Q: My mom is in her late 80s and needs assisted living care, but her assets are insufficient to cover the cost. My older sister and I are tightening our belts to help out. Our other (younger) sister and her husband say they can't contribute due to lack of financial resources. But they both have good jobs and healthy incomes. They buy expensive cars and go on extravagant annual vacations (which they have sometimes invited us to join). Meanwhile, we're helping out willingly but at great sacrifice. It's hard not to feel resentful. What should we do?
Jim: Much depends upon the relational dynamics within your family. Are you on good terms with the sister who isn't contributing to your mother's upkeep? (Since she's invited you to go on their vacations, that sounds fairly positive.) If so, you need to start talking about this.
It would probably be a good idea to bring all three sisters together for an honest conversation. Tell your younger sister what you're thinking and feeling and solicit her honest feedback. If you need help covering the cost of your mother's care, come right out and say so. It's best if all of you could sit down together and hash this out face to face. Only then will you be able to start cooperating as a team.
But if the relationship isn't conducive to this kind of healthy dialogue, you may have no choice except to resign yourself to the situation as it is. You can't control your sibling or tell her what to do, even when you think it's the right thing. You can only try to set a good example by doing what you believe to be right. If your sister would rather have new cars and exotic vacations, that's her choice. She's missing out on an important life experience in terms of accepting responsibility and honoring your mother -- but there probably isn't much you can do to convince her of that. She'll have to find it out for herself.
Q: How can I deal with my shortcomings as a parent? I love my family dearly and do my best, but I feel like I make a lot of mistakes with my kids.
Danny Huerta, Vice President, Parenting and Youth: Parenting has a way of sometimes highlighting our imperfections. Thankfully, being a good parent doesn't mean having to be a perfect parent. In fact, true success in parenting is about how you learn from and respond to the mistakes you inevitably will make.
When imperfection happens, I have learned to ask myself four key questions:
1. What happened (from both my perspective and my child's)?
2. What can I learn from what happened?
3. What will I do differently next time?
4. What's my next move to reconnect with my child and move forward?
As I've worked through these questions in specific parenting situations, I've also developed more and more empathy and understanding for other parents -- including my own.
Along the way, I've had plenty of opportunities to continue learning grace, forgiveness, humility, love and patience through my role as an imperfect dad. Even though we can drive each other nuts sometimes, as a family we've also come to understand one another at a very deep level, and that fosters genuine empathy and connection within our home.
You can become a better parent by taking advantage of specific parenting tools (like our organization's 7 Traits of Effective Parenting Assessment, which you can find at FocusOnTheFamily.com/parenting). Find out where your strengths lie and maximize those. Learn what your weaknesses are and work to shore those up. And, as should be the case in every area of life, be ready to apologize and repair when needed.
Jim Daly is a husband and father, an author, and president of Focus on the Family and host of the Focus on the Family radio program. Catch up with him at www.jimdalyblog.com or at www.facebook.com/DalyFocus.
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