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Family Friday Newsletter - 2 min read by: Finley Robinson

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A Single Sentence from a Season Ahead

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The Half-Whole

Family-isms are special and unique trademarks that exist in each home.

They show up as sayings, traditions, meals, and practices. People outside the family don't easily understand them but everyone inside gets it.

Mine eats Pig Sandwiches.​
We have reunions at Lake Norfolk.​
A current group text is titled Pirate Life.​
And we also cut our apples into Half-Wholes.

What's a half-whole? Well, it's the way that my mom used to cut apples for my sister when she packed her lunch years ago.

It's just an apple cut in half and then a divot is cut out of the middle of each side where the seeds were.

But it's not a whole apple at all. It's two halves, except each half is kept intact as a whole.

So we called it a half-whole. It's a funny family-ism for us because there is, after all, a difference between a half and a whole.

If you put a half stick of butter into a recipe instead of a whole stick, the cookies won't turn out the same.

When your son or daughter cleans up half of their room instead of their whole room, they get in trouble.

On the other hand, something we learned as a family is that half-credit can qualify as a whole.

The Mentality

Half-credit isn't easy for every parent's personality type and does demand a willingness to allow grace to enter your home.

But your season of parenting is full of halves.

Half of a show watched before bedtime.
Half of a Sprite can sitting on the counter.
Half of the chores complete on a Saturday.
Half of the shinguards you need for practice.
Half of a book read to them before you fall asleep.
Half of a sandwich still in the lunch box after school.

But here's the mentality I struggled with and now realize was wrong at your stage.

Something only counts if the whole plan goes through.

I took my family camping once and had huge goals for a massive adventure. During our hike, I kept our family moving at a fast pace to get to the waterfall destination. Long after they asked to turn back I kept us going. I wanted the whole thing or nothing.

Turns out, it was the only time we went camping. I couldn't settle for half and burned everyone out with my poor mentality.

In the Power-Decade, half-credit is so much better than none at all.

If two bike laps around the neighborhood with your daughter is normal but you only have time for one, you should still go.

If you can't finish a whole chapter you're reading to your son, read half.

It's not about the laps or the chapters. It's only about showing up with them.

Your kids need you to show up. Sure they count the laps and the pages, but do you know why? Because that means more time with you.

1 chapter means more time next to Mom.
2 laps converge into more time with Dad.

Kids count only because it means half as much time with their favorite people on the planet. You're the ones who provide predictable rhythms and wonder moments for them.

Again, it's not about the laps or the chapters. It's about showing up.

When you show up, even for half-credit, you are getting the whole effect of being a parent.

The Half-Whole Mentality is something that it took me a very long time to learn but was freeing when I finally realized its power.

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