A long time ago, children played role playing games while climbing on gravel piles wherein one might be Superman and another Wonder Woman. In the course of acting out this very physical drama, children worked their bodies while they worked out the moral equations that would eventually govern their lives. Nowadays, they watch hours of television depicting wealthy teenagers complaining about the inadequacy of $50,000 sixteenth birthday party or watch uneducated punks from New Jersey act like they were just shot out of the ass of a double wide. On the surface, our children are watching television like children of a century ago might have watched monkeys at the zoo. In the beginning of the reality TV viewing experience there might be some recognition of the base vulgarity of people behaving badly. But subliminally, they are identifying with the behavior they see and it is informing their development as people. One of the greatest detriments of the junk media era is that it has made being common and undignified chic. If you do not think this is happening, check in on your child’s Facebook page. There you will see the imitation of sorts of behaviors that have been adopted simply by being immersed in the media barrage. One of my personal favorites is the wealthy children at prep-schools how take dozens of pictures of themselves flashing their version of gang signs. For a humorous parody of this phenomenon see Billy Reid’s video White Chicks and Gang Signs on YouTube at http://bit.ly/nE7srg.
If Johnny isn’t already an idiot because he has traded most of his real life experience and the coping skills that come with it for near total immersion in junk media, then the nearly random life choice patterning he is doing during this immersion will surely finish him off. Employers across the United States are reporting that the crop of young job applicants hitting the market are remarkably unprepared to be hired and hold a job. In my own experience as the co-owner of a small company, I have noticed that an inordinate number of job applicants under thirty, with some notable exceptions, have no work ethic, no ability to apply themselves to tasks with which they are less than enthused and have a sense of entitlement that makes one wonder how Paris Hilton could have so many brothers and sisters. But that’s the point. She was one of the many models of behavior that informed this generation.
Children emulate the story they live in. If that is a tale of ignorant people living together in a house and treating each other poorly, then that is the narrative that begins to shape their own story. What is the story told around the campfire in your family? Is it a tabloid tale of pop-stars acting like jerks or the saga of ordinary people of great commitment preventing the self-annihilation of the human race? You are what you eat and you will be what you think. Eating junk food will make you sick and thinking junk thoughts will make foolish.
Parents establish the narrative of a family and in so doing become the most important role models that their children will have. This is hardly news. What most parents do not always manage well, however, is the quality of the family narrative. It is often an erratic and inconsistent story with no clearly identified message. And sometimes it is just a story because it is not the script for parental behavior. Everyone is shaped by the cultural conversation that they are in. If you are a sports fanatic, sports culture will ultimately influence your personality. You might be more likely to be competitive and take an analytical view of personal performance, for example. The story of your family and what it stands for is the most important of these cultural conversations because it the one closest to where you live. In fact, it is where you live.
If you want to provide a positive influence on your children, you do not need to work on them, you need to work on you. If you want them to be generous, then you must be generous and speak of the merits of generosity. If you want them to be hard working, then you must be hard working and speak of the merits of hard work. If you are parked in front of a television, they will be parked in front of an Xbox. If you are obsessed with your self-image, your child will be vain. The biggest problem that most parents have is not that they miss what is going on with their kids, but rather, that they miss what is going on with themselves.
I have two children. My children grew up in a martial arts dojo when they were very young and in two separate households. In one, their mother worked for the Archdiocese of St. Louis and in the other their father was the head of a Buddhist sangha. Both of their parents were attorneys. Both parents were committed to community services and personal evolution. The overwhelming message that my children heard throughout their childhood was “work hard and serve others”.
