Blog
August 4, 2010
Can you spot what's wrong with this photo?
That's right the blue and white table cloth should be running the other way!
July 25, 2010
I Know What My Kids Should Be When They Grow Up
I had to laugh the other day – my 5 year old son Tate asked me ‘dad, how much would I have to pay to be a bus driver?’ When I told him that bus drivers actually got paid – not the other way around, he was sold – ‘that is what I want to be when I grow up’. This was a huge improvement on his acclimation a few months previous when he declared that he wanted to clean out drains and gutters for a living (and here’s me hoping he was looking forward to manning the reception till at Tabatinga!)
Having witnessed my kids growing up together, I think that there is a profession that is much more suited to their talents. A Weights & Measures Inspector – you know, the government officials that are charted with the responsibility of making sure that products for sale match the quoted size and weight on the label.
I know what you are thinking, this is an unusual occupation to aspire to. And you would be right, until, that is, you see the uncanny ability my kids have of being able to tell with just the naked eye who has more cordial in their cup, who has more lollies in their pile, even, and here is the scary part, which biscuit has more cream in the centre than the other – uncanny!
So if you are planning on opening a fish shop or a fruit shop or intend on working in a business that sells their goods based on weights and volumes, be on the lookout for the ‘Parker’ name.
You have been warned......
Brian
June 30, 2010
I know I am bias, but this is a true story
As the owner of Tabatinga, I guess my choice of recreation venue for my kids is obvious but for variety (and as a social experiment) I take my kids to the public playgrounds every now and then.
This is where today’s story has come from. It was a pleasant enough Saturday afternoon and the kids and I walked to a nearby park. The kids rode their scooters, and I walked iPod in hand with some marketing guru telling me how to run my business spruiking in my ears. When we arrived at the play area we were the only ones there so the kids had the run of all the equipment.
Not long after we arrived, as I was sitting in the bench seat in the shade of a large tree, I felt a light touch on my shoulder, I was pretty sure that no-one was behind me and as I turned around I felt three or four more taps to various parts of my torso – then it twigged, I was not being assaulted from behind, it was coming from above! Yes a bird was taking a dump on me!!
As the grey clouds started forming in my head thanks to my encounter with my feathered friend, some older kids turned up at the play ground. Here is something that has never ever entered my mind until I became the parent of young children, but why do older kids play on equipment that was quite obviously made for younger minds and bodies.
Anyway these kids proceeded to take my sons scooter off for a ride, naturally enough without a helmet, unwrap their lollies and throw their wrappers on the ground and swear at every second word of their sentences (not to mention climb all over the wrong parts of the play equipment).
A quick retreat was what was needed as just about every rule I have spent years drumming into my kids was being broken before our very eyes and ears. So off I went hunting down the scooter and putting the kids helmets back on all while looking for suitable leaves to remove my little brown ‘badges’ I had on my shirt.
So my recommendation is this, join your kids up as VIP members of Tabatinga and let us become your home away from home, your kids will be safe, they will have modern, well maintained equipment to play on, they will be in age appropriate play areas and you certainly will never become target practice for aerial assaults.
Brian
June 15, 2010
How to Choose Your Kids Toys – The ‘Mine Field’ Test
These days there are so many toys to choose from.
Firstly there’s the cheap and nasty – buy it today and it will be broken and in the bin by tomorrow. These toys only serve one purpose, and that is as a shopping pacifier. The kids are standing in the trolley pointing at every toy on the shelves (normally the dearer ones) and the non-stop chorus of ‘can I have this, can I have this’. You spot something that is $2.99 – brilliant – ‘here you can have this one, now stop your whining!’
Then there are the computer games. Now I am not an expert on these, but they seem pretty expensive to me. I have even heard that the manufacturers are on to the Bali knock offs – the last bastion of the shop savvy parents.
As the owner of Tabatinga, a family fun centre, are you interested in how I choose toys for my kids? Yes? Well this is what I do... they must pass the ‘mine field’ test.
