Family & Parenting
My in-laws openly disagree with how we are raising our kids. How do I keep the peace without giving in?
“And Moses' father in law said unto him, The thing that thou doest is not good. Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee: for this thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone.”
Moses' father-in-law Jethro watched him judge the people alone from morning until night and told him plainly that what he was doing was not good and would wear him out. Moses listened and changed the system. The scene is worth sitting with, because the in-law happened to be right, and because Jethro said it privately, once, and then went home rather than staying on to supervise.
“Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.”
Paul is giving the Colossians instructions for dealing with people outside their church, and the picture is of speech that is both gracious and salted, meaning it has flavor and some preserving bite to it. This is not a call to be endlessly agreeable. It assumes you will sometimes say things people do not want to hear, and it governs how you say them rather than whether you do.
A path forward
Agree with your spouse in private on the two or three things that are genuinely non-negotiable, and let everything else go. Most in-law friction is a hundred small preferences being defended as though each one were a principle.
Have the parent whose parents they are deliver the message. A limit set by a blood child lands as family business; the identical words from the in-law land as an attack.
Find something specific to thank them for and say it out loud this month, then pray for them by name. Criticism from grandparents is often anxiety about being edged out, and being visibly wanted lowers the volume more reliably than winning the argument does.
Closing verse
“The discretion of a man deferreth his anger; and it is his glory to pass over a transgression.”
- Proverbs 19:11
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