Pitfalls in Counselling

Daughter of Mine has yet to tell me what she intends to do with her life. I wouldn't mind so much if I didn't have a sinking feeling that I will be funding it.

DOM is (it goes without saying ) beautiful bright and charming. She and all her peers have had the benefit of the new wide ranging State curriculum designed to turn them into thoughtful active citizens and have been enthusiastic participants in the many and varied extracurricular activities on offer- all of which serve to build us a better balanced dole queue.

It's not called a dole queue anymore . Even in my parent's day it was the unemployment office and by my time it had advanced to be the Commonwealth Employment Bureau (although with fewer jobs on offer.

As the Marriage Guidance became Relationships Australia (some sense there) and Family Planning became (bizarrely) Shine so did the Employment weasel- word it's way to become Centre-link (?huh).

In Year 11 school classes go to Centre-link ostensibly to seek career advice but probably so most of them will know where it is on a map. Each teenager has a short interview with a case-worker and they are then shown (I got all of this from DOM so no claims to accuracy here) a room with files full of job descriptions and encouraged to browse.

Just how much information you can glean with the inevitable Davo and Jonno running around declaring "I wanna be a topless waitress" and "Where's the file on dealing dope?" I don't know.

DOM's interviewer asked her what she was interested in. She said painting, writing and drama.He said " I actually meant that you could earn a living from."

I knew I should have gotten her that T-Shirt when we went to LA. It said "Yes , I do have a Performing Arts degree and would you like fries with that?"

The school was not much better in year 12. DOM went to see the Careers Guidance Officer who was actually one of the Maths teachers in disguise ( I think it was the one who had offered to join in the book-burning when her (lowest- rated) class finally finished the compulsory Maths curriculum in Year 11).

He sighed heavily as she outlined her interests (see above), perked up briefly when she mentioned an interest in psychology and collapsed back down again when she expressed a aversion to rats and statistics (and science in general.)

"You really mean a counsellor" he said dispiritedly "Why on earth would anyone want to do that?"

"You're a counsellor" she pointed out.

He thought for a moment .

"Oh God.......You're right."

She hadn't had that much encouragement since she told her favourite teacher (Drama naturally) in Year 9 that she might like to teach. "Christ, why would you want to do that?" was the reply. "Change your mind now before it's too late".

Futurekind

Daughter-of-Mine has her last day of school on Friday.It will (apparently) be a much more muted affair than when her brother left only a few years ago.

"Muckup Day" - that frankly odd mixture of ceremony and spite which first appeared in schools about 25 years ago and has been flourishing ever since- is now politically incorrect. Not just the obvious and understandably frowned -upon  components- damage to school property with eggs and flour, publishing the Year 12 "Hit List" of the most despised staff and students - but the relatively innocuous water pistols (threatening behaviour) and the exchange of boys' and girls' uniforms (apparently cross-dressing can offend an unspecified and one can only assume hitherto silent minority).

At least I won't get her uniform back ripped at every seam from some 6 foot tall hairy male wearing it for the day.Or covered in obscene graffiti.

The PC revolution continued with the official briefings for Schoolies.

 With Number One Son's class it was a  paramedic and a council officer and some sensible damage limitation advice -how to put your mate in the coma position , which chemists dispense the morning after pill, where to go to rest,to rehydrate or just to feel safe if it was all too much. (I know these tents will still be there down at Victor because my church helps run one).

This year it was a policeman who looked and acted as if he hated all teenagers (OK certain sympathy there) and a knit- your- own -yoghurt -and have -it-with-brown-rice Welfare worker.

The entire message was don't get drunk and don't have sex. Yes,well- but apparently if they admit the possibility let alone give any advice about it they could be seen to be condoning it- even encouraging it- and of course that makes them (gasp) potentially LIABLE  (the real boogie-man).

So abstinence and orange juice all round, chaps and chapesses.(or lads and ladettes).

Time to trawl

I've had a pleasant holiday. M'sister invited the urban terrorist to her NSW home for a week and offered to take him down to the Blue Mountains to see the caves.

I thought it best to accompany him interstate in case there were - shall we say- any unpleasant incidents.

M'sister survived with both her coronaries and her sense of dignity intact although both were tried- the former by the sight of a nine year old dancing along the edge of a 200 metre cliff and the latter by watching same (at the end of a 2 hour guided tour) emptying his bladder on a(world heritage listed) cave wall to the bemusement of half a dozen Japanese tourists.

I wasn't there of course. I judged my duty to be done by being in the general vicinity (ie in the same State).Being a consultant on call has taught me a few things.

I was at M'sisters house surrounded by an inexhaustable supply of good wine and mediocre murder mysteries.

Mediocre mysteries are of course best . Literature is for Booker Prize nominees.A murder mystery must have a pleasant setting, not too much violence of course ,a detective or protagonist with whom I am in sympathy and a certain amount of humour. If there is a young couple in love they must never -under any circumstances - be the murderers. Plot is optional and the ability to guess the murderer with a degree of accuracy is a plus. Although certain cheats are inexcusable - ie use of dreams or psychic powers to explain plotholes, the insertion of new information in the denouement (Agatha was renowned for this ) and ABSOLUTELY the explanation that the hitherto blameless and saintly character was the murderer because of a sudden attack of madness.

Thank goodness for M'sister's collection. I had an unpleasant hour or so trying to find something to read at Angus and Robertson's before we flew out.Why are the "New Release " shelves full of books the covers of which feature the haunted sepia tinted faces of waifs and strays?The covers are indistinguishable but they appear to be divided into tales of despair and destruction (third person, fiction and true crime ) and tales of uplifting I-rose-above-it-alls (autobiography and campaign awareness).There is a triple decker guilt-trip here .Feel guilty if you buy it (vicarious interest in another's sufferings ) and guilty if you don't (passing by a fellow-man's catharsis). The third deck is for people like me who automatically make fun of any genre.

I need a book to be upbeat without being uplifting (or inspiring) and light-hearted without being banal.

Perhaps I should get daughter of mine to expand her blogs (jealously guarded).Even inadvertently she can cheer me.She tells me she had a history essay returned with a query as to which military campaign she was referring to. "Oh well" she shrugged "I knew it was a cleaning product". That would be Operation Ajax dear, not Windex.