h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm clearly not cut out to be a mother.

I've been trying to teach little about money and how it doesn't grow on trees. He spent most of his pocket money yesterday - on Frosties breakfast cereal. I buy him organic food. He had 7p left. We went to the supermarket. He tried to spend his 7p. Surprisingly, there wasn't anything costing 7p Big howls, tears and stamping of feet. Whilst he was shouting at me in the car, I reversed into a stationery object. No damage, but I'm in the business of road accident prevention. It could so easily have been a person.

Went to the petrol station. Got petrol. He came in determined to spend his money - he didn't care on what as long as he could spend it. Again nothing. Again the howls, tears and screaming. A kindly Sainsbury's person, managing the in-flow of cars, said 'Just wait there a moment, to me' , came back with a small chocolate egg and took his 7p. Silence in the car all the way home.

I really don't want to be a mother. It limits me so much. Difficult to go places and do things and means I have little money to do them with.

On top of that, when I came back, I found that he'd more or less trashed my computer. I thought I'd lost the information for ever, including my e-mail files. I did get them back, but it took a lot of time, effort and heartache.

Well, got my e-mails back and a bit more sense of proportion.

I think I'm in danger of seeing little as some kind of 'Mordac the Preventer'. Preventing me - going out, being able to have holidays abroad, and when I want, meeting new friends, in short, having a life.

However, I chose to have him. I'm learning new things; and for the moment he is my life. What's life about if it isn't family? It is a little family, though, he and I. On the positive side, he does bring love into my life and despite everything, I do love him.

Hi,

I wish I could be of more use than this, but I don't have any relevent experience in this field to draw on... well apart from being a chlid myself rather recently, and of a single parent for a while.

Alll I can offer is a none of the things he's doing are that different from what normal children seem to do, so he's not really a bad children at all. In fact he seems to be just fine. Things could be worse! a lot worse.. he's not out commiting crimes or anything which some children of his age do. He's not been expelled from school.

I've only just started to realise (at 21!) that my actions do affect my parents feelings! when I was 8 or 9 I used to know exactly how to put my parents on a guilt trip to blackmail them.

The way i used to see it was that a job was something people did to get money, I used to get money and food treats by persuading my parents to give it to me, therefore maniluplating money out of my parents was a job.

and sneaking food out of the kitchen was just a game for me. My parents tried to control what I ate, I wanted to control what I ate, it seemed a very personal thing to me.

I was raised vegetarian, most of the children I knew as a child were as well, we all went through phases where we questioned our parents food values, some of us started eating meet and some of us decided that our parents weren't extreme enough and became vegan. He's got two contrary influcences and what you tell him about food is just one of them, he's got society, the school and advertising telling him other things. He's got to learn to evvaluate both and come to his own opinions.

Hi Z,

Thanks for the . Just what I needed!

I'm feeling more balanced now, and realised why I'm reacting this way. PMS. It's not something I get often. Just be grateful you don't get it.

And yes, he is doing the sorts of things boys of his age do (he's seven and three quarters). He is good at pushing my buttons, knows just the weak points.

On camps, I heard what some of the teenagers said about their parents. Some boast how weird their parents are. New age version of Ab Fab.

When he's older, he will of course have a free choice. That's one of the reasons I decided to take him along to Quaker meetings. He can't make a choice unless he's experienced both sides. He could become a Buddhist or an atheist. I suspect he will choose some kind of spiritual tradition, though.

As a child, did you want to be a meat eater, then? Was it difficult to be one of only a few veggies? What are you now?

I wish I could be of more use but I didn't have exactly the same experience.

Well I was brought up in a community where it was the norm to be vegetarian, any non vegetarian child would be called a murderer and bullied mercilessly, usually they would become vegeatarian, at least at school, throgh peer pressure.

I didn't go to a normal school until I was 12, where most people were very ,much more accepting of me than I had been of the children who ate meat. I was persuaded once to see what it tasted like in the canteen, and did so, but that was through curiousity of my own as well.

What I did find difficult was when I left home living with people who cooked meat in a shared kitchen. Having been brought up to believe eating meat is murder it was hard to live with people who thought that it was food. Mainly because when we engage in discussions about why I don't eat meat, and I say it's because I think it's morally wronge they do find that offensive, and I end up appearing morally superior.

Oddley enough I've never consciouly avoiding dating girls who eat meat, but it's never actually happened, I just can't imagine a long term relationship and potiently children with someone who does eat meat. But that may be because I'm still in love with my ex girlfriend to be honest, who comes from a simalar background as my own.

