Giving and Taking Counsel and Correction

Sometimes there comes a cleavage between people who should be close to each other⎯because of inability either to give or take counsel and criticism and correction kindly. Parents and children are often estranged because of this problem of giving and taking counsel and correction.

It isn’t always easy to balance authority with love with those on whom we have the closest claims⎯because people aren’t perfect, and because proximity often sharply shows up imperfections. And parents often become impatient with children, and children become impatient with parents, and feel that they don’t understand. But parents do pretty well understand. They understand many things. They understand causes and consequences⎯and the need for correction⎯even if they can’t always make counsel and correction completely palatable to all concerned.

Learning to give criticism and correction as they should be given, and to take them as they should be taken, is one of the greatest lessons of life⎯and one of the most essential, because there aren’t any perfect people, and because we all need counsel and criticism and correction.

We all make mistakes, and we all need to learn about apology and repentance. And the child or the adult who thinks he is above counsel and correction, above apology and repentance, has an inescapable lesson to learn.

Parents have an obligation to give counsel and correction⎯and children (and adults and all of us) have an obligation to take criticism and correction when we have made mistakes⎯and to apologize and repent⎯and then to go on to improve, without rankling resentment.

Parents and children have urgent need to keep close to one another⎯and not withhold confidences and not shut off communication. There is no happiness or peace in living in injured silence, and there is no safety in supposing oneself to be above counsel and correction.

Heaven help us in our homes and elsewhere also⎯to give and to keep confidences, and to give and to take constructive counsel and correction⎯ “reproving betimes with sharpness…and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy…”