Children's Rites

Children's rites are not adult. Their "rites" are rights. To play. To socialize. To have a place in a family. Children also have responsibilities. They have opportunities to learn about what it is to be family. They are learning by watching what their parents and others around them do. Before school begins, most of that kind of patterning and modeling happens at home. It's why it is tragic when a child doesn't have this right. Each family sets up its own values and practices and these are found in the home. Some family structures are deliberate and others are kind of random. All work. Happiness and love are what children need most for success. The rest is socializing and this happens with other families and places such as schools. Sometimes clashes between what one family's standards are and others that are not the same, but that provides families opportunity to learn what their own family is and that it is unique, while at the same time, respectful of  the rights of other families to create their own. A family is a home and what that means can be how it is made. The variety is enormous but all are family. Children often make up their own rites, hopefully that fit with their family make-up. I recall the joy in having complete freedom to play without a lot of parental involvement. We lived with children of all kinds in our neighbourhood. No one told us about colour or religions or languages. We were just kids and no differences were bothered about. It was all fun. We had large yards or properties, places where together, we could build "forts" and "playhouses", where we could climb trees and paddle in streams and fish with safety pins for minnows and nibble at "sour leaf"and swing on branches. We spent only very little time, usually the evenings for awhile, listening to canned entertainment. We had time with parents and siblings at the dining table. The most wonderful adult parent moments were when we all played table games together or went on picnics or to the zoo or library or museum, but the closest, memorable times were story times or listening to tales of our parents'childhoods. The weeks we stayed with grandparents were precious. That's when we learned about a time a long time before we were born. Grandparents took time for us, too. Their work may have been business or farm obligations, but they loved us in a very special way. We could see in their eyes, that they once had children like us, our moms and dads, and that they could see them in us. It made us feel proud and confident  to realize our lineage beyond academic family tree genealogy studies or reams of photos. We simply felt it in their care of us, and their hugs and the way they looked at us as though we were the most important people on earth. And we were. That was our children's rite, to love and be loved, and know we were family.