The kids who don’t know they are too young to die

He was a teenage boy threatening to kill himself. He didn’t want to live any more, he said, and everyone would be sorry when he was gone. She was a teenage girl, his friend, desperate to talk him out of it. Her best effort belied her naivete: “You’ll be sorry if you do it!” (A week later, he tried and failed to kill himself).

“Neither of them understood that death was final,” says suicide researcher Dr Kate Blackmore. To such overwhelmed young people, suicide seems just one of many possible responses to life’s problems: “Suicide is just (another) act; it’s not something they separate from cutting yourself or taking drugs or driving a car too fast … They don’t really understand what death is.”

Australia has among the highest rates of male youth suicide in the world, with about 500 deaths in the 15 to 24 age group each year – a rate that has tripled since the 1950s. In contrast, the rate for young women has not changed since the 1960s.

Blackmore, a research fellow at Wollongong University’s department of public health, is part of the national effort to stem the tide. As part of the National Youth Suicide Prevention Strategy, her task has been to work out how to best educate young people, as well as professionals, in ways to minimise youth suicide. Her approach incorporated some revolutionary material – the views of the kids themselves.

Talking to focus groups of 30 city, semi-rural and rural teenagers in NSW, Blackmore found they did not want suicide prevention education for themselves. They wanted to be taught coping skills so they could better deal with crises in their own lives and help friends survive their problems. Forget the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, they seemed to be saying – teach us how to keep from falling off it.

Most of the young people interviewed were from groups at high risk of suicide. They had emotionally or materially deprived or abusive backgrounds and many were unemployed or school dropouts. Several had attempted suicide.

Blackmore says she was floored by their insight: “Probably the most humbling part of the experience was the gradual dawning on me of how much wisdom actually resides with these young people and how appalling it is that they haven’t been listened to in the past.”
Their debates mirrored academic discourse about the issue, including arguments about whether the topic should even be raised with young people for fear of giving them ideas they may not otherwise develop.

“Most of the kids we interviewed said: ‘Don’t use the word suicide with younger kids’,” Blackmore says. “A lot of them had younger brothers and sisters still at home that they were very worried about. They said if they talked to them, they used language that they understood, and that didn’t scare them, like: ‘You must be feeling really, really bad’.

“Most felt that (classroom discussion about suicide) was not an issue for kids in the older levels of high school. But several said: ‘If you’re really depressed, if you have lost your job or your relationship has broken down, and someone says to you that suicide is what people do when they are really desperate, it can give you the idea’.”
But the teenagers did believe youth suicide prevention education for adults was a good idea. They wanted grown-ups to know what they needed. Top of the list, even with the toughest kids, was the need for a sympathetic adult who could truly listen.

Said one: “Parents just have to be able to, like, sit there and listen. Don’t get mad with what the kid says, or anything like that … I’ve been through it. I got kicked out of home and everything. It’s just … it’s scary.” Another talked about the need for understanding friends: “You just want them to talk to. Just make sure that someone can understand you, so then you won’t go any further.”

They also wanted help to see things more clearly: “I was 14. Sitting at the bus stop, waiting to go home, cutting my arms up with bits of broken glass because . . . just because of some of the things that happened, you know. I got abused when I was 11 and I didn’t tell no-one for years, because I thought it was me . . . Someone needs to be there to say something, you know? (To say) ‘It isn’t your fault’.”

Asked what else they wanted from a friend, parent or other adult in a crisis, the young people listed understanding and sympathy (free of blaming or judgmental attitudes) and information about where to go for help. They wanted professionals to be adequately trained, to have a uniform approach and to offer continuity of care.

Many were scornful of professionals with whom they had come in contact, particularly psychiatrists and school counsellors. They mistrusted school counsellors, Blackmore says, because they saw them as people who could get them transferred away from their friends to another school.

They saw continuity of care as central. Some had been shunted from one counsellor to another as a result of developing suicidal tendencies, after having sought help. Said one: “Why should a counsellor, because they feel uncomfortable all of a sudden, say: ‘Oh, I don’t know what to do with you no more. I’m scared of you now’? And then you’re dumped, like that . . .

“(You’ve) put your trust in them. You’re saying: ‘Help me; I don’t know what to do’. And they’re saying: ‘Well, I don’t know what to do with you either’. I’m not blaming them, but I am saying that can’t help the situation.”
They were also highly critical of hospital casualty staff. “Some casualty nurses see suicides as a waste of time,” says Blackmore, “You’re holding up this bed for someone who has had a heart attack or a severed limb, you self-indulgent little wanker!”‘

Blackmore knows one young woman who was slapped by her treating nurse. Another, an unstable schizophrenic who frequently overdosed when she had a psychotic episode, found herself in the hands of a sadistic nurse who gave her a gastric lavage three times in one visit to punish her for her frequent trips to casualty. One young woman told of being left on the floor until regaining consciousness after an overdose; another, of being called a “useless little slut”.

“It reinforces the kids’ idea that they are garbage and that no one cares what they do,” Blackmore says. She believes there is an urgent need for education about suicide in undergraduate courses for doctors and nurses.

But she is wary of some suicide prevention courses aimed at teachers and students. Programs that talk to kids about suicide in class are no longer seen as appropriate, she says, and she is concerned by some teacher training programs. “It’s important that teachers are conscious of risk factors,” she says. “Teachers probably know kids almost as well as parents; they spend every day with the same kids. If you have a kid whose performance suddenly drops off, who suddenly withdraws, or who does something about death in art or writing, it’s important to recognise that (as a warning sign).

“But to expect the teacher to take responsibility for anything more than that is dangerous. They must be told to refer on to someone who is trained to deal with a very depressed child.”

The young people interviewed, like Blackmore, were staunchly opposed to suicide education programs based on fear, which present horrific details about violent means of suicide and the potential physical consequences of failed attempts (such as warnings that a young person who survives hanging might be left with a paralysed face). Such stories might be scary, they said, but they were no help to a person in despair.

Blackmore says: “They also thought it was inappropriate to say that suicide is the morally wrong thing to do, because that just loads up kids with more guilt, potentially making someone who is borderline feel even worse about themselves.”

What they did want for themselves was easily accessible, easily understandable, practical advice on what to do in a crisis. And they had great ideas about how to distribute it. “We posed the question: ‘You have just hit Wollongong, you’re unemployed, you have nowhere to go, and you would like to get some information. What do you need?” Their answer: graffiti the name and phone number of a refuge on the wall of the local cop shop.

Says Blackmore, “These focus groups were very funny at times, but they also came up with some very sound ideas.”

* If you need someone to talk to about your troubles or are worried about a friend or relative, contact Lifeline, tel: 13 1114, or Suicide Helpline, tel: 1300 651 251.

Young people are at a higher risk of suicide if they:

* Live in rural or remote areas

* Are unemployed

* Have a profound mental illness

* Are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander

* Lack a trusted adult in whom they can confide

* Are struggling with their sexual identity

* Have suffered a recent loss or a shaming experience that is significant to them, even if it does not appear so to others

* Have previously attempted suicide

* Were victims of physical or emotional abuse as children

Signs that a young person may be suicidal:

* A sudden change in behavior, as when an extrovert becomes very quiet

* Obvious depression

* Excessive ongoing anger

* Loss of interest in things that used to give pleasure

* High-risk behavior, such as excessive drinking, dangerous driving or drug-taking

* Isolation from others, including a lack of friends, or a withdrawal from networks and activities at work or at school

* A preoccupation with giving away belongings and setting their affairs in order (a phase in which they can appear very calm) — Sources: Kate Blackmore and Lynn Bender, manager of Lifeline and Suicide Helpline.

First published in The Age.

Finding the smart kid inside your child

Jerome was a 14-year-old stuck in sixth grade because he could not read. Teachers had him tagged as “trainable retarded”. But in the migrant labor camp where he lived, in a small Florida town, Jerome was a legend; an unbeatable chess champion.

His school psychologist, Dawna Markova, was puzzled by the paradox – dummies can’t play chess – so one day she went to the camp to watch him. She found his audience sitting on fruitboxes, utterly silent. Jerome paced back and forth, his eyes scanning the board. Then he made his move: “Checkmate!”

Markova realised his mind didn’t work in a way that fitted the traditional way teachers taught. So she taught Jerome to read using the same strategies he told her he had used to learn chess.

Markova had joined the growing ranks of educationalists who believe that many intelligent children who “fail” in school are actually being failed by teaching methods that do not match the way they process information.

Markova has made the new theories available to parents in her book: How your child IS smart: A life-changing approach to learning. She says, while it is usually assumed everyone’s mind operates the same way as the teacher’s, there are, in fact, several ways we can “think”.

She says children digest information at three different levels: conscious (where information is most easily absorbed), subconscious (where information is sorted) and unconscious (where information is integrated with what is already known).

As thoughts and information move from one level to another, they change form. The three kinds of processing are:

* Visual: seeing the outer world, inner visual images, and crafting what can be seen (reading, drawing, writing);

* Auditory: listening to the outer world, inner voices and sounds and expressing what can be heard (speaking, singing, chanting, music making);

* Kinesthetic: sensing from the outer world, inner feelings or body sensations, and moving or doing in the world (touching, actions, experiencing, crafting).

Markova says in everyone’s mind, each of these three perceptual channels is linked to one of the three states of consciousness, but the mix varies between individuals. Take, for example, remembering a telephone number: one will visualise it as if it’s printed on a screen in her mind, another will hear a voice speak the numbers in her mind, and a third will remember by holding the phone in his hands and actually going through the motions of dialling in his mind. Traditional teaching methods, however, are based largely on the auditory channel: teacher talking, child listening.

