Dear LPG,

I read with interest your post- where OP of Bellingham made some really good points about the importance of trying to bring children together or at least to a point where they can put their differences aside and work together as a united family. 

Just like OP  my three children have learned how to not see eye to eye over the years.  Their Jobs spouses and families have pushed them apart geographically and in many other ways but I love them all. 

I think that the biggest problems between them stem from trivial things that have happened so far in the past that where they stemmed from has got lost while the fall out has far outgrown the original cause.  There is a lot of ‘face-saving’ involved and when I get to talk to them individually the pride –rooted aspects of their differences becomes all too apparent.

I tried to address the very problem that OP wrote about by focussing some of the time I spent with each child, really getting them to talk through any animosity they harboured towards the others and I worked out that it’s often the case that they are looking for a way to repair their differences, but blame gets in the way.   The one thing that they all have in common is that they really do not want to come out of the making-up process having to admit that they were wrong.  

I still have the luxury of being important to each of my children who are all based in the UK, and I have now spent a lot of my time emphasising my feelings that ‘what is past is past’ and appealing to them to try to put it behind them for my sake.  I have used reasons such as the distress that it is causing me to see discord between them, that, however they look at it,  my time is coming to an end and I really  want to leave this earth knowing that I leave a united family .

I then got really brave and invited them all to a restaurant for a family dinner which was a ‘strained’ affair, but turned out to be a meal where every member of my family managed to get through the experience being guarded, but reasonably pleasant to each other.  A bonus is that my grandchildren met cousins that they had only heard about or met years ago and new bonds were forged there.

It is not the only way but it might work for some of the readers who have similar problems.

CP. Blyth Hill

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