I was about to write "random", but when I saw the word "randmom" it seemed more appropriate, because these are thougts relating to what I've learned from being a mom, a daughter, a wife, a sister, etc.
I've been thinking today about a class I took at BYU's Education Week about dysfunctional families, specifically about the hallmarks of a dysfunctional family, specifically the one that says dysfunctional families have their own particular set of little rules that become a really big deal if transgressed. One of ours was that the children did not use the towels in the guest bathroom....so what??!!
Anyway, what I've been thinking about today in connection with that particular warning sign of a DF is the "We don't do that" syndrome - as if our family is an exclusive little syndicate, just a cut above the normal, more "in the right" than just about everyone else. In actual fact, saying what we do or do not do is more an effort to control, to assure that the expectations of the one in control are carried out.
If we want our children to learn, truly learn good conduct, we might consider asking questions that require the child to ponder her behavior, that require him to make a decision about the course of action he as a person wants to follow. We want to appeal to the child's own sense of right and wrong, not corral her inside our own paradigm. Thus we encourage him to use his own agency, to try it out and to find it real, to discover that agency is the avenue to truth, to meaning, to fulfillment.
"And that's all I have to say about that." Today anyway.
As one who is slowly shedding the DF-imposed paradigms I grew up with and finding the REAL reason for doing things, this post reminded me of a quote that resonates with me:
ReplyDelete"It is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason."
~Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley