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Corsets, coolness, caps, and cosmetic surgery

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A few days ago when my son, my husband, and I were having breakfast, the conversation turned to fainting, and from there to corsets. (What, you’re not talking about things like that at breakfast? Oh, you’re not talking at breakfast. Well, that’s the only meal we always eat together.) Let me explain: my son had been feeling a bit dizzy lately because it was very hot and humid, he has been growing fast, and so he started to ask me about feeling dizzy and fainting. My husband said that women used to faint all the time, and I said that was because of corsets. After my son had listened to my automatic lecture about the importance of drinking enough water he asked, “What’s a corset?” We tried to explain. He was puzzled, why would somebody want to wear something like that? Well, it all comes down to coolness, I said. “It’s like when you’d rather get heatstroke than wear the sun-hat you don’t like because your “cool” baseball cap is in the wash.” He wasn’t really convinced. (He wore his hat that day, though. After we had “talked it cool” by comparing it to a cowboy hat and such.)

Still, he couldn’t get over the fact that women would wear something as uncomfortable as that, something that makes you almost unable to breathe. My next thought was, “Today’s women would never do that!” But then I thought of high heels. Shoes that make your feet hurt, and your back, and your knees, and your hips, and you can’t even walk in them. And then – I thought of cosmetic surgery. And made the mistake of talking about that as well. Have you ever tried to explain to your kindergardener why some women want to put plastic bags into their body? Because they think it looks pretty?

Of course, I couldn’t really explain it to him because I don’t understand it myself. I do understand not feeling pretty, I understand not being content with the way I look (though I wish I couldn’t). But pay a fortune to have surgery that isn’t really necessary? And where do you stop, then? When you look like a Barbie doll? When you have grown so old that your heart doesn’t take it anymore?

Cosmetic surgery is on the rise, and I sense a paradigm shift that makes it more “normal”. Younger and younger women are thinking about it, and having it, even at an age where their bodies aren’t yet finished.

I’m really worried about a lifestyle where we are defined by our looks. Where we try to look like the ideal 18-year-old until we die.

I’m also very worried that something like cosmetic surgery seems to be much more available these days. Until not that long ago, in Germany, cosmetic surgery was only for people who really needed it. People with horrible scars and such. Nowadays it’s something that you just pay for. Don’t like your nose? Snip.

I’d love to be able to tell my son that people have evolved since the days of the corset but it seems they haven’t.

(And, please, don’t forget to send your links for the Just Post roundtable. My e-mail address is creativemother AT web DOT de.)

Creativity when having children

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I just bought a new book.

I know, how unusual, and I even read it, and read it with much pleasure. It’s called “the creative family” by Amanda Blake Soule and with that title of course I had to have it. Also I love Amanda’s blog, I find it very soothing and positive and inspirational and it’s the same with the book. So before you read anything else you have to keep in mind that I really love the book, am about to read it for the second time in a row and just went out to get embroidery supplies to embroider some of my son’s drawing onto cloth even though I never liked embroidery before. I will make quite a few of her projects and am looking forward to do some “family drawing time” in the future. There was only one thing in the whole book that didn’t sit right with me and that started with the following paragraph from the introduction:

Given the creative nature of children, it is no coincidence that so many of us are led to seek a more creative life in their presence. Either an old creative passion or pursuit that has been forgotten is internally churned up, or we suddenly feel a need for something else in our lives when we’ve never considered ourselves creative before. Being around even the youngest children – and the purity of their rich creative energy – brings out our need for that same innovative spirit. They inspire us not only to nurture and embrace all of who they are, but to nurture and embrace our own creative selves as well.

(from “The Creative Family”, p. 2)

I know that my situation before having a child was quite different from hers in that I already was an artist then. I wasn’t exactly lacking imagination or creative spirit, only energy and sometimes time to make music, or write, or craft. Then I got pregnant and tired all the time and tried to record vocals for my husband’s CD while being out of breath, tried to help him mix the CD while being extremely sensitive to loud noises (and music), then had a baby, and was even more tired all the time while trying to parent, teach, and still make music on the side while helping my husband with his next CD, recording vocals during naptime, and once with a baby on my hip (oh no, on his hip, but in the same room, and it even kept quiet). So, while I always encourage people to be creative and while I have even written a series of posts about how to be creative when you don’t have the time, resources, or space for it there are several things about having children that don’t foster creativity for me.

