One of the things we try to do as parents is to impart our value systems on our children. Of course, they are individuals and tend to grow up and formulate their own opinions and ideas about the world—sometimes taking on our values, and sometimes coming up with some of their own. Many of you know that all of my children are currently teenagers and they are little opinion machines right now. Part of my world, as a parent to teens, is to learn how to and foster some tolerance around all of these differing opinions and ideas that are going on within my family…
Learning how to discuss and debate differing opinions and co-habitate with people who feel very differently about things is an important element of living in any society. With the intensity of family life, it isn’t always easy but it might help to understand that the family should be a safe place where kids can try out different ideas and opinions and experiment with values that might not come from their parents. I know, it comes as a surprise and can feel hurtful and insulting when a child starts sharing different political or religious ideas, or she wants to try out some of the values she’s seen at a friend’s house. We can still stick to our guns as parents and maintain the strength of our own commitments, while also modeling understanding and tolerance for some different ideas too.
We are not clones of each other and, in my head, I expect that my children will grow up to be very different people from me—but of course I’ve also hoped and tried to impart some of my own opinions and values onto my children. They may come around and they will certainly cling to some of them—but we all have to make room for each other’s differences too. And the family is the perfect place to learn how to do that.
Also: Letting Our Kids Be Different From Us
Keeping Personal Experience in Perspective