Community means a lot more to family well being than a street address. Community is support, camaraderie, and education. This post, which is my monthly Home News Tribune column is a description of the Gush Etzion communities of Israel, located just south of Jerusalem.
On a recent trip to Israel, I had the opportunity to have coffee with Mr. Shaul Goldstein, who is the mayor of the Gush Etzion Region of Israel. Located just south of Jerusalem, the communities that make up the region are home to over 3700 families. They range from large cities such as Alon Shvut, to Mayor Goldstein’s home town, Neve Daniel, which started with 17 families and now has 400. Mayor Goldstein speaks glowingly of his neighborhood, which is where he was raised and together with his wife of 25 years, they are raising their 7 children here as well. I learned that, not only are these beautiful communities, but nurturing and sharing as though each community is a big family.
When our discussion turned to how communities support couples and families, Mayor Goldstein explained the concept of “chai kehilati” which means community life. “I will give you an example. In one of our towns Karmei Tzur, there are many Peruvian immigrants, but some of them are uncertain of their family roots. So they undergo a mini-conversion to Judaism which requires another Chupah (wedding canopy). Recently, a couple went through that process and the entire wedding ceremony and reception were sponsored by their community. The couple had absolutely no family in Israel and can you believe it? The community decided we are your family now.”
“In the neighboring town of Tekoa, they have a wonderful custom for honoring newlyweds. The town hosts an evening during the week of blessings (Sheva Brachot) that follows the wedding. In the middle of the town, there is a great lawn, and that’s where they make an enormous party. The entire town shows up to dance, sing and wish the new couple well in their life together.”
Mayor Goldstein described the communal gathering that takes place after Sabbath morning services; the Kiddush. “For happy occasions such as a circumcision, naming a baby girl, Bar or Bat Mitzvah, you cannot imagine the response of the community in hosting a Kiddush. One family prepares the fruit, another the cakes, another the fish, another the paper goods and it is truly remarkable when the whole town participates in the preparation and then celebrates together.”
He described the intriguing concept of the “Gemach” in each town. It is a Hebrew acronym for doing acts of kindness for others. “Families donate appliances, furniture, even money,” explained Goldstein, “and it is a free loan society which is available to all individuals and families in the town.”
He added, “People really do care about each other here. When you read the weekly Sabbath Newsletter that each community prints, you often see in the back section, this one family wants to thank this other family and you don’t know why, and you don’t ask. The story is private, but the expression of appreciation is public.”
There is also generous support for families when they experience the sad side of life-cycle events. When Mayor Goldstein lost his father several years ago, he spent the week of mourning (shiva) in a small southern Israeli town that had no religious community to speak of. “Requiring ten men to say the daily prayers, dozens of my neighbors came before work each morning to make the quorum and again late in the day for the afternoon and evening prayers.” He remembers how many neighbors drove over an hour in each direction on each day of Shiva so that he could say the Kaddish (memorial prayer). “That is what I call community support. I was so touched by their efforts on my behalf.”
There is much that we can learn from these communities about acts of kindness in our own neighborhoods and within our own extended families. To participate in the remarkable projects of the Gush Etzion Foundation please visit www.gush-etzion.org.il
Be Counted columnist Dr. Alan Singer is a marriage therapist in Highland Park. Respond to this column via his website www.FamilyThinking.com
Monday, January 17, 2011
Thursday, December 23, 2010
"Good Enough" Marriages Suit Children Just Fine
What is a "good-enough" marriage?
And why is Booth and Amato's 1997 finding, that 2/3 of divorces end "good-enough" not high-conflict marriages, so significant?
Elizabeth Marquardt wrote an excellent piece for the Huffington Post. Here are some excerpts:
"We disagree about a lot of things. Sometimes I think our kids would be better off if we both moved on."
"I've been researching and writing about children of divorce for a decade and I've heard these sentiments over and over. These parents not divorced yet, but they're thinking about it. They're raising children, struggling to make the mortgage payment and pay the babysitter, hoping to get ahead. Meanwhile, their marriage isn't what it used to be. Those pre-kid days of hanging out with friends seem the stuff of dreams now. Talking is mainly about negotiating schedules and money. Weekends are busy getting caught up from weekdays. Is this what marriage is all about? Do the kids really need this?
In a word, yes. Some marriages are plagued by such serious problems -- such as addiction, chronic infidelity, or violence -- that divorce might well be warranted. But social science research shows that about two-thirds of marriages that end in divorce are low conflict. These marriages may feel troubled to the one or both of the spouses, but they are not struggling with the kinds of serious or frequent conflict many imagine when they picture a marriage on the rocks.
