Family Businesses or Worlds Colliding

I couldn't have been more than five or six at the time. It was raining outside and we were at my mom's office in Lisle one evening. Mom was seeing patients, dad was serving as the night receptionist, and I can't even remember what Roy and I were doing. I'm sure that we must have been trying to help out in some way and reflecting on it, I'm sure it was probably more work for others than actual help. It was the family business, the seventies version of a "start-up." Dad was the greeter. Mom, the primary "bread-winner," was a physician in a time when there really weren't women physicians. And two little boys were welcoming anyone who would say hi.

Twenty years later, I remember walking into a diner two miles from my first assistant principal's job. It was between school and a night activity. In a booth sat two boys from school, a second grader and a fourth grader, doing their homework. The older one looked up, scurried to the counter and grabbed a menu. He invited me to take a seat at a nearby table and coyly said check out the menu, I designed it. As I sat, his mom appeared from out back, thanked the young man and invited him back to complete his homework. I learned later, every night the boys "helped out" at their diner. It was their "start-up." A tough business, fifteen years later I wonder if it's still their's and still there.

Powerful lessons are learned when we share our work. As we have children take part in our work and we take part in their's, bonds are formed. Understanding and context developed. Real life application helps our children understand why the skills they are learning are necessary and important. They also learn not to go it alone, but to work together with us to help achieve. My wife shares stories of helping her mom out at school. Going as a teenager to organize supplies, help students find things, and listen to them read. For us, our children help us with our work in innumerable ways. They have made sample videos such as our first 1:1 video to the Board of Education about what a child could do with an iPad came from my eldest, 9 years-old at the time as he screen shot how he used it to write and organize his work. When we had 2000 iPads to organize for school in a month, there were my children and their friends. They unboxed iPads and created set up shortcuts that we had never imagined.

When worlds collide, positive connections can be made. The realization within the family that both our work and their's are important. As such, there are many nights when I wander home from a meeting to be greeted by a young man who needs (wants) help completing an assignment. One who wants a section re-read to him or an essay reviewed. It's their work and my time to help them out at the shop. Through these opportunities we discover that our worlds are not separate, but intertwined experiences, home-school-work coming together to make a powerful tapestry of life. One in which we can choose to share and through sharing we become more connected.

When World Collide