Taking care of the elderly

is something I do know about. I have done it. It is hard work. It requires commitment, organisation, time, patience and any number of other things.

I also know that I was one of the lucky ones. I was incredibly fortunate in that my father, my beloved "Senior Cat", was so easy to care for even when he needed so much help. He was intellectually alert to the end of his life. He was good tempered, polite and forever saying "Thank you".  

I also know I was very fortunate in having my sister, Middle Cat, there to help. She was the one who took him to medical appointments when he could still get in and out of her car. She went with him in the access cab when he could no longer go in the car. On the rare occasions she could not go with him and I went she would always check to see we had arrived there and back safely.

Being at home for so long meant that I could see the Senior Cat had proper meals, meals he liked, meals he wanted to eat. I did the best I could to provide good nutrition and I did what I could to make sure they were presented to him at set times during the day. We both knew when to expect things to happen. 

These things matter for the very elderly...and the Senior Cat was almost ninety-eight before he made the decision it was all too much for both of us. He was the one who made the decision about "going into care" and I still feel I let him down by not arguing too hard. Yes, I was tired. I had spent too long sleeping "with one ear open" like a mother of very young children. I doubt I will ever catch up on the lost sleep.

Once in the nursing home Middle Cat and I alternated days so he always had a visitor. He had other visitors too, far more than most people. We just thought of it as the right thing to do - and it was the right thing.

I am saying all that now not to say "how good of us". No, that had nothing to do with it. It was the right thing to do. It was what should have been done. It is what should happen to all older people. It doesn't.

This morning's paper has the preliminary stories to a campaign the paper says it will be running. Their campaign is called "Care Repair" and is supposedly going to deal with the "reforms" in aged care that were supposed to lead to more care and have actually (and not surprisingly) led to less. They are talking about those who are getting one shower a week at triple the previous cost. They are talking about a pack of seven "fruit smoothies" which retail for less than $20 and cost $120 when part of the package. Is this how we keep the elderly clean and provide them with the fruit they can no longer prepare for themselves? 

There are people out there making an enormous profit. They must be. I know employing people is expensive. There are all sorts of additional superannuation, insurance, leave loadings and so on to consider. Even with those things there are people making a big profit. It is why they are in the business of "providing care". The problem is  they are not providing "care" at all. They do not care. It is simply a business for them.

I wonder if I will reach the point of needing such "care". Will anyone care? It just makes me so glad I was in the position to make sure that the elderly person I loved above all others was given some care. I was not perfect, far from it, but at least I tried and Middle Cat tried. No, he was not "lucky". We just tried to give the Senior Cat what all elderly people should be given - loving care.   

The ban is "not working"

according to the latest reports. Under 16s are still accessing social media.

Yes, of course they are. Did you really expect them to voluntarily give up such a large part of their lives? 

Last Saturday I was in the supermarket. Ahead of me there was a parent doing the weekly shop. In the child seat of the trolley there was a three year old. He was behaving very well indeed. He was quiet. He was not fidgeting. He was not pulling things from the shelves. He was not making any noise. He was apparently completely absorbed in playing a game. 

Not a problem? Yes, a big problem. It was a computer game. It was rewarding him each time he clicked on the "right" answer. It may have seemed like fun to him but it was teaching him to become addicted to such things. 

It was nice for his parent. They had a nice, quiet, well behaved child while they managed to get yet one more of the weekend chores out of the way. There was no attempt at all to communicate with the child or involve them in the food being bought or how it might be used.  It might be that the parent really did not have time to involve the child but it is much more likely that the parent simply did not see it as important. Their child was being "good" and that mattered more. 

Is it any wonder though that children grow up believing this is normal. that this is how you get entertained? Is it any wonder that they are addicted to the screen for entertainment? Should it surprise us that unless school based learning provides at least something approaching that level of entertainment then it is considered "boring"? 

Of course "Big Tech" will provide this sort of material. There is a lot of money to be made here but there is also a huge demand for it. It is not a demand driven solely by the companies providing it. It is also driven by parents who want their children to be entertained the easy way. The "oh, but that game is an educational one" is an excuse which is far too easy to use.  No, it is not "educational". It may teach something but at what cost? 

