COUNSELING AND CONSULTATION ASSOCIATES, INC.COUNSELING AND CONSULTATION ASSOCIATES, INC.
Phillip L. Blansett, Ph.D.
1621 Eagle Trace Drive
Mount Juliet, Tennessee 37122-7428
(615) 758-7568
Website: http://DrBlansett.com
Email: DrBlansett@DrBlansett.com
--------
Neighbors Helping Neighbors in Parenting
by
Phillip L. Blansett, Ph.D.
I was helping someone pack up their belongings and load them into a rented moving van as they prepared to relocate across the country. I had mentioned the name of a fellow member of the church we attended and the person I was helping said, "Yes, we were in the same Bible Study for 17 years, and I never could stand him. We just had nothing in common." That comment weighed heavily on me at the time, and has since. How could someone spend a weeknight every night of the year for seventeen years and still not like or understand him? Wouldn't you think they'd pray for brotherly affection? Wouldn't you think that in that period of time they would have found some common ground on which to be friends? I was puzzled by that comment as the most bothersome comment I'd heard, until recently. Our son, after playing soccer for ten years, experienced a similar thing with his tragic knee injury. He'd played and practiced really intensively for ten years, mostly with the same kids and mostly with the same parents (although soccer parents, like much of America today, swap partners through divorce at alarming rates). Yet we've observed that after spending six hours or more each week sweating, passing, running, playing, when a member of the team "goes on to other things" few on the team, or their parents, care. Few care that he was ever on the team, that he left, or where he was going. Nothing drove this home more to me than when our son was to be operated on the following day for the devastating knee injury received during a game, he received a telephone call from a parent who's son was on the team. Feeling apprehensive about the surgery, missing his teammates whom he assumed cared about him, he took the call. "Oh, I forgot you were having surgery." the team mom said, "Tell your dad he owes $70 for this month's dues." When, after seven months of expensive, painful and dedicated rehabilitation he made his playing debut, a mother of a teammate remarked to me, "Oh, I forgot he was even on the team." Is this the caring nation we've become? One where we can sit and pray together with someone and never get to know them? One where we can discuss moral and ethical codes week after week and never develop what the ancients called "brotherly affection." Has the word "affection" itself become corrupted so that it is laughed at rather than embraced? One boy on the soccer team candidly admitted that after competing against certain players, now being on the same team he couldn't bring himself to pass to that former opponent. The Soccer Field and the Bible Study have both become metaphors for our greater societal faults. For the good of our country we need to put away our game faces, and seek "brotherly affection" toward one another. If we don't, how will our children learn?
Next week we'll continue to examine how neighbors can help neighbors in parenting.
Dr. Phillip Blansett is a psychotherapist in private practice in Nashville and West Wilson County.
--------
WORD COUNT: 571
