Luck + 10,000 hours = Genius

So it's official then. If you have a modicum of talent and you work really really hard, then you will get very good at your chosen field.

Who knew?

Well, practically everyone with a functioning brain, I would suggest.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-1088303/Luck--hard-graft--Genius-OUTLIERS-Malcolm-Gladwell.html

We had post parents' evening chats with both kids. In both cases this resulted in red faces and sobbing. In one case it resulted in a terse text frommy daughter saying"Bullies!" .

Because you see as parents we're only supposed to say relentlessly jolly, upbeat things. Unfortunately I'm not good at not saying what needs to be said. I'm also fairly rubbish at paraphrasing to soften the blow. I reason that if I say things very gently they won't get through. I reason this way because I have tried it and it doesn't work. What I have to say is:

"You're not working hard enough."

It's not enough to be good at something. You have to work at it if you want the top marks. Sometimes children have a rather X Factor approach to success. "I want to be an A student, and I'm good at everything, so why am I not getting top marks?"

Well, as a wild stab in the dark, probably because you do the minimum to get by, cut and paste instead of researching properly and writing out the results, and spend more time trying to get people to compliment you than actually doing the work better.

Just a guess.

The other one needs to spend more time focussed on his work and less on larking around with his mates. It's not rocket science.

But probably the fact that they witness me grafting and not getting anywhere doesn't help... But then I'm not quite at my 10,000 hours yet. But I will be soon.

Another Day, Another Hangover

I think I've been drinking too much on a regular basis for about thirty years. There are days when I can feel my liver complaining.

Recently, in the last five years or so, the amount I'm drinking has risen. I'd actually be ashamed to admit how much I put away on an average day, and how most of these evenings by the time I go to bed I don't feel drunk, but just a bit numb...

As a result I don't sleep well, often waking up early in the morning and then worrying myself awake to the alarm at six. I have something of a paunch, and I rather know that that's something to do with wine. And an awful lot of the time I just rather hate myself for my lack of control and my immoderate nature.

In the past I've announced here that I'm going to stop, and then failed to do so, because I'm weak-willed. It's all a bit tragic.

Just thought I'd share.

Off to have a vat of tea...

Angels and devils.

Apparently Haringey Children's Services find it incredibly difficult to attract social workers to its team. I wonder why. I'm guessing that this means that in order to tackle the monstrous workload which they have the caliber of staff which they do attract is not the highest. And those who are there are overworked. Government guidelines say that no social worker should have a caseload of more than twelve chidren to deal with, whereas the overstretched staff whom Haringey have managed to keep are coping with caseloads of between eighteen and twenty. After the recent storm of criticism it will be even more difficult for them to attract staff.

Perhaps when the enquiry looks at what went wrong, they might address the profile of social workers in this country. Damned if they do take children away and damned if they don't, they perform an intensely stressful and emotional function, and the only time anyone pays them any attention is when something goes horribly, tragically, appallingly wrong. Or when a woman goes to the press with a story about how mean, vindictive, heartless social workers have ripped her innocent child from her without any justification at all. And yet there must be stories where the intervention of a social worker has made infinite difference to the lives of children and families all over the country. Have you ever heard one? No, nor have I. A girl I teach wants to be a social worker. I had to suppress my look of astonishment and dread when she said this. A more distressing and thankless job it is difficult for me to imagine. I can only guess at the stress levels which must be endemic in the profession. From the recent coverage you'd think that the social worker had joined in the beatings.

Someone who knows what he's on about said something interesting to me yesterday when I talked about a case of two children , a fifteen and a sixteen year old, who had beaten a man to death. I made some disgusted comment about them and my friend pointed out that they had probably had a brutal life, one not a million miles from that of Baby P, only they survived. You don't come out of a loving, supportive happy home and get your thrills kicking the shit out of people.

And yet we look at pictures of angelic, tortured and murdered children on one side, and police mugshots of dead-faced, hate-filled teenage thugs on the other and never consider that there might be a relation between the two. Both are damaged; both probably have known much misery. The older ones are hardened. And maybe they are hardened because they are the children of brutalised or neglected children, who themselves were dragged up by inadequate parents of their own.

