Please come and find me:- familyaffairsandothermatters.com
Friday, 20 November 2009
GRANDPARENTS AND DIVORCE
It has become increasingly obvious to me that something should be done to make the role of the Grandparents in a divorce or separation scenario a little more defined. At present, the law in the UK does not acknowledge any legal relationship between grandparents and grandchildren which means that when their child divorces or separates they could well lose contact with their grandchildren. Currently they have barely more rights over their grandchildren than complete strangers.
There are over 14 million grandparents in the UK and according to figures from The Grandparent Association over 1 million of them have lost touch with their grandchildren due to a divorce or separation. Paternal grandparents are usually the most deprived because women are awarded custody of their children in 90 % of divorce cases.
As a parent, it must be a nightmare to have to deal with any sort of trauma involving one of your children in later life. But if they are going through divorce and have children it could be even worse. I have relied on my parents support hugely from the beginning of the breakdown of my marriage and my poor mother must have to spend far too much of her day worrying about my latest drama. I suspect my parents would have stayed abroad if they had any idea how much time and effort they would have to put into getting me through my divorce. So imagine adding to that the risk of losing contact with your grandchildren. What a nightmare.
I was thinking about the role of the grandparent recently because I have two male friends who are currently in a similar situation. They are both divorced. They both have ex wives who were given custody of the children. Neither wife has made any effort to continue the relationship their children previously had with the grandparents and yet both my friends' parents have received letters recently from their ex-wives asking for additional financial assistance with the children.
So if both women believe that the grandparents should continue to play an active financial role in the lives of their grandchildren because they are flesh and blood then surely there should be laws in place to ensure that grandparents do not lose contact with their grandchildren in the event of divorce, separation or even bereavement. It seems a little unfair to just be able to pick and choose which bits you want and currently it seems that grandparents have no voice and no rights.
A Conservative government are proposing to change the laws. David Willetts, the Shadow Tory Minister has recently said courts should “at least have to consider” continuing legal rights for access to their children’s offspring in the event of a family breakdown. He said it was wrong that only half of councils considered family members first when deciding who should look after a child who would otherwise be taken into care. He agreed that we must improve the rights of grandparents to have access to children:-
“The courts should at least have to consider whether there should be continuing legal rights to access in the event of family breakdown. It’s also wrong that only half of local authorities have a policy that families should be considered as a first option before a child is fostered or taken into care. Grandparents must have a right to be the legal guardians of the child.”
The Conservatives are also considering making it easier for grandparents to receive childcare tax credits for looking after grandchildren. These are currently only given for formal care in a nursery or by a childminder. Mr Willetts said it was scandalous that grandparents had little or no recognition of their role in society, saying they were “fantastically important members of strong families”.
“They do an increasing amount, particularly in terms of childcare. Lots of parents rely on the support they give,” he said.
“They also help with the family finances, where there are big flows of support from grandparents to parents and grandchildren. “And, very interestingly, they are often a good source of advice for teenagers. There is fascinating research about which members of their family they would talk to about a problem, which showed grandparents often scoring above parents".
There are over 14 million grandparents in the UK and according to figures from The Grandparent Association over 1 million of them have lost touch with their grandchildren due to a divorce or separation. Paternal grandparents are usually the most deprived because women are awarded custody of their children in 90 % of divorce cases.
As a parent, it must be a nightmare to have to deal with any sort of trauma involving one of your children in later life. But if they are going through divorce and have children it could be even worse. I have relied on my parents support hugely from the beginning of the breakdown of my marriage and my poor mother must have to spend far too much of her day worrying about my latest drama. I suspect my parents would have stayed abroad if they had any idea how much time and effort they would have to put into getting me through my divorce. So imagine adding to that the risk of losing contact with your grandchildren. What a nightmare.
I was thinking about the role of the grandparent recently because I have two male friends who are currently in a similar situation. They are both divorced. They both have ex wives who were given custody of the children. Neither wife has made any effort to continue the relationship their children previously had with the grandparents and yet both my friends' parents have received letters recently from their ex-wives asking for additional financial assistance with the children.
So if both women believe that the grandparents should continue to play an active financial role in the lives of their grandchildren because they are flesh and blood then surely there should be laws in place to ensure that grandparents do not lose contact with their grandchildren in the event of divorce, separation or even bereavement. It seems a little unfair to just be able to pick and choose which bits you want and currently it seems that grandparents have no voice and no rights.
A Conservative government are proposing to change the laws. David Willetts, the Shadow Tory Minister has recently said courts should “at least have to consider” continuing legal rights for access to their children’s offspring in the event of a family breakdown. He said it was wrong that only half of councils considered family members first when deciding who should look after a child who would otherwise be taken into care. He agreed that we must improve the rights of grandparents to have access to children:-
“The courts should at least have to consider whether there should be continuing legal rights to access in the event of family breakdown. It’s also wrong that only half of local authorities have a policy that families should be considered as a first option before a child is fostered or taken into care. Grandparents must have a right to be the legal guardians of the child.”
