Random reminder

Press, 12 June 1978, Page 22

Random reminder

OUT OF TOUCH

Parenthood is difficult; ask any, child. And perhaps it has never beerr more difficult than today, when what-j ever the parents do is wrong, and. there are a dozen experts to tell them! so. Many parents are beset by feelings ■ of inadequacy, guilt and fear — or anyway, they ought to be. Two shattering blows have nearly! done for a Christchurch women. She is a congenital worrier and pessimist, absolutely committed to thinking the worst, and how she wishes she weren’t. Her son is called for every morning by another thirteen year old; a small, delicate looking child wearing a hearing aid. She tries hard to not be particularly nice to the caller but does take care to raise her usually soft voice and to look him in the face while speaking. One morning she remarked to her son that it was a pity his friend was deaf. Her son hooted with laughter. The “hearing aid.” is of course, ai small transistor. i

q Sheepishly, his mother reverted to . i her worry of the month. She was anx- [ ious about her fifteen year old who had, some weeks before, developed browny-green shadows about her eyes. ■ Tentative enquiries, (she didn’t want Ito alarm her daughter) about health \ and habits revealed no obvious reason for these. ! The family doctor’s reaction, when ! she mentioned it to him, was brisk: “not enough sleep — these teenagers.” So the girl was ordered to bed earlier and earlier with no effect; the shadows remained. Eventually, when she was being sent to bed at the same time as her twelve year old sister the fifteen year old rebelled and returned to her life of dissipation and ten o’clock bedtime, and the shadows grew no worse. Her mother fretted about this as she dusted her daughters dressing table and decided to take her to Dr Buisk for a complete check up. Turning resolutely away she knocked the lid of a I trinket bowl, revealing a browny green i cylinder, labelled "Eye Crayon.”