Archive for the ‘family’ Category

A Continuous Seam; Ironed Smooth

Posted: February 4, 2014 in family
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“When I was little I never had a store boughten dress,” my mother said, “but my dresses were prettier than all the other little girls. My mother made all the dresses for my sisters and me, and she added little embroidered flowers, ruffles, gatherings and special touches to them all.”

My mom paused, and as if peering through the soft haze of many years, went on, “Your grandma had a hard childhood. Her dad died while she was an infant; her mom died when she was twelve years old. She was sent to live with an aunt but she was molested there and moved to another relative’s home. When she married my dad, he was thirty-six and she was eighteen. His wife had died and he had three little girls. That must have been a challenge for such a young mom.”

I looked at my mom. She was bent over her iron, eighty-six years old, beautifully dressed, at her work, making order, making beauty.

“Your grandma was a petite woman. She was very artistic,” mom said. ” She loved my sisters and brothers and me as children.” She paused and then looked over at me. “She was very artistic, you know.”

I looked at her and smiled, then at the wall where mom’s own paintings decorated her room.  I looked back at my mom, ironing there in her beautifully furnished and decorated room, making her clothing, and my dad’s, into perfectly flat surfaces.

“I like my clothes ironed,” she said. “No wrinkles.”

I glanced behind her, into her walk-in closet. There was her perfectly arranged wardrobe —  the fourteen purses on one shelf, the thirty pairs of shoes in cubicles, the fifty or more nit tops stacked neatly by season, the rows and rows of hanging jackets and pants and tops rich in color and lavish in texture.

“My mom loved her children,” mom went on. “She took really good care of all of us.” She stopped.

“Oh your dad tore his pants,” she said, and fussed over her work. “There is a little hole here,” and she pushed at it with her finger. Then she folded the pants along the seams and laid them in a drawer.

Driving home I from Los Angles that afternoon, I mused about my mom, Lois Hasper, a lovely woman. She learned some things from her mom, and she passed those on to her children, my brothers and I, and we passed them on to our children, and some of them are now passing these things on to their children. There is a photo in my mom’s room that caught my eye today. It is a picture of a great grandchild; she is in a pretty dress.

My mom tells me she is really old now, every time I see her, several times, “Your dad and I are really feeling our age now.”

She is old, but she is not done yet, and though she is tired, and ready to be done, she is even better in some ways now than ever before.  I think she has softened in the last few years. Always gentle, she has become more gentle, and sometimes, with her short-term memory loss — which she told me again today, “is so frustrating” — she seems to me again a precious little girl, in a pretty dress, loved by her mom and her sisters, with rows and rows of beautiful dresses in the closet behind her.

What is it?

There on the ironing board, here in this quickly-passing lovely-fading world — there is a line, running through our family, a line passing from my grandma to my mother to me and to my brothers, a continuous seam upon which we have all folded our lives, a colorful edge, a loving row of stitches, a doubled fabric, ironed smooth.

It is love. 

married

Posted: September 7, 2012 in family
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Marriage has four stages:

1. “I’m going to change her!”

2. “She’s not going to change!”

3. “My God, she changed!”

4. “What I just said, sounded exactly like her!”

That’s how it goes, and that’s how it lasts, as I’ve lived and seen it over thirty-three years of it.

For me, there are reasons to stay married.

The foods gets better — other things too.

Staying together is the only hope of driving away the kids.

I stay warm at night.

And I desparately need vowed, ringed, committed and unconditional love.

In fact, we all need and crave crazy-devoted love, die-hard love, romantic, gift-giving, promise-making, always-there love.

We want someone who won’t leave the house after we fight, who will be first to the hospital room when it all goes wrong and who will be still sitting beside us holding our hand when we are old and wrinkled and done.

And most of us can have that, or some of that,  if we will.

And if we can’t — we should get a cat, or a dog.

Animals are God’s antidote for an overdose of humans.

My other thoughts on marriage may be found at “The Modern Thought Proverbs of Randy Hasper,”   www.modernproverbs.net  Click on the category “Marriage.”

The number of completion

Posted: August 1, 2012 in family
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It’s happened before.

People are missing.

Murdered, kidnapped, AWOL or gone to the store — I’m missing them.

When I was in Nicaragua recently, I found that my wife was missing.

I had to return home to find her. There she was, at home, saying, “You’re always the one who gets to go off on adventures, and I’m stuck home, waiting for you. I feel like I spend my whole life waiting for you!”

I know what she means — kind of.

In Nicaragua I was waiting for her too, waiting to get back to her, to be with her again, my soul mate, my true love.

She is my lady in waiting.

What is it about missing people? This summer my daughter has gone missing. She’ll be home next week after two months on the road — camps, kids, a worship band, her job.

So, next week I’ll be more complete; I’ll get back to my number of completion. The number is 4.

Perhaps there is a kind of idiosyncratic number of completion that each of us internalize and use to measure completeness. I’ve heard people say that the Biblical number of completion is 7. God created the heaven and the earth, finished the work in 6 days, and rested on the seventh day. Creation was complete at 7.

