My 2 books intersected today talking about parental goals. Tedd Tripp says, "Parents must be goal-directed." Meredith Small says, parents "are active participants in bringing up a particular kind of adult."
"American Culture as a whole clearly fosters independence" as a major goal.
People here gasp and are horrified at the thought of our babies sleeping in their own bed and in their own room. Parents would never expect their child to move out of their house on their own and earn their own living. And men never do leave their families. They get married and the wife comes and lives with the fam.
A local guy lived with us for a short while. Very stressful. Mainly because some of these cultural differences came up. He didn't know how to be by himself. I suggested reading a book. He looked blankly back at me. I said, "take a walk around the neighborhood". He replied it would be boring by himself. This was the first time he lived away from his family at 24 years old. This was the first time he was expected to take care of himself and be by himself, even just for an evening. His parents had never pushed him away to have him get some of his social and emotional needs met elsewhere. Now he was looking to us.
I confess we bought him a TV as a surrogate family.
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1 comment:
Perhaps xBox Live would be helpful to allow him to interact with other people without the necessity of family interaction. It works for us :) , though we would prefer some of the reliance your houseguest expressed. Very interesting post about the differences in independence.
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