Nomads

From the age of five to the day I left home at seventeen, we lived in more than eighteen houses, thirteen cities, and I went to eleven different schools. When I tell people this, they assume I am an Army Brat. No, just the child of two mentally ill parents. My father would get into some kind of trouble, or we simply couldn't pay the rent and we would move. These were the days before credit scores, and the types of housing we inhabited varied greatly. We stayed in a three story home on the shores of Lake Erie one winter (an enormous old guest house), and found ourselves in a small dilapidated cabin the following summer. We stayed in hotels, rental homes, and occasionally with family. I never lived in a house my family owned until I was thirty-five and bought my first home. Likewise, the first new car my family owned was the one I bought at age thirty.
Obviously the key issues here were stability and consistency. But it runs much deeper than it appears: It wasn't just the lability of moving constantly, it was the anomie of everyday life that developed. When I woke up in the morning, I never knew what to expect from the day. I didn't know if my step-father would come home drunk, and if he did, if he would be in a good mood or be violent. I didn't know if my mother would be happy or deeply depressed. I didn't know if she would be going to the hospital that day, or if she would we be musing suicide. I didn't know if creditors were coming to repossess cars, household belongings, or even Christmas presents (if we got them that year). I didn't know if I would be eating steak or cornmeal mush. I did know I didn't want to be awake when my step-father got home, no matter what his mood - it would inevitably change in an instant.
I was the oldest child of three, and soon found myself taking the brunt of my father's rage, but my siblings were by no means spared. In some ways, it was probably much worse on my sister, but I will not go into that. My mother tried to defend us, and I was never beaten terribly, but I was smacked around and punched, and was subjected to an enormous amount of verbal abuse. Out of this hell arose the only rule of the household though - no matter what happened, it disappeared the next day, we never talked about anything once it subsided. To bring it up would be to invite an episode even worse.
We tried to do family things, but they almost always blew up. More often than not, family outings would be cancelled, as the money would be spent the previous night at some bar. There was never any sense of normalcy, just the occasional relief when things were quiet.
I mentioned in an earlier post that mental illness is never funny. Nor is drunkenness and violence. Sure, I see them portrayed as such in the media, but I can attest to the carnage they produce.
The legacy of this upbringing has been interesting to say the least: I kept moving once I left, working around the United States and the world. My younger brother and sister have stayed exactly where they are since they left the household those many years ago. And although I have kept moving, my two daughters have only known one house and one school system. This was important to me.
A good working enviroment should be consistent. Once people know what to expect, they can act efficaciously without fear. Too often, I think, we worry about what is right or wrong living in the moment of the decision. Relativity is just another form of inconsistency. Hope and fear dance erratically in an inconsistent system, one energizing the other until they both collapse. A consistent environment includes consensually derived goals, clear rules and guidelines, and a communicative feedback system that doesn't forget about yesterday. Most importantly, a supervisor needs to be concerned with his/her own consistent actions before attempting to standardize the actions and behaviors of others.