CONTENTS

• JUST VISITING
• FEATURE ARTICLE: BLESSINGS AND PROBLEMS IN AN EXTENDED FAMILY
  Part One - Changes in the Extended Family
• I WOULD NEVER, OR WOULD I
  by Mikal Frazier MA, MMFT, LMFT, LPC

Today, we begin a continuing series of studies on the extended family. Recently, Ann and I were asked to address the needs of the extended family in our week long series at Danville, Illinois. As we began looking for preparation materials, we were shocked at the lack of significant literature on the subject. After making the rounds of the Christian book store, browsing web sites and search through catalogues, we were convinced that most writers think family life stops when the last child is grown. They also think grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins aren't real family members. Actually we know they don't think that, but for some reason, very few people are willing to either pick up the pen and write about it or key their thoughts into a word processor. We certainly don't have the last word on the subject, but we would like to initiate discussion concerning this important but overlooked part of the family.

Mikal's latest article challenges my comfort zone. If I'm really honest with myself, I would have to admit that I sometimes resent the faults of others knowing that I'm vulnerable in the same area. It's disconcerting to know that we may be burying some of this stuff and totally without conscious awareness of some of our most glaring faults. I urge you to read her thoughts. If you can be objective enough to accept what she says and apply it to yourself, it could have a great impact on your relationships. It applies across the board -work, church, family - just about anything you can think of.

Norman

By Norman Bales

When I stop to consider family dynamics in today's world, the change has been so drastic that it seems like I must have lived my childhood in another life. None of my children live in the same state, nor do they live near us. If I see my grandchildren once a year, I'm doing well. As for aunts, uncles and cousins, I rarely see them at all - usually when there's a death in the family. I didn't grow up that way.

Most of my family lived within a hundred miles of one another during my early years. Most were farmers, who congregated in town on Saturday afternoons along with their immediate families and neighbors. We usually didn't buy very much. The cash crops were harvested in the fall, but most of us sold milk, cream, butter or eggs in order to have a little spending money in our pockets. It was usually the kind that jingles. Folding money was harder to come by.

When we hit town, I went looking for my grandfather. My search was an easy one. I knew exactly where he would be - sitting on the sidewalk on a certain street corner. When I found him, he usually would be involved in a discussion with his friends. They were exchanging opinions about the need for rain, the extent of the expected harvest and market prices. He would always take time out for me and that brief visit created a bond between us. He always gave me a penny, which I exchanged for a stick of peppermint candy.

My other grandparents lived further away (probably twenty miles). About once a month we made it to their house on Sundays. We worshipped together and shared a big Sunday dinner (it was never called lunch). At the time, four of their younger children were still at home, teenagers as I recall. My aunts and uncles were fun to be around, especially if they let me play phonograph records on my grandmother's wind up Victrola.

I remained fairly close to my extended family through my adolescence, but since then I haven't lived close to any of my aunts, uncles, aunts and cousins. My Grandparents died years ago. Basically, I lived in geographic isolation from everyone in my family except for my wife.

When compared to Biblical family dynamics, the change is even more pronounced. In the Old Testament period, the family leader was the oldest living male who had begotten children. He exercised almost complete control of everything that happened in the family unit. In Genesis 18:18-19 God said, "Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord...." Notice that Abraham would "direct his children." Some versions say that he would "command" his children. Furthermore, Abraham's family extended beyond that of his children He would "direct his children and his household." That's his extended family. Who was in that family? We know for sure that he took his nephew Lot with him when he when he left Haran. In Genesis 15:2-3, he complained to God because he was childless. He said, "O Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus. And Abram said, 'You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.'" Notice that the servant was a part of the household. Jacob had 12 sons and a daughter and even into adulthood, they all lived together, with the grandchildren and everyone involved. Even though they were nomadic people moving from place to place, they moved together. They were an extended family, sharing family experiences into adulthood.

The family patterns of my youth do not exist in today's Western culture. There is some evidence that they may still be very much a live in Third World cultures. I find it hard to even visualize Abraham's family structure. I don't command my adult children to do anything and they probably all think that's good. While I don't want authority over them, it would sure be nice if we could share family experiences more often.

The decline of extended family influence in today's Western culture is probably explained more by increased mobility than anything else. The private automobile and accessibility to air travel are partly responsible for the change. The extent of the change is intensified by the broad-based communications systems available to the present generation. These factors often make location a secondary consideration in choosing one's place of employment. Sometimes families are even separated by an ocean. My oldest son, his wife and two children live in Europe at the present time. I know a missionary family who attended a family reunion while on furlough in the United States. Their teenage children were greatly surprised when they saw cousin's who resembled them in appearance. While mobility has obvious advantages, the opportunity to bond with one's extended kin is greatly reduced.

