There’s been a bit of talk again how we’re missing out on statutory holidays and if the special days fall in the weekend, we should get Monday off. I’m totally against the idea. In fact I’ve decided to write to the Prime Minister to suggest he bans all holidays.
If even half of New Zealand felt like I did the week I had to go back to work after a summer break, we’re in serious trouble. If the psychological state I was in was multiplied by the New Zealand workforce, the nations psyche is in serious danger and that’s got to be bad for the government – especially in election year.
Holidays give you a taste of something unrealistic and unsustainable – a nirvana where we get to focus on our health and wellbeing and our families. We are almost always nice, thoughtful and without stress. We have enough sleep, we exercise and we set ourselves up workout regimes that are doomed to failure. We are creative, we write, we paint, we garden we have take time to cook. Surely all that lack of real productivity has got to be bad for the countries GDP.
Even worse when our credit card bill brings us back to the first realistic bump and we return to work, we spend the first few days drinking numerous amounts of coffee (that we made a New Year’s resolution not to spend so much money on this year) and then skip to alcohol by late afternoon for medicinal purposes only. Our work consists of pushing our inbox around like a child with a plate full of vegetables, eyes darting sideways for anywhere we can slip them without having to actually address them.
Weekends too should probably be banned. After washing, cleaning and carting the kids around sports fields, sometimes, just sometimes, a few spare hours in the weekend beckon us back toward the road to freedom.
So John Key, forget the sale of state assets – if you want a real election platform this is it – an end to annual leave. I’m sure he’ll buy it.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Bully Bashing
Last year I discovered that one of my children was the victim of bullying.
They didn’t tell me themselves – they were too embarrassed.
You would think the act of being bullied would make a child express immediate outrage. The kind of outrage I see when they are requested to eat vegetables, make their bed or hang up the bath mat. But bullying isn’t like that. It creeps up on you like a slow growth. Sometimes you think you just imagined it – until it happens again. Sometimes you think you’re going slightly mad. And all the time it eaks away at your self esteem - a bit like what the Paekakariki beach is doing to our seawall.
It broke my heart when I heard about the bullying, not just because it was nasty and unjustified, but because it was another one of life’s experiences and it wouldn’t be the last time they’d face it. Bullying and related activity come in many forms right through life as we adults all know.
The irony of my child’s plight was not lost on me when I knew what the Board of Trustees was dealing with at Paekakariki School. A number of complaints about the way past and present staff had allegedly been treated. Each complaint had to be thoroughly investigated, taking hundreds of hours of the board’s time. Some asked why these issues hadn’t come up before. Well it’s not that simple. To stand up to an issue when you feel like you’ve been regularly undermined is far from easy. Years ago as a fledgling journalist writing a feature on domestic violence, I interviewed numerous women who had been victims. Why didn’t they just walk away? Well, they said, the day after it happened life was back to normal. The only thing that was different was a feeling in your belly that it could happen again anytime soon. They said it was like walking on egg shells and, you thought, if you were really careful and kept light on your feet you could keep it at bay.
So I told my child what I knew about bullying. I told them that almost everyone experiences it at least once in their lives. I told them I told them that bullying can be caused by stress and that is probably inherent in all of us given the right mixture of circumstances. I said the best way, but a brave way, to deal with bullying is to stand up to it. But that too has its own consequences.
And the best we can do as parents who have all experienced bullying at least once along life’s rocky roads, can only do our best to stand up for our children, and in the case of Paekakariki, for the teachers too.
In the meantime, for a quick fix, I said. Find some blades of grass, name them after the bullies, then get the lawn mowere and deal to them! Works for me.
They didn’t tell me themselves – they were too embarrassed.
You would think the act of being bullied would make a child express immediate outrage. The kind of outrage I see when they are requested to eat vegetables, make their bed or hang up the bath mat. But bullying isn’t like that. It creeps up on you like a slow growth. Sometimes you think you just imagined it – until it happens again. Sometimes you think you’re going slightly mad. And all the time it eaks away at your self esteem - a bit like what the Paekakariki beach is doing to our seawall.
It broke my heart when I heard about the bullying, not just because it was nasty and unjustified, but because it was another one of life’s experiences and it wouldn’t be the last time they’d face it. Bullying and related activity come in many forms right through life as we adults all know.
The irony of my child’s plight was not lost on me when I knew what the Board of Trustees was dealing with at Paekakariki School. A number of complaints about the way past and present staff had allegedly been treated. Each complaint had to be thoroughly investigated, taking hundreds of hours of the board’s time. Some asked why these issues hadn’t come up before. Well it’s not that simple. To stand up to an issue when you feel like you’ve been regularly undermined is far from easy. Years ago as a fledgling journalist writing a feature on domestic violence, I interviewed numerous women who had been victims. Why didn’t they just walk away? Well, they said, the day after it happened life was back to normal. The only thing that was different was a feeling in your belly that it could happen again anytime soon. They said it was like walking on egg shells and, you thought, if you were really careful and kept light on your feet you could keep it at bay.
So I told my child what I knew about bullying. I told them that almost everyone experiences it at least once in their lives. I told them I told them that bullying can be caused by stress and that is probably inherent in all of us given the right mixture of circumstances. I said the best way, but a brave way, to deal with bullying is to stand up to it. But that too has its own consequences.
And the best we can do as parents who have all experienced bullying at least once along life’s rocky roads, can only do our best to stand up for our children, and in the case of Paekakariki, for the teachers too.
In the meantime, for a quick fix, I said. Find some blades of grass, name them after the bullies, then get the lawn mowere and deal to them! Works for me.
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