Libby: Mum’s the word...

Most of us, on a baby’s arrival, can only assume that the manual was left with the manufacturers

MY WEE mum had four boys, four girls and three nervous breakdowns. Can you imagine? I can’t, and I was there!

She said, in due course each kid became kind of responsible for the wee ones after them. I’d argue that all of us needed to be on ‘team baby’.

Are the children not all our responsibility? And when kids have kids, is that not a double whammy?

So, it’s with all this in mind that I’m looking forward to doing some summer school, self-expression-style workshops with some unusual school kids – they’re all parents.

I’ll be working with users of the Young Parent’s Support Base (YPSB), a vital part of Glasgow City Council’s education services, which has become very much part of the school. They have teamed up with health, social work and community groups, offering loads of support as well as nursery provision within the school.

The fact these schoolkids still attend secondary school and access their education, but with their babies in tow, has me in awe of them.

And I’d like to do some myth debunking when I’m there.

First there’s the depressing idea that our school days are the best years of our life. Yeah right! The very thought of being forced to sit through double maths again would bring me out in a rash.

Secondly, the notion that along with the delivery of a baby, you’re also delivered an ‘instinct’ that tells you what to do with it. Most of us, on said baby’s arrival, can only assume that the manual was left with the manufacturers.

I’ve always thought there is a conspiracy of silence that baby rearing is a natural thing. I felt it was exposed at last when doing the Scottish tours of the shows Mum’s the Word and Mum’s the Word-2.

To much hilarity, the mums in the sketches confess to the audience their mis-management of motherhood which leaves them feeling like mystified misfits. After the shows, women from the audience would wail ‘and I thought it was just me!’

I asked the teenage girls drama group I run for Toonspeak if they knew about the Parent’s Support Base. They did, and all wished it was at their school, as every one of them knew of someone they had been to school with, who one day had just disappeared. No one had explained to them why, and only later had they heard about the baby.

Some among us might think this would only encourage “daft wee lassies” to get pregnant when the statistics bare out that not hiding away the young parents, who the other students can see desperately juggle the work involved at school, as well as being with the baby at every break time instead of hanging out with pals, has the opposite effect, instead lowering the instances of unplanned pregnancies.

You know me, and my proverbs, well one of my favourites is ‘it takes a village to raise a child’.

It’s great to know at least these young mums are team handed. At the base they have access to a co-ordinator, a social care worker, and an outreach child development officer, a team leader, two child development officers, a parttime clerical assistant and soon a wee visit from me.

I’ll give them my best bit of baby care advice: ‘The only place for a newborn for the first six-months is in the sink with the tap running and the plug out.’

And finally...

YOU know you’re old when you can’t remember the last time you lay on the floor to watch telly.