Are you deficit spending in the most important relationships in your life? This article will help you get out of emotional debt and turn your failing relationships around.

I have a 15-year-old teenage daughter. Kimberly is her name. She and I have always had a close relationship as father and daughter. Recently, though, I’ve noticed that she doesn’t want much to do with me. In fact our relationship has been strained on a fairly frequent basis. When I see her and say “Hi” she barely acknowledges me. When I ask her how school is going she gives me a scowl and mumbles something under her breath that sounds like “go away and leave me alone.” I couldn’t quite make it out. Anyway, I was getting concerned. I know deep down inside that she loves me. So what was going on here?

I suppose I could chalk up this behavior to the normal teenage tension that goes on between adolescents and their parents, but I just wasn’t buying that. What really was the root cause here?

What is the Love Account?

This is my take on it. With each person that we have a relationship with, we have something I like to call a “Love Account.” Just like a bank account, we make deposits and withdrawals in the Love Account. And like a bank account, if we don’t make deposits on a regular basis then we can’t expect to make withdrawals from it without consequences.

I could see that my Love Account with my daughter was overdrawn. In fact she was ready to close the account! This can happen to each of our relationships with family members if we aren’t careful. We have Love Accounts with each of our children, our spouse, our parents and so on. If we expect to withdraw benefits from each of these accounts we need to be making regular deposits.

What is a deposit into the Love Account?

For each person it can be different. What may be a deposit for one person wouldn’t necessarily be a deposit for another. One way to make deposits in your children’s Love Account is to be there and support them with the important events in their lives. If my daughter is in a play it means I had better make darn sure I go and see her in her play. If my son has a soccer game or a concert it means I show my love and support by being there. They may not even acknowledge it. They may not say anything like, “Thanks for being there, dad.” But you did make a deposit and every deposit builds the account so that later when you need to make a withdrawal, you won’t bankrupt the account.

My son Preston has a Boy Scout campout this weekend and dads are always invited to go with them. As much as I sometimes dread packing up all the camping gear and sleeping out on the cold, hard ground, it’s a huge deposit into my son’s Love Account when I am there with him.

Other ways we make deposits are being kind and sweet and loving. We make deposits by caring about the other person and seeing that their needs are met. We make deposits by being interested in their life and what they are currently going through. We make deposits by being generous with our stuff. We make deposits with notes of appreciation or even appropriate gifts. All of these things can build the Love Account.

Make sure the deposits are things that are of worth to the intended person. I heard a story of some parents who bought tickets to the Broadway play Phantom of the Opera for their teenage son. Unfortunately, what was of high value to the parents was of little value to their son. You need to understand what makes them tick and what they are into so you will know what is of high value to them. I know my daughter Kimberly loves clothes, shoes and lip gloss. She’s a 15-year-old girl and these are things that she is into right now.

What is a withdrawal?

There are two kinds of withdrawals. The first kind of withdrawal is made up of the expected rewards that come from a full and overflowing Love Account. With our children it may be receiving their cooperation, their love, a smile or a hug. It is also when we need something from them such as cleaning their room or doing their homework or being home by curfew.

With our spouse it is when we need love and affection and intimacy. These are legitimate withdrawals we are entitled to when we have filled the Love Account.

The second kind of withdrawal is when we do things that damage the relationship. When we miss the important events in their lives we are making withdrawals. When we disregard their interests or needs or when we violate their trust we are making withdrawals. When we criticize or put down or show disrespect we are making withdrawals. When we make fun of or embarrass them in public, withdrawals are being made. These things can take a major toll on the Love Account and quickly put it in deficit.

Like a bank, there is a penalty exacted then you write a check with insufficient funds in the Love Account. It costs you more than just the face value of the check.

Also, like an interest-bearing account, the more you deposit the more interest you earn. Your rewards are greater than the total amount you have deposited into the account.

Pay attention to your Love Accounts

So my message today is to pay attention to the Love Accounts in your life. Keep them full and overflowing. There is no better place to invest your time and effort. The rewards will always be more than you put in.

As for me and my 15-year-old daughter, it’s time to make some deposits. Where do you buy lip gloss anyway?

Thank you.

Master Yourself, Master Your Life

Copyright © 2009 Garold N. Larson

As Christmas approaches my thoughts are drawn back to the memories of Christmas past. When our children were young Christmas was a magical time of the year. The memories are sweet and comforting. One in particular comes to mind of many years ago. This was when my oldest daughter was 6 years old. I cracked open my old journal this morning and read about the experience and felt like sharing it with you. Here is my journal entry from Christmas Eve 1990:

Christmas Eve – what a night! It was a lot of fun for me and Lisa to see the excitement in the kids’ eyes. We sang Silent Night and then read the Christmas story in Luke. The kids wanted to get to bed so fast. Neil kept telling everyone to stop talking so we could get through our scripture reading.

After family prayer and scripture reading we sent them off to bed. Soon after that I went outside and rang the jingle bells outside the kids’ window. Later, when I went into their room to check on them, they were so excited to tell me about hearing the bells.

