Trigger Warning: Strong Language!
Comic Context!
“Move your arse!” Said Grandma. “It’s time to go to school”.
Ódhran huffed and pulled on his boots, and started out the door to school. Mammy watched Eastenders on the telly in the living room.
“Why doesn’t Mammy have to go to school?” Asked Ódhran.
“Because she’s a grown-up.” Grandma said, “And grown-ups don’t go to school. They stay home to look after kids like you.”
“I want to be a grown-up.” Said Ódhran.
“You will be someday, but not anytime soon!”
~
“Move your arse!” Said Grandpa. “It’s time to go to mass.”
Ódhran huffed and pulled on his Sunday coat, and started out the door to mass. Daddy scrolled on Twitter over breakfast at the kitchen table.
“Why doesn’t Daddy have to go to mass?” Asked Ódhran.
“Because he’s a grown-up.” Grandpa said. “And grown-ups don’t have to go to mass. Not if they don’t want to.”
“I want to be a grown-up.” Said Ódhran.
“You will be someday, but not anytime soon!”
~
“Move your arse!” Said Mammy. “It’s time to do the shopping.”
Ódhran huffed and pulled the shopping bags out of the press, and started out the door to help Mammy do the shopping. Grandma played bridge at the table with Great Aunt Mary and shouted “Sh*t!” when she realised she’d lost.
“What does sh*t mean?” Ódhran asked.
“It’s the grown-up word for poo.”
“I want to be a grown-up.” Said Ódhran.
“You will be someday, but not anytime soon!”
~
“Move your arse!” Said Daddy. “It’s time to go to your swimming lesson.”
Ódhran grinned and grabbed his togs, and started out the door to his swimming lesson. Grandpa ate his three-in-one on top of his big belly on the sofa.
“Why doesn’t Grandpa have to go to swimming lessons?” Ódhran asked. “His arse has been getting rather big lately.”
“Because he’s a grown up.” Daddy chuckled. “And grown-ups don’t have to go to swimming lessons. Not if they don’t want to.”
Ódhran noticed how Daddy did not scold him for saying the grown-up word for bum. Maybe he was a grown-up now.
~
“Move your arse!” Said Ódhran. “It’s time to do my morning sh*t.”
Grandpa shrieked and farted, and dropped the toilet roll, and pulled his pants up round his knees.
“Where’d you learn that language?!” Grandpa asked.
“Mammy and Daddy and Grandma…and you!”
“But that’s grown-up talk! And you’re not a grown-up!”
Ódhran frowned and slumped his shoulders, but then his stomach bubbled, and he remembered the runny curry Mammy had ordered for dinner the night before.
“Move your arse!” He shrieked. “I’m going to f*cking sh*t myself!”
Grandpa huffed and wiped his arse, and moved it like Ódhran had asked. Ódhran dropped his pants and fell onto the toilet seat, sighing in relief.
“Move your arse!” Shrieked Mammy. “I’m going to be sick!”
But Ódhran was already pooping, and so Mammy got sick in the bathroom sink.
“Move your arse!” Bellowed Daddy, elbowing Grandpa out of the way. “What’s wrong, love?”
“I’m pregnant.” Mammy said, and Ódhran and Grandpa farted, and blinked.
“F*cking sh*t arse!” Daddy cried.
“F*cking sh*t arse!” Ódhran repeated gleefully, swinging his legs back and forth on the toilet seat.
“Watch your language!” Grandpa said, and pointed a finger. Ódhran huffed and slumped his shoulders, and stopped swinging his feet.
“I wish I was a grown-up.”
Greetings, foster mammies and daddies!
I hope you enjoyed the excerpt I’ve thrown in for you from a comic I’m working on! I found it related really well to what I wanted to talk about this week. Welcome back to Adventures of a Biological Foster Child in Ireland! If you’ve been here before, you may be starting to get the gist of things, and if you haven’t, don’t worry about it! To learn more about My Child and Fostering Ireland, check out the homepage and the welcome blog. As this blog is still brand new and finding its feet, it might also be worth your while checking out the pilot blog, too, to get a feel for what kind of topics are explored, and what kind of themes will be followed. I would like to take a moment to remind you of the trigger warning listed just under the title. This week I will be discussing learned behaviour. The anecdote I am drawing from for this topic has been largely fictionalised, and the personal details of the child in question have been changed in order to protect their identity and integrity to the fullest extent. So, without further ado, let’s get started.
Leading on from last week, I wanted to introduce the topic of learned behaviour. As parents (I’m not a parent, but I can assume), we are constantly conscious of how our behaviour might affect our children. We try our best not to do things like curse around them (maybe by introducing a curse jar to the kitchen) and when we are fostering kiddies from multiple different social backgrounds it can be hard to monitor things like language, certain topics such as sex, and behaviour.
