I suppose that each generation looks askance at how the next is bringing up children and, even if you have no children of your own, it doesn't stop you having opinions. Just look at ministers of education around the world to see that actual knowledge of teaching is obviously seen as a serious disadvantage to the successful carrying out of duties!
Perhaps it is because the Christmas holidays this year in Catalonia have been unduly (!) extended so that the kids have not gone back to school until today, the 11th of January, that has encouraged me to think about the behaviour of children.
It is indeed true that you cannot remain impervious to the daily drama as child after howling child is dragged away from the swings in the outside part of the leisure centre cafe by exasperated parents. It is also inevitable that you think of your own behaviour when you were that age. Or at least you think about what you think was your behaviour at that age. Whatever the truths of the situation, it is one - if only because of the sheer noise involved - that demands some sort of response!
Living by the side of the sea, we also have a number of sellers who display their goods on sheets which can, in a moment (when the police have been seen) be gathered up and taken away out of the sight of the eyes of the law. At the moment the objects for sale are sports shoes and mechanical toys, but during the high days of summer we were urged to buy baseball hats with the brand 'Obey' writ large on them.
It was a combination of memory, observation and need to say something that prompted this poem.
Obey
I was, it must
be said, unnervingly
polite when I
was small.
When still too
young
to understand
the means,
I realised how
ruthless
being nice could
be.
My ready smile
and fluent speech
(in accents
unattached to who I was)
got me what
tantrums never did.
I left the Roath Park swings when I was
told;
agreed time limits for the saving
of my castle on the Barry beach
against the boringly relentless tide,
and always said my ‘please’ and ‘thank you’
without prompt.
Outside the house, in streets
where I was free to roam:
in Dogfield and in Malefant,
in Tewkesbury and Robert too,
my father’s whistled rhythm
(one-two and one-two-three and
one)
would bring me back at once.
Just like the dogs we later had –
though Labradors were more
recalcitrant than ever Stephen was!
And so I watch
the modern kids,
whose parents
now
negotiate,
cajole and plead
and often are
rebuffed
with what looks
like imperial distain!
But parenting’s
an easy hit
when you have
raised
no children of
your own
to make your aim
unsure.
Instead,
reliance on the partial
memories of what
you were
steady the
telling shot.
I watch a girl
ignore her parent’s call
and use her
toddling sister’s wanderings
to justify her
staying on the swings.
I watch three
boys kick at a ball,
and then play on,
ignoring
all their fathers’
shouts.
They deign to
make faux turns
placating parent
protest
allowing gesture,
once again,
to take the
place of fact.
And at my present
age,
and distant from
the young
(yet old)
remembered self,
it’s tempting to
assert
‘Obey’ has just
become another
brand on baseball
hats
(and always worn
the wrong way round)
and that the
concept is as distant now
as those delightful,
winsome smiles that
creased my infant,
knowing face.
The italics and bold print are intentional, as is the extra space before the final stanza.
There is a sinister feel to the last line which I think is exactly what I was aiming at!
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