One could go on and on about 7 in Jewish and Christian history — 7 days for the feast of unleavened bread, 7 days of consecration, the seventh month of atonement, 7 cities of refuge, 7 eyes, 7 horns, 7 candlesticks, 7 churches, 7 stars …

It’s enough. I’m good with it, even if I don’t entirely understand it.

I’m a bit of a man in waiting when it comes to numbers anyway. I wait for them to make sense when they don’t.

Whatever our proclivity with numbers, I think most of us get the general concept of a number that represents a sense of completion.

“Three scoops of ice cream please.”

We like our realities in certain numbers — packaged, bundled, just the right amount.

I especially get this, the completion thing, regarding my family. In my family, my wife, my two daughters and me make 4. When all 4 are present, a very peaceful, familiar, satisfying completion settles on us.

But I don’t think this is the same for when it comes to how many other people I might be willing to talk to know, to help, to befriend, or to love.

In all cultures there are some prescribed limits on a semse of social completion. A friend of mine who just got back from South Central China told me that he found that people there were reluctant to help a stranger. There you help family and friends, you’d do anything for them, but with ones you don’t know, you are careful, because if you were to help them, then you would be including them within your close circle, and thus obligating yourself to help them always.

Interesting. We set numerical, social limits, resource limits. It the same here in the United States, but perhaps a bit more lose. Here, one can help a person once, and never help them again, and it’s okay. In fact we like that, the hit and run charity thing, but I don’t really like it.

I like hit and hug and stay charity.

I get the number of completion in a family thing, the biological deal, the same DNA bundled, but what about when that number changes, when somebody dies, and what about when you want to change that number by adopting someone, or treating them as family or taking them into your home, an aging mom or dad, to be very close extended family?

Then after a time, that may feel normal, and the number of completion is then something you have changed. I like that. I don’t like a fixed number, always and forever the same by holy writ, or cultural mandate, although that’s fine to for some purposes and ever so practical too.

But I like it when numbers flit around a bit, change shapes, become larger — numbers on fragile, hopeful, surprisingly human terms.

I’ll always want the same 4, my girls, but I think I’ll also want more because what is alive grows, changes, morphs, expands. I want to be able to open my tent to a grand-daughter someday or a grandson or someone else’s daughter or son for whatever is needed or I need to do or they need.

I think it’s a spiritual thing to think of the number of completion as a changing number. I think, but what a heretic I am, that God is interested in more than 7! Way more!

What more might He or we package up, given a little time and a little love.

Who more might end up in my bundle?

What number might feel like completion for me in the future that I can’t even imagine now?

It’s worth considering. People are missing.

In fact, I think that I’m missing people who I haven’t even met yet.

They are my people in waiting, and I’m waiting for them to get to me.

4 is good. So is 8, 16 32 or today’s count, 7,057,020,330.

family

Posted: October 11, 2010 in family
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Yesterday I watched Henry II re-imprison his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine in the tower. It was Christmas of 1183.

It is interesting, Henry’s decision. You can see it too by watching the movie, The Lion In Winter.

Eleanor, Henry’s queen, played by Katharine Hepburn is brilliant. When Henry II, knife in hand, threatens to kill their three sons, she eloquently rants:

“Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It’s 1183 and we’re barbarians! How clear we make it. Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war: not history’s forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breed wars. We carry it like syphilis inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten. For the love of God, can’t we love one another just a little – that’s how peace begins.

For the love of God, can’t we love each other just a little? Good question for the family?

While it is noble of the queen to take responsibility for the problems, the truth is that she and Henry and their sons were very much products of their times. The succession of power deal was something they inherited, and it mucked with the softer family values of kindness and gentleness. They might have been a nice family, Henry, Eleanor, John, Richard and Geoffrey, like TV’s Addams family, but they had the dilemma of deciding who ruled next. In other words, they had to figure out who to hate, band against, betray,  bash, banish, imprison or kill, and who to crown the next worthy ruler of England. It was the ongoing problem of the English monarchy – who do we love, who do we murder? Think Henry the VIII and his six wives.

The kings of England were only relieved of this complexity when Charles I was beheaded on Tuesday, 30 January 1649, and the English Parliament took over the job of loving and murdering.

It got me to thinking – what creates the rules for a family’s use of knives and of towers?  Power struggles for royal succession don’t help. Favoritism either. Towers not much. Violence not much at all.  I know a girl who grew up with a bigoted mother. This girl is an amazingly open and accepting woman. She overcame the family knife. A family legacy is partially a choice.

I think about my own family.

