preview

Happy Days

Good Essays
Happy Days Remember that old television show" Happy Days?” Well, when I was in the fifth grade I remember thinking, "My family is like ‘Happy Days’." We were happy and there was plenty of laughter and love to go around. Furthermore, like the television show, there were plenty of struggles and some kind of dilemma to solve before the night was over. No matter the problems the day may have brought, I always went to bed feeling happy, safe, and loved. Unlike the majority of kids in my fifth-grade class with broken homes, I just knew that my parents would be together forever. After reading Bradshaw on: The Family by John Bradshaw, I can see now that I may not have had a perfect family. My mom and dad got married in 1962 when she was just…show more content…
This person gives the family a sense of dignity” (Bradshaw 33). In a healthy family there may be roles being played but they are flexible and changing. It is dysfunctional for one person to play a rigid role such as “Hero” and that is what was going on with Shawn. I don 't think my family was drastically dysfunctional, or that we really needed to have a "hero," but for some reason, my dad felt we needed one. By putting so many demands on my brother to be perfect, he took away his freedom to think, feel, to take risks, and to be his true self. This was a form of the Poisonous Pedagogy (Bradshaw 7) that Bradshaw talks about. “Children are considered ‘good ' when they think and behave the way they are taught to think and behave” (Bradshaw 7). This was exactly my dad’s way of thinking. He drilled that into us as children. I think my dad really meant well and wanted us to succeed in life. Even though he drilled this success talk into us, he was still kind and did always encourage us and tell us good things about ourselves. One way he demonstrated this was every morning he would wake me up and sing these words to me “Hey did you happen to see the most beautiful girl in the world (Charlie Rich)”. It’s funny, I find myself singing to my boys in the morning, and sometimes they get so irritated, just like I used to. I bet someday they will sing to their children in the morning. My mom was really a great mom. She went
Get Access