You know...
2003-Oct-29, Wednesday 02:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ssurgulThis is from my parents, but I think it'll apply to many other situations.
And yes, there's a strong religious filter applied to it, but just transition to your own Dogma, and move on.
If I Were Starting My Family Again
The words burst from the man sitting across from me, his eyes pleading for help. "What should I have done differently? If your children were young again, what would you do?" He was suffering the empty, deathlike feeling of a man whose children have strayed. He felt he had failed as a father.
His questions stayed with me. What insights had I gleaned from my own experience as a parent and from my years of counseling others? If I were starting my family again, what would I do to improve relations with my children? After some reflection, I jotted down things I considered most important.
I would love my wife more. In the closeness of family life it is easy to take each other for granted and let a dullness creep in that can dampen the deepest love. So I would love the mother of my children more -- and be more free in letting them see that love. I would be more faithful in showing little kindnesses -- placing her chair at the table, giving her gifts on special occasions, writing her letters when I'm away. I have found that a child who knows his parents love each other needs little explanation about the character of God's love or the beauty of sex. The love between father and mother flows visibly to him and prepares him the recognize real love in all future relationships. When a mother and father join hands as they walk, the child also joins hands. When the walk separately, the child is slow to join hands with anyone. Sentimentalism? Then we need a lot more of it. Often there is too much sentiment before marriage and too little afterward.
I would develop feelings of belonging. If a child does not feel that he belongs in the family, he will soon find his primary group elsewhere. Many who live in the same household are worlds apart. Many children see their father only at the dinner table. Some never see him for days at a time. For others, father-child time together may be only a few minutes a week.
I would use mealtimes more to share the happenings of the day, instead of hurrying through them. I'd find more time for games or projects in which all could join. I would invite my children to become involved in the responsibilities and work of the family. When a child feels he belongs to the family, he has a stability, which can stand against the taunts of the gang and the cries of the crowd.
I would laugh more with my children. It has been said that the best way to make children good is to make them happy. I see now that I was, many times, too serious. While my children loved to laugh, I, too often, must have conveyed the idea that being a parent was a perennial problem. I remember the humerus plays our children put on for us, the funny stories they shared from school and the times I fell for their tricks and catch questions. Such happy experiences enlarged our love, opened the door for doing things together -- and still bind us together. I would be a better listener. To most of us, a child's talk seems like unimportant chatter. Yet, I now believe, there is a vital link between listening to the child's concerns when he is young and the extent to which he will share his concerns with his parents when he is in his teens.
If my children were small again, I'd be less impatient if they interrupted my newspaper reading. There's a story about a small boy who tried repeatedly to show his father a scratch on his finger. Finally his father stopped reading and impatiently said, "Well, I can't do anything about it, now can I?" "Yes, Daddy," the boy said, "you could have said, 'Oh.'"
I was once with a father who did not answer when his young son called to him again and again. "It's only the kid calling," the man said. And I thought it would not be long before the father will call the son and he will say, "It's only the old man calling."
I would give more encouragement. Probably nothing stimulates a child to love life and seek accomplishment more than sincere praise when he has done well.
I know now that encouragement is a much better element of discipline than blame or reprimand. Fault-finding and criticism rob a child of self-reliance, while encouragement builds self-confidence and moves a child on to maturity. Deep in human nature is the craving to be appreciated. And when those we love meet this need we will also grow in other graces.
So if I were starting my family again, I would persist in daily praise, seeing not only what the child is now, but also what he can be. I would seek to share God more intimately. We are not whole persons when we stress only the physical, social and intellectual. We are spiritual beings. And if the world is to know God and His will, parents must be the primary conveyors. For my part, I would strive to share my faith with my children, using informal settings and unplanned happenings. Rather than discuss abstract theology or impose rigid rules of family worship, I would pay more attention to the things my child notices and to what concerns him and find in these a natural way to discuss spiritual truths.
There is a story of a schoolmaster who once was asked, "Where, in your curriculum, do you teach religion?" "We teach it all day long," he replied. "We teach it in arithmetic by accuracy; in language by learning to say what we mean' in history by humanity; in geography by breadth of mind; in astronomy by reverence; in the playground by fair play. We teach it by kindness to animals, by good manners to one another and by truthfulness in all things."
I remember a little fellow, frightened by lightning and thunder, who called out one dark night, "Daddy, come. I'm scared." "Son," the father said, "God loves you and He'll take care of you." "I know God loves me," the boy replied. "But right now I want somebody who has skin on." If I were starting my family again, that is what I would want to be above all else -- God's love with skin on.
