30th June 2023 !

 Three important experiences converged yesterday, the 30th June 2023!

I was blessed to enter the seventy-fifth year of my life's journey!

I was enabled to complete forty years of professional life in child development service !

I spotted a common five ring butterfly in our garden!

I have spotted five ring Butterflies only occasionally in our garden. The four rings ones are more common. 

I wondered as to, what might be its significance for me! 

It is a small butterfly measuring about 32 to 48 mm in its height! Its spectacular design, colours, and appearance stand out! Small is beautiful. 

They are often found in the interface between forests and human habitation 

I realised that most of life is behind me and what is ahead are few years, all being well!

To be able to see the coming years as an opportunity to be engaged in small matters in the interface between parents and children is what  comes to me as a calling!

I have had time to dwell on the theme of this interface between parents and children for a few years now. 

 

The home is the interface between parents and children.

How to make  a home richer for parents and children engaged me  in the recent three years. 

It was during the COVID pandemic between 2019 and 2022 we witnessed parents and children, finding themselves choked by being confined to their homes, resulting in them gravitating to spend many hours watching TV or using the mobile phones for entertainment! This occupied hem but distanced them from each other.  

The homes got reduced to entertainment places. 

What then is the purpose of a home when we view it as an interface between parents and children! Let me suggest three possibilities.

1. A home is a place for parents to grow into their fullness to accompany children from infancy to youthful years. Parenting involves an incremental growing experience to befriend growing and changing children, which calls for Continuing Education in Parenting. The skills needed to be involved with infants, are different from accompanying children of early childhood, mid-childhood, late-childhood, teenage years and youthful years. Do parents take conscious efforts to grow in stature to be competent, in parenting skills corresponding with the transitions in the conduct and character of their children!

2. A home is a place,  where children would want to feel included in the fabric of the home. A home is place of many strands weaving the matrix of a home, in which children participle in a major way. For children to feel that their home is the place of belonging, they need to grow in the feeling of belonging to parents, from whom they receive the pathway for life. So children need Continuing Education in Belonging! It is when they grow in the security of belonging, they feel rooted in values that would form their personhood. 

3. A home is a place of meeting of generations. The grandparents, parents and children are from different generations, which represent different practices culturally, behaviourally, socially and morally! A home can become a melting pot of contradictions or be a meeting place of creative and transformative interactions. So parents and children need Continuing Education in Homemaking! A home is the bedrock of human formation. Every member of a household needs to be on this educational journey, to make a house into a home!

A home is an interface between parents and children through these three dimensions: Continuing Education in Parenting; Continuing Education in Belonging; and Continuing Education in Homemaking !

It was after sighting a small five ring Butterfly in our garden, the above trend of thoughts crossed my mind. That small butterfly is a confluence of colours, designs and patterns. A home is a tapestry of events, experiences, and engagements!

On the first day of the new year in my life, I stand at threshold of my life, looking into the few years ahead, as an opportunity to explore and highlight home as an interface between parents and children!

A small butterfly is abundant in beauty and grace!

So shall each home be !

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)