Improving family relationships

I love my sister Amy. In our family, she is number 7 of 10 children, while I am the caboose. Since

Here are our kids with cousins Rachel and Dara,
during one of Amy's family's recent visits.

there are a few years between us, some of my earliest memories with Amy revolve around her “coaching” me about basketball outside our home in south Texas. While there are many good memories, I don’t know that I felt very close to her or many of the siblings older than her due to the age difference. (The oldest is a different story, but that’s because she was like a second mother to me.)

For many years, due to distance and our involvement in separate pursuits, our relationship never really got any stronger. I still loved her; I just didn’t really know her that well.

Over the last four years, I feel like we have grown closer and developed a better relationship. We still live more than 200 miles apart and see each other only half a dozen times a year, but I know her better than I ever did before. I’ve learned a few things in the process that I think can be applied to all relationships to make them stronger.  

Make an effort

One of the funny things about family relationships is that we spend so much time around each other that we can get on each other’s nerves and see the worst side of each other. We’re on our best behavior in front of friends and coworkers, but don’t hold back around our family. I think we need a place to go and not worry about status or social pretenses, but I also don’t think we need to lash out at our family. We can be good to our family and this may take effort … a herculean effort for some. It’s worth it though.

Think about it this way, sometimes we treat our family badly because we feel they are stuck with us. We feel like we can say anything because they can’t leave us. Our family can leave us, but usually it’s a little bit at a time. If we make an effort to build a relationship of love and respect, we will receive dividends from that relationship for a long time to come. It all starts with commitment. Are you committed to a strong family unit? If so be ready to put in the effort.

Give them time

I don’t know of any lasting relationships that don’t take time. There may be love at first site, but lasting love takes time. I was immediately enamored the first time I saw my wife, but my love grew with each date, conversation and decision that we made together. Now that we have kids and lots of responsibilities, we have to make time for us. When we don’t our relationship gets strained.

When we moved to Kansas City, the three-hour drive to see Amy was long and it didn’t happen very often. But we made good use of opportunities to see her when we could and each visit showed a commitment of time in the relationship, which she has returned by visiting us. It’s hard to know someone you don’t visit or talk to.

A song I like by Josh Groban says, “Time is love. Gotta Run. Love to hang out longer, but I got someone who waits for me, and right now she’s where I need to be. Time is love. Gotta run. Gotta fly, before one more moment gets by.” How we spend our time, is an expression of what’s important to us. Are you giving your family some of your time?

Be interested in what they do

I ran my first half marathon because of my sister Barbara. I ran my first marathon because of my sister Amy. She was training for a marathon and asked if I wanted to run with her. I wasn’t willing to spend $80 on registration and then invest more in shoes and running gear on my own. But when she wanted me to run with her, I thought it would be fun and worthwhile to do something with my sister.

When I try to get the kids to play what I want to play, it’s not as fun as when I follow their lead and play what they want to play. Conversely, it meant a lot to me to have my dad become my basketball coach in second grade, especially because I knew he didn’t have a lot of time. Basketball was my idea (as far as I can recall) and he wanted to support me in it. Do you know what your kids/parents are excited about?

Listen with love

A family therapist I just heard speak at a convention said, “Have a meal with your family at least once a week, and don’t try to lecture or preach to them. Just talk to them about your day, and let them feel safe and comfortable to share about their day. Tell them about the things that you’re excited about and listen to them when they talk.”

Dinner can include meaningful conversations, but don’t stress if your kids don’t want to have deep conversations or have a therapy session at the dinner table. We are trying to teach our kids to take turns and not interrupt. Each gets a turn to share their “guess what’s” and other silly stories … as long as there is some eating going on. I think eating together once a week is not good enough to establish good strong lines of communication and love, but it’s a start. Daily conversation about simple things will make difficult conversations easier. They know you will listen and you will understand them better because you have been listening. Can you listen to a full story without butting in or multitasking?

Next week: What makes a healthy home?

Learning through parables

Children usually put themselves into the story, often as the
main character, and think about how they would act.

One night as we drove home from some errands, my kids asked me to tell a story. Earlier in the day, I had tried to explain why it’s important not to fake being hurt or tell adults something was wrong when it really wasn’t. So I used this opportunity to tell my kids about the boy who cried wolf. I explained that the boy only cried wolf the first two times because he was bored and wanted to see what the town’s people would do. But the third time, when the wolf really came, the people didn’t believe him and came after it was too late.

While the motive was good, my 5-year-old daughter didn’t think so much about the moral as she did about the wolf. For the next week or two we were answering a lot of questions about wolves and reassuring her there weren’t any wolves in our area. Our 3-year-old son hasn’t stopped talking about fighting wolves since then.

While my story is not a model of success, it helps to illustrate a couple points about teaching through parables.

1. Puts things into perspective

A parable is generally a story that takes divine or eternal truth and compares it to things that are material or physical in nature. Jesus did this to help people grasp the concept and make it plain to understand (for some, which we will cover next).

My favorite story of teaching through parables actually comes from the Old Testament. Shortly after King David lost control of his will power and made a series of bad decisions that lead to his falling from favor with the Lord, Nathan the prophet shows up. While he had every right to launch into a stern rebuke and give David a tongue lashing he wouldn’t soon forget, he didn’t. He started by telling David a story about two men with sheep. One had many sheep and was a very rich man. The other was a poor man with only one sheep, but he loved it very much. The rich man takes the poor man’s sheep and serves it to some guests, instead of killing one of his own sheep. David was outraged and was ready to have the rich man killed for this abomination.

Nathan’s response was “Thou art the man,” (2 Samuel 12:7) and then he delivered the rebuke. So why did Nathan start with a story? It made David put things into perspective. Instead of David immediately putting up defenses and excuses, he acted as his own judge. When the names were revealed, David realized he had no excuse for his actions.

We can use stories to help our kids understand principles that would otherwise be over their heads, or difficult to understand. Through comparisons with things that are familiar, unfamiliar concepts come to life.

2. Allows for deeper understanding

As we learn in the scriptures, Jesus used parables so those that had ears to hear could hear, while keeping those that only wanted to argue were deaf to the truth. The parables can be understood very simply as a story. Then as you think about the story and think about the setting, the characters and plot, you begin to understand more about how they feel and what is important about the story. For those that take time to think about the story, the meaning becomes clear and the truth is evident. For those that don’t believe, the story is elementary and doesn’t deserve any more thought.

When teaching children, I would suggest following the Savior’s example. After he told the parables, his disciples didn’t always understand what he meant by it. So Jesus would discuss it with them and help them understand. We need to talk about the stories we tell and where the truth in the story lies. The wise man didn’t just build on a hard surface; he built his life on the Rock of Salvation and lived according to His teachings. Ask them questions and find out what they understand, and then you know where to add perspective.

3. Provides an opportunity for application of principles

As a social worker and psychotherapist, Betty J. Freedson explains that kids see themselves in stories. They identify with characters and internalize the message, which will seem like inner wisdom later on. In other words, they have put themselves in the position of the main character and faced a decision in their minds, long before they have to face it in real life.

My kids showed this that night when I told them about the boy who cried wolf. They were fixed on trying to figure out what they would do if they had to face a wolf. They put themselves in the story as the main character. It was up to me to help them understand that the problem wasn’t the wolf, because others would come and help, if the boy would just tell the truth.

The main point is that parents can’t just leave it at the story. Parables contain truth that never dies, it just has to be applied. Parents have to help their kids learn the application, which will help them in the future as they find other applications.

Next week: Marriage = More than I Do’s