For the illiterate Jerome, the written world opened up when Markova taught him to read using the same kinesthetic and visual strategies he had used to teach himself chess. He told her: “I gotta be standing up and moving around. And it’s gotta be real quiet or I can’t think. Then I gotta look steady with my eyes at one thing, and one thing only, like the chess board, then I gotta close my eyes and see it in my mind, then I hear way inside my mind what to do.”

While Jerome moved with his eyes closed, Markova spelled words out loud, tracing them on his back or in his palm. He would say the words while he looked at them in a book. And the untrainable retard learned to read.

Scholto Bowen, deputy principal of Huntingtower School in Mount Waverley, has run courses to help teachers identify children’s learning styles. He says there has been much research in this area overseas since the early 1980s, but the strategies are just starting to filter through the Australian education system.

He says teachers need to understand that they might be unknowingly teaching in their own preferred style. “They need to move back and forth between all three styles in each lesson,” he says.

“I would estimate that 95 per cent of the problem kids out there are that way, not because of attention-deficit disorder or whatever, but because their learning style is just not being met. They have got to cope with incredible boredom (and) very often develop negative strategies to (deal with that).”

Learning can be difficult even for those who are not “problem kids”. Karen Ritterman, coordinator of the gifted children’s program at St Leonard’s College, Brighton, tells of a highly creative student who was a talented artist but found art history a nightmare. She could not navigate her way through great slabs of printed information.

Ritterman says, “We highlighted the main points about the French impressionists, but she didn’t know what to do from there. So we created a ‘mind-map’. We had the key point in the middle and all these little symbols that came off it.

“We drew muted colors over it, like the Impressionists had used, so she didn’t have to remember any words, just visualise the whole picture. She was able to reproduce that mind-map in the examination.”

The school’s head of science, Merrin Evergreen, has also used the multi-faceted approach, most notably in a Year Seven sex education lesson on menstruation. The students spent time labelling and coloring in the reproductive structures of both sexes, and then discussed their functions.

Then she took them down to the school oval, where they acted out the female cyle. Some were the fallopian tubes, others the uterine and vaginal walls. Everyone wanted to be the ovum, who was encircled by two other students and then released as the rest of the team shouted “Ovulation!” Then came ‘Menstruation!’, and after the ovum and uterine lining left the body, everyone cheered.

The experience taught them more than just the mechanics. In the following lesson, Evergreen was surprised when a group of usually “loud” boys gave a sensitive presentation on the onset of menstruation.

Other teachers have been startled by the intense creativity that can be unleashed when students are given free rein to process information in any way that suits them. Ritterman says one class at her school is studying Antarctica and students have been told they can do a presentation in any form. One is making a cake model of Antarctica; chocolate underneath, representing the earth, with white icing and a string of imaginative symbols for other elements. Three others are making up a song.

Says Ritterman: “The teacher was saying, ‘This is amazing! It’s like a runaway train, and I’m just hanging on the end’.” — How Your Child IS Smart, by Dawna Markova, Conari Press, rrp $26.95

Different learning types

Show and tellers

Natural persuaders who learn best through reading and light up when telling stories. Good students who shy away from sports.

Seer/feelers

Empathetic children who learn best by doing what they are shown and asking endless questions. Generally prefer working in groups.

Leaders of the Pack

Natural powerhouses who learn by teaching others. Though they have wide speaking vocabularies, they can have trouble reading and writing.

Verbal Gymnasts

Effective and articulate communicators whose words pour out in logical order. They love facts, history and ideas of all kinds, and have to talk to understand. Sports may be difficult.

Wandering Wonderers

Quiet Einsteins who learn best in solitude. Can learn physical tasks easily without verbal instruction. Can become overwhelmed by listening.

Movers and Groovers

Athletes who need to be allowed to use their bodies in order to learn – often called hyperactive. Reading and writing may be very difficult.

– Source: ‘How your child IS smart.’

First published in The Age.

Kids these days

THEY are fiercely Australian, devoutly individualistic, indifferently agnostic. Although only 12 and 13, they are worldly wise about drugs – powder’s bad, chroming’s cheapest – and knowing but sweetly insecure about sex.

They are not so much teens as ‘tweens, just starting to cross the bridge towards adolescence and away from a childhood that seems to end earlier with each generation. For their parents at that age wholesomeness ruled: it was The Brady Bunch, hoola hoops, the Monkees. Today, they read AIDS posters on the back of dunny doors and learn to put condoms on bananas at school. They see other kids swap porn and marijuana. Their favorite TV fare is the black humor of The Simpsons’ dysfunctional affections. Reality bites.

They can be scornful of those who have been more sheltered.

Says Daniel McLeish, 13: “Someone came up to me the other day, and they’re in Year 8, and they said, `Umm, can you get AIDS from having sex?’ In Year 8!” The students with him, all in Year 8 at Princes Hill Secondary College, join his laughter.

They are the product of education-as-inoculation; parents and teachers warn them of peer pressure and dangers such as smoking, drinking and drugs in the hope it will keep them safe until they are old enough to make responsible decisions.

It gives them a veneer of sophistication about the gritty side of life that is not always matched by greater emotional maturity. It’s one thing to know the facts about lung cancer but quite another to be able to forgo membership of the cool gang at school because you refuse to smoke. How are they finding life past the age of innocence? For this group from Princes Hill, many of their day-to-day problems are the ordinary ones their parents and grandparents had too: mostly they are happy with life at school and at home but there are still teachers they dislike, subjects they’re no good at, siblings who can drive them nuts. Says Tobi Poland, 12: “Sometimes I have to take care of my sister when I don’t want to; sometimes I want to go out when I’m grounded.”
The restrictions of life as a not-quite-grown-up are maddening, agrees Mishaal Kumar,13: “They say you have to be mature, but if we show some maturity no one notices and they still treat you as a kid. Like with M-rated movies: `Can I watch this?’ `No, you’re too young’.”
Then there is the minefield that is relationships with other kids. Careful alignments must be made – with the cool kids, the goody goodies, or the I’m-just-me’s, depending on one’s predisposition. Both sexes agree that friends are important, and they have seen what life can be like for those who are disliked. Schoolyard bullying can be merciless, to the point where some victims have had to change schools. It is not physical violence but relentless verbal malice. Says Catherine Williams, 13: “(The bullies) find the littlest thing about someone and they just go on and on about it.”
“If someone’s fat, oh, that’s a beauty!” says Daniel, almost with relish. “They just don’t stop – `Lard arse!’ – ‘cos there’s a rumor going around that the McDonald soft serves are made of lard or something, and people say, `You could work in McDonald’s soft serve, you could feed ‘em your stuffing!” “And if they cry . . .” says Mish darkly, shaking his head. But, he points out, all the kids who are bullied hang around together. Come the revolution, “There’ll be so many of them they’ll come and belt up the cool people.”
They will talk about what they have seen happen with others but are old enough to want to veil what goes on in their own friendships and families. Most of this group are children of divorce but will not be drawn on what it has meant for them, resorting one after another to the same non-committal summing up: “It’s OK. You get used to it.”
A couple acknowledge that it can mean grief for kids, telling stories about how they have struggled to help friends devastated by parents splitting up.

J. P. Sammons, 13, says he has heard that often kids blame themselves for a divorce. But they are unanimous that it is better for parents to separate than to subject the children to an endless Punch and Judy show.

“If they stayed together it would be 10 times worse,” Tobi says. “There was a couple that stayed together and just fought all the time and the kid committed suicide because he couldn’t handle it.”
Relationship problems are the ones that kids this age find most distressing, judging from the 148,000 calls a year made to Kids Help Line, a national phone counselling service whose main clients are 12 to 15 year-olds. “Most of our callers are in that transition between primary and secondary school and they are also experiencing all kinds of family pressures, ” says Max Kau, state liaison co-ordinator for the service.

“In the ’60s and ’70s, youth work was done primarily with 14-year-olds plus. We never dreamt, in those days, that 11- to-13-year-olds would have anything but a blissful existence in their happy little Australian family. In fact, many of them are going through extremely traumatic experiences.”
MORE than half of callers phone about isolated incidents of conflict or intermittent family problems – rows with siblings, disagreements over discipline, wanting more time or affection from parents – 15 per cent face major problems, such as conflict with step-parents, on-going parental fighting or custody battles.

A further 15 per cent are severely distressed with their family situation and just want to get out.

Many phone after school when they are home alone or looking after younger children. “They often felt lonely,” Kau says.

“Some were quite anxious about being left home alone, not sure whether they were safe from intruders or likely to be abducted, an idea they have been exposed to by the media. Often they ring up just to debrief their day; their parents are out at work and they have no one else to talk to . . .

“A lot of young people are sad; they have got sad personalities, because they don’t see that the world is a safe place for them to grow up in.”
While the sheer volume of calls to the Help Line indicates widespread problems, it is also true that kids who call a counselling service are likely to be more unhappy than the average. What concerns researchers such as Richard Eckersley is that even Australian kids who seem quite cheerful about their personal situation tend to be deeply pessimistic about the wider world.

Eckersley has spent years researching young people’s views of the future. He has found that the older they are, the more gloomy and jaded they are likely to be, feeling helpless in the face of worsening problems, such as violence and environmental degradation.

Even primary-school children’s poetry is apocalyptic, he says, full of fears that the Earth or its atmosphere will be destroyed by pollution, or that the world will be further wracked by war. “My gut feeling is that we are burdening children too much and too early with the troubles of the world, before they are an age where they can cope with it,” he says.