It is these marriages -- what some call "good enough" marriages -- that matter so much. To any still-married parent who is considering divorce who may be reading this, I want to affirm that your "good enough" marriage is doing a world of good for your kids. By sticking with -- and working on and believing in -- your "good enough" marriage, you are sustaining one world for your child. You are affirming that the rough and sometimes not-pretty job of holding together one family belongs to you and your spouse, not your child."
And why is Booth and Amato's 1997 finding, that 2/3 of divorces end "good-enough" not high-conflict marriages, so significant?
Elizabeth Marquardt wrote an excellent piece for the Huffington Post. Here are some excerpts:
"We disagree about a lot of things. Sometimes I think our kids would be better off if we both moved on."
"I've been researching and writing about children of divorce for a decade and I've heard these sentiments over and over. These parents not divorced yet, but they're thinking about it. They're raising children, struggling to make the mortgage payment and pay the babysitter, hoping to get ahead. Meanwhile, their marriage isn't what it used to be. Those pre-kid days of hanging out with friends seem the stuff of dreams now. Talking is mainly about negotiating schedules and money. Weekends are busy getting caught up from weekdays. Is this what marriage is all about? Do the kids really need this?
In a word, yes. Some marriages are plagued by such serious problems -- such as addiction, chronic infidelity, or violence -- that divorce might well be warranted. But social science research shows that about two-thirds of marriages that end in divorce are low conflict. These marriages may feel troubled to the one or both of the spouses, but they are not struggling with the kinds of serious or frequent conflict many imagine when they picture a marriage on the rocks.
It is these marriages -- what some call "good enough" marriages -- that matter so much. To any still-married parent who is considering divorce who may be reading this, I want to affirm that your "good enough" marriage is doing a world of good for your kids. By sticking with -- and working on and believing in -- your "good enough" marriage, you are sustaining one world for your child. You are affirming that the rough and sometimes not-pretty job of holding together one family belongs to you and your spouse, not your child."
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
The Parenting Hall of Shame
Children are special treasures that are entrusted to us to protect. Particularly in the summer, I spot safety risks for children that land parents in the Hall of Shame.
Here is my monthly parenting column from the Home News Tribune.
Each summer I inevitably observe parenting behavior that appalls but not necessarily surprises me. I often say, if there were such a thing as a parenting license, these folks should have theirs revoked.
The first incident took place on my own street, when an SUV driven by an adult cruised by with his sun-roof wide open. An 8 or 9 year old boy was standing up in the sunroof, and waving to passers-by. I cringed and hoped that an Edison patrol car would soon be turning our corner and issue a summons to this driver.
The second incident took place on the West-bound train platform at Metropark. I looked across the tracks to see a little two-year-old girl running back and forth between what appeared to be her parents, standing several yards apart from each other. It appeared that she was enjoying her freedom as she ran back and forth with Amtrak Acela trains speeding by at 100 mph. Having grown up with a mother that had a “death grip” on my hand when crossing busy streets, again I cringed at this irresponsible behavior.
The third incident took place on a recent trip to Florida and although it did not involve safety, it tops my list of bad parenting behavior nonetheless. Near Boca Raton there is a water park named SKIRIXEN. The brochure states: direct from Europe to Florida comes one of America’s first cable water-ski resorts. Imagine waterskiing and wake-boarding with no boat, just an overhead cable to pull you. When the advertisement says, no boat hassles, I can personally vouch for the fact that there is no family recreational activity that is more stressful and has more yelling than renting a boat, equipment, and waterskiing.
I watched the safety video and got the explanation of rules with a group of youths who were all 1/4 my age. A young girl of about 13 years old was standing on the line in front of me, ready to go into the lake but looking hesitant and her father was standing nearby not going in himself. He was yelling at her, “You better go in after all the driving I did to get you here.” Her red face revealed not only embarrassment at her father’s tirade but the fear of a child who clearly did not want to do this activity.
After a lifetime of waterskiing experience, even I was feeling a bit uneasy, since this cable system involves being yanked onto the lake at 18 miles an hour, as opposed to a boat’s pull which gradually increases. It was reasonable for her to be nervous. Incidentally, safety rule #1 at SKIRIXEN: if you fall, look behind you fast to make sure the next skier sees you and avoids running you over.
The father then berated his fear-stricken teen-ager, “I paid $25 damn bucks (expletive toned down by author) for you to try this sport so you better get the hell out there and do it right now!” Although I was disgusted, I have been told on more than one occasion to mind my own business, so I write about incidents in my column rather than confront the guilty party face-to-face. Here are the four violations I would give this dad if I could suspend his parenting license:
#1 – Use of foul language in the presence of a minor
#2 – Speaking in a demeaning and angry tone in public
#3 – Forcing a child to do something she fears
#4 – Making $25 more valuable than his child’s emotional well-being
If I would have spoken to this man, I would have suggested that he forfeit the $25 and thereby gain his child’s respect and trust. He would have then topped the list of his daughter’s role models, rather than the Parenting Hall of Shame.
