150 MAMMA MARGARET 150

by Pascual Chávez Villanueva

T

CRADLE OF LIFE

HELP FOR THE FAMILIES

FRIENDS

One of the most important things for the family’s support is finding other people with plenty of experience. A family needs to grow up with a lot of positive encouragement. Good friends are necessary to live better.

One thing absolutely necessary in life is support from society. Man was created for company. As we read in Genesis: «It is not good for man to be alone ». God is Trinity, that is communion, Love. Jesus called the Twelve and he founded the Church. Parents should always help their children to have good friends, and the family itself should do the same. In all friendship there is a real meeting of minds, after which things are never the same again. Parents who have had the experience of genuine and sincere friendship can teach their children what having friends really means. It is sad when parents never invite friends to the house: in this way a window on the world remains closed, and for parents like this it is difficult, if not impossible, to understand what an important gift in life friendship can be. True friendship opens the way to embark on an adventure, to broaden one’s horizons and to make a commitment. Perhaps it is for this reason that nearly all adolescents say that for them friendship is the more important thing. Since it is in friendship that we feel stronger, thanks to the sense of security and the self confidence that comes from the trust we experience with someone we respect, in whom we can confide everything, even the things we are not proud of, knowing that we will be accepted with understanding

 Friends are important. Popular wisdom has always made the point clearly and simply: «Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are ». Children are influenced by their friends, their circle, their “gang.” According to some recent studies, while the influence of heredity is not denied, the personality of children is influenced mainly by their peers, who shape the behaviour and the choices made far more than their mother and father’s teaching does. It will be his companions/friends (playmates or schoolmates or neighbours) who determine the child’s way of talking and behaving, making him weak and insecure when he feels rejected because he does not go by the rules of the group, even to the extent of giving up his studies. It may seem extreme, but some parents find this really worrying. Peer pressure from companions and friends is very powerful. In a group, the quietest youngster in the world can allow himself to be caught up in activities that no one would ever have thought possible. Choosing friends is never easy and it is never without its consequences: it can give rise to disappointments, to being let down, to suffering. On this account parents need to act with prudence and tact in this area.

 The issue of friends is important especially for the children. «Why are his friends more important than his family?». No matter how good and understanding parents are, mother calm and even tempered, father affectionate and tolerant, detachment on the part of the adolescent seems obligatory and inevitable, at least to some extent. A certain break is part of the normal development of family life. Starting with puberty, the priorities of the children emerge: «Friends first of al!». And the family in the second place. In a friendly or in an aggressive way, the adolescent begins to create a distance from his parents and to discover “life outside”. There is no need to get alarmed: after all the same thing happened to the parents, and it just goes to show that friends are not only useful but essential. With friends one begins to love someone outside the family, to respect other views, to discover other loyalties. It’s a necessary apprenticeship that doesn’t finish with adolescence but continues throughout life. Friends bring new ideas into the family circle and make it take a fresh look at its own, to find new ways of responding to new challenges, to examine its own and other people’s points of view. They are the source of knowledge, occasions for discussion, for a new approach, for transferring one’s interests outside the family, in order to discover and to take on board other people’s difficulties and problems…Friendship, in other words, brings something valuable, teaching respect and tolerance and satisfies the need for encouragement and support that everyone feels and seeks. Friends are not a way of running away from one’s responsibilities, but on the contrary lead us to look at things squarely and face up to them with all the effort required. 