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FAMILY LEGACIES
BY J. OTIS LEDBETTER
BY KURT BRUNER
 JANUARY 1, 1996
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If we don't intentionally pass on a legacy consistent with our beliefs and
values, our culture will pass along its own.
No matter who we are, where we live, or what our goals may be, we all have one thing in common: a
heritage. That is, a social, emotional and spiritual legacy passed on from parent to child. Every one of
us is passed a heritage, lives out a heritage, and gives a heritage to our family. It’s not an option.
Parents always pass to their children a legacy … good, bad or some of both.

A spiritual, emotional and social legacy is like a three-stranded cord. Individually, each strand cannot
hold much weight. But wrapped together, they are strong. That’s why passing on a positive, affirming
legacy is so important and why a negative legacy can be so destructive. The good news is that you,
with God’s help, can decide to pass a positive legacy on to your children whether you received one or
not.

Today, if we don’t intentionally pass a legacy consistent with our beliefs to our children, our culture
will pass along its own, often leading to a negative end. It is important to remember that passing on a
spiritual, emotional and social legacy is a process, not an event. As parents, we are responsible for
the process. God is responsible for the product. We cannot do God’s job, and He won’t do ours.

The Emotional Legacy

In order to prosper, our children need an enduring sense of security and stability nurtured in an
environment of safety and love.

The Social Legacy

To really succeed in life, our children need to learn more than management techniques, accounting,
reading, writing and geometry. They need to learn the fine art of relating to people. If they learn how to
relate well to others, they’ll have an edge in the game of life.

The Spiritual Legacy

The Spiritual Legacy is overlooked by many, but that’s a mistake. As spiritual beings, we adopt
attitudes and beliefs about spiritual matters from one source or another. As parents, we need to take
the initiative and present our faith to our children.

The Emotional Legacy

Sadly, many of us struggle to overcome a negative emotional legacy that hinders our ability to cope
with the inevitable struggles of life. But imagine yourself giving warm family memories to your child.
You can create an atmosphere that provides a child’s fragile spirit with the nourishment and support
needed for healthy emotional growth. It will require time and consistency to develop a sense of
emotional wholeness, but the rewards are great.

A strong emotional legacy:

 Provides a safe environment in which deep emotional roots can grow.

 Fosters confidence through stability.
 Conveys a tone of trusting support.
 Nurtures a strong sense of positive identity.
 Creates a “resting place” for the soul.
 Demonstrates unconditional love.

Which characteristics would you like to build into the legacy you pass along to your children? Even if
you don’t hit the exact mark, setting up the right target is an important first step.

The Social Legacy

In order to prosper, our children need to gain the insights and social skills necessary to cultivate
healthy, stable relationships. As children mature, they must learn to relate to family members,
teachers, peers and friends. Eventually they must learn to relate to coworkers and many other types
of people such as salespeople, bankers, mechanics and bosses.

Nowhere can appropriate social interaction and relationships be demonstrated more effectively than
in the home. At home you learned — and your children will learn — lessons about respect, courtesy,
love and involvement. Our modeling as parents plays a key role in passing on a strong social legacy.

Key building blocks of children’s social legacy include:

 Respect, beginning with themselves and working out to other people.

 Responsibility, fostered by respect for themselves, that is cultivated by assigning children
duties within the family, making them accountable for their actions, and giving them room to
make wrong choices once in a while.
 Unconditional love and acceptance by their parents, combined with conditional acceptance
when the parents discipline for bad behavior or actions.
 The setting of social boundaries concerning how to relate to God, authority, peers, the
environment and siblings.
  Rules that are given within a loving relationship

The Spiritual Legacy

Parents who successfully pass along a spiritual legacy to their children model and reinforce the
unseen realities of the godly life. We must recognize that passing a spiritual legacy means more than
encouraging our children to attend church, as important as that is. The church is there to support
parents in raising their children but it cannot do the raising; only parents can.

The same principle applies to spiritual matters. Parents are primary in spiritual upbringing, not
secondary. This is especially true when considering that children, particularly young children, perceive
God the way they perceive their parents. If their parents are loving, affirming, forgiving and yet strong
in what they believe, children will think of God that way. He is someone who cares, who is principled
and who loves them above all else.

Here are five things you do that predict whether your children will receive the spiritual legacy a
Christian parent desires. Do you:

1. Acknowledge and reinforce spiritual realities? Do your children know, for example, that Jesus
loves everyone? That God is personal, loving and will forgive us?
2. View God as a personal, caring being who is to be loved and respected?
3. Make spiritual activities a routine part of life?
4. Clarify timeless truth — what’s right and wrong?
5. Incorporate spiritual principles into everyday living.

