Skullduggery Pleasant and the problem of violence

Dudelet (who’s nine) has recently got into Derek Landy’s Skulduggery Pleasant in a big way. He’s devoured the first one in about two days and is currently storming through the second. There are, of course, various things about the books I’ve forgotten. Like the swearing, for example.

“You know how I’m not supposed to swear?”

“Yes.”

“So how come this children’s book has so much swearing in it?”

“No it hasn’t.”

“This character says ‘Damned key!’”

“Ah. Well. That isn’t really swearing.”

“Can I say Damn? Damn!”

“No you can’t.”

“What about ‘bloody’?”

“Can we talk about something else?”

“It’s not my fault – you gave me the book!”

“Yes – but…”

Yes, but what?

Actually, the swearing in the Skulduggery books doesn’t go any further than the occasional ‘bloody’ and only ever by the bad guys. Mostly. The violence, though, is another thing entirely. My God, but Skulduggery Pleasant and his friends are pretty bloody violent individuals. But according to the discreet little note on the back, the novels are suitable for children of “9+”.

One swipe of the sword took the fingers on his left hand and he howled in pain and staggered back and she jumped. She planted her feet on his chest and swung, the blade flashing in the bridge’s lights as it took his head.

Eek. Or is it different because it’s happening to a troll? And am I a hypocrite because I’ll let him watch this or Avengers Assemble but I won’t let him see Skyfall? Supermum’s puzzled about the last one. She thinks the Marvel films are too violent (but I’d argue her tolerance of little elf’s Barbie fixation ceded the moral high ground long ago) and she used to worry about Doctor Who. So what’s the difference? Why is Skullduggery acceptable? Why are The Hulk and Thor positive role models? And why does the idea of my nine year old watching James Bond make me queasy?

Supermum asked me this in the car once, with dudelet listening attentively (we’re pretty open about these discussions).

“It’s because it’s too sexy, isn’t it?” dudelet said.

“What’s ‘sexy’?” asked little elf.

As it happens, I do have an answer (though not about what sexy is) and it’s to do with that old fashioned fall guy, the Moral Compass. Skulduggery Pleasant has one. The Mighty Thor has one. Even Ironman has one.

James Bond doesn’t.

Bond might as well be Loki. He likes killing. He enjoys watching his enemies suffer. He treats women with contempt and uses them as toys. He stumbles through the kind of ambiguously grey moral universe that only adults should be asked to navigate. For all of the cartoon dismemberments, beheadings, eviscerations, zombifications and sundry other horrors, there is never any doubt about right and wrong in Skullduggery’s universe, even if the characters themselves struggle to orientate themselves along the compass points they know they ought to follow. And, compared to The Hunger Games or the horrors of Garner’s Red Shift, it’s fairly knockabout stuff.

Barbie, though. That’s plain unforgivable.

Do you draw the line at particular books or films? I suppose we all have a limit. What’s yours?

Bad parenting and TO THE LIGHT: Yoko Ono and Ai Wei Wei at the Serpentine

Somehow, supermum had managed to convince herself that the Princess Diana Memorial Playground was in Hyde Park as opposed to the best part of a mile’s trudge across Kensington Gardens. I was grumpy and still weirded out by various work-related miseries. Dudelet was on a mission to annoy everyone and little elf was taking full advantage of this with a sickening display of decent behaviour. Sarcasm is instinctively written in her bones. I just wanted utter silence and to contemplate the abyss of my working life. Supermum was probably quite happy to be where we were but no doubt devoutly wished the whole crew of us on Pluto.

Then we realised that we’d accidentally parked outside the Serpentine. So we wandered over to look at the Ai Wei Wei/Herzog & de Meuron pavilion. It was twenty metres away and I managed to squeeze in two more instances of appallingly bad parenting along the way. Dudelet burst into tears. I burst into tears and simmered at the same time. Little elf skipped obliviously into the pavillion’s shady depths and I followed her, hoping it would swallow me up.

In a way, it did, a little. The photographs available don’t really do its odd presence, at once chthonic and airy, justice. A flat round roof overlays a partly below ground-level space full of curved walls and gently stepped levels heading in different directions and rather ugly IKEA lights. It’s like a deconstructed amphitheatre. Cork stools shaped like giant button mushrooms or champagne corks – champagne being something at once rooted in earth, permeated with air and emblematic of all things playful and extravagant – are scattered here and there. Little elf and dudelet ran back and forth and dudelet ran over and hugged me. I hugged him back. We all peered over the edge of the pavilion’s flat roof. It was covered in water and mosquito larva but one sense of it was clear. Earth, sea and sky.

Then we went in to see the Yoko Ono exhibition. First, dudelet and little elf had their pictures taken to join her #smile project then they attacked the all-white chess set which was attracting a large quantity of equally puzzled young people. I asked dudelet why he thought it was white.

“So that people don’t know if they’re winning,” he decided. Little elf, showing a flicker of little goblin, then tried to win by knocking all the other pieces over and we made a hasty exit for the galleries.

