Repairing the Breach


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I need some advice. I have a daughter that is grown and married that has left church activity. I have a second daughter who goes to church still but seems ambivalent to it. She has done a few semesters of college, but now she just seems to want to play her instead of finding a job. I have told her that my patience is beginning to run pretty thin and she needs to get a job.

I have two sons who are always fighting and seem to hate each other. They both are active but they seem pretty resentful towards my wife and I. We have tried to have scripture study as often as we can, but the boys tend to be really sarcastic readers and it causes quite a lot of contention during scripture time and makes us feel like not doing it. 

I am kind of at the end of my rope with the whole situation. How do I repair the breach?

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I feel for you.  And am you in many ways.  Somehow I became the bad guy of the family.  Not much use for dad any more.

From what the smart people tell me, it's not about to getting back to the way things were, it's about accepting and working with the way things are.  This is the new normal, and your best hope is to work with it.

Sarcasm is an indication of deep intelligent and serious thought.  Fools and ignorant people cannot be sarcastic, they can only engage in biting humor, which is different.  So kudos to you dad, for raising two boys bright enough to not just accept things at face value.  Your challenge here is to not win, not shut down, but to respond with truth and love.  Example: Yeah, put 1000 women claiming to be virgins having God's child in a room, and all 1000 of them are lying about fooling around with the pool guy.  But our story, incredulous as it sounds, is that across all of history, all of these lying women, exactly one of them was telling the truth.  And it's worth our time to figure out whether we buy her story or not.

Hang in there dad.  I'm pullin' for ya

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2 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

I feel for you.  And am you in many ways.  Somehow I became the bad guy of the family.  Not much use for dad any more.

From what the smart people tell me, it's not about to getting back to the way things were, it's about accepting and working with the way things are.  This is the new normal, and your best hope is to work with it.

Sarcasm is an indication of deep intelligent and serious thought.  Fools and ignorant people cannot be sarcastic, they can only engage in biting humor, which is different.  So kudos to you dad, for raising two boys bright enough to not just accept things at face value.  Your challenge here is to not win, not shut down, but to respond with truth and love.  Example: Yeah, put 1000 women claiming to be virgins having God's child in a room, and all 1000 of them are lying about fooling around with the pool guy.  But our story, incredulous as it sounds, is that across all of history, all of these lying women, exactly one of them was telling the truth.  And it's worth our time to figure out whether we buy her story or not.

Hang in there dad.  I'm pullin' for ya

yeah, we're all in this together. lol.

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If it's any consolation, I think all parents experience this to some degree or another. In my own experience, I have had the most success by following (surprise!) the hardest route: Always act out of love. Don't return anger for anger or sarcasm for sarcasm. Don't disinvite anyone. Just always model love and patience. Hold to your personal and family standards and always expect the best, but be forgiving when people fail to live up to the standards you've taught them. For the scripture reading, show your own interest in and love for what you're reading. Maybe stop the reading every so often and give insight or just editorial commentary on a verse. It will not immediately cure the inattention and lack of interest, but if done day after day, you might be surprised what it can accomplish.

And don't give up. Ever. Just keep doing what you know to be best. Hold fast to the truth. Eventually, things will turn out well.

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I have 2 boys that can get super sarcastic.  My older boy (he's 18 now) has learned the art of tact, so his sarcasm is well placed.  The 2nd boy (he's 16) hasn't learned tact yet so he sometimes (okay, maybe it's more a lot of times than sometimes) turns people off.  I'm not working on telling them to stop being sarcastic.  I'm working on getting them to understand the art of tact.

But all this teaching is a progression.  There comes a time in a child's life when things become too late.  When the kids are teens and they hate each other... something has been going on since they were kids that led to this that has remained uncorrected.  It doesn't just happen out of the blue.  Sometimes it's too late for parents to correct these behaviors and the only thing parents can do is talk to their children about it and hope they change.  Being dictatorial about it wouldn't work anymore - they would just end up resenting it and becoming worse.  Teaching the art of tact to my kid is a progression - it started from when they first started talking in sentences and me teaching them that words are important.  So it's just a natural development from there so when I tell my 16-year-old kid to be tactful it's just an expansion of what he already knows growing up instead of a drastic change.

Love our children.  It's the only thing that we can continue to do after they become independent of us.

This week has been melancholy for me - my oldest is leaving in 2 weeks for the MTC and I've been trying to be happy about it but I can't help being depressed about it.  This week, every time my son passes by me, he hugs me and tells me he loves me.  Every.  Time.  I think he has told me he loved me more times this week than the entirety of last year.  I'd like to think that for all my faults as a mother, I think I can comfortably say I did something right.

Edited by anatess2
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Just now, Vort said:

For the scripture reading, show your own interest in and love for what you're reading. Maybe stop the reading every so often and give insight or just editorial commentary on a verse. It will not immediately cure the inattention and lack of interest, but if done day after day, you might be surprised what it can accomplish.

