Politics, Pekoe, and the Second Decade

Last updated on: April 7, 2016 at 7:48 am by Anne Kennedy

Politics, Pekoe, and the Second Decade 2016-04-07T07:48:48-04:00 Anne Kennedy

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

A long while ago, seemingly years before I had reached the end of what Leila Lawler calls ‘The First Decade’, providence ordained for me to read her piece about ‘The Second Decade’. I should have saved it, and in a different kind of world I would take a few minutes to comb through her archives to find it. It was exactly the kind of jolt I needed to wake me out of the stupor of baby vomit and self pity. What you do in the first decade with your children, however many of them you have, is going to have some kind of effect on what they are like in the second decade. Auntie Leila recommended terrors like Eating Dinner All Together and Talking To Your Husband at the Dinner Table. There were a lot of other important recommendations but those were the two that stuck with me over the years. Those and the niggling thought that life won’t always be the same. Children grow, both in mind and body, and what happens then.

So now we are in the first glimmering moments of the second decade. Our oldest has survived infancy and is the size of a regular person–well, me, so, short. But it’s strange to have a third adult sized person around. She isn’t used to her new dimensions and she crashes into everything. I can see why parents packed off their young daughters to finishing school or lessons of grace. She needs to walk around with a book on her head or something. The sheer size of the children, increasing almost before our eyes, is completely alarming.

But more alarming, though not necessarily in a bad way, is the true, unavoidable realization that family is indeed a communicator of culture. You can’t help it, you’re going to communicate your habits, beliefs, and unquestioned cultural assumptions to your children. Whatever your values are, those will be indelibly marked into the psyche of your child. The trouble for most of us is that what we think we believe and value, and what we actually believe and value, are not always the same thing. I might say I love to read books, but if I am always playing mahjong quietly on my tablet, some small people will understand the great profundity that mother doesn’t actually like to read, she is tired and wants them all to leave her well alone.

This truth, of course, is there in the bible for anybody who wants to read it. The son is the imprint of the father. He will make manifest who the father is and what he does. It doesn’t matter what the father says about himself, or even how he understands his own life and priorities. If he wants to see who he really is, he can look at the life and tastes and priorities of his child and understand far better than filling out little personality tests on Facebook or asking his friends and relations how they experience him.

Veering sharply away from the potential abuses and ugliness that each generation passes on to the next, the reason I know that culture is communicated from the parent to the child whether the parent wants to or not, is because, after a decade of calming and soothing my own soul with pot after necessary pot of tea, and thinking that it was my own thing, because Matt drinks coffee and we live in America and the children are “American”, I have, against really my own will, raised a cohort of children who expect and demand to always be drinking tea. Excuse me while I pause a moment to drink my second cup….

Everyday around five o’clock there is shouting and banging and water boiling and I am dragged from my solitary moment of recovering my own sanity after a long day of muscling children through their various intellectual pursuits, and made to sit at our vast dining room table and pour tea into each child’s own carefully selected mug. ‘Does a child need her own peculiarly preferred mug of tea?’ I whisper to myself as I pour. But I myself raise a mighty fuss if I have to drink out of a cup that has not the right shape or feel in the hand. It should be no wonder to me that the children think this pickiness is part of their birthright.

Example number two? Because surely you wanted one more. I like to fancy myself as a secret, emphasis on the secret, political junky. When I read the Internet, it’s mostly funny and profane political blogs, and, because I’m a decent parent, I don’t read them out loud, because, well, I just don’t. But two days ago I forced my second child to come with me to Aldi, because of my poor hurting shoulder, and to my alarm and surprise, the only thing he wanted to talk about was politics. We talked it all the way there, through the store, and back. ‘Oh man,’ I whispered to myself, ‘I have illusions of self control.’

On the one hand, the fact of being who you are and communicating it to your children whether you want to or not, is necessarily terrifying. If you are a very bad person, this will be a bad thing. And who among us is not just a little bit bad, evil even. The sins of the parent go to the child and that’s the way it is. On the other hand, there is grace. The Christian parent who is always drinking from the well of God’s mercy should be somebody who is changing and being remade in the image of the Son. And if that is really going on, the child will experience that profound change first hand. If you begin life as a parent undisciplined, selfish, angry, and addicted to the Internet, but you constantly fling yourself onto the mercy of Jesus, by the time you are ten or fifteen years in, your child will have seen you change into someone better disciplined, less selfish, kinder, and maybe reading an actual book on occasion. The transformation itself will be communicated as part of the cultural identity of the child.

Moreover, the grace of reality means that you don’t really need to set out to be a certain kind of parent and raise your children to be a certain way. You are who you are. You could just show up for your children, moment by moment, not giving way to the existential angst of agonizing over What Kind Of Parent you are. Better a moment of honesty about your true priorities, and repentant leaning on the Holy Spirit to change what what needs to be changed, than trying to organize your child into some kind of desired, but not real, cultural identity.

And on that note, I have to go moan about my shoulder, because it’s that or gently stretching it, and I think we all know which is better.

In conversation with children

Life Going On

Work and the Christian

life with boys

Life with Girls

vanity

Previous Post

April 6, 2016

The Panic Driven Life

Next Post

April 8, 2016 I'm Here for You Facebook: 7 Helpful Hints

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category books Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Children in Conversation culture watch Daily Devotions Demotivations with Anne faith alone for the grandparents GAFCON In conversation with children In the News Kitchen Notes Lambeth Learning Notes Life Going On Men are Human Notes from Home Pictures Reading the Bible Saturday Links Sermons Signs of the Apocalypse The Bad Word Association The Prayer of Jonah Travel Notes Uncategorized Witless Wednesdays Work and the Christian

Select a Month June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 July 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What attitude does Jesus teach toward children?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Send them away Welcome them Ignore them Teach them to fight

Books by This Author Books by Anne Kennedy

See All Titles »