When I was young, I thought every family was like mine. I assumed that all families ate at the dinner table together, prayed together, went to church (any church, really), talked, had sibling rivalry, chores, expectations for school, etc.
I remember the first part of that bubble being burst when I was about 9 years old. A family moved in next door and they had a boy 2-3 years older than me. He would play basketball frequently with my older brother and sister. One day, my mom called us in for dinner. I turned to the boy and said that he should go in too for dinner. He said he wasn't hungry and he would eat when he was. I asked if that was because he didn't like what his mom was making. He kinda chuckled and said that she didn't make anything, he just ate when he wanted.
Wha? I thought about that and the freedom and fun it would be to do anything I wanted at any given time - eat when I was hungry and what I wanted. I mean, WOW!
As time went on, I realized that the family next door lacked several things that my family had our fair share of - we liked each other. I never got along with my sister (more to come on this, for sure) but we liked each other.
That is one of the things I want for my kids so bad, is to like their family and to be able to grow up as a team of allies, even if there is sometimes fighting, bickering, etc. We will eat dinner around the table. We will talk. We will be what I increasingly realized was the freakish family on the block, one of the fraction of kids in high school who still had dinner with their family.
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