Community: what community?

picture by kilobar

Warning, disturbing content

The tragic neglect, resulting in death, of 18 month old twins here in Brisbane will haunt a family and a community for the rest of their days.

The father claimed to have not seen the twins, who were kept shut in a separate room in the house, since Christmas – six months ago. The other children in the family had seen little of the twins since they were born. The mother had known about the deaths but not reported them. Both mother and father are reportedly refusing psychiatric assessment.

The school had noted frequent absences for the oldest child, aged eleven, who discovered her siblings tiny, decomposing bodies. Neighbours reported seeing the other children, aged 3, 4 and 5 in the street. A neighbour said a child had come to her door asking for food. No one followed up these incidents. No one detected a family in crisis. Could their neighbours have been afraid of them? Maybe they thought it was none of their business?

A representative of the National Association for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, said it was “everyone’s responsibility to help and care for our most vulnerable” and called for neighbours to report any concerns over the welfare of children.

In a similar vein, in January this year an elderly man was found dead in his single bedroom apartment in Sydney – bank statements demonstrated he had been dead for approximately a year. It took one year for his neighbours to notice! Several similar incidents had occurred in previous years. This family tragedy shows it is not just our senior citizens living out their last days in isolation. Even a family whose children play in the streets can slip through the cracks of society and community. It appears there has now been a flurry of similar reports to child welfare as neighbours and witnesses see their concern for families could prevent a similar tragedy.

It was not so long ago that our neighbours were essential community who kept a watchful eye over children and the elderly. The occasional frozen casserole, offer to buy milk or bread at the shop, or sharing of produce from the garden was a staple of neighbourhood life during my own childhood. What has changed? Why are we so protective of our own and everyone else’s privacy to the detriment of our social and emotional health? Is it so difficult to offer a non-judging hand and ask, “Are you OK?” Sometimes it’s the tiniest gestures that mean the difference between dignity and indignity – and in rare instances, between life and death.

June 25th, 2008 - Posted in happiness, childhood, partnership, parenthood, community, duty of care | | 0 Comments

Time Capsule from my Childhood

picture by ansik

Last Christmas, my dad cleaned out the cupboards of my childhood home and delivered to our family three full boxes of my old toys and books and drawings. At first I was not at all pleased. I had been on my own rampage against clutter the previous year and I felt that Dad should have at least consulted me before he irreverently dumped all this stuff in front of my kids, his grandkids. They pounced on it immediately so that I had no chance to sort or salvage any of it. Hey, but at least our frugal Christmas in no way impacted on the children’s entertainment.

Lazy homemaker that I am, it is six months later and those boxes are still lined up on the floor against my bedroom wall. The children come and go, looking for something new to read or play with now and then. The objects of my childhood are slowly being integrated into the fabric of our family. What I first perceived as a curse of clutter has now become a treasure trove of childhood memories I’ve begun to share with my own children. Unbeknown to us all, my dad brought us a time capsule.

There are old newspaper clippings of my gymnastics training, school magazines, long-forgotten but once well-loved books with dog-eared pages, old sketch books, school projects and sewing samples. There was my old baby doll which my mother must have sentimentally stashed away in my teenage years. Ah, and my baby photo album! All these things I could have happily lived without, but for my children, these are historical objects, evidence that, yes, Mum was a kid once upon a time such a long time ago. I can tell them stories of my childhood, but they are all the richer for having these objects to touch and view, and in some cases adopt as treasures of their own.

Like my old View-Master. Children of the 1970’s may remember these contraptions in angular red and white moulded plastic, reminiscent of something from the original Star Trek show on TV (the one with William Shatner as Captain Kirk). A reel, or disk, with seven pairs of pictures on Kodachrome colour film can be viewed stereoscopically by clicking a little lever on the side, giving the images three dimensional depth and form. The reel story, in summary, can be read in the window between the binocular viewer.

More than a simple children’s toy, the View-Master was used for training the US military in plane and ship identification and range estimation during World War Two. It was also later used to create an anatomical atlas of the human body. View-Master has become one of those classic toys that will never go out of circulation. At least, I hope not.

My View-Master was complete, in its original cylindrical box, with its styrofoam packing and the white plastic case holding the beginners’ collection of reels. Some collector might have whooped over the immaculate, original condition of my 1976 Hanna-Barbera View-Master Gift Pak – or maybe not, as it is probably worth no more than $20. My children have never seen Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, or The Flintstones, but they were familiar with Scooby Doo and Charlotte’s Web thanks to recent Hollywood remakes of the originals. I’ve since learned Fisher-Price still sell View-Master and it looks like second-hand reels are still highly available and collectible on E-bay.

Of course, now the box is damaged, and the foam packing became playthings in their own right. I’ve also found the viewer with several disks simultaneously wedged in the slot. And now the colours in the photo-film have faded significantly with exposure to sunlight. But I can’t be precious. I like to watch my kids play with my old playthings. Maybe by doing so, they get to share in some of the delights of my own childhood – a time before electronic toys and relentless product marketing to young consumers.

And when I was a child I could never have imagined I’d be delighting in watching my own children play with the very objects that delighted me in my childhood.

Do you still have some of your childhood toys? Why do you keep them?

June 14th, 2008 - Posted in childhood, consumerism, nostalgia, grandparents, play | | 4 Comments