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Nurturing The Family Unit | |
In her book, The Art of the Fresh Start, Glenna Salisbury begins her acknowledgment with a memorable phrase. She says, "Love fires my life and I have been surrounded by an abundance of supply of this precious commodity." She is referring largely to her family. Unfortunately, many people aren't having such an experience. Moreover, unless you've been working in the far reaches of Antarctica for the last several decades, you may have noticed fundamental changes in families all around you. The once‑traditional single bread‑winner family, where the mother stays at home and raises two children is all but a memory. Today this structure represents less than seven percent of all households. The Data Is In Young boys and girls grow up with the best chance of succeeding in life when they have two loving, caring parents. Certainly, a single parent raising children can do a wonderful job. Many single parents perform everyday acts of heroism when you consider all that they do. Suppose you are married and have children, or are married and will have children, were married and have children, or will be married and contemplate having children sometime in the future. With that in mind, what kind of family goals do you have and what type of goals might be appropriate for the whole family, i.e., where every member gets to offer input? An Interrelationship Many of the goals you have for your family life are likely to be interrelated with the other major goal areas of your life. For example, one of your goals might be to provide for your children's education, buy a new home, and be able to retire with grace and ease when the time comes. Any financial goals you choose to pursue for you and your family need to be initiated as early as possible. All benefits, including compound interest, accumulating principal, even the discipline to start saving and investing in this manner, are all facilitated when you begin at as young an age as possible. If your child is in grade school now, and you want to be able to send him to college, it will be much easier if you start early. If your child is thirteen years old and you have five years to save, in order to accumulate a given sum you'll have to put away three times or more the amount than you would if you had started when your child was age three. Hey, it's just the way time and money work. A More Active Interest Suppose your goal is to take a more active interest in your family's activities. This means spending more time with them, actually conveying your interest and being a good listener. Many people say they want to be more involved with their family; they want to spend more time with their son; they want to attend their daughter's recital. The reality for too many parents, however, is much different. If they're lucky, they catch the last ten minutes of the recital, spend a scant three minutes per day actually listening to their spouse, barely know their son, and so on. Is any of this slightly familiar to you? The key to pursuing goals in a variety of areas is balance. Nowhere is this more clear than in pursuit of family goals, because your family members are more likely than others to let you know when you're not upholding your word. When Are We Going to Get There? Another common goal area is family vacations. How often would you like to go away with your family? Once a year, twice a year, quarterly, monthly, perhaps even bi‑weekly? Suppose your goal is to take a extended vacation of between three and six days quarterly. Perhaps during each of the eight other months in which this time away is not taken, you also seek to go on at least one weekend venture. Reaching this goal would involve a good deal of planning‑‑making reservations, coordinating schedules, allocating funds, ensuring that projects and tasks at work are taken care of well in advance of departure dates, and coordinating your children's academic schedules and other responsibilities accordingly. Family Dynamics In many respects, how your family operates is representative of how your life operates. Do you want your children to greet you enthusiastically when they come back from visiting friends, or some after school activity? If they don't regularly do this, then you might want set a goal of greeting them daily, or at some other interval, with open arms when you return from work or time away. Assuming that you've married the right person, if he or she hasn't been responsive lately, perhaps it's because you haven't been communicative. In essence, when you draw up a list of the things that aren't necessarily "working" in your family, and hence those areas for which you choose to establish goals, often what you find is that your own behavior and mindset are what Need to be changed first. Modern psychology holds that you can't change someone else's behavior. As much as you think you can motivate and inspire somebody to do something, all you can do is plant the seed and hope that it grows. To influence another person, or more specifically, to get someone to change, the seeds of change or the desire to move have to already reside in that person. Thus, it's a tough task to get anybody else to revise his or her approach to life. Changes Within You have nearly unlimited leeway when it comes to making changes within. As you've already learned, you have the opportunity at any time to set goals unlike those you've ever set before. You have the opportunity to set goals that enable you to head in an entirely new direction. Denis Waitely, in The Psychology of Winning, says that while you never outgrow certain types of behaviors that were established within you when you were very young, you can uncover new directions in which to move. Think of yourself in a vice that leaves you very little room for maneuvering. Trying to move left or right is futile, but you can move up and down quite freely due to the fashion in which the vice is constructed. Maybe you'll never be the type of father who comes home at the end of the day with boundless energy, all smiles and hugs and ready to play with your children until their bedtime. However, even if you've been a stick in the mud to this point, there's certainly some room for you to expand your range of behaviors with your children. Perhaps you can play some of their favorite table games with them. Perhaps you can engage in riddles, storytelling, or something they enjoy, and that will spark laughter and mirth. | |
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