It is time to stop trying to make "Big Tech" entirely responsible for screen addiction. The addiction begins early and with the choices parents make for their children. They need to see it the way they would see alcohol and tobacco. Parents are making available something just as addictive and potentially dangerous. It is their responsibility first. 

Are they "mentally ill" or

is there something else at work here? 

I refuse to believer that "up to half of preschoolers have a mental health disorder". At least a third of them have a serious one.  This is a wild claim that, if true, should be sending everyone into panic mode. Nevertheless this is what was being suggested in the article in yesterday's state newspaper.

Apparently "anxiety" is a big thing now. I delved a little deeper into the report. Yes, "separation anxiety", "depression", "conduct disorders", "panic attacks" and then "ADHD", "oppositional defiance disorder" were all mentioned.

These are children under the age of five and they are already being labelled as having serious mental health issues. One in five are described as having "two or more serious mental health issues". 

I tried finding more about this from official sources and I am waiting to read how the research was actually conducted. Still, the report was there and, true or not, too many people will feel an inclination to believe it.  

This is ridiculous. Yes, very young children can have issues but are they mental health issues or are they issues caused by the environment in which they find themselves? I am not intending to include children who have very obvious issues such as severe autism here. I am simply asking this about your "average" child, the child going through "the terrible twos", the "why and what threes" and "frightful fours". These are children who, although it may not seem that way to harassed parents, are growing up. They are growing through normal stages of development. 

If a child is left with strangers from six months of age so that both parents can go back to work does it perhaps contribute to issues they might have about being separated from their parents? They may not see the same adults every day at day care. Those adults rarely have the time to offer undivided attention, to answer questions, handle problems. Is anxiety arising from these things mean the child is somehow at fault or mentally ill? Their parents do not spend so much time with them. When they do see them then it is at times of the day when they are in a rush to get the child to day care so they can go to work. At the end of the day the child is tired and often fractious.  A parent can get irritable too.

Small children do get frightened easily. I watched one who had been happily playing on a ride on toy in the shopping centre. The adult in charge of him, presumably his mother had moved out of his line of vision. He suddenly realised it and was, for a moment, panic stricken. As soon as he saw her and was comforted he went back to playing. Does that mean he has "panic attacks" or is it normal child behaviour?

Children will test boundaries too. "No" is a favourite word in their vocabulary. It is one they learn early. It is a powerful word and they know how it can be manipulated. Does that mean they are showing "oppositional defiance disorder" at all times? Of course there are children who show more serious behaviours in relation to defiance but sound consistent discipline from all the adults around them puts and end to most of it. Does that happen when there are different rules at home, at day care, with grandparents?

And do those children really have attention deficits? Are they really unable to sit still when required to do so? My experience of reading bedtime stories has been that small children will bounce around and wriggle even while they are listening to a story. It does not mean they are not listening. Sometimes it means they are anticipating. I also know their attention span can be very short. When they are involved in pushing the plastic dinosaur through dirt the span for concentration can double or triple. 

I might be completely wrong but I am wondering whether many of the "mental health" problems are being created by adults. Are we simply demanding what the child cannot deliver in an environment which is telling him, "Don't try to explore, to ask, to build relationships. Just do as you are told. " 

 

 

Having ten children is

surely irresponsible now? 

There was a "human interest" story about a family with ten children in yesterday's paper. It was about how hard they found it to "make ends meet". The mother spoke of the size of the grocery bill, not being able to afford new clothes for any of them, that they had not been on holiday for two years and more.

I do not quite know what the point of the story was because of course ten children would be expensive to feed. I also wondered how well they were being fed because apparently she only buys 15litres of milk a week. That is only just over a litre each in a week. That is not much for a child. Even if the adults go without it is not much for a child. Yes, they have a vegetable garden but the mother also talked about buying 80c packets of cake mix to feed them. I wonder how much food value there is in cheap cake mix? Do they, even with the kitchen garden they claim to have, get well fed? 

