Sharing Parenting..

Our "Singles" who work in our place with our girls at last year's annual Thanks and Giving Dinner

Here at  BGC we get a strong dose of what it truly means when you say,

 "It takes a village to raise a child".

As you know if you have read the blog in the past the way our schedule works is that Cliff and I work eight days on and four days off. On our four days we have what are called single teaching parents who come on shift and live and work with the girls in our absence. 

They work four days in our cottage and then four days in another cottage on campus while those teaching parent are off and then take four days off of their own. This way everyone on campus is working in this eight and four block. 

We are learning how to parent in this very nontraditional style as we go along and it isn't always easy! 

When we first came to be to BGC Cliff and I actually worked as "singles:. This meant even though we were a married couple, we were the relief workers for full-time teaching parents before we got a cottage of our own. This gave us a good healthy sense of what our singles who come on and relieve us now that we have our own cottage deal with. 

It's really not easy being a single. You must shift back-and-forth between two cottages, a daunting task that can make you feel nomadic at times.  The constant effort to maintain normalcy in the cottage when you are there and the full-time teaching parents are not is also difficult. 

There is a lot of trust that must happen in order for this to work. Cliff and I are blessed with our singles who are on during a normal shift in our cottage when we go "off". 

Sarah Rankin 

Julianne Evans

Their names are Sara and Julianne and they are both in their early 20's. As much as we have grown to love them in this short eight months working with the girls in Cottage Three it can still sometimes be hard when we are sharing the parenting responsibilities of the girls in our care. We are not only trusting them to keep the order we have established in our cottage with routines, rules etc. but we are also trusting them to love and nurture our girls as well.

 This can be a hard thing. As parents we would like to think that we know how to love and discipline our kids best. But we have learned rather quickly that it is important to maintain a good relationship with these caregivers, not only for our own family dynamic and the sake of good Christian behavior, but also so that our girls don't feel tension and are more able to maintain a well balanced life even in the midst of this crazy back-and-forth schedule of co-parenting that happens here at BGC. 

 It's a delicate balance and one that is not so easily maintained. There is much to be taken care of in the cottage. Everything from scheduling, to running errands, to making a grocery lists, to keeping up with licensing practices and procedures makes the job of the teaching parent that much more difficult. And when you spread those tons of little things we are responsible for out over the course of the full 12 day shift with at least four different people trying to all get the same job done it can sometimes be overwhelming and even frustrating. But hopefully we do a good job of maintaining this balance. We are trying at least. 

Our "singles" with the girls at a food drive event

In addition to these young ladies there is a whole plethora of others on campus who in large and small ways contribute to the raising of our kids. We truly are a community surrounded by parents from other cottages who step in and help out where need be. We have education coordinators, tutors, volunteers, sponsors and whole host of admin folks who go the extra mile for our kids whenever they can. Even those of you who read this little blog and pray for our family are 

contributing in a major way!!!

I am reminded that our little arrangement here on campus is not unlike many family arrangements across our nation and world. Modern-day parenting looks very different than it did 50 or 60 years ago. The little picture of a family with a mom and dad both living at home is becoming less and less the norm. Many parents now struggle to maintain balance between his weekend and her weekend, shared responsibilities with grand parents, nannies and even day care workers and teachers who spend almost more time with our kids than we sometimes can. 

I think I am realizing more and more that if we surround ourselves and our children with people that we love and trust, community parenting in this way can and does work. It may not always be ideal, it will most assuredly sometimes be a struggle, but in the end I think we will find that it IS working. I think if we are getting the message across to kids that they matter, that they are loved, and that they are cared for, that is significant.  

Pray for us as we maintain this delicate balance between normalcy and our busy schedules.

Pray for all the people who work with our girls here on campus but particularly for Sara and Julianne.

Pray for us we guide this ship that is our cottage. Pray that we can maintain order, but do it in a loving and Christ like way. Pray that we can lead by example and that our program managers and others on campus will see how hard we are working to do this.