Spot a toy that you think might be played with for more than 10 minutes – now here is the trick. Take off your shoes and socks and place the toy on the floor in the centre of the shopping centre aisle. Next close your eyes and step firmly on the toy with your bare feet and if you are game lift the other foot off the floor. If there is a sudden pain running from your feet and up your leg, put the toy back on the shelf and try another one.
By passing the ‘mine field’ test you have a much better chance of not inflicting too much pain when walking into your child’s room at night (especially if you are carrying them to bed).
By the way – Thomas the Tank Engine will NOT pass the ‘mine field’ test – take my word on this!
Brian
May 28, 2010
I Am In No Man’s Land, How About You!
Depending on whose date range you are looking at, being a child of the 60’s, I am either the last of the Baby Boomers or the first of the Generations X’s – sort of no man’s land.
Either way I remember growing up hearing countless stories of how good kids get things nowadays. How ‘back in my day’ we walked 3 miles to and from school, used backyard dunnies and played with only handmade wooden toys. I also remember thinking ‘get a life will ya – it could not have possibly been that hard’. Now I am older, I have so much more respect for my elders because I know that their early childhood descriptions were all true (even if there was a little embellishment for dramatic effect).
I now have kids of my own and I can’t wait until they are old enough so I can tell them tales of how hard life was when I was a kid. No mobile phones with personalised ring tones, no internet, no email, no facebook and no 20 channels on TV, etc etc. We rode push bikes to school, if we needed to make a call we had to look for a phone booth, if we wanted to find out about a subject we had to go to a library and look it up in a book, if we wanted to communicate with someone we wrote them a letter and if we wanted to watch cartoons we had to wait for ABC to show Play School in the morning.
The only problem is, I will tell them this but you know what their response will be? – ‘get a life will ya – it could not have possibly been that hard’.
Brian
May 11, 2010
Only So Many Tantrums At Once Please
I am starting to see a pattern evolve here which I will explain in a moment.
But first, let me set the stage for you. Cath & I have just taken our kids on a holiday to one of those great kid’s resorts on the Gold Coast. You know the ones, the facility is full of child related activities and of course lots of young families spending time together.
Anywhere where there are a lot of children congregating you are sure to get a fair amount of tantrums happening at any one time for one reason or another. Of course it seems like my kids are in tantrum mode at the most inappropriate moments, such as in restaurants, at theme parks, in motel receptions etc etc.
Take for example our first night there in the restaurant. One look around shows all other children sitting up straight angelic like, eating all their vegetables, with a fork, with lots of loving smiles at their very content parents, who are sipping wine sharing an intimate joke. I glance back to my table to see one child spooning ice cream out with her hands getting about 10% in her mouth the rest falls in a 2 metre radius covering face, dress, table, seat and floor. The other child is sitting upside down so his head is below the table and his feet are swinging in the air. Of course he is also pinching his sister on the legs to get a desired raise out of her. My wife appeared to have 7 hands in operation, one wiping up spilt ice cream off the table, one trying to get a solitary kernel of corn onto a fork in the feint hope that one of the children will eat a vegetable, two are holding each leg of the upside down child to stop him from knocking over his second lemonade, one to lean over and apologise to the adjacent table, one is trying to put some food into her own mouth and one to wipe the sweat off her brow.
I can also confirm that trying to scream at your children in a hushed voice through clenched teeth, which is made to look like a smile from a distance, does not fool a room full of parents who are in a similar stage of their lives with tantrums of their own to dispel. Instead they sip their Corona beers and White Wines and give you a look which conveys the message ‘poor buggers, I know what you are going through’.
After a while the tantrum settles and our table returns back to normal. Of course the penalties for bad behaviour have been mounting, by now we are going home tomorrow, we have removed every fun activity off the list, no sweets after dinner for at least a month, the list goes on.
Now to my theory. I think that every child is somehow in sync with each other and there can only be so many tantrums going on at any one time and that is the reason your children go in and out of a tantrum regardless of your efforts to prevent one from starting or stop it when it starts. When your child’s turn is up, he or she simply settles down and the batten is passed to someone else’s little angel. The problem is other children’s tantrums for some reason never seem to be as bad as your childs.
