Looking through the current Scientific American Mind special edition on parenting, it struck me that as our nation's age span grows longer, we - as community & culture, families & individuals - need to find better ways to handle childing.
Childing - similar to parenting, it is what we do as youngers to help ensure that our older parents, family, loved ones, neighbors come into their aged own. Perhaps it starts with shifting focus from chasing youth to pursuing purpose.
Out of Eric Erikson's eight stages of life development, our culture seems intent on staying as long as possible in Stages 5 - 7 ~ with occasional excursions into 1-4 ~ while holding off for dear life Stage 8. As a culture nation world, we suffer for their folly, for it makes so difficult for our elderly to become true elders, the promise of the recently added Stage 9.
If we want to restore a semblance of sanity to our crazed culture, we need to change contempt & fear of old age back to appreciation & honoring.
Just look at the USA & the UK in June 2018 - examples of cultures where the sane, leavening voices of the elderly have been put on permanent mute & the "wild ass" state of unbridled youth holds full rein.
Our parents will always be our parents, but just as their role changes with old age, our role as children has to change as well.
I'll be honest with you - this was never an issue for me. Being there for my mother was a given. It didn't feel like a sacrifice, even when it was wrenching (which it often was). It felt right. "Honor your father & your mother..." Whether due to accepting it as another of the Ten Commandments or because it was clearly the right thing to do or for some other unknown/unknowable reason, I was into childing long before I knew it as a term.
Mom would say, "I am like the child, now." And I would explain that she was very much the parent, I was very much her child, but how we experienced & acted out those roles had evolved into something wholly new for both of us. Sadly, what we saw as an adventure into the great unknown too many find to be unsettling, disorienting, frightening.
Without turning our attention to the situation, changing our futile search for endless youth into a fertile seeking of all that age unfolds, my Boomer generation is going to be in far worse shape than our parents. We will become what we learned, as youngers, to fear. We will be faced with decreased resources, increased dependency AND self-loathing.
We are, as a generation, swiftly getting past our opportunity to cultivate a practice of good childing. It is no easier to child than it was to parent. And just as essential for the well-being of everyone, the family, community & culture.
People often said some version of, "If I got along as well with my mother as you do with yours, I'd have her live with us, too." As I've written many times, we were NOT an easy match. As much as certain aspects of our personalities messed, our expectations of life, our definition of family, how we viewed roles & responsibilities within particular partnerships were light years apart. But for some reason, I had a sense of family as tribe & a total commitment to living the 5th commandment. That doesn't make me noble, just doing what called to be done.
How can someone see older family & friends slowly losing their once-strong sense of autonomy & NOT feel compassion? There was a time when Mom fell into complete distrust of herself & of her environment - she would not step foot outside of the house, feared everything as a potential trip fall injury. It took every bit of my fledgling childing skills to draw her out & help lead her back to a fuller sense of her true self. Praise be for Gail & Scott's flowering magnolia, a sight she'd looked forward to since they'd planted the tree five years before, an opportunity I offered & she took, leading to a childing personal best!
We need to be writing books on childing, share experiences & best practices, much as in the 1950s Benjamin Spock & others started conversations on parenting. We need Scientific American Mind to be publishing a special childing edition - How to Appreciate & Cheerlead a Wise Parent. We need TED talks & youtube presentations. We need to understand what underpins effective childing - compassion, empathy & caring, all possible even in situations where love is in short supply or stretched to limits of endurance.
In spite of her many physical challenges & the stresses/strains within our personal relationship, I like to think that Mom never lose her sense of place. I don't mean physically. Both my mother & my m-i-l died in their own home, my mother in her own room. I mean a sense of personal place. While, as she herself described, she'd lost so many of her previous roles, she knew that there were others she could still fill, new ones that she embraced.
There are many things that I stink at, have no affinity for, am a complete failure. But I understand the importance of & have a knack for childing. My calling, my purpose, my passion is to help others develop & cultivate their own childing skills. Like parenting, childing isn't a cookie cutter dynamic. It takes hard work, patience (with self as well as others) & bottomless compassion empathy endurance.
And, as a generation, we better get cultivating our childing skills fast or our own future goose will be thoroughly cooked!
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