The Conservatives are also considering making it easier for grandparents to receive childcare tax credits for looking after grandchildren. These are currently only given for formal care in a nursery or by a childminder. Mr Willetts said it was scandalous that grandparents had little or no recognition of their role in society, saying they were “fantastically important members of strong families”.
“They do an increasing amount, particularly in terms of childcare. Lots of parents rely on the support they give,” he said.
“They also help with the family finances, where there are big flows of support from grandparents to parents and grandchildren. “And, very interestingly, they are often a good source of advice for teenagers. There is fascinating research about which members of their family they would talk to about a problem, which showed grandparents often scoring above parents".
Thursday, 19 November 2009
ANISH KAPOOR AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY REVIEW
Anish Kapoor was born in 1954 in Mumbai. He has lived in Britain since the 1970's and he is a sculptor. He was the winner of the 1991 Turner prize and is now recognised as one of the most influential and significant artists of his generation - you can tell he must be really important by the total bloody mess he's been allowed to make of the walls of the gallery and I believe it's the first time a living artist has taken over all of the main galleries in the Royal Academy.
I felt a bit like a child in a sweet shop. Lovely big, bright, simple, tactile shapes everywhere that I just wanted to touch. Instead I had to sit on my hands so that I wasn't tempted to stroke, poke, squish, smell, taste and just generally over-indulge in the senses.
One of my favourite pieces was outside in the courtyard - I wonder if he would let me borrow it for Christmas - just like huge pile of giant polished baubles:-
As you walk into the first room you see his works in pigment, which are wonderfully simple shapes covered in colour that could be taken right out of an Indian spice market. This pigment covers the objects and spills out over the floor around them.
"When I Am Pregnant" took us ages to find because it is just as if one of the walls itself has grown a small belly and again, you just want to reach out and stroke the swelling.
Another room has a cannon in it and every twenty minutes a solid lump of crimson paint is shot out with a loud bang. It might have looked quite frivolous when the installation began, but now it just looks dangerous and evil. Like a sea of blood is flowing from one room into another representing death and war and destruction and a bloody great cleaning bill for the Royal Academy (there are even splatters all over the ceiling - HOW are they going to get all that lot off?)
The mirrored room provided the most fun for children (and us). Just beautifully polished surfaces that gave us unexpected images and reflected constant change in a fascinating way.
Another room housed his most recent sculptor's - it looked like a whole room of oversized worm casts made of cement. All very grey compared to the lush colour of the other rooms but fascinating nevertheless....
I felt a bit like a child in a sweet shop. Lovely big, bright, simple, tactile shapes everywhere that I just wanted to touch. Instead I had to sit on my hands so that I wasn't tempted to stroke, poke, squish, smell, taste and just generally over-indulge in the senses.
One of my favourite pieces was outside in the courtyard - I wonder if he would let me borrow it for Christmas - just like huge pile of giant polished baubles:-
As you walk into the first room you see his works in pigment, which are wonderfully simple shapes covered in colour that could be taken right out of an Indian spice market. This pigment covers the objects and spills out over the floor around them.
"When I Am Pregnant" took us ages to find because it is just as if one of the walls itself has grown a small belly and again, you just want to reach out and stroke the swelling.
Another room has a cannon in it and every twenty minutes a solid lump of crimson paint is shot out with a loud bang. It might have looked quite frivolous when the installation began, but now it just looks dangerous and evil. Like a sea of blood is flowing from one room into another representing death and war and destruction and a bloody great cleaning bill for the Royal Academy (there are even splatters all over the ceiling - HOW are they going to get all that lot off?)
The mirrored room provided the most fun for children (and us). Just beautifully polished surfaces that gave us unexpected images and reflected constant change in a fascinating way.
Another room housed his most recent sculptor's - it looked like a whole room of oversized worm casts made of cement. All very grey compared to the lush colour of the other rooms but fascinating nevertheless....
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
COME AND SEE ME SOON X
Just to let you know I've moved.....
Please come and find me:- familyaffairsandothermatters.com
"CONFLICT CLINICS"
"Parents' failure to divorce amicably means that one in three children permanently loses touch with one of them, usually the father, a new study has found".
The same study also found that one in five parents said "that their primary objective during separation was to make the experience as unpleasant as possible for their ex-spouse". Hmmm. Well I can see that. It's very difficult to try and remove your own bitter and angry feelings from the equation when attempting to discuss the children. However, I have decided that each time we argue I am going to try and think "will this matter in five years time?" and see if I can rise above it.