--John Drescher
And yes, there's a strong religious filter applied to it, but just transition to your own Dogma, and move on.
If I Were Starting My Family Again
The words burst from the man sitting across from me, his eyes pleading for help. "What should I have done differently? If your children were young again, what would you do?" He was suffering the empty, deathlike feeling of a man whose children have strayed. He felt he had failed as a father.
His questions stayed with me. What insights had I gleaned from my own experience as a parent and from my years of counseling others? If I were starting my family again, what would I do to improve relations with my children? After some reflection, I jotted down things I considered most important.
I would love my wife more. In the closeness of family life it is easy to take each other for granted and let a dullness creep in that can dampen the deepest love. So I would love the mother of my children more -- and be more free in letting them see that love. I would be more faithful in showing little kindnesses -- placing her chair at the table, giving her gifts on special occasions, writing her letters when I'm away. I have found that a child who knows his parents love each other needs little explanation about the character of God's love or the beauty of sex. The love between father and mother flows visibly to him and prepares him the recognize real love in all future relationships. When a mother and father join hands as they walk, the child also joins hands. When the walk separately, the child is slow to join hands with anyone. Sentimentalism? Then we need a lot more of it. Often there is too much sentiment before marriage and too little afterward.
I would develop feelings of belonging. If a child does not feel that he belongs in the family, he will soon find his primary group elsewhere. Many who live in the same household are worlds apart. Many children see their father only at the dinner table. Some never see him for days at a time. For others, father-child time together may be only a few minutes a week.
I would use mealtimes more to share the happenings of the day, instead of hurrying through them. I'd find more time for games or projects in which all could join. I would invite my children to become involved in the responsibilities and work of the family. When a child feels he belongs to the family, he has a stability, which can stand against the taunts of the gang and the cries of the crowd.
I would laugh more with my children. It has been said that the best way to make children good is to make them happy. I see now that I was, many times, too serious. While my children loved to laugh, I, too often, must have conveyed the idea that being a parent was a perennial problem. I remember the humerus plays our children put on for us, the funny stories they shared from school and the times I fell for their tricks and catch questions. Such happy experiences enlarged our love, opened the door for doing things together -- and still bind us together. I would be a better listener. To most of us, a child's talk seems like unimportant chatter. Yet, I now believe, there is a vital link between listening to the child's concerns when he is young and the extent to which he will share his concerns with his parents when he is in his teens.
If my children were small again, I'd be less impatient if they interrupted my newspaper reading. There's a story about a small boy who tried repeatedly to show his father a scratch on his finger. Finally his father stopped reading and impatiently said, "Well, I can't do anything about it, now can I?" "Yes, Daddy," the boy said, "you could have said, 'Oh.'"
I was once with a father who did not answer when his young son called to him again and again. "It's only the kid calling," the man said. And I thought it would not be long before the father will call the son and he will say, "It's only the old man calling."
I would give more encouragement. Probably nothing stimulates a child to love life and seek accomplishment more than sincere praise when he has done well.
I know now that encouragement is a much better element of discipline than blame or reprimand. Fault-finding and criticism rob a child of self-reliance, while encouragement builds self-confidence and moves a child on to maturity. Deep in human nature is the craving to be appreciated. And when those we love meet this need we will also grow in other graces.
So if I were starting my family again, I would persist in daily praise, seeing not only what the child is now, but also what he can be. I would seek to share God more intimately. We are not whole persons when we stress only the physical, social and intellectual. We are spiritual beings. And if the world is to know God and His will, parents must be the primary conveyors. For my part, I would strive to share my faith with my children, using informal settings and unplanned happenings. Rather than discuss abstract theology or impose rigid rules of family worship, I would pay more attention to the things my child notices and to what concerns him and find in these a natural way to discuss spiritual truths.
There is a story of a schoolmaster who once was asked, "Where, in your curriculum, do you teach religion?" "We teach it all day long," he replied. "We teach it in arithmetic by accuracy; in language by learning to say what we mean' in history by humanity; in geography by breadth of mind; in astronomy by reverence; in the playground by fair play. We teach it by kindness to animals, by good manners to one another and by truthfulness in all things."
I remember a little fellow, frightened by lightning and thunder, who called out one dark night, "Daddy, come. I'm scared." "Son," the father said, "God loves you and He'll take care of you." "I know God loves me," the boy replied. "But right now I want somebody who has skin on." If I were starting my family again, that is what I would want to be above all else -- God's love with skin on.
--John Drescher