flu, how the parent/teacher interview wasn't half as bad as we thought. It might sound mundane when it's written down like that but aren't these little things the threads which make the fabric out of which we create our lives? And aren't these the exact things that we talk about in real life anyway. I know I chat with the parents in my real-life circle about how cheeky the kids are getting, how my husband always leaves just one unwashed item when he does the dishes and how hard it is to get white school shirts really white - no matter how much Napisan soaking you do.

What I have found through Twitter is that parenting and kids are amazing equalisers. I don't know the life circumstances of many of my 'tweeps" (Twitter friends) but when we chat about our experiences as a parent, most differences don't seem to matter. And it looks as if some filmakers have hit on the exact same idea with a film due for release soon. You can see the trailer for Babies here (which came to me via @An_Idle_Dad).

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My seven-year-old son received his first Christmas card yesterday and FINALLY it feels like Christmas. I remember the excitement I got as a kid when people started handing out cards or indeed when I handed out my own. Should I write ‘love from’ to the boy I like? Who should I give the ‘best’ card - the one with the cute teddy bear in a Santa hat - to?  These days some kids even give out cards with little candy canes attached. It's all part of the way kids get into the spirit. But for me it takes a little more than that.

It is usually around November that my incredibly organised sister who does her Christmas shopping in May people begin asking the inevitable question - “So, started your Christmas shopping yet?” My daughter has a birthday at the end of November so I always tell everyone that I can’t even think about Christmas until I have her party out of the way. But Indy’s birthday has been and gone and now it’s time to get festive.

As a child the tradition in our house was that the Christmas Tree went up on December 1st. It’s something I’ve carried over into my own family. So today, after school, we’ll drag down the tree from on top of my wardrobe and put it up together. I can guarantee a couple of things - One: There will be a variety of ‘sweet’ hand-made tree ornaments which I have learned to love because they are reminders of Christmases Past. The one the kids made when they were three and four and I took them to a craft session at our local library; the first one they each made in Kinder; the ones they made on a boring December afternoon last year. And Two: We will forget whose turn it is to place the angel at the top of the tree. Every year we think we will remember so WE NEVER WRITE IT DOWN. We really should. Because after 365 school days, holidays, birthdays, fun days, bad days, sad days and all the other kinds of days which make up life in a family with kids who could ever remember what we did for a brief second last December 1st? And so the kids will argue and I'll end up doing it myself. Ahhh – tradition.

December 1st is a significant day on the Christmas calendar for another reason: the calendar itself - the Advent or countdown calendar that is. My son gets inordinately excited about the prospect of having chocolate before breakfast for twenty-four days of the year. Last night he fairly skipped to bed in anticipation and this morning I had none of the usual GET-OUT-OF-BED angst as he leaped from his slumber and straight to his chocolate stash. Yep, it’s a silly season.

But I think I like the silliness - a time to relax the rules and do things differently.

The ancient Greeks and Romans are known for their Dionysian/Bacchanalian celebrations. “Dionysus was often seen as the god of everything uncivilized, of the innate wildness of humanity… The Dionysia was probably a time to let out their inhibitions through highly emotional tragedies or irreverent comedies.” Taking the spirit of letting one’s hair down even further came with the Bacchanalia. “Bacchanalia were wild and mystic festivals of the Roman god Bacchus. It has since come to describe any form of drunken revelry.” (Wikipedia)

While it’s nice to think we are marginally more civilised than the ancients (but don’t we all have an Uncle Harold who would give Bacchus a run for his money?) I do think the theory that we all need a break from the constraints of everyday life is a fabulous one. For me that means time to relax, to read summer novels, to while away hours sitting on the deck with the kids. To forget about bedtimes and homework and uniforms and early mornings. I love it.

And now, thanks to a lovely little card with a snowman on it, I am finally in a festive mood.

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Last week I had the pleasure of heading out on the road with one of the Sunny Days teamsters – the lovely Annya. Together we went to visit some of the council facilities which provide activities for kids and parents in our region. We visited Carol at the Newcastle Regional Library, Fiona and Jo at The Swansea Library and Justin at the Lake Macquarie Art Gallery. They all welcomed us warmly.

One of the main reasons we were popping in was to let them know about our magazine and website events calendars which are quickly becoming one of Newcastle and the Central Coast’s easy references for parents who ask, ‘What can we do with the kids?’

Each month we trawl the internet looking for activities and events which are suitable for kids and families, but there is so much going on and sometimes we might miss an event or two. Meeting up with these great local folk gave us a chance to let them know that we are happy to provide listings of their events – especially with the Christmas school holidays not too far away.

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The media has been abuzz this week with talk about the link between magazines and negative body image and self-esteem in girls and women. The debate has been heated with passionate assertions on both sides. Some people believe that the cumulative effect of unrealistic images is definitely detrimental while others are of the ‘just don’t read magazines’ persuasion.  You can read just a little of the media coverage here,  here and here.

I even dipped my toe into the fray with a piece on The Punch last week where I bemoaned the pressure I feel about aging naturally. One of the people commenting on my piece asked, “What does your magazine do about body image for mums?” I have to admit I was a little thrown by the question as I don’t remember ever putting into place any kind of ‘initiative’ to deal with body image. We have never published a story about how mums feel about the issue and I have never blogged about it. So I had to wonder: am I part of the problem?

