My brother told my wife and me that our kids are ‘Rude Pigs’

Hey Rosie,

I had a huge argument with my brother the other day because he said that my wife and I were not doing a good job with correcting our children. In fact, his exact words were, “your kids are rude pigs”, and he didn’t want their bad influences around his kids! Rosie, I was so pissed off that it nearly came to blows! Our children are 6 and 9 (a boy and girl) and his kids are a little older, they are 11-year-old twin girls. He is acting as though his kids are perfect, they can be just as obnoxious too.

I’m not saying that we don’t have to keep working on our children’s behaviour, but he truly hurt my feelings and offended me by what he said. Should I reach out to him to hash this out?

No brotherly love

Dear No brotherly love,

I can see this struck a nerve and he hurt you deeply with his blunt assessment of your children, this is indeed a touchy subject when we are discussing our kids.

Let me encourage you and your wife to step back and take a deep breath. Let’s not have these unfortunate words get between you and your brother.

After you are a little calmer examine if there is any truth at all to what he’s saying (this is all about being honest with your own situation), then finally reach out to your brother about having a open conversation with each other.

This may need to be done with a mutual friend who can help you both stay on task in regards to coming to a respectful resolution.

Remember, we all have different approaches when raising our children. However, we are trying to raise respectable,honest and well rounded individuals to make a positive contribution to society one day.

So even though his approach was totally unacceptable, I hope both of you can bridge the gap and allow this to be an opportunity to have a positive resolution about how you will interact with each other moving forward. Good luck my friend.

Rosie

Send questions to Rosie at: heyrosie24@yahoo.com or PO Box 152, Kingstown, St Vincent & the Grenadines