Sunday, October 25, 2009

Family Partnership, Empower for Life


By Amy Price  PhD

Partnership…The Work of Champions


In work with children a team means everything. Your child’s self esteem and ways of relating are constructed by what they learn from team interaction. Even in graduate school students learn that the key to power for scientists is flexibility and cooperation. Many experiments show success after many well planned failures. Sometimes it takes only a new way of seeing to trigger a break through. We can mourn the past or prepare for the future, we can not do both. Often weakness in one team member will trigger unknown strength in another so it pays to obey the three fs of creativity,. Fun, flexibility and favor.

Blessed are the Flexible, for They Shall Not be Broken

One day I was trying to find a stick to roast marshmallows on. The old ones were easy to separate from the branch but were dry and brittle. The young ones did not seem that strong but they could not be broken. They were attached to the tree and gained strength and life from it. This is like your family and you. When we are attached and meet needs for each other we are strong but when we allow the stress of life to separate us from kindness and humor our loved ones draw away in pain and begin to dry from the inside out. This applies to older people too. I will use the analogy of a Christmas tree. When I was small and Christmas was over I wanted to replant the Christmas tree. My mother laughed and said it has no roots and it is already dead. I was sure she was wrong and planted it anyway! It was cold so it looked like my mother was wrong and I rejoiced, I did notice it was not growing though….when a warm spell came death became apparent.

Our roots are our families and those we work with, we can choose to be roots that help them grow or just leave them planted and alone and see how they do…. It is good to remember that live trees are a source of shade and beauty, dead trees are ugly and take a lot of work. You can choose Life or death..you can make things happen or let things happen