Family Forgiveness

Sharon Lewis

Have you ever known a family where the parents and children no longer speak to each other? Do you know someone who has nothing to do with their siblings? Sometimes, families break apart over relatively minor disagreements that seem to grow bigger over time. Frequently, family members don't even remember what the original disagreement was about, but they hold on to the resentments for years.

As young parents, we have plans and happy dreams for the future with our families. We expect to enjoy relationships with our children into their adulthood and perhaps, someday have grandchildren to love and spoil. What can we do to keep those dreams alive and help keep our families intact, with warm, loving relationships among the members?

Forgiveness may well be a part of the answer. We can learn for ourselves and teach our children how to be understanding and forgiving people.

What Is Forgiveness?

What is forgiveness? Many of the world's religions teach the concept of forgiveness, but the idea is not limited to the religious sense. To forgive means to let go of resentments and blame. It means to continue to accept, and even love the individual although you may disagree with his or her behaviors and ideas.

Don't Expect Perfection

In order for parents to model and teach forgiveness to their children, they must first learn to forgive themselves for being less than perfect. It is important for parents to accept their own humanness so that their children will not only accept their parents lack of perfection, but will also learn to accept their own. Parents cannot expect to be completely consistent, to always act loving, to be totally accepting and tolerant, and to always be unselfish and fair. In turn, children cannot be expected to always meet the standard of perfection. These behaviors are goals to strive to reach.

Forgiveness Is Unconditional

Forgiveness should not be conditional on the "right" behavior nor should it have to be earned. Although behaviors may sometimes be unacceptable, and changes need to be made, the individual is always acceptable and worthy of love and forgiveness.

Forgiveness Does Not Replace Consequences

This does not, of course, mean that there should be no consequences for unacceptable behaviors. Natural and logical consequences and making amends by parents and children are expected, but this needs to be accomplished in an atmosphere of forgiveness.

A young child who steals a candy bar from the supermarket needs to return the candy and apologize to the market owner. Perhaps the child will need to do some type of small task for the market owner (especially if the candy has already been eaten) in order to make amends for stealing and to help teach the lesson that stealing is wrong. The parents' role in teaching this lesson is to firmly and lovingly see that the child follows through on making amends and to continue to teach the child about honest behavior in the future. This teaching needs to be done without constantly reminding the child about the past misdeed. Once amends or restitution is taken care of, the matter should be closed and full forgiveness expressed to the child.

Learn and Talk Together

Parents and children can learn together that misunderstandings will sometimes occur and they may often hold different perceptions of events and behaviors. This doesn't necessarily mean that either person is wrong; just that they have different views.

Different perceptions of behaviors and events are particularly common between teenagers and parents. Parents may be able to minimize conflicts by remembering their own perceptions during their teen years and realizing that time and experience may bring theirs and their teens' perceptions closer together. When parents acknowledge that the teens' perceptions are important even if different, both generations have the opportunity to be more accepting of each other.

Times like these are wonderful for good family discussions and developing more open communication between parents and children. A part of the idea of forgiveness is learning that differences in the ways people perceive things can bring added enrichment to the relationships. Accepting differences creates more understanding among family members and can help to build greater family strengths.

Changing The Future

During the 1990's, we have seen a growing trend for adult children and their parents to "divorce" each other because of different ideas, lack of understanding, and a lack of forgiveness. Perhaps it's time now to strive to change that trend and work toward becoming stronger and more cohesive as family members by learning and teaching the idea of forgiving and loving each other while we acknowledge our differences.

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