Tally and Kesha struggled individually and collectively with one of the fundamental building blocks of Generativity One: the issue of discipline in the raising of children and control in conducting a project. Kesha and Tally both came from a very traditional culture (India) and found that a focal point of their relationship and their shared values was a struggle with old parental and societal values about discipline and control. When first married, Tally and Kesha had quite different views on parenting. Tally was very reluctant to discipline their children in any way. He traced this back to his strong reactions against the domineering and abusive parenting that he experienced. Kesha claimed he was afraid to touch the children at all. He would sit and “reason” with them for hours, while she became more and more frustrated. The key for them was to find a way of blending Tally’s distaste for coercive control with Kesha’s concern that their children receive a clear message from their parents about boundaries and acceptable behavior. Kesha and Tally decided to have weekly family meetings with their children where they could encourage trust and honesty in each other. They negotiated disagreements with their children rather than forcing them to accept parental authority. At the end of these meeting, however, there were clear resolutions and expectations about what the children would do during the coming week. Love is mixed with clarity and communication.
It was this new focus that helped Tally and Kesha look at themselves in action. Gradually their work on parenting moved to marriage counseling and some effective new ways of living their lives together. The end result of their disagreements about child-raising was not only a rather innovative style of family decision-making, but also the creation of a new focal point for their marriage that eventually helped them through several difficult times. Since they began their new approach, Tally and Kesha have constructed a new life style which involves their children, their work with others in parenting, their work with other married couples, their church, and many other shared activities. They now teach the parenting class which had been so helpful for them, and they are team leaders in the Marriage Encounter movement.
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