The One Thing I Won't Let My Grown Kids Do

A few years ago I was having lunch with my sister. She was telling me, in great detail, all the things my mother and other sister had said about me. It felt awful to hear, but I realized she was telling me all this because she had probably participated too and didn’t stick up for me at all.

It hit me at that moment that I had been just as guilty of gossiping about my mom and siblings without even trying to put a stop to it.

And suddenly, I saw the danger in what we’d been doing. I didn’t trust my mom or sisters with anything. It had made some family get togethers uncomfortable. And it had torn our family apart a little and fractured trust.

So I decided to do something about it even though I was really nervous to speak up. I looked at her and said, “The reason why they are telling you this stuff about me is because you let them. And I’ve been letting them do the same thing and I think we should stop it.”

While I do believe we all need a safe place to vent, and oftentimes that safe place is with a family member, I think we need to be very, very careful, not only of what we say, but what we listen to and put up with.

My kids were very young when I had that talk with my sister. Things got a little better in my family, but old habits are hard to break. I thought a lot about that conversation because it made me realize I don’t want the same dynamic with my kids. I never wanted them to feel like they couldn’t trust me or each other, or that we were all sitting around discussing their lives when they weren’t there.

So when they got a bit older and something about one of their siblings bothered them and they came to me with it, I was careful about how I handled it. I didn’t want to shame them or ignore them, but I wanted to teach them a better way to deal with it. So, I’d encourage them to bring their concerns to the brother or sister they were struggling with.

For example, I remember a day when my daughter came to me very upset that her brothers left her out of a game they were playing. The three of us had a family meeting and I could see my oldest son getting defensive, and that it seemed very important to him to stay aligned with his younger brother and continue to leave his sister out.

“See!” my daughter said.

It was so hard not to get upset with my son and speak up for my daughter, but I resisted, and told her to tell her brother how she was feeling. I was exhausted by the end of the conversation, and not sure if what I was trying to establish would work, but eventually my efforts paid off.