I Will Not Pin.

Oh my. Everyone, but everyone, seems to have gone suddenly crazy for Pinterest.

Not me. I have decided that I Will Not Pin. And it's not just because I'm a jumper-off from bandwagons, though that's true. All my life, if everyone was wearing mulberry and taupe, I was in black and scarlet; if everyone was coming out of the movie theatre drooling about "Titanic" or "American Beauty", I was running the other way screaming "GARBAGE!".

(Don't start me. Please.)

So perhaps I was inclined not to pin from the start. But honestly, contrary nature aside, my rational brain can think of plenty of reasons not to pin.

(You're wondering what this has to do with childcare, aren't you? Bear with me. I always get there in the end.)

Remembering adolescence

Have you ever been asked what you'd do differently if you could live your life all over again?

My answer has always been that I'd pass up the chance to do that, because I would never want to be an adolescent again. Never, not ever. It was just too hard.

And that makes me wonder about parents of adolescents who do nothing but wail about how IMPOSSIBLE teenagers are.

I wonder about their memories.  Have they forgotten what it was like to be neither child nor adult, besieged by hormonal imperatives, weighed down by conflicting expectations from every side?

I wonder about their ability to apply knowledge. Can they not synthesise material from their own adolescence with what their child is going through?

Apparently not, in many cases.

This is what I remember about being an adolescent. This is how I survived teaching adolescent girls for over 20 years, and how come most of them are still speaking to me as adults.