In there, we queued to walk around a perspex maze after watching other visitors wander around it, arms outstretched like blind men or women. It’s a simple maze and (I think) a simple point – how easy it is to see how others are on a wrong path and taking the wrong turn, not so easy for oneself – but one that’s made quite powerfully. Dudelet and I went in together and we found our way to the centre. Once inside, you forget that other people are watching you. We reached the centre, a simple square plinth, hollow, with a still pool of water at the bottom. It was inside a small, private enclosure. I told him I was sorry and kissed the top of his head. Then he led the way out and we watched little elf lead supermum around the small labyrinth looking absolutely delighted with herself.

There were other pieces (“Look! Bums!”) but the maze meant the right thing at the right time, as did the Ai Wei Wei pavilion. Later, we were all grouchy with each other once more – it’s been a long summer with too much change – but at least we all know how to make up when we need to.

Smoking

Dudelet and I are walking to the Underground on the way to pick up supplies from the Japan Centre.

“Look, those girls are smoking!” he says, clearly disapproving but also fishing for my reaction.

“Not good for them, is it?” I offer feebly.

“How did they get the cigarettes? I thought shops weren’t allowed to sell them to children?”

“Well, maybe they got an older kid to buy them. Some shopkeepers don’t pay as much attention as they should/“

“Did you ever smoke?”

Oh dear. Here it comes.

“Yes,” I say, wondering if I should lie.

“When did you stop?”

“January 1st, 1998. Wish I’d done it sooner. Hope it wasn’t too late.”

“When did you start?”

“When I was thirteen or fourteen.”

“Why?”

Why indeed? I’m stuck with being honest now so I plough on.

“I suppose I was trying to impress other, slightly older or cooler boys – at least I thought they were cooler at the time.” I decide to leave out the fact that I actually started smoking in Scouts.

“Oh. Were they a bit thuggish, then?”

“Er…possibly.”

“Mummy says she never started because she tried one cigarette and it was so disgusting, she never went near them again.”

“She was very sensible, then,” I say, half-wishing I’d given the same answer.

“Yes. Did I tell you I’ve started writing a script?”

How I most recently failed our daughter

Dudelet, little elf’s brother, is eight and clever. Clever as in very clever, very academic but not at the extreme end of the scale. He learns easily (perhaps a bit too easily), has developed a ridiculous vocabulary for his age (I treasure the memory of his grandfather’s face when dudelet, at two and a half, gravely explained “…and this is a meditation stool”) and is one of the small group in his class who are sat together and given extra homework to “stretch them.” He’s also a bit moody, hyperactive, spends too much time on iPods, computers and GameCubes if given the change, and wakes up at 5am daily to read Michelle Paver. I can’t remember a time when he hasn’t clearly and cleanly distinguished between fantasy and make-believe. Most younger children walk a liminal line between the two if, at times, a slightly knowing one. For dudelet, his toys have always been toys from the moment he found words to express the concept (when he was nearly three). Imaginative play has always been story telling with a layer of ironic distance rather than projection. I sometimes feel he’s missed out.

Little elf, in contrast, rapidly acquired imaginary friends – in fact a whole imaginary family. She went through a phase of putting her babies everywhere and heaven help you if you sat on them. This was tricky because her babies were tiny and invisible. Her bedroom is full of monsters and fairies. Her toys talk and need their hair washed. Sometimes, they speak for her or she speaks for them (and therefore, for herself). Dudelet taught himself to tell the time and use a computer. Little elf has zero sense of time and seemingly no interest in acquiring one. She loves pink, dresses, ballet – a long list of normative little girl things.

Recently, we went to a parents evening. Little elf’s teachers and the classroom assistant sat behind the desk and beamed at her. Then dudelet took her off to play so we could have a conversation. We were in for a shock. Little elf was a bit disruptive. She didn’t want to play with others when she was supposed to. She’d only join in activities in her good time. She was cheeky. She threw things. She’d hide or pretend to be invisible.

Supermum and I looked at each other, baffled. We hadn’t expected this. Our four year throws the occasional (okay, regular) major strop but she’s usually…Well, there’s the drawing on the wall, the room demolition, the eating tantrums, kicking her brother, cheekiness…But she’s so funny…How could anyone…?

“Don’t get me wrong,” the teacher said. “we do love her. But she can be a proper little madam if she doesn’t get her own way.”

“But…” we chorused, trying to explain that we just didn’t recognise the portrait of a charming, manipulative little harridan that had just been painted for us.

The teacher scanned us both. She knows little elf’s brother who’s also got something of a reputation as a character at his school.

“She really is very clever, you know,” she said.

I confess, I think we both said “What?”

“Really smart – she’s a very intelligent little girl. She’s knows just what she’s doing.”

After which, the teacher went on to outline a strategy for managing her behaviour which has so far worked reasonably well. Meanwhile, we went away reeling. Little elf is clever. Why had we never noticed?

It isn’t that we don’t think she’s clever so much as dudelet has so thoroughly occupied the ‘clever’ slot in the family. Little elf had taken up the ‘charming, mischievous, cute” slot (and the speech issue probably doesn’t help).

