Say what Needs to be Said

Often children approach their parents to complain about their married life!“I am being treated terribly and spoken to harshly! I cannot take it anymore! I wish I could just end this marriage!” are some of the endless complaints we probably hear. When faced with these complaints, how do we respond and react?

In a situation where they are jumping at the first convenient opportunity to bail out of the marriage and have not already tried their best to make it work, the correct response is, “My son! Go and make your marriage work! There is no way I am going to let you allow this marriage to fail!” or “My daughter! You need to make your home as there is no way that you will be coming back here!”

In essence, our sons and daughters need to be told what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. As parents, we need to remind ourselves that we also go through the same ups and downs and will sometimes have similar complaints in our marriages. Our children complain to us hoping that we will blindly believe them and justify their complaints for them. If we do this, they will regard themselves to be completely innocent and will place the entire blame for the failed marriage on their spouse.

As parents, we will definitely be emotionally affected by the complaints of our beloved children. However, we cannot allow ourselves to be governed by these emotions as this will lead us to blindly siding with our child after only hearing one side of the story.

Always remember that in marriage, the winners are not the parents who proved their child to be right. Rather, the winners are those parents who save the marriages of their children.