Interracial Family Organization

The Responsibilty of Creating a Human

// January 11th, 2010 // written by Laura Stillman

AUTHOR BIO:

Laura Stillman is the wife of Keenon Stillman. They have been high school sweethearts/BFFs/roomates/boyfriend-girlfriend/husband-wife over the last 26 years. Between them, there are seven biracial (black/white) children ranging in age from young teens to mid-twenties. She is one of the co-founders of the Interracial Family Organization. She works full time as an Administrator and Director of Clinical Services at a Home Care agency and has a personal blog at I Am the Glue, where she blogs about balancing work and parenting, raising an autisic child, managing a large family, wrestling teenagers to the ground, and keeping a healthy relationship with her husband in the middle of the chaos.

We often talk about how hard it is to do things in our life. The struggle to find and keep a job that allows the bills to be paid. How much energy and time it take to clean, cook, or do laundry. How hard it is to deal with people who have difficult personalities.  How difficult it is to balance our lives with work, family, friends, and still find time for ourselves.

We feel successful if we have received a promotion at work. We feel successful if we buy a new house or a new car. We measure our success by how many vacations we have taken, how many important people we have met, or how many toys we have.

We talk about all of our responsibilities. Becoming the best we can be at our jobs, maintaining a household, caring for family members, working on our relationships. But those are not the most important responsibilities you have.

They are insignificant compared to the responsibility of creating and raising  human beings, your children.

There is the actual physical work that goes into conceiving, giving birth, and the years of sleepless nights, running after toddlers, helping with science projects, being the chauffeur, and crying many tears. But, that is still the easy part.

Making a human is basic. Shaping a human into a beautiful adult person, inside and out, takes more than Spiderman sippy cups and the coolest new cell phone. You have to teach compassion. You have to model for them what to expect from a love partner. You need to help them find their talents. You have to help them work through their insecurities.

You have to be the person that you want them to be.

There is no one specific recipe to get a perfect outcome. Each child is very different. Different things motivate or interest them. Or not. You work with what you have and as a parent, you must be creative and flexible. They don’t usually learn life lessons through stories of your mistakes. They have to learn hands on.  You give them all the tools, then you step back and say a little prayer.

This morning I sat down with my 14 and 15 year old daughters to have the “Big Talk.” They are the youngest of seven, so I have the script perfected. No butterflies this time. I breezed through the basic of STDs, pregnancy, and contraceptives. They know these things. The had classes in school. But, I did want them to hear it all from me.

Then I went into the second half of the talk. I told them to slow down, think carefully, and be well informed before making life choices. I told them about planning your life and finding a partner that brings out the best in them. I told them I wish for them to have the same type of relationship as their father and I do. I needed them to feel empowered as a female to make their life turn out exactly how they dreamed. I encouraged them to use their young years to go on adventures, meet people, and have stories to tell their own children later. I want them to become strong, inside and out beautiful, compassionate, intelligent, non-dysfunctional women.

Now THAT is responsibility. No job I will ever do will be as important.