Why So Blue, Part Two

Why so sad

 My fine young friend

 Why so blue'    (Paul McCartney)

So life may be shit for kids and teenagers in 2017, but bullying in all its forms has always been present. Two things, perhaps, are different…

The internet and social media mean that innocence is often lost at a very early age. Since information about anything is instantly available and comparisons too easily made, arguments in the playground continue remotely long into the night. Kids have always wanted just to be the same as everyone else, not to draw attention to themselves, but this is so much harder now.

The commonality of cultural experiences is also diffused. My husband remembers the joy of watching `Red Dwarf’ and knowing that all his friends were watching it at the same time and they could talk about the best bits the next day. I remember the same about `Dr Who’. The 1986 Eastenders Christmas show pulled in 30.2 million viewers, The `Bake Off’ launch show only managed 10.4 million.

The number of time travelling shows on TV recently seems significant, as adults hark back to better and simpler times, a way of escaping the pressures and speed of everyday life. With so much knowledge so easily attainable it seems to get harder and harder to succeed. My husband plays online poker. If he’d been playing with the same skill as he does now even ten years ago, he’d have made us rich...

I got an agent when I was 29, the first one I approached. I couldn’t believe I’d been taken on by such a great man, Michael Thomas at AM Heath (long retired), who offered me cups of tea and spoke about Alice Walker and Gore Vidal for whom he was the UK agent. I didn’t get anything published through him- I wasn’t anywhere near good enough- but editors got to read my manuscripts and offered encouragement. Now that I’ve returned to writing years later, it seems almost impossible to even get an agent. A 1 in a 1,000 chance to even make it off the slush pile, I’ve been told.

This is the difficult, ever more competitive world our kids are growing up in. No wonder so many movies at the moment don’t deal with the everyday, but other planets or dystopian futures: `Bladerunner 2049',  `Geostorm', `Thor: Ragnarok', `Star Wars', `Transformers', `Cloverfield 3', to name but a few. No wonder so much social `interaction’ is achieved through gaming, rather than face to face and the first thing most teenagers want to do when they get home from school or college or their jobs is to shut themselves away in their rooms.

So what’s the answer? Counselling is extremely valuable, if it can be accessed, although this is also becoming harder with longer and longer waiting lists.

I would advocate three things:

·       Exercise of any kind, preferably outdoors. Whole books have been written about the therapeutic effects of walking (or running).

·       Keeping a journal to pour out all the self-hate and anger at parents, teachers, friends. Writing a letter to the hated person and then burning it can be very satisfying and affect some kind of closure.

·       Get a pet. To care for and train a pet prevents a child/teen from turning ever inwards. Who can give greater love and loyalty than a dog? Roehampton University even has a pair of `therapy’ rabbits!

Why so Blue?

`Why so sad

 My fine young friend

 Why so blue'    (Paul McCartney)

I read in the Guardian last week that, according to research conducted by University College, London, 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 10 boys are depressed by the age of 14. This is no doubt exacerbated by the fact that many schools are having to cut pastoral and mental health support services at the very time they are most needed.

I have 6 adopted kids, 4 girls and 2 boys. They went to primary school immediately disadvantaged: one of my daughters had to wear a sticker over one lens of her (thick) glasses due to a `lazy’ eye. The hospital gave us stickers with fairies and princesses to cover the lens. A black pirate patch might have made a bolder statement. Two of them needed grommets and speech therapy, as their hearing loss had not been identified, until we adopted them. Despite my best and lengthy efforts one was persistently sent home- mortified- with nits. And then there was the: `So you’re adopted. My mum says that means your real mum doesn’t want you.’

Bullying is not a new phenomenon. As a therapist, I’ve had a twenty stone builder weep when he remembered how he was made to stand up in front of the class and read aloud.

I didn’t have eye patches, grommets or nits, when I was a kid, but I did have red hair (`Carrot tops’ was a favoured epithet, which used to incense me, as carrot tops are green.) I was also illegitimate at a time when nice middle class parents told their kids not to play with me and to find out whether my mum had lots of boyfriends.

Why are more girls depressed than boys? I doubt this differential has changed much over the years. For a start, girls are meaner. They whisper and exclude, boys, in the main, just slug it out in the playground.

