Many children and even adults long to live in a “normal” family assuming, of course, that normal is equivalent to healthy and happy.
When I goggled “normal family” just to see what popped up, my personal favorite was the following from Wikipedia:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In mathematics, with special application to complex analysis, a normal family is a pre-compact family of continuous functions. Informally, this means that the functions in the family are not widely spread out, but rather stick together in a somewhat "clustered" manner. It is of general interest to understand compact sets in function spaces, since these are usually truly infinite-dimensional in nature.
More formally, a family (equivalently, a set) F of continuous functions f defined on some complete metric space X with values in another complete metric space Y is called normal if every sequence of functions in F contains a subsequence which converges uniformly on compact subsets of X to a continuous function from X to Y.
Since I personally love the language of mathematics I find this an accurate and fun way to think of what is normal for a particular family. This might not be normal for any other family. One can predict the general behavior of a normal family. On the other hand, normal does not mean happy, functional, safe, or well.
Some of my friends who live with a partner and, in some case, still have children living at home have recently had their normal predictable routine interrupted or changed by serious illness or death. Nothing seems normal for them. They now are establishing a new normal, which, for them, means that their routine and who does what to insure that the household runs smoothly has changed. In one case, the new normal means 5 days a week morning trips to get radiation treatment. On the other hand, the values, which guide this family, remain the same.
In other families I know their normal has been completely disrupted by addiction which now dictates the F, X, Y. None of the people are the same, how they spend their time and energy and what they thought were the values of the family no longer are in evidence. The entire family is in a reactionary mode.
According to the definition I am using the genders, races, nationalities, incomes, or ages do not determined what is normal for one family to the next. Some of my friends are in a same sex marriage without children. Some are in a same sex marriage with children. Some of my friends are in a marriage in which romance or a sexual relationship has not played a part for years. Some of my friends are married to a person of a different race or nationality than they are and they may have children of a multitude of races or nationalities. All of these families are normal.
On the other hand, several families I know appear to be living the
standard middle to upper class United States dream. If one “looks” at these families from a distance they have it all. They have the requisite 2.5 children, the sheepdog, a very upscale house, which is tastefully furnished, two fairly new cars and all look to be physically fit and healthy. Yet, when the doors are closed and the blinds and curtains closed some of these families live in fear. The drinking and anger on of one of the family members, terrorizes everyone in the family. No one sleeps well. Harsh words and threats are spoken daily. No one feels good emotionally or physically. Yet, this has become the normal for this family, Any suggestion that the non drinking adult and children go to a shelter and get help in establishing a new home with a new normal is not welcomed. A part of their normal is to pretend as if everyone outside the immediate family thinks that all is okay. They could likely be one of those families who tragically become front-page news when someone discovers that they have been the victims of murder suicide.
Obviously a more functional goal would be to establish a healthy family in which the normal is a set of behaviors matching the values of that family. Of course, I am assuming that the values respect the rights and dignity of everyone.
In many families what occurs is that either a negative uninvited visitors arrives, some unplanned for event happens or the family allows itself to set sucked into allowing what seems to be the values and norms of others to take over. It is easy to allow work performance, school performance, cell phones, the Internet, the more and bigger is better attitude to take over. Soon there is no time for taking care of oneself or each other, for family fun time, for daily time to step back and articulate the spiritual goals of the family and to insure that the behaviors of the family allow those goals to be realized or at least allows the family to work towards achieving them.
A negative uninvited visitor might be an illness such as an addiction, another serious chronic illness or a spiritually and emotionally challenged relative who arrives on one’s doorstep with all their worldly possessions. They have arrived to stay! Yikes.
Even then if the family is in the habit of regularly stepping back to remind itself of it spiritual values and goals, the uninvited visitor will not take over the dynamics of the family. They will continue to function normally because the same values will be accessed to deal with the new situation. This does not mean that the transition will be easy or even smooth. It does mean that the family will work as a team to meet this new challenge. This includes the fact that if one family member is ill with addiction or some other disease such as Alzheimer’s that the decisions of the family about how to deal with that will be based upon the shared values of the remaining healthy members of the family.
My friends Becky, Bob and John Michael are an excellent example of how they adapted to a new logistical normal while holding on to the same shared values and goals. When JM was five his father died. Later his mother got diagnosed with cancer and died when JM was 12. Becky and Bob had agreed to take over the raising of JM in the event that his mother died. Bob retired and Becky quit her job as head of a private school so that she could move into the house JM has been raised in and parents him until he was on his way to the next stage of his life which turned out to be college. The logistical normal changed for all three of these people but the values and the goals remained consistent. For Becky and Bob the spiritual values of taking care of each other and family members such as JM remained consistent. There was never any question of whether they could and would take over the parenting of JM. There was no question of whether Bob would agree that raising JM had to be the primary goal. Thus the family held on to their basic normal despite many logistical changes.
It is not easy for we humans to develop and maintain a healthy normal even when life throws us curve balls. There may be times when really tough decisions have to be made. Those decisions might affect the constellation of the immediate family. A family member might die, have to go into a nursing home or have to go away for extended treatment. Some family members might not be able to stay strong and may decide they have to live elsewhere in order to stay healthy. Sometimes outside support from a therapist or a life coach might be helpful.
No matter what, all of us have to remember that we cannot compare our insides with the outside of others. We do not know what is going behind the doors that very well maintained home with the two new cars, the swimming pool, the 2.5 “beautiful” children and the sheepdog. We do need a system for regular evaluating our normal, our goals and the values upon which those are based.
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