On that basis, although our endless parental disputes are getting VERY tedious I decided to try and look at our latest issue from a different perspective. Our 9 year old really wanted to go and play football with his dad in the dark this morning, so I suggested that he have a go to see if it was going to work. He enjoyed it but I still think it's too early to do regularly - he was up ridiculously early and consequently it was all a bit chaotic by the time he went to school - we'd lost the fable he was supposed to be able to recite and his maths sheet and his jumper.
It's a shame we can't agree without an argument...my ex simply wouldn't accept any of my opinions - accusing me of being selfish and he was furious that I wouldn't drive him to his house saying "but you do nothing in the morning", which as any parent who has to get three children out to three different schools every day would know is a wonderfully deluded view of a busy household pre school. So. In order to try and be more forward thinking about the long term interests of our children I might suggest to my ex that we go to a "conflict clinic" which campaigners are trying to establish. I suppose it is similar to mediation. It might be worth a shot....
In the meantime, tonight I am dealing with the discovery of a photograph of a teenage girl's arse on my computer taken during the Friday night party. The problem is that my desktop is in the kitchen and they all love taking loads of morph like pictures - I was shown most of the ones of their faces but not the rude ones obviously. Having discovered the offending picture tucked away on the bottom right hand corner of my desktop, I put it on my screensaver in an attempt to publicly humiliate my son but then a friend knocked on the door to drop something off and so I panicked and before I could let her in the kitchen I had to get him to quickly delete it in case she thought I was a pervert - he thought the whole thing was hilarious. I am not amused. Today's teenagers. Revolting. No morals. Imagine. Mooning (although frankly this was more than a moon). I suppose in our day we were just bloody lucky not to have mobile phones and computers to record our most embarrassing moments - although do you think we would have done it anyway?
As I write my two teenagers are watching "I'm A Celebrity" in the other room and they're both shouting loudly in vague unison in the style of "Family Guy" for a cup of tea each - it is relentless "MUM!, MUM!, MUMMY!, MUM!, MOTHER!, MUM!, MUM, MUM, MAMMA, FAMILY AFFAIRS!! LULU, MUM!, MUM!, FAMILY AFFAIRS AND OTHER MATTERS. COM!!, MOTHER!, MUMMY, and so on and so forth until I AM GOING TO BLOODY KILL THEM.
The same study also found that one in five parents said "that their primary objective during separation was to make the experience as unpleasant as possible for their ex-spouse". Hmmm. Well I can see that. It's very difficult to try and remove your own bitter and angry feelings from the equation when attempting to discuss the children. However, I have decided that each time we argue I am going to try and think "will this matter in five years time?" and see if I can rise above it.
On that basis, although our endless parental disputes are getting VERY tedious I decided to try and look at our latest issue from a different perspective. Our 9 year old really wanted to go and play football with his dad in the dark this morning, so I suggested that he have a go to see if it was going to work. He enjoyed it but I still think it's too early to do regularly - he was up ridiculously early and consequently it was all a bit chaotic by the time he went to school - we'd lost the fable he was supposed to be able to recite and his maths sheet and his jumper.
It's a shame we can't agree without an argument...my ex simply wouldn't accept any of my opinions - accusing me of being selfish and he was furious that I wouldn't drive him to his house saying "but you do nothing in the morning", which as any parent who has to get three children out to three different schools every day would know is a wonderfully deluded view of a busy household pre school. So. In order to try and be more forward thinking about the long term interests of our children I might suggest to my ex that we go to a "conflict clinic" which campaigners are trying to establish. I suppose it is similar to mediation. It might be worth a shot....
In the meantime, tonight I am dealing with the discovery of a photograph of a teenage girl's arse on my computer taken during the Friday night party. The problem is that my desktop is in the kitchen and they all love taking loads of morph like pictures - I was shown most of the ones of their faces but not the rude ones obviously. Having discovered the offending picture tucked away on the bottom right hand corner of my desktop, I put it on my screensaver in an attempt to publicly humiliate my son but then a friend knocked on the door to drop something off and so I panicked and before I could let her in the kitchen I had to get him to quickly delete it in case she thought I was a pervert - he thought the whole thing was hilarious. I am not amused. Today's teenagers. Revolting. No morals. Imagine. Mooning (although frankly this was more than a moon). I suppose in our day we were just bloody lucky not to have mobile phones and computers to record our most embarrassing moments - although do you think we would have done it anyway?
As I write my two teenagers are watching "I'm A Celebrity" in the other room and they're both shouting loudly in vague unison in the style of "Family Guy" for a cup of tea each - it is relentless "MUM!, MUM!, MUMMY!, MUM!, MOTHER!, MUM!, MUM, MUM, MAMMA, FAMILY AFFAIRS!! LULU, MUM!, MUM!, FAMILY AFFAIRS AND OTHER MATTERS. COM!!, MOTHER!, MUMMY, and so on and so forth until I AM GOING TO BLOODY KILL THEM.
