"Honour your father and your mother, so that your days are prolonged upon the land which YaHuWaH your God is giving you."
Honouring our parents is required by the 5th Commandment. Above all, this directive to honour our parents is consistent with honouring YaHuWaH, our Creator. After all, he is our "Heavenly Father" and the one who guides us. And just as a mother feels compassion for her young, so does He have compassion for His children.
The parents have authority over their offspring. It is the responsibility of a man and woman who come together to care for and provide for their children. It should be a natural product of bearing children to love them and raise them and protect them. Part of that responsibility the parents have for their children is to pass on to them the teachings regarding living righteously before YaHuWaH.
The picture that is implied here is that the parents are teaching and guiding their children within the borders and boundaries of the Torah, which are installed to protect us from all manners of harm. So, by obeying their father and mother, that is, by keeping the commandments of the Torah, children will receive the favour and protection from the Almighty YaHuWaH to live long and avoid the pitfalls of sin that shorten a human's life on the earth. This is a commandment of promise. It promises long life to those that observe it.
The command to honour father and mother serves as a protective boundary for children. They must respect their parents for the sake of their own well-being. However, what happens when this proper behaviour is violated? Just as YaHuWaH disciplines those He loves, parents are expected to discipline their children...
There will be occasions in which parents have not earned honour and respect because they have not loved and protected their children as YaHuWaH instructs. One aspect of honouring flawed parents is realising that the best way to honour them is from a distance, both emotionally and physically. You can give yourself permission to do this. Giving people honour is demonstrating (not necessarily feeling) respect, letting them know you are listening and taking what they say into account (which does not always imply following through!).
To give them honour means being civil and kind in your dealings with them. It does not mean trusting them. It does not mean placing yourself in harm’s way. It means forgiving them so that you are not carrying and paying for the emotional baggage of their treatment of you. And please remember that forgiveness is given, but trust is earned, so it’s entirely possible that you can release the woundings you sustained from them without ever, ever trusting them with your heart because they don’t deserve your trust.
Honouring flawed parents means you have healthy boundaries so that you know where you end and they begin. It means you learn how to protect yourself so that they can’t steamroll over you; it also means you have realistic expectations about what they can and cannot give you or do for/to you. In these circumstances, and when our faith and beliefs cause conflict between parents and their offspring, we can look to examples in scripture of honouring yet not putting family relations first, such as in Yahushua's teachings found in Matthew's Gospel.
Honouring our parents entails acknowledging their existence and their role as life-givers in the chain of human existence. Naturally, in order to honour them in this way, we must be thankful for our existence, but we should also feel pity for them. Despite their good intentions, parents have almost always been mistaken in a number of ways and may yet be.