Erika had written a letter to Santa and left it by the tree. She asked several questions like; is there really a red nosed reindeer and how does he know if you are awake and how do reindeer fly? She also left a banana and a glass of milk for Santa on the fireplace mantle.

So I decided Santa should write her back. I sat down at the kitchen table and began writing her a letter from Santa as I ate the banana and drank the milk. I used a red pen and wrote in a very fancy script. I was halfway through the letter when I looked up and there was Erika, standing by the table staring at me! I about died on the spot! She wanted a drink of water. I quickly covered the letter, got her a drink and then chased her off to bed.

Later I went back into her room just to see what she would say to me or what kind of questions she may ask. I was worried about how much she may have seen. Luckily she hadn’t noticed what I was doing earlier or at least didn’t say anything about it. That was a close one!

Later Lisa and I were wrapping presents and I was hauling them upstairs. I decided to check on her again. She was still awake at 12:15 a.m.! That little rascal! She is so excited. It’s 1 a.m. and I hope she’s asleep now. It will be so fun to see the excitement on the kids’ faces in the morning.

And it was exciting, as all Christmas’s were back then. There is nothing quite like having Christmas with small children. They had a way of bringing back the magic and excitement of my own childhood. Now my daughter has two children of her own and she has begun the cycle all over again of experiencing the magic through them.

I’ve heard criticism from time to time of people who “deceive” their children with the whole Santa Clause thing. Frankly, I’ve not seen any negative effects from it with my children. In fact it’s been quite the contrary with my experience. Now, when my children gather at our home they love to talk about the great Christmas memories of their childhood.

We can talk about tips and techniques for mastering our family relationships but sometimes the answers to our problems are so simple. Sometimes all that we need is to spend time together having fun and building memories. Christmas traditions build wonderful memories with your family that will last a lifetime. It’s part of the glue that holds a family together. May you take the time to build memories with your loved ones this Christmas season. The dividends and blessings will continue to come year after year.

What are your Christmas memories? What is the glue that holds your family together? Please share!

Thank you.

Master Yourself, Master Your Life

Copyright © 2008 Garold N. Larson

My answer to that is that there has to be exceptions at times but they should be few and far between.

For me last night was one of those exceptions. The only time there should be an exception is if there is a higher priority at play here that supersedes the lower one. For example, a higher priority would be my family and my relationships with my children. In this case it was attending a performance that my son was in.

Let me just explain what it was about. My soon-to-be 17-year-old son is a member of the local high school marching band. He plays the sousaphone. (Yes, that’s him in the center of the photo.) I thought it was called a tuba but apparently a tuba is played sitting down such as in a concert. A sousaphone is simply a version of the tuba used by marching bands. Anyway, my son and his band have worked extremely hard on their performance. For those of you who have never been involved with marching bands, they actually have competitions where many marching bands get together and compete. Each band puts on a performance that includes a number of elements. They have judges who judge the competition and they give awards at the end. This is a huge event that begins in the early afternoon and goes on until after 10:00 at night.Of course we wanted to be there to support our son and watch how his band did. My son’s band was scheduled to perform at 9:15 p.m. After they performed there was one more band to perform and then the tallying of all the judge’s scores and then the awards ceremony which lasted quite a while. (Incidentally, our son’s high school band took first place!) Anyway, following the awards ceremony we stayed to help clean up the stadium. So we didn’t get home until around 11:00 p.m.

Now here my goal was to be in bed by 10:30 p.m. What do you do in that situation? Well, you have to have priorities. I can’t, for the sake of my goal to get to bed by 10:30 p.m., ignore my son and not support him. There has to be reasonable exceptions. Those exceptions should only be for events and things that are of a higher priority than the goal of getting to bed on time.

I think there were two lessons learned from last night. The first was one is what I just talked about: Only allow higher priorities to cause exceptions to the rule.

The second lesson on self-mastery that I learned from the band competition last night can be divided into two parts. The first one is to simply watch the performances of these high school kids and see the self-mastery that they have achieved in the performance they put on. It was amazing the way that they learned to work together, to stand at attention, to march in unison, to flow as an entire unit together as a small part of a large whole. To me it was an amazing display of self-mastery to watch these marching bands.

The second part was even more amazing. A storm had been blowing in most of the day. We watched the dark clouds gather and the wind pick up as this competition went on. By the time my son’s high school band performed it was pouring rain. Not just rain but cold, pouring rain. Remember that it’s October. You would think in most situations that they would cancel a big event such as this because you wouldn’t expect anyone to stand out in that rain and put on these performances. These are huge marching bands all dressed in uniforms, carrying their instruments.

I asked one of the organizers of the event if they were going to cancel it. He said there was only one thing that would stop one of these shows and that was lightning. If it begins to lightning only then will they stop the show. Other than that, regardless of whether it’s raining or snowing or windy, the show goes on.

I was amazed at this fact that they go on no matter what. I was astonished as I watched these kids standing there at attention, not flinching as the rain was pouring on them. It was incredible self-mastery. And then to watch them go through their performance, totally ignoring the rain and playing these magnificent songs and marching their complicated formations – it was wonderful and showed supreme self-mastery.

Master Yourself, Master Your Life

Thank you.

Copyright © 2008 Garold N. Larson