I also find myself having odd attitudes to people who do eat meat, I tend to instinticly think that vegetarians are more compassionate to animals. For instance if someone is upset about their cat being ill, I can't help myself thinking "Oh you're up set about one animal sufferering but you go home and eat another one, you can't be that upset!" and put down their feelings. I do try not to do this, because I don't want to live in a enclave of people who don't eat meat, I want to live in the real world!

If I'd been raised in a family where it was normal to eat meat and decided to become vegetarian myself I don't think I'd have these problems, because I would have know people who ate meat from a young age and realised that they weren't monsters.

I didn't come to being a vegetarian through the ethical route, so I don't have big hang-ups about 'meat is murder', although I can get upset about the conditions some animals are kept in. Pigs before slaughter, for example. (I've read Viva)

I became vegetarian following a retreat where we ate vegan food. No-one told me I had to prepare for it and I got ill within a day and a half, probably withdrawal symptoms to coffee and dairy. When I got home, I couldn't face eating dairy or meat. It came as a big surprise to me!

Oooh yeah that makes sense, I did go through a vegan phase when I was in my mid teens, and I didn't need to prepare for it, though I still drank a lot of black coffee during that time. I don't really agree that meat is murder, at the moment I'm just happy to say that I think that being a vegetarian feels the right way for me to live my life. If other people want to eat meat it's fine with them.

One insight I have had, is that children of "new age/hippie" parents have a simalar experience of growing up in a sub culture as my friends who grew up in Hindu or Musilm households.

Yes, that might be true. I suspect that as mine is being brought up vegetarian and a Quaker and being exposed to other spiritual beliefs, he might be seen as being different. However, I think he could also be enriched by the experience.

Would you have been happier in an omnivore family?

Gosh what a question I don't know! it must ahve affected me deeply because it's the only part of the values my parents tried to instill in me that I've stuck with.

if you'd ask me when I was a child (and I was an especially nasty child looking back) I would have happyily swappend my family for a normal one. I even used to spend hours fantasising about them being killed in an accident and me ending up living with my very normal aunt and uncle. To be honest I have yet to meet someone who hasn't fantasied about things like this happening as a child.

But now well I think I wouldn't be me, and I like being me.


I've never really thought how being a vegetarian affected me until I typed all that.

And I'm sure that he *will* benifit from being brought up vegetarian and Quaker. He may well hate you for it in his teens but he will change his mind later! he really will! You're obviously a very loving caring parent

I do try! I'm sure you're right. He is being brought up with a reasonable set of values.

Fantasising about your parents being killed? Mine might do that, but usually he turns it back on himself. I think he thinks it has more effect (if he died, I'd be sorry! - that kind of stuff).

Looking back on myself as a child, I can also remember fantasising about finding out I was adopted, or being a princess - that kind of stuff, so yes, it's probably normal.

We'd a great day out yesterday at 'Art in Action' near Oxford, where there was the opportunity to watch demonstrations of things like glass blowing, silversmithing (raising a silver bowl), woodturning using a foot operated pole lathe, and there were also opportunities to try out things (pottery-making, pyrography, painting on silk, etc). He went into one of the story-telling sessions too. Good stuff.

Hopefully, he'll look back on it and find it was mostly good.

I'm sure he will, the only person I know who didn't admit to those sort of feelings was actually adopted.. so I do hope it's normal.

Despite the tantrums, he does tell people he loves me. A while ago, we went to a wedding and he told the bride's mother 'Doesn't mummy look beautiful'. Priceless! I do try to remember this type of thing when he's being a little 'b'.

I'm sure there will be a time when it's not to be proud of your mum, so I'm appreciating it while it's here.

Oh that's so sweet he must be a really nice child at times. I don't remember ever doing that, I know I cared a lot for my parents, but I don't remember expressing it, or at least not in that way, it jsut wasn't the done thing in our family.

As a child, I couldn't speak to my parents as people; just as parents. I've taught little to be able to express his fears to me and he also expresses his love, which is nice. I've a friend in New York, who is a psychotherapist and he's been helping me find ways of dealing with his issues.

Apparently, one of the big keys is to acknowledge the feelings eg, 'I can see you're feeling upset and angry', rather than trying to deal with the symptoms 'Stop doing that!'. And it does work. However, nobody ever tells you stuff like that. When I mentioned this to his school, his teacher said, yes, she used this method. I thought, well, why does no-one tell parents how to do it?

The last time we went to see my parents on the Isle of Wight, I can't remember what the issue was, but I heard little say to my dad, 'Do you have any sense?'. Dad said, 'Yes', whereupon little said, 'Well, use it!'. Both of us collapsed laughing and dad said, 'Well, I've been well and truly told off'.