Owning What Is Ours To Own

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

Sitting in a counselor’s office as an early 30-something, I remember the psychologist introducing me to the conflict triangle.  It appeared that I had been part of one since childhood without even understanding how I was participating.  What I discovered was that when the two people in my life were in conflict, I was the emotional support for both of them creating the third part of the triangle.  The two of them would come to me individually and share their woes about the other person.

And I’d fix the problem.

I’d empathize with each of their feelings.

And because I knew both sides of the issue, I’d say the words that needed to be said to each of them separately.

Magic!  They’d make up and life would go on.

The truth was that neither of these people knew how to resolve conflict in a healthy way.

As parents, it is easy to create a conflict triangle without even realizing it.  After all, don’t we want to fix our kid’s problems when they bring them to us?  And, as all of us know, sometimes it is easier and quicker to just fix the conflict issue rather than trying to teach and coach our kids how to manage conflict on their own.

Dare 11 in With All Due Respect is all about owning what is ours to own and teaching our kids to own what is theirs.

But how many times do we step in the middle even though our kids have reached the tween, teen, and sometimes 20-something years? We fix it because that’s the way we’ve always handled these situations.

We forget that our role as parents is to teach our kids to start thinking like adults.  We need to model healthy relationships, healthy conflict, and healthy boundaries.  We need to coach them through the process so they become good at handling their relationships.

Let me share a few examples.  Remember, these are tweens, teens, and 20-somethings relationships.

Example 1:  Say you get a call from a neighbor who is upset about the job your son did mowing her lawn.  She calls you to complain.  You can:

  1. Thank her and go fix the problem.
  2. Thank her and tell her you’ll make sure your son takes care of it.  Then tell your son what she said and make him go fix it.  Then follow up with the neighbor to make sure he did it right.
  3. Thank her and tell her that you are trying to teach your son to take responsibility for his work.  Let her know that you are trying to respect your son and will ask him to come see her.  Let her know that she’ll need to communicate with him exactly what she needs.

Example 2:  Your daughter is upset at something her friend, Misty, is doing that she doesn’t think is a good idea.  You know Misty and her mother.  You can:

  1. Call Misty’s mother and raise her awareness of the situation.
  2. Tell Misty that you know what is going on and try to counsel her the next time she comes over.
  3. Coach your daughter through ways she can help Misty and let her know you are willing to get involved if she thinks you would be helpful in the situation.

Example 3:  Your teens are always arguing over the bathroom before school in the morning.  You can:

  1. Take the door off its hinges.
  2. Listen to both sides of their argument and make a family rule and enforce it.
  3. Coach your teens through coming up with their own system to resolve the conflict and let them own their problem.

Example 4:  Your husband left a note for your son to complete a chore after school.  Your teen has come to you complaining and you recognize that it is too much for your teen to handle given his school work and sports practice.  You can:

  1. Do the chore for him.
  2. Call your husband and get your teen off the hook.
  3. Suggest that the teen call his dad and negotiate a reasonable completion time and explain what is already on his schedule.  Let your son know that if the conversation doesn’t go well, you are willing to get involved if necessary.

It doesn’t surprise me that most parents will typically solve the problem with either option 1 or 2.  It’s easier.  It’s quicker.  And the problem goes away.  Finished.

But what did our teen learn?  Mom will fix it.

Now we find ourselves in the middle of an unhealthy conflict triangle continuing to be put in a position of fixing their problems.

Matthew 18:15

“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.” 

Dare you to consider how you can unhook unhealthy conflict triangles and coach your teens through handling their own conflicts.  If you do, they’ll become more mature in learning to own what is theirs to own.

“Let go…and Let God”,

Want more ways to think about how you parent and build relationship with your tweens and teens?

Why not grab the book With All Due Respect: 40 Days to a More Fulfilling Relationship with Your Teens and Tweens  and go through it.  Maybe even ask your  friends to join you.  It will change the way you look at your role as a parent and how you help your teens mature.

And we promise to make it easy to lead.  You don’t need to be a perfect parent; you don’t need to have perfect kids; and you don’t need to have ever led a group before.  A Small Group Leader’s Guide is available with questions for group discussion.

If you want to interact with me, we’re offering the With All Due Respect eCourse for a limited time for free!  Be sure to grab your book now.

It will change your relationships with God, with your spouse, and with your kids.

Dare ya!

 

Time to Tame the Beast in Your Teen?

