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resilience and stong attachments….

Some days are tough, bedhead that fights back, spilled milk, rain, pesky family members…we’ve all been there.
Really though it’s only bad hair, a small clean up job and everyday people living together, it’s all a matter of changing your point of veiw. A little less Eyore a little more Jeanette Walls. Have I lost you?

Here is a reveiw fro the Chicago Tribune:
“On the eights day when God was handing out whining privleges, he came upon Jeanette Walls and said, ‘For you, an unlimited lifetime supply.’ Apparently, Walls declined His kind offer.”

The Glass Castle is Jeanette Wall’s astonishing memoir of childhood. It’s her account of being raised by a self-absorbed artist as a Mother and a brilliant Father suitable for a Disney Movie. His downfall is alcohol though and drinking binges stamp out everything charismatic about his character. Still, you love them…and amazingly enough the kids stay loyal to their parents throughout unimaginable hardships.

This aspect was facinating to me. How could kids who are often hungry, cold and extremely neglected feel so strongly to their parents? I didn’t understand at all until recently started to study the writings of Gordon Neufeld on forming attachments with your children. His book is called Hold On To Your Kids – Why Parents Matter. Jeanette’s parents had made those attachments, the children needed them and tried to earn their love. The Walls kids were devoted to their parents not their peers, this gave her family cohesion despite hardship. Dr. Neufeld teamed up with Gabor Mate in Hold On To Your Kids and examines the frightening phemomenon they call peer orientation, the trend of youths to look to their peers for the guidance and and values parents used to represent. He urges us to examine our relationships and build strong ties before they reach their teens and it’s too late to reel them in.

There are several instances in The Glass Castle where the parents made a huge effort to collect their kids and form attachements:

When Christmas arrived and there were no presents to be had, Jeanette’s Dad gave each child a star from the sky and the kids were thrilled. He made them feel special and loved and they were oblivious to the fact they had no other gifts because he had spent the last money on booze.

The Walls parents always made things into an adventure for the kids and made they felt priviliged to have these experiences. When they couldn’t make rent and had to flee (which happenned more than once) it was presented as as an opportunity to find a more unique, forward-thinking place to live.
Together they made special memories by having fun and being grateful together.

These are examples of ways I saw the ties between parent and child were stregthened in the Glass Castle. There need not be such crisis as Jeanette lived through to have these opportunities with your kids. In Hold On To Your Kids there are countless ways suggested and proven that will help you form attachments with your own kids. It’s all about being there, listening, simplifying and opening doors for your children. The author does an amazing job of bringing home his theories with shocking, often sad examples from his practice and statistics.

Books, even fictional books, can be such wonderful food for the soul. They bring us perspective, they open our imaginations and offer and escape from the everyday. Stepping away from the mindlessness of television to the stimulating world of reading never leaves me disappointed. Finding several people who enjoy reading the same type of books and forming a book club is a fantastic way to have fun and get a little more out of your reading. We did The Glass Castle recently as our monthly book and everyone was moved by the story and wooed by the shockingly unsentimental prose. Next time I am wah-waaahing away about trivial things I will shift my thoughts to Jeanette and as Pooh once told Eyore: “…turn my frown upside down.”