Still stuns me that I incorporated a lesson on my very own family dynamics into teaching a high school health class. Who ever would have figured such a opportunity would ever come my way? Everyone should be so blessed.
Awesome, taking my lineage back to my grandparents to show how circumstance & the characteristics of surviving parents profoundly affected my mother & father, then how the two of them affected my own generation, and ultimately the various ways we (alas, including me) touched the next generation. Fascinating to think that Gar's & Gran's idiosyncracies might affect Piper & Riley.
Am always taken aback when my oldest brother rips into Dad for his failings as a father. Hey, we all do the best we can with what we've got. Put failings in context. To his dying day, my father believed his own father's philandering utterly broke his mother's heart & lead to her death soon after giving birth to a baby that died before her. I explained this to my class, drawing the first part of the geneology to show Gar & Lillian (deceased when Dad was in his early teens; a year later, Gar married his mistress) and Benjamin (deceased when Mom was 19) & Rena. We talked about how my surviving grandmother seemed to lack the slightest connection between what served her best interests & what was outrageously bad behavior. About how coming from the upbringing they'd had, both Mom & Dad were primed to give the each other the love & support neither had experienced in their earlier years - and neither was in the least way prepared to be a parent. Loving? Absolutely. But without a clue about how to nurture & guide their children into independence, let alone interdependence.
Next, we discussed my generation. My sibs gave me plenty of material. And just because I didn't have children of my own didn't mean I didn't get my own time at bat for hitting a home run with the next generation or (more often than not) striking out.
Through the years, the classes - at-risk students, kids you warned, "I'll call your parole officer" instead of "your parents" - ate it up. Being honest about my own traits & their negative impact intrigued them. Real life.
We looked at communication patterns, at how Mom & my sibs triangulate while I am to the point. What especially grabbed their attention were the times I'd present our opposite ways of dealing with things, then ask, "Which is correct?" Answer - they both are. Different doesn't mean that one or the other is wrong. That just boggled their minds.
Can see their faces as I describe my apparent impact on my nieces & nephews. Sadly, not good. Which helps me feel compassion for all the messed up ancestors that came before me. Bet they did their best, too. Sometimes - often - your best just doesn't cut it. Could be because it sort of stinks or because you don't understand the actual situation or because how you process stuff is different from how others handle it.
That last one can be devastating. Doesn't matter how clearly you express yourself or commit yourself to hearing the other person, if you use the same words but in different contexts, nothing is going to get across or be understood.
My hope was that my students would see the humanity of each of my family members & realize that we can't blame those who came before or each other for our problems, because they probably had their own challenged circumstances.
Always ended up the lesson talking about how our families provide our first laboratory for better understanding human nature, that we are meant to learn from them, replicating in our own way what works, doing our best to heal what seems broken, and taking responsibility for what could affect others & other generations.
How many people get to look at their families dispassionately, a lesson unit on geneology? For me, it was some kind of wonderful!
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