👟👠 Rude people and entitled kids (#16)

Hi !  Welcome back. Sorry that you see me on Sunday not Saturday, but…life. This week I am thinking (and writing) about the Olympics, rude people, entitled kids, plane hijacks and very large families. If you haven’t subscribed yet, you can join here or by clicking the button below. - Eve D.❣️

WEEK IN REVIEW

🐶 🎂 It was Lisa's 6th birthday, so a very important week in the household .

🚶‍♀️ I started walking in practice for my upcoming Kruger Park trail. My plan was to walk about 8-10km per day, which is close to the daily required 10,000 steps anyway. But then I had a talk with someone who’s done similar trails, and he said that the focus should be on length of walking time, not distance. And the required duration is about 4-5 hours, which quite frankly is a bit of an OMG reality for me. But we prevail!

🥇 The Euro soccer is over, so now you get to hear me talk about the Olympics, which start on Friday. This year, the opening ceremony will not include the country teams walking into a stadium. Instead, they are somehow going to parade/float down the Saine, which sounds spectacular but also like quite a challenge (especially since the river is less than clean!). Social media is full of nightmare-esque stories of the hellhole that Paris has become due to security measures in preparation for the Games. But don’t the French just love to complain all the time? Either way, I am super excited for the Games but equally hugely disappointed by the lacklustre PR coverage of our SA team, and am near-clueless as to who our medal contenders are.

⚰️ Also: doesn’t it seem like a lot of our icons are dying? Richard Simmons, Shannen Doherty, Bob Newhart. I'm particularly sad abut Shannen. She fought breast cancer so bravely, and just 3 weeks prior was saying she was hopeful that her new protocols would buy her at least a few more years. #RIP

IDEAL OFFICE

Forget working from home, how about working from your garden instead? This is not your “Roald Dahl garden shed” ! I am actually obsessed with this set up. I would definitely need to add a very comfortable couch, an outdoor seating area, a coffee station and a rug but …this is very aspirational for me.

GET OFF THE SPEAKERPHONE

Unacceptable Behaviour

Saw a tweet where someone asked “What do you have unreasonable high standards for?” and it got me thinking. I actually have quite a lot of things I expect to be done “quite right”, but I don’t consider any of them to be unreasonable. Just…normal? Some things that are important to me, and that I also expect from others:

• punctuality

• grammar (especially from professionals). I walk around correcting anybody in my family who dares say things like "Me and Stacey….".

• manners, but especially table manners

• top-notch service at restaurants

• bed quality in hotels

But my absolute, biggest gripe by far is for all those inconsiderate baffoons who walk around with their phone on speaker while having a conversation, or while listening to videos or music. For the love of God!!!! Are these people unable to afford headphones? What kind of inconsiderate ignoramus do you have to be to think that is is okay to subject other people to your conversation or entertainment? I consider it an invasion of my personal space and it drives me insane. Like…literally mad.

I actually crapped out a woman the other day for having a Facetime call on speaker in a nail salon while all the other women were trying to have pedicures done in peace. I didn’t even try to be polite about it, because I couldn’t find a shred of compassion or empathy for that sort of selfish behaviour. (To her credit, she was apologetic and mortified to find out that she was bothering anybody, which makes me wonder…are these people living in their own bubble of self-entitlement?).

What do you have “unreasonable standards” for? I’d really to hear…please hit reply and let me know.

SPEAKING OF ENTITLEMENT…

Fear of Frustration

I watched a podcast with Dr Becky Kennedy, a psychologist who helps people parent better. She’s really very, very good and if you have kids I strongly suggest you listen to her speak or at least follow her on Instagram. She makes a lot of sense.

Anyway, she was talking about “entitled kids” (most parent’s nightmare) and she had such a good definition for entitlement … it is simply a fear of frustration. She mentioned a story about a 16yr who threw a fit in an airport because he realised his parents booked economy seats, not first class, which he was more used to. That’s an extreme case, but this “entitled” kid was scared of the frustration of economy class (shame!).

I’ve shared and discussed this entitlement definition with other parents, and pretty much everyone gets this look of guilt and horror, as the penny drops. We all have stories where we bend over backwards to prevent our kids from feeling any frustration, but the reality is that by removing as much frustration as we can we are creating kids who don’t know how to deal with friction, and then act entitled and incapable. So best we stop doing that. (Btw, I think “participation trophies” fall into this category, giving kids a false sense of accomplishment, and lowering the will to strive, but that’s a discussion for another day.)

Dr Becky also has an amazing TED talk that is a good use of your 16 minutes, linked below.

SPEAKING OF KIDS…

Parenting is … a lot.

I was at chess tournaments with Zac the last two weekends (including yesterday, which is why newsletter is late. Sorry.) The way these tournaments work is like this: parents and players (mostly kids, but not exclusively) arrive at a designated school, ready to start play by 8am. The players play 5 matches, and the whole affair usually takes about 8-10 hours (we leave at 7am and return at 5pm!!). There is a whole bunch or rating and seeding that happens during the day, and players collect points for each match won, and the more matches they win, the higher they climb up the internationally-recognised ranks.

