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Julie, a working mother.
As I share my children’s journey from the mysteries of infancy through their teenage anxieties, longing for the day when they will become happy young adults I realise that I need that fourfold Salesian balance in my life.
I want my children to feel sure they belong and to know I love them, and are safe. But, I also need to know that I belong, I am loved and I can be myself too. I can’t sink all of me into the children because I know I would start to look for the things I need from them rather than my adult friends and partner. I need to belong to a wider group of friends, if I am to be healthy for my children. I am very careful not to burden them with my worries and uncertainties. I also need to belong enough to my own family to have the luxury of a bad day myself and still feel I belong. As the children grow older I would expect the “give and take” of family life to happen more. The trouble is that we all seem to want to have our bad days on the same day or have so many that there doesn’t seem to be a day when everyone shares that sense of belonging. On the other hand I do know that family disagreements can also be a form of intimacy. Belonging doesn’t usually mean everything feels cosy together.
I know that learning is something that happens when you bring up a family. I have learnt so much. I don’t mean about nappy rash, measles and child psychology, I mean I have learnt so much about me. Looking at my children is like looking in a mirror, I see so much of myself reflected in them. Sometimes I look with pride, but there are things in them that worry me because I know they have come from me. Someone once said that the apple never falls far from the tree and watching the family grow up has got me reflecting deeply on my own strengths and weaknesses. For example I’ve got this thing about always making the place tidy for visitors. I get so annoyed if it’s messy. Last week my eldest said, “Stop worrying Mum about those crumbs on the carpet, its you they’ve come to see, not the house”. I stopped in my tracks because I had said more or less the same thing to my mother thirty years ago. Somehow I had lost my own wisdom and a teenager was handing it back to me. It’s almost like growing up again, but I have to let my children teach me. For me that is part of being a Salesian parent and I find the fourfold balance helps to make sense of my family and what happens to me as I struggle with it. |