When we were in grade school, my little brother and I played baseball with a golf ball one day in the field in front of the house, the field with the fire flies and cow paddies. What a cool idea. A golf ball hit with a wooden bat travels fast and far. I remember one of my drives to deep center. “It’s deep, way back, way back – gone. A home run.” I also remember another clothesline drive back to the pitcher’s mound. I swung, the ball sprung off my bat on a straight line, the pitcher, my little brother Lars, was down. I ran towards him. He was holding his mouth. We were in the car. We were back at home. He was lying on the couch with a blanket over him. His face was swollen; his teeth were broken; his jaw was wired closed. It was a moment.

I’ve told this story before. I’ve used it as a prop, an item in a series giving evidence of growing up crazy with my two brothers. It fit into the line, “I grew up tough. I shot my big brother. I clubbed my grandma unconscious in the laundry room, and I broke my little brother’s jaw with golf ball.” It’s gotten a few laughs.

But the golf ball incident isn’t really funny, and it remains for me as somewhat ambiguous. “We all have knives,” remarked Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. The golf ball was one of my knives.  It was an accident, of course. But by it I harmed my brother. It was stupid to play baseball with a golf ball. My brother and I made a decision to play together, but I was older. And yet, I never imagined that he would be struck, and I didn’t want him to get hurt. I loved my little brother then, I still do now.

In the family, we make choices. Stuff happens. People crumple. They hold themselves. We hold them. It doesn’t change what happened. Every family has a history of violence or harm or disruption and every family must travel forward with a legacy both good and bad. But interpretation and re-interpretation is an important in dealing with our narratives.

What if the golf ball had carried a little higher? I have never really thought of this before, but perhaps I didn’t want to. We don’t think much of “what if …”, and we don’t unpack our family stories that often. For many of us, these stories remain largely unexamined, left in the semi-rational closets of our minds, un-actualized and un-interpreted. Could the result have been worse? Yes, it might have been worse if the ball had hit him square between the eyes, or square in one eye?  I am very grateful to God that this didn’t happen.

But the incident doesn’t stand alone in my childhood. We did so many foolish things growing up. We also played baseball with rocks. We jumped off a high bridge into the river, flying down through the air, plunging into the fast brown water. And we did lots of fast driving in cars, over this bridge and around the country, and some drinking and driving.  We could have killed ourselves. A number of young people in my high school did so, destroying themselves and their friends in alcohol related accidents.

Life isn’t safe, but we who survive into adulthood with our siblings have much to be grateful for. I think the family, even broken, is something to be grateful for. I think the family, even with a negative narrative, has something to be thankful for. My little brother and I survived. But we had so many good moments growing up together. We swam together, road bikes together, played ping pong for hours on end together, ate together, water skied together. How many times did we laugh together? I’m not sure but it was enough that the good thoughts outweigh the bad. My brother called me last week to ask for my advice on what telescope to buy. I enjoyed sharing my expertise with him. Family is precious.

I remember shooting little spring load guns at each other in the hall, firing little round silver balls down the hall into each other. We shot each other, we laughed when we took a hit between the eyes; we fired and laughed again. It’s family, both the hits between the eyes and the laughing.

I re-watched The Godfather again the other night. It’s a superb movie! Scenes stick with you: the famous scene where Michael Corleone is present at his nephew’s baptism juxtaposed with the scenes of his gangsters carrying his orders to murder his rivals. The camera is stationary, coldly objective, with short close ups and mid-shots — the water running down the fragile baby’s soft head, the bullets ripping into the soft bodies of the rivals. Michael renounces Satan as he murders the families of others. Coppola edits for us the holy and unholy in one person. We see that violent cruelty and tender love can exist in the same man at the same moment. It is an interpretive stroke of genius. It is life as we know it in the family.

I spoke with a twelve year old girl last week. She has to make adult-like decisions about her family. Why? Perhaps, she is the most responsible, mature person in her family. I’m not certain. She was wondering something fairly significant for a young girl —  where to live. It was an honor to witness her wise sensibilities concerning her family. But what was this — twelve and parenting herself? This is not unusual. There are an estimated 10 million children in sub-Saharan Africa orphaned by AIDS. They have no biological parents. They remain. And what shall they make of this? And we?

What do we each one do with what has happened to us in our families and in our communities?

I believe that every community has a tower, and every family has a knife. Every family has a sense of succession, an inheritance, even if only social and psychological. Each family is in danger of being put in a tower by other families living nearby them, and they are in danger of  locking some of their own family members in a tower. To understand this, we must choose to see this, and we must think more about this. And we must process the destructive past; we must move away from it and move toward it again. We must go exploring.

I grew up white in the Midwest in the sixties. I was an inheritor of the dominant narrative of America. Succession to the throne was a given. We never questioned our right to go anywhere we wanted, to eat anywhere we chose, to become anything we desired. My parents were actually poor, but I didn’t know it. Their Christian work didn’t pay well, but there were perks, free housing, free food and some vehicles provided for us by the Christian campground my parents ran.  I had as much or more stuff than the farm kids that lived near me, and so I didn’t have much of a sense of class consciousness.