How could I have let her down like that? How could I have allowed this to happen? And how typical! The ‘clever’ boy, the ‘charming’ girl! I’m so thoroughly ashamed of myself.

So I’m trying to monitor my behaviour, to look for ways in which I’m failing to actively empower her intellectually and (contrariwise) to be attentive to how I’m pushing dudelet into an altogether different stereotype. The other thing, of course, is to be aware that all stereotypes aside, they may well be expressing perfectly valid sides of their characters and identities to date. Who’s to say? It’s an ongoing project, parenting, and we can’t deny that she’s already equaling her older brother in sheer emotional intelligence. And, lastly, it could be argued that the fault isn’t that I’ve noticed she’s clever but that I put too high a default value on conventional evidences of intelligence. Little elf spins astonishing stories of giants and pirates and princesses and monsters who are invariably cut into little pieces. Dudelet likes to do sums, draw comics and invent sushi processing machines.

That’s enough navel-gazing – you get the picture. But, I’m still stunned by our failure to at least question the stereotypes we were setting up. Sigh.

Must try harder.

Eight is a difficult age

There are times when I really don’t want to be in the same building as my eight year old. I’m sure I’m not the only parent who thinks this. Two nights ago, I walked into the bathroom following twenty minutes of intense prevarication on dudelet’s part and asked him if he’d cleaned his teeth.

“You’ve already asked me that!” he whined.

I know, I wanted to say, and I’m asking again because you ignored me. And because you’ll ignore me this time and then again until you finally get the reaction you’re looking for: an explosion of frustrated rage on my part generating dramatic tears and an even larger explosion on your part culminating in your slamming the bathroom door on me and screaming every time I try to engage you or attract your attention. The previous night I’d been foolish enough to tell him that I’d actually been waiting for half an hour and had triggered slammed doors and inarticulate howls of rage and sorrow every time I’d come near him until he finally fell asleep, still furious.

This time, I didn’t say anything. Ten minutes later, he cleaned his teeth. But I felt like I was walking on eggshells.

You can probably tell that we’ve got a bit of a cycle happening here – we ask him to do something, he doesn’t do it, we wait a reasonable amount of time and ask again and he explodes in fury. It’s unpleasant, it happens on a daily basis and we still don’t really know what to do about it. Eggshells, many of them broken, all over the house.

We know it’s related to a number of issues:

• Self-esteem

• Tiredness

• School

• Growing up

Growing up is the easiest one to accommodate. We know hormones and testosterone are raging throughout his (still) little body. He’s an increasingly independent being who struggles with that independence and the responsibilities. There are changes going on with his body and it’s both interesting and frightening for him. The good news is that he at least talks to us about him and the those conversations (that’s a whole other post) are going well. The bad news is that it contributes to the thunder and lightning of the other issues.

Tiredness is a big problem. Dudelet is an early riser. Four thirty isn’t unknown. At eight, he knows to keep the noise down and to find something quiet to entertain himself with and we’re lucky that he’s a good reader. But if he wakes up before five during a light sleep phase he just won’t try and go back to sleep again. There are simply too many distractions and short of stripping every book out of his room and putting a lock on his door (NOT under consideration for even a single moment!) there isn’t a lot we can do about it.

But this means that by six or seven o’clock, after a long day at school, he’s often cranky, grumpy and carrying huge bags under his eyes. He’s generally asleep before eight thirty but we’re pretty sure he isn’t getting all the sleep he needs.

School is another challenge. His tiredness is starting to impinge on his behaviour in the classroom (his teacher reports that he sometimes ‘loses it’ over the tiniest of things) and getting him to engage in out of school activities is a constant battle. He seems to be well socialise and popular but he’s clever and still hasn’t learned how to manage how he uses that cleverness. In other ways, he’s immature for his age – he cries more readily than other children. He’s physically timid (this frustrates supermum, who can be a bit of a Hemulen, a great deal) and avoids teamsports or physically activities like the proverbial plague. I suspect (and feel rather guilty about it) that he gets a lot of this from me. In other ways, he’s ahead of most of his peers ( a full stage above in areas like maths and reading).

Looking at books and commentaries leads us to believe that self-esteem, or lack of it, at the core of dudelet’s tantrums and difficulties in coping with everyday elements of family life. On some occasions he’s come right out and said it – “I’m no good at anything” “You don’t love me” “You think I’m rubbish” – and it breaks my heart.

It also makes me feel terribly guilty, as if my own feelings of inadequacy and failure have somehow infected him like an airborne virus

So what are we doing?

Nothing very spectacular. We’re biting our lip, we’re avoiding getting drawn into confrontations (which always end appallingly badly), we’re praising when possible and avoiding being negative. We’e already doing most of the things one finds on typical parenting checklists (except, of course, when we forget ourselves – we get tired too). I can’t help feeling that a lot of these tensions would dissipate if he could only learn to go back to sleep. But that’s not something we can impose – he has to learn to do it himself.

Anyone else find themselves trapped in this sort of a cycle? How did you manage to break out of it?