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Let’s face it, most of us have emotional outbursts from time to time.  Even if not openly for everyone to hear, at least internally where we tell ourselves that the person who has “hurt” us is in the wrong.  Hopefully we don’t go into this mode as often as our teens, but we do have these negative conversations.

 The question is how do we as adults deal with these experiences and move to equilibrium quickly and are we passing the right skills along to our tweens and teens to help them tame the emotional beast?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen grown adults who still haven’t learned the skills to calm their emotions.  Several years ago I witnessed an auto accident where a guy speeding in a sports car was involved.  Watching from  a distance I stared in disbelief as this man jumped out of his car raging and screaming as he ran toward the other car ranting to the other person involved.  He was totally oblivious to the state of the other person’s injuries.  The man was so emotionally charged in the moment he became an emotional beast ready to take out the individual whom he now saw as an opponent.

There is now brain research that  gives us a clue as to what is going on internally when we have those meltdowns–or sometimes shutdowns.   Most of the time those feelings will override our ability to think in a cohesive pattern causing us to go into a negative spiral.  When we go into the negative self-talk mode then the world around us becomes a dark place where we tend to emotionally vomit on someone who will listen–usually people with which we feel most comfortable around–family–or we go into our own personal inner sanctuary where we shield ourselves from the pain.

Helping our children harness those feelings by speaking truth into their lives can teach them skills that will provide a foundation for more emotional maturity.

So what are some of the things you can do as a parent when your kid comes home from school grunting as he walks past you in the kitchen, ignoring your greeting, disappearing into his room as he slams the door?

 Or what do you do when you and your child have had angry words and he shouts “I hate you!”?  

What if you see your kid punching his younger sibling or screaming words that you cannot believe are coming from his mouth?

Or you child seems to have retreated to a place where she seems to not be emotionally present?

  1. Take a deep breath and pray.  God sees your child’s pain.  Ask Him for wisdom in how to deal with this child in this moment.
  2. Give your teen space.  Every emotional outburst doesn’t need to be dealt with immediately.  I’ve coined a new catch phrase when I meet with parents.  If it isn’t a situation of life and death, choose to deal with it later–meaning after the emotion has subsided.  Even if the slammed door has come off it’s hinges or the younger sibling has a bloody nose, deal with the blood and not the emotionally charged teen.
  3. Re-engage when cooler heads prevail.  Re-engage in a safe place.  Maybe it is in the quiet of your teens room when everyone else is in bed or you take him to his favorite burger hangout or coffee shop, either way gently broach the subject without raising defensiveness in your teen.
  4. Ask your teen to do some soul searching.  What was he feeling in the moment?  What does she think triggered the outburst?  Was there ever a time he had that feeling before?  If so, what happened in the past and are those two events connected?  Research shows that anger in a given situation can sometimes be traced back to a previous event that seemed similar to the current event.  Because of that, your teen could have had a heightened emotional charge because the “feeling” was connected.  In other words, the emotional outburst was actually triggered because of what happened before–not necessarily the current situation.
  5. Help your teen become aware.  With your teens permission, come up with a way to cue your teen in on her emotional  escalation.  A simple hand gesture or funny phrase can easily raise awareness.
  6. Give you teen options for the future.  Share with your teen possible calming techniques for future situations.  Reading a book, asking someone to listen to their side without judgment (some kids process quicker if they can verbally dump their angst),  playing soft music that doesn’t further enhance their anger, or prayer and meditation are all ways to cope with negative feelings.  Your teen may find other ways that will bring calm to a given situation — a bubble bath, a chat with a friend, or doing something fun with a family member that takes their mind off the pain. Encourage your teen to tell you when they are struggling.  Even encouraging your teen to utter a simple statement such as “I’ve had a bad day and need to be alone or I need to process what happened” is a mature response that indicates they are becoming aware of their need to take control of their own emotional beasts.
  7. Share scriptures that will build confidence in your teens ability to take charge of feelings.  Most of us can allow negative thoughts to spiral out of control when our feelings run amok.  Scriptures that speak to their situation help our teens accept that the battle actually belongs to the Lord. 

2 Corinthians 10:5

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

John 8:32

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Colossians 1:22

But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation—

Dare you to be pro-active in taming the emotional beast in your teens rather than being a reactive agent adding fuel to that already roaring flames.  Teach them the skills to self-sooth their hurt and anger so they can reach full emotional maturity.

