Communication Is A Must In Relationships

You can have communication but not a relationship with someone,
but you can't have a relationship with someone without communication.

I've lost a relationship with a young friend this year which makes me sad. Actually she was an adopted godchild. I was kind of her grandmother mentor, even though her mother is only 10 years younger than I am, and she has a perfectly good grandmother.
Yet she needed someone else in her life in that role, and for awhile, I filled it.

Because she lives about 45 minutes away, it has taken work to maintain this 3-year relationship from the start. We have talked on the phone, written emails on computer, text-messaged, and seen each other face-to-face on rare occasions.
She's almost 17 years old and driving and has been working part-time in addition to going to school. So she is busy, and I am busy. And so communicating at times that were good for both of us has been difficult.

I have discovered with my own grown children, that you have to communicate in whatever way works for them in order to hear from them. When my daughter lived in Knoxville, we would have gone broke if we had called each other. But we emailed back and forth. When she moved to Denver, she started text-messaging, so I had to learn how to text-message to keep up with her. My son emails me often. If he calls it's a rare occasion, or it's something bad. We do what we have to do in whatever manner to communicate with each other.

And so with P, the godchild, we've tried it all, but in the last few months, nothing has worked well. The first train wreck was when she went on Fall Break with her parents. Though she text-messaged me on the way to FL, it stopped abruptly when she got there. Come to find out, her father told her she couldn't call or text-message me, because the phone carrier service would charge him extra down there. I could understand that, maybe, but why didn't she tell me that ahead of time? And come to find out, she took a friend with her. She hadn't told me that either. I began to discover that not only were we having trouble finding a mode of communication, but that she was not communicating. I began to feel like I was talking to a brick wall. She had been only offering "how are you" and "I hate school/work". I wanted, "saw a cute boy in my class today," or "had a math test and it blew me out of the water," or "I have a friend and we went shopping and I found the cutest pair of shoes."

When I would call her, invariably her parents would give her something to do. When she called me, it would be about 9pm and I learned she was supposed to be in the shower or getting ready for the next day, and she was talking to me while changing clothes, or with her head stuck in the closet picking out clothes for the next day, or packing her lunch... she was distracted. I had trouble getting her attention.
Okay, phone wasn't working. Then we went to text-messaging, but you can't have long conversations that way, plus, her dad cut that off at times. Why don't you email me, I asked her. I'm too busy. No time to get on the computer. I didn't buy that. I think her parents had restricted her use of the computer. Or... she wasn't very concerned about really communicating with me to start.

The Saturday before Christmas, I had a great-niece born. This niece has the very same name only spelled differently from my godchild! I text-messaged her to tell her - I thought that was exciting because it is a pretty unique name anyway. I think she responded "cool". Some of the relatives at the hospital live north of Nashville, as does this godchild. They said it was snowing up there! So I asked the godchild if it was snowing at her house and she said she didn't know. I asked why she didn't know - was she still in bed? (it was about noon) She said no. Then she said in a typical smart-aleck teenager tone - "If you want to know, why don't YOU look?" She missed the part that I was in Nashville. It wasn't snowing in Nashville. I heard it was snowing NORTH of Nashville. She lives north of Nashville. That's why I was asking her. And to share something with her. And just to talk to her. At that point, I told her to go back to bed, and when she got up in a better mood from the other side, I'd talk to her again.

The relationship has gone downhill since. If I text-message, she answers but she does not initiate any conversations - by phone, or email, or text-messaging.
I did send her an email about friends - some are friends for a season, some are friends for a reason, and some are friends for a lifetime. She did email back and say she didn't "get it".

I'm pretty sure her parents have told her not to correspond with me - unless I contact her first. I can't knock her parents. Her parents are her parents.

In the brief conversations I have had with P since Christmas, she only rattles on about how she's losing friends, and it's not her fault and she's doing the best she can,...??? I think there is alot more going on than meets the eye. But she's not telling me what that is.

I know her parttime job has put her under alot of pressure with getting her schoolwork done. I think she would have been alot better off working last summer, instead of starting when school started, but that was her parent's call.

And so I think about her, and wish her the best, and hope that one day we can be friends again. But for now, it's over. You cannot maintain a relationship without communication. This opened my eyes to that fact. And that's sad. I can only hope she learns HOW to communicate with people she cares about.

Makes me wonder why in school they teach the basics such as "reading, writing, arithmetic" but they exclude such life skills as basic appropriate communication from one individual to another.

Random Thoughts on Parenting

Okay, it's been over a year since I posted anything. Since getting back on this site, I have found several things to change, and wanted to do more, but decided to stop and WRITE. That's what happens to me these days... I get distracted and don't complete the task at hand.

Well, because of several things that have happened in the past couple of months, I have been taking looks at the past. The distant past and the faraway past. But the past leads to the present. We don't need to dwell in the past. We don't need to lie in the mud. We need to appreciate today for today. But there is some value in analyzing what has happened and made us what we are today.

From a conversation with my brother today, I am convinced that we all have those snapshot moments from our childhood and of our past, that affect us in very real ways today. As Dave said, they aren't whole videos of chapters of our life. Just unconnected snapshots. They don't have to make sense to anyone but us. We feel what we feel. Might have been explained away if given the chance to communicate. But we carry them with us today and into tomorrow.

I think that no matter how good or how bad our childhood, we all walk into adulthood with some kind of baggage.
And I am convinced that parents do the very best they know how while bringing up their children.
But there are always consequences, from a response, spoken or acted upon, and given little thought about at the time.

Times have changed and life is not like it was 40-50 years ago.
And just as I brought some of that snapshot baggage with me into my adulthood, my children have snapshot moments they have taken into their adulthood.
I cringe and hurt and am embarassed and ashamed sometimes when they talk about things they remember I did in their childhood years.
Why does it seem everyone remembers the bad times but not the good times?
Or at least the bad far outnumber the good.
There are so many things I hoped at the time to erase from my kids' minds and hearts and egos.
I feel I did more tearing down than building up.
I hoped and prayed they wouldn't remember the bad - but they do.
My parents would probably feel the same way.
But they aren't around for me to talk to. (Talk to your parents while you can!) And children from the same home can come away with totally different perspectives on their upbringing.
My brother was a great kid. He was a little adult and got into little trouble.
I thought. In hearing him talk, he had his own share of problems and feelings of insecurity.
None of us come away unhurt.
Very complex. How do you break the trend when you are raising children?
Do perfect environments exist today?
Are only top-level, mature Christians capable of making perfect homes for children?
Is there perfect?