How is your family unique?

The first 20 years or so of a child’s upbringing lays the foundation on which they build their adult lives. It’s a parent’s responsibility to be a positive role model, influence and help their children establish a foundation based on the family’s culture, values, beliefs, traditions and worldview. I call it ‘Family Branding’ – the things that make each family unique. Branding is more difficult if the parents separate or if two brands combine in a blended family – but no matter the challenges, it is worth working on.

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As children become young adults (yadults), they may veer away from the family’s brand, but at least they have had a yard stick by which to evaluate and formulate their own brand.

At home, we are moulded and fashioned by the following factors:

Heritage
Our DNA, inheritance and legacy are all part of our heritage.

Values
Values come from our beliefs and reflect the things we consider to be the most important in life. Our values lay the foundation for the ethics, morals and worldview that we adopt.

Worldview
Worldview is how we see the world, how we want to see it and what we believe to be true. Our worldview dictates the pathways, approaches and stands that we will take on certain issues.

Culture
Culture is passed on from generation to generation and is absorbed from our environment, whereas genetics are passed on by heredity. Our food, clothes and music all display our cultural bent.

Traditions
Traditions vary tremendously from family to family and county to country, which can be clearly seen in the way we celebrate events and achievements and how we ‘do life’.

My family background or branding
My earliest memory is from when I’m aged four. I am sitting with my brother Peter (six) and my younger sister Katie (three) in a cow bail that Dad made into a play pen so we would be safe while he and Mum milked the cows. With three very young children, life was hard going for my farming parents. For them, life was mostly just work – day in and day out, with little time to play.

When I was five years old, we left the farm and moved into Whangarei in Northland, New Zealand. Dad became an agent and auctioneer for a livestock company. He would spend hours on the phone dealing with farmers and organising their stock for sale. During the school holidays, Dad would take me with him to the stock sales and I would proudly watch him conduct his auctions. People often told me that he was the best auctioneer they knew, and I don’t think it was said just to make me feel good. He would jokingly put me up for sale as one of the lots and I loved hearing him give me a huge build up to the crowd, before he would take me off the market just in time!

One Saturday morning when I was seven, Dad took me into his office in town. I was gobsmacked as I looked at the 30 or so manual typewriters lined up in rows. They sat silently, taking a well-earned rest from being banged at mercilessly all week by typists sporting beehive hairstyles and short, bright red fingernails. Dad told me to wait for him in the ‘typists’ pool’ as it was called. While he was gone, one of his colleagues walked up to me and asked, ‘Hello little girl, who are you?’ I stretched up to my full seven-year-old height with my arms firmly at my side like a little sentinel and replied in a clear strong voice, ‘I’m Stan Taylor’s daughter!’ In my mind, this made me famous by association. It never occurred to me to tell him my own name. That just didn’t seem to be as important as belonging to my Dad. I was part of the Taylor tribe! My mother was a top nurse with a lot of post graduate training. She was highly intelligent, and was constantly thinking up better procedures and systems for the hospital. She was very attractive and always well-groomed and she taught us manners and social etiquette. My parents taught us to do things properly. And even though we didn’t have a lot of money, I always felt that we were ‘classy’ people.

Screen Shot 2014-08-15 at 9.49.31 amThe Taylor brand was signified by hard work, excellence and service to others.
Mum and Dad separated when I was ten, but because that brand was ingrained into me, I have continued to use it as a benchmark for everything I do, with a couple of adjustments. You might notice that our family brand was all about ‘doing’ and not about ‘being’. I have realised that any quality done to excess becomes a weakness. Hard work, for example, can lead to burn-out, excellence can become perfectionism, and serving people can end up becoming people-pleasing. So I have added fun and enjoying people into the brand that I now share with my husband and daughters, so that it retains balance. In addition, everything I do is done to the glory of God who gives me life.

Values instilled in you as a child will carry you through adulthood
I left New Zealand for Australia when I was seventeen to be near my brother Pete who had moved there before me. I had all my belongings in one small bag, $60 in my pocket and a one-way ticket on a Russian ship bound for Sydney. Pete shared his flat in Bondi with two mates, and neither of them had any regard for personal hygiene or housework. The place was a haven for cockroaches who had assumed squatters’ rights. I arrived close to Christmas and the flatmates went to their parents’ homes for Christmas Day. Since Pete and I didn’t have anywhere to go, we went to the Wayside Chapel in the heart of Sydney for Christmas Dinner.

The Wayside Chapel was an icon in Sydney, led by Rev Ted Noffs, a celebrated eccentric. Mainstream clergy gave him a wide berth but he personified Christianity in action. Had his colleagues looked past his idiosyncrasies, they could have learned a lot from this unpretentious saint. Wayside Chapel was a homeless person’s sanctuary. No one was turned away, and by midday on a hot Sydney Christmas Day the place was packed with the lame, the poor, and the unlovely. Feeling uncomfortable but grateful, Pete and I took our places as guests and received our hot dinner with all the other misfits.

From Guests to Hosts
We soon realised why we felt uncomfortable – it was because we were on the wrong side of the table! With hardly a glance at each other, we swapped our guests’ ‘hats’ for hosts’ ‘hats’ and began to help with serving the Christmas pudding and custard to the others. Then, we flew into the kitchen to finish our day by washing the dishes, happy as clams knowing that this role of being involved and contributing suited us much better. The concept of Peter and me receiving charity when we could have been giving it was unacceptable to us. We needed to be consistent with our family value, which is to help and serve others. For all of their differences, Mum and Dad modelled this brilliantly to their kids.

It’s important to establish traditions and rituals in your family because, chances are, your yadult will take the traditions they loved as children into their adult lives. Traditions that revolve around celebrations and fun or regular events are the ones most likely to be remembered.

Ask your children what things positively identify your family. Build on those. Ask them what things negatively identify your family. I’ll let you decide what you want to do with those! Define your brand and let it be a foundation for your yadult’s future.

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Yvonne Godfrey


Yvonne Godfrey is the founder of Miomo (Making it on my Own), a 10-day, live-in experience to equip 17- to 24-year-olds for a responsible, independent and successful adult life. www.miomo.co.nz