...and then there were two!

My world has changed

In school this week, I talked to my kids about media violence and its influence on children and youths. My research revealed some interesting nuggets of information.

• Television alone is responsible for 10% of youth violence. (Leonard Eron, Senior Research Scientist at the University of Michigan)
• The more real-life the violence portrayed, the greater the likelihood that it will be learned. (American Academy of Pediatrics Policy Statement, Volume 95, Number 6, June 1995)
• Children younger than 8 cannot uniformly discriminate between real life and fantasy / entertainment.

Scary stuff.

During my lesson, I suddenly remembered Jamie Bulger. I remember reading somewhere that his killers copied what they watched in the movie Chucky. So I told my kids about this extreme case of how influential the media can be.

After the lesson, I went online to check on the details of the case. And that's when my heart fell like a ton of bricks. Reading about it now is so different compared to reading about it in 1993. I mean, I was sad and shocked then, but as a parent now, reading about it made me hurt in places that never hurt before.

He was just shy of his 3rd birthday and he must have been so scared.

When PF picked me up from school that day, I talked to him about it. I really needed an outlet. I felt like a tight balloon ready to explode. We spoke about how different it feels now, to read about tragedies and little children, and how we both hate, really really hate, to read articles like that in the newspapers. And we found that we both skip those articles altogether.

It hurts because you think about your own baby, and you think, what if?

It's strange. During my pregnancy, I never felt any connection or bond with the baby at all. I was very worried I was incapable of loving my baby because ALL the books talked about talking to your belly, but I could never do it. It just felt too weird and earth-mother-ish. But when the nurse put DN in my arms for the very first time, I suddenly felt this insane explosion of love. It was crazy. I realised there and then that I will jump in front of a hurtling bus for this 47cm long, swollen, wriggling, helpless being.

It was at that time that I became a parent. And my world changed.