Before I dive into list-making though I have to tell you that I really love my son and really think that he makes my life richer. He is a very creative and imaginative person. He’s fun to be with. So this is not about him, it’s about the daily things that come with having children.

  1. I’m tired. When I’m tired my body wants me to sleep, or eat and rest, not to spend energy making art.
  2. I have much less time than when I didn’t have a child even though I teach less. I have to spend a lot of time caring for my son or attending to household chores that didn’t exist before. For example ever since I returned from the hospital after his birth our laundry has been triple the amount than before.
  3. I’m being interrupted constantly. It’s much harder to find time to hear myself think.
  4. After talking with him for more than ten minutes I feel as if my brain is dripping out of my ears. Now, don’t get me wrong, he is an intelligent and entertaining human being, it’s only that after being talked at for an hour about robots, or building a submarine in the backyard, or going to the moon with his stuffed bunny in a LEGO rocket I usually need about thirty minutes of quiet time on my own to feel like I have any mental capacity at all.
  5. There is so much more organizational detail to attend to that my mind gets constantly drawn towards things like bringing money to kindergarten for the field trip, organizing baby sitting, searching for his rain pants, remembering that he had his rain pants with him when he went to that birthday party three weeks ago, asking the mother of his friend where his rain pants are, searching again because that other mother said her husband had dropped the pants off at our place, remembering while her husband might be sure that he did that I haven’t set eyes on the pants since my son left for the birthday party, making a note on my to-do-list to buy new rain pants at the second hand store, actual remember the rain pants when I’m near the store, go in, look for pants in his size, not finding any, make another note for another day, finally after three attempts get new rain pants, only to have him lose them at kindergarten the following week, start over. – And that was only one thing. And one child.
  6. Did I mention that I’m tired? Before I had a child when I stayed up late I just slept in the next day and restored my energy. Nowadays if I stay up late I have to pay for it for three days straight.

These things don’t make being creative impossible but it’s much harder. Even on weekends there is never a feeling of “open end”. Creativity has to be pressed into whatever slice of time is available. And for me that is partly the reason that most of my creativity these days comes out in knitting and blog posts, and there are no new songs written by me. That’s not to say that I can’t be creative with my son around but I have to say that I find it hard.

And I have found that there are different degrees of creativity for me. Things like knitting or sewing other people’s patterns, while fun, don’t fulfill my creative urge adequately (and neither would designing my own patterns, I tried). Writing blog posts is okay but writing fiction is better. Practicing guitar and playing other people’s songs is okay, improvising is better, and writing my own songs is best. But writing my own songs or writing fiction is neither “fun” nor relaxing for me. It’s hard and takes a lot of energy. I tried to find a way to make this easier but even when everything flows perfectly afterwards I feel like I have climbed a hill. And also my mind is entirely elsewhere. My son doesn’t like this. Nobody likes it when his mother has this far-away look on her face and doesn’t really pay attention.

The creativity Amanda talks about in her book is mostly the crafting type. And in the book there are mostly projects you can do with your children, which I love. But that’s just it. I can sit next to my son and knit, even while he plays or draws or even knits himself. (I’m so proud of him, he has knitted all of two rows on a scarf for his teddy bear. Of course after that he lost interest again.) Sometimes, very rarely, I’ll even play the guitar a little or sing while he’s with me but I can’t do more than that. Creating art requires your full attention and your child does too. Which is why even Amanda does most of her book writing and serious embroidery and sewing at night after her children have gone to bed.

Please understand that I am not saying anything against her or her book, in fact I strongly recommend buying it, it is lovely and very inspirational. That paragraph I quoted was only the starting point for me to say something that has been on my mind for a long time (and on my husband’s even longer). I find that I am not alone in this. I see a lot of musicians who used to practice for hours every day spending their evenings slumping in front of TV these days because they feel too brain dead after a day with their children. I also see people picking up something new through their children’s activities like the mother who started playing the guitar when her daughter didn’t want to any longer and who is now learning something she always wanted.