Be Counted columnist Dr. Alan Singer is a marriage therapist in Highland Park. Respond to this column via his website www.FamilyThinking.com
Here is my monthly parenting column from the Home News Tribune.
Each summer I inevitably observe parenting behavior that appalls but not necessarily surprises me. I often say, if there were such a thing as a parenting license, these folks should have theirs revoked.
The first incident took place on my own street, when an SUV driven by an adult cruised by with his sun-roof wide open. An 8 or 9 year old boy was standing up in the sunroof, and waving to passers-by. I cringed and hoped that an Edison patrol car would soon be turning our corner and issue a summons to this driver.
The second incident took place on the West-bound train platform at Metropark. I looked across the tracks to see a little two-year-old girl running back and forth between what appeared to be her parents, standing several yards apart from each other. It appeared that she was enjoying her freedom as she ran back and forth with Amtrak Acela trains speeding by at 100 mph. Having grown up with a mother that had a “death grip” on my hand when crossing busy streets, again I cringed at this irresponsible behavior.
The third incident took place on a recent trip to Florida and although it did not involve safety, it tops my list of bad parenting behavior nonetheless. Near Boca Raton there is a water park named SKIRIXEN. The brochure states: direct from Europe to Florida comes one of America’s first cable water-ski resorts. Imagine waterskiing and wake-boarding with no boat, just an overhead cable to pull you. When the advertisement says, no boat hassles, I can personally vouch for the fact that there is no family recreational activity that is more stressful and has more yelling than renting a boat, equipment, and waterskiing.
I watched the safety video and got the explanation of rules with a group of youths who were all 1/4 my age. A young girl of about 13 years old was standing on the line in front of me, ready to go into the lake but looking hesitant and her father was standing nearby not going in himself. He was yelling at her, “You better go in after all the driving I did to get you here.” Her red face revealed not only embarrassment at her father’s tirade but the fear of a child who clearly did not want to do this activity.
After a lifetime of waterskiing experience, even I was feeling a bit uneasy, since this cable system involves being yanked onto the lake at 18 miles an hour, as opposed to a boat’s pull which gradually increases. It was reasonable for her to be nervous. Incidentally, safety rule #1 at SKIRIXEN: if you fall, look behind you fast to make sure the next skier sees you and avoids running you over.
The father then berated his fear-stricken teen-ager, “I paid $25 damn bucks (expletive toned down by author) for you to try this sport so you better get the hell out there and do it right now!” Although I was disgusted, I have been told on more than one occasion to mind my own business, so I write about incidents in my column rather than confront the guilty party face-to-face. Here are the four violations I would give this dad if I could suspend his parenting license:
#1 – Use of foul language in the presence of a minor
#2 – Speaking in a demeaning and angry tone in public
#3 – Forcing a child to do something she fears
#4 – Making $25 more valuable than his child’s emotional well-being
If I would have spoken to this man, I would have suggested that he forfeit the $25 and thereby gain his child’s respect and trust. He would have then topped the list of his daughter’s role models, rather than the Parenting Hall of Shame.
Be Counted columnist Dr. Alan Singer is a marriage therapist in Highland Park. Respond to this column via his website www.FamilyThinking.com
Friday, November 19, 2010
Heartbreaking (Adult) Sibling Fights
One of my favorite familythinking.com readers named, “anonymous” responded to my recent post, When an Adult Child Cuts Off a Parent, by sending me a link that she found. It’s a post on parentdish.com that is titled “When Adult Children Fight, a Mother's Heart Breaks” and was written by Jessica Barksdale Inclan. It is well written and poignant.
She describes the distinctly different personalities of her two grown sons; one an anarchist and the other a police-academy aspirant.
Inclan writes, “At one time, these were my happy little boys, my sons who played together all day on the weekends, slept in the same room for years. They both went to the same college, called each other frequently, hiked together, laughed together. But when Nicolas began to become the man he is, their ideologies started to pull them apart. He began to despise all that Alex stood for, and their drives home from Washington State began to get ugly, full of silences or harsh words. Our last meal together, all of us sitting around the table of our new home, was as unpleasant as could be.”
“It's possible that these two will never come back to one another. The fight could be the axe that splits their relationship wide open, forever irreparable. I close my eyes and breathe in hard when I think of them forever at opposite sides. Siblings are the closest relationships in time and age and place. Siblings know each other in ways no one else can, and to see my boys approach an end to this connection is more than I can bear.”
I want to suggest two things:
These two young men drifted apart and have let their ideologies divide them. There will (hopefully) come a time in the future when they will recognize the indispensable nature of one’s nuclear family….and agree to disagree.