As I reflected on what I had been asked, I realised that, while we may not appear to have done anything to overtly address the issue, perhaps the Sunny Days ethos deals intrinsically with unrealistic representations of motherhood. I have been in this role for just over a year now and in that time we have made a few changes to Sunny Days – some have worked, some haven’t. But I think we are really starting to find our voice. And I hope my own personal desire for honesty and realistic media representations has informed some of what we do.

For example, we have made an effort to take celebrity mums off our pages and replace them with real mums and their real stories. I’m not saying that parents who are well-known because of their profession do not have interesting things to say about parenting - I know that many of them do- but with the limited space we have I feel happier dedicating our stories to local parents who also have interesting things to say about parenting. I guess my main objective is to create a magazine where our readers can see themselves reflected on our pages in an honest and empowering way - not in a way which will make them doubt themselves as parents and indeed as women and men. Such empowerment doesn’t always come from reading about someone whose very lifestyle is the antithesis of your own. Yes, Madonna may have well-behaved bilingual children and a hard-line policy when it comes to watching TV but such admissions usually evoke, at the very least, a sigh from other parents who don’t have the resources/help of a superstar.

The other thing I always take into account when planning Sunny Days is the voice of fathers. Newcastle University has an amazing research team at the Family Action Centre which has done, and is doing, groundbreaking work in their ‘Fathers’ program (to say nothing of their other initiatives for families). Being in close proximity to these guys makes me very aware of the need to ensure dads are given equal opportunity to let us know what it means to be a father. I jump at the chance to interview or hear the voice of dads. It’s just another way I hope to reflect the real experience of parenting.

When it comes to the debate about the influence of magazines over readers I believe that the media does affect the way we think. But I also believe it’s just one in a whole range of societal and cultural issues which influence a person. Role models and education are two of the most powerful ways a child is shaped - and as parents these fall firmly in our sphere of influence. We can educate our kids about the nature of the media and advertising, and we can model behaviour which we hope to see in our children. Having said that, it is also important to note that not all kids have access to both of these things. This is why I think that there comes a time when other social institutions - such as the media - must acknowledge their position and address the negative issues which may arise from it. Yes, we are all responsible for ourselves but in a humanitarian society it’s kind of nice to keep an eye out for others too.

What can Sunny Days do to ensure that we are accurately representing our readers’ real life experiences of parenting?

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A leading obstetrician has said that having dads in the birthing suite may lead to longer and more stressful labours. I think it's a very personal decision but this is how it went down for me and my husband when I had our babies.

My husband was not present at the birth of either of our two children. By ‘birth’ I mean the actual moment each child exited my person. Or, for the less euphemistic, he did not watch our kids’ heads emerge from my… no, I’m sorry, I’m a euphemistic kinda gal.

“Why not?” I hear you ask. Well, no, he was not a military man on a tour of duty at the far reaches of the globe while I earned the Victoria Cross for birthing. And no, he was not on a movie set in an exotic foreign clime with a webcam recording the action as I lovingly labored with our offspring.

He was there with me in the birthing suite – helping me get in and out of the spa; holding the nitrous oxide nozzle in my mouth; reading week-old newspapers and dozing in the armchair. But when the crucial moment approached he made himself scarce.

I don’t really remember when or why we decided that he might not stick around for the finale but it was definitely a mutual decision. I don’t think I’m a prude. I’ve had medical students present at a pap smear. I’ve sunbathed topless in Greece. I’m not ‘too posh to push’. But I may be too posh to let someone I love watch. I just don’t feel at my most fabulous when I’m grunting and groaning. Vanity perhaps? More than likely.

Of course, most people were shocked when we told them my husband was not going to be a spectator. “Oh, it’s a beautiful miracle. You have to be there,” they declared en masse.

We held firm and before long we felt the rumble of an underground swell of support. A friend furtively confided to my husband that he had been pressured into being present at his son’s birth. Not wishing to go against the flow of popular opinion – and risk the wrath of his wife – he acquiesced. His wife needed an episiotomy and the friend admitted, with a rather haunted look in his eyes, that, for him, the defining memory of the experience is the sound of flesh being cut.

I know it’s very un-pc to admit it but maybe some men are not equipped to deal with the nuts and bolts end of a pregnancy. And, in the same way, not every woman is of the ‘share-everything’ variety.

I remember being about 20 hours into my second labor and having just received a begged-for shot of pethidine. As I turned my head to the side of the bed in order to vomit elegantly into my hair, I spotted a pair of familiar shoes about to step through the doorway.

“If that’s my husband,” I said in my best imitation of Linda Blair in The Exorcist, “tell him to GET OUT.”

The fact that another man in a white coat would soon place his hand inside my body to break my waters really didn’t matter – after all, I didn’t have to look him in the eye over breakfast for the rest of my life.

My husband and I are definitely in the unfashionable minority and we would never suggest a retro conversion to days of yore when dads were relegated to the waiting room. But the word ‘choice’ comes to mind. Should being present at the birth be an option rather than an expectation?

In the months after our kids were born my husband was occasionally made to feel as if he had somehow missed out on something. But I believe there may be some confusion between watching the birth of your child and the first time you actually see your child. Although my husband first saw our kids as they were being weighed and checked he could not have been any more blown away had he seen them two minutes earlier. The look in his eyes merely confirmed the “Can you believe what we did?” awe which was spilling out of me.

He missed out on nothing.

Was your partner with you when you gave birth? Are you both happy you made that choice?

(This blog was originally published on Web Child in June 2008)

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