Traits of a Healthy Family

Today let’s look at some simple lists and then, if you make it through to the end, I’ll offer my own two recommendations for building healthier families.

First, an addition to the Single Parent Family topic from two weeks ago. In Dr. Phil McGraw’s book, Family First: Your Step-by-Step Plan for Creating a Phenomenal Family, he lists

 

The most profound needs of children who are adjusting to life in a single parent family:

1.         Acceptance – They need acceptance. They need to know that they are important, that they are a priority. They will try to gain approval because their sense of belonging to the family has been shattered.

2.         Assurance of Safety – Parents need to go beyond normal efforts to assure their children that although the family has fragmented, their protection is solid. The key is to maintain a normal pace, boundaries, and routines. They need to know that their world is predictable and that it’s not going to change on them.

3.         Freedom from guilt or blame for the divorce – Children often assume the blame for the dissolution of a marriage. Be conscious of this and assure your children they’re blameless.

4.         Need for structure – They need structure more than any other time in their lives, because this is when things seem to be falling apart for them. Enforce discipline consistently and with the right currency for good behavior. They need to see that the world keeps spinning around, and they’re still an integral part of what’s going on.

5.         Need for a stable parent who has the strength to conduct business – Whether or not you feel brave and strong, you have to appear to be the best for your children. Do everything possible to assure them of your strength, and in doing so, you make it possible for them to relax. Show yourself to be a person of strength and resilience.

6.         Need to let kids be kids –

•          Do not burden your children with situations they cannot control. Children should not bear such a responsibility. It will promote feelings of helplessness and insecurity, causing them to question their own strengths and abilities.

•          Do not ask your children to deal with adult issues. Children are not equipped to understand adult problems. Their focus should be on navigating the various child development stages they go through.

 

Now on to all families:

 

In Traits of a Healthy Family by Dolores Curran, she writes that families for ages held traditional goals:

1.         To achieve economic survival.

2.         To provide protection.

3.         To pass on the religious faith.

4.         To educate their young.

5.         To confer status.

 

These goals were largely taken for granted until the 1900s. Today we focus instead on relationship. Curran writes, “We marry so we can love and be loved, not feed and be fed. We join together in a search for intimacy, not protection. We have children so that we can give and be given to, care and be cared about, and share the joys of connecting with posterity, not for old-age bread and bed. Abraham Maslow once observed that we are the first generation in the history of peoples sufficiently beyond sustenance to be able to focus on the quality of our relationships.”

Here’s Curran’s list of the traits of today’s healthy family:

1.         Communicates and listens

2.         Fosters table time and conversations

3.         Affirms and supports one another

4.         Teaches respect for others

5.         Develops a sense of trust

6.         Has a sense of play and humor

7.         Has a balance of interaction among members

8.         Shares leisure time

9.         Exhibits a sense of shared responsibility

10.       Teaches a sense of right and wrong

11.       Has a strong sense of family in which rituals and traditions abound

12.       Has a shared religious core

13.       Respects the privacy of one another

14.       Values service to others

15.       Admits to and seeks help with problems

Not a bad list to strive towards. I think I like it better than Stephen Covey’s but I’m offering his list for those it might appeal to. In Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families, Covey writes:

“Good families—even great families—are off track 90 percent of the time! The key is that they have a sense of destination. They know what the “track” looks like. And they keep coming back to it time and time again.” 

Stephen Covey’s list of habits for effective families includes:

1.         Be Proactive – Become an agent of change in your family

2.         Begin with the End in Mind – Develop a family mission statement

3.         Put first things first – Make family a priority in a turbulent world

4.         Think “Win-Win.” – Move from “me” to “we”

5.         Seek first to understand . . .then to be understood – solve family problems through empathic communication

6.         Synergize – build family unity through celebrating differences

7.         Sharpen the saw – renew the family spirit through traditions

Well done! You made it to the end, so here are

Two of my suggestions for growing a healthier family:

1.         If you know you make unhealthy choices in an area—whether physical, emotional, spiritual or relational—get whatever help you need to become healthier.  A family benefits whenever any member improves.

2.         Spend more relaxed time interacting with your family. Sacrifices you’ll need to make for this to happen (turning off the TV, computer, and cell phone) are worth it. You won’t regret it. In our marriage, from the time our fourth was born, we made time for a date night each week (in order to complete a whole sentence and keep our relationship strong.) During the hectic years with four elementary school daughters, we restricted them each to one activity beyond faith formation classes. Schedules became more complicated with teenagers, but we flexibly enforced Sunday afternoons as family time and, with rare exceptions, expected everyone home for dinners.

I’ve quoted him before, but I still love Matthew Kelly’s concept that the key to thriving relationships is carefree timelessness. By this he means spending time with people without an agenda, simply to enjoy their company. “No matter what the relationship, whether spouse to spouse, parent to child, friend to friend, or person to God, increase carefree timelessness and it will deepen.” *

Does anyone remember the commercial, “Try it, you’ll like it”? Try family carefree timelessness today. You will like it, even if the eight year old stomps his feet and crosses his arms. Or wait, maybe that was the fifteen year old. Secretly, they’ll love having your focused attention.

Blessings on your week!

 

*For more information about carefree timelessness and Matthew Kelly visit www.DynamicCatholic.com