Next week, three of my youngest kids will graduate from high school, leaving us practically empty nesters. After 31-plus years of parenting, we are arriving at the end of the day-to-day, hands-on parenting, a day I wasn’t sure would ever arrive. Here’s one thing I know for sure, after those 31 years. We could not have done it alone.
Long before it was a book title, the phrase “It takes a village to raise a child” was an African proverb. That saying recognizes that families do not exist in a vacuum. We are all in this together and we need each other.
Our family’s lives have been blessed by countless teachers who have shepherded my kids from non-English speakers who could not distinguish letters from numbers to productive adults with full-time careers.
One daughter arrived from Ethiopia at age 7, a true orphan who had lived on the streets of Addis Ababa. She could not count or read. She did not know her colors or even how to hold a crayon. But by golly, she knew how to use a mortar and pestle to grind teff and she knew how to butcher a goat.
Her original school psychologist’s evaluation said she’d never be “educable,” would never learn to read or write and could only hope for menial labor somewhere. I wasn’t the only one who dismissed that report as the flotsam that it was. Her teachers believed in her, just like we did and they let her know she could do anything. When she graduated from high school, she also graduated from a dental assisting program at the local Applied Technology Center. Today, she works full-time, makes a good wage, models on the side and is happily married to an Eritrean refugee.
We have had teachers who cried with us when our daughter with disabilities passed away and taught their classes how to mourn with those who mourn as they comforted our daughter’s siblings. Teachers have helped instill a love of learning by praising our children’s abilities to solve hard problems and showed them that Mom and Dad weren’t the only people who loved to read. They helped us tag-team and keep our kids accountable when they struggled to tell the truth. Teachers and the school principal listened to us when my son was being bullied. They not only intervened directly and stopped the bullying for our son, they also instituted school-wide anti-bullying campaigns so no one else would become a victim. That meant so much to our family.
Classroom discussions have allowed my children to reveal vulnerable sides of themselves they then shared at home. One son read “The Rent Collector” about a family living and scavenging on a trash dump, then shared with his class that he too had done that as a 4-year-old. Later that day, he shared the story with me and showed me a side I had not known.
A daughter wrote a beautiful and heartfelt essay about how she felt when her sister died. Another one wrote about the things she loves about growing up in a big family. Teachers and school counselors have also pushed, prodded and pulled a couple of my kids across the finish line, when we weren’t sure high school graduation was in the cards. We are eternally grateful.
We have had neighbors able to reach my teens when we could not. They might have said the very same thing we did, but coming from a neighbor and a friend, my kids could both hear and believe the message that they tuned out when it came from us.
I am grateful when “the village” gave appropriate, corrective feedback to my children — and when they let me know they had. I am grateful to the many people in my children’s lives who have held them accountable for their actions and to the many who have modeled good, ethical behavior. During the times when my children have encountered some of the uglier sides of our society, including racism and bullying, I am grateful for the many “villagers” who had their back and stood with them.
So here’s to the village. Thank you. We couldn’t have done it without you.
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Holly Richardson, a Salt Lake Tribune contributor, is a proud mom and grateful member of an ever-expanding village.