I say this because as my children settled down in the restaurant and my wife and I settled into some manner of normalcy, other children around me took their turns. And as their children ran up and down the buffet putting their hands into every dish, or their children pushed the button on the soft serve machine so many times that it jammed on spewing mountains of ice cream everywhere, I patted my now obedient son on the head, sipped my Corona beer and gave their parents a look suggesting ‘poor bugger, I know what you are going through’.
Brian
April 29, 2010
The Swimming Lesson
The staff at the Harbour Swim School are fantastic! But I bet on a Thursday morning they don’t jump out of bed full of enthusiasm like they normally do. I bet they have an extra strong coffee every Thursday before heading into work. And I bet the ticks on the wall clock above reception sound like grenades going off as it marches inevitably closer to 10:30am. Why? Because at 10:30am on a Thursday morning is when my 3 year old daughter Bronte has a swimming lesson (and I use the term swimming very loosely!).
You see Bronte, on the other hand, springs out of bed on a Thursday at the crack of dawn throwing clothes all around her room with gay abandon looking for a swimming costume, preferably one she hasn’t worn in a while (aren’t I in for some great wardrobe debates down the track!). She has even been known to don the goggles some 3 hours out from the lesson!
Don’t get me wrong, I love the enthusiasm, many would say from that level of enthusiasm I may have a swimming prodigy in the making – that is until they actually see her in the water of course.
If it were up to me this is how I would prepare her for swimming. First I would bleach her hair white, then spray fake tan all over her body until she is a nice shade of orange. I would then get her into her swimmers and put on the outside an oversized World Wrestling Championship belt around her waist because I want to re-name her ‘The Rock’. I don’t need to boost the over the top self confidence because that is already nicely in place.
Why ‘The Rock’? because that is her style of swimming. In fact I think I am even giving rocks a bad wrap! The big arms, the blowing bubbles, the kicking of legs all work fine above water and until she launches herself off the island, when apart from a few entire body wiggles, she sinks straight down only to be plucked up by the instructor and guided with a push towards the other island with enough momentum to get her there before she repeats step one again.
The best part of me watching these swimming lessons is the look on her face when she eventually stands up at the other end – it’s a look of great achievement, of pride of having just concurred, completely unaided of course, a task of mammoth proportions. A look over at me as if to say ‘don’t worry dad, I have this swimming caper all under control’.
No matter what mood I am in when I go into the complex, that look of misplaced self confidence makes my day every time. Thanks Bronte for the reality check of what is really important in life.
March 29, 2010
What the bloke in the pub told me!
I got talking to a guy in the pub the other day who knows a bloke who has a friend whose brother has invented a time machine. Obviously I am trying to track him down so I can partake of his services, but in the meantime I am working on my list of events that I want to travel back to and change.
I remember a day when I was riding my bike home from school when I reached a slight incline so some extra weight was needed on the peddles to keep up the momentum. Problem was just as I reached a bus stop full of girls and I needed to be on my A game, the peddle fell off from under me sending me sprawling on the road – definitely a couple of minutes I would rather scratch!
Then there was the morning I went swimming training. I’m not what you call a morning person and I rely on auto-pilot to get me through the first hour or so, but on this day it let me down big time. You see as I stood in the middle of the training squad in my trackies doing my stretches and time came to strip down to swimmers, mine were nowhere to be seen leaving me starkers in front of everyone – girls too! – that one has to go as well.
The one thing this guy in the pub couldn’t tell me was if I took back with me all the knowledge I have gathered and learned up till now. Because when you think about it, if you didn’t have this knowledge wouldn’t you just make the same mistakes all over again?
I have two young kids of my own now and I watch them growing and learning, making mistakes and taking risks – they have such a long journey ahead of them. I wonder if they would like to use the time machine already in their short lives to fix their mistakes.
