Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 198 | What Do You Do When Your Parents Are Opening Old Wounds?

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Ep. 198 | What Do You Do When Your Parents Are Opening Old Wounds? · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  You're able to set a lot of sort of cultural things where your parents just feel like, whoa, we're being swept up into this amazing thing that our son has created.
• 0:12
  Hey guys, welcome to the 5-Minute Fatherhood Podcast. I'm your co-host, Jeff Bethke, along with my friend and mentor, Jeremy Pryor. Join us Monday through Friday as we chat about quick tips, skills, and ways to help equip you on your journey as a father to build your multi-generational family team on mission. Stay tuned.
• 0:34
  What's up, guys? Welcome to another 5-Minute Fatherhood. So there has been a great conversation that we've been having in our Facebook group with the guys about what do you do when your parents just are opening old wounds? I mean, this is really, really hard to deal with. My heart goes out to the different guys who are expressing this happening to them. They want to integrate their parents into their life. They want them to be around their kids. They want their
• 0:59
  They want grandparents' engagement to be really good. But, man, there's tension between them maybe and their wife. There's tension between them and themselves. Their parents just haven't learned old lessons. And so a lot of times this can get really painful because now you're experiencing sort of freedom from some of that baggage. And then your parents pick open...
• 1:19
  that sort of fresh wound. And so we're having this conversation like, how do we handle that? Do we just wall our parents off from our kids or create really strict boundaries? Or how do we handle that? And there's a couple of—every single situation is different, so we don't know your situation. So just we're going to give you some tips. This is not prescription. But a few tips, you guys. Tip number one that I think is really big is you need—when this is happening, you need to lower your expectation for your parents. And so you're going to have a lot of
• 1:44
  You need to understand maybe your parents have grown in certain areas and not in others. And so a lot of times if you have high expectations and you're constantly shocked, they haven't figured this out yet. You know, and just your actual anger and resentment is growing, even though your parents are sort of the same as they were. Yeah.
• 2:01
  then I really think it's important to dial down your expectations, because I think your expectations could be creating more resentment. And a lot of what we need to do is accept our parents, where they're at, what they're doing, not try to—we're not given the assignment scripturally to fix our parents, just to honor them. And so if they're still sort of picking open old wounds, then definitely lower expectations or begin to expect that that's going to be just a part of the relationship—
• 2:28
  in order to not let that resentment build. Another tip that I think is really important is that you need to understand that your faith in the gospel, your ability to receive what your Abba Father is saying about you, your identity, is usually directly related to the amount of impact your parents' words, particularly maybe your father, it could be your mother's, words have over you.
• 2:53
  And so, in other words, if their words are really causing an identity crisis for you, or causing so much pain and frustration, then maybe instead of just trying to create boundaries against your parents, really use that as a portal to figure out, is there a part of the gospel I don't believe?
• 3:10
  something that my Father is saying about me, my Abba Father, my Heavenly Father, that I'm not believing. So going deeper into the gospel can really help heal those wounds so that you can have a very open, loving relationship with parents who may be sort of opening those old wounds from time to time.
• 3:26
  And so the last thing I would say is over time, and this is more maybe as your kids get older, strengthen the culture of your home and make it strong enough so that when your parents enter into your home, they're entering into your culture and that they're not able to.
• 3:42
  to just completely blow up or overtake the culture of your home. That oftentimes happens when you're old, you have more kids, you've done a lot of training, you're able to set a lot of sort of cultural things where your parents just feel like, whoa, we're being swept up into this amazing thing that our son has created, so that they're not constantly feeling like those violations are not causing rifts or disunity within the family multigenerationally. So those are three tips that might help. But yeah, Jeff, have you thought about this one?
• 4:11
  No, I think that's great. I don't even know if I would add anything because I think all those were, yeah, right on the nose. I think the only thing I would emphasize is what you said about expectations. I think it's just so important. So much of stuff like this or bitterness or resentment, not always, but a lot of times can come from us having a vision that isn't met, like an ideal that isn't met or a picture that isn't met. And so I feel like, man, there's so much grace and so much pressure taken off. If you just say like,
• 4:36
  Even if this is a terrible reality, this is my reality. And the Lord's going to meet me today and going to speak to me and get, I'm going to allow, you know, grace in me and grace in other people's lives. So I just think, yeah, just like let your reality be your reality with open hands, receiving that as a gift from God who he wants to teach you, talk to you and meet you in the middle of it.
• 4:57
  Hey guys, one of our favorite places to hang out on is the family teams, Instagram. That is where you will find tips, quotes, tricks, and a bunch of other conversational things to help you build your family team on mission. If you're on Instagram and you want to get encouragement as you do this and build your family team, just head over to Instagram and follow us at family teams.