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Posts tagged ‘Peaceful homes’

Apr 9

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Table Time

It’s starting to be a thing again: families are gathering around a table at mealtime to talk and to find out what is going on in life. Now, this meal activity proceeds everyone placing electronic devices in a basket. It seems as if, slowly and quietly, society might be heeding the call of researchers such as Jonathan Haidt and rethinking how media is playing out in a family’s daily life.

I grew up with family dinners. We knew that at 5:30 the family had to gather, and we sat around the table. We talked; my father displayed humor by making faces, and it was funny. He was a serious man. I couldn’t do what he did with his face. After the meal we’d go outside until dark and play with the neighborhood kids. We made our own rules, and we worked out our differences with no adults present.

When my friend’s brother fell out of our tree at my house, she and I stayed put, and our mothers took care of it. We were scared because broken bones are scary things. Life went on, and it became an event that had happened. When I broke a bone while riding my bike at a friend’s house, her mother didn’t panic: she checked me out, and when my parents came to get me, they took me to the ER. Broken bones happen when kids learn and explore their universe. Her family had dinner around the table too. I think it made a difference in how some things got handled.

There were phones only in the family spaces, and maybe as we got older, we might have a phone in our room.

I think one of the things that happens as we converse as families and parents is that they know who their children are spending time with. Both sides learn to build trust, and that trust builds with each experience and, slowly, more freedom is given. Friendships are strengthened and, relationship by relationship, goodwill builds in homes, schools, and neighborhoods, and it can spread out from there.

We learn about holding differing views in our homes. When healthy family structures exist, differences are accepted and respected. Lively discussion can happen, and children can learn to test voicing opinions in a safe environment. I was fortunate to understand that my parents had differing political views, and they could discuss them and understand each other, and it was normalized. This was part of the conversation in my household. I can’t say the same thing for my paternal grandparents. Politics was off-limits. It wasn’t a healthy place to discuss many things.

I grew up without tech. We made tin-can phones with wire. We learned to type on a manual typewriter that operated on finger power. Stranger danger wasn’t a thing back then. Now, states pass “free-range laws,” and the kids need to know about safety and their communities. I knew all of that growing up: it was expected that I’d know how to navigate on my bike.  

You might want to argue that it isn’t as safe now. Really? Could there be media hype about stranger danger? Could parents be sheltering children too much? Are we stressing children with lessons and other activities to the point of it being a bad thing? Children need to have time to explore and to play! The fact is, most kids don’t really understand free play because it’s all scheduled.

I’ve seen a child in a therapy session not understand how to imagine or create. When I give them tools to create, they grasp onto it. They aren’t acting out what they see on a screen: they’re working through things in their own way and on their own terms.

I’ll also state that when there are healthy boundaries in a household, this can work really well. So, the question becomes, how do I enable healthy boundaries to happen in a dysfunctional situation? Let’s say you live in a place where the furnace is set to come on at 70° Fahrenheit, and it is to shut off at 75°. As long as things work, everything is normal. Peace and happiness are present. It works like this in families. The degree variance is like the rules, and as long as everyone holds to the rules, there is homeostasis. Go outside of the rules, and things can get bumpy. Bumpy isn’t pleasant. So, in a family, the more flexibility there is, the better things can be. A five-degree variance is much too narrow, and while it might work for heating, it won’t work in a healthy family. A family therapist can guide a family to reset the family thermostat, because sometimes you didn’t learn it in your own family, and it is never too late to make a change. Once you can have skills, healthy conversations happen. It is a learning process, and you will fail into success. Learning is all about making mistakes and getting up again.

So, there is one other thing about families I want to mention. Your family may not look like someone else’s. People live in different situations, and things like work schedules creep into things. Tech might not be an issue because you can’t afford tech in the home. Schedule a time to engage and check in. Whether it is low-income housing or a mansion, it’s all about committing to learn to talk to each other. It all boils down to flexibility and commitment.  

I now tell parents that I work with to restrict their media time and their children’s media intake. I suggest sit-down meals. These two things help in a few ways:

  1. It gets everyone talking to each other because you become focused on the conversation.
  2. It provides a structured place to learn proper table manners, and it serves as a teaching tool for real-world dining-out experiences.
  3. You have to ask to be excused after finishing the meal, so you also learn to sit with a conversation where you may not agree with stated views.
  4. You find out what is going on in each other’s lives.
  5. You learn that talking is about learning to understand the other person’s point of view, and to explore the why of their view.
  6. When you take these conversational skills out in public, you might find that you can build relationships where differing views can exist, and so your circle of friends expands in its diversity.
  7. You begin to build peace and understanding in the home and can take it out into the greater world.

Right now, what we need more than anything else is to talk to one another, and to build bonds of understanding and acceptance for each other.

Some of this might sound out-of-date. I’ll tell you it is working for clients, for friends, and others I know. It’s about table time.