Then I realized that my life has been my journey, not always perfect, lots of tears and laughs, a few regrets and a few victories, by my journey just the same. Do I really need to go back and change anything? After all It’s my story and it is totally unique in the whole world and it has shaped me into the person I am today, warts and all.
Maybe if that peddle didn’t fall off and my swimsuit was on then my life would have skewed in a totally different direction and I would not have met my lovely wife Cathy and had my two beautiful children – is it worth taking that risk? So maybe I will pass on the time machine bloke after all and resume my search for the bloke who knows the secret spot to catch giant mud crabs instead.
Brian
PS if the time machine worked on lotto numbers I might be forced to re-think things!
March 18, 2010
Now here is a dilemma for you!
I have a theory. When I was created I was given a choice. I could either have the ability to party hard during my uni years OR I could have a great and long lasting memory. The only trouble is, I can’t remember which one I chose..
My son Tate started school this year, which means that the whole family started school this year. Gone are the casual time commitments when we could drop off at day care at any time and collect at any time (although we have raced in a few times as the doors were closing for the day), gone are the quiet 30 minute ‘me time’ breaks you were able to squeeze in every now and then after work and before collecting the kids and ‘happy hour’ kicked in. Now I have a small window of time allocated to collect him, and when I say small, we are talking 5 minutes. My day is now 3 hours shorter hemmed in by school time. I now am confronted with terms like ‘parent pick-up’ and ‘oosh’. I have even had to dig up my old black shoe shine kit with the kiwi polish hard and cracked from a very long siesta (does that stuff have a use by date??) . We have library books to read (and protect from the artistic hands of the little sister) every night, diaries to check and complete, uniform schedules to follow, parent meetings and information sessions to attend, sport choices to make, lunches to pack, the list goes on.
But here is my dilemma. I can see it coming. I am going to get found out. Sure I can draw the number ‘4’ and can help spell out ‘cat’, but for the life of me I can’t remember most of what I learned in school! Nouns, adjectives and dangling participles are a foggy memory. And you can forget about maths and chemistry. I guess when you stack hundreds of episodes of ‘Law and Order’ on top of copious amounts of ‘Friends’, ‘Cheers’ and ‘Seinfeld’, some things have to fall off the radar! And just how many brain cells are destroyed by red wine?
But here’s something that slugged me right in my softer regions, and I don’t want to deflate the iron man image that you all have of me by now, but I was not as ready for Tate’s first day of school as he was. Sure he did the runner on the orientation day, trying to climb the fence to god knows where, and sure I had the odd day of him being glued to my leg when I walked him to class, but here’s the thing, after just one week he said ‘just drop me off at parent pick-up dad, I can walk to class by myself now’. So now I drop him off and watch as my 5 year old disappears into a huge school amidst kids twice his size wearing a back pack that looks like it could swallow him whole at any minute, and not a mother or father in site to guide and protect him. Even now weeks into his scholastic career, I still strain to watch, for as long as the parent pick-up process will allow me as I drive off, to see my son walking off without a care in the world to class. Everything else seems to melt away into insignificance at that moment for me. That is a memory that I won’t allow TV or red wine to steel away!
Brian
March 13, 2010
I have discovered a new game, but I didn’t invent it..
I have discovered a new game at home but I am pretty sure I didn’t invent it, so I thought I’d ask to see if anyone else can relate to this...
I have called this new game, ‘the kitchen bin squeeze’.
Now this is a game that has been building up in our household ever since the kids have learned to put things in the rubbish bin by themselves. No-one has ever defined the rules and we have never declared a winner, but I am pretty sure this is how it works;
All non-recyclable rubbish goes into our modest size kitchen bin as required. As the bin fills up, the grown-ups have the job of pushing the rubbish down to create more space (this sometimes needs to be done tactfully as generally there is something wet and mushy on top). Here’s where it gets interesting, the trick is to avoid being the one who puts the last bit of rubbish into the bin which causes the bin to explode, and therefore forcing the last person (or loser) to empty it into the downstairs council bin.
