John Marsden - 23 July

About The Art of Growing Up

When I hear parents say I want my children to enjoy their childhood; therell be time when theyre older to learn about those things, I hear the voices of those who are scared of the vastness of the universe. These adults have a view of childhood as some kind of discrete interval, rather than just a few years from the continuum of life. How fortunate that the spirit, courage and curiosity of many young people remain largely undefeated by such adults.

John Marsden has spent his adult life engaging with young minds through both his award-winning, internationally bestselling young adult fiction and his work as one of Australias most esteemed and experienced educators. As the founder and principal of two schools, John is at the coalface of education and a daily witness to the inevitable and yet still mysterious process of growing up.

Now, in this astonishing, insightful and ambitious manifesto, John pulls together all he has learned from over thirty years experience working with and writing for young people. He shares his insights into everything - from the role of schools and the importance of education, to problem parents and problem children, and the conundrum of what it means to grow up and be happy in the 21st century.

Contents

For Kris,

my partner in this noble and ridiculous world

This book draws upon my experience of teaching over 40 years. For legal reasons, some details have been changed. It also includes correspondence from parents of students: for copyright reasons and to protect privacy, I have created my own versions based on the originals.

Preface

Your parents and your school. Does anything else matter?

Well yes, probably. The question is not entirely serious, but these two forces are enormously powerful. They can be compared perhaps to the effect of sun and rain upon the earth. The suns rays sculpt the earth, as does rains relentless impact. The results can be beautiful, stirring to the soul, or they can be as mud, attractive to some but not to others. The earth can become a pile of dust, blown away by the wind, to become grit in the eyes of passing creatures. It can become a desert of dunes, forever changing in form and size, glaring at the thirsty traveller, or softly, richly beautiful. Or an infinite number of variations on those extremes.

Adults have for the most part physically left school and left the parental home. However, they are forever shaped by those two influences. The impacts of parents and school on them are so vast and far reaching that I cannot think of any person Ive known in my life who has been able to completely reverse those effects: in other words, to profoundly change their personality, to redesign or reinvent the inner person.

Children, however, are still in the early stages of formation. They are somewhat akin to the early studies for a piece that a painter hopes ultimately to finish. So this book is really about future adults, the next generation the one for which current adults are now responsible. It must also be about the past and the present, because every adult who comes into contact with children and adolescents brings with them their own experiences as children and adolescents. These adults still have many choices in their lives thousands of them, every day. They can, on each occasion, replicate the words, behaviour and values of the parents and teachers who cared for them when they were young, or they can decide on different paths. The parent who was savagely criticised as a child, or who was made to feel that his worth could be measured as the sum of his tangible achievements, or who was treated as a starlet fit for diamonds and gold, or who was taught that the world is a cruel and untrustworthy place, may come to understand that these behaviours by parents and teachers were ugly, damaging and unhelpful. He or she might find the strength to bring different attitudes to their own parenting.

The person who grew up in a home established by a parent or parents with good values, emotional intelligence, and a healthy liking for children and adolescents, and who went to a school staffed by wise, thoughtful, mature teachers, may replicate the attitudes and behaviours of those adults when they themselves become responsible for children or adolescents. Or, they may not.

I am grateful to those who showed me kindness when I was a child. I have not found it easy to navigate childhood, adolescence and adulthood, but Ive worked at it. As a person, as a parent, as a teacher, as a principal, Ive learned a bit. There are times when a GPS system, a compass, a map are useful, but much more is needed. A deep and profound insight to ourselves, to others, and to relationships has to underpin our lives if our journey is to have meaning and value. My goal is to gain as much of that insight as possible.

In The Art of Growing Up Ive written about some of the truths which I believe we need to confront, explore and understand as much as possible. Comprehension of those truths can be helpful in our own lives, and can change the lives of the young people with whom we interact.

John Marsden

The People Who Matter Most: Parents

It can be difficult for us to confront an obvious truth: that one consequence of toxic parenting is uncountable numbers of people in our world who suffer from mental health problems. These people include many psychopaths and sociopaths, some of whom are assassins, terrorists, serial rapists and serial killers. We exclaim over the conspicuous lack of empathy so easily noted in cold-blooded murderers, wondering how they commit their atrocities with no apparent emotion, no empathy for either their victims or the people who loved them.

Every persons situation is different, every life story unique. But common to most deeply troubled individuals is the simple reality that their parents, through what we could call over-loving or under-loving, or a distorted understanding of children and their needs, damaged their capacity to feel. Violent criminals, whom we commonly term as evil, are people who in many cases discovered at an early age that feelings were dangerous, because feelings were penalised, sentimentalised, used to entrap, treated with scorn or contempt, ignored, denied.

Key figures in the early lives of many psychopaths proved they could not be trusted: relationships were unstable and betrayals commonplace. Emotional abuse was the default setting for their childhoods. They were often abused in other ways too, but it is impossible to have physical and/or sexual abuse without emotional abuse being part of the mixture.

Emotional abuse is still underrated in our society, partly because it is nebulous, abstract. Physical abuse is easier to diagnose: bruises, scars, cigarette burns, broken bones and internal injuries tell their terrible stories to anyone whose eyes and minds are open enough to read them. A child who suffers only emotional abuse can be an elusive figure when visiting for play dates or occupying a space in a classroom or hanging out in the school yard at lunchtimes.

As a result of abuse by toxic parents, we have huge numbers of people around the world with addictive behaviours and problems associated with addiction. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that 27 million people in the world are problem drug users, and about half of this number are injecting drugs. These figures do not include addictions to food, exercise, pornography, screens, gambling and other potentially addictive activities.