One thing sat in the back of my mind that discriminated. We were from Southern California living in Missouri. My parents had a past with avocadoes and tacos. They had lived in Los Angeles. They were more cosmopolitan than rural, more aware of diversity than uniformity. They were displaced persons. They tried to join the local Southern Baptist Church. They were told that they would have to be re-baptized. Their Presbyterian baptisms wouldn’t work. They decided not to join. We were outsiders. I never forgot that. And I think as a result I have never had much of a stomach for intolerance, for narrow-mindedness, or sectarianism. But I love church. I love the church. I believe that the church is part of how God shows himself to us. It can be made into a tower, to lock people in, and to lock people out, but when it is at its best it is an open family, open to more and more siblings, able to absorb and adopt and love all different kinds of people.

I believe that we were meant to live kind, tolerant lives, accepting  differences in the church and in our families. But we must not get too sappy about this. Jesus said that he came to bring a sword to the family, that family member would rise against family member, in conflict over Jesus. And this has happened. The conservatives should not claim Jesus as the poster boy for family values. Jesus disrupted the family. He said that his family wasn’t simply made up out of his nuclear family but out of anyone who would follow him. But he loved his family too. He made provision for his mother to be taken care of after he died.

It’s something to try to understand. I’m sorting it out. Whatever conflicts and wounds occur in our families, I believe strongly that we must take responsibility for our choices. I am a devotee of Soren Kierkegaard. He believed that, “Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth.” He believed that in the end we are individually responsible for what we chose. We will stand alone in heaven to answer for what we have done. I believe that too. I believe that we are responsible for how we treat family, and how we interpret our families once all is said and done. It can get rough.

Once my father was asked which of his sons was better at public speaking. He quickly indicated that it was my older brother. I will never forget this. I was standing within hearing distance when he said it, but he didn’t know I was there. It stabbed me, unexpectedly and hard. I make my living by writing, teaching and speaking. It is my identity. The same is true for my older brother. The same for my dad too, at one time. “And the award goes to, the older brother!” For me it was, in part, a kind of succession. It felt a bit like the law of primogenitor or the divine right of kings. The older recieved the nod, the blessing, the oratorical crown. It was competition, and it was preference. It was Henry II and it was Eleanor. It was a knife, and it was none of these things but merely a poorly thought out response on the part of my dad.

I spoke to my dad about this later. He too was wounded by what he had done. He apologized to me. It was a very painful moment for both of us. I forgave him. I still think of it sometimes. It still wounds me a little. But I am largely over it. I forgive him, as he must forgive me for the mistakes I made growing up. We are good, different not prefect in unity, but good. I choose to love my father. He is a good man, and he was a good dad to me.

My daughter Laurel is very smart; my daughter Rosalind is smart too, but in  a different way. Rosalind has brain damage, and she can’t read very well, but she is smart with her heart. Rosalind has a good life, but it is painful, her limits, and yet it is beautiful, her uniqueness.  Our family has space for the differences. As a father, I have made a conscious choice, along with my wife and my daughter Laurel to do no violence to the close juxtaposition of contrasts in our family. A family is a place where significant difference should be able to exist without judgment. A family is, I believe, a place where certain comparisons simply should not be made.

My daughter Laurel is studying in London this semester. She visited the holocaust museum there. This week she sent me a poem that she had written.  It’s a poem about her sister.

The Unforgotten Crime

Honey Nut Cheerios

tumble into my older sister’s bowl,

twinkling round O’s matching her big blue eyes.

We laugh loud and I pour her milk,

insurance against the chance of an embarrassing spill.

 

I am her prevention policy against frustration;

I spoon her sour cream, set minutes on the microwave,

and towel- dry the glass dishes;

a dropped plate

often results in crystal shards and tears.

 

My own eyes well up as I trudge through the breathing rooms,

still with their secrets.

I pass Hitler,

and the smell of burning books wafts to my mind as

faded yellow Stars of David on blue breast pockets droop

behind smudgy glass panes.

 

I glance to my right, and a gleaming white table

rests haughtily on its haunches,

taunting me, sinister

and slick,

clean white metal hiding dirty black deeds.

 

The dark room propels me forward,

betraying me,

forcing me to stumble unwillingly towards my foe.

I stand before this thing, and –

I read it.

 

“Mental retardation…genocide rehearsal…unfit for society…sterilization…experiment… T-4…

Murder.”

 

The words blur together and I turn

to the table,

its dead red eyes reflecting

children’s screams and their naked

exposure to white-coated probing,

 

flashing cameras and sharp instruments,

scientists taking detached notes and

emotionlessly practicing their

cruel sciences under the guise of research and –

I see my sister’s face in the scared eyes of the littlest ones.

 

Sobbing, I sit on a bench in the darkness and grieve,

while those sterile and sightless scientists

sit next door, still and silent in their frames,

the horror of their actions forever frozen.

 

Would you have thought differently, I ask them,

if you poured her cheerios every morning?

Laurel read me this poem the other day as we were talking with each other on Skype. At the last line the eye wiping began and didn’t stop for a few minutes. I couldn’t really say anything for a short time. Hitler was so messed up. He knew not a thing about my daughter Rosalind.

