What is the purpose of your family? When I ask parents or their children in a therapy session, I usually get blank stares or an off-the-cuff response like, “You know. what they teach in school or church.” Most people haven’t thought or talked about what their families are for or what their family’s purpose is, beyond containing a group of same-last-named individuals that do what families do. 

What is the Purpose?

Beyond the obvious same last name, eating out of the same refrigerator, and most often sleeping at the same address, there is a purpose to your family. Raising children is most often, but not always, associated with having a family.

However, raising children is what most families do, but even then, sometimes children are raised not on purpose, despite the family they have. The children may grow themselves in some families, with little attention to deliberate nurturing. 

Often families see their purpose as giving identities to the members. We are the Olson’s. Olson stands for people who do what they say they will. Families identify with their name and who they perceive themselves to be as a group, or what others perceive them to be. You know that blanking blank family down the road are nothing but junkyard dogs. 

What is a Family?

Families are a collection of individuals who have and express a shared purpose. The purpose is to cooperate to help themselves, and the other family members grow, succeed, and feel good about themselves.

The choice to respectfully assist and communicate with each other is key. Competition within families should never be greater than the cooperation. Families that cooperate can achieve much more than each individual alone, like 1 and 1 can achieve three times as much as two alone. 

We all owe each other as humans are our honesty, and after that, all else is a gift. Family members’ gifts to each other are to realize their cooperative purpose and honestly act on it for their common good, success, and happiness. Happy family members project that happiness forward out to each other, neighbors, and colleagues. 

Positive Parenting Tips & Reminders

Healthy families have a purpose beyond identity and/or raising children. They purposely cooperate and nurture each other. 

YOU are the expert on your Child Are you perfect? No. Do you make mistakes? Yes. Can you learn something today that will help you be a more effective Parent? Absolutely! 

Hold them close, but don’t smother them. Love them, but don’t enable them. And, keep it simple with the basic, but sound rules that you enforce consistently. Take care, and use “Positive Parenting!”