However, the hypersexualisation of girls is a relatively new phenomenon. Again, as a therapist, I have a client whose seven year old daughter attends pamper parties and spends hours in  her room watching YouTube videos about the correct application of make-up. I’ve seen nine year olds roll their skirts over at the waist to make them shorter, flout the school ban on nail varnish, foundation, hoop earrings. Some even have high or lowlights and expensively cut, long, straight hair from the very first day of primary school. Frizzy is never good. A client told me a boy sent her a Valentine card when she was 14: `Roses are red, violets are blue, your hair looks like pubes and no one will ever love you.’

It’s true that clothes and hair styles have always been a source of mockery for both sexes, which is why, again, I have one client who can remember being ridiculed for wearing home-knitted jumpers (I would never send a kid to a school that didn’t have a uniform, for that reason.) Another client had a mum who cut his hair rather than send him to the barber’s and another had a mum who refused to buy him swimming trunks, so he had to wear underpants at his swimming lessons.

My 14 year old son made me watch several episodes of `Catfish’, the TV show. For the uninitiated a catfish is someone who pretends to be someone they’re not, using social media to create a false identity and have online relationships. I was sent to boarding school at 11, by which time I was not only a ginger and illegitimate, I had a new Canadian accent. Inevitably, I got called Canada instead of Amanda for a whole year (the year it took me to ditch the accent). I’m ashamed to say that out of boredom and sick of being bullied, I started writing to a `pen pal’ out of a magazine, pretending to be a boy. I liked the feeling of power, but panicked when she wanted to meet me and confessed, blaming it on a dare.

So life may be impossibly tough for kids and teenagers in 2017, but bullying in all its forms has always been present. Two things, perhaps, are very different… Read tomorrow’s blog to find out what I think!

A Short Blog for a Long Dog

On Saturday my husband, Ben, and I drove into Norfolk to pick up our new miniature long-haired Dachshund puppy, Eric (my husband is a `Lovejoy' fan), born on June 18th. We had decided that I would drive home and Ben would sit in the back seat with Eric on his lap. Perhaps it was Ben's calm voice reassuring him about my erratic corner taking, combined with the anxiety of leaving his mum and dad and little cousin for the first time, but Eric has fallen for Ben big time. I only get a look-in if Ben is out of the house and Eric has already popped into Ben's study to leave a little wee as a welcome home present, marking their joint territory.

The Highlights

*     The first time he crapped outside, after I'd spotted some heavy  sniffing action.

*     He wouldn't drink and became listless on the first day, but upon advice from the breeder I went to buy him some goat's milk to mix with his water and he finished the whole bowl in a lapping frenzy.

*     I gave him an apple from our tree to play with and he pounced on it, rolled it around a few times, then took the stem between his teeth and dragged it back to his den under the chair.

*     The first time we took him onto the (weed-infested) lawn and he started gambolling like a lamb,  biting the heads off  the dandelions.

*      This morning I was sweeping leaves, or trying to. He launched himself onto the broom and hitched a ride with the leaves, then fought me for the bristles. We ended up having a tug of war for ten joyful minutes.

*     Just carrying Eric in from the car (he can't go outside till tomorrow after his second vaccination),  I met someone from the village (only the second person who's ever spoken to me on the street here) who immediately fussed over him and told me he breeds Afghan hounds. Dogs are like babies, it seems, everyone feels entitled to stop, coo and ask very personal questions (like how  much he cost).

The Lowlights

*     When you've taken him outside (in the dark or the rain) and he's played about, but not had a wee and then the minute you're back inside, he looks at you and you watch urine trickle away from his back legs.

*    Following the breeder's advice we put him in a crate at night with water, toys, his mum's blanket, a comfier bed than ours and my husband's sweaty T shirt draped over the top. We put the radio on and a dim lamp. We sat and conversed quietly. He settled down. We tiptoed out and much like a baby- again- he immediately started howling. We were told we had to ignore him or we'd make a rod for our own backs. Very hard, but we obeyed. He fell asleep after half an hour last night, but woke at 1.30 and 3.30 and 5.30 and made his presence known through two closed doors. When we  came downstairs at 7, bleary-eyed, he'd somehow managed to pull  my husband's T shirt through the bars of the crate and staged a (very) dirty protest.

Overall

Although I'm exhausted - and still have to work- and a bit jealous at the adoration in his eyes when he looks at Ben (reciprocated), it's already impossible to imagine life without him. Plus he's helped me rediscover a sense of play and that has to be the most important thing of all.