Contact and Belonging

It seems kinda weird to be writing a post about parenting since I have no experience whatsoever, besides observing my own parents. But then again, isn't the way we learn how to parent from our parents? Unless we actively change what we disliked growing up we probably pick up their habits more than we realize anyway. 

Something my dad did that was really confusing was letting me choose. When I was about four I remember it was a Sunday afternoon which I knew was a day we spent as a family after church but I saw the neighborhood kids outside playing. I asked him if I could go out to play and his confusing response was, "do whatever you want to do but I'd rather you didn't". I don't know if it's because I'm the youngest of four and they just, like, gave up or if that was some sort of reverse psychology but that's kind of how the rest of my childhood went. Now it's up to me if that's something I want to carry that on to my kids. That's scary! I still don't know if that worked out for me! In that instance, it worked for my dad though. I think my four-year-old moral conscience was too conflicted so I didn't end up going out.

On the other hand, something I am determined to change is being able to express love comfortably. It's just something that we did not do. I'm really not sure about my dad's childhood but that's how it was for my mom too. Her parents were a bit distant in that way as well. In one of her journals, she asks herself why it was so hard to put an arm around my sister. It may sound silly but it really is uncomfortable for us. Not because it wouldn't be nice but because neither of us was raised in a family where that was normal. I don't think anyone is to blame. I just know I want to change that. 

Having contact and a sense of belonging was something we focused on in class this week. We talked about how they figured that out partly from the orphanage where one side of kids was thriving and the other was sick and even dying. Eventually, they figured out that there was a janitor that would hold each baby on the thriving side. That is amazing to me. It makes me wonder if I would've been a more open person today if that was more present growing up. 

Since mentioning orphanages, parents, and belonging I couldn't stop thinking about these three Ukrainian orphan siblings. Every summer the orphanages there close like school and the kids get sent out to hosts until they open back up in the fall (if they don't get a host they get sent to a government camp which sounds real suspicious to me). Since they're staying with my cousins for the summer they came to our family reunion. How despairing would that be? Orphans who don't speak any English at a family reunion. From what I could see, they didn't seem bothered and did their thing together. But I can't imagine how hard that could be for so many different reasons. Their sense of belonging that weekend must have felt so inadequate and unfair. That's probably why one of them was so excited when my brother-in-law started kicking his soccer ball around with him. Having one person be interested in the same thing despite a language barrier must have felt like a miracle. 

I'm not really sure where I'm going here but I guess maybe what I'm saying is that it's important for a child from any family to receive love whether it's through putting that arm around a shoulder or participating in something they are interested in. How they receive love will end up influencing how they give love, so it's important that parents and adults teach that.