The Rewritten Life by LaGrone Jessica;

Author:LaGrone, Jessica;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abingdon Press
Published: 2017-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Passing on Traditions

When we’re little, our parents seem like know-it-alls. They are the ones in control. They seem to hold all the cards, and they always know what they’re doing. Imagine my surprise when I became a mom myself to learn that when they hand you your baby for the first time, they don’t hand you the secrets that all parents know, the instructions for what to do at every moment, or the answers to all the questions your children will ask.

On the first night home from the hospital with our first baby, I kicked all the relatives out of the house, thinking I had it all under control, imagining our sweet little family of three bonding all alone together. Let’s just say that night convinced me of how much I had to learn.

The surprises definitely didn’t end in the newborn phase. Lately I’m baffled that I thought parenting one tiny baby was so difficult. Now that he has grown into the little boy trying to run our household and annoy his little sister, taking care of one tiny baby seems like a piece of cake! Someday I will have two teenagers and I’m sure I’ll look back and wonder what all the fuss was about when they were little.

Parenting is not for the faint of heart! Running a multimillion-dollar corporation, or a country, is less challenging on some days (not to mention nights) than raising children.

Not only do our children start out in the world physically helpless, dependent on us for their needs of nourishment and safety and shelter; they also are a behavioral and social blank slate. They need to be indoctrinated into the family’s culture: the expectations of how family members are to treat one another, behave at the table, speak or wait to be called on, and generally function in this particular group of people. We begin teaching our children about the family’s culture from the first day they are born. Even newborns receive messages about how structured or chaotic, loud or quiet, loving or distant the family’s culture will be. Families teach some of the same lessons, but each of our families is unique in some ways, with its own values, standards, and habits that make it special. Your own family, for example, may have communicated the importance of getting an education, appreciating music or nature, serving the poor, or respecting the wisdom of elders.

As our children grow, we teach them that our family culture will sometimes differ from those around us: “We don’t do that in our family” or “If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?” Children are absorbing the culture and beliefs of the family around the table at meals, in the car as they are going places, and often just observing our everyday reactions and responses to the world around us.

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