Kidnapped by the Kids

How well do you communicate with your family?

During our church's couples camp, Dens and i realized that we need to improve on communication. I honestly never really thought we had a problem in that area. We always talk anyway.  We talk about the kids, our daily activities, business ideas, and a whole lot of other things. But i realized that we never really take time to talk about how to improve our relationship. We go by the mentality of 'Why fix what's not broken?' But when we started evaluating our relationship during the camp, we realized that there are things that i like Dens to improve on and vise versa. On the flip side, it was also nice for us to hear how we appreciate the things that the other person has been doing but we never took time to say it out loud.

Last week, Patty talked about this new TV show entitled Kidnapped by the Kids. It sounded interesting so i looked it up. The episode that i watched talked about a mom who lost the connection with her eldest son because she avoided communicating with him and didn't want to deal with the issue. Each time she sensed there is a problem, she would use her job as a way to keep herself busy so that she doesn't have to face the music. I'd like to share the entire episode with you (cut into 4 parts). I feel that it's a good insight to how our children feel when we don't spend enough quality time with them. Communication is key in all relationships within the family. It's not only important to communicate better with your children but also with our spouse. Each day is another chance for us to do better.

Rick Warren, the pastor of saddleback church, illustrated this nicely. He said that some of us tend to always sweep family issues under the carpet. We know it's there but we hide it because we don't want to deal with it. The problem is that we keep sweeping all of these issues under the rug and before you know it, there's already a big pile of mess underneath.  Until one day, you find yourself tripping over the carpet and hurting yourself or your love ones even more.

Spend time communicating with each other. It's a great investment for your family.