Reflecting on myself as a person, I can say with certainty that I have learned many different behaviours from my mother, my father, and all of the children we have fostered over the years. For example, I learned what sex was from a teenage girl who had fallen pregnant and ended up in care with us. I learned how to say fuck when I was about eight years old from another child my age (and swiftly received a perforated ear drum from Patty, who shrieked so loud when she heard me repeat it I thought we were in the process of being burgled). I learned how to put my fake tan on for teen discos from a seventeen-year-old sweetheart who wore it as a badge of honour, and I learned to fight back in almost every way from every person with whom I shared temporary siblingship.
But how do we monitor what our children learn? And how do we make sure they aren’t learning what we don’t want them to, especially when they’re trudging through their formative years where peers can sometimes have more influence than us?
Well, we can start structurally. This may be common sense, but separate rooms for separate genders is certainly a promising place to begin. When I was thirteen we fostered a girl one year older than myself named Karina. She had unprotected sex with her boyfriend quite regularly and I was absolutely hooked on her every word when she would come home and relay the details to me. I was so curious at the time, and I became fascinated by the idea of sex and what it might be like. Karina had her own room in our house, but that didn’t stop her from skipping into my shared room with my sister to tell us of her risqué outings. She had learned this behaviour from me; I had a skewed concept of boundaries at the time, and I was so infatuated with this cool girl who has out having sex and doing grown up things that I just couldn’t help myself from barging into her room and demanding gossip on the daily. Serious conversations were had with both of us regularly about our gossip topics, but at the end of the day there wasn’t much my mother could do to regulate our vocal feed! Talking to her about it now, Patty said to me, “My God, Naoise, I was biting my nails waiting for the day I would hear you come home and go up to Karina to tell her you were doing the things she was doing. You seemed so happy to listen, and I was sure it was only a matter of time before you jumped on the bandwagon, no matter how much I tried to shelter you.”
Patty was right to be worried. She had been trying everything in her power to shelter Karina from her own destructive behaviour, but that girl had ways! Mitching school, sneaking out – all the tricks an unfortunate teenager knows when it comes to escaping an environment they don’t want to be in.
Alas, I learned my lesson all on my own. I was learning all these new things from Karina, but to me sex and everything that comes with it was one big illusion – a Twilight movie come to life before me, rated Eighteen and OVER. I didn’t actually know anything about the details of it all, I was simply fascinated by the idea, and my lack of respect for boundaries taught me the lesson that sex isn’t everything it is made out to be at such a young age.
One frosty and foreboding night in October I awoke in the night to a bang and a yelp coming from Karina’s room, and in a fit of worry I jumped from my top bunk and bounded across the upstairs hallway to her room, barging right in. I was promptly greeted with a face-on view of a strange boy’s arse, the milky white cheeks clenched in shock as he scrambled to cover himself up. Karina had fallen off the bed in the throes of their activities and was flat on her back with her knees over her head, knickers hanging on by a thread. This was sex. I was frozen in horror, confronted with the reality of it all. Girls were supposed to fall out of the bed? Boys actually had to get their bums out? What do you mean we couldn’t just kiss and run away from each other at warp speed? There was VULNERABILITY involved? I realised with substantial disappointment that Karina had lied to me. She didn’t know everything about sex.
The commotion caused that night hadn’t taken me as its only victim – the great Patty had awoken as well. The young boyfriend who had climbed through the window was dragged out of the house by the ear with his shoelaces still untied, and the following day Karina was carted off to the clinic for STD and pregnancy testing, after which she provided me with those details, too. This part, I was not too intrigued to hear.
You are not alone in monitoring the behaviours of the children running around your house. Patty could rely on Karina’s social worker to organise help straight away, and they were armed with advice for her on how to help Karina, to begin teaching her that the path she was on would not lend her a kind future. As for me, I had learned an entirely new behaviour – that of minding my own business and staying away from boys! As far as thirteen-year-old me was concerned, I never wanted to see a guy’s arse again. Karina had undergone an unfair amount of humiliation because of the ordeal, too, and so her detailed gossip chats came to a swift end.
If I were to give my own personal (and possibly inaccurate) opinion of learned behaviours in the home, I would be of the belief that it could actually be preferrable to navigate these behaviours within the confines of your own four walls. This way you can monitor, regulate, teach and love the young hearts that you care for. You are one person within a community of people in this country who have bravely stepped forward to help children in need, who haven’t had the best upbringing so far in life, and who just need a little guidance from a courageous adult. And as I constantly say, it will always boil down to the context at hand!
I hope you enjoyed this week’s topic – I understand it may seem like quite a broad perspective, and maybe you feel like you didn’t get as detailed an answer as you felt you needed. And that’s OK! The question portal is there for you to vent your innermost worries about how fostering might affect your biological child, and I will always anonymise the people who submit their questions! If you’re doubtful about whether I might have experienced something similar to what you’re needing advice on, don’t be. I’ve seen everything.
On that note, please do share this week’s post (or the entire site!) with other people you feel could benefit from my knowledge. You can subscribe through the homepage, too, to get exclusive updates delivered to your email every other week when a new post goes up! I don’t do email marketing, so new posts will be the only notification you get from me.
Thank you so much for reading guys, and I look forward to your feedback about learned behaviour!
‘Til next time, Naoise
Naoise McGuinness 