Families: The Training Ground for Small Humans
Note: The author is well aware of the range of dysfunction within families. This blog post intends to focus only on the phenomenon of families as “first teachers,” not on the content — supportive or destructive — that is being taught to children. The reader can extrapolate the profound impact of both helpful behaviors and harmful ones on the developing mind, body, and psyche of a child, and the long-lasting effects of abusive family dynamics. A future blog post will delve into intergenerational trauma as a result of this phenomenon, and offer avenues to prevent and heal family-generated trauma.
Why I Think Families Are Really Important
We hear all the time about the importance of families.
Family members stress, “We must stick together; blood is thicker than water” and all that...
Elders share stories of long-gone ancestors in hopes of keeping memories and legacies alive...
Politicians spout rhetoric on how their programs will support families, or at least family values as they define them...
Social service agencies promise to keep families together as the ultimate goal.
I think about the importance of families in a different light, though.
The impact of family is much more profound than a motto or sentiment.
Families are actually “first teachers,” modeling and showing children how to move through life.
A family is literally the place where babies and children learn how to be human.
Babies Know Nothing About Being Human
It has innate reactions and reflexes that enable it to find the breast, lift its head, crawl, and suckle.
Babies can do these basic things to keep themselves alive.
And then, as they start observing what's around them and notice their surroundings and how the people around them behave, they develop their neural pathways for human behavior.
Humans have mirror neurons that allow us to copy what we're seeing. So, for the first few years of a person's life, they learn from the people around them how to behave, what to do, what to say, and how to react to situations.
All these behaviors and reactions are programmed pre-verbally, which means they are not stored in the conscious part of the brain. In later years, someone cannot recall how they learned specific speech patterns, food preferences, or facial expressions.
Babies learn so much, so fast, and it’s all planted deep inside their minds and bodies at a subconscious level.
As a child becomes verbal, the left part of their brain — the logical part — starts to kick in.
Though young children won’t be able to reason for many years, they start to develop the capacity to reason.
Reasoning is so critical in this process of becoming a human because that is how we can look at the behaviors, patterns, and values we learned and get curious about them.
If we have the insight to observe them, to wonder, “Hmm, why do I do that? Why do my parents do that? Why do my grandparents do that...” we can start seeing familial patterns.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The ability to reason isn’t going to happen for many years yet.
Kids start to develop the skills for logic and reason when they’re elementary school age when they’re learning math and writing.
During this time, they are also being influenced by others around them — other kids or teachers if they go to school, or by TV or books or other media.
They see how other families do things.
They start to see other ways to be human.
But most very young children will continue to do what they learned in their family of origin. Young children have a built-in instinct to conform in order to belong and stay safe (you’ll learn why in a moment).
The Teenage Years
When people get into their teenage years, the very important individuation process happens.
Individuation is when we start to see ourselves as unique individuals, recognize and flex our autonomy, and form our own ideas and opinions.
We begin the process of discernment. “Huh, when I was a child, I learned X, Y, and Z. I was explicitly told X, Y, and Z, but other things were implied, or I deduced them by looking at what was going on around me.”
All children learn these things:
We do this in our family, but we don’t do that.
Moms/women do these things; dads/men do those things.
These people are good; those people are dangerous/not to be trusted/bad.
These are what I call the black-and-white “rules of engagement” we learn to navigate the world.
Because children are too young to reason or think about these things critically, they gobble it all down hook, line, and sinker.
But in the teenage years, we start to wonder. “I thought XYZ is the way it is, but I just saw something that showed me the complete opposite.”
And now they’re at a crossroads.
Now, they have to decide if they want to keep believing their old rule or not.
And the thing is, there are big stakes at play!
If a child stops believing something their family believes, they risk being ostracized.
They rely on their family to feel taken care of, safe, and protected. If they don’t go along with the status quo, they are vulnerable.
All humans have an innate sense of the risk of vulnerability and the importance of belonging for our safety. That's one of the reasons young children are so easily manipulated. Not only do they not have reason to think things through, but they also have a very strong need to do what everyone else around them is doing so that they fit in, belong, and be taken care of.
Now, back to the teenagers...
Even teenagers, who are quite capable of doing many things to take care of themselves, aren’t safe alone in the world or able to support themselves.
But they are starting to try out different ideas, make other choices, do things differently from their family or peers, and have some sense of having agency or at least being able to defend their ideas.
Why Holiday Dinner Can Suck
As those teenagers age into adulthood and leave home for college, work, and to take care of themselves independently in the world, they can really make changes in their ideology that might differ from their family.
And that's why Thanksgivings can be so tenuous: you never know what kind of opinions will show up around the table.
So when I think about the importance of families, I think about this process of becoming human and how we learn it from our family of origin.
We all know we don’t have a choice about our family members. We are stuck with them for the most part until we individuate.
People flip out if we start to question our family’s fundamental rules of engagement — those deep core values of how to be a good human.
Most people don’t know where their beliefs and behavior patterns came from. Because those rules and values run deep, most people aren’t aware of how they inherited them. They do what they’ve always done and don’t question it.
If someone starts poking around their inner psyche, looking at their family values with scrutiny, it can be really threatening to those who are humming along with the status quo.
The Power to Change and Heal Families
When I work with families, I ask them to do an inventory of their beliefs, values, and rules of engagement:
What do you want to keep or maintain from your family of origin?
What do you want to shift?
How will you do that?
I have an amazing story about delving into my family lineage so I could break a pattern that had plagued us for centuries. I needed to understand what had happened to my ancestors so I could heal it.
I went on a retreat to explore and commune with my ancestors. I learned their stories, understood when and how the break happened, and drew a line in the sand, saying, “It's stopping here, with this generation.”
But to do that work, I had to understand deeply this process of becoming a human. I had to uncover the family patterns, make new choices, and communicate what I’d learned to the rest of my family. I told them, “We're not going to do this anymore.”
This is the power of understanding how we learn to be human.
When you know how this process works, you can learn and embrace your family — with all its beauty and faults — for what they have done for you and also to make different choices for yourself.
It's an incredible opportunity.
Family love, choosing awareness, facing family patterns, and knowing you have the power to change them — though it may take a bit of work — will make you a more expansive, compassionate human being.
That is what I wish for us all.
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