HOLD ON TO YOUR KIDS by
Creating Community
Community must be familiar, familial, and multi-generational.
“Another attachment void has been created by the secularization of society. Quite apart from religion, the church, temple, mosque, or synagogue community functioned as an important supporting cast for parents and an attachment village for children. Secularization has meant more than the loss of faith or spiritual rootedness; it has brought the loss of this attachment community. Beyond that, peer interaction has become a priority for many churches. For example, many churches divide the family as they enter the door, grouping the members by age rather than by family. There are nurseries and teen groups, junior churches, and even senior classes. To those unaware of the importance of attachment and the dangers posed by peer orientation, it seems only self-evident that people belong with those their own age. Large religious organizations have evolved to deal with only the youth or the young adult, inadvertently promoting the loss of multi-generational connections.”
1. Familiar - Community can only happen with people whom we know, not simply recognize, are acquainted with, or happen to live or go to school with.
2. Familial - Community can and should reach beyond the family, but it cannot supersede it. Any community which does not intimately include a person's entire family will unintentionally seek to replace it. The attachment needs meant to be filled in home will go unmet and the outward community will be sought as a replacement for home, a role no school, church or organization can properly fulfill.
3. Multi-generational - Any community which does not place its members shoulder to shoulder and face to face with individuals ranging from birth to death, is a click or a club, not a community. We cannot have healthy, attachment-building community in a single-aged classroom, or in a youth only "day orphanage."
To build authentic community which meets all three of these criterion will require much dedication and long labors. It will require changing mindsets and reclaiming familial, multi-generational values, which alas are no longer familiar to our modern sentiments. It can, however, and should, be done.
This week, let's ask three questions to build upon our work re-promoting grandparents and establishing ourselves as mentors.
1. What can I do this week to make the members of this community more familiar with each other?
2. What can I do this week to broaden the reach of family in our daily lives or programs?
3. What can I do this week to increase the multi-generational contact of the children I serve?
If we keep asking these questions, and answering them honestly,
they will inevitably lead us to brave leadership, where we can give children what they need, in the face of their wants, in the face of cultural trends, and in the face of our own discomfort.
Obeying and pursuing these laws of community, we will find ourselves fulfilling and proving attachment theory in the reality of strong, familiar, familial, and multi-generational connections.
Ultimately, this is what it will take to Hold on to Your Kids.
For more from Hold on to Your Kids,
visit here and go to the "Attachment Theory & Peer Orientation" topic tab