“Other researchers have warned that this fear of the future could produce cynicism, mistrust, anger, apathy and an approach to life based on instant gratification, rather than long-term goals or lasting commitment.”
Tobi Poland has two traits Eckersley has repeatedly found: concern over pollution and a fear of advancing technology.

“I reckon your generation has stuffed it up because of the scientific stuff, all this modern technology, cutting down forests and moving factories in . . .” she says. “I like olden days sorts of stuff. If everyone keeps on inventing machines and weapons and things, everything’s going to stuff up.”
THIS is a moral generation, full of political correctness, says John Kellett, who has been researching teenagers for his Sydney agency, Loud! Advertising.

He says they dislike pollution, know sexism and racism are bad, have a strong sense of personal values – but think nothing of minor law-breaking such as dope-smoking, under-age drinking, petty theft.

In these terms, the Princes Hill group seems an abstemious bunch. A few have had a taste of alcohol but none of them drink.

They say smoking is common: “When you go to the park there’s usually a big bunch of people sitting around smoking cigarettes, everyone – every age group,” says Bill Rogers, 12.

“It’s cooool,” sneers Daniel, exhaling with a flourish, aglow with the self-righteousness of the ex-smoker; he gave up his scabbing habit last year, he says, ” ‘Cos I thought, save my lungs.”
Jemma Rossel, 13, is the only one who confesses to occasionally lighting up now: “I’m not doing it to be cool or anything because I’m doing it at home, not at school. I’m not addicted or anything.”
Mish says teachers overdo anti-smoking education, ensuring that kids will take it up just to annoy them. But some of the information must stick because he then lists a string of smoking-related health problems including “it stunts your growth and lowers your sperm count”, which amuses the others.

Some of them have seen marijuana offered about but it is not available to them the way cigarettes are. The people who carry it, says Mish, “are all tight-arsed. I mean I’m not saying that I asked anyone; I don’t take that. But you hear other people asking and they’re told, `Nah, get stuffed!’ ” The group is almost unanimous that smoking is stupid and that kids take it up just to impress others; their self-esteem, at this stage anyway, relies heavily on their sense that they make their own choices uninfluenced by “peer pressure”, a term
they use with practised ease.

They are more divided about marijuana and a heated debate breaks out on whether it should be legalised. Leah Thampicha, 13, thinks making another mood-altering drug easy to get would lead to more social breakdown; Jemma argues that it’s probably not as bad for people as tobacco because they wouldn’t smoke it as much.

“It’s not like the worst drug in the world,” Mish says, “but I know that it really changes your attitude. You’re, like, lazy, you lie. I have a friend and he was a really nice guy and then he got addicted to dope; he’s just lost, that’s all he talks about, he doesn’t do anything.”
As for those who pack a spray can: “Chromers are just low.

They just hang around doing nothing, just at a loss, staring and stuff – it’s just stupid.” At 13, this is much more than a textbook understanding of the effects of drugs. “(Kids today) are exposed to drugs in a way that we just didn’t have access to, sometimes in the very school yard,” says Glenn Bowes, director of the Centre for Adolescent Health and professor of adolescent health at the University of Melbourne.

“In the 1960s I didn’t have the media ramming negative images of the world down my throat, I didn’t have drugs put to me, I didn’t have to make decisions about whether to shoot up or smoke marijuana and I had an intact family.

“By . . . removing their innocence, we have exposed kids to a whole range of things at a stage of their development when they are just not neuro-psychologically equipped to make well-informed decisions about the future.

“There’s a much greater availability of alcohol, too, because of the clustering in large cities where there’s no sense of collective spirit about caring for children. Where I grew up, everyone knew I was Johnny Bowes’ son; if I went to a pub they’d say `Piss off or I’ll tell your dad!’ Then there’s the greater prevalence of sexual behavior, and its earlier onset . . . The exposure to potential harm is much greater in our society today.”
In 1992, the centre surveyed 3000 high school students across Victoria and found that about 10 per cent of year 7 students smoked (45 per cent by year 11) and 17 per cent drank alcohol (75 per cent by year 11). Eight per cent of boys and 1.8 per cent of girls in year 7 had had sex, as had just over a third of both sexes by year 11. Most of those had experienced it on only a few occasions and most used condoms, although 10 per cent reported never using them.

Those who had abstained were asked why; a third of year 7s said “No one’s asked”. But most said “not having met the right person” was the main reason. More girls than boys were “not ready for it”, which might help explain why more boys than girls said they “had not had the opportunity”.

Traditional sexual morality appears all but dead, with only 5.9 per cent of year 7s saying they had abstained because it was against their religion and a mere 2.3 per cent citing “parents against it”. But at Princes Hill, at least, a rather savage moral code regulates sexual activity – if you’re a girl.

Tobi says if it gets around that a girl has had sex, she is treated like a pariah by the other students. Says Jemma, “They think, `Oh my God, she’s sleeping around, she’s such a slut,’ but it’s different for the guy.” The boy, says Tobi, struts about thinking he’s great: “The girl loses all her friends because she had sex once.”
The girls know it’s unfair but don’t seem particularly angry about it; they accept it as a lesson in keeping quiet about one’s private life.

Bill Rogers says it’s wrong to make such a drama over something that will happen to just about everyone at some stage, but he, too, accepts that it is inevitably tougher for girls: “There are a lot more things that can trouble a girl. If the boy has sex he doesn’t have anything to worry about but the girl has to worry whether she’s pregnant or not, so the girl has to worry about abortion as well.” In fact this group don’t feel they worry about much at all and look startled when asked if they do. But there is a vein of bitterness running through them about the gap between the rich and the not-so-rich in this country; for them, it comes down to a fear that going to a state school might limit their chances of success.

Few of them have a strong sense yet of what it is they want to do, although Bill would like to be an actor and Catherine hopes to work with children. Tobi would like to be famous – “but not famous for murder or anything” – and Jemma doesn’t want to have to struggle financially.

But several of them have a sense they are starting from behind in the race for success in life. J. P. says, “There are heaps of newspaper articles saying that private students are better off. I’ve also heard that, say, if I got a really good VCE exam grade, up in the 90s, and there’s also a kid in the 90s who’s from a private school, that he gets preference at jobs.

“You’re just not getting a fair go in the world. I think . . . it all comes down to who’s rich and who’s not, and the rich will get preference.” It is a grim reality to face at 13, but they do face it.

These kids fit David Chalke’s description of the average 10 to 14 year old as “sensible, cool and level-headed; remarkably mature in many of their attitudes to life”.

CHALKE is an independent consultant for AMR Quantum, a market research company that surveys 1000 teenagers every two years.

Thirteen-year-olds are questioned on topics including social issues and their main concern about the future (getting a job); their average weekly income ($21); favorite goodies (bikes, CD players, tapes and joggers) and favorite brands (Nike, Reebok,
Billabong, Sony and Stussy).

The survey finds that the sexes do quite different things in time out, Chalke says: “As young as 10, girls are much more into the things that you would typically associate with female behavior, such as shopping and talking on the phone, relationships. Boys are more into competitive things like sport and lone things like computer games.” Both sexes like reading magazines, watching videos, hanging around the local mall.

Kids have definitely been battered by family change, Chalke agrees; a third would love more time with their parents, and 16 per cent wish their parents weren’t divorced. Even those whose families are intact worry more about the risk of their parents’ marriages breaking down than distant issues such as AIDS.

But he thinks they generally are standing up well to what social researcher Hugh McKay has called The Age of Uncertainty: “They accept that they actually have to take on board some responsibility themselves for getting on with things. With AIDS, for example: Yes, there is a real danger, but they feel that learning to avoid it is just one of the things that living is about. I think they are smarter and more capable of accepting harsh truths than we thought.”
Glenn Bowes worries about those who are not. His survey found that, while most teenagers across the three year levels were healthy and happy, 8 per cent of girls and 4 per cent of boys had true depression, and one in 20 kids had deliberately tried to hurt themselves – “cutting, burning, playing chicken with cars”, he says. Depression and self-harm are both linked to a risk of suicide.

Bowes says overseas studies indicate that the resilient teenager needs three things: a sense of connectedness to one caring adult, a sense of connectedness to school and a sense of spirituality – “Not necessarily religiosity, just a sense that there’s more to the world than your material being; a sense of culture, or a sense of community.”
It is here that Richard Eckersley believes that we are failing kids. In modern western culture, he argues, meaning is increasingly invested in the individual’s attributes and achievements, leaving young people vulnerable to a “collapse of meaning” when things go wrong in their personal lives.

“A guiding myth is almost entirely lacking,” he says. “Our culture is just not doing what cultures are supposed to do, providing the myths and stories and beliefs and values that give people a sense of place, or purpose, or meaning, or belonging.” MOST of the Princes Hill group don’t believe in God and none have regular links with organised religion. Any tenuous hold on a wider system of belief, or a sense that there is a purpose to life, has come from a casual encounter with television or a passing word from an adult at a sensitive time.

J. P. says, “I do believe in reincarnation. There was this program a while ago about Tibetan guys; they talked about reincarnation and how, after you died, 48 days later you found a new body. I guess that might be true. And I believe that everything happens in your life for a purpose.”
Jemma, too, thinks “there’s a meaning in the way you are born and where you are. I asked one of my Mum’s friends once why couldn’t I be born somewhere else, and she said, `Well, I think there’s a reason why you were put here’. I’ve always remembered that.”
Daniel believes in karma: “You do something bad to someone, it’ll affect you back one day.”
Mish agrees, “What goes around, comes around.”
But they are confused when asked what values they think are important to live by, and in the end plump for ethical relativism: people should do what feels comfortable for them.