My paternal grandparents came from large families, eleven on one side and nine on the other. In the late Victorian era this was considered quite normal but should it be considered normal now? I think my paternal grandparents ate well for the times. There was a lot of fish available for my paternal grandfather. He and his brothers may have caught most of it.  Great-grandma, if the recipes handed down to us are any example, also knew how to make use of everything a sheep or cow had to offer. She knew about potatoes, pumpkin and carrots too. She grew beans and peas and more. There were no "takeaway" meals available. My paternal grandmother came from a farm and there was clearly no shortage of food at Spring Farm. The Senior Cat could remember many meals there as a child. One of his jobs when he was there was to churn the butter. Milk came straight from the cow. There was a vegetable garden and fruit trees. Feeding all those children was possible because of those resources. Yes, they bought other essentials like flour and rice but most food was there on the farm.

This would not be possible with ten children on a small urban block without access to something like free fish. 

I have a distant cousin with six children. They were "home schooled" and I sometimes wondered how easy it was to feed them. I knew something about how much they could eat because they would descend on us once a month for woodwork lessons with the Senior Cat. I would feed them with some help from their grandmother. The first thing I would do was supply them with a mid morning milk drink and six milk drinks plus tea for five adults was an extra two litres of milk alone. They were nice, well behaved children who have grown into nice, responsible adults but I did wonder what they missed out on sometimes.

Brother Cat and Middle Cat and their partners made the decision to stop at two. "Replace yourselves," they said. Their children have a sibling. By modern standards they were not given much spoiling but they were given opportunities and they used them. They have appeared in films, on stage, played sport, work in medicine, law and education and built a multi-million dollar business.  Many people describe them as "lucky" but in reality they were made to work for what they have. They could not have had the opportunities which laid the foundation for these things if there had been six or ten children. Their experiences would have been not necessarily better or worse but they would have been different.

I really do wonder though about people choosing to have ten children now. Yes, they are getting a considerable amount of government assistance to feed the children they have chosen to have. Was it really a responsible choice though? What was acceptable 120-150 years ago relied on a different sort of lifestyle altogether, one that most people no longer live.   

The "Muslim" issue will have to be

addressed at some point. Trying to pretend it does not exist or is some sort of Islamophobia is not going to do that.

A Muslim friend of mine did address this issue as we came out of the library yesterday.

"Cat, I'm worried.  This phobia thing is not going away. We are good people. We work hard but now A... is finding people do not treat him quite the same way at work. In the library it is good but in the shops it can be bad. I am trying not to use the car but we did need petrol and the man at the service station was hostile."

I really did not know what to say. I did not want to upset her but I know she is right. What I wanted to say is unacceptable.

I wanted to tell her. "Don't dress the way you do. Ditch that hijab now. Don't try telling people what you have just said to me. They will not believe it. A... does give the impression he believes he is superior to you and to any other woman." 

I would like to know what was said at the mosque last Friday but I am also afraid that it will have encouraged the sense of superiority her husband displays. He is always polite to me but it is distant. I am a woman and woman are not equal to men. He has told me this. He thinks of himself as being "very liberal" (his own words) but is he? Perhaps he is within his own culture but many of the men I know would not dream of treating a woman the way he does. What is more their wives would have something to say if they did. My friend P... accepts it. He behaves as she expects him to behave. Yes, it is much better than some Muslim men I have known but it is different. His religion requires it of him. This is what he has been taught to believe.

So where do you begin with that sort of problem? It is not a simple issue. There can be "education" but this is religion and, as I know all too well, religious beliefs will all too often take precedence over all other beliefs. How else would otherwise highly educated people believe that something like a blood transfusion was wrong? How else would others believe that their god does not expect them to be happy, simply obedient? How else would they refuse to allow their child life saving treatment or demand they miss out on any form of celebration?

Our national constitution, rightly, does not allow laws to be made about religion. That is actually not the problem. The problem is the "we are right and you are wrong and what we say must prevail" attitude of some.