Just to build on this a bit, I usually frame this as a question to my children. "What do you think Paul means when he talks about 'charity'?" "Why would a woman's hairstyle be something the writer would comment on?" "Do you think you would have reacted the way Joseph Smith did?" Like that. I often have only a hazy idea for an answer to my own question, but after eliciting a response, I'll share my own insight, whether it's clever or lame. Because the point of scripture study is not merely or even mainly to learn scriptural doctrine, but to learn to feel and be guided by the Spirit. Analyzing the scriptures read may not be everyone's best way to accomplish that, but it seems to work fairly well for me, as well as most other things I've tried. So I try to lead my children along that path.

Just a thought for your consideration.

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1 minute ago, Vort said:

Just to build on this a bit, I usually frame this as a question to my children. "What do you think Paul means when he talks about 'charity'?" "Why would a woman's hairstyle be something the writer would comment on?" "Do you think you would have reacted the way Joseph Smith did?" Like that. I often have only a hazy idea for an answer to my own question, but after eliciting a response, I'll share my own insight, whether it's clever or lame. Because the point of scripture study is not merely or even mainly to learn scriptural doctrine, but to learn to feel and be guided by the Spirit. Analyzing the scriptures read may not be everyone's best way to accomplish that, but it seems to work fairly well for me, as well as most other things I've tried. So I try to lead my children along that path.

Just a thought for your consideration.

Guided by the Spirit.  This.

There are times when we would halt scripture study in the middle because the Spirit is not with us.  We would just stop and "reschedule".  

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45 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

the art of tact

tact.jpg.1f6630b5511b52f51a621ab774b3cb3a.jpg

41 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

Guided by the Spirit.

I was guided by the Spirit to take & post that picture. . . . . .  OK, probably not.  It's still funny, though.  (I have a bunch of Garfield post-it notes and can't seem to bring myself to use them as then they'll be gone.)

</threadjack>

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On 1/10/2020 at 10:19 AM, Emmanuel Goldstein said:

I need some advice. I have a daughter that is grown and married that has left church activity. I have a second daughter who goes to church still but seems ambivalent to it. She has done a few semesters of college, but now she just seems to want to play her instead of finding a job. I have told her that my patience is beginning to run pretty thin and she needs to get a job.

I have two sons who are always fighting and seem to hate each other. They both are active but they seem pretty resentful towards my wife and I. We have tried to have scripture study as often as we can, but the boys tend to be really sarcastic readers and it causes quite a lot of contention during scripture time and makes us feel like not doing it. 

I am kind of at the end of my rope with the whole situation. How do I repair the breach?

Perhaps the greatest fault of parents is in judging themselves by what their children do.  Remember, even G-d the Father lost a third of his children - that would have nothing to do with him and many more that would not qualify for the Celestial Glory.  Yet as @Vort suggests - G-d loves them anyway.

 

The Traveler

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7 minutes ago, Traveler said:

Remember, even G-d the Father lost a third of his children - that would have nothing to do with him and many more that would not qualify for the Celestial Glory.  Yet as @Vort suggests - G-d loves them anyway.

Just to clarify: I do not know that God loves the third who rebelled. I am not even sure what that means. As far as I understand our doctrine, those who rebelled premortally are eternally damned by their own choice. I don't know that "love of God" has any meaning in such a situation.

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52 minutes ago, Vort said:

Just to clarify: I do not know that God loves the third who rebelled. I am not even sure what that means. As far as I understand our doctrine, those who rebelled premortally are eternally damned by their own choice. I don't know that "love of God" has any meaning in such a situation.

We are told that the heavens wepted - I would assume that included G-d.  I am concerned with the notion that no one (especially G-d) cared???  Or was happy to be rid of them????

I am inclined to agree with the general authority (do not remember who) that said, "G-d does not love us because we are good - G-d loves us because he is good."

 

The Traveler

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28 minutes ago, Traveler said:

We are told that the heavens wepted - I would assume that included G-d.  I am concerned with the notion that no one (especially G-d) cared???  Or was happy to be rid of them????

I, like you, assume the weeping heavens included God himself. But this is not a question of historical occurrence. It is a question of present reality.

28 minutes ago, Traveler said:

I am inclined to agree with the general authority (do not remember who) that said, "G-d does not love us because we are good - G-d loves us because he is good."

I, too, agree with that. But "God is love" does not mean "love is God". Love is not God. God is God. God does not love all things. God does not love sin. The scriptures claim that God loved the Nephites but hated the Lamanites. Let us be careful not to project an oversimplified idea of God onto reality and draw conclusions therefrom. To the extent that the oversimplified idea of God is incorrect, the conclulsions will certainly be wrong.

I repeat: I do not know that God loves (present tense) Satan or those who followed him, because I do not know that God's love would have any meaning in that context.

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On ‎1‎/‎10‎/‎2020 at 7:31 AM, NeuroTypical said:

I feel for you.  And am you in many ways.  Somehow I became the bad guy of the family.  Not much use for dad any more.

This was me two years ago with my three youth daughters....

On ‎1‎/‎10‎/‎2020 at 7:31 AM, NeuroTypical said:

From what the smart people tell me, it's not about to getting back to the way things were, it's about accepting and working with the way things are.  This is the new normal, and your best hope is to work with it.

This is what I did and am doing, it works.

 

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