The kids have yet to discover the risk associated with closing the lid on an already full bin, but I tend to leave the lid open not wanting to risk an overflow.
I am guessing that extra bonus points are allocated to the families that can manage to get some sort of odour coming from the lower level contents following a lengthy stay.
The only problem I have found with this game is that I seem to lose every time despite my best efforts.
Can anyone offer me advice on how to avoid losing all the time?
Brian
PS I have noticed another game starting to occur at home as well. This is the ‘leave the rubbish just outside the front door’ game. Contestants must manoeuvre around rubbish piles as they accumulate. The loser is the one who finally gets fed up with walking around the rubbish taking it to the council bin (again I seem to lose this one as well).
February 28, 2010
Why Your Couch Doesn’t Love You Anymore!
Do you remember those lazy Sunday afternoons spent on the couch where the house was quiet except for the noise of the fan gently rotating, with the promise of providing a soothing breeze over whoever lay in its path. On the coffee table beside the couch was an ice filled glass of your favourite drink and beside that was a bowl of nibbles guaranteed to both quench the thirst and combat the afternoon munchies that were surely just around the corner. The slight hangover you suffered through on Saturday was now passing but you still have a sly grin as you remember the antics you and your friends got up to on Friday night. You remember thinking ‘hangovers are a necessary evil but are a small consequence and easily managed, compared to the copious amounts of fun and frivolity you have during a long drinking session with friends.
The Sunday papers lay strewn neatly on the foot of the couch, pulled apart as you skipped through the large volumes of paper seeking out your essential reading sections. You reach down the crack of the cushions feeling for the TV remote and your obligatory channel surfing session commences. You pause momentarily as you decide between an old movie, or a mildly interesting documentary, either way it doesn’t really matter because in a matter of minutes you will be drifting off into a heavenly sleep not bothered at all by the distant noise of a neighbour’s lawn mower chewing its way through a lawn.
You settle in for the afternoon comforted by the knowledge that when you wake you have a wide selection of take away foods to choose from to satisfy your Sunday night take out tradition, safe in the knowledge that your young supple body can handle copious amounts of calories without ever showing signs of gaining weight – a gift that you are sure will stay with you for life (as will the ability to easily shake off the after effects of a big night out)!
Yeah right!
Sunday afternoon comes around like you are living in the south pole where the sun never goes down! It feels like that because you have been up for hours. Your head is thumping from the single glass of cask wine you had last night while trying to get the kids to have showers, get into PJ’s, eat their dinner, stop them from raiding the pantry every 3 minutes and convincing them that it was way past their bedtime. You are still in your five year old Nike trackies with stitch lines straining to keep the fabric together (thanks very much Thai take-outs!). You have just spent the last hour tip toeing around the house desperately trying not to wake the youngest one up – no luck there. The brief moment alone was spent doing a load of washing, folding the clean pile of clothes that has been sitting in the basket for two days, squeezing in some washing up of dishes from breakfast and cleaning up the numerous piles of toys that you swore (under your breath of course) that you would make the kids clean up earlier.
The Sunday papers, pointlessly bought earlier, are strewn all over the lounge room floor and have been torn up and drawn on. As you are busy cleaning up, you manage to glance at a few headlines but can’t make any sense of any stories because of the state of the paper. The TV has been hijacked yet again for a Dora or Thomas DVD. Just as you glance over and spot the cold and half drunk cup of coffee sitting there from several hours earlier it is hit with a plastic sword being spun around at light speed, sending it clean across the room and into the curtains only to rest on the carpet forming a pool of brown liquid around the now cracked coffee cup. ‘Not to worry’, you think, ‘at least it will mask the crayon marks that were already there!’