Personally, and I think I have mentioned this before, I really enjoy the tournaments because they give me a great opportunity to disconnect from the world. Yesterday I sat out in the sun, on a blanket with a cushion prodded against a tree, and I just chilled. I caught up with friends via phone-calls, I did some thinking and plotting, chatted to Zac in between his matches and had a generally good, relaxing time. It’s a great opportunity to switch off, guilt free and I’m not complaining.

But that is not the fate of most parents, I don’t think. While the kids compete in the matches, the parents sit scattered around the school lawns, and they come prepared for the day: they bring loungers, umbrellas, gazebos, lots of food, inverters, laptops, games and an attempt at the right attitude. They take it very seriously, and do what they can to make the very long day more pleasant for the family. If you’ve ever lugged six bags of stuff to the beach, you’ll have a good idea of what I’m talking about.

I was observing these set-ups and I noticed…most of the parents look really unhappy. They look tired, defeated but put on a brave face. Most would clearly prefer to be anywhere else. I don’t blame them: they’ve worked the full week, they’ve parented the full week, and still they need to get up at crack of dawn on a Saturday, pack up the car and come and support their kids in another extra-mural. That’s half the weekend, gone. And not only do they have to continuously act the part of supportive emotional boards (half kids win a match and are elated, half kids lose a match and are dejected) … they also have to entertain the younger siblings who are not playing the matches! And they try to smile through it all, and convince themselves and each other that this is exactly what they signed up for when they decided to have kids but let’s be honest….

…It’s a lot.

As parents, we sacrifice so much for our kids. I know that we all know this, and we also then immediately assure whoever is listening that we love our kids, we would do it all over again the same way if we had a choice and that our time together is so precious. And yeah. OK. I get that, and I concur. But I am also going to say the unspoken, somewhat less popular opinion: kids are a lot. They cost us a lot (time, money, energy) and I think it's ok to be honest about that, instead of walking around all the time pretending like it's all fine, (fine!) all the time.

It’s acceptable to feel frustrated and tired and somewhat resentful of the sacrifices we have to make. It doesn’t mean we regret our life choices, but it does mean that we are only human, with our own needs and that parenting is difficult, and often thankless. We don’t need Noddy badges (and we’re not going to get them) so why not just give ourselves some grace instead, and acknowledge that it isn’t meant to be easy, and it isn’t easy. No need to be heroes about it. We don’t have to be “fine” all the time.

A nice little counter-balance to paranoia…maybe we all adopt it for a week and see what happens?

YOU’RE NOT ON CANDID CAMERA…

This is hilarious, but also possibly not at all funny. You decide!

I'm sure you watched Candid Camera when you were a kid. It was the show where everyday people were pranked into funny situations and secretly filmed. The original version of MTV’s “punk’d”, if you will. Every country had their own Candid Camera franchise, I think, but it originated in the US in the 1960s with Allen Funt, who was the (very famous) original presenter of the show.

Anyway, in 1969 he and his family were on a flight from New Jersey to Florida when the plane was hijacked mid-flight. The hijackers demanded to be taken to Cuba, but most of the passengers recognised Funt and thought they were part of a Candid Camera episode! Funt tried to explain what was really going on, but no one believed him 🤣 🤣 . Only when the plane landed in Cuba did the passengers realise that this was not a prank. (Everyone was safely released after 11 hours). 🤣 

ENTERTAINMENT

Speaking of things that are funny but not really, I’m watching The Man with 1000 kids on Netflix. It's a 3-part documentary about a sperm donor from the Netherlands who donated sperm that fathered at least 1,000 children. The donations were through multiple sperm banks, but also done privately. He told all the parents that he was maxing out at helping 5 families. I've only watched the first episode, and let me tell you...aside from being extremely serious this documentary is also roll-on-the-floor hilarious. There is nothing quite like the frankness of the Dutch.

The obvious problem with 1000 kids who share a genetic makeup is the huge potential of “inter-breeding”. But another issue that strikes me as horrendously mentally challenging is how a person copes with the idea of having one thousand siblings. I mean, most of us max out at one or two. But these are actual blood relatives, walking around each other’s country, town, school (!). How does one deal with that complexity? Maybe it’ll be addressed in the remaining two episodes. Anyway…highly recommend you watch!

I also watched Twister for movie date night, which has aged well! The effects are still spectacular and it was nice to see Helen Hunt on the big screen again. Twister 2 is coming out soon (no original cast, I don’t think), and I honestly don't understand why we continuously need to remake classics. Are people not able to come up with original ideas?

And lastly, I finally watched an episode of Killing Eve last night, and boy oh boy is it good! So that’s my new show for the next couple of months.

FREE THERAPY

Thanks for reading!

🔥 Enjoyed it? Please click the like button at the top. Comments? Share them! 🔥 

That’s it for this week. (Want more? You can find past editions here). I hope you have a great weekend and upcoming week. Please keep sharing /forwarding to your friends/groups 😄 . You can also email me privately by hitting reply on this email.

PS