Healthy families provide safety, support

Many of us spend very little time thinking about who and what we are as individuals and members of our families. We are so busy with the events and activities that make up our lives that we really have little time for reflection and introspection of the things that are really important.
Families are really important. They are central to the basic structure of our neighborhood, community and society as a whole.
So what does it mean to have health in your family?
It means different things to each of us depending on the family you were born into and environmental and societal concerns.
Healthy families provide safety and security for all members.
They mold and support children in the process of developing the necessary skills, including esteem and character, to become independently functioning and autonomous adults. The kind of children that leave home before they're 40.
Another thing they do is provide support for each member in becoming an individual in his or her own right. And I don't just mean the children here, folks. Adults also are constantly in the process of growing and becoming.
This process includes such things as skill and esteem development and improvement.
It also includes healthy individuating and separating from our birth families and the assigned roles we played in our families. It also includes developing healthy independence and interdependence in our families and society at large.
In two-parent families with children it means being a couple as well as parents. In single-parent families it means having a support system or network of extended family or other people to meet the parent's emotional needs. In remarried families it means supporting the children in successfully adapting and growing with two homes and families.
As parents our role is to provide emotional support for our offspring, not receive it. Emotional support that we as parents need must come from other adults and not our children if we're truly healthy as a family.
As parents we are the architects and role models who provide the leader family.
We provide our children with secure environment where each develop a solid sense of esteem become a separate individual. It requires a lot of actual time.
People need quantity time with each other. Not quality time, which may be the 90s excuse for not having much our families.
Families and individuals that are healthy have the ability to balance needs for work, for love and for play. As parents and leaders we must thrive to be enthusiastic about our ability to work and contribute to our family, community and society.
To love entails providing safety, structure, support and nurturance.
To play, just watch your children what they do. Remember to find joy in all your thoughts and deeds and look qualities in others.
Roger Gerwe is the owner of Family Health Counseling Services at 7373 Beechmont Avenue in Anderson. He is a independent social worker and certified chemical dependency counselor. For more information contact, Roger Gerwe at 624-6550.
first published on 4/98 in the Forest Hills Journal is A Community Press newspaper serving Anderson Township. Newtown, Mt. Washington and California Ohio