Amidst the mayhem, you have a moment of clarity, ‘I will not let parenthood hijack my life, I am still an individual’ you mutter. In an act of defiance you go the fridge searching for a drink remotely similar to the ones you used to drink and enjoy so much. But have to settle on a glass of kids veggie juice. The ice cube tray is now sitting outside in the sand pit so no luck there either. You pour a drink into an old chewed tinkerbell plastic cup because the last remaining glasses of your favourite set were put away months ago in an attempt to save them. You piece together what seems like any four consecutive pages of the paper in order to read it, but unfortunately you end up with the travel section, ‘a holiday, yeah right!’ you mutter.
As you settle into your once trusted couch, lift up the paper to read a pointless pacific island travel tip and take a sip out of the tinkerbell cup, you hear a dull sound. It takes a second or two to register in your brain that you have heard the sound before. It doesn’t fit in with the picture of a beckoning hammock swinging between two coconut trees on a deserted tropical paradise that you are currently lost in. It’s not the faint sound of a distant lawn mower from your past life either. Then you realize what it is... your primitive fight or flight instinct kicks in as you lower the paper just in time to see your three year old launching themselves at you.
The sound you heard amidst the ‘swiper no swiping’ blaring from the TV, was the sound of your child’s feet taking the biggest possible run-up from deep in the reaches of the hallway to ensure maximum flight time and greatest impact. In the brief second you have left to react, what do you do? Not cover your stomach and groin in anticipation of an impact, not hold your hand out in order to circumvent the impending collision. No, you pointlessly lift up your hand holding the tinkerbell cup so as not to spill any. I say pointlessly because as the impact occurs and you recoil in pain, the contents of the cup go flying anyway all over the couch you once had a mutual love affair with.
Is it any wonder your couch doesn’t love you anymore!
Try finding that in any parenting manual!
Brian
PS. Why is it that for every child, the sight of one of their parents attempting to achieve a horizontal position presents not only an invitation, but a directive, that they must jump on you and treat you like a trampoline. The only form of defence available to us parents is to exact several minutes of tickling until they flee because they can no longer draw breath because of laughter. Leaving you to deal with the aftermath of a mid section impact!
February 18, 2010
Don’t burn out the grandparents!
When I was a kid I remember my grandmother lived in Brisbane and I was in Rockhampton so I didn’t get to see her much. When we did make the trip south, we visited her in her old Queenslander house in Sunnybank. The house was built after WW1 for war veterans and displayed a cut out of the Australian coat of arms above each internal door jam. The bedrooms were cluttered and the mattresses were thick and lumpy. There was a flush toilet downstairs but the ‘out house’ still stood proudly in the backyard – all it was good for by then was to house a few garden tools and a heap of daddy long leg spiders. The house was full of old world artefacts, some of which were still in commission and some of which were pushed aside and their modern day replacement sat in front.
Grandma lived for visits from her many grandchildren and we loved her hugs and laughed when she got our names mixed up with one of our cousins. I remember thinking ‘old people are allowed to make those type of mistakes – after all she must have been at least 50!’
Now I am all grown up, my grandma has passed on and my kids have their own set of grandparents to follow on the tradition.
As the owner of a family entertainment centre, I see a lot of grandparent help with kids of today. I see them at swimming lessons, dropping off at school, wheeling kids around in shopping trolleys. I even get plenty of them calling Tabatinga scouting out entertainment venues to take their grandkids on their next extended visit.
I guess it’s a sign of times that our lives are so packed and busy that it seems a lot of the time a mum and/or a dad just can’t cut it. It seems that we need a grandma, nanna, pop or grandad thrown into the mix just to help us get by.
Now I am not passing judgement, not for one minute, my kids grandparents are an invaluable part of our family. In fact we moved here so that we could be closer to them so we could get some extra support (I think the term I used was ‘so they didn’t miss out on our kids early years’ - lol). It seems that a calming word from people that have been there and done that in a world that was a lot harsher than the one we live in is very reassuring – ‘things will get easier’ is something I hear a lot, then I think, ‘hang on a minute, I’m still leaning on them and I am middle aged!’
My biggest fear is that they will turn around one day and announce that they are heading off on their grey nomad adventure and they will see us in 12 – 18 months. So my advice: keep the bed sheets clean in the guest room, make sure you have plenty of their favourite food in the fridge and keep reminding them how fast their grandkids are growing up and if they are away for even a week, they are going to miss out on so much!