They wouldn’t have done what they did, the murderers, they wouldn’t have done those experiments on our family members, they wouln’t  have laid precious ones onto cold tables and into unmarked graves, they wouldn’t have done any horrible thing they did if the differently abled ones had  been their sons and daughters and they had poured their Cherrios and they had had the courage to even begin to understand what being a human family really means.

What is a family? I am still trying to figure that out myself.  I confess and grieve that my family and all of our families are places where the sacred and the profane exist side-by-side. In me and my kin, the holy and the unholy co-exist. The character of Michael Corleone is not an abberation, although he is an extreme. There is a bit of Henry II and Eleanor in all of us.

But I am beginning to believe that the family can choose to be a place that moves away from violence in every one of its twisted and damaging forms. And I believe that it can be a place that allows for differences to exist side-by-side without judgment. And I believe that it is wisdom to chose to forgive what should never have happened. Think Rwanda and Burundi — some families there have forgiven the unthinkable in their neighbors.

“For the love of God,” cries Eleanor with anguish over her family,  “can’t we love each other just a little?”

I believe that we can.

I Love You; I Hate You!

Posted: March 8, 2010 in family, love
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It’s weird, but sometimes the people we love the most we hate the most.  We don’t really hate them, but we sometimes have the strongest negative emotions that we have ever felt, toward them. At a moment of conflict, it feels like hate.

This is something we don’t want to admit. It sounds wrong, but really it’s quite normal. Feelings of love and hate live closer to each other than we may want to admit. We act the dance between the two out. We yell at a spouse or child, criticizing them for something they did or didn’t do, or we simmer inside, silently furious that they have neglected or hurt us, but afraid of our own emotions and afraid of conflict. And yet at the same time, we know we profoundly love them and are committed to them.

Why do we sometimes feel so strongly against those we love? There is so much at stake. Close, family relationships have a huge impact on identity, who we are or think we are. In these relationships we gain a deep sense of worth, and that this can be enhanced or damaged by the loved person. Family relationships also control us, adding to or limiting what we get from life in the crucial areas of money, sex and power. Either gain or loss of what we need amp up our emotions and stir fires of deep calm or anger in us.

We may conflict in a casual relationship without much consequence, but we know that a fight with a spouse or child matters. Our feelings in these relationships flash on brightly, like red lights at busy intersections at night.

What do we do with these feelings? We should honor them, we should accept them, we do best to lean into them. They help us. They are our friends. They tell us that we care. They tell us that these relationships matter. They are normal, and we normalize them by not denying them. And we honor them by acting on them; yes, we act on them by having the needed talk, by working out the needed negotiation, by giving time to process these valuable feelings.

This is life. Feel. You  love. Feel. You  matter. Feel. You have relationships that are important enough to fight for, to care for, to resolve.

Feel. You are alive!

Customized Love

Posted: February 19, 2010 in family, love
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Love  is idiosyncratic.

We  each  experience  love uniquely, filtering it through our personal backgrounds, personalities and experiences.  In this domain, don’t bother with generics.

One person feels loved when they are given a gift that perfectly fits an interest they have. For them, that’s love.  Another  feels deeply loved by a  snuggly hug, another by being close but not touching. Another feels most loved by being listened to as they share the trivia of their day, another by being allowed to talk about ideas, another by having a purring cat sleep on their lap, another by being allowed to watch a local football game with friends, another by being encouraged to go to the beach and walk with girl friends.

Love is ideolectic, which means it is articulated in the language of the individual, not the group. It is found in nick names and private endearments and familial neologisms and  goofy redefinitions. It resides in family jokes, favorite foods and funny family stories, a language invented by people with the same reality even if they don’t have the same last name.

When we cannot experience love, the dysfunctions behind our attachment disorders are often idiopathic, unknown or at least unrecognized by us.  An angry father, a perpetually drunk mother, a childhood illness, a traumatic divorce,  a disabling shyness — we may have some idea as to our love disability, but often we are not quite sure as to its precise etiology. We may brood, “Why can’t I seem to connect well with people, bond, enter into love the way I see that others do?” We often don’t know precisely why; perhaps we never will. Love’s dysfunctions are complex, but we do not have to understand them completely to  love.

To whatever degree we can give or receive love, we should; it is a gift and a thrill. Love  is the essence of mental health and the core of happiness. Love is so essential that it should be made the highest priority of life. We should go all out to love the people we live with idiosyncratically, in the ways in which  they want and need to be loved. We should gently, kindly, patiently and continuously customize our love for our spouses and boyfriends and kids and best friends.

If we do everything else but don’t do love, we have done absolutely nothing. Love is first, best, highest and most supreme. Do not miss making this your primary mission in every second of every day for the rest of your life.

Let quirky, personalized, specialized, custom-fitted love rule.

Fight Fair

Posted: February 4, 2010 in family
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“We had a fight last night.”  Few families haven’t said that.

