Magyar Egyház, 1970 (49. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1970-05-01 / 5. szám
MAGYAR EGYHÁZ 9 MAGYAR CHURCH Bertram J. Sathmary: “I JVant To Make Confession.. As chaplain of a Medical Center, these words have been called out to me from rooms as I pass through the psychiatric ward of the hospital. A visit to this department causes me to be sick at heart and soul as I see the large number of young people in distress. The cure for juvenile delinquency and the appalling increase of crime is a many-sided cure. Curfews, playgrounds, camps, recreation centers may all help. But the deepest secret of a stable and happy creative personality is to be discovered in loving attitudes and habits of parents towards their children from their earliest years up. Someone has suggested that there ought to be a great deal more sitting on the side of the bed than there is. He was referring to those quite irreplaceable moments, when the children are put to bed for the night; when the day’s events are being reviewed and shared; when wondering thoughts sometimes bubble up to the surface, when, in the quietness of the descending nighttime, confidences and questions seem easier to share. This is one of the unique opportunities that parents have to get close to their children, and their children to get close to them. But how often we miss them, or brush them aside in order to hurry on to what we assume are more urgent affairs! Do we really know our children? What are they thinking? What are they, deep down inside themselves? Without prodding or nagging, have we encouraged them to communicate with us, by our quiet interest and openness and availability? How often, how intently, how unhurriedly have we been willing to listen? And not just to hear words, but to get the message so tentatively and brokenly—yet hopefully— conveyed by the words? The extreme importance and relevance of all this comes home to us in a letter written by a so-called delinquent boy who permitted me to copy his letter before he sent it to his parents in Kansas City. Perhaps if we share this letter it will help other parents. Here is the letter: Dear Folks, Thank you for everything, hut I am going to Chicago and try and start some kind of new life. You asked me why I did those things and why I gave you so much trouble, and the answer is easy for me to give you, but I am wondering if you will understand. Remember when I was about six or seven and I used to want you to just listen to me? I remember all the nice things you gave me for Christmas and my birthday and I was real happy with the things for about a week at the time I got the things, but the rest of the time during the year I really didn’t want presents. I just wanted all the time for you to l i s t e n to me like I was somebody who felt things too, because I remember even when I was young I f e 11 things. But you said you were busy and had to go someplace. Mom, you are a wonderful cook, and you had everything so clean and you were tired so much from doing all those things that made you busy; but you know something, Mom? I would have liked crackers and peanut butter just as well —if you had only sat down with me a little while during the day and said to me: “Tell me all about it so I can maybe help you understand.” And when Donna came I couldn’t understand why everyone made so much fuss because I didn’t think it was my fault that her hair is curly and her teeth so white, and she doesn’t have to wear glasses with such thick lenses. Her grades were better too, weren’t they? If Donna ever has any children, I hope you will tell her to just pay attention to the one who doesn’t smile very much because that one will really be crying inside. And when she’s about to bake six dozen cookies to make sure first that the kids don’t want to tell her about a dream or a hope or something, because thoughts are important too to small kids even though they don’t have so many words to use when they tell about what they have inside them. I think that all the kids who are doing so many things that grown-ups are tearing out their hair worrying about are really looking for some-
