Family Dynamics

Family Dynamics -- what's the first thing that comes into your head?  I bet you're
thinking  things like where does the oldest child fit in, middle child syndrome, youngest child spoiled, etc.  Older sibling dictator, younger sibling annoying,  All kinds of dynamics. 

I'm talking about how our family is made up.  And our family dynamics are indeed interesting.  I am older than my husband.  This is just the way it is...we don't discuss age differences in our household because we know that they don't make a difference.  (Now we do think it makes a difference when you are under the age of 21 but we won't be discussing that issue today).  I am 13 years older than my husband.  This has caused several comments when people find out - perhaps those stories can be another blog for another day. 

When we got married I had 3 older girls - teenagers - ages, 16, 14 and 12.  Plus another girl who was 16 and lived with us for 3 years.  My poor husband.  What he went through for me (again this might become another post). 

So we got married - my husband was 24 and I was 37.  We became grandparents in less than a year of our marriage.  My husband was a very young grampa!  Well, here we are 18 years later and we have added to our family.  We now have 6 birth grandchildren and 3 step-grandchildren and we also added two more children of our own! 

Getting the idea of family dynamics yet?  Our oldest daughter has 4 children - 17 year old son, 13 year old daughter and twin 8 year old boys.  Middle of the oldest girls has no children at this time but does have a dog.  Youngest of the 3 oldest girls has 3 step-children ages 23, 20 and 15 (I think I have those ages right), an 8 year old son and a 7 year old daughter.  The younger two children are not married and have no children. 

One day one of the grandsons was talking about adoption with me.  This was in relation to a family at church who are foster parents and had adopted a child.  I explained that sometimes birth mothers just aren't able to take care of children and other parents take over.  I explained that Grampa and I did the same thing and adopted our youngest daughter (age 24) and son (age 20).  My grandson, bless his heart, looked at me and said "What!  Chris is adopted!!!???  When did this happen?" 

Now you might think this is the end but no.  A month or so later this same grandson is having a discussion with his mother about Dad's.  She has remarried and so her children have a father and a step-dad.  After some discussion he said "You mean Grampa is your step-dad?"  After affirming that yes this was so, he was asked who did you think he was?  His response? - I thought he was just a friend who hung around a lot.  (Same grandson also made the remark that Grandma must know a lot about dating).

Wait -- we aren't done yet.  Shortly after that discussion we had daughter and her family over for dinner.  The discussion of holidays came up and we were discussing Christmas plans.  We live in Tulsa.  My in-laws live in North Missouri.  We were trying to make plans for going up for Christmas.  Grandkids were excited as they like to visit Grammy and Poppy on the farm.  We talked about when Aunt Jeri and Uncle Vernon would be there.  Grandson says - who's Aunt Jeri and Uncle Vernon. We explain that Aunt Jeri is Grampa's sister.  His response?  You guessed it! "What??!!  You have a sister?"

We asked him who he thought Uncle Vernon was.  He didn't remember Uncle Vernon until we reminded him that Uncle Vernon liked to play with them.  He played play-doh and helped with playing cars.  He then says "oh yeah, I remember him."  I asked well who did you think he was?  His response, "I thought he was just a friend who came and hung out." 

Wow - we have lots of friends hanging out with us.  I'm thinking it's kind of neat that my grandson thinks we just let people hang out with us for no reason and he never questions why. 

Dynamics aren't over yet.  I mentioned at the beginning that my husband is younger than I am.  Well, daughter #3 is married to a man who is 13 years older than her.  We really think the world of our son-in-law and my husband is very quick to let everyone know that he is younger than his son-in-law (by 2 months). 

Yes, I think we have family dynamics in our family.  But we wouldn't have it any other way.  We love each and every member of our family.  We treasure the time we spend with them.  And we know that our family is unique but in reality isn't every family?  The dynamics of your family might not be quite as diverse as ours but family dynamics make life interesting.