Often when you hear parents talk about their pre school children it’s about how well toilet training is going or how many words they can say, or their reading or reciting poetry. As they grow older it’s about their school achievements and what they want to do when they leave school. And later in life perhaps how well their career is going, how many degrees they've got and perhaps what a ‘high flyer’ they are.
Well I have a high flyer for a son – no he doesn't have any degrees, he hasn't completed a university course but he is a high flyer in the true sense of the word. He is a trapeze artist – you know one of those people who fly through the air with the strength, poise and grace most of us will never achieve and probably never understand. However we watch with awe and fascination as these ‘high flyers’ entertain and inspire us to greater things!
I can still remember my first ‘interview’ with a teacher about my 7 year old son Tim. He was a distraction in class, needed to focus more, talk less and sit still. I remember leaving the interview feeling very inadequate as a mum. I was raising Kate & Dan and they were both doing okay at school (most of the time). I’d never been summoned to an interview outside of the normal parent teacher times before.
Well I just had to get used to it. Over the next 9 years I was a regular visitor to the primary school and then the high school as Tim challenged and I must admit at times provoked some teachers to their wits end.
There was the time he led a delegation of students up to the office to protest at the way their teacher was treating a particular child. There was the time he was suspended - how was he supposed to know there was vodka in the lemonade bottle he was given ( but guess who was holding it when they were caught) and another suspension, there were the daily reports to the year master, weekly phone calls from the year master and many many discussion with teachers.
It was funny – nearly all of our meetings with teachers started with Tim's a great kid but……., or Tims one of my favourites but……..
BUT things changed for Tim when he found Flipside Circus. It was a chance finding as Flipside was still a very small organic organisation operating out of the Judith Wright Centre in The Valley. We took him to him first circus class and he was with a group of kids and was taught clowning with a bowler hat and suitcase. Then he learned to juggle. Then he began to teach himself back flips at home & then front flips. Before long Tim was invited to join the Flipside Circus Performance Troupe and this is where his life truly changed. He was among a group of young people and their parents who appreciated his quirky sense of humour, they laughed when he showed off his latest trick and accepted him for who he was. In fact Flipside seemed to encourage that risk taking, showing off, and challenging behaviour that drove other people nuts!
Through circus classes Tim became aware of how he could control and change his body. At an age when many young men struggle with the physical changes taking place Tim was focusing on his upper and lower body strength. He set up a chin up bar at home and practised his chin ups. Then he'd turn up the other way and hang upside down and did sit ups! Over and over and over again!
The house became littered with juggling pins, unicycles, rola bola and many other circus toys. He couldn't walk past a broom, rake or ladder without trying to balance it on his chin (he still does this).
Then he discovered the trapeze! Tim had been training in static trapeze and did his first performance for Flipside when he was twelve at the opening of the Goodwill Bridge here in Brisbane Qld. He loved it! At last an appreciative audience who clapped at the tricks he’d been practising and were amazed such a young boy had muscles!
Tim began a swinging trapeze lesson on a Saturday morning. We were amazed as we watched our baby son become adept at flying through the air, letting go, falling backwards, swinging around the bar and doing it all so well. It appeared he had found his calling!
Things at school weren't going so well though. It seemed the years of negativity at school had finally worn Tim out. He became depressed and very unsure of himself. We began to attend counselling classes to try to understand why Tim was feeling so bad about himself.
It was weird on the one hand at school Tim was a distraction and nuisance & yet on the other he was a natural performer with strength, grace and enormous amounts of focus and self discipline.
During this difficult time I truly don’t know what would have happened without his circus life. It gave him an escape – a place where he could just be himself and enjoy that. And it soon became evident that was where he should be.
Two weeks before finishing grade 10 Tim walked out of the school gates for the last time! Within weeks his attitude began to change and Tims zest for life returned. Through the TAFE system Tim began a Certificate III in Entertainment and began a traineeship.
My husband & I have often reflected on Tim’s life as he has reached adulthood and can truly say we are so very proud of him. Without Flipside Circus I truly fear where Tim may have landed - the circus gave him purpose - he found his tribe!
Today I work at Flipside Circus as the CEO and I am still committed to providing a place for young people who 'don't fit in' to the square pegs that society sets. Flipside Circus celebrates a young persons uniqueness - the things that drive most crazy! Even if a young person doesn't become a professional artist the life skills that Flipside Circus encourages will remain with them their whole life.
Are there any other circus mums and dads out there who have had this experience? I'd love to hear from you.
