However when we came home and Gabriel was saying that he had no fun. I felt that I needed to say something. It has opened up the discussion at least, and hopefully it can move to a positive space. My experience is that boys are usually more physical that girls, but that the aggression, is related to the tribal experience of Australians as well as television. It seems that many mothers are unable to address this, and are not able to encourage their boys through any aggression Instead it is just accepted that they have no control over the desire to hit, push, shove, and wrestle. In particular it concerns me that these children are role models to younger children, and that children younger than 7, primarily learn through imitation. Of course these older children have no idea, that they are being emulated, but I think as a society all older people need to be held more accountable for their actions. I suspect that if this happened with all children we'd be living in a much more stable society. I know that, for myself, I had no idea how important my behaviour was in shaping another person until we had my daughter.
What a different world it would be if people realised that the behaviour of each of us matters.
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2025
I still feel this way generally. We now have more boys and each one is quite different to another, and in fact I was discussing with someone recently that if I only had certain combinations of my children, I could be going around saying "all children are motivated, driven and organised when it comes to achieving their goals around their interests and careers". Now anyone can see that it is a blatantly ridiculous generalisation, but at this stage I definitely have two children that are more that direction.
Equally I have two that are more dreamy. And I could make generalisations that way, if I only had those two. So I just steer clear of generalisations myself. I hated them growing up, I wanted to be seen for me, and how I do things and not for being a "girl" and so I treat my children as I wished to be treated, as unique individuals with their own goals and interests to be nurtured and expressed.
In general we've still found my above complaints to be an issue here, and overall they've affected us somewhat as a family. The culture is always in a hurry and has little time for attention to children, and that definitely affects how the children behave. We've adapted to this aspect of the culture, and accepted the deficits and the assets it brings- because that is one aspect that I have probably matured in living here, is that there are pros and cons to everything.