“To be a good person . . . ummm, I dunno. Just be me,” says Tobi.

Bill agrees: “It depends on what sort of person you are.

” But they do have a strong sense of themselves as Australians: Bill volunteers that he wants a republic, Daniel’s fed up with American shows on TV, J. P. shakes his head at the way other nations misjudge us. And, although they cannot always articulate it, they also have a strong sense of what’s right and wrong.

Tobi is disgusted by boys from another school who trade porn videos and dirty pictures on the bus; Mish was going to be a lawyer until he realised it might mean having to defend someone who was guilty of a crime like rape.

And while all these great issues wash over their lives, they get on with what really matters. Mish is up at five every morning for swim squad and Daniel cruises the streets on his skateboard and Tobi lives in hope of one day scoring that longed-for pair of Doc Martens . . .

INTERVIEWS: KAREN KISSANE. PHOTOGRAPHS CATHRYN TREMAIN.

Daniel McLeish, 13.

On money: I get $10 a week. It goes into my bank; I can just do the EFTPOS thing if I need something. My parents get paid and then $10 goes into my account from theirs. I have $2500 because I used to have a job at a chemist delivering medicine to old people.

On TV: I like Australian shows. Australian movies are better.

Blue Heelers and Fire, that’s a really good one . . . American accents really annoy me.

On music: I don’t like that homey rap stuff. More Spider Bait . . . just rock ‘n’ roll. All music’s good, except rap. Techno’s really bad.

Catherine Williams, 13 On leisure: I go to the city and hang around with friends, even if it’s only at their houses. I window shop, look at CD shops and clothes.

On money: I’ll say can I borrow $20 to get a dress and Mum says, “No, go and get a job so you can buy it yourself.” I’d like to get a job, but I don’t know . . .

On playground politics: If you never get into trouble that’s like being square, or straight. You’re a goody goody.

Mishaal Kumar, 13.

It’s all crap. I’m not sure if this is true or not , but I’ve heard that cocaine eats its way through your nose, and you can’t taste often.

On playground politics: I used to get picked on by a mean cool group, but then my best friend – he’s left now – he saved my arse, ‘cos he said `Don’t pick on him or else I won’t talk to you’.

Jemma Rossel, 13.

On drugs: I reckon they’re bad for you. I wouldn’t take them, but if I knew they were going to be safe then maybe, maybe I would have a try. I wouldn’t get hooked or nothing.

On her future: I want to be wealthy. I don’t want to be majorly rich, I just want to be wealthy, so I have enough to keep me going.

On abortion: They say”Oh my God she’s killing a life”, but they kon’t even understand how awful it would be for, let’s say, a 15 year-old girl, to have a baby. It’s the mother’s choice.

Tobi Poland, 12.

On music: I like listening to Beatles records. I love them.

I only have one other friend into them. They all say “Oh no, not the Beatles, you can’t be into them, they’re not ’90s stuff!” I think, “Oh well, get lost.”
On fashion: I wear whatever I want. I don’t care what anybody thinks. I don’t care if they say “That’s not cool, you’re not going to be our friend any more!” I don’t care, this is my choice, this is me.

J. P. Sammons, 13.

On the environment: I can see that the way we’re going this Earth is not going to be lasting too long. You think of how much oil is dumped at sea, how much gas we let up into the ozone layer . . .

On school: Sometimes school’s a pain, but I like sports. Sport’s not that bad at this school, despite all the government cuts.

On TV: I watch Star Trek – the original – and the news. I like Deep Space Nine.

Bill Rogers, 12.

On leisure: I play sport seven days: tennis, basketball, cricket.
I do homework and on the weekends I like to go and see a movie with friends. I’ve mainly watched action films but I like comedies.

On sex: if you’re 20 years old and had sex on a first date, then you might hate the guts of this person after a week.

On puberty: Now everyone’s learned about puberty, it’s a matter of who can get through it first. it’s like a race.

Leah Thampicha, 13.

On family breakdown: I think it would be better for them to separate if the parents are fighting most of the time. It would be hard at first, but it would be better later on.

On drugs: If you are talking about good drugs, medicine, that’s OK. But some people overdo it, like with sleeping pills. Marijuana can be addictive. It’s not for me.

Small comfort

As debate continues about whether child care hurts children, Karen Kissane looks through the latest research and finds a mix of good and bad news. Part two of our special report: Who is looking after our children?
ARE CHILD care centres the gulags of the ’90s, dumping grounds where vulnerable children are abandoned day after day to survive as best they might? Or are they warm, creative places where children are kept safe and happy while their parents work?
Twenty years after mothers of young children began returning to the workforce in numbers, the child-care debate is alive and angry. Age cartoonist Michael Leunig inflamed it further in July with his “Thoughts of a baby lying in a child-care centre”, in which a small, weeping bundle defended its mother against accusations of being a “cruel, ignorant, selfish bitch”, and blamed
itself for failing to win her love.

Many people feel passionately that it must be a cruelty for small children to endure long separations from the person they love most in the world. Many parents who have used child care feel grieved and defensive that an experience they have found so positive for their children could be so maligned.

Who is right? As with most complex questions, the answer is “it depends”.

Studies suggest that each case depends on a combination of factors including the age at which the child began care, the number of hours per week, the quality of the child-care centre and how well-loved and secure the child felt at home. The child’s own temperament is important, too; children are not merely passive recipients of influences.

Yet the voices of children are strikingly absent from the huge body of research; no one seems to have asked older kids in child care whether or not they like it, and whether they would still rather be at home with mum or dad.

These are questions that may remain unanswered. The Australian researcher Gay Ochiltree says she wanted to do such a study, in which children would be both observed and talked to, but was refused funding on the basis that it would be unethical to question small children.

In general, Australian and international studies consistently find that the toddler and child who is well looked after at home and at day care thrives. If it’s a good centre or family day care home and the child’s relationship with the parents is sound, there is no evidence that pre-school care will cause harm either at the time or later in life.

Professor Margot Prior, the director of psychology at the Royal Children’s Hospital, says: “Quality day care has no damaging effects providing the child has a good relationship with the parents. Of course, they can experience grief, but if their attachment (to the parents) is secure, they cope with the separation. The security of that attachment does not depend on the hours spent together. If grief does occur, it should be temporary.”
Prior says it is normal for a child to cry and feel lost and uncertain at first in a new environment. Skilled caregivers will be good at distracting them into activities; gradually they feel safe and begin to enjoy themselves, and they realise that they are not abandoned when they find that their mother always comes back for them. “If a child continues to grieve over weeks or months, there’s an issue there that’s got to be dealt with,” she says. “It may or may not be to do with day care.” The educational psychologist Maurice Balson, author of the book Becoming Better Parents, agrees. “If the child’s got a good relationship with the parents at home, child care doesn’t bother me. Long term, it doesn’t matter what the child is experiencing; what matters is how the parents relate to it and what it makes of those experiences, how it interprets them . . .”
But the reassurance is not a blanket one. In her book Effects of Child Care on Young Children, Ochiltree reviews international studies done over the past 40 years. Some American research indicates that babies who have 20 or more hours of care in the first year of life tend, as older children, to be less close to their mothers and more aggressive than their peers (see box). Some United States studies found that disadvantaged children were better off in child care than at home with struggling families; Nordic studies, however, indicate that even in high- quality centres where most do well, children with emotional difficulties tend not to get the extra help they need.

Other findings are even more contradictory. There are indications that child care might make children more socially skilled, independent and intellectually able, but this seems to depend largely on whether the care was of high quality. IT IS the findings about quality that help explain why parents’ views about child care can vary so dramatically. Clearly, the quality gap can be dramatic, particularly in countries where child care is poorly regulated. (Australia has an accreditation process.) Ochiltree’s book quotes a national study of 64 centres in the US in 1979 that found big differences: “Small groups, especially those supervised by lead caregivers with preparation relevant to young children, are marked by activity and harmony.

Caregivers are warm and stimulating. Children are actively engaged in learning and get along with others . . .

“Larger groups, especially those supervised by caregivers without education or training specifically oriented toward young children, present a contrasting picture. Caregivers monitoring the activities of many children at once, without active intervention. In such an environment, some children `get lost’. Apathy and conflict are somewhat more frequent . . .” Recent New Zealand research into day care for the under-twos has made the alarming discovery that many parents did not know how to pick a quality centre. Some idealised arrangements that their babies and toddlers found miserable.

“Parents know more about how to choose a car than a child- care centre,” says the head of the research project, Professor Anne Smith, of the Children’s Issues Centre at the University of Otago. “We found that most parents are incredibly happy with
their child care, no matter what the quality was. The parents would say things like, `My child is perfectly happy, the staff are warm and caring’, about centres that we regarded as mediocre or poor.

“Some centres that we went to were distressing to the researchers.

(The children suffered from) boredom, wandering listlessly from one activity to another; there was more crying . . .
Overall, we found no relationship between parent satisfaction and the quality of care.”
Eighty per cent of parents had settled for the first centre they looked at, with less than 4 per cent knowledgeable enough to shop around and examine such issues as staff/child ratios and staff qualifications.

In good centres, the children were happy: “It’s not realistic to expect kids to be happy 100 per cent of the time, especially the under-twos. But in a good-quality centre, there shouldn’t be any more ups and downs than there are at home,” Smith says.

