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Family Matters
By Jeff Kemp
Children, teens need roadmap for positive relationships
If our children asked us for directions to a friend’s house, we wouldn’t draw them a map that sent them in the wrong direction. We’d help them any way we could to arrive at their destination safely. And yet many parents struggle to provide their children with an adequate roadmap to help them find and build healthy relationships.
A divorced friend reminded me of this recently. One morning not long after his wife divorced him, her car broke down in his driveway. Rather than taking satisfaction in her misfortune, my friend let her borrow his car for the day and even bought some parts and repaired her car.
As he did the repairs, his son asked why he would be so helpful to her after she had divorced him. His response was simple yet profound: “We’re supposed to help people when they need it, not just when they’re nice to us.”
My friend’s decision to treat his ex-wife in an honorable way went well beyond a demonstration of human kindness. It gave his children a positive picture of human relationships and spared them the painful experience of seeing their parents in conflict.
As parents, we have opportunities each day to give our children a roadmap for healthy relationships. Maybe the first step toward taking full advantage of this opportunity is to recognize that our teens want enduring intimacy with the opposite sex and dream of lifelong marriage.
Research shows that teens want successful, committed marriages. Families Northwest’s 2001 Teen Relationships Report revealed that 88 percent of Washington teens express an interest in getting married someday. And 93 percent believe marriage is meant to be a lifelong relationship.
The report also revealed that teens consider their parents a major influence on their future relationships. According to teens, parents wield more influence over their views about marriage than anyone else. Nearly half of all teens look to their parents as the “single most significant influence on their thinking about what it will take to have a good marriage.”
Whether we’re married, divorced, single or widowed, we should all be encouraged that the next generation wants to marry and stay married for a lifetime. After all, marriage is the most basic human institution and the cornerstone for strong families and communities.
In her book “What Children Learn From Their Parents’ Marriage,” Judith P. Siegel says “When parents praise or compliment each other, they send a message of value that is fully absorbed by the child. When parents demean each other, they create discomfort and conflict in the child.”
Siegel, a marriage and family therapist and associate professor at the New York University Ehrenkranz School of Social Work, goes on to cite findings by Dr. Jon Gottman, a leading marriage researcher from the University of Washington. According to Gottman, for every stressful or negative interaction in a relationship, there need to be five positive ones to keep the relationship working.
Siegel says the same holds true if we want to teach the next generation positive lessons of love. What can we do to teach our children that relationships are a treasure? The positive interactions most visible to children are physical affection, friendship, appreciation, laughter, open-mindedness, flexibility and forgiveness.
They learn how to communicate and resolve conflicts from parents, stepparents and other adult role models. The examples they observe from the earliest ages make lasting impressions that influence their behavior as they grow older and begin to form relationships with the opposite sex.
We can be thankful that teens have decided marriage matters to them. They want successful, lifelong marriages and we have to remember they are looking to adults to provide them with the blueprints to build healthy relationships that last.
I sometimes wonder what my friend must have been feeling as he helped his ex-wife with her dilemma. Whatever feelings he may have been struggling with personally, his actions pointed his children in the right direction for positive relationships in their own lives.
Whether we are married, divorced or never-married parents, we all can take similar actions and help teens achieve their dreams for lasting intimacy in marriage.
Jeff Kemp is a husband and the father of four boys. He also serves as President of Families Northwest, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the Northwest the world's premier place for marriage, family life and children.
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