How to establish healthy co-relations with family members? Most of the time, my husband and children, they quarrel with each other for petty things. They get angry, sometimes I get very angry. There is always fighting, so what to do?

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Jayapataka Swami: Sometimes, they have a kirtan inside the house to sway away all the ghosts and subtle entities which are creating disharmony in the house. They also say, you study the qualities of devotee -have to be patient,have to be tolerant. not that we should be always be impatient and intolerant of things. Generally what we do is, we don’t try to push. Because one person in the family is more Krishna conscious than the others. but if she/ he pushes the others too much – pushing them that “ you are not vegetarian” ,or “ you are not chanting” or.. . too much of a push, then the person may also develop some kind of rejection. that “you don’t love me anymore, you don’t like anything I am doing, only you are criticizing me, in this way they start rejecting everything. “I don’t want anything to do with Krishna. Krishna has created problem for my life”. So they may have some negative reaction. so we don’t want that to happen.

Instead, you try to encourage them to do something. But if they don’t do ,then you don’t be very discouraging. you just, rather give some thing postive. you may do something like trick them , “Prabhu let us sit down and read Bhagavad gita together or let us chant one round together” .Something like a more affectionate way to do it rather than nagging, and pushing.Then they feel like, you know, this Krsna is creating so much trouble for me.Rather, I make krishna the source of more happiness for them, materially and spiritually.

As far as the fights between the father and the children, I am not a grihasta , so I don’t know all these details about grihasta life.May be talk to some senior grihasta who is more experienced , someone who has been able to manage their husband or wife very effectively in their grihastasrama.

HH Jayapataka Swami
November 26, 2007
Vishakhapatnam, India