Tell Them the Hard Parts Too

Do you know where your grandparents grew up?

Do you know how your parents met?

Do you know where your name came from?

Do you know about an illness or injury one of your parents had when they were young?

Do you know what your family learned from its hard times?

Those come from a short list two psychologists put together to find out what helps children cope when life gets hard. The children who could answer more of the questions had higher self-esteem. They felt more in control of their own lives, and they believed their families worked well.

Then something happened that nobody had planned for. The researchers had just finished their first round of interviews when September 11th came. They went back to the same children afterward, and the ones who knew more of their family's story came through that frightening time more steadily.

A child who knows where she comes from knows she belongs to people who have come through hard times before.

Look again at the list. Illness. Injury. Hard times. They aren't there by accident.

Every family has its holiday stories. How your grandparents met. The winter the pipes froze. The uncle who drove three states with a goat in the back seat. Those are treasures. But the stories that went with the steadiest children weren't the polished ones where everything went right. They were the ones that went up and down. We lost the farm, and we started again. Your grandmother was widowed young, and she raised four children on her own. We had a terrible year, and we stuck together.

A story like that tells a young person something no lecture can. Hard things happen in this family, and this family gets through them.

And it's usually told at the most ordinary moments. Over dinner, in the car, on a holiday — by whoever happens to remember. Very often, by a grandparent.