Many of us would have heard of this phrase. “It takes a village to raise a child.”
Raising a child requires good partnerships. Not just from both parents, or primary caregivers like the grandparents, uncles/ aunties etc, but all who have some form of contact with the child.
This will include your child’s school teachers, CCA coaches/ instructors, the canteen uncle, bookshop auntie, church cell group leader, and the list goes on.
(To think we have not even include the peers but we will leave that for another post.)
Anyway, these adult (or semi adult) figures make up the village that your child is in, and are directly and indirectly responsible in the raising of your child. As far as we are concerned, both me and Angie have always tried to ‘sing the same song’ to our kids. We support and complement each other in our instructions to the kids. We even take turns to play the ‘good guy, bad guy’ at times! We try our best not to contradict one another to avoid confusing the kids as well as the political game of who-is-on-whose-side. Both of us spend the most time with the kids and thus are naturally the ‘village chiefs‘ directly in charge of their education. We are also responsible in ensuring the rest of the village sing the same song as us.
Really?
I have always believed in ensuring a village of like-minded people to help raise our kids. Long before we had kids, I witnessed a father disciplining his son and the granny stepped in to stop the father and chided her son in front of his own son. I made a proclamation to my wife that if anyone does that to me (including my mother-in-law or mother 😬), they can forget about spending time with my kids!
I want to surround our kids with like-minded people who share the same values and child-raising practices like us. The whole village chips in effort to educate and nurture the child with the same beliefs. and that’s what ‘taking a village to raise a child’ should mean right? 🤔
We have even gone to the extent of making painful decisions like changing schools, changing music teachers, even consider changing church (for one of our kids) and also spending lesser time with some groups of people 🙊
But as our kids grow up, I began to understand the meaning of a ‘village’….
A village is made up of all sorts of people who play all sorts of roles and take on all sorts of responsibilities. The village chief, the wise ones, the strong ones, the hardworking ones, the nosey ones (but they actually truly care), the selfless ones who give help no matter what, and the ones who needed help. They all work for the good of the village. They are all like-minded just like my dream village.
And yet, just like in any other real life village, there will be those who don’t think the same. The village villain, the nosey ones (who are truly just nosey for the sake of being nosey), the selfish ones, and the ones who simply enjoy seeing others fail.
Every village has them. Every life will have them (in varying proportions and intensity).
Am sure as adults, we have encountered people who don’t make life easy for us. Not because they are bad people, but because we hold different views and philosophies. We disagree, we argue, we stubbornly hold on to our own views, and we stress one another out.
Our kids will have such people in their lives too.
And today, I appreciate the value of having such people in my children’s village. At least at this juncture when I can still ’monitor’ their village and help them to manage such difficult people.
Hopefully one day, they’ll grow to have the skillset to manage and live with these people in their village, on their own.
In the meantime, God help me to love these 不可爱的人 in the village.
“No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide an escape, so that you can stand up under it.” 1 Corinthians 10:13