Miki Dedijer

Coaching for Relational Parents | Miki Dedijer

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Becoming a family servant

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In a few days, a dozen or so men are gathering at our farm around a man about to become a father.

So I’ve spent some time pondering what this moment asks of us, now that his life seems to be taking him away from a certain singularity awash in endless possibilities, towards an obligation to be tethered to the bundle of ties that is family.

Now there’s a word, family, pregnant with hidden meaning, fully birthed only by a willingness to wonder some about its ancestry.

Family, from the latin famulus, is originally an adjective meaning servile, or a noun signifying a servant or slave. We may receive this as a negative, this posture of submission, but I suspect that there’s more to it then what the knee’s jerk suggests. As the verb famulur, it indicates someone who ministers, tends to or waits upon someone or something.

And so there is an action concealed within the pale lifelessness of the noun, something being done that is of consequence to the one being acted upon.

The servant here is not a single person submitting to the will and command of others of higher standing. Nor does it ask of us that we resign ourselves to tending to the whole without recompense, agreeing to become gradually impoverished by our  ministrations, forever bound to an insatiable hunger.

When we first tread across the threshold of parenthood, we’re not entering the vaguely heroic realm of sacrifice, rising every day to lay our gifts down at the altar of the child. Not as I understand it. It’s more relational than that, less ridden with resignation.

It seems that as you become a parent, you take on a relational obligation and mutual agreement to serve whatever and whoever needs sustenance. Not sacrifice. Surrender.

For this man coming to our farm, his heart expectant, this may be his pregnant partner. It most certainly will be their newborn child. At times a grandmother or uncle and others of the fold. The family requires the attention of all members onto all members. It ceases to be without this collective willingness to serve.

And in entering this web of relations with the stance of a servant, we soon discover that it extends far beyond our child, our partner, ourselves. For what sustains us, is serving us, is family.

So I wonder if family is only born from our willingness to bow our backs and kneel together in servitude to all that calls on us for nurturance. As a man then, we marry into family by a pledging our allegiance to matrimony, the condition of the mother. This is the honor bestowed on the one entering wedlock, to become a servant, not master, in the household of life, human or otherwise.

Our children are not exempt from this daily practice of family-making.  They too are asked to learn this willingness generously to serve, so that they may one day come of age, knowing that beyond the immediate family, there’s a larger community fed by their willingness to give what they are able to part with, and some of what they relucantly know they must give up for life to continue.

Spring cleaning

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When the sun comes out again in Spring, we notice how much there is that needs a good cleaning, stuff we’ve tucked away during the dark months of winter.

Psychological garbage we’ve forgotten to take out. Guck that clutters our senses. Lead weights that sink our hearts. Unmet expectations and stale resentments with a sharp taste of bitterness.

The rituals of spring are about endings, renewal, rebirth. This is a time of bonfires that consume deadwood, transform darkness into light, and mark the end of winter.

One possible meaning of the Gaellic Imbolc festival is the Old Irish imb-fholc, “to wash/cleanse oneself”.

You may have a spring cleaning of your home and family relations. Rather than analyze it and try to make sense of it, gather all that has served its time into a bundle of dust, light it up and watch it go.

Beauty as gratitude

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Beauty is made before it’s perceived.

It’s decorating the dinner table with a crown of fall leaves. Singing by a fire. Hand painting a dead tree. Speaking a kind word to a stranger, Carving little jewels from elderflower branches. Gathering moss in the shape of a mandala. Dancing to the beat of a brooding storm. Cooking a plate of wild mushrooms on buttered buns. Lighting a smoke free fire. Playing music with icecicles.

Living so you leave a beautiful track is a skill, a practice, a craft. It’s a learned thing, a dedication to tending relationships.

Your child can become a master of beautification. She likely has a knack for it too, whatever her passions. Children often do.

Making beauty is a way for your child to celebrate creation, decorating the world with the delightful trail of her imagination.

Beauty is gratitude manifest. It’s giving back in celebration of what is received.

Your secret lover

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Your partner doesn’t know your secret lover called Plan B.

Plan B is softer, more loving, doesn’t smell of onions. It has nicer parents, better health, and always agrees with the values you want to share with your child. Plan B doesn’t age.

It is the other life you dream of when this one seems unbearably mundane, ordinary or average.

You call on Plan B by whispering to yourself  ‘if only…’, or ‘I want more…’ or ‘that’s it…’

Whenever you’re cradling Plan B, you’re not present to your relationship. You have one foot in, and one foot out the door running towards a mirage. A part of you is absent.

Are you ready to share your secret, and tell your partner about Plan B?

How sometimes you imagine living on your own again. How you worry sitting by the bedside of your sleeping child, that you might not be up to the task of parenting. Or that you long to rekindle a tenderness that used to be there but now seems atrophied somehow.

For as long as it lasts, true comittment doesn’t house a secret lover.

Connect before you direct

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Coming out of our house, I see my youngest son peeing all over our new patio. I’m incredulous, and tell him to get a bucket and wash the stones.

Later I ask how come he peed there. And here’s what he tells me–he was competing with his brother to see who could pee the farthest into the bushes. He was backing away while peeing to see how far it would go, and as he ran out of pee, it splattered on the stones.

We had a good laugh about that (along with my pang of paternal guilt). Then we agreed that the next peeing competition will be held on the lawn, well away from the patio.

It’s tempting to stop our child in his tracks when he screams in the car, throws a pine cone at his sister, turns his plate full of food onto the floor.

Sometimes you might have to–if whatever is happening is truly dangerous. Fortunately, it so rarely is.

Still, you might feel an irrisistible urge to master a situation. When you do–when you forcefully intervene–you’re placing control before connection.

Your relationship with your child–as any relationship–asks that your child feels safe with you, seen, respected, understood, no matter how odd the behavior might seem to you.

To paraphrase Alfie Kohn–assume your child’s best motives consistent with the facts.

When my son was peeing on the patio, I could have assumed he was playing, and just asked what was going on. To be honest, a bit of pee never hurt a patio.

All to say, there’s a good lesson here for the relational parent–connect with your child before you direct his behavior.

Music tunes your child’s spirit

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In our fragmented and commercialized culture, it can be hard to know how to nurture your child’s relationship to spirit.

You may not know yourself what it means for you to be a spiritual being, someone at home with all that is unknown, unseen, or beyond your understanding.

You may not have an intact practice that feels grounded in your being.

Or if you’re fortunate enough to have a deep, consistent and rewarding relationship with spirit, you may not know how to convey this to your child.

Wherever you find yourself on this spectrum, you can always rely on music to nurture your relationship to spirit.

Not any old song will do, not any kind of music is helpful. It must be something that lifts you, that touches you, that moves you. A surprising rhythm. A sweet melody. A profound baseline. A familiar verse that comes to you when everything feels hopeless.

Fill your home with music. Start the day with a funky rhythm. Offer your child a daily dose of Bach or bluegrass, country or congas, funk or fado.

Immersed in music, she will attune to a language older than words, a powerful balm for healing disconnections.