Parental Sensitivity - They Ought to Ban it!
by Alan Patching
Our life conditioning is to blame. Parents the world over should simply gang-up against the Political Correctness police who've been responsible for conditioning us over a decade or so to become the hyper-sensitive uber-parents we now are. They should be made to suffer for the pressures they've caused us to bear, and the damages should extend at least to payment for the worldwide parental consumption of Valium and similar calm-inducing drugs. In fairness, parents claiming the expense of dope smoking should be required to prove how much they were paying to purchase it from their teenagers who had doubtlessly been the cause of the pressure necessitating its use (for medicinal purposes, of course) in the first place. I didn't say this was going to be easy.
'What are these parental pressures he speaks of?' I hear some of you non-parent readers say. Well, maybe it's not so much the pressure build up as the lack of ability to release. Visit any health farm worth its 'alternative-seasoning-to-salt' and the program is likely to include belting the living kapoks out of a pillow with a cricket bat while dementedly screaming out the pent up emotions. One is said to achieve maximum effect if one mentally projects onto the pillow an image of the person or persons who gave rise to these emotions in the first place. Post experience research shows that teenage sons rate only slightly behind husbands of various categories as pillow images for female bat wielders.
In my childhood, parents did not go to health farms. They did not wallop their pillows with cricket bats. They walloped their children with cricket bats. Wooden spoons, pieces of fruit packing cases or leather straps were also popular. The humble fly swatter was my dearly departeds' preferred punishment device. I recall the physical pain being really quite temporary, but I've lost much sleep over the years dealing with the deeply cutting psychological scars of that weapon of choice. Whatever the choice of walloper, the action had two clear effects. Firstly, parents when I was a kid did not need calm-inducing drugs. (Maybe the drug conglomerates are behind the politically-correct-discipline-for-kids movement). Secondly, ratbag teenagers were ratbag teenagers for far shorter periods of time within their allotted 7 years.
This is because they either joined the army to avoid parental discipline, or got married early because the make ups, after doing the bat and pillow number about each other, were fun.
Former Australian Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam's favourite Governor –General (Kerr, to non-Australian readers) commissioned me an officer in the army at the tender age of 19. This means that I probably would have been the cause of much weeping and gnashing of the parental teeth of the mums and dads of other tender nineteen year olds had I ever seen active service. On a more positive note, I did carry the self discipline drilled into me by Sergeant Holroyd's dulcet tones into the home environment. My mum used to wax lyrical about this unusual teenage phenomenon. I even recall the neighbours across the road asking how they could get their teenage son involved in this military discipline routine.
I also recall that my interest at the time was more focused on how I could get to be completely undisciplined with their totally gorgeous teenage daughter. But I digress.
My own sons at the ages of 19 and 21 demonstrate a level of discipline in tidiness which makes the grubby member of the Odd Couple seem an ideal mix of anal-retentive and obsessive-compulsive. It takes longer to clean and tidy any space they inhabit for more than 10 minutes than it would to clean up after a nuclear bomb. Both work nights. Which does have the advantage of having them sleep, after the inevitable work-stress relieving TV and booze session, until just prior to their leaving for work the next evening. The impact of their actual existence on the remainder of the household was greatly reduced by positioning their bedroom right beside the front door. This works extremely well except when visitors are expected. On such occasions, extensive fumigation is required just before the anticipated time of arrival.
My wife and I, quickly tiring of these wretches with their piles of old food in their piles of dirty laundry on top of piles of sports shoes that would make any knackery smell like Chanel Number 5 by comparison, recently reached the point of deciding to replace our bashing pillow with the actual boys for whom it had previously substituted. It is then we find that these kids' good fortune is as abundant as their bad habits. One left home before suffering the impact of the willow. The other, as smooth as silk and with gold medal levels of charm and BS, somehow manages to do something even more special for his ever-more adoring younger sisters than he did last week, and just when the bat is about to fall.
Oh well, we can't be doing it all bad. And one must focus on the positives. I'm convinced the Australian Armed forces will remain a far more efficient outfit without my sons' contribution.
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