The most important component of quality was the warmth, responsiveness and consistency of the staff, she says. She believes the under-twos should have a ratio of one carer to every three children, with each child assigned an adult to be their special friend. And the centre’s staff should be stable, so that children do not get attached to caregivers only to lose them. Smith found that the caregivers’ level of wages per hour was the most important predictor of overall quality.

Ochiltree, now a lecturer in family studies in the Institute of Early Childhood Education at Macquarie University, advises parents to choose carefully and remain watchful. If there are aspects of the care that make you or the child unhappy, talk to the staff. If it doesn’t improve, move the child.

She is disturbed by the tone of the public child-care debate.

“What I object to most is the idea that mother has disappeared from the lives of children in child care. Of course, she hasn’t.

As much as children at home, they have mothers who are concerned about them and their parents remain the continuous figures in their lives throughout childhood.

“It’s also made to sound like they enter child care and stay there until they enter school. It’s not so. Many mothers are in and out of the workforce, often doing part-time work . . . And grandparents are actually the biggest providers of (non-parental) child care.”
Official statistics challenge the idea of parental deprivation.

When he analysed Australian Bureau of Statistics surveys on how people spent their time, the researcher Michael Bittman found that both mothers and fathers are spending more time with their children now than they did eight years ago. Women are cutting back on laundry and cooking, not on the kids.

Bittman, of the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, speculates that the concern about children being deprived of their mothers could be a form of “moral panic”. The term was coined by the sociologist Stan Cohen to describe the way a vague sense of unease becomes a public question of “Where will it all end?” It arises when there is discomfort about a big social change in this case, women re-entering the workforce. After public exaggeration, pronouncements by experts and stereotyping of the people being discussed, the discomfort becomes alarm. Ultimately, whatever is at issue comes to be seen as a threat to society’s values and interests.

Says Bittman, “One possible explanation (for this) is rising expectations. If over the years, mothers . . . are expected to do many more things for their children than an earlier generation of mothers, then it follows that the actual increase in time devoted to child care falls behind expectations that rise at a more rapid rate.”
What of Leunig’s tiny weeping bundle? Australia has few small babies in formal care, says Ochiltree, and maybe most of them wouldn’t be there if we had better parental leave.

In Sweden, which has what might be the world’s best and most widely used child-care system, few babies under nine months are in care because parents are entitled to 18 months paid leave after a birth, and they mostly choose to use it.

Three degrees of separation.

To study the effects odf child care on babies’ relationships with their mothers, researchers have used the `strange situation’ technique.

Gay Ochiltree explains in Effects of Child Care on Young Children that the child is put in a strange room with its mother and is observed during a series of events, including the mother leaving, a stranger entering and the mother returning.

Babies considered to be “securely attached” to their mothers protest or cry on separation but greet her with pleasure when she returns and are fairly easy to comfort. Those who are insecure-avoidant appear to be independent but reject mother when she returns, while those who are insecure-resistant are clingy and seek mother when she returns but resist her efforts at comfort. It has been argued that insecure attachment could be linked with later social and emotional problems. In America, it is estimated that about 30 per cent of babies of at-home mothers are insecurely attached.

American researcher Jay Belsky, reviewing studies involving 491 infants, found that those who had more than 20 hours a week of non-maternal care in the first year of life were 1.

6 times more likely to be insecurely attached, with boys more affected than girls. But other factors must also be at work, Belsky said, as many of those exposed to the “risk factor” of long day care as babies had not been affected.

But attachment research has been questioned regarding its suitability for children in day care. It has also been criticised for its focus on the child’s attachment to the mother.

First published in The Age.

Music loses its thrust for rap’s rage

In the good old days, all it took to shock the older generation was Elvis’s pelvis. Oh, for some good clean thrusting.

Today’s music extreme is “gangsta rap”, in which women are bitches and whores, cops are for killing and gang violence is the best response to oppression. It’s big in America, where it is the beat of young ghetto blacks, and it has a following here.

“We can relate to the lyrics,” says James, 17, of Richmond. “When we get hassled by the five-oh (police), they batter us, and the lyrics say we shouldn’t stand for that.”
Gangsta rap, which in this country is a small offshoot of the more popular and laid-back rap, or hiphop, is black music. It chants the rage of the poor and powerless against the whites who abuse them, but James and his friends have no trouble relating it to themselves.

“We’re poor white guys,” says Shane, 16.

American gangsta rappers Ice Cube and Cypress Hill begin a national tour in Melbourne next Tuesday, and promoters expect them to fill Festival Hall with an audience of 5000. Critics have accused Ice Cube of going soft since he married, had children and found religion, but a copy of his latest album is a shock to the unitiated.

`Lethal Injection’ begins with a Mr White going to a black doctor for a shot. The doctor swabs him with alcohol, tells him to brace himself and look away – and blows his brains out with a gunshot. The baldness of the encounter makes it seem like gratuitous violence, but Ice Cube has explained that “it’s really about killing off the white way of thinking, that mentality”.

To James and his friends – who dress in the rap uniform of oversized clothes and undersized baseball cap – the aggro of gangsta rap is its main attraction. They talk with awe of American rapper Snoop Doggy Dog who “just got done for a drive-by” – that is, was arrested for shooting someone dead from his car.

Michael Bradley, of Central Station Records in Flinders Street, says half the store’s sales is rap music and a smaller percentage gangsta rap. He describes gangsta rap as message music, lyrics with a political edge. Some of the “gangsta” element is real, but much is put on by performers who have never lived that kind of life.

Mr Bradley says there is a lot of straight rap music in which the singers urge young people to keep away from drugs and generally “do the right thing”. “If parents only stopped and listened and didn’t cringe whenever they heard the F-word, they’d find that there are rap groups with brains in their heads.”

In rap the F-word appears liberally. It makes Emmanuel Candi, the executive director of the Australian Record Industry Association, think back to the lyric scandals of his youth in the ’70s. “Remember when they beeped the `Christ’ from `Christ, they’re gonna crucify me’, by John and Yoko? When they beeped the `bloody’ from `the bloody Red Baron’?” Yes indeedy, the times they are a’changin’.

First published in The Age.

War in Peace

Holocaust, Hiroshima, Anzac, Changi: What should we tell the children? There is a price to be paid for portraying the Anzac legend as the birth of the Australian nation to spur patriotism and admiration for heroic efforts, writes Karen Kissane.

My friend, you would not teach with such high zest.
To children ardent for some desperate glory.
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est.
Pro patria mori.
(It is sweet and fitting to die for your country).
Wilfrid Owen: `Dulce et Decorum est’.

CHILDREN do not learn the old lie about today’s wars; it is hard to cloak battle in nobility when its reality sputters across the nightly news. It might be easier for some children if they did. During the Gulf War, counselling clinics treated children anxious that they or their families could somehow be hurt by this conflict that held the world transfixed. To be a child of the information revolution is to learn early the true nature of war; Holocausts and Hiroshimas, suffering, death and evil.

But war, at least as encapsulated by the Anzac legend, has always been central to Australian identity; Prime Minister Keating now wants to emphasise Anzac Day as Australia’s main celebration of nationhood. So what should children know about war, and when should they know it? For the very young, there is not so much an age of innocence as an age of incomprehension. Dr Graham Martin, the chief child psychiatrist at the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service at South Australia’s Flinders Medical Centre, says children aged between four and seven cannot understand the finality of death. If they saw killings on television, he says, it would be through a kind of “cartoon mode”; they would expect the victims to bounce back up again like they do in `Loony Toons’.

But small children are very frightened by even the threat of violence, Dr Martin says: “They feel somewhat defenceless and can easily translate an outside threat into a threat to themselves, giving them a minor reaction like a nightmare. They need to be protected against coming across that kind of material; if they do come across it, parents should provide them with the chance to talk through the issue.

It’s important to tell them that this doesn’t happen in Australia, and that it won’t happen to them.”
But even from children of this age, he says, parents will then face ethical questions about why war happens in other countries, and why individual murder is wrong but mass killing by armies is not. “The problem in the past has been that we have always taught kids that there are bad guys, whom we alienated and created a racist nickname for, like `Nips’ for the Japanese, dehumanising them. But when you get down to the nitty gritty, there were very few bad guys, and lots of good guys who got caught up in jingoistic rubbish.”
Children should be allowed to play with war toys, he says, because they deal with anxieties about this and other issues mostly through play. But parents should be watchful about children’s tendency to divide games up into good guys and bad guys, never wanting to be the bad guys themselves: “That denigration and objectification of others begins even at this stage.”
For older children and teenagers, the issues become more complex. When is battle noble, and when is it merely foolish and bloody? How should we pass on the Anzac legend, if we do at all? Should Australia’s sense of itself continue to be grounded in one incident in one war a long time ago? While Mr Keating might have no doubt about the significance of Australia’s war heritage, many educators are more wary. They see a touch of the big lie about the way the Anzac legend is passed on.

“Australians have been obsessed about teaching Gallipoli,” says Deb Hull, who is writing her PhD thesis at Melbourne University on how Victorian schools taught about war between World War I and World War II. “It’s never been, like so many other parts of Australia’s history, left for students to look up if they have an interest in it.”
Ms Hull says that earlier this century history was distilled into exemplary stories to try to instil virtues in children: “If you wanted to teach about the abuse of power, for example, you’d focus on one of the bad kings of England.” Today, she says, the way the Anzac legend is taught as the birth of the nation, to spur patriotism, is the last remnant of this approach to history as moral fable. Ms Hull says some politicians today echo the concerns of Victoria’s conservative Opposition in the 1920s, who were shocked when the pacifist Labor Government proposed banning teaching about war in schools. The Opposition argued that children would never learn to be patriotic if they were not taught about Anzac Day.

