Standing by Family

When your adult child disappoints you by making choices that are wrong for them, do you stand by biting your tongue or do you voice your opinion?

Nothing in life is black and white-there are always shades of gray in between.


In a family, there are the gossipers who will appear to be supportive but bash you behind your back. There are the rebels who stand up for what they believe even if it goes against what the family stands for.

In a family where there is dysfunction , many continue the cycle partly out of ignorance and partly because they lack the strength or courage to fight against it.

Being a supportive family member can be tough when you see a younger family member choose to do something that is so wrong and is only going to lead to heartache. It is easy to see a situation clearer when you are not living it. You may be making the wrong assumptions about it, but then again, sometimes you are not.

When a family member is insistent that you go along with supporting someone's bad choice and you refuse, it can lead to family resentment and arguments. All this because one person is making a bad choice that few will confront them about.

I believe in honesty. Honesty can be painful but if it is approached in a loving way, it can soften the blow. The problem is that too many people are too willing to put up with the bad behavior of others in order to stay in their good favor. This makes for phoney relationships. For some people, they will accept anything that they can get. Even from their family.

Perhaps it comes from an inability to look in the mirror and be honest with our own faults. It takes courage to admit that the "perfect" life you dreamed of was a fantasy. For all the control you asserted onto someone, ultimately, you find out that once the person was allowed to be free you lost that control.

"Catholic school girl" syndrome is when a girl who has been controlled by the strictness of religion, rules and her environment breaks free and discovers all that was forbidden to her. Some will explore, experiment and then move on. Others will get sucked into a life where they make bad choices that will affect them for a long time to come.

The young adult thinks they are having the time of their life and is so naive that they cannot see how wrong they are. They are being mislead, used and family cannot get through to them. Sometimes family members won't even try. There isn't much that a family can do.

It is a lesson in how not to parent but for the young adult who is making these life choices that will surely bring heartache, it is sad. There is no "fixing" them now...they are going to make their wrong choices and have to live with it.

Just because the person is "family" doesn't mean that you have to support their poor decision.