What is the most important lesson you feel you need to teach your children?

WHAT WE LOVE

Like most successful first timers Sarah Hay wrote about what she knew and loved and that was the harsh, arid landscape of her childhood. She was brought up on Aroona station, 120 km east of Esperance and her family used to ...

holiday all the time along the coast of Mt Arid National Park. Her Mum and Dad would pack up the four-wheel-drive with camping gear and their three kids and a blind black labrador piled in. It was freedom.

A professional fisherman mate of her Father took them to uninhabited island for a week that extended to a month when bad weather stranded them. A corrugated thin shed, which was kept stocked for emergencies was the camp...

kitchen and the only sign that people knew or cared about this windswept island. Here, Sarah, between catching lobsters almost as big as she was, listened to tall tales and true stories of dangerous and murderous sealers, kidnapping,

shipwrecks and piracy. Sarah Hay is a successful Australian writer and an author of the beautiful novel: 'Skin'.

Kerrianne Cox lists a haunting legacy of the racial indifference of the past and the damage wreaked on her family. A grandmother killed in a hit-and-run accident and no investigation ever carried out. An aunt strangled in the sand hills.

An uncle found floating dead in the ocean with his guitar. Her mother taken away on a boat from Sunday Island as a four-year-old by government men who never brought her back. It just breaks her heart to know her grandmother suffered so much pain.

That her mother grew up only an hour away from her parents, knowing nothing of her family or culture. It affects her now, seeing old people in the crowd and they are crying. But it is not all about blaming. Forgiveness is so important.

We have to face ourselves. It is also identity. Reflecting back on her childhood she can strongly say, she is Aboriginal in her way of culture and her growing up in the bush and her parents and grandparents who have been inspiration in her life.

"They are not here anymore to come out and express themselves, but I am here for them, when I sing, they sing, they are here, because of my music, healing can happen as well." The well known Aboriginal songwriter and singer relfects on her childhood.

Walter Gibb from 'Relationship Australia' talked to me about modern families: 'Men and women are struggling to meet each other's expectations and achieving balance between work and home has become one of our greatest challenges...

There is too much pressure to be perfect parents and have successful carrers in a modern environment where work is either limited or all-consuming, and meeting the needs of children is expensive."

"Where is the balance? Where is the time?" He asked at the end. "And what about your son?" I asked him back instead of reply.

"I just want to tell him stories as long as I can, teach him to read, be in love, know what it is to be a man." He smiled at me and left. There was nothing more I needed to know.

A Princess and the Pea

this famous fairytale

teaches us

about a delicate girl

whose famous physical sensitivity

stretches to feeling

a pea

under twenty mattrasses,

and everyone

is running around

to protect

her

from the first sign

of physical discomfort

without asking

the basic question:

" Is the pea, really, causing her so much harm?"

Princesses and princes

or our times

driven

by the best

of intention

are being

cocooned

from anything,

and protected

from everyone.

In the 'all must have prizes'

era

teachers,

just like me,

award

merit cards

for the most

mundane

things.

Parents

increasingly

expect

and

demand

that their children

are protected

from all

and every

possibility

of harm.

A bare suggestion

of not guarding

students

from

the anguish

of failure

is met

with

howls

of protesting crowd.

Rearing a child

is a great privilege

and responsibility,

exasperating,

yet rewarding,

exhilarating,

emotionally and physically

draining,

yet heart warming

and heart stirring,

frightening at times...

There is no generic way

how to raise

your brilliantly

and frustratingly

unique individuals,

and yet,

by trying so hard

to make

your kids happy,

by trying

to protect them

from any kind

of often

hypothetical

harm,

you are denying

them,

happiness

as grown up

individuals.

Teach your kids

FAILURE,

at an early age.

They will be

grateful

for their experience

of hardship

once

they compete

for their place

in the sun

with their mates.

Encourage

EARNED ACCOMPLISHMENTS.

Narcissism

is cute

in three-years-old,

but young adults,

away

from their teachers

and their parents

do not get

constant praise

for their brilliance

they do not posess.

Liberate yourself

and liberate your children

as well...

Let them to find their own way,

let them to learn from their own mistakes,

we have all learnt

this way,

once,

do your remember?

A princess and a pea

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Sarah Hay: Skin

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