“I still get teary at Anzac Day services and speak in whispers at the Shrine,” Ms Hull says. “But history generally is not taught that way today … We should stop telling children what Gallipoli means and let them decide what it means.” The myth exacts a price, she argues. It does not encompass the experience of those who were cowards, or who died less glamorously of illness; it holds up an unreachable ideal for the generations of soldiers who followed. She was appalled to hear a former prisoner in a Japanese camp talk of his misery every Anzac Day, when he was forced to remember that he had spent most of World War II not fighting: “It is unspeakable that men who endured such hardship feel guilty or ashamed that they did not live up to an image that was unrealistic anyway.”
The veil that has been drawn over the slaughter inflicted by Anzac soldiers caused pain as recently as the ’70s, when Vietnam veterans found themselves ostracised. “Who’s the only person everyone knows from Gallipoli?” asks Ms Hull. “Simpson and his donkey. People back home wanted to think of their men as brave, but didn’t want to think of them bayoneting people, which is what Australian soldiers were very, very good at. So the image we have is of merciful mateship, the brave man who saved people, not of blood lust and fierce hand-to-hand combat … The Vietnam vets were greeted with, `Oh, how dare you! You burnt children!’ What did they think Australians did in war?” Patsy Adam-Smith, author of `The Anzacs’, holds a view that is more traditional but which she came to only after reflection. She says she used to be a relative unbeliever in elements of the Anzac myth: “When people spoke about `mateship’, I didn’t really know what that was. Not until I began my research.” Now, she firmly believes in the heroic aspects of the venture and the importance of acknowledging them. “We should be teaching children about heroism … There are people who give their lives for others in warfare.” She has no doubt that Gallipoli was the birth of the nation, and that a unique sense of mateship did develop among Anzac troops. “I have seen photographs of men with their arms around each other, almost resting in weariness, in utter trust … Australians did look after each other in adversity.”
Dr Sandy Yule, the co-founder of the Victorian Philosophy for Children Association and a lecturer in Melbourne University’s Institute of Education, has mixed feelings about what he sees as traditional teachings about war: that every so often war is inevitable, that it is forced upon us by aggressors, that it is heroic to defend ourselves and that this is the basis of our freedom and democracy.

Dr Yule believes fallen soldiers should be honored: “People get into difficult situations where moral choices are hard to make, and young people should respect the moral choices their elders make even where they don’t agree with them. The actual sacrifice of the hundreds who went and died in Vietnam, for example, should be respected just in human terms.”
He also sees value in the role of history as moral exemplar: “One of the potential problems in the more laissez-faire notion of community we have today is that we have less idealism, less willingness to sacrifice, and a lack of care for the greater good of the community. I think we are weak at building those values for ourselves in the next generation, yet they have played a powerful part in bringing Australia to where it is now.”
But he has little sympathy for the traditional notion of “My country, right or wrong” and says that when we build our own history, we should encourage an openness to the views and experiences of other nations, and try to develop a growing awareness
of world citizenship.

What of horror? How should young people learn about what the atom bomb did to the civilians of Hiroshima, of Jews and the Final Solution? If they are not to be overwhelmed, Dr Yule says, they should be introduced to war through the notion of peace, by someone who has already resolved his or her own attitude to these issues.

“Traditionally, we have introduced people to peace by telling them about war; peace is what happens when you stop the war. But you can tell a lot of stories about conflict and crisis and how it was resolved, and treat war as the story that needs to be told when peaceful methods failed.” Children’s fear, he believes, come more from a lack of context in which to place war, and sometimes from a sense that the adult talking to them is not being frank. “Horror and evil can be named appropriately; if you don’t do that, it comes across as
a dark shadow lurking behind what you are saying.

“We need to start and finish by talking about the coping strategies we have … about missed opportunities for peace. The important thing is to preserve a sense of human viability, to leave them with the knowledge that we do have choices about such situations, that there is some possibility of control.” By the end of their lifetime, today’s young will know whether this became the next big lie.

YEAR 6: How hard it was to be a soldier.

ELLEN DUSEK didn’t know it, but her great-grandfather was a hero. His story was in the folder of family memories she brought to school for an Anzac Day talk, in a letter that told why Private Matthew Thomas Hogan was recommended for his Military Medal. In 1918, the last of his team left standing, he kept firing against an enemy machinegun, capturing it and destroying its crew. He then turned the captured gun on the retreating enemy, inflicting heavy casualties. “His courage and coolness were magnificent,” the letter said.

Ellen listened, surprised, as the story was read out to the class. It was not part of her family lore. The war story she knows, and tells bubbling with laughter, is of her grandfather, one of the Rats of Tobruk, and his mishaps with army latrines.

Many of the other students in her class, year six at Sandringham Primary School, know that fathers or grandfathers were soldiers, but have heard little more. Perhaps it was too long ago; perhaps it is not long enough. Says Meagan Carr: “My grandfather fought in the Second World War and a couple of his friends died … He still doesn’t like talking about it.”
The children believe that war is bad but soldiers are good. “We need soldiers, because we have to stand up for ourselves against other countries,” says Michelle Bishop-Dyson. They are unanimous that soldiers should be honored for their sacrifice but find it hard to explain why.

But they also say, over and over, that war should be avoided. Fabian Bannister says: “I think it’s really uncivilised for people to fight in wars. It’s governments that decide to fight … they should try to be a soldier and see how hard it is.”
To these children, the Anzac legend is Australia’s war heritage. They all know of Simpson and his donkey – Steve Anderson’s great- grandfather was rescued by him – but the more recent World War II is distant to them. None has heard of Changi, the Kokoda trail, or Weary Dunlop. Only Jaya Prillinger can describe what happened at Hiroshima but when he begins talking about fallout these children of the nuclear age catch on. “Aah, radiation,” they murmur knowingly.

A couple have heard the term Holocaust: “Wasn’t that the war where they invented gas chambers?” asks Ben Robinson. Says Matthew Lawson: “They put the Jewish (people) in there and took them to concentration camps and shaved their heads.” They answer matter-of-factly, as they would about rainfall in a geography lesson; the facts known but not the reality.

Asked how many of them can imagine a world without war, three-quarters of the children put up their hands. Imagine.

YEAR 11 AND 12: Trying to look at war from both sides now.

IN WORLD WAR II, Fiona Kozub’s grandparents were taken from their homes in Poland by soldiers with guns. Neighbors looked on silently.

“It was all really hush hush,” she says today. “No one argued, no one put forward their views.” She and other VCE students at Sandringham Secondary College can understand why ordinary citizens failed to speak up about the Nazi concentration camps. You wouldn’t, would you, if you were faced by men with guns? They even have sympathy for the Nuremberg defence of soldiers charged with war crimes: “I was just following orders.” There were SS guards who were as good to prisoners as they could manage without endangering themselves, says Stewart Hore, who recently visited Melbourne’s Holocaust Museum. The survivors he met there told him of camp guards who were surreptitiously kind.

“The soldiers couldn’t say anything either,” agrees Alyson Innis.

Says Sacha Cody: “You can blame them, but you can’t. There was so much propaganda at the time.”
The students are conscious that what they learn as history is, in fact, the view of only one side in the conflict. Alyson says, “We don’t get educated about all the bad things the Americans and British did, just on the bad things the other side did … Our history teacher always tries to make us think about what’s wrong with reading only books in English. Sometimes things get lost in translation, and always it’s just the English perspective on it.”
They enthuse about the glory of Gallipoli. Their sharp criticisms of the Vietnam War – a stupid war that wasn’t ours, that we entered only to keep an ally happy – could be applied just as readily to World War I, but aren’t. It was the birth of the nation, they say, the first time Australia made its own decision to enter a war.

Stewart talks about how Australians were known then, and in Vietnam, as great fighters, and how they’re laconic, like bushmen. Where does that leave Australian women? “Cooking up the damper!” says Fiona, amused but exasperated.

Stewart, aggrieved, explains that he was just leading up to that: “The women are out of it with the wars and stuff, with Anzac Day – we need something where women can feel proud.”
Lara Flynn agrees: “Women were the ones who ran the country while the men were gone, so they should get equal recognition.”
Some of them see war as inevitable: “It’s in human nature to start being suspicious and then fight and be really evil towards each other,” says Fiona.

Lara can see an alternative: forget arms and alliances, she says, and forge new relationships with each other where disputes can be resolved peacefully.

First published in The Age.

Sex and the sandpit

Questions such as “Mummy, where do babies come from?” have sent many an unprepared parent ducking for cover. But an informed approach to educating children about sex will not only equip them with a healthy attitude to their sexuality, but could also help keep them from harm.

ONCE UPON a time, sex education for little kids fell into the same realm as Santa and the Easter Bunny, with fantasies about cabbage patches and storks. It may not have been much use to children but it was a great comfort to parents. Then came a transitional phase, where it was recognised that older children should be prepared for puberty.

This often meant one painfully embarrassing session in which a welter of shocking information was released and never referred to again.

These days, sex education is meant to start from the time a child can talk. This is partly because it is thought better for sex education to be a natural unfolding of appropriate information at different ages, and partly for reasons that are too urgent to ignore. A child who cannot name and talk freely about body parts, who has not been told what is and isn’t appropriate sex play, or who feels that she or he cannot come to parents with rude stories, is a child at greater risk of sexual molestation.

A study of 122 children by Professor Freda Briggs, at the University of South Australia, has found that common parenting practices make children more vulnerable to abuse and less able to report it to an adult.