It's a tough one, but at some point society has to look beyond today's awful, awful headline and see what needs to change.

Without pointing fingers at scapegoats. I object to it because it doesn't help.

Love and hate

Things I love:

1. Being a mother; love like you couldn't have imagined before they came along.
2. Being a teacher; best job in the world. Everything they say in those ads? It's all true.

3. Seeing friends greet each other on the street; smiles are infectious, and it always makes me feel that's all is right with the world when people are pleased to see one another.
4. Plain digestives with Philadelphia and strawberry jam. Mini cheesecake - yum.
5. Dark evenings and lights on mean Christmas is on its way.
6. Nights out with friends - laughing til I cry.
7. When the writing goes well and seems to flow from my fingers before I've thought it....
8. Winter clothes - no one looks better in summer clothes except supermodels.
9. My Dorothy shoes; red, high heels, platform soles, sequins, bows - what's not to love?
10. A night in with a bottle of wine, a DVD and Martin.
11. Historical fiction that sends me scurrying to the reference books.

12. Silence. So difficult to find.

Things I hate

1. Chewing gum. Why?

2. Anybody texting when they are in my immediate company.

3. The fact that this country allows poverty and brutality to pass from generation to generation so that children either die at the hands of their families or grow up to brutalise others.

4. Stupid or venal politicians.

5. The Rich List. Why?

6. The prison fashion of doing up your trousers under your arse. It makes you walk like a duck and you can't run for a bus.

7. Spitting. Not sexy.

8. People who say proudly stupid smug git things like "Charity begins at home" or "too clever by half".

9. All of my family being engaged on different electronic media and not talking to each other.

10. Petty officials who think they have power because they have a uniform.

11. Guantanamo Bay.

12. Mud. The dogwalker's nemesis.

Plus ca change...

Someone told me a joke today which I remember hearing at the time of the last recession:

Q: What's the difference between a merchant banker and a pigeon?

A: A pigeon can put a deposit on a Porsche.

Back then the word yuppie replaced the word banker but that apart it was word for word the same. The papers were full of lip-smacking relish about the upcoming gloom, and everyone giddily wondered how we got here so incredibly suddenly when just a few weeks ago everyone had been high on the loadsamoney ethos of the time.

The papers warned about the terrible dangers of deflation in the same slightly reproacheful tones that they'd used weeks earlier about the dangers of inflation. They told us that it was our duty to go out and spend to stimulate the economy at the same time as gleefully predicting massive job cuts. And if anyone dared suggest that there was something slightly unseemly about the press's role in the economical vortex, then they came over all sanctimonious.

Now as then, a slightly more upbeat tone, or at least a balanced one, might be a good idea.

And then there's Haringey Children's Services. Another sickening blast from the past. My brother was an expert witness for the enquiry into the Climbie murder and the failure of the social services to prevent it. An now we have this pitiful toddler. What we've read is appalling enough, and no doubt there are details which we have been spared. It's just too dreadful. That a child should have the misfortune to be born into that parentage, and then for that woman to meet up with those men is just a catalogue of appalling events...

The insistence on lynching the social services make me uneasy though, as does the queue of professionals queuing up to say that henceforth pursuing the interests of a child will mean that social workers will need to take a more combative and challenging line with parents. Does this mean that social workers start off from the position that parents are trying to pull the wool over their eyes? Are they, because they are on the side of the child, necessarily on the opposite side to that of the parents? Because if that is the case, they will be able to do very little - sad to say, the parents will always have more power over what happens in their homes that the children or the social workers. And sure as eggs is eggs there will soon be a story where a child is removed from parents whom children's services suspect threaten its wellbeing and there will be howls of protest about heavy-handed social workers ripping innocent families apart.

I don't pretend that I have an answer. But I'm pretty sure that shouting very, very loudly and acres of newsprint vilifying social services won't help as much as taking a deep breath and a long, cold, hard look at what needs to be done. Preferably out of the public eye.