In future segments, we will explore the value of maintaining contact with one's extended family and look for ways of keeping those contacts alive in world characterized by mobility.

by Mikal Frazier MA, MMFT, LMFT, LPC

"Others are merely mirrors of you: You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself." (Christian Research and Development Institute on the Internet)

Well, if you are going to buy into this statement, it will take some brutal honesty on your part. Most of us like to go around denying certain parts of ourselves, and can only acknowledge the same annoying and hurtful behaviors in others, never in ourselves. As a result many of us unwittingly choose to participate or not to participate in relationships, based on how we really feel about ourselves. We like the people who have characteristics we like about ourselves and we do not like the people who have characteristics we do not like in ourselves. We project our own faults onto others. This particular psychological phenomenon is called projection. But projection does not just happen out there in less important relationships. Projection can be extremely hurtful when it happens in a family, particularly when it passes from parents onto children.

A couple of days ago, Jim and I were privileged to hear Dr. Paul Meier as he wove truths of psychological health in submission to absolute scriptures. Perhaps you are familiar with some of his bestsellers: Happiness is a Choice, Love is a Choice, and quite a few others. At this seminar, Dr. Meier shared a very personal experience of projection in his own family.

Dr. Meier and his wife are parents to four children and they serve as guardian aunt and uncle to two nephews. When their youngest, a daughter named Elizabeth, reached fourteen, she became seriously depressed. Dr. Meier was not able to acknowledge the difficulty his own child was having and wrote it off as a "normal rebellious stage." But Dr. Meier could no longer deny that his baby daughter was clinically depressed when she ran away. Her frantic parents called the police and even hired a private detective to find their run-away. But as Dr. Meier says, a teen who wants to stay lost is nearly impossible to find.

Finally, a telephone call came from a compassionate pastoral counselor from whom Elizabeth had sought assistance. The pastoral counselor requested Dr. and Mrs. Meier to come to Kentucky where the counselor was visiting with their daughter. Dr. Meier quoted the counselor as saying, "I believe we can point out some things you have been doing wrong." Dr. Meier says he was humiliated and insulted, but agreed to come with his wife in order to help his daughter.

The night before they were scheduled to meet with the counselor and their desperate child, Dr. Meier says God came to him in a dream and told him he was denying his own faults and projecting them onto his daughter. God told him to read Matthew 7:3-5 and he would understand.

Dr. Meier also tells this story in a recent book entitled Happiness Is A Choice For Teens. There he writes what he read when he turned to that scripture: "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your (daughter's) eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your (daughter), 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your (daughter's) eye."

The story goes on that when Dr. Meier and his wife were reunited with their daughter in the counselor's office the next morning, the pastoral counselor took out his Bible and turned to Matthew 7:3-5, and read the same passage revealed to Dr. Meier. Dr. Meier wept out loud.

Through this frightening experience, Dr. Meier realized he had been overly critical of his daughter because she reminded him of his own faults and shortcomings.

Following are elements of projection as delineated by Dr. Meier. Some of these are specific to this phenomenon as it occurs between parent and child:

• 80% of our thoughts, feelings and motives are unconscious -- that is, outside of our conscious awareness. Many of our motives are sinful and selfish.
• We humans feel uncomfortable around certain people who have similar unconscious faults to our own, as they threaten to make us aware of our similar faults.
• Because of that threat, we reject them, never realizing we are really rejecting ourselves.
• In most families, the father projects the most onto the oldest son, and the mother projects like this onto the oldest daughter.
• Dad tends to be most critical and hypocritical and conditionally loving with his oldest boy, who then grows up feeling like no matter what he does, he's not quite good enough. Mothers do the same with their oldest daughters.
• That's why the oldest boy and oldest girl in most families are more perfectionistic--to try to win the approval of the conditionally loving parent of the same sex.
• Firstborns of each sex get better grades, more college training, better jobs, but enjoy it less, with a higher degree of depression, anxiety, and workaholism.
• Fifteen out of the first sixteen American astronauts were firstborn sons.
• About 80% of medical students who graduate are firstborn sons and daughters.

Dr. Meier explains this did not occur with his firstborn son because he was aware of this tendency and guarded against it. His projection fell to his baby daughter. It is probably safe to say that the child with whom you are mot conflicted is the one on whom you have perpetrated projection.

Dr. Meier says, "The projection problem is one of the biggest causes of teenage rebellion and teenage depression and even teen suicides, and very few of us humans ever even know that we are doing it."

Moms and Dads, we must work at examining ourselves, 2 Corinthians 13:5. Stop the criticism of our children. When a relationship with one of our children is not working, we are the parent and the adult. We are the ones to take responsibility for making it better. We are to communicate unconditional love. This in no way negates appropriate training and discipline. Appropriate training and discipline are mutually inclusive to unconditional love.

Paul reminds us of this same principle in Romans 2:1. "You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things."

(Mikal Frazier is a licensed family therapist with a private practice in Minden and Bossier City, Louisiana. She and her husband, Jim have three adult children and two grandchildren, whom they will gladly tell you about if you ask. Actually you don't even have to ask.)

If you have questions about marriage and family relationships, you can "ASK THE COUNSELOR." Address your questions to Mikal Frazier. Her address is mikalfraz@aol.com

Norman's e-mail address: nlbales@allaboutfamilies.org