Hi there, it's Finley 👋🏼

Happy Friday to 208 parents this week.

Today's story takes 4 minutes to read.

You can always catch up on the last few weeks right here.

It's Complicated, Right !?!

One of the most complicated relationships we have as parents is the one with our own parents.

It doesn't matter if you have a good relationship with them or are estranged, your parents are a part of your life as a parent.

I have friends who've lost a parent and they mourn the fact that their mom won't ever meet their kids.

I have friends whose parents watch their kids five days a week so they can both work full time.

I live next door to my parents but haven't talked to my wife's dad in several years. They are both still a part of our lives but in different ways.

During your season of parenting, the various interactions with your parents can cover a wide range of possibilities.

I don't know the in's and out's of your particular family dynamic but I do know that you have decisions to make as a parent about your parents.

Having principles to help guide us in the process in necessary and here are four I've gathered from the community of friends I've been a part of.

1. Feedback loops pay off
2. Control only what you can
3. Communicate most with your kids
4. Find a way to honor your parents

With summer vacations and travel happening, most of you will be seeing more of the grandparents, so here's a deeper dive.

Feedback loops pay off

Parents love giving advice. It doesn't matter if its your parents, older parents (like me 😉), peer parents, or neighborhood parents.

When it comes to your parents, though, they care about their grandkids and feel a level of responsibility for them most likely.

Creating an early feedback loop with your parents helps establish open dialogue that you can build on.

Your parents will directly or indirectly criticize some of your decisions.

Rather than rush to defend yourself, ask them why. Seek understanding. Then you can help them understand why you're making the choice you are.

Give them vision on how you see their role and voice in the lives of your kids.

Teach them how your kids think and about their personalities. Equip them to be better grandparents. After all they do want to know them!

You will likely have to train your parents on what works and doesn't with each of your children.

Teach them how to interact with each of your kids.

Control only what you can

Everyone who becomes a parent will have issues with their parents. Some require more distance than others.

Acknowledging your own baggage is necessary as a mom or dad.

You can't control your parents words, timing or tone. You can only control your response.

As the parent, you do have a say on how much time you spend with your parents. Hopefully you have a healthy relationship with them and this is less of an issue.

You can't control how your 3 year old acts around them and you can't control that your 13 year old lives on their phone while your parents roll their eyes.

Give up on situational perfection. Pursue healthy family relationships.

Communicate most with your kids

When our kids were little they spent a lot of time with my parents. Living in the same town, they were our go to babysitters when we went out.

One of the things we learned was that we needed to talk with our kids about their grandparents.

Your kids need to understand:

• grandparents love them by saying yes and no.
• grandparents can be fun and older at the same time.
• grandparents who live far away think time together is special.
• grandparents care about strange things you've never heard of.
• grandparents can be wrong too.

Teaching your kids how to interact with your parents will go a long way.

Have conversations before, during and after you spend time with your parents. It's another way to build that feedback loop with your kids.

Find a way to honor your parents

In the list of the 10 commandments, number five is "Honor your father and mother."

For some families, this will be easy. No parents are perfect, but they have lived lives worthy of honor.

For others, there is great damage that has been done and pain associated with the decisions their parents have made.

Choosing to find a way to honor your parents will make you a better parent.

Teaching your kids what you learned, good and bad, from your parents will go a long way towards honoring them.

Honor is not the same as celebration. Honor is closer to recognition.

I believe it is possible to find at least 1% good in our parents. Choose to honor that.

Honoring your parents, whatever it is and whatever it looks like will make you a better parent and your kids better adults someday.

Which do you see right now?

​Kristen Ivy​

"Some of us have been so programmed to see what is wrong about our kids that we have forgotten to see what is right about them.

When you remind yourself consistently that your kids are made in the image of God, it can change:

How you see them.

How they seem themselves.

How they see God."

That's all for today's writing of Parenting: what we've learned (so far)

If any of this was engaging or you had a small take away,
it always helps when parents share with others.

​Here is a link to this page on the web you could copy & share​