Family Matters: How To Strengthen Your Family (Without Paying for Therapy or Changing Your Lives)

Family Matters:

How To Strengthen Your Family (Without Changing Your Lives or Paying for Therapy)

Brenda McCreight, PhD

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 Brenda McCreight

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Family Matters:

How To Strengthen Your Family (Without Changing Your Lives or Paying for Therapy)

We live in one another’s shelter – an old Irish saying

Introduction

Change and Fear

It’s spooky out there. The world isn’t safe, my country isn’t safe, my home isn’t safe. After living in some kind of denial for a long time, I have finally accepted that bad things don’t just happen to other people in other countries. Bad things can happen to me, to my family, to my home. Bad things can happen to my neighbors, to my friends, to my close and distant cousins, and bad things can happen to you. That’s right, the world is full of dangers that you and I can’t control. I can’t protect my children from the big events that happen outside our front door or from the global politics and the economic trends that seem to keep swinging at us.

You may have known this for years. Maybe you’ve prepared your family to get ready for the worst. Perhaps you are living in a commune in the woods, raising your home schooled children on organic veggies, always prepared for a breakdown in the order of things. Or, you may have saved enough money so that you can make a run for it if the going gets really tough – and maybe you have even figured out where you can run to. Or, you may have been diligent about paying off that mortgage, saving for rainy days, and planning ahead so that your family will not be financially or emotionally devastated by unexpected events. Or, maybe you are like me – only recently waking up to this fact and you are totally unprepared for anything.

Wiser Ancestors

My great-grandmother understood the way of life better than I did. She knew that she could not protect her children. Her world was not the huge, impersonal, global sprawl of today. Her world was personal, small, and basically confined to the farm on which she raised eighteen children (without such necessities as two ply toilet tissue, running water, good ethnic restaurants, and, worst of all, no cheap Tuesday movies). Her boundaries stretched only as far as the small community in which she bought what the farm could not provide for the children. Still, her world contained daily worries and fears.

My great-grandmother worried that winter ear infections would leave her children deaf. She worried that her sons would get caught in the wheels of the tractors during haying season and lose an arm, or a leg - or a life. She worried that the big copper pot that was always bubbling on the wood stove would scald the hands of one of the ever present toddlers that she kept in sight while cooking all day for the farmhands, as well as the children. She worried that her daughters would marry men who were like my great grandfather – full of talk and promises, but empty when it came to initiative or work. And, she worried that she would lose her health, leaving her family to collapse without the guidance and stability she provided.

How I Was Fooled

I did not have the same things to worry about as my great-grandmother. I have grown up in an era when there is a medicine for everything. Earaches are cured quickly and easily with a simple prescription from the doctor at the local clinic. I don’t worry about what my younger children are up to when out of my sight, because, unlike my great-aunts and uncles who were expected to be completely self-reliant by mid-childhood, my children rarely go anywhere without qualified adult supervision prior to reaching their teen age years.

I am pretty sure my teens are safe from industrial accidents because, so far, none of my teens have felt called upon to associate themselves with the hard work that is associated with large machinery – or even an electric lawn mower. Even if they actually wanted to do hard, physical work, I would not dream of letting my sons operate heavy equipment, I don’t even let them ride their foot pedaled scooters around the driveway without their helmets securely on their heads and their pads wrapped tightly around their expensive, brand name jeans.

And, unlike my great grandmother’s girls, my daughters are growing up to be well educated and self-supporting, aware that they can make their own choices in life. I am not naïve, I know that my daughters may make a few mistakes along the way, but I also know that society is more tolerant of mistakes today, and there are many services to help them rectify problems they create.

My friends and I hope to marry for life, but believe, unlike my great-grandmother, that we can leave if it doesn’t work out. We are able to seek counseling for marriages that are faltering, and we can support ourselves and our children financially if we have to (okay, so we can’t do it quite so well without a partner, but we can do it).

For a long time, I believed that as long as I fed my children enough fruit and vegetables, read with them every night, and provided loving guidance and effective discipline, then my children, my family, would be safe.

Why I Wrote This Book

What I believed was wrong. Events of recent years have forced me to accept that I need to be as worried as my great-grandmother. I was silly to think that I had more control over the safety of my children than she had over hers. Political terrorists, scientists who manipulate the basic structure of life, new diseases that seem to crop up out of nowhere, meteors flying in from out space, are all beyond my control.

I put automatic parental controls on the television to keep out the pornography, but the nightly situation comedies challenge my moral values to the hilt and present a world of changing partners and casual sex that belies everything I want my children to believe (I know, I should get rid of the television if I am that unhappy with it, but I am not yet ready to sacrifice my weekly hit of Lost, even for my children).

It seems that between my unwillingness to change my lifestyle, and the growing threats in the world, I can’t keep much of anything from seeping through the door jam of my life and harming us.