Apr 4

One Wish, Please

We watch as suffering comes over the world. A mother cries for her lost child. A father mourns the death of his son, who was sent off to fight a war that should have never been. A parent mourns the loss of the son or daughter they believed they had in order to discover the new trans child they will get to love. A child endures bullying at home, while another child becomes the bully at school. Somewhere in a police station, a human being’s rights are violated. Marchers descend on a capitol in hopes of bringing a message of solidarity with those on the margins. A young boy witnesses the death of his friend on the streets of the inner city. We become one of six. There is trauma in all of this. 

It seems that the cycle never ends, despite the cries of the injured and the questioning of parents, and others who care about the victims of what can’t be stopped. If only the emotional pain would end. Life doesn’t offer that. We protest the needless suffering, bigotry, senseless acts of violence, and raise the question of where and how it all began. Ultimately it begins in the home. 

If I could wish one thing for the world we inhabit, it would be to have functional homes, where each human being is loved, honored, respected, and has a recognized voice. A home where each child is raised to enter the world as a functional adult who is ready to take their place in society and contribute to making the world a better place. What a wish! I’m not wishing for utopia. I’m wishing for something better: a healthy peace for all. It starts in homes. Oh, I want to see this happen! 

A home with a loving parent(s) who offers up a platter of love, protection, and acceptance to a child so that they can become who they were born to be. I salute the courageous! I honor those who try to learn and understand what might be different to them. I honor the parent who says “I don’t understand, and I’m committed to learning” when their LGBTQ2s child comes to them with fear of the consequences of coming out: first to themselves, and then to others. 

I applaud the enabled person who struggles to meet daily challenges in an abled world. The parent who shepherds the child in the hard times as well as the good times. Homes need to be safe havens for all of us. 

I’m not building to a kumbaya moment here—that takes a great deal of work. I’m building to something else: peace. The peace-filled home that spills over into the neighborhood, then the city, and spreads out to all corners of all nations: it begins within our homes. 

Saying it is one thing, and implementing it is quite another process. My husband’s psychiatrist once made the point that all voices in a family need to be heard, acknowledged, and respected. Parenting isn’t about giving orders; it’s about guiding, setting boundaries, and being willing to have hard conversations with growing children of all ages. Parents create a micro-community in their homes when they commit to bring tiny humans to dwell with them. 

It’s about accepting your child for who they are, and where they are, offering a safe space to explore their identity, speak their point of view, and explore their own values.  Eventually, children need to make their way out of the home and into the world. Happy, healthy adults have experienced many of these things. 

Mentoring begins from birth. Mentoring is about parents doing things with kids, making it fun, teaching them the value of working for something, and waiting for results. It’s about offering children healthy choices so that as they grow, they develop empathy, social skills, insight, and inner strength. 

Boomers were raised by parents who dealt with the Depression and WWII. Their children faced the 60s and 70s and began to question the culture of parents and grandparents who came out of a more authoritarian view. And then, things started moving faster. I believe that with Gen X and beyond, we’ve never quite caught up. Time has sped up, society has changed radically, and with it, the home has been rocked on its foundation. There is a real need to re-examine relationships and to have hard conversations about what works and doesn’t work. 

One of the consequences of this radical shift is that parents say “yes” when they need to say “no.” Yes and no have to do with setting a healthy boundary. It is about helping a developing child understand long-term choices and offering the mentoring to enable them to think it through for themselves. Now more than ever, children need the skill of thinking it out for themselves! The thinking starts when parents offer up limits such as a healthy diet that incorporates varied food choices, or reading to children daily and offering up experiences that teach the young child to choose good and age-appropriate things. It’s a confidence builder. It continues as the child matures and is able to make task-appropriate choices that will enable them to learn and grow. When a child experiences failure, with a parent encouraging them to give it another go around, they will! I also understand that some parents are faced with needing the village to step in while they work three jobs. Who we put in our villages can enable parents to have that needed assistance to raise the child to healthy adulthood. Successful single parents and two-parent families have a village to back them up. 

I acknowledge that I’m speaking from a point of privilege. I grew up within a home where there were two parents, and they were able to provide the basics but not the luxuries. Money was tight and there was a village of extended family and community.    

With the way things have sped up, it is essential to cultivate relationships that include extended family, friends, community members, schools, and charitable organizations. A parent may not know their village until a crisis happens. 

My wish includes people sharing a meal and coming together to learn from one another: people who discover that in diversity, there are both differences and sameness. The sameness begins with recognizing that we are all humans residing on this pale blue dot. The diversity offers up the gift of human understanding, culture, and a differing world view that teaches us to learn, listen, and understand. In table fellowship, we offer up the gift of being heard. It is listening that bridges gaps, strengthens the person, enters the home, and moves forward to influence the neighborhood, the community, and eventually the world.