Second, I have faith that the (future) spouses and children of these two young men may have a profound influence on this sibling division (or not). If each brother has their own two children (which my research shows is likely) and they each try to prevail upon their own children how important sibling bonds are in life, a major-watt light bulb may illuminate (or not).
You can read Inclan's entire post by clicking here.
And be sure to read some of the frank comments that follow her post such as Debbie who stated:
I do feel a little better because I'm not the only one who is going through this. My two boys will never be friends and will never have a relationship. I think this is sad, but I'm done with all the conflict and unpleasantness. If I could go back in time, I would have had puppies and never any children.
(ASinger: Ouch!)
She describes the distinctly different personalities of her two grown sons; one an anarchist and the other a police-academy aspirant.
Inclan writes, “At one time, these were my happy little boys, my sons who played together all day on the weekends, slept in the same room for years. They both went to the same college, called each other frequently, hiked together, laughed together. But when Nicolas began to become the man he is, their ideologies started to pull them apart. He began to despise all that Alex stood for, and their drives home from Washington State began to get ugly, full of silences or harsh words. Our last meal together, all of us sitting around the table of our new home, was as unpleasant as could be.”
“It's possible that these two will never come back to one another. The fight could be the axe that splits their relationship wide open, forever irreparable. I close my eyes and breathe in hard when I think of them forever at opposite sides. Siblings are the closest relationships in time and age and place. Siblings know each other in ways no one else can, and to see my boys approach an end to this connection is more than I can bear.”
I want to suggest two things:
These two young men drifted apart and have let their ideologies divide them. There will (hopefully) come a time in the future when they will recognize the indispensable nature of one’s nuclear family….and agree to disagree.
Second, I have faith that the (future) spouses and children of these two young men may have a profound influence on this sibling division (or not). If each brother has their own two children (which my research shows is likely) and they each try to prevail upon their own children how important sibling bonds are in life, a major-watt light bulb may illuminate (or not).
You can read Inclan's entire post by clicking here.
And be sure to read some of the frank comments that follow her post such as Debbie who stated:
I do feel a little better because I'm not the only one who is going through this. My two boys will never be friends and will never have a relationship. I think this is sad, but I'm done with all the conflict and unpleasantness. If I could go back in time, I would have had puppies and never any children.
(ASinger: Ouch!)
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
When an Adult Child Cuts Off a Parent
I wish I had a more chipper post for Election Day folks; this is just plain sad.
Therapists for years have listened to patients blame parents for their problems. What about the suffering of parents who are estranged from their adult children?
Joshua Coleman, a San Francisco psychologist who is an expert on parental estrangement, says that parents often report that a once-close relationship has deteriorated after a conflict over money, a boyfriend or built-up resentments about a parent's divorce or remarriage.
''We live in a culture that assumes if there is an estrangement, the parents must have done something really terrible,'' said Dr. Coleman, whose book ''When Parents Hurt'' (William Morrow, 2007) focuses on estrangement. ''But this is not a story of adult children cutting off parents who made egregious mistakes. It's about parents who were good parents, who made mistakes that were certainly within normal limits.''
Dr. Coleman himself experienced several years of estrangement with his adult daughter, with whom he has reconciled. Mending the relationship took time and a persistent effort by Dr. Coleman to stay in contact. It also meant listening to his daughter's complaints and accepting responsibility for his mistakes. ''I tried to really get what her feelings were and tried to make amends and repair,'' he said. ''Over the course of several years, it came back slowly.''
(A Singer: there is no simple answer or quick fix here. Coleman correctly states that persistence is the key)
Source: Tara Parker-Pope, NY Times
Therapists for years have listened to patients blame parents for their problems. What about the suffering of parents who are estranged from their adult children?
Joshua Coleman, a San Francisco psychologist who is an expert on parental estrangement, says that parents often report that a once-close relationship has deteriorated after a conflict over money, a boyfriend or built-up resentments about a parent's divorce or remarriage.
''We live in a culture that assumes if there is an estrangement, the parents must have done something really terrible,'' said Dr. Coleman, whose book ''When Parents Hurt'' (William Morrow, 2007) focuses on estrangement. ''But this is not a story of adult children cutting off parents who made egregious mistakes. It's about parents who were good parents, who made mistakes that were certainly within normal limits.''
Dr. Coleman himself experienced several years of estrangement with his adult daughter, with whom he has reconciled. Mending the relationship took time and a persistent effort by Dr. Coleman to stay in contact. It also meant listening to his daughter's complaints and accepting responsibility for his mistakes. ''I tried to really get what her feelings were and tried to make amends and repair,'' he said. ''Over the course of several years, it came back slowly.''
(A Singer: there is no simple answer or quick fix here. Coleman correctly states that persistence is the key)
Source: Tara Parker-Pope, NY Times
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