When I realized that I am as powerless as my great-grandmother at protecting my family, I looked around at how others try to protect theirs. I thought of moving to an isolated spot, preferably in a sunny climate and with long, pebble free beaches. But, those places are called resorts! There are plenty of mountains near where I live. I could take my family and build a log house without a computer, without a television, without a telephone. But, those kinds of places also have no movie theaters, no washers and dryers, and no Starbucks. These are staples in my life and I will not willingly give them up (although I greatly admire people who have done so – I nominate them all for hero status).

So, the questions became – if I’m not willing to make major lifestyle changes, and, if I can’t protect my family from the dangers outside of our home, then how can I make us strong enough to adapt to, and deal with, the challenges that may come our way? How can I raise my children to be strong for each other in adulthood, and to have the skills to create their own strong families?

Where To Look?

First, I looked to my great-grandmother for ideas on how to make my family strong in the presence of dangers. She did not have my choices and she did not have my networks of support. Yet, she took what little she had and forged a family that knew how to love, as well as how to argue. I saw this woman as my best role model because I had spent my early childhood surrounded by the proof of her success at creating a strong family.

My great-aunts and great-uncles, and their children and grandchildren, all got together regularly, right until their deaths. I saw that they were kind, loving people who turned first to each other when they had sorrow or fears. They knew that family was what mattered in the tough times. Through their relationships with each other, they found the strength to deal with the outside world. I also saw that they were not perfect, that they lived a wide variety of lifestyles, and they did not all create families that neatly fit today’s idea of functional.

My great-grandparents, although married for sixty-six years, did not like each other, and even my grandmother (the oldest of their eighteen offspring) could only vaguely recall seeing her parents speak with each other. I recall that my great aunts and great uncles were sometimes crabby, sometimes demanding, sometimes intolerant, often judgmental. A couple of the uncles had reputations of being hard drinkers well into their later years, and one of the great aunts had emotional problems (and this wasn’t even one the aunts who were married to the drinking uncles), and as my generation was growing up, many of my cousins, and myself, struggled with the challenges and temptations that life presents the young.

Yet, for the children of my great grandmother, their faith in the strength of family never wavered. When their friends deserted, when their businesses failed, when their sons went off to war, when their daughters were unexpectedly pregnant, even into their final years of life, it was their family that mattered to them as they sought the shelter that their sibling and parental bonds provided.

The families that descended from my great-grandmother have never been asked to be on posters ads for functional families. But, they also didn’t fall apart when times got tough. The children have not been left to fend for themselves or become wards of the state, and today we continue the tradition of turning to each other when shelter is needed.

And Today’s Questions Are…

I was given the gift of growing up in a strong family by my great-grandmother. She was my role model and she set our standards. But, simply following her style was not going to be enough to make my family strong in today’s world. She lived a long time ago, and the world has changed.

I wanted to know –

How do I keep my family strong in today’s world?

What can I do to teach my children to rely on each other without being overly dependent?

How can I help them be the kind of brothers and sisters who can give lifelong shelter to one another as well as provide it?

How can I help them to create strong families for themselves so that they can raise their own children with some degree of confidence that when all else fails, they still have each other?

Seeking Answers

In order to find out how to make a family strong in today’s world, I decided to start asking people. I asked the audiences at my behavior management presentations and older child adoption workshops to think about whether they considered themselves to be part of a strong family, and for those who did, I asked permission to interview them. I asked friends, family, and acquaintances to spread the word, and I began interviewing people by phone, by email, and in person. I did not attempt to define strong family. I let the people who came forward do that. After all, what constitutes a strong family relationship to one person might be different to another.

For example, some families might perceive themselves to be strong because they can let go of family members and allow each to pursue wildly different life paths; others might feel they are strong because of the way they hang on to each other and find comfort in their similar values and shared lifestyles. Some might feel they are strong because their parents stayed together, others might understand family strength as knowing when and how to break apart.

As well, I did not ask that any of these families fit a particular definition of family or functional. Some had been divorced more than once, others had fought addiction problems, some were struggling financially, some were fearing their marriages might be on the last mile. I interviewed two parent heterosexual families, single parent families, lesbian and gay families, foster families, adoptive families, biological families, soon-to-be families, long established families. I interviewed families in which religion was a basic foundation of daily life, and families in which religion played no part all.

After I completed enough interviews to begin finding themes, I began sifting through them to organize and priorize what people had told me. The themes, and their importance to the people who participated, were not difficult to find and you will read about them in the rest of this book. The thread that tied them together, however, was the belief that in times of trial, they could turn to each other.

How to Use This Book

This book is written so that you can print it out and then pick it up and read parts of it in the few minutes you have between putting the laundry in the wash and packing your briefcase. Find a section that interests you, read it, and let it settle into your mind, finding its own route to meaning and usefulness in your life.

You can also share parts of it with family members who have not yet come on board with your plan to strengthen your family. Each section is short so that when you hand the book over ("Honey, I just need you to read