Honoring your parents

In this time between Mother's and Father's Days, I have been thinking about how we should behave to our parents. Honor your father and your mother; fear your mother and your father, the Torah tells us. However, what that means isn't always that clear. Now that my older son is almost three, it's clear that he learns how to behave from us, so we must model the behavior we wish to see. Some ways to manifest this honor include not to sit in your parents' chairs and not to contradict them in public. I was at a meeting of relatively new moms recently and we were asked what we did to make our lives easier before having kids. One mom responded that she and her husband sat down with their parents and said that they were going to make their own decisions and choices and please not to offer their opinions. Well, this wasn't actually contradicting them in public, though that's not that far off from what they were doing - or perhaps one could be generous say they were trying to avoid doing that.

I thought long and hard about this. It seems to me that while we're not obligated to do exactly what our parents tell us - there have certainly been a number of advances and changes and we're entitled to make decisions about our own children - it seems to me that disregarding completely everything that our parents can offer is not only mean, but also ridiculous. There are lots of tidbits that we may find useful, even if some are not things we'd like to try. I hope that my parents and in-laws realize that I do appreciate their ideas and also that they aren't hurt if we don't follow through. We should all remember to thank our parents, even for unsolicited suggestions, and make sure our children know how much we appreciate their grandparents.