Thursday, 12 November 2009
BIRTHDAY PRESENT TO MYSELF
OK. The time has come for me to show you my other birthday present to myself.
I have bought myself a new blog. It's been something I've been thinking about for a long time and the time has now come for my little bloglet to grow up a bit.
The blog that I started has been a wonderfully cathartic thing for me. I have made new friends and found a way to turn what was a very traumatic experience into something positive. I want to take that one step further now and move to the next stage of my development. I want to be able to turn all that negativity into something better. I want to be able to continue to write about my life with my children, but to be able to include other stuff as well. For friends to be able to write articles or post information. I want to be able to write about single parent holidays or divorce issues or raise money for something or write about other people raising money or whatever and for it all to be easier to find.
In a psychology book I was reading the other day about milestones in adult development it said:
"A recluse who spends his entire life alone in the same house in the same community, without working, marrying, traveling, or meeting new people is unlikely to change very much in adulthood. But most individuals in our society continue to pass developmental milestones. These can be seen as crises, but they can also be developmental opportunities.
The photo that I'm using to represent my family was taken in the Luangwa Valley when I was there this summer. It is a picture of a female elephant with her children. I love it because it says a lot about my life. The fact that it represents my family, the fact that I love elephants above all else, the fact that I love Africa, the fact that her children are walking away on their long slow path to independence and that she is just there watching and guiding and protecting, the fact that she has a huge arse...
Anyway, this is just to say that for some reason this all feels a little terrifying. It shouldn't be I suppose. Change is meant to be a good thing but I really don't want to lose all you lovely people out there.
So, as it's my birthday present, please come with me.
Here's the link:-
http://familyaffairsandothermatters.com
You will have to update your bookmarks and sign in again as a Google follower because it's a different URL address.
My huge thanks goes to Andy from Add Creative who must be the most patient man on the planet.
I have bought myself a new blog. It's been something I've been thinking about for a long time and the time has now come for my little bloglet to grow up a bit.
The blog that I started has been a wonderfully cathartic thing for me. I have made new friends and found a way to turn what was a very traumatic experience into something positive. I want to take that one step further now and move to the next stage of my development. I want to be able to turn all that negativity into something better. I want to be able to continue to write about my life with my children, but to be able to include other stuff as well. For friends to be able to write articles or post information. I want to be able to write about single parent holidays or divorce issues or raise money for something or write about other people raising money or whatever and for it all to be easier to find.
In a psychology book I was reading the other day about milestones in adult development it said:
"A recluse who spends his entire life alone in the same house in the same community, without working, marrying, traveling, or meeting new people is unlikely to change very much in adulthood. But most individuals in our society continue to pass developmental milestones. These can be seen as crises, but they can also be developmental opportunities.
The photo that I'm using to represent my family was taken in the Luangwa Valley when I was there this summer. It is a picture of a female elephant with her children. I love it because it says a lot about my life. The fact that it represents my family, the fact that I love elephants above all else, the fact that I love Africa, the fact that her children are walking away on their long slow path to independence and that she is just there watching and guiding and protecting, the fact that she has a huge arse...
Anyway, this is just to say that for some reason this all feels a little terrifying. It shouldn't be I suppose. Change is meant to be a good thing but I really don't want to lose all you lovely people out there.
So, as it's my birthday present, please come with me.
Here's the link:-
http://familyaffairsandothermatters.com
You will have to update your bookmarks and sign in again as a Google follower because it's a different URL address.
My huge thanks goes to Andy from Add Creative who must be the most patient man on the planet.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME
I had the most lovely birthday. Thank you for all your messages. My friend took me out for a lovely lunch and in the evening I went out with my children and my brother and my sister in law.
Feeling very spoilt. My kids made a huge effort. Gave me some lovely presents and some handmade cards.
My youngest child's card was so sweet. It said:-
"Dear mum
Thank you for everything you have done for me and I hope this is the best day of your life so make it count. I know my presents aren't very good. I would of got you a really good present but I got something else. I'll get you a late present for you anyway oh and I forgot happy birthday.
Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of love...
YOU + ME = LOVE
How sweet is that?
Feeling very spoilt. My kids made a huge effort. Gave me some lovely presents and some handmade cards.
My youngest child's card was so sweet. It said:-
"Dear mum
Thank you for everything you have done for me and I hope this is the best day of your life so make it count. I know my presents aren't very good. I would of got you a really good present but I got something else. I'll get you a late present for you anyway oh and I forgot happy birthday.
Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of love...
YOU + ME = LOVE
How sweet is that?
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