New Year's Day is a Wonderful Time to Make Family Amends

There is an alarming amount of estrangement between parents and their children in our society. Sons are at odds with their fathers and daughters are at odds with their mothers. Seems the legacy of “Mommy Dearest” is more than a Hollywood phenomenon. It runs deep across our culture.

This estrangement between parents and children isn’t so noticeable when the children are younger, but it makes its presence felt as these same children become adults. And it’s more than just teen-age rebellion growing into generational differences. It’s a parenting problem.

It’s criminal that we don’t require parenting classes in High School and College curriculums across America. We are required to have years of training and to be certified proficient in most every profession, except parenting. The only parental training we receive is from our parents. If our parents had poor parenting skills, then we too will have poor parenting skills.

Poor parenting skills cause immeasurable damage that is handed down from generation to generation. Emotionally unavailable parenting is at the top of my list of parental dysfunctions. When parents are emotionally unavailable, they aren’t able to convey love or a sense of worth to their children. This stems from the fact that said parents have never been able to love themselves. A parent who has poor self-love will also have poor self-worth and poor self-esteem. No one can give to others what they can’t even give to themselves. So a parent who isn’t able to love themselves well will likewise not be able to love their children well. Deep down they may love their children immensely, but they will not know how to communicate this to the children in nurturing ways.

Children who do not receive nurturing love from their parents feel unlovable and unwanted. They come to believe that they aren’t good enough for their parents, or even God, to love them. Their self-love remains a neglected seed inside of them. Because their self-love isn’t able to grow and blossom, neither is their self-esteem or sense of self-worth. Animosity then grows between parent and child as each child grows toward adulthood. Inherently, each child knows that they did not receive the one thing, the most important thing, they needed from their parents: Love.

Children need to hear from their parents that they are loved and they need to experience parental love through the warmth of hugs and kisses. Simply providing room and board and education isn’t enough. They also need to have parents who listen to them, affirm them and spend quality time with them.

If you are feeling uncomfortable while reading this, then you may have some work to do in reaching out to your own children, or parents. The best thing that parents can do is to offer an olive branch to children who are estranged from them. Tell your children that you’re sorry you weren’t the best mom or dad. Tell them that you are aware you made mistakes and that you are sorry. Then tell them that you want to be reunited with them; that you want the chance to heal old wounds and to start over again. In doing so, you will plant the seeds of reconciliation in their hearts. Once you have done so, give them time to work through any old unresolved pain they have and ask God to help them heal and forgive you.

If you are a wounded adult child, remember this: Your parents may have done a poor job of parenting, but they only did what they knew how to do. They did their best, even if it wasn’t good enough. This doesn’t mean that what they did wrong is now somehow right. It isn’t. But no one can give what they don’t have to give. If they honestly couldn’t do any better, then we need to have some compassion with them. We need to be able to forgive them and to try and mend our most sacred of relationships.

The New Year's Day is a wonderful time to pick up that telephone and make amends. Plant the seeds of forgiveness. Offer your hand in reconciliation. Give the greatest gift you can give to family members you are estranged from. In doing so, you will allow your hearts to be filled with the graces of God’s healing love; and you will bring the world one step closer to peace. World peace begins in our families. Reach out and allow your soul to shine.