My son currently studies at Harvard and my daughter studies at Smith College. My son is in a post-baccalaureate program and is applying to medical schools. He has no intention of being a plastic surgeon. He is interested in emergency medicine and would like to someday become part of Doctors Without Borders. My daughter won a fellowship to study in Washington D.C. and is serving as an intern in the United States Senate after spending the summer as an intern with the Children’s Defense Fund. She believes in government for the people and is willing to wade into the morass to make a difference. My son spent most of 2009 in New Orleans rebuilding houses as a work crew leader for Hurricane Katrina victims. My daughter has volunteered countless hours to Catholic Charities Legal Assistance Ministry and has worked as a counselor for the YMCA. A couple of years ago, when they were both home for the summer, I noticed that neither one of them was ever around on Tuesday nights. Once I noticed the pattern, I asked them where they were going and they told me that they were tutoring children at a local homeless shelter. That’s how they spend their summer vacations. These are the things that they have chosen on their own.
Van and Emma are by far my greatest heroes, bar none. In our family, we do not consider people on permanent vacation or those who smother themselves with opulence to be worthy of anything but our pity. In our story, the protagonist is leery of vanity and struggles against self-delusion. I have nothing much left to say to my children other than that I love them and that I respect them very much. I even sometimes find myself wishing to be like them from time to time. What else can I possibly contribute to these two fine young people that they have not already claimed for themselves?
A friend of mine who is a retired social worker and therapist, mentioned to me recently that how these kids turned out was hardly an accident. They are the product of two parents that lived inside a meditation on what it means to be a useful human being. My kids played video games and watched junk TV, but never without being questioned as to whether or not this was good for them. My kids ducked out on chores at home and tried to spend most of their time surfing the internet and texting with their friends, but not without someone pointing out that this was not living. They were required to carry their share of the load that their parents carried as we all served our various communities. They grew up with two religions that occasionally conflicted, but they were required to respect both while asked to think through spiritual issues for themselves. They were trapped in a divorce for a number of years and saw their parents struggle to remain civil. They had to learn that even people of great compassion and conviction are still human and must work at overcoming their own nastiness. These were the facts of their lives, but they were woven into a narrative of perseverance and the commitment to stand in compassion that makes it a story of victory instead of stark ugliness. In short, they were compelled to bear witness to a struggle for the higher ground in the midst of the basest of human conflict and struggle. They were not sheltered from it. They were asked to confront it.
Far from being coddled, these young people had their hearts ripped out by domestic conflict at home, and the ravages of poverty and despair in the communities that their parents and they themselves came to serve. They have looked into the eyes of homeless children, murderers, drug addicts and thieves. They have taken teachings from the Dalai Lama and heard Pope John Paul II say mass. They have sat with nuns who have sat with prisoners on death row. They know what hell looks like. They have been helping people dig their way out of it since they were old enough to walk. But in the stories that were told to them about these things, there was always a suggestion as to why they are here, what they are about and what they might do about it. This telling of our story as we made our way through our lives provided guidance without insistence that has helped them choose how to color their character.
I would love to lay claim to causing or inspiring what they have done so far, but if I had anything to do with it at all, it was in the form of surrounding them with stories of heroes and warriors who, at the risk of their lives, sought to better humanity. They grew up with hearing of Martin Luther King and the Buddha, Gandhi and Jesus. They grew up surrounded by an army of priests, lamas, monks and nuns all deeply engaged in the war on ignorance, hate and greed. They grew up being taught to fight injustice and stand for those who cannot stand for themselves. They were spoken of as characters in an ongoing heroic saga that suggested to them that the day would come that they would be expected to take their place among the lotus warriors. Over the course of their young lives, they have seen ten thousand small examples of the fight for the dignity of humanity and they have, indeed, now come to take their place among those of us who truly give a damn.
The story of your family does not simply unfold with the passing of events. It is authored. It is the intentional interpretation and reinterpretation of the meaning of events so as to state and restate these that are the deepest commitments of a family. The tale of the tribe is one of the oldest ways to use the collective wisdom of a group as guide through the uncertain territory of life. But to have a successful family narrative, you have to know what you stand for. Like any good tale, good writers know that it helps to think a story through before they tell it.
