19 January, 2025

A formative family life!

I sometimes wish that the garden around our home has a permanent look like what is above!





The reality is that flowers too have their life time of presence, after which they whither and fade away. When I notice that the flowers become dry and fall off to join the soil beneath, they do so leaving a message of transitoriness! What is temporal has many limitations. However, the memory of flowers last as they brought colour, grace and beauty during their life time. The insects, bees  and butterflies thrived on them. On some occasions the insects feed on the buds, denying them the chance to become a flower. Some of the flowers become ornamental in our vase of flowers in the drawing and dining rooms. 

Our domestic helper waters them every day. The de-weeding and manuring also take place every month. The rose bush would need pruning at least twice a year.  

The presence of flowers in a garden is an announcement of a healthy integration between the soil and the weather conditions. 

During a conversation on on-line with a group, I felt the heaviness some carry upon their hearts about unsettling situations in life. 

I realise how some situations have a demanding effect that resilience to respond becomes not compatible with the demand. It is like a flower looking dry because the plant is not watered. 

Every family needs upbuilding for relationships within the family to be refreshing and intimate!

Often families turn to entertainment on the media to be a pacifier to diffuse the daily demands on them. The entertainment can have a transient effect of release from the heaviness. 

I wish families can be helped to find a rhythm and regularity in practicing  some rituals that  the communicative atmosphere in the home becomes therapeutic and supportive!

I know of a family who has a dedicated family conversation time every week when the husband and wife sit together to look back over the events of the week and schedule the activities of the coming week for themselves and children! Apart from this, they have a separate time of 'auditing the week' with their two children every week. It is a listening time  for parents to come closer to the inner world of happenings in the lives of their pre-teenage children. 

The challenge in every family for parents is to grow while their children grow, develop and change to be adolescents and adults. There is a concurrent journey parents ought to make to keep accompanying their growing children to feel near to them and retain their children to trust the parents as their confidants. 

The parenting skills which we need to accompany infants, toddlers and pre-school children are at one level; when they become middle schoolers and pre-teenage children, the parenting skills ought to become corresponding to the emotional aspirations of children. 

There is a need for parents to apologise to children for being impulsive, threatening, and imposing without feeling  the experiences of emotional ups and downs which their children encounter. Sometimes children suffer silently. Even when children have difficult dreams or appear moody,  we can inadvertently overlook the turbulence deep within children. 

There are two concurrent growing processes in the family life. The husband and wife are on a journey to become 'one' from the time they are married. The parents  are involved in practicing co-parenting.  These two experiences make a home, transformed into a formative ambience for parents and  children. 

A family has the opportunity to influence their children formatively till they are young adults! They are foundational years of a child's life. 

I have come across an inscription on the walls of some homes, 'A praying family stays together'! That brings a home to live by giving, forgiving and experiencing healing. 

To make a home seasoned with joy, communication and trustful relationships, the parents have to come to own their calling to be 'builders of their home'!

We need elders to be 'Friends of families' to upbuild family life! A supportive family offers their children a home they would treasure!


M.C.Mathew(text and photo)



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