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ParentsJuly 17, 2017

Emily Writes: How to survive the school holidays

Contributing writer
A woman lies on a rock in the middle of a river, reading
Getty

Spinoff Parents editor Emily Writes has all the tips you need to get you through the last half of the school holidays.

I said to my husband earlier in the week “These school holidays are unending!” and he said “Emily, it’s 10am on the first day. Are you drinking wine in a mug?”* and it was in that moment that I realised 1) I needed a bigger mug and 2) I should definitely write about school holidays since I’m clearly so good at them.

So with that in mind, I’ve spent a whole 15 minutes or so coming up with amazing ideas to help you survive this two weeks of enforced joyous compulsory family time. Let’s go.

Know that you’re halfway there

You’ve made it one week, so chances are you will make it another week. Do not think about the Christmas holidays looming ahead where we will have a soul-destroying 150 weeks with our beloved children at a time when nobody has any money because they need it for travelling and buying stupid shit nobody wants. These holidays are actually the easiest holidays as they’re only 2,0160 minutes long. Take a deep breath – you’re almost there. This is a marathon and you’re nearing the finish line, and hopefully you’re not going to be that person who shits themselves and turns into a meme.

Play the grass is greener game

While your children watch 1600 hours of Paw Patrol, scroll through the Facebook pages of your friends who don’t have kids. Oh look – she’s just come back from Ibiza and bought a house. She has three pug dogs and her own business. Hide in the toilet so your children can’t hear you crying. She’s going to Paris for a vow renewal with her husband. Your husband taught the kids to fart in their hand and now they keep coming up to you and blowing fart residue in your face. CLOSE YOUR EYES AND IMAGINE PARIS.

Fuck you Karen. Credit: Pixabay

Tell your kids to pretend they’re dogs

Put leads on them and walk them to the dog park. Once you’re there, take their leads off and make them run until they fall asleep. Bedtimes are so much easier when you lock them in a crate. Tell the mums in that judgey Facebook group that you’ve been doing “imaginary play” throughout the holidays.

Take them for a visit to the local nursing home

Old people love kids because they’ve forgotten what they’re like. Let the kids tear around the rest home and watch the old people try to deal with it. If they get upset say “I thought you said in your day you knew how to parent. Go on then: parent.”

Tell them about global warming

Take them to the beach and show them all the ways a penguin can choke to death on bits of rubbish if they’re not mauled by dogs. Explain the Paris Agreement, anti-intellectualism and the Age of Trump. They’ll be so afraid for their future they’ll be nice and cuddly and nearly catatonic for the rest of the day.

Take your children to Chipmunks and see if they survive the terror that is Chipmunks during the school holidays

Prepare them with knee and elbow pads and a helmet. I find that giving them a pep talk before I send them in helps: “Fight and you may die. Run and you’ll live – at least for a while. And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!”

Eat chicken nuggets in peace.

Remember, if you leave your child in the ball pit the Chipmunks staff will raise them as their own. I had a third child once. Thanks Chipmunks!

Take them to Te Papa and spend 14 hours looking at the giant squid

For his entire life my son thought the squid was sleeping because I am soft and I wrap my children in cotton wool meaning they will probably live with me for all of eternity. So every time we visited Squiddy (why hasn’t Te Papa named him?) my son would say “Oh he’s not awake! What a shame. One day he will be awake.” Then on one fateful day an old man turned around and said to my angelic child “He’s actually dead, he’s been dead a long time.” So I punched him in the face and used his walking frame to finish the job. What kind of asshole tells a baby that a squid is dead? “He’s sleeping too,” I said to my son and the children surrounding the man’s body. “Just like the squid.”

Just a regular day out enjoying nature with my children #organicsand #screenfree #thisphototooksixhourstoget #lorazepam   Credit: Pixabay

Spend 45 minutes trying to stop your child from running in the water at the beach

It’s two degrees but take your kids to the beach anyway. Spend the whole time trying to stop them running into the water. They’ll get their socks and shoes wet and it will be miserable and you’ll yell in front of another family and be sweaty and stressed out. But you’ll get to post a photo on Facebook afterwards proving you have wonderful family time on the beach with your wonderful family.

Go to the zoo and try to stop your toddler from screaming in the kiwi enclosure

I live in fear that one of the kiwi will die because of my toddler’s shrieking and I’ll end up on the front page of the Dominion Post as a kiwi killer. All my toddler wants to do is go into the kiwi enclosure. I clamp my hand over his mouth and tell him that the kiwi will eat his face if he makes a noise, but he still screams with excitement when he sees it. Kiwi must hate kids so much. I bet they’re distraught that they can’t fly and therefore can’t peck the shit out of noisy toddlers.

Spend $50 taking your family to see a movie and have to leave halfway through because one of your kids is scared/bored/pissed themselves

Why are kids movies so long anyway? Why was Cars 3 eight hours long? It makes no sense. Nobody needs that much time to tell a story. Especially when the story is just car wins race eventually. Movies are too long and Peppa Pig is only like five minutes. Thank God for the people who make Peppa marathons on Youtube. The 336 hour one is just the right length for school holidays. Also, be prepared for at least one meltdown when your child spills their popcorn one point five seconds after you bought it and gets upset because the superhero movie is not for children for some inexplicable reason.

Sit in the fecal matter at the public pool

Who doesn’t enjoy a warm urine soup to sit in? Code browns are as common as unidentified matter in the shower drain at the public pools. School holidays in the spray pool are a time for floaters and we all know our own child’s turds are easier to handle than someone else’s. Watch the poor underpaid pool staff deal with crap – for once in your life it’s not you handling it. What could be better?

Mmm I’ll take the excrement soak please. Credit: Pixabay

Start up a small crack factory in your shed so you afford school holiday programmes

Your boss won’t let you have a day off because we live in a capitalist nightmare. You get the honour of paying $80 a day for some sixth former who is probably as high as a kite to sit and paint rocks with 100 other kids for four hours while you try to complete eight hours work in that time.

Go on a holiday!

Have just as much stress as you always have but in a new environment. Look at the beach through the window as you do endless dishes because the bach doesn’t have a dishwasher. Spend most of your time trying to stop the baby burning themselves on the fire. Spend the small amount of money you have on a holiday that seemed far more relaxing in your head than it is in reality. Listen to the kids say “I’m bored” and “I want to go home” over and over and over and over again. What’s more fun than flying with children? Your child getting an ear infection five minutes into the holiday and screaming for the entire plane ride while a woman getting a connecting flight to Ibiza glares at you. Don’t look at me like that Karen – your dogs have breathing problems.

Write passive aggressive comments on Facebook about how much you love the school holidays

May I suggest “Well, I love my children so I spend every second of the school holidays aching with a fulfillment so agonising it’s almost unbelievable.” Spread some low-key insults based on your particular situation. For example, “I don’t abandon my children for work so school holidays are just a continuation of joy and wonder for me.” Or “I actually work an actual real job so school holidays are so satisfying it’s almost vulgar.” Or “Well I love every millisecond with my children – why would you even have children if you weren’t going to make it your life’s work to surgically create a pocket in your stomach flesh for them to live in for all of eternity?” Try to add “they’re only young once, you’ll miss this time together” wherever possible and caption all Instagram photos with #schoolholidaymagic #teamworkmakesthedreamwork #sunshineeveryday #sohappyishitmyself #Sofuckinghappyicouldfuckingdie #ourloveisasbigasthisdeadbloatedwhalewefoundonthebeach.

Enjoy your children

Cherish every moment for in less than a minute your children will be fully grown adults and you will be in a rest home dealing with a bunch of asshole parents bringing their asshole kids into your space. Watch the little brats run around and think:

More Reading

    “These parents are unbelievable. In my day, I loved the school holidays! The school holidays were for family. We enjoyed every second, cherished every moment, and were so blessed it was physically painful.”

    *This is a JOKE. Calm down. I am not actually drinking at 10am, I don’t think you should manufacture crack, and nobody ever sees the kiwi in the kiwi enclosure.

    Emily Writes is editor of The Spinoff Parents. Her book Rants in the Dark is out now. Buy it here. Follow her on Facebook here.

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    ParentsJuly 14, 2017

    Thanks ACT, for revealing the truth about low-income parents

    Contributing writer
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    David Seymour and the ACT Party believe that only parents who are wealthy should be able to have children. Many, many parents, including Dr Jess Berentson-Shaw, disagree.

