The flourishing family ambience !

 Flowers are more than just colours or fragrances!

They tell the story of the plants which bear them and the soil that nurtures them, the sunshine that feeds them and water that sustains them. They grow in manicured or wild gardens where they are planted. The plants carry the potential to grow and flower in due season. The flowers feed insects with nectar and participate in pollination. They perpetuate and sustain themselves.

In a conversation with a family I understood how their home is naturally conditioned by the needs and aspirations of their children. The week-days have one rhythm and the week ends have another rhythm.  Both parents make an effort to take leave during children's holidays to create another rhythm during the holidays. 

The conversation proceeded to give me a surprising state of awareness that this family has in fostering the enlargement of their children by making the home, a place of belonging and upbuilding. Th family has a journal in which the parents and children make entires to share experiences and recollections. This journal currently a designer book has entries from parents and children, sometimes daily or as when they have something that occurred as special. It is a practice for the family to have this journal before them during the Saturday evening family meeting to have longer conversations about what were entered in the journal. They live their memories actively and reflectively. This time of conversation often brings a new level of connections at the family level. Each parent and child makes an entry of the experience of this weekly family conversation in a sentence or through a drawing to summarise the conversation. 

The parents have a separate journal for both their children, which is an open book, accessible to children. The parents make regular entires of comments, appreciation or questions which children can read and add their thoughts. The parents often make their entries related to what they notice in their children and adding compliments and suggestions. Children respond with questions and comments during the Saturday family meeting. For children, the individual journals are a recording of their formative and relational journey which gives them a feed back and affirming direction. 

I was moved to listen to the story of this form of Parental awakening which a creates an environment of trustful and cordial communication between parents and children. 

This form of written journal with drawings and sketching, which the family maintains for parents and children might not be a usual habit. I saw in this practice an imaginative dimension that family carries in its role, as the garden of life for their children, and a learning ground for parents in moderating and modulating parenting practices. 

Flowers flourish because a garden favours it by its homely soil. 

A family flourishes by nurturing children to grow up to be who they are to be! 

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)