“Let go…and let God”,

 Even us moms need a safe place to deal with the feelings that emerge within us as we parent during the tween and teen years.  Our With All Due Respect eCourse is a great place to share and learn from other moms. And for a limited time, it’s free! And remember that you will need a copy of the book as we go through it together.  Moms tell us all the time that they’ve learned so much and how their parenting responses have changed significantly since working through this curriculum.  “I wish I’d read this book years ago” is a common response.  We encourage you to read it and let us know what you think.  It may revolutionize your parenting.

Can I Love My Kids Too Much?

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Several years ago, when I was at my wits end with one of my kids, someone recommended  a book  When I Lay My Isaac Down by Carol Kent.  I’ve often thought about that title and how it applies to our daily lives, especially as we parent.

With more than a decade since I read her book, the words seem to be following me recently. “Am I ready to lay my Isaac down?”

For those of you who might need a refresher of the story from scripture, Abraham had a promise from God that he would be the father of many nations.   It wasn’t until Abraham was 100 years old that Isaac was born.  As the Word tells us, at one point Abraham was told by God to sacrifice his son.  Yes, kill him!

It was as if God was saying, “Who do you love more–Me or your son Isaac?”

While that seems absolutely unfathomable for us as parents that God would ask any one of us to take our child’s life, an even more profound question would be, “Would you trust God with the outcome?”

If you remember the ending of the story, Abraham chose that God knew what was best.  He went to make Isaac a sacrifice, but right before laying him on the alter, God provided a ram to take Isaac’s place.  It was as if God was saying, “I just want to see if you trust me.  I just want to know that you will listen to my voice and heed my instruction.”

As parents, most of us love our children with our whole being.  We would do absolutely anything for them.

But think about Abraham for a moment.  He was 100 years old!  He had waited a century for his child to be born.  How easy it would have been to wrap all his attention, all his resources, and all his time into Isaac and put him up on a pedestal to be front and center in his life.  How easy to revolve his whole world around this child making all of Isaac’s wishes come true.

And then I have to pause.  

Do I love God more than I love my children?

Am I willing to give up my child’s desires to focus on what God wants for my child? For me?

Do I love my child so much that my world revolves around my child’s world?

Hmm…

Definitely something to think about in a culture that is so child centered.

It is easy as moms to love our children too much.  Yes, you heard me right–too much.

We can love our children so much that we:

  • Make sure that we solve their problems for them.
  • Intervene when they are forgetful and come to the rescue.
  • Do everything in our power to not let them fail.
  • Expend all our energy on our kids rather that doing other things that we’re called to do.
  • Are too busy to spend time with God because our new spiritual gift is driving our kids places.

Genesis 22:9-18

9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”

15 The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time 16 and said, “I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”

Isn’t that what we want as moms?  That God will bless our offspring because of our obedience to a mighty God who loves us so deeply that He wants relationship with us.

Don’t we want that for our kids?

Dare You to define your relationship with God in your choices as you parent.  Chose to lay your Isaac down and love Him and give your kids to Him in the process.  It doesn’t mean that we’re not there to walk beside them.  It means that we allow the struggles and we allow God to orchestrate their path, so that they learn that they have a need to depend on God instead of us in their time of need.

“Let go…and let God”,

090414_1835_Dare23TheR2.png

Have you gotten your copy of With All Due Respect yet?  It’s parenting self-discovery training in book form.  If you want someone to walk beside you in your parenting and go through the book with you, for a limited time we are inviting moms to join our With All Due Respect eCourse for free.

 

 

 

 

6 Steps to Help Validate Your Kids

/0 Comments/in , , , , , /by

The word validation has been cropping up everywhere I turn for the past two weeks.  It’s something that I’ve struggled with for years.  I always thought empathy and validation were essentially the same thing.  I tended to be pretty good on the empathy front so I assumed that my empathy was in fact validating my kids.  After all, I was listening, naming their feelings, trying to connect on an emotional level.  I was telling them I understood why they felt the way they did, and then I would share how I saw the situation.

Wrong.  (That is the sharing how I saw the situation part).

It took a good friend to call me out on it one day.  Actually we were in the middle of a disagreement.  It wasn’t heated and I was doing my best at showing her empathy at the time.  Then I used the word.  You probably use it often too.  It is that little word where we invalidate everything we just said.

I used the word “But”.

Validation is more than empathy.  Validation says that you have a right to think the way you do AND feel the way you feel.  It also says that I’m willing to acknowledge it.  I am willing to be present in your moment.

