Comments on Marvin X's essay
Of Grandparents, Parents and Children
Very true and insightful, Marvin.Thanks.
--Dr.Fritz Pointer
Good teachings, Baba Marvin. But grandparents teachings permeate and last an entire lifetime. The unconditional quality of their love is needed to offset the stress of their parents. I think if we were good parents, our children want our input- to a point, as you were outlining.
--Dr. Kweli Tutashinda
Let not our regrets and frets from our past cast a shadow on the possible lessons that our wisdom and the extra time we have for support and babysitting loved ones.However, one should not be overbearing sharing our seeds of knowledge. Let the little ones teach us what we need to learn, In time the tables will turn given the blessing of aging. Let us not squirm from hearing our neglects, overdue frets and debts unpaid.
--Monsa S. Nitoto
Marvin,I’ve just read this. Fritz Pointer is right, as usual. It’s an important issue.I had an entire chapter in my Ph.D dissertation on a black boy I treated who was caught in the conflict between mother and grandmother (“ everybody’s mother”), though a lot of the conflict comes from the birth mother who had dumped the kids temporarily on the grandmother then got halfway on her feet and wanted them back; but the grandmother had bonded with the children by then, plus she and the mother remained attached to the child dependency check. In other words, both felt, let me have the check and you can have the kids. So it works both ways. But it’s a problem that originates with the parents though driven by social forces and the righteous feeling on the part of the grandmother that she hasn’t done a perfect job of raising the mother and would like to try her hand on her grandchild if not rearising the mother.. But this complex and variegated issue you point to is just one of the projects in black social engineering neglected and lost in the winds of tough talk of black family strengths after the black intellectuals turned away from combat with oppression after the Sixties to patching up black identity and self-esteem image-making largely through denying the very pathology our oppression had wrought.
--Dr. Nathan Hare
Of Grandparents, Parents and Children
by Marvin X
Gibran taught us children come through us but they are not us, we are the bow, they are the arrow. As much as we love our grandchildren, they belong to their mothers and fathers who have their visions for them, so we must ultimately step back and let their parents raise them, no matter how much we love them and want to give them our vision.
So I say to myself and other grandparents, let the parents raise them no matter how much you want to instill your vision, you had your chance with your children, now it is your children's turn to raise their children as they see fit. If and when they call upon you, be ready to serve and don't overwhelm your children with your dogmatic ideas of child raising notions infused with ideological and spiritual dogmatism.
Your children are your children and their children are their children. If your children never desire you to see their children, so it is. You had your chance with your children, your grandchildren are just a last chance to scoop your poop and join the ancestors with a clean slate or ma'at, the balance of right and wrong, good and evil. Don't push the issue, after all, you shall be gone soon and so shall your children, then it will your grandchildren's turn to see if they can walk the straight path!
--marvin x/el muhajir
11/1/17