Most of us do verbal battle in our families, often at night when we are all home, and all tired. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A certain degree of conflict is normal, even healthy! Conflict is needed to set things right when they have gone wrong.

My wife has confronted me several times in our marriage over spending too much time at work. As a result, we’ve made more space to be with each other more, to do more fun things together. Lately we’ve been walking together on the days we have off together.  Conflict, if resolved well, can bring about new peace and order in the family.

But how we will fight, now that is worth thinking about, because if we don’t fight well, in fair and productive ways, we can cause a lot of damage and even eventually ruin our relationships. Early in my marriage, I said somethings my wife still remembers thirty years later. I wish I had been able to control my mouth better.

What do families commonly fight over? They fight over significant issues of power and control in important areas of life:  money, in-laws, sex, children, homework, housework, jobs and friends. The underlying psychological reasons include our desire and need to control our lives, our instinctive drive to get our own needs met and the normal competition over the emotional and financial resources available.

In my family we have sometimes fought over how to discipline the children. Sometimes one of us has wanted to be tough on an issue and the other has wanted to be relaxed, to let things go. It’s classic; it’s the old war between the obeying the rules or relaxing and having fun, between having strict in discipline or creating a relaxed, easy going atmosphere. The truth is we need both in the family. Too much just-leave-them-alone and you get chaos and rebellion; too much hammering of the policy and the bedroom turns into a military barracks.

As a result it’s good to scrap about discipline once in a while, and to come to some middle ground between the police academy and an unspervised grade school playground.

Whatever the outcome, conflict should not be seen as something to avoid. The good family is not the family that never fights, but the one that knows how to fight in fair, appropriate ways. 

Here are a few rules for fighting. You’ll recognize some of these. They are borrowed, currently part of the common language and knowledge of good conflict resolution.

 1. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. The goal is to “Get it,” to really listen in such a way that you can truly understand how the other person feels and what they think.

2. Go for win-win outcome. That means you come to a solution both parties can live with.  Avoid win-lose solutions, where someone dominates the others. To help, remember that you are fighting for your relationship, not for a personal victory.

 3. Stay under control. Be kind.  Work hard not to be abusive, mean, cold, hard, inflexible. Giving full vent to your anger can cause a lot of damage.

 4. Give people space and time to process possible solutions if they want or need that. It’s great to work things out on the spot, before you go to bed, before it can build up. But sometimes, other people just need time to cool down and think a little. In that space they may even self-correct.

 5. Stick to the point. Avoid bringing in a bunch of other unresolved issues, and avoid personally attacking the character of the person you are disputing with.

 6.  Support your spouse in front of your kids. If you don’t agree with your spouse, set aside some space and time to talk it through later. Parents who are united can do a super job of dealing with kid issues.

 7. Avoid arguing late in the evening, when you are tired, when you have the least control.

 8. Ask for forgiveness, and be willing to forgive.

Different, But Still Family

Posted: January 28, 2010 in family
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One of the most obvious things about the people in your family is that some of them are quite different from you. 

Take the issue of how we process time. We process it differently. Some are speedy thinkers, quick with a response, quick to want to suggest solutions, quick to want to make up after a fight. Others are deliberate processors, slow to know what they feel, in need of time to  make a decision.

One of my daughters processes things over time. Recently we got in an argument over what movie to watch. I pushed; she got upset. It was a bit of a mess.

When the deliberate processors meet the fast processors over an issue, watch out. The quick tend to bulldoze the slow; the  slow tend to stall the quick.

The solution? In the family, it is wise to allow for differences without judging and stigmatizing the way the people we live with process things. The quick can say, “Hey, take a little time and get back to me on what you think.” The slow can say, “It’s good that you want to resolve this now. Let’s see if we can talk it out. What do you think we should do?”

The secret is to honor the other persons process and to negotiate in a way that works for both people. On the movie issue, my daughter and I gave it some time. We came to an agreeement.

Often the differences in our families show up in our likes and dislikes. Some like sports; some like to read. Some like to hike; some like to watch TV. Again it is so easy to be threatened by differences.  If we aren’t atheletic, could it be that atheletic people make us feel clutsy? If we aren’t smart and bookish, perhaps the literary nerds make us feel ignorant.

I like to watch football. My wife doesn’t. She graciously gives me space to do this. And she doesn’t just tolerate it; she supports me in it. Recently I invited a friend over to watch a playoff game with me. My wife called my friend’s wife, and they took a walk during the game.

The solution to our different likes? Again, it is to allow for differences without judging each other. Who wants a family full of rules and reactions that keep people from enjoying what they really love to do? By giving space for others to do what they want, we allow them to be happy and fulfilled. And furthermore, if we will participate in each others likes, we can expand our interests and become increasingly enriched people.

Giving a spouse or child a chance to pursue their passion is a way of serving and deeply loving them. The I-want-you-to-be-able-to-do-what-you-want response is at the core of what it means to love another person.

