About MISH

What to check out:

Parenting Tips are tales and tips from my work as a Psychologist and Parent Consultant. The ‘A mum I know…’ stories come from actual client notes (with identifying details changed) - they are light-hearted anecdotes with good practical tips for managing common child behaviours. Feel free to email me with ideas for future articles.

Parenting Tales are my ponderings and wonderings being a mum of two little people. It comes with some bonus fun like the ‘What Sort of Mummy Are You?’ Quiz and the Aussie Lollybag Personality Test for no reason except that I have taken a fancy to wasting time creating time-wasters.

Writing Tales is a chance to share my ‘I am really keen to be a writer now’ journey. Keep up to date with my attempts to get something published. Enjoy my success or enjoy my failure, it’s up to you and your levels of empathy. There are some creative writing samples to check out if you are interested, or if you are a publisher!

So come along for the ride with me, I am not sure what it will be full of but it is sure to be full of something…

Support for this blog

‘Isn’t blogging dead?’ Husband.

‘That just looks like boring writing for adults’ 5 year old daughter.

‘The Mish Gittens blog. Writer. Psychologist. Mum.
Kids behaviour tips. Stories.
Loads of full stops (and parentheses!). Funny stuff.’ Mish Gittens.

Bio

Born: Apparently against all odds.

School: Done, but rarely enjoyed.

Study: B. Psych, Dip. Ed, Cert IV.

Work: Teacher, Psychologist - many various settings with diverse range of clientele, Co-Director Psychology and Parent Consulting Practice, School Psychologist, Writer.

Previous work: Check-out chick, waitress (for many clumsy awkward years), door-to-door water seller, and ice-cream shop attendant (for one delicious day).

Parent: Two amazing funny little people. Here is one of them:

A bit more if you don’t have much to do…

I was born in Perth, Western Australia. I did some childhood business of suburban schooling, sports, friends, big ups and mad downs (‘just the usual’ I insist to my therapist) except I loved to write. Read, yes, but write? Triple yes. I wrote story after story: ‘My Life as a Garbage Bag’, ‘My Life as a Newspaper’ and ‘My Life as a Storm Cloud’ being standout prose from an unusual theme I continued throughout most of Year 3. Looking back I was very supported by one particularly patient teacher who endlessly read my stories out to class, entered them in competitions, and allowed my plays about butter-loving Aliens (?!) to be acted out in assemblies.

Then I started doing English Lit at high school and it was all about analysis and essays, and my creative writing died a quick lonely death. I didn’t take it up again until uni, and even then it was only during emotional lows, I-never-inhaled highs, and social lulls. I have used writing as a great therapy tool for my young clients since becoming a psychologist, but only recently thought of it as more than a tool or background hobby.

In the last year or so, I have had some kind of hideous sphincter opening, like an all-time-consuming creative purge. I can’t stop writing, or thinking about stuff to write (mostly the latter due to the ol’ time-poor issue). I write it all: screenplays, children’s books (my ultimate favourite), articles, car competitions entries, shopping lists, emails (some were even sent), you name it. In the crazy luxurious 4 hours per week that I have child-free and all to myself, I have gone completely writing mad. I realise it may have all started just to avoid going to the gym, but the reality now is that I need to feed this mad hungry beast that I love. Hence ‘the plan’.