The study found that one-third of children aged five to eight had already sought their parents’ help to stop unwanted touching, sloppy kisses and other inappropriate behavior by older relatives. These children had learned that, in conflicts between children and adults, parents support adults. With only one exception, the children said that they could do nothing to stop adults from touching them inappropriately. All but one had been taught that to be good, they must obey all adults.

At five to eight years, they had already learned that behavior or talk about genitals, excretion and nudity were “rude”, and that “rude” was “naughty” and could lead to punishment. As a result, none of them believed that they could trust an adult to help them stop a grown-up’s sexual misbehavior, but thought that their parents would blame them for it, even if they had refused to participate.

Professor Briggs concluded that, when parents discourage children’s curiosity about sex because they fear permissiveness or embarrassing behavior, children learn a taboo that could endanger them.

All this leaves parents of preschoolers treading warily. On the one hand, children are meant to feel comfortable with their bodies, relaxed about sexuality generally and fairly trusting of adults. On the other, they need to be warned about sexuality’s darker side and encouraged to be careful. How can they be taught to be protective of their bodies without becoming anxious or shameful? How does today’s much-promoted tolerance of self-exploration and sex play with children their own age sit with strictures about not allowing bad people to touch them? How can they be helped to set safe boundaries without populating their imaginary world with monsters? Even discussion of normal sexual matters with children this age can be difficult for parents who have no blueprint, whose own parents raised the subject with them much later or not at all. In other research, Professor Briggs has found that most Australian parents plan to talk to their children about sex “next year”, irrespective of the child’s age; the parents never see them as quite old enough to hear the facts of life.

Steve Biddulph is a psychologist, family therapist and author of a book on parenting (`The Secret of Happy Children’) and another on marriage (`The Making of Love’). He says information about sex should begin with the under-threes by helping them name their body parts, so that a little boy can name his bottom and penis, a little girl her bottom and vagina or vulva. (Educators suggest that the clitoris be discussed with girls a little later, by about grade five or six.) Naming genitals makes children comfortable with their bodies and gives them the ability to explain if something is wrong with them. The downside is that it also gives little ones the ability to wander around mother’s next high tea inquiring politely of each guest whether they have a penis or a vagina. More tea, vicar? Professor Briggs says little girls are particularly “deprived” this way; because their genitals are tucked away, parents can avoid mentioning them at all. But little boys are often given private, pet names that have no meaning outside the family; she went around one classroom and found 20 different names for penises. The most euphemistic expression came from the little boy who referred to his genitals as a golf set _ “Because it was a stick, two balls, and a bag.” Very cute, says Professor Briggs, but: “Can you see the position this puts children in? If this child told a teacher that someone had done something to his golf set, she would just tell him to run away and play.” She says this practice also gives children a clear message that adults cannot cope with talking about private parts _ the beginning of the taboo.

From three to five, children can begin to grasp concepts about intercourse and where babies come from in more detail. Their questions are likely to be frank and matter-of-fact, and parents should respond likewise, says Babette Oshry, a community educator with the Family Planning Association of Victoria. She recommends honest, simple answers that don’t overwhelm the child with information, for example: “Where did I come from?” “A special place inside mummy’s body, called a uterus.” (Use “uterus” rather than “tummy”, Ms Oshry says, or they imagine the baby floating alongside Vegemite sandwiches.) “How did I get out?” “There’s a place between Mummy’s legs called a vagina, and you came out there.”
Ms Oshry says it will probably be sometime later that they get to the big one: “How did I get in there?” She says ruefully: “This sometimes occurs in the most unlikely places. With me it was in a crowded lift!” This is the time to start talking about daddy’s penis in mummy’s vagina, and how his sperm and her egg joined to make the baby. Ms Oshry suggests this is also the time to sit down together with a book on the subject, preferably one that the parent has checked out beforehand: “We all come from different backgrounds and have different values, and parents will find that different books suit them.”
Don’t expect to get away with one talk. Questions don’t always indicate what it is that the child wants to know; they might be checking the parent’s willingness to talk about sexual issues, or the parent’s values on particular topics. Children who can remember all sorts of complicated facts and stories “forget” the facts of life over and over, partly because young minds have trouble with abstract concepts, and sometimes because they find it uncomfortable to think of their parents as sexual beings.

HELEN BUXTON, an educator with the Family Planning Association of New South Wales, recalls her well-informed son coming home from school announcing with disbelief a friend’s claim that making babies required penises in vaginas. Ms Buxton told him that was pretty much how it happened. Pause. “Did Dad do that to make me?” “Yes.” Says Ms Buxton: “He then looked skyward, admiring such self-sacrifice, and said, `Gee, Dad must have really wanted me!” From three to five is the time children learn not only facts, but attitudes, including the notion that their body is their own property.

Says Mr Biddulph, “They can wash their own bottom and penis or vagina, can learn that `This is mine and I look after it’. There isn’t any need for adults to touch children after that stage. It’s not until after five that they really need to know about the downside of sexuality, about bad adults.” He estimates that the average school classroom would contain at least one child who has been involved in sexually gratifying an adult.

Ms Buxton teaches protective behavior to preschool children by breaking it down into simple concepts. She explains that there are public parts of the body, and private parts _ the ones hidden by undies. She explains that there are public and private places; bedrooms and bathrooms, for example, versus parks and shopping centres; and that private parts go with private places. This provides a neat solution to the problem of children playing with themselves in inappropriate venues, such as supermarkets and grandma’s living room.

It also gives children boundaries about where to discuss the topic _ at home with mum and dad is private.

Ms Buxton tells children that they are in charge of their bodies, especially those private places, and that nobody is allowed to touch them if they don’t feel OK about it. With very young children, she emphasises that no one but mummy or daddy may touch them, and even they have to explain why they are doing it. If anyone else wants to touch them, such as a doctor, mummy or daddy must be there too. “It’s important they know they can say no, even to their mum and dad,” she says.

Ms Buxton tells them that there are never any secrets about their genitals, and that if anyone ever tells them something like that is secret, they must tell mum or dad or another grown-up right away.

Sexual exploration of their own and other children’s bodies is normal and healthy, Ms Buxton says. But parents should give children the confidence to talk about any experiences they have, such as the “You show me yours …” encounter. The parent could then inquire matter- of-factly about what happened: “Did you give him permission? Did you look at his? What did you learn from that?” If parents find that one child was taken advantage of and felt unhappy about the experience, they should intervene, the way they would with any other play that went too far and caused distress.

Like Professor Briggs, Mr Biddulph is concerned that the “normal” things parents do increase children’s risks. He believes that this century’s main tools of discipline, spanking and shaming, have much to answer for. “When kids are hit, they experience that feeling of being invaded, of having no power, and that makes them more vulnerable to people who do other things to them that arouse those feelings. They are also going to be fearful of telling you things in case they get smacked or shamed. Discipline may be the key to the whole business.”
Mr Biddulph says children who do not regularly experience fear or shame are also less likely to send out “victim” vibes: “People who work with perpetrators have found that they know to pick children who are either nervous or lonely and therefore vulnerable.”
Professor Briggs, who has studied child sex offenders, says another safeguard is to make sure that boys, in particular, get enough hugs and kisses at home. “The majority of victims who don’t escape a paedophile, and who don’t particularly want to escape, are the ones who have been affectionless, especially those whose fathers are unaffectionate or absent.”
She also suggests that parents spend more time helping children develop problem-solving skills generally, for example, by helping them work out what to do if they got lost in a shopping centre. And parents should take notice of children’s reservations about other caregivers; if a child dislikes a particular babysitter, sack them: “Rely on your child’s gut feelings.” Professor Briggs also says it is important to teach children to say no to things they don’t want.

The sort of children created by these practices will not always be comfortable for parents: they will ask embarrassing questions, let wincing parents know about what goes on in the sexual world of children, and be more likely to challenge adult authority. But it is a small price to pay if it produces children like the English girl who refused to get into a stranger’s car. Her two friends, who did get in, were later found and asked by their parents why they had done something they had always been warned against. They sobbed that they had been told always to obey their father, and the man had said that their fathers had told him to pick them up. The girl who had refused to go explained to her parents, “You told me always to think before I do something.”
The Family Planning Association of Victoria has a booklet, `Talking to Kids About Sex’, designed to help parents of children under 10, and runs workshops for parents and other caregivers. The association also operates Options Bookshop, 266 Church Street, Richmond, which has resources for parents and children. Telephone 429 3500 for a catalogue. Community health centres, libraries and schools also carry helpful materials.

Broaching the subject.

Broaching the subject of sex with your children may be confronting for both you and them. Here are some more subtle approaches: Leave books or leaflets lying around the house.

Watch and discuss television or video programs together.

Visit the zoo or other places where animals are around. Use them as a starting point for many topics.

Casually discuss magazine or newspaper stories.

Visit libraries or relevant bookshops. This can be a good way of checking out your child’s interest areas, or doing some research with them on tricky questions.

Often there are interesting displays and exhibitions at museums and community centres.

Discuss the pregnancy of a relative, friend or neighbor.

Source: Family Planning Association of Victoria.

First published in The Age.

Young girls and the road to hell

Karen Kissane reports on prize-winning research on juvenile girls and crime in New South Wales.

JUDY LOST her mother, through no fault of her own, and then lost control of her life. She spent the rest of her childhood living between the homes of two related foster families. By the time she was a teenager she was a regular in the Children’s Court, for being uncontrollable, destitute and exposed to moral danger. She had been raped by men in both the foster families, from which she kept trying to escape. The courts and welfare officers knew this but still sent her back to one of the families.