    I want to thank David Seymour and ACT for revealing a truth about parents with his recent statements about giving money to low income families. It is perhaps not the truth he thought he was revealing, but a truth nonetheless.

    To be fair to David, before I had kids I had some pretty weird ideas about what children, and parenting especially, involved. Honestly I was a bit of a dick about parents then. I laugh a bit sheepishly about that now.

    Of course not everyone need become a parent to learn about the realities of parenting. Another way to learn about what you are talking about is to read about it.  I am not a parent living on a low-income, and before I read a single piece of research about low-income families I probably had some pretty funny ideas about money and how it affected families too. A bit of unbiased research soon corrected them.

    Another way to learn about parenting – or just a life different from my own apart from living it myself – is to listen to the stories of people who live that life, instead of, I don’t know, drawing on myths and misinformation and my own ‘inner creativity’. Rather wonderfully, David’s remarks in various media outlets have created an opportunity for him and other people who have not parented on a low income to learn about how people do just that.

    What I have read over the last few days are some beautiful, complex and amazing stories about parents doing the hard yards to raise children who have grown into complex, funny, clever and valued human beings and it is a wonderful truth indeed.

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    What these stories draw out is what the research tells us, that parents on low incomes are like everyone else. They want the best for their children and will do whatever they can to make their children’s lives positive.

    One thing to note from the stories from the 1970s and 80s is the support many of these parents, particularly sole women parents, drew upon while doing this great job. A universal family benefit in some cases, training allowances, free tertiary education, accommodation and food that was actually affordable, and a system of benefit payments that ensured children did not barely survive, but thrived.

    The situation today has changed dramatically for parents on low incomes. House prices as a proportion of income have skyrocketed for everyone, but most for those on the lowest incomes, wages have not kept up, food, especially fresh unprocessed food is much more expensive, transport costs are up and travel times longer, work is more insecure, and many of the supports that allowed low income families to bounce up (instead of fall to the ground with a thud) have been removed by people in various governments. We see these impacts play out in the data on family poverty.

    The benefit cuts made by Ruth Richardson and the National Government in 1991, tipped many families into poverty, as you can see in the figure below. These cuts came on top large scale deregulation of many industries put in place by people in the previous Labour government. The deregulation was so rapid that mass unemployment was triggered and those hit hardest were Māori and Pacific communities who formed the backbone of our industry and agricultural sector. What we can also see from the figure below is that the introduction of Working for Families (which let families keep more of their income) helped with rates of child poverty, it did not however, reverse the trend because it gives the least assistance to parents and kids on the lowest incomes.

    Fig 1. Proportion of Low-income families over time in New Zealand (Pennies from Heaven, 2017)

    In the longitudinal Survey of Family Income and Employment (SoFIE) we found that over half of all families in New Zealand go into a year of income poverty after the birth of a child and around a third will stay there for three years. Providing our country with the next generation of workers is a significant public service that also comes with a financial sacrifice for families.

    Excluding some families from income support during these financially vulnerable years has been very problematic for those parents and children and ultimately for the country. The negative impact on the health and wellbeing of these children is there for us to see every day in our hospitals, communities and schools.

    All that amazing potential wasted for want of a bit of investment during childhood. Because with more financial support, the research is very clear that parents and kids do better, way, way better: their health improves, their educational achievement, their earning potential, their well-being all improves, and then we all do better. Not rocket science really.

    What do the stories and the research tell us (and tell David even?)

    The stories and research tells us that regardless of what politicians choose to do and say, most families will do what families have always done for their kids – the very best that they can. It tells us that people in government can however, choose to maximise that parental effort by putting more financial inputs into families. It tells us that when they have done so in the past it did not give parents on low incomes a smooth path, but it made a big difference to their kids.

    Politicians from various parties are proposing that we do so again as part of our responsibility to the next generation, and because it works to improve the lives of children and their parents. They are families who will bounce, not hit the ground.

    If you would like to read more about the data and evidence I have touched on here, it is all laid out in my book Pennies From Heaven. David and Beth may even like to give it a read, or perhaps a nice chat to a few parents living on low incomes might help?

    Dr Jessica Berentson-Shaw is a mother of two, scientist, writer, and author. This is her approach to writing about science for The Spinoff Parents.

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