Brian
February 4, 2010
What - my son has a pickle on his arm?
Here’s a reminder to all mums and dads of young kids, do you remember those funny little speech mishaps when your kids were younger? They know exactly what they are trying to say, and you have a fair idea, but what actually comes out is hilarious. So much so that you make a mental note to write these little golden moments down with the sole purpose to dust them off later in life to embarrass them (let me guess – their 21st birthday, right?).
As usual for me life intervened and I never did write them down but I still remember a few. Like the day my son Tate proclaimed to me that he had a ‘pickle’ on his arm. When I quizzed him on what he was talking about he pointed to a freckle. We liked the new name so much, we kept on using it for a few years (I even remember thinking ‘maybe I should be teaching him what the correct word is, then I thought, nahh, I am getting too many laughs from my friends when I rolled him out at parties and bbqs asking him what was on his arm’).
‘Look dad, it’s a wa-wa’ he used to say as he pointed to a koala. He took ages to get his lips around the word BBQ – instead we had lots of BARKY-YOU’s. My daughter loves the lip-lip slide (I assume this means a slippery slide).
One of the main tests we did when we came up with the name ‘Tabatinga’ was that we wanted to see how easily it was spoken and remembered by kids. Funnily enough, even though it’s a bit of a mouthful for adults, it seems to be an easy word for kids to repeat and remember – or at least, you get quite a funny pronunciation which then sticks in the minds of the adults. Either way Tabatinga was here to stay.
Now it’s your turn, what funny speech mishaps have you heard that put a smile on your face? Why not share them with me (and our 4,000 members). I will give some prizes out to the best ones that come in (clean ones only please). Who knows this might be the only time you write them down for future prosperity.
Send them to admin@tabatinga.com.au
Brian
February 3, 2010
Well it's been on the drawcard for months, come over from Europe on a ship, transported up to Coffs by truck and then installed by Fred & Brian. The new Comfyland pre-schooler and toddler attraction is up and running. How is it going? Well have a look at this small social experiment....
January 20, 2010
Don't make the same mistake I made...
I am sitting here at the dining table, its 10pm Wednesday night and I am still working. Cath’s mum has taken our two kids up to her home near Yamba for a few days so we can focus on Tabatinga, and although they have only been gone a few hours, I already miss them.
We have been here nearly 2 years now, working enormous hours, firstly planning and constructing our business and then of course for the last 13 months, working the business. In that time our two children have also grown two years, and although we are fortunate to get to spend a lot of time with them, we are rarely ‘present’ with them (well at least I’m not, Cath is probably better at it then me).
Now our kids going up to Nannas is nothing new but two major things happened this week to make me think about family life. Tate, our son, finished ABC Day Care today forever and is headed off to school next week, and Bronte, our daughter turned three yesterday.
Raising children, in my experience, has been more of a challenge than I was expecting. I seem to always be rousing on them for one thing or another and I often think that my kids’ memory of their dad will be one of this ogre who always drummed in manners, was over protective in every environment, made them eat fruit and vegies when there was perfectly good chocolate bars in the fridge and made them go to bed way too early. I have had plenty of days when the only time they seemed angelic to me was when they were asleep, I would often just sit and watch them sleeping peacefully.
2010 is not only a new year, it’s a new decade, if there was ever a time to turn over a new leaf we are presented with a perfect opportunity. For me, I plan to be present when I am with my kids. That doesn’t mean I have to work less, in fact, with all the plans we have for Tabatinga this year, that probably won’t be possible. But I plan to sit down with Tate and build train tracks together before dinner instead of looking over from the lap top to give him encouragement to play on his own. I also plan to help Bronte play dress-ups and have fun with her when she matches her clothes with her bling instead of reading up on a marketing book.