Differences between us can threaten or enrich;  it’s mostly our choice.

The Values Outlast The Rules

Posted: January 21, 2010 in family
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Values rule, not rules.

Over a recent holiday my daughter and I  hiked through some beautifully sculpted sand cliffs down to the beach at Torrey Pines State Park in San Diego. On the way down, we stopped and ate the lunch we brought. On a bluff overlooking long, curling waves we chatted away and  luxuriated in the sun and sage bushes.   On another day we drove to downtown San Diego together and had lunch at a favorite bistro of hers. I picked the corn chowder and turkey sandwich based on her recommendation. The rye bread was superb — my choice. Afterward we walked and shot pictures of ourselves sitting by a fountain at the train depot.

These days were the best! I think of these kind of days as the it-was-all-worth-it, the now-we’re-really living, the it’s-so-good-to-be-together days.  The activities were simple, but the time was rich with deeply shaping, underlying values —  the value of respect for each other’s choices, the value of good food and the universally esteemed  value of walking with someone you love in a beautiful place.

We parents want our children to open their arms and take in our values. Step-parents and single parents and foster parents and grandparents and adopted parents and surrogate parents and every other kind of parents want to enrich our children with a wealth of rich, wise beliefs.

But there is a very important question here:  How do we do this?  Let’s try to be bluntly helpful about this. Not by pounding our children with the rules. If we pound children with rules they may reject our values.  I know a family where the kids were constantly dominated by rules. The rule hounding  produced anxious, angry, frustrated  children. On the other hand, too little rule making and enforcing and we may produce undisciplined,  unwise and disrespectful children. I know a family where the parents were very passive and the kids were very much in charge. Everyone of the kids made a mess of their adult life. It’s a balance, but keep in mind the end — we want to produce value-inspired people, not rule-enslaved people.

What are values? Values are our deepest beliefs, our core truths, the things we hold to be good and right, those guiding ideas that help us live well.  Where do we get them? We get them from our most trusted sources —  our experiences,  our  family,  best friends, our trusted spiritual leaders. They also come from the collective wisdom of the community. They are beautiful,  powerful  realities — things like love, beauty, honesty, kindness, integrity, trust in God, hard work, tolerance of diversity, freedom to make choices.

To really understand values, it helps to see that they are somewhat different from rules. Rules and values are similar in that they both set standards, but rules tend to demand while values tend to inspire.   In general we might say that values endure; rules change. Although some don’t: Replace the toilet paper roll when it runs out; don’t use other people’s tooth brush.  Rules are typically imposed from the outside; values live within and surpass rules.We give our children a rule; hold my hand when we cross the street. But one day the child will cross alone, taking her own responsiblity to look both ways.  A value underlies the crossing rule, the value of safety, and we want this value to guide all our children’s choices, even their risky ones.

Ask of every rule you make for your children, what value does it flow from? When the value becomes embedded in the child, the rule may no longer be needed. The goal is for our children to grow out of our rules and into our values. The goal is for them to become motivated from within, not from without.  A curfew will one day be let go; the value of rest and of safety will not.

In our family we have a kind-of unwritten rule that the person who cooked dinner doesn’t have to clean up., and all the people that eat without cooking, are expected to help reconstruct the kitchen. It works; it gets the job done.  But behind the rule are at least two important values: the value of order and the value of responsibility.  My wife and I hope that these values will remain in our girls long after they are gone from our home and our rules.  

How do we build our values into our children? Bottom line: your kids will most likely value what you model by your own behavior, not what enforce by your own rules. They will learn the most from what we do with them and for them, not as much what we say to them.

When our children were younger, we took them to dance classes and music lessons; we put them on sports teams. And we had a general rule that when we committed to a class or a season, we went every week and completed the experience. These were fun times,  but these times are now gone. And yet we can  see that the value of art and of sport and of teaming with others and of following through  is something that the girls now own. One now plays on a special olympics type of  basketball team by her own choice. The other is chosing to study literature in London next fall.

As our children grow up and leave home, we will no longer be there to provide the experiences and enforce the rules, but our hope is that through the experiences they have had and the way we have interpreted these experiences for them,  powerfully shaping  values will remain. When our children are with us we make rules about money and time.  One day we hope that they will internalize and live by the values behind these rules,  the value of saving, the value of planning ahead or the value of spontaneity.

 We do well to keep in mind the end product: we want our children to own the underlying powerful beliefs that make for the best life. Do your best work parents.  Go deep. By your own actions, embed powerful ideas in their little psyches.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, my oldest daughter and I went to church, went out to lunch and split a sandwich, came home and watched a football game together, went out to a movie, afterward did a little shopping for necessities, grabbed a bite at one of her favorite places for for dinner and came home and read and goofed off.  It was like being on vacation. No rules; we did what we wanted, but we honored a very high value — us!

When their arms are open and their spirits are open, while you still have time with them, pour into them the most profound and lasting values of life — the values of love and kindness and nonproductive leisure and respect and the supreme value of just being together.

