Seen and (not) Heard

Today

 Last Saturday we were discussing the way that modern day parents talk to and share conversations with their children compared with our own experience. "Well", was Paul's contribution "my stepfather would say 'when I want your opinion, I'll ask you'". One of our guests said, "Well my upbringing was pretty much of its time, I guess - seen and not heard."

"Oh!", I replied "we had a family council."

In My Day

We did, indeed have a family council. We met approximately every three weeks after Sunday lunch. No topics of family interest were excluded and we discussed holidays, Christmas, budgets, domestic chores, garden management, events and dates etc. Mamma and Daddy had right of veto over matters financial, which was fair enough.

We were all given an opportunity of making our case. On occasions, children were united and parents had to cave in. It was extremely good training for the future and certainly we three oldest became quite good at cogently defending a position. I'm not entirely sure that Beatrice was quite old enough for this, at least at the start, and she soon became pretty bored.

It was also a concentrated example of the way my parents ran the family. "I'm not a Victorian Father!" Daddy would proclaim. By this he meant that he didn't just make edicts which we were all, including Mamma, expected to obey without question. He generally explained his reasons and methods, and, while I'm certain that we were as often disobedient as not, we did have a sense of family involvement. This is something that I so often find out was lacking in other families, where father was a forbidding distant figure and where mothers still said "you wait till your father gets home....." making father even more terrifying.

While I've never been afraid to insist on proper behaviour and a degree of obedience, I much prefer to involve children with family life in all its aspects. That way they naturally become your friends in adulthood, a privilege that I'm now enjoying.