It is also why our Prime Minister made a major error in attending an Eid service. He reportedly had himself invited which makes it an even bigger concern. There had to be a police and other security presence there to ensure his safety. Some present let him know what they thought in no uncertain terms. That has never been necessary at a church, a temple or a synagogue. It was wrong. Even if an invitation had been freely given he should have excused himself politely. The events at Bondi are still too raw. We do have an issue and it is not going to go away simply because everyone is being told they need to be more tolerant. 

 

  

An $85m pay out?

Apparently the "sacked" presenter of a radio show I had not even heard of is seeking that extraordinary sum as "compensation" for being sacked. 

I do not choose to listen to radio. I do not actually own one any more. Even when I did have one I did not listen often.

I grew up in a family where the radio was turned on for the news service and, as we kittens grew old enough, to listen to "the Argonauts". (For those of you who do not know this was a very well presented program for older children. It was definitely "educational" or we would not have been permitted to listen to it.) Apart from that we did not listen to the radio.

It meant I grew up knowing nothing about the latest "pop" songs to "hit the charts". I had no idea who the performers were. I had no idea who presented these shows. My ignorance was so great that it was not until I went to school in the city that I had heard of the Beatles. I was genuinely confused about the fuss that was being made. My new class mates were very kind to me but I was still bewildered. I didn't actually like the music. My old class mates knew more about classical music because it was what the cows preferred. (Yes, seriously!) 

My paternal grandmother liked silence. The radio, apart from the news, irritated her. My paternal grandfather would sometimes "listen to the cricket" but I suspect he was really asleep. My maternal grandparents did listen to radio in the evenings but not when we were there.  Nana must have listened during the day as well because she sometimes argued with a neighbour about something that had been said. The radio was not on when we there.

But the Senior Cat was like his mother. He liked silence while he worked. He was comfortable with his own thoughts. I am comfortable with my own thoughts. The avoidable noise of other people is something I find irritating. I do not want to hear the endless chatter of radio presenters. Above all the "talk back" shows where people can "phone in" and "have their say" make me squirm. I am intolerant. I know I am intolerant. I do not need to be tolerant do I?

So when I learn that someone apparently had a radio show where they also had a "contract" for $100m and they have now been "sacked" for their lewd remarks on air, remarks which went just too far for their female co-presenter to tolerate, then I can feel no sympathy. Presumably the sum this person was being paid represented something of the advertising the show generated. What it tells me is that too much money is spent on advertising...and far too much is spent on deliberately provocative radio presenters. 

Thankfully I do not have to listen to them.   

No, it was not a "landslide"

even though the result was largely as expected. 

As I am writing this the results of the state election are being analysed and discussed and argued...and more. There is a claim that the winning party won "by a landslide". 

That is wrong. They managed to get 39.1% of the first preference vote at the last count. It means that almost four in ten people wanted them before any other party. After that they had to rely on the second or third preferences or more. In other words people were put in a position where, like it or not, they had to choose another candidate or candidates apart from their first choice. 

Yes, some of you will be tired to death of me saying that yet again. You may even stop reading the blog. Some of you will tell me "it's fairer than first past the post" or "it is fairer than any other system". No, it isn't. It is no more or less fair. It is simply the electoral system we are stuck with. 

What I want to say here however is that the way the media is portraying all of this is a problem. It is not educating people about the way the system works. Is it their role to do this? That is another question.

Given that most adults in this country know almost nothing about actual politics and do not educate the young then it likely is the role of the media. They will not do it but perhaps they should. Of course the problem is that, in order to do it in a fair way, the media would need to be (and remain) apolitical at least while dealing with the topic of voting. It is not something they would find easy to do. Our ABC (the approximate equivalent of the BBC) is unashamedly left wing. If a more "conservative" government came in they may find there are demands to at least "be more inclusive" or "broaden their perspective". It is unlikely to happen. They have an agenda and intend to stick to it.

But they have at least raised the issue of the far right party abusing the preferential voting system in a way of which few people are aware. They were almost encouraging an "informal" vote which then, under arcane rules, requires the electoral commission to make decisions that may not be in accordance with a voter's intentions. If ever there was a reason for a review of our electoral system then this must be it.