by Lisa Ross

Created on: January 17, 2009   Last Updated: February 21, 2009

Without forgiveness between a parent and a child trust would not exist, so the importance of forgiveness is crucial to the relationship. This is not to say that you immediately forgive on all things, because without some repercussion to the matter at hand you will be taken advantage of. This goes for both the parent and the child.

When a person does something wrong or acts indifferent for selfish reasons we can not be too quick to forgive them. Before the forgiveness takes place it should be clear between the two of you that what happened was wrong and that with your forgiveness you are having faith in them that they will not do it again.

With a child, the errors are easy to see. A child is learning about life and testing their abilities, and as adults we know that in the process a child will make many mistakes. If a child touches a hot stove and burns them self there is an obvious immediate forgiveness, the pain they endured doing it would be consequence enough in this type of situation. It is when your child takes your car late at night and crashes it that you need to talk about why you are forgiving them. In this situation, you would always follow up by letting them face the consequences of their actions, filing criminal charges, or having them work their tail off to pay for the damage.

With a parent, the source of the problem is a little harder to target. As a parent, you are the adult and your repressed freedom days are over. A child doesn't have the authority to tell a parent what to do, and therefore feels reluctant to tell them when they are doing something wrong. Consequently, a parent doesn't always recognize that they are doing something wrong, and even if they do recognize it, they have a hard time admitting that it is an actual problem. Furthermore, a parent doesn't always tell their child everything that they do.

If you are confident that there are no boundaries of forgiveness from the people that you love, it would not be hard for you to trust them. Forgiveness is so important for gaining trust in the first place. Adult or child, you would not go to a person for advice or direction who you think might hold judegements against you for making a mistake and learning about life. You would go to the person who will continue to help you stand no matter how low you go.

This is what our life is all about. Living, learning, forgiving, trusting, and loving.

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