From Your Heritage, by J. Otis Ledbetter and Kurt Bruner. Used by permission of Chariot Victor Publishing, a
division of Cook Communications Copyright © 1996.

THE POWER OF FAMILY LEGACIES

Traditions
Every family has its traditions.
 Some you may truly treasure such as big holiday gatherings with extended family.
 Others you may truly despise such as the jello mold served at every festivity.
 While some you may not even realize exist.
Those that you value, you hope your children “inherit.”  Those that you abhor, you try to avoid.

However, what you pass down to your children consists of much more than these obvious traditions.
Have you ever stopped to think about the impact of all of your day-to-day interactions with your
children?

What are Family Legacies?

All families have a set of beliefs, values, and attitudes that are passed down from generation to
generation through the messages that children receive from their parents.
These then become part of the growing child’s worldview.

These beliefs are frequently conveyed unconsciously by parents and internalized by children
unknowingly and without being evaluated in terms of their validity, truthfulness, or usefulness. They
are blindly accepted.

Although most obvious during the holidays, the transmission of family legacies occurs all year long
through the small events and interactions of daily living.

Many of these legacies, therefore, can be passed along without a lot of reflection on the part of the
parent.

For example, you might have grown up in a house where “children were to be seen but not heard.”

Without even realizing it, you might be acting on this idea by not encouraging or even allowing your
children to voice opinions, and you may not engage in discussions and conversations with them.

Without evaluating the belief that children should not speak their minds, you may not even consider
a more open approach to hearing your children’s thoughts.

You simply do what has always been done.

Evaluating Family Legacies

Positive Legacies
Family legacies can be worth treasuring and passing on to the next generation or they may be
unhealthy and merit discarding. Being aware of your family legacies can help you to decide which
beliefs and attitudes you cherish and which you want to make a conscious effort to change.

For example, if you were raised in a family that valued “together time,” your parents may have
taught you why they thought this was important, spent time with you and your siblings, included you
in decisions about outings and vacations, and encouraged you to set aside time to be with your
family.

As an adult, you may want to continue to teach and model this value for your own children. This is an
example of being aware of a positive tradition that remains important to you and that you have
consciously decided to maintain.

Negative Legacies
On the other hand, there may be some values passed down that you decide you want to modify.

For example, you may have been raised by parents who were very strict in their discipline; they were
quick to punish, did not allow you to explain your point of view, and used humiliation as a discipline
tool.

As an adult you may decide that you want to reverse that legacy. Instead of using discipline that
shames your children, you choose methods that maintain their self-esteem and your relationship with
them.

Conflicting Family Legacies

Sometimes parents are at odds with each other because they each bring their own family legacy to
the parenting table. It may not be a matter of one being right and the other wrong; they are just
different options.

Yet, because parents have not stepped back and evaluated the messages they received, they may
assume that there is a “best” way to do things (their family’s way) and that any other choice is
inferior.

For example, you may believe in making birthday celebrations a full day event with elaborate
planning and lots of guests, while your co-parent believes in a low-key dinner with a cake and just
the immediate family. With these different expectations and assumptions, disappointment or anger
can easily take over.

Changing Family Legacies

If you find yourself at odds with your parenting partner or frequently frustrated with your children,
then it may be a sign that you need to look at some of your underlying beliefs.

If you hear yourself repeating words your parents said to you that you swore you would never say,
you can stop and ask yourself, “What do I really believe about this?”

Once you become aware of your family legacies, you can then choose to keep, modify, or discard
them.

Making changes in the messages you send to your children is not always easy and can cause stress:
 new behavior may not come naturally to you;
 it may feel like you are being disloyal to your parents because you are rejecting some of their
values by doing things differently;
 and family members may feel threatened by and resist the changes you are trying to make.
 

What You Can Do

 Surround yourself with people who support your growth.
 Make shifts in approach gradually and thoughtfully. You want to be careful not to throw
the proverbial baby out with the bath water. There will probably be some parts of your family
legacy that you choose to preserve even as you discard other parts.
 Acknowledge the struggles other family members may have with the changes you are
making. Remember that they may have been quite happy with how things were!
 Gather information about healthy parenting strategies and approaches.
 

A Parting Thought
By replacing some of the negative messages you absorbed as a child with ones that are more in line
with how you want to live, you can pass on to your children more positive messages which they in
turn can use when they raise their children.

You have the power to change and improve upon your family’s traditions and heritage for
generations to come!
 
By Audrey Krisbergh, Certified Parenting Educator