Tag Archives: childhood

Boys to men

Posted on by Neil
1

Sometimes a little something demonstrates a big step. The smallest action that shows understanding, growth, maturity . There are things that kids need to learn and things that they need to be helped to learn – the years between 11 and 18 seem to incorporate so many changes, the real steps between childhood and adulthood. And whilst some of the changes will come about naturally as the body and mind develops, others will need to be teased out and encouraged.

There comes an age in a young person’s life (particularly I think if you’re a boy) when more and more you find adults extending their hand to you and that awkward embarrassing feeling of being neither adult nor child. A sense of feeling like you’re playing a game – let’s pretend we’re grown ups…..

Visiting my son’s new school a few weeks back, the teacher went to shake his hand and I saw all of this play out, he looked down at the floor, extended his hand and seemed to die inside from embarrassment. Later we talked about it, the history behind shaking hands, the importance of it in society, the fact that when someone extends their hand they are treating you as an equal…regardless of whether they are an adult or not. And you have a choice whether you want to step up and accept that.

Hold out your hand. Meet their eyes. Be confident.

Fast forward a couple of weeks later and I’m looking at the photos from the leavers’ assembly at his primary school. The end of the first stage of his life and of course the start of the next. I guess at that age it feels a little bit like your world is ending, everything that you know is being left behind and the future feels…..well unknown. A lot of the kids had tears in their eyes, including those from other classes, the tightness of the school community and the sense of family still amazes me.

At the end, the school presents each leaving child with a book that they have chosen as a reminder of their time there. One by one the children go up and meet the head teacher, receive the book and shake her hand. And there in the actions of the kids you can see everything that I’ve written about, awkwardness, extending the wrong hand, taking the book and not shaking the hand.

But then I see a photo, that makes me smile, but brings a tear to my eye. The boy, hand out stretched, making eye contact, confident.

Sometimes a little something demonstrates a big step. The boy is growing up.

Freedom isn’t just another word for nothing left to lose

Posted on by Neil
7

Do you know how hot a kettle is before you touch it?

How sharp a knife is before you cut yourself with it?

Or, how it feels to be lost….until you are lost?

When I was a kid things were simpler.  When my parents were kids they were simpler still.  I ran through the woods, I did shit and stuff and we walked the streets looking for fun.

What has changed?

Surprisingly little, other than our fear, our paranoia and our absolute dissociation with reality.

What I mean is…the problem is in your head, the problem is not other people.

Kids learn by taking risks, kids learn by getting things wrong, kids learn by fucking things up.  That is how I learnt, that is how you learnt, so why the hell are we preventing our kids from learning in exactly the same way?

Let them run wild, let them do things that make you worry, let them fall out of trees, into rivers. Let legs and arms be broken, let tears be shed, let fear be feared and let us let them free.

Free from us.

Free from our fears.

Free to grow.

A total spectacle

Posted on by Neil
7

I was born in 1973.  Which in itself is perhaps the least interesting fact I could tell you.  I mean, even with the power of Google I struggle to come up with a list of fascinating facts about the year.  But what it does mean, and the observant amongst you will already have worked this out, is that my formative years were mainly spent in the 70s and 80s.  Not a time of high fashion.

We were all victims of over large collars, tank tops, basin hair cuts and bell bottoms.  That was our cross to bear and as kids I think we knew that we were destined to look back at photo albums in our 30s not with a sense of fondness, but instead dread and loathing for the generation that made us look like total social rejects. But more than that, I….I was special.

When I was very little the Doctor’s noticed that I had a lazy eye. In fact once they had diagnosed it, they then berated my mother for not having noticed it – which is the sort of pathetic self-important idiocy that the medical profession can so often indulge in.  And because it hadn’t been picked up “soon enough” they set about corrective treatment.  Not only was I the proud owner of a pair of prescription specs, but I also got to wear an eye patch on a regular basis…..a look that I totally rocked.

The whole optician thing was to a child a complete tortuous and frustrating experience.  I would sit on a big machine with my eyes pressed to a viewing hole and each hand holding a lever (I always imagined this was a little like a submarine periscope, but given that I have never been in submarine it will have to remain an imagination). When the adult person was ready to humiliate me, they would display two images…a lion and a cage, a parrot and a bird-cage etc. and ask me to move the two levers until the lion was back in the cage or the parrot was back…..well you get the idea. Then when I replied that it was, they would do something to undo my hard work and ask sweetly, “is it still in the cage?”

Of course the adult voice inside me shouts, “No it isn’t fuckhead because you’ve just pressed a button or something to make it all go wrong” but the child at the time would just repeat the exercise seemingly ad infinitum.

And kids being kids, anything that was slightly out of the ordinary was fair game for name calling.  And nothing much better than the boy just arrived from Wales….with big thick glasses…..and an eye patch!  One ingenious child came up with the name SpeccyWoo and for a while it stuck.  If you went back and asked the kids at school with me, what nickname I had they probably couldn’t remember….but if you ask me, then of course I can. As you know……because I’m talking about it. 30 years later.  So anyway, I decided to take the name and make it my own so if you’re on Twitter and you come across @SpeccyWoo you’ll find me, still wearing glasses, still with god awful dress sense….only this time, without the patch.