Catch Happiness

Posted: January 27, 2008 in family
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tom3

Happiness is hereditary.  Your kids can get it from you.

Families want to be happy families.  Sociologist, George Barna, reports that one of the greatest needs expressed by adults is the need for a happy family.

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of spending the afternoon with my brother Lars and his family.  As we walked along the boardwalk of the St. Claire River in Port Huron, Michigan, our eyes were lured from the impressive 800-foot freighter passing by to something that seemed even more eye-catching – it was Lars’s two teenagers strolling along in front of us, arm-in-arm, chatting with each other and laughing.  Pointing to his kids, who were thoroughly enjoying each others company, Lars remarked, “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

A few tips

Many of us want a happy family, but how do we get there?  To be honest, no family is happy all the time, nor need they try to be, but there are some simple things we can do to improve the odds.

Don’t compare your family to other families

 

Live comparison free.  Don’t compare your husband; don’t compare your kids; and don’t compare your in-laws.

My family is so different from my brother’s.  His daughter Rachel graduated as a valedictorian, a straight A student,  an accomplished flutist.  Awards for spelling bees, awards for academic excellence, and scholarships from the Young Educator’s Society decorated her journey toward becoming a teacher.  Rachel is a wonderfully successful  young woman.

My daughter Rosalind travels a different road.  Rosalind has accepted by the San Diego Regional Center, an agency providing services for the developmentally disabled.  Rosalind has epilepsy.  She is in special education classes in community college. Rosalind will never win a spelling bee.  She won’t be the valedictorian of her class.  Our family has clapped for her, but we’ve cried for her and with her too.  We are choosing, everyday, not to go through life comparing Rosalind with other girls.  That won’t help any of us. 

All of us are tempted to compare.  We might think our families are not as fun, not as healthy, not as spiritual, not as complete, not as wealthy, not as smart, not as you-name-it.  We often tend to compare ourselves with those who we think have it better.  But in the Bible, 2 Corinthians 10:12-13, it is wisely written, “We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves. Good advice. So our family will stick to bragging about Rosalind’s success in Special Olympics. We couldn’t be more proud.

 

Have fun together 

Don’t underestimate fun.  Proverbs 10:1 says that “a wise son brings joy to his father.”  A primary goal in the family is to bring joy to each other.  The wise have fun – together.

I don’t have a perfect family, and I’m not a perfect dad or husband.  But I make ’em laugh at home.  I consider it my fatherly duty to be as wild, unpredictable, and outrageous as necessary to make lighten up the house. We should hold nothing fun back at home.  We should dance in the living room to loud music.  We should stay up late and eat all the ice cream. We should all travel together farther than we think we should. 

I once asked some high school students, “What is your best family memory?”  They said: “When my parents surprised us at Christmas and took us to a theme park.”  “When we went to Wyoming.”  Their answers almost all involved family vacations.  I asked my daughters about their favorite family memory.  For our family, our kids will say it was our trip to Hawaii, snorkeling in along the Kona coast with the sea turtles.

And families need to party together.  Someone told me recently:  “I don’t remember the gifts my parents gave me for my birthdays when I was young.  But I remember the parties.”

How much fun are you in your family?  Be crazy. Joke more.  You’ll feel better.  So will the people who live with you.

Set clear goals

 

Set goals, then get busy accomplishing them.   To be happy, human beings need something meaningful to do.  Goals stir us to rich living.  Isaiah 32:8 says, “The noble man makes noble plans, and by noble deeds he stands.” 

One of the goals in our family is that all of us will develop meaningful lifelong interests.  Rosalind plays basketball.  Laurel sings  Linda swims and sews.  I read.  These things make us happy.

Evidence suggests that few families make “noble plans.”  George Barna reports that only 4 percent of  families have goals.  Perhaps many of us don’t plan because we are naively hoping that the things we want for ourselves and our kids will just happen spontaneously or naturally, like growing wisdom teeth or getting pimples.  But good things don’t always come to those who wait.

Charles Shedd  has written some great books on parenting and marriage.  In his book You Can Be a Great Parent! Charlie explains how he and his wife set clear financial goals to guide their relationships with their teenage children.

“By your junior year in high school, we want you to manage yourself financially.”

 “By driver’s-license age, we want you in your own car.”

Setting goals promotes teen responsibility.  Such an approach could make for some very successful young people.

What about some spiritual goals?  Here’s a simple one:  I will talk to my kids about God.The church isn’t responsible for our children’s relationship with God.  We, as parents, are responsible for our kids’ spirituality.  I’ve had a great time with my daughter, Laurel, reading and discussing Old Testament stories about Ruth, Esther, David, and Elisha.

How about goals related to productivity?  Here is one:  I will teach my children how to work hard.  I will gift my children with chores.  Why?  Because if my children learn how to work hard, they will be wanted.  And being wanted is part of being happy.

Catch happiness, it’s hereditary. And then pass it on to your kids.

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