My Family is Divided Over Politics, What Do We Do?

Dr. Skinner, my teen is into politics. Our family ended up very divided after the last election, and I'm worried these differences will have issues with his cousins this time around. My solution is don't share. What is your solution? Dr. Skinner? My solution is this. Um, first and foremost, this is probably one of the more, uh, hot topics or difficult topics that we're dealing with. I think there's more divide maybe than we've ever seen. So my suggestion is this. Um, I have a general rule relationships first, because when we get so caught up in the way, something should be, this person should be a president, or this person should be a president, we're missing out on, on. These are people. And yes, there are decisions, but we often are finding in the media where we're making people out to be, um, our enemies. It it more now, more than ever, we need to teach civility and respect, and we need to teach. People have differences of opinions and they're not bad, and they're not awful. And if we can get that message across, then we realize, you know what? Both parties have good ideas. Both parties have good people. And, and I know that a lot of people say, no, you're absolutely wrong with that. I'm a person who believes in the goodness of all people, and they have different ways of going about things. So my, I guess my core point here is being aware of your child's needs, right? Your child is passionate, that's great, but we have to teach stability. And if we're even gonna do this in that step further, I'd like you to do some research on the other party's platform, what they stand for. Take out all the social media. I want you to go look at the, what they stand for, not the pundits, not everybody else. I want you to go look at it because as we go through this conversation, let's have some meaningful conversations. And if you say, this is what I believe in, this is why I believe it, I can respect that. But we need to take out the animosity and we need to teach civility and respect that leads to a better culture. And I'm talking about a cultural approach, because what we're doing right now is actually destroying the fabric of our society. And we think we're so far apart, it's not appropriate and it's not helpful when we're, uh, bashing and harming other people. Other people are other people, and we may say, yeah, but they do this. They, you know what? Go, go read. Go look, go study both sides. And that would be my suggestion in a situation like this. So your question was more of how do we deal with this? It creative family problems. Again, I wanna teach stability and respect for all people. That's how I would approach it at this point, because, um, we all have our opinions. We all have done our work. We've all done, you know, at least some ideas of what, how we're gonna vote and why. But I encourage all of us to step back and, and, and look at our own approach. How am I seeing this? How am I communicating it to my family? And why am I, why am I standing for what I am? And, and I'm more than willing to listen, help me understand your, your perspective, not what the other party's doing. Your party's perspective on how they would solve a problem. Listen to what they're actually saying. And, and again, sometimes people will spout things and they don't know, well, why are you saying that? And when? Right? So everybody needs to be, if we're gonna talk about, uh, things as passionate politics, we probably don't understand why we believe what we believe and really get some understanding. So it's a great time to teach civics and law and, and respect and, and how our law works. And, and, and, and yeah, we're passionate. That's great. But don't forget, there's a person on the other side that has a very different opinion than you. And they're your brother, or they're your sister. They're, they matter. They're person too. And, uh, I, I, again, if we're gonna, if our society's gonna be improved, we need to take out the animosity and the conflict. And we need to teach respect and dignity towards all people.