I Want My Children to Be Best Friends

Some days, I worry that my children are never going to get along. So much bickering. So much unwillingness to share. So much eye-rolling. And so much more bickering.

But then I remember that my brothers and bickered and refused to share and rolled our eyes and bickered some more. All the time. My poor mother! And every time one of us said that we’d rather go with friends than participate in a family activity or that we didn’t like our siblings, my mom always said the same thing.

“Friends come and go, but family is forever.”

And whenever she said that, more eye-rolling ensued. I won’t speak for my brothers here, but I certainly rolled my eyes a lot. I didn’t WANT to hang out with my family, I wanted to go be with my friends!

Now that I’m 41 years old, I realize that my mother was absolutely right. Friends do come and go, and while Facebook is a miracle and helps me to keep in touch with hundreds of friends that would have otherwise “gone,” family has always remained the one constant.

I just spent the last 5 days in California with my parents and siblings. One of my brothers got married on the beach and so it was the perfect excuse to get out of the almost-winter weather here in Michigan and go hang out in the sun. It was also a wonderful excuse to spend time with my family, since I live pretty far away from all of them and rarely get to see them.

If you had told me when I was a teenager how much I’d love being with my brothers now, I don’t think I would have believed you. In fact, I would have rolled my eyes. (It really is a wonder that I am not stuck permanently looking at the ceiling for all the eye rolling I did!)

I would have also been pretty skeptical if you’d told me that I would actually look forward to spending time with my parents, and that the person I would spend the most time talking to on the phone would be my mom.

Funny how that goes.

But I still worry that my kids will not like each other when they are 41. Because, bickering. A lot of bickering.

So I have resorted to doing the same sorts of things that my own mom did when we were young. We do fun things together as a family. And sometimes that means no friend activities. Because family is forever and friends come and go.

• We do themed Halloween costumes together.
• We play games together.
• We have traditions.
• We go on fun vacations together.
• We read together.

We make things together, we cook together, we eat together, we laugh together, we do puzzles together, we spend time together.

And I hope that through all of it, we are creating memories that will last forever. And that someday, when my children are 41, they will just laugh about all of the bickering and be thrilled to spend time with their sisters.

Family is forever.

This post is part of my 31 Days to a Happier Home series. 

To see all the posts in this series, click here: 31 Days to a Happier Home