Listen to thisFamily isn’t just people – it’s love, sharing and listening
Recently I attended the NCFL Families Learning Summit in Washington, D.C., and was reminded again that family involvement, referred to now as family engagement, is the key to raising thriving, healthy and successful children.
I went to the conference to represent San Pedro’s Toberman Neighborhood Center, one of five new national Toyota Families Learning Projects. This new projects cornerstone is family engagement.
A “family” now comes in all shapes and sizes; meaning it may not contain a traditional mother and father in the same home and it probably involves others from close by – the school, the neighborhood, etc.
Growing up in the 1950s myself in an atypical family structure, I always thought I was luckier than my friends and classmates. In my household were my mother and my older brother and younger sister as well as my mother’s sister (my aunt) and my father’s father (my paternal grandfather).
Other members of my family living less than 10 miles away and always present in my life were my father, his lifetime partner, “my uncle,” and my paternal grandmother and stepgrandfather. This was my family – these were the people who helped me grow up, who answered my questions, encouraged me to try new things and who shaped my life.
It wasn’t a typical “Leave it to Beaver” or “Father Knows Best” family. Significantly, it wasn’t who made up my family that was important, but how they guided me and ensured that I knew they loved me. It was their involvement that was critical to my success and happiness in life – not that their “structure” was not traditional.
My family was involved in every aspect of my life and gave me the strong foundation I needed to grow up. My mother taught me to sew, to make a jar of jam, to love great books, to draw and paint. She was my first teacher and she never missed an activity at school. She was my Girl Scout leader and she taught me to find a great bargain.
We did not have a car growing up and as a family we walked to the grocery store with our wagon to get the groceries for the week after searching the ads in the newspaper to make sure we got the best bargains. She always taught me that even though we did not have a lot of money, we could always buy enough so that when we came home we would bake or cook and share what we made with our neighbors who might not be well enough to go to the store that week.
My mother taught me love and compassion for others at a very young age. My siblings taught me the power of compromise, how to play and trust, and how to tie my shoes. They were my best friends and we learned to count on each other. We still do.
My grandfather read stories to us, but even better than reading a book, he would tell us stories – of “the old country,” the small island in Greece that was his birth home.
Every once in a while we would find a note on the kitchen table explaining that grandpa would be gone for a few weeks traveling – he was going “home” – and when he returned he would regale us with his adventures. I would sit for hours while he told me what he had seen and who he had talked to.
My aunt taught me to tell a good joke and how to laugh. She would play games with us and she taught us to dance.
My love of opera, travel, music and all the arts came from my father and uncle – as did my love for diversity and compassion and understanding for all people.
My grandmother shared her love for knitting, gardening, and dogs, actually all animals and nature. She held my first-born son, her great-grandson, and told him how important he was to our family and this world – she was never concerned about his disabilities, only his presence and the fact that she knew he would always be important in our family.
My step-grandfather, a whiz at math, sat with me as I studied for college entrance exams and showed me with his slide rule how to find the answers to complex problems. He died before I graduated from college – but I know it was his involvement that sustained me later in my statistics courses in my doctoral program. I heard him in my memory, reminding me that checking my answers gave me another chance to see how I solved the problem so I could tell someone else who needed to understand.
In the end, it was my family members’ investment in me – their involvement and engagement in my life and my day-to-day activities – that mattered the most. They were all my teachers and they each brought to my life important wisdom and life lessons.
While at the National Center for Families Learning Summit, I was fortunate to hear from families that had participated in literacy programs and who had achieved their goals despite challenges and, in some cases, overwhelming obstacles. They had with them, for their presentation, members of their families – foster parents, mentors, siblings, spouses, and dads and moms.
Each told a story of how his or her “family” had supported them by their involvement and their presence. I was reminded again that it is not who is in a child’s or youth’s family that matters – but rather how they are involved, and that they are available and present to teach and guide and share what they have learned.
Family engagement and how the family members are involved together and how they love and support one another are what are most important. A successful future for every child in our community begins with the engagement of their family, whatever the structure of that family is – one parent or two, grandparents or guardians, foster parents or birth parents, siblings or cousins.
Linda Matlock
22 March 2014