These sessions don’t need to be long – I just need to be there in the moment, after all I can go back to working again after they go to bed. This is something I need to do for me and my family, because one day soon Tate will be going to high school and Bronte will be hitting double figures.
Don’t make the mistake I have made, be there in the moment with your children, even for a few minutes, it will beat hours of disconnected interaction hands down every time.
Brian
December 28, 2009
Bubble wrapping our kids ...
I came across this article written by Dr David Eager about the 'bubble-wrapping' of children at play, titled Encouraging Risk. Here are some extracts from the article;
'Children need to be given the chance to stretch themselves, test and verify their skills without exposing themselves to unacceptable risks. If we do not expose our children to managed risk they may be more likely to direct their energy and time into inappropriate activities where the risks are significantly greater.
As a community it's high time we all woke up and did a reality check. The tell tale signs and near misses of a generation gone wrong are all around us, a generation that does not have a personal duty of care.
We now have a generation that, by and large, has grown up with poorly developed common sense. The terrible thing about common sense is that it is becoming less and less common.
Psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg has referred to the breeding of an anxiety-prone 'marshmallow generation' and that children that denied some risk in play fail to develop self-confidence. The 'fun police' have made play areas boring and are breeding a generation of children who don't know how to use a swing or experience the thrill of being so dizzy from riding a merry-go-around that you can hardly stand. Or simply playing after school until you are so tired you can hardly eat your dinner from exhaustion.
Parents need to accept that safety in the playground and at play does not necessarily mean play without tears. we should be encouraging our children to take risks at play. Children need to challenge themselves to gain confidence and develop resilience. There is a lot of experiential stuff going on in their active and developing brains when they take a risk, they try something they haven't done, and they try again. So they climb higher on the space net, and yes, they might fall and, yes, they might sustain a bruise, they might even get a rope burn. They'll come away with a little badge of honour and a bunch of personal duty of care skills that will come in handy in the university of hard knocks.
As a parent, we all know that any injury can be distressing for both the child and their carer. Notwithstanding, the exposure to minor injuries also has benefits and can form part of their healthy childhood development. They are directly learning the consequences of their actions and choices, and through this a deeper understanding of their abilities and competencies.
Risk in our society is generally associated with something negative. What a lot of people fail to realise is that risk can have both positive and negative consequences.
The risk of not allowing our children to be exposed to managed risk has consequences. Are we prepared to allow another generation to be 'marshmallowed' or will we follow the European example and encourage children to develop in a less structured world that allows them to develop their very own personal duty of care.'
Great food for thought!
December 8, 2009
November 24, 2009
Boambee Playgroup celebrated their Christmas break-up today with a special visit by Santa.
With a Ho Ho Ho and a ring of a bell Santa made a very special appearance at Tabatinga today at the Boambee Playgroup Christmas break-up. A very happy group of children got to meet Santa and get an early present from him. Lots of playtime, dancing in bubbles, facepainting and lots of nibblies followed. I am sure all involved went to bed early and with big smiles on their faces.
November 13, 2009
I Think I Have Solved The Town's Flooding Problem!
There I was, 2am in the morning,sweeping water down our hallway and into the toilet floor wastes. 'Not again', I was thinking, 'why didn't I get that flood gate organised, I have only had 6 months to do it!'. A quick phone call to the father-in-law, 'you know that flood gate we often talked about?, how bout we get it installed fairly soon?'
So on Saturday afternoon we used 4 tubes of silicon around the exit door that lets all the water in and installed what we hope will be the answer to all our flooding problems, a you beaut home made flood gate.
So how have I solved the town's flooding problems I hear you ask? Well it's simple, you know when you put the clothes on the line or organise an outdoor BBQ - it is bound to rain right? Well now that I have installed a flood gate the rubber seals will probably perish before I need to use it again! So rest easy Coffs Harbour, we have 300 flood free years ahead of us!!
(Note to non Coffs Harbour residents - Coffs has had not 1, not 2, not even 3, but 4 one hundred year flood events in the last 12 months - coincidentally these are Tabatinga's first 12 months in business!!)