So, what’s your experience? Are you more creative or less since you’ve had children? (Of course, comments are open for people without children too…

stifling the urge to learn

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I’ve been thinking a lot about schools and learning the past days. It all began with the question of whether our son should be starting elementary school early (that would be this fall) or regularly a year later. I had been thinking about this already last year. In all the thinking and talking to kindergarten teachers (“Better wait.”) and the pediatrician (“But of course he has to start school this fall!”) I got totally emotional and nervous. And I wondered why. Because, truth to be told, I don’t think that it really will make much of a difference for our son and both ways would be sound. And, as much as we can tell so far, he probably will do well in elementary school. Either way.

I only realized why I got all worked up about this when I went to look at a nearby Montessori school. I entered the classroom, I saw the teachers, I heard their presentation and thought, “That’s how school is supposed to be!” And I realized how much I had suffered as a child in school because I had to learn so slowly. I didn’t get top grades but basically I just sat there, made an attentive-looking face and thought of something else.

I’d like my son to have the chance to learn as fast or slow as he needs to.

The other thing that has me all worked up is the Bavarian school system. When I studied music education I learned a lot about the various school systems in the different parts of Germany. When my husband and I got married, and when I briefly worked as a music teacher in a Bavarian school, I told my husband that we had to move somewhere else in case we had children so that they didn’t have to go to school here.

All in all it’s a jumbled mess of reformed reforms, of decision made hastily and then altered because it all didn’t work. That’s possibly true of most institutions but the Bavarian school system is especially prone to promote only a few elite students and leave the rest behind.

There are only very few students who still love knowledge and learning after leaving school even if they have been successful there. I can see it right now at kindergarten level when dozens of people tell my son that he should be glad to still be in kindergarten because he won’t be having any time for playing anymore once he’ll start elementary school. (Which is crap by the way, school’s from 8 to 1 and they don’t have much homework the first two or three years.) I see it in a kindergarten teacher telling another parent – while I and our two children were standing nearby – that it’s a shame, the things first graders have to do these days in schools, some of the lessons were too hard even for the kindergarten teacher!

And then, in third grade, it gets worse because then the children are pressured to get good grades otherwise their chances of getting access to a college or university education later in life will be minimal. (Really.) And if they get top grades and get admitted to the Gymnasium the fun only begins. With the recent reform of the system joy of learning and knowledge has a very hard time in school today. “Learning” is again used as a synonym for “cramming as much facts in your head as it can hold until the next test and then forgetting all about it”. Learning is considered to be hard, to be something one only does when forced to, something that isn’t fun for sure. And it’s not as if the students were taught how to learn, it seems as if they just get fact after fact dumped on them, without any strategies of how to deal with that.

I, on the other hand, still believe that learning is fun, that it’s something that occurs naturally, and especially that children are eager to learn as much as they possibly can. Just like Maria Montessori did.

In order to have our son visit a Montessori school we’d have to pay about 350 € every month for school, have him driven to school to the next town, and we’d have to be lucky to get him in since there are much more people interested than they can take. Regular elementary school is free, it’s nearer to our house than kindergarten, and it has to take him by law.

Those of you outside Germany might ask why I don’t homeschool him, seeing that I am that passionate about learning and a teacher on top of that. Well, homeschooling is illegal in Germany. This goes back to the 19th century when children were forced to go to school for the first time ever, even those whose parents depended on their labor, like farmers. I always believed that this is a good thing that it makes society a bit more equal.

But now that it is about my son I’d like him to be a bit less equal, or better yet, that all the children can have access to schools where learning is fun and where both teachers and students are looking forward to go to every day.

I know that there are still a lot of children in the world who would love to go to school and can’t. Children who have to work for money like they were adults, children who’d love to learn anything, and can’t. But still I’d like to live somewhere where learning is driven less by fear and more by enthusiasm.