After taking a near-fatal overdose, she was committed to a state institution for the third time. Judy escaped the system literally: her file closed only when she disappeared after absconding from the youth detention centre.

Her story is told in the newly published book `Offending Girls’ (Allen & Unwin, $21.95), by Dr Kerry Carrington, a sociology lecturer at NSW’s University of Newcastle. The book is the result of Carrington’s research into more than 1000 cases of girls who had records with the NSW Juvenile Criminal Index. Dr Carrington had sought to prove the feminist thesis that offending girls are punished not for real crimes but for being sexually active and in other ways “unfeminine”. What she found, instead, is that girls were criminalised not just for their gender but for their poverty, their race and their position as wards of the state.

“The major predictor of whether you became officially classified as a delinquent has been whether you were abused as a child and ended up in the child welfare system,” Carrington says. She asks why Judy, a state ward, ended up in detention rather than in a house for incest survivors.

Carrington says feminist writers have wrongly suggested that it is always male figures like magistrates and police officers who overuse the law to deal with difficult girls. “What’s much harder for feminists to confront is that it is mostly women who are social workers and psychologists who are doing things like this to girls like Judy, in their capacity as expert witnesses before the courts.”
Carrington does not dismiss all of the feminist analysis; she agrees that female delinquents are particularly vulnerable to the old- fashioned view of women and girls as “guardians of our morality”.

Judy was once incarcerated after problems including an incident on a school bus where boys stole her comb and refused to give it back unless she bared her breasts, which she did. Carrington writes: “It was her sexuality and not that of the boys which was considered central to the incident. By being represented as an evil seductress and a temptation to naturally playful young boys, Judy was made responsible for the sexist behavior of the boys … In relation to Judy’s experience of incest, it was her sexuality and not that of the three men in two different foster families who sexually abused her over a period of about eight years which was scrutinised, moralised and subject to court action.”

Aboriginal girls were even more likely to be treated this way.

Carrington found cases of girls being charged as a result of hanging about in parks, streets and shopping centres. “The mere public display of the black female body was sufficient in itself to be regarded as `harmful to the local community’ – an often quoted phrase in court reports.” One sexually active girl was taken into custody “because of fears that respectable parents and citizens of the town would be upset at the prospect of white boys being seduced by an Aboriginal girl who hangs around on the street.”
In 1991, Kerry Carrington’s work, originally written for her doctorate, won the Jean Martin Award for the year’s best PhD in the Australian social sciences. It was a triumph for a woman who had graduated from the juvenile justice system herself with a major in truancy. Carrington is the youngest of six children and the only one to complete school and go to university. The difference between her and other girls like her, she says, is that she had a probation officer who was determined to keep her out of the system. He largely succeeded, and she laughed to find herself spending a year in a girl’s reform school during her research. She worked in an old cell as she read through 8000 documents.

Carrington chose this area of research because “I wanted to turn my anger into something positive. Back then, everything was presented to me in terms of benevolence – `This is going to help you’ – and, of course, it had the exact opposite effect. I don’t deny the good intentions of a lot of people, but good intentions don’t necessarily have good effects. In this work I looked not at the rhetoric or intentions, but the effect the interventions had on the lives of the clients.” She was shocked to find that one fifth of those who became state wards travelled the fast track from care to detention.

BY THE standards imposed in many of the cases she researched, Carrington argues, most teenagers are `delinquent’. At some point they are involved in under-age smoking, drinking or sex, or commit offences such as shoplifting or truancy. The difference between those who finished up in detention for such “petty behaviors” and those who went undetected – or at least unpunished – was poverty. Carrington analysed the cases by local government area and found that most came from Housing Commission areas or Aboriginal communities.

Too often, children were taken from families in which they had never been hurt or abused but in which the material standard of living seemed inadequate to middle-class eyes. Children were removed to punish mothers who failed to cooperate with welfare officers’ diagnoses of, and recommendations for, their children’s problems, or who failed to measure up themselves: “They didn’t like mothers who went to the TAB. They didn’t like women who sought leisure activities in pubs … (When you are poor) you are vulnerable to this very petty supervision. Welfare workers come in and count how many bits of food there are in the house, how many children there are to a room. You can easily be classified as a dysfunctional family.”
In fact, Carrington found more evidence of sexual abuse in foster homes than in natural ones. “One of the foster girls actually had a baby to her foster father. She was hidden away in one of those institutions for pregnant mothers and then her baby was taken away from her and made a state ward. It was always the wrong people being punished.”
The case-file documents she found hardest to bear were the begging letters from parents, asking just to be allowed to see their children.

Some were pathetically eager to please “the welfare” but had no clear idea of how they were found wanting. Truck driver Mr Drake and his wife applied to get back their daughter Maree, who had been taken away because the family was destitute, partly because of Mr Drake’s drinking problem.

Wrote the district officer: “Mr Drake seems to spend most of his time trying to make his wife and son behave in the way `the welfare’ expects a good family to behave … Mrs Drake says she is made to scrub at the clothes until her knuckles are red and raw because her husband … insists that a good family must have white sheets …

Recommendation: that Maree is not returned to her parents.”
Since Carrington made her study, the situation in New South Wales has improved. Children on criminal charges are dealt with separately to those in welfare matters, and some `status offences’ such as uncontrollability have been removed from the books (although others, such as `frequenting a public place’ have been reinstated by the conservative government). The number of girls in care proceedings has dropped significantly as a result. But she still fears that at least one in five of those taken into care end up in the justice system, and worries about the unscrutinised power exerted by the welfare officers who advise judges, and the privacy of the decisions being made in closed children’s courts.

“The shield of invisibility did prevent the urge for change in the system,” Kerry Carrington says. “There needs to be more research to render the system public, and the department should take up that role itself, setting up long-term evaluation …. It’s a real human rights issue, the vulnerability of clients to forms of power which are totally unchecked.”

First published in The Age.

Are they old enough?

PEOPLE in cultures that did not have cameras sometimes feared the power of Westerners’ early lenses. Some even refused to have their image taken for fear that it would take their soul, too.

The Platonist philosophers of ancient Greece held that the soul was located in the whole body. Catholic schoolchildren probably still have drummed into them the notion that the body is the temple of the soul (and that there’s to be no toying with the temple, but that’s another story).

A camera can steal something from its subjects, rendering them seemingly spiritless. It’s usually the person behind the lens who has the power to choose the composition, the image, the impact. Take the cover photo of the current issue of the fashion magazine Australian Style.

The models are three 14-year-olds. They sit with their legs open, uniform-like skirts and tunics hitched way up on to their bare thighs, their hair thick and tousled. Their faces have the clinical-depression blankness of catwalk chic; their long, long legs finish in lace-up school shoes. The caption reads: “Class Acts: 14, sexy and … exploited?”

Inside, a photo spread features the girls in the stuff of paedophiles’ fantasies: little-girl-style underwear. The girls sit as a sullen threesome, again with legs spread, in nothing but cotton briefs and singlets, braless.

They wear the same in every individual shot in which they are featured. One wears a charm bracelet with what looks like a teddy bear hanging from it.

It is not their bareness that is troubling; they’d reveal more in bikinis. What is disturbing is the schoolgirl costuming, an attempt to sexualise them while simultaneously emphasising girlishness and childlike vulnerability; the studied manufacturing of Lolitas.

The magazine’s editor, Wendy Squires, writes in the magazine that she expects to be “crucified for promoting kiddie porn with our cover shot”. (Translation: “This should score us some free publicity.”)

She blusters that she won’t apologise for putting 14-year-olds on the cover because “these girls have hot careers. They have agents and parents. They have a right to make their own decisions. They were not forced to pose for us, nor were they made to do or wear anything that made them feel uncomfortable”.

But Squires does not address the issue of her decision to undress the girls, or how she justifies portraying them only as smouldering, sexually available nymphettes. There are no photographs that portray them in the glitzy clothes they presumably aspire to model.

Alongside the magazine on newsstands this week were newspapers reporting on a serial rapist with a history of assaulting teenagers. His current alleged offences included targeting and pursuing teenage girls whom he had seen photographed in a newspaper story on table tennis.

If something as innocent as table-tennis pictures could have such a powerful effect on a disturbed mind, you wince to think how such deviants might employ the suggestive images Squires has seen fit to promote.

The camera did steal something from these girls. It rendered them empty vehicles for male fantasies. It turned them into toys. Informed consent notwithstanding – and how informed can consent be at 14? – the images give an overwhelming impression of passivity and lack of agency.

Do you think would-be glam girls would choose to be pictured in school clothes (not to mention the kind of undies their mums probably made them wear when they were eight?)
Sex-and-the-camera is a game for big girls. SBS newsreader Indira Naidoo plays it with verve and assurance. Sunday night’s episode of Good News Week had some delicious flirting between her and male comics Mikey Robins and Andrew Denton.

It began after she purred out the words “Victor Chernomyrdin”. Her velvety voice had made the Balkans crisis sexy, said Robins; Denton asked whether she had ever thought of doing a 0055 newsline for SBS.

Then he asked, “It’s not a hard one, but it means a lot to me. Could you say the word `Minsk’?”
Naidoo moved from helpless laughter to sudden steely poise, producing the required sultry expression and breathy enunciation, followed by the wry raising of an eyebrow and the tiniest of pouts. The audience exploded and Denton mopped his face.

This was body and soul; Naidoo brought her whole being to the encounter with the camera, and she was in charge of the image projected.

That was fun. The photo spread in Australian Style is not.

It’s not fair to play a game in which one side is too young to understand the rules.

First published in The Age.