The In-Laws and the Rules...

    Accepting and fitting into your spouse’s family is an interesting topic for me. This has been a challenge in my marriage.  I loved this quote from Harper and Olsen’s “Creating Healthy Ties with in-laws and Extended Families”, “Marrying into a family that is different from yours or has different values can be a challenge.  Demonstrating humor, exercising patience, overlooking small irritations, and looking for the positive can help in dealing with differences.”  I feel that I have had to use all of these techniques with my husband’s family!  Don’t get me wrong, I love them, it has just been difficult.  I have had to deal with situations that were unfamiliar to me and my upbringing.  The thing that has helped me most has been prayer.  I pray every day to love them and to be able to understand them.  The spirit has been with me and helped me with this.  I have also learned that it is just as important to spend time with my husband’s family as it is to spend time with my own.  We have actually been able to combined some family gatherings so both families are in attendance. 

    Being married and creating our own set of family rules was an interesting challenge as well.  We definitely had some different ideas on how certain aspects of our family should go.  With prayer and compromise we have been able to set up family rules that we are both happy with.  We occasionally still have disagreements, but the basic rules are in place.  We do have explicit rules on our refrigerator in the form of our family mission statement.  These are known rules that we choose to live by as a family.  This statement has been a very helpful tool in our family.  We came up with it together, so we all agreed on its contents.  Of course we also have nonverbal rules that we strive to teach our children by our actions.