Playing War

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There have been quite a few posts about toys lately which is only natural since Christmas is only a few days away and our children will be getting toys for Christmas. In our house the situation is always quite extreme because our son’s birthday is a week before Christmas. And though my husband and I try to keep it small there will be toy overkill. But that’s not what I’ve been wanting to write about in this post.

I have been thinking about plastic toys. I’m not particularly fond of plastic toys as such. On the other hand there are plastic toys that I loved when I was a child myself and that I still consider great toys. I’m speaking of LEGO and playmobil.

Last year my son received a huge amount of playmobil cars, a helicopter, a doll house, an ark, animals, and whatnot for his birthday and so I consider the playmobil department overflowing. I don’t think that he really needs more of that. Of LEGO he has quite a bit but only in the duplo size which is aimed at preschoolers. So I broke out the LEGO catalogue, and sat down with my son to see what he would like to have.

Okay, that was a lie. These catalogues are what he is usually “reading” every day. I always deemed this a harmless and nice pastime until about two years ago when I had to rip out all the pages containing bionicles because my son was so scared and fascinated by them that he couldn’t stop talking about them. He still thinks that bionicles are totally cool but I told him they are for bigger children only. So he’s looking forward to his eighth birthday because then he will have horrible black creatures throwing plasma balls and riding monstrous spiders.

Since I have been following these catalogues for a few years I have the impression that there are more and more of these bionicle-like LEGO toys. Do I want my then 5-year-old-son to play with hideous alien monsters of which every single one carries at least two weapons? No.

I feel a bit hypocritical writing this because it was me who gave my son a duplo castle with knights and armored horses and a fire-breathing dragon. I didn’t like the ferocious faces of the dragon knights and the amount of weapons that each single knight came with but in the end it turned out well, my son had the knights cooking meals and sleeping in the castle all of them together, caring for sick horses and the dragon. Mostly.

I know that children’s play has to include aggression, that it’s their way of making sense of the world, and that children everywhere incorporate scenes of conflict and war into their play. I only don’t want to give my son a toy that’s only a weapon. – Says she who gave her son a wooden sword last year. I don’t know what it is but somehow unarmed combat and sword-fighting seem more noble to me than pointing a gun. So far I don’t want any toy guns in the house (nor real ones, of course).

So, back to LEGO. There are several sets aimed at the younger children, most of them things like an airport, a police station, a hospital, and firefighters. And then comes a whole range of really cool sets, and “worlds”, all involving fighting. There are aqua raiders who are obviously doing research underwater. And then all their submarines come with guns, and they have to fight ghastly skeletons and sharks. The thing that I loved at first sight was the “mars mission”. Anything with space ships and astronauts has to be good, hasn’t it? Well, to my son and me anyway. So what do we find? Instead of research there are glowing-in-the-dark aliens and fighting over minerals. Aliens are imprisoned, and there is nothing but fighting between them and humans.

In short, almost every set of LEGO is about fighting and shooting. Apart from the sets that are for children age 12 or older that involve building cars and such. And every single thing about LEGO seems to be about vehicles or machines. And here I was, thinking that LEGO was for building houses.

Playmobil isn’t better, you have lots and lots of pirates fighting, roman soldiers fighting, vikings fighting, knights fighting, you get the picture. Of course, like with LEGO, there are real world sets too, houses, and a zoo, police and such. I probably should be very thankful that all those fighting scenes take place in a sort of fairyland. That there are no real soldiers with real weapons.

So I don’t quite know what to do. While I’m typing this my son is sitting on the floor building a tank out of castle parts. I’m not worried much because he usually quits this kind of play after a short time since he has to care for his pregnant stuffed bunny. But stuffed bunnies are not cool. Deformed machine-like people who let destruction rain on the world obviously are.

Girls, by the way, don’t get to play war. They get the double pink princess-unicorn-fairytale-castle. Where the princess gets everything her heart desires (including the handsome and brave prince) because of her beauty. Which poses another problem.

I know this post is totally ambivalent but that’s because I am too. I only wish that there could be toy sets about research and adventures that didn’t involve killing.

So, how do you feel about this? Anyone with bionicles in the house? Am I over-reacting?