How Expectations Can Destroy or Develop Your Family Culture

It’s Monday morning, and we’ve been in Taiwan for less than a week. Dave has already left for the church office, and I’ve got my kids sitting around the table eating breakfast. They are being so cute, laughing and talking happily with each other. I fill the sink with dishes and turn on the water because I know it takes a long time to get hot. My day is already shaping up great! I’m ahead of my “to do” list and think I might actually make a big dent in unpacking our boxes.

“Mom, you’re creating a fountain,” Rachelle yells from the kitchen.

I come to the kitchen door to see that a bowl has floated under the faucet and is indeed creating a fountain that is spraying water all over my white tile floor. I know it’s slick when water is on it, so I carefully walk toward the sink trying to see where the water is and avoid it. I did not succeed.

Suddenly I can water skiing across my kitchen floor. I grab the counter edge to steady myself and try to keep from falling only to learn that in Taiwan, cabinets are not fastened to the wall. I figured it was better to fall down than to pull a whole set of cabinets and a sink full of dishes and water over on top of me.

Down I went in what I’m sure was a graceful half split maneuver resembling a beautiful ice skater – NOT. I lay in the floor trying to figure out if I’d broken anything or could get up. I asked Rachelle to go call her dad on the phone. The church was next door, and he could come home and help me get up and make sure everything was okay. Several minutes later, nothing. I carefully got up, and everything seemed to be okay. I found Rachelle in the living room sitting in front of the TV completely absorbed in watching cartoons.

I was shocked. I was a little hurt. But mostly, I felt sad. I had expectations in that moment, and none of them were met.

My day was no longer on track.
My knees hurt and I was wet instead of feeling good and being productive.
My cabinets were not connected to the wall which seemed like a normal expectation.
My dishes didn’t get done till much later.
I never expected to be whooped by a silly plastic bowl.
I had a lot more to clean up.
My daughter didn’t care enough about me to get help when I needed it (that’s how I took it, anyway).
And of course, Dave didn’t come to my rescue because he knew nothing about it.

It’s a small example of how even small expectations can affect our day and our family culture.

Disappointment is sometimes a stronger emotion than anger.

As we seek to create a loving, peaceful, whole family culture that blesses each member of our family, we must examine the expectations that we’ve inherited from our family or our own desires and imaginations.

Every one of us brings expectations into our relationships. Think about when you got married. What did you expect your spouse to do in the home? Outside the home? In your private life? We all had ideas of what we expected. Many of those were changed within the first days of marriage, and some built into resentment if we didn’t address them.

Disappointment is sometimes a stronger emotion than anger.

When we had our children, we had expectations of who they might be and how they would behave. We probably tried to tell ourselves our children were not going to be perfect, but most of us secretly hoped they would be. Good grades, good behavior, good looking – everything to make us beam with pride and feel good about our family and ourselves.

I wanted a devoted husband who listened to my every word – with his ADD, I have to make sure he even knows I’m talking to him.

I wanted to nurse my babies for a full year – my first two were born with clefts and could not nurse, and my other two weaned themselves much earlier than I’d planned.

I wanted kids on the honor roll – with three of the four being neurodivergent, we became thrilled if they could successfully navigate their lessons and whatever the day held. At times, we wondered if they would even graduate.

My mom insisted on Sundays being quiet, relaxing, and predictable – as a pastor’s wife, I find Sundays are rarely quiet or predictable, and almost never relaxing.

When it comes to expectations, the three steps to begin building the family culture that is unique and beneficial to our whole family are:

Examine → Engage → Equip

Examine Expectations

Expectations are a good starting point to discuss what we want out of life, but unexamined, inherited, or pre-determined expectations are never the ending point. They can’t be if we want to create a loving, peaceful family culture. We must develop our own family culture, maybe built on those inherited expectations, but modified to match our family members, their needs, and the culture we can embrace joyfully.

Until we examine what our current and inherited expectations are, we cannot evaluate their value or realism. Once we examine them, we can decide whether they are appropriate for our family.

Engage the Heart

If all we’re after is looking good to others, we are not building a family culture. We’re building a dysfunctional “family” most likely destined to implode.

When dealing with expectations, we can’t just focus on behavior modification. That’s a great way to build resentment in relationships. Remember, disappointment is sometimes a stronger emotion than anger, and it can be destructive in families. When we are building on unrealistic expectations and ignoring unmet needs and expectations, we also create a false culture that may look good on the surface but is dysfunctional beyond that.

So, we work on our hearts, our own desires and discipline as well as our children’s. We face reality, and we embrace the family God has given us. We work to understand each other’s expectations and needs, abilities, and desires.

Our children may need more help to learn to read because of their dyslexia, or our 3-year-old may be reading before we’re ready. We can’t raise both children the same with the same expectations for their reading abilities. It’s the same with any expectation. We must consider each individual in our family, and how our family interacts with each other. Then, we can begin to create a unique family culture that blesses our whole family.

Equip for Self-Rule and Success

The first part of this is having honest conversations about expectations and boundaries. Expectations based on reality are important for motivating each other and for clarifying roles and responsibilities.

We can equip our children for success and for learning self-rule. Discipline is from the heart and our desires to succeed, not from punishment and threats or guilt trips. When we have unmet expectations, if they were established and communicated, then we can talk about consequences and restitution if needed. However, holding someone to unmet expectations that were never clearly communicated is unfair and can be quite cruel. Holding someone to expectations they are incapable of meeting is also unkind.

The good news is, though, if we are willing to take the time and put in the effort, we can equip our children and our spouses to fulfill the expectations we’ve decided on as a family.

One example that has been really helpful in our family is to understand each other’s love languages. My love language is gifts. My husband’s is acts of service. My older daughter’s is words of affirmation. Can you imagine, let’s say Christmas, in our home early on? Dave was terrible at picking out gifts for anyone. I labored over getting the perfect gift for everyone. Rachelle just wanted to know that we appreciated her gifts and that she did a good job. I felt unloved because Dave didn’t seem to know me at all (no melodrama in our house, LOL). His gifts were never something I would have picked out. I didn’t recognize that he’d cleaned the kitchen, helped with Christmas dinner, and helped with clean up too! He was saying “I love you” constantly by his actions. The gifts were just a part of Christmas. He remembered to buy me one, and that was good enough in his mind.

Things changed completely once we understood love languages and the expectations that naturally come with them.

I recognized when Dave was showing me that he loved me by doing small acts of service, which he still does all the time.

He learned that the gifts I took so long to pick out to make sure they were perfect for each person was me celebrating that person and saying how much they meant to me.

And we learned that if we praised Rachelle for anything, she beamed with joy. She also would tell us how much she loved our gifts or whatever we did, and that was her way of saying how much she loved us.

Peace, appreciation, and a sense of family returned to our little family quickly once we understood what was really going on.

When we’re dealing with neurodivergence, this process may be much longer and labor intensive. We can’t grow weary and gift up. We will see the fruit, and our whole family will be blessed if we are diligent and care enough to build the family culture we long for.

Expectations can be our friends.

When everyone knows what to expect, there are no surprises. We find peace and unity in fulfilling our roles, and each person uses their own self-rule or self-discipline to know that they are adding to the beautiful family culture we’ve created. This is practical discipleship that prepares our children for life.