Uncles and Aunts

I’m not very close to my aunts and uncles, and that’s just kind of a part of my family’s setup that I’ve accepted. Growing up, I didn’t have the same kind of relationship with my extended family members as some people. We saw each other periodically, mostly for major family events or during visits, but they weren’t people in my life on a daily basis, so at times I feel like I don’t know them that well.

I think relationships with extended family can vary greatly, depending on things such as the geographical distance separating people, personality differences, the status of the family circumstances of the members in the family, and what level of intentional effort each person makes towards keeping those relationships going. Because everyone gets caught up in their own lives, it’s easy to drift apart. Often there isn’t even an actual fight or disagreement, there’s just the slow drifting of people growing apart. That would most likely be how I’d describe my current relationships with my aunts and uncles.

Even if I’m not close with them as individuals, that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want my own children in the future to experience the same isolation as I do from my extended family. I would hope that my kids would get the opportunity to know their aunts, uncles, cousins, and other family members; I would want them to have support people around them beyond just mom and dad. Kids with strong relationships with their extended family have additional role models to emulate, people to look to for guidance, and a sense of belonging outside the immediate family unit.

On the other hand, even though I may have had this experience personally, I know it’s unrealistic to just assume that a close knit extended family would just naturally occur without much effort being made on anyone’s behalf. For kids to have strong relationships with extended family, the parents would need to take charge of fostering that, by making visits, planning get-togethers, staying in touch on a regular basis.

Because I haven’t been as close with them as most people seem to be, it reminds me not to take for granted family members. Although a person may share the same bloodline, they aren’t automatically going to be tight. It takes commitment to maintain those relationships; it takes spending quality time and investing love. I hope to be able to provide for my own children an environment that allows for the forming of close bonds with their extended family members and allows them to feel an encompassing and support.

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