On a surface level, validation is acknowledgement.  When we are standing in the kitchen prepping a meal and our teen comes in from school, turning to acknowledge they are home, looking them in the eye, or asking a question is a form of validation.  It says that I think you are more important that whatever I am doing in the moment.  I choose to be present and engage says a lot to validate the importance of that person in your life.  Multi-tasking while our teen is sharing their story is not validation.  

Oh, my.  How many times a day do I actually stop what I am doing to validate the importance of my teen in my life?

Another level of validation is to summarize and reflect on what the other person has said and maybe include how you think the person is feeling.  Just by summarizing in a non-judgmental way, it tells your teen that you hear her AND you acknowledge her world.  If your teen comes in crying and tells you something her best friend did to her, “Meggie told everyone at school that I liked Tim.  I hate her!”, validating her might be something like “Oh, I’m so sorry she told everyone that.  You must feel so hurt that she would betray your confidence.”  Another step would be to hug and console her by letting her cry on your shoulder.

How many times do we invalidate our teen by saying things we think will fix the problem?  “Oh, honey, you don’t hate Meggie.  She’s your best friend.”  or “Meggie certainly didn’t mean to tell everyone.  You’re just hurt.  This will blow over.”  We may say the words in a soothing manner; however, have we thought about what we are really saying to our child?  Words such as these defend the other person and can make our teen feel like their thoughts and feelings aren’t justified.

To take it up a notch, we can even validate someone when we are in the middle of a disagreement. 

  • Listen carefully to their words and summarize them to make sure you heard correctly in a non-threatening, non-judgmental way.
  • Read their body language and use words to describe what they might be feeling.  Get consensus that the words you choose are accurate to them.
  • Understand their tone of voice and acknowledge the emotion the other person is conveying.
  • Agree with the other person as much as possible.  In other words, agree that they have a right to feel the way they feel and they have a right to think differently than you.
  • Apologize for your part in making the other person feel the way they feel even if you feel that you did nothing to make them feel that way. Sometimes we do and say things that are taken the wrong way, but we can still apologize for the way it came across.
  • Try to resolve the disagreement only after the other person feels totally heard and understood.  Make sure they know that you are on their team.

A mom called me last week to share a conversation she had had with her adult son.   He called her to say he wanted to come over because he had some things he wanted to get off his chest.  It seems he had been bottling up frustration for several years about some of the decisions his mom had made when he lived at home and the way he was parented.  This son came in with accusation after accusation.  When I asked my friend how she responded to him, she told me, “I just listened and then told him why I did the things I did.”

As she shared, I imagined a ping-pong game.  You did this, justification.  You did that, justification.  When this happened, justification.  You didn’t, justification.  Back and forth without any acknowledgement of his feelings.  No summarizing to get clarification of his thoughts or to make sure he felt heard.

“How did the conversation end?” I asked.

“After about an hour and a half, I told him I was sorry and he left,” she responded.  “He seemed talked out.”

“I asked if she thought her son felt closure and connection.”  

“I don’t know,” she replied.

The son most likely wanted reconciliation and an adult perspective of what happened while he was growing up.  Let’s face it.  As parents we will make mistakes and we want our kids to bring those things they are having difficulty understanding to our attention.  Thankfully, this mom was open to the conversation; she listened and she did apologize.

That’s a great first step.

But validation can be so much more if we choose to not justify our actions.  Justification says I’m right and you are wrong.  It can become threatening and feel judgmental to the other person.

Many of us do this without even realizing it!  It is second nature to justify our actions and responses especially if we grew up in a home that didn’t use validation as a means of encouragement and connection. 

This friend and I are still talking about her conversation with her son.  She didn’t even recognize that there was more she could have done.  I’m encouraging her to try practicing the skill of validation and reopen the conversation with her son in the future.  If she does, then full restorative healing can take place.

Acknowledgement of our child’s thoughts, frustrations, and emotions through validation can strengthen our relationship beyond our wildest dreams.  It communicates acceptance.  It communicates that their thoughts and emotions have value.  And even when we don’t necessarily agree with them, it shows that there are different ways to view any situation and their way is okay.  Validation leads to an opportunity to later explain your view of the situation without condemnation.  They’ll be more open to listening to you because they feel valued by you.

Romans 8:1

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,

Dare you to learn the skills of validation to enhance the relationship with your teens.  Start becoming more aware of your conversations with your teens by getting rid of the “but” and justifying your actions.  If you do, it will strengthen your relationship.

“Let go…and let God”,

We’re in the process of revamping our With All Due Respect eCourse.  For a limited time moms can sign up for our current course on Facebook.  And it’s free. Get your copy of the book to go through the dares with us here.