Category: Parenting

In our last video we talked about what it takes to set our kids up to thrive.

But…how?

It’s actually quite simple and only requires three things (that you already have, by the way):

1. You. (check!)
2. Your home. (check!)
3. Your calendar. (and that’s the real topic of this video)

The bottom line:  In order for our kids to feel that they are worth showing up for, we’ll have to show up for them.  And when we show up, it’s important that we LISTEN to what they have to say. 

The best way to do that: an intentionally planned and upheld family conversation in your home each and every week.  As a church that wants to see your family thrive, our challenge for every family is to adopt the following plan:  

1. Choose a time your family will gather at a table in your home each week just for the sake of a conversation. And then:
   1. Stick to the time.
   2. Prioritize the time.
   3. Incentivize the time (make it fun!)
2. Come prepared with a way to start the conversation…but pro-tip, don’t try to control the conversation. Let it flow.  Your goal: just to create a place where your kids can feel safe to talk and to ask tough questions. This isn’t a time to manage behaviors from early in the day.
3. Power through the awkward.  Not all of the conversations will go well. Sometimes people will get sent to their rooms. Sometimes spaghetti-o’s will be thrown. Sometimes the worst part will be all the silence. Sometimes questions will be asked that you can’t answer.  All of it is worth it. 

If you instantly have all of the reasons why this won’t work, then you’re not alone. Most of us think, “But my child is 3. We can’t have a conversation.” Sure…but you are communicating something when you keep sitting down together. And you keep prioritizing your child. 

Or we think, “Our schedule is just too busy with all of our extracurricular activities.”  You’re probably right.  Is there something that will have to go to make this work? Or is there an unconventional time that your family will have to gather each week?  Whatever you have to do, do it. 

Because in the end, not asking the questions or choosing to prioritize the time doesn’t change the fact that your kids need you and really do want to talk to you.  And if they aren’t asking you tough questions or grappling with their emotions in front of you, it doesn’t mean it’s not happening. It just means you aren’t a part of the conversation. Whose advice are they seeking instead?  Or, worse, are their own thoughts the loudest thing they hear as they gradually come to believe things you’d never want them to think? 

Of all the questions you could ask yourself that would serve as a barrier to incorporating a family conversation into your weekly rhythm, I’d love to counter them with a different question for you to ponder: 

What happens if you don’t do this?  What happens if your child doesn’t have a safe, consistent place and the most important voice in their life providing a time each week that they can count on to hear and be heard? 

Grab your calendar and your family. Find a table and look across it at the people God gave you.  What do they need you to see?  What do you need them to see?  And how can this lead to you both seeing something only God can reveal in these moments of true connection?   Of all the battles you have to choose as a parent, this is the one worth fighting for. 

In a lot of ways, being a parent or caregiver seems to come with a passing or failing grade each day.  We are largely driven by fear that our kids won’t know what they need to know to survive without us or that they’ll leave us impacted more by what we did wrong than what we did right.  Added to that are the staggering stories of kids who are anxious, depressed, or even choosing to take their own lives.  All of it can easily contribute to us parenting in a way that reduces our interactions with our kids to managers of behaviors and schedules and meals.  We begrudge the battles we face with our preschoolers and tiptoe around our teenagers, trying not to set them off. 

If you are identifying with this, it’s largely because all of our managing and fears is rooted in a good place of wanting the best for our kids.  We think if we were a little wiser, or more confident, or could just finish a book on parenting or find a parenting mentor, we could set our kids up for success in spite of our weaknesses. 

The bad news is that there really are no guarantees that our kids will be resilient, loving, followers of Jesus…but my guess is you knew I was going to say that. 

The good news is that there is a clear and consistent way to stack the odds in your child’s favor, and YOU are the one who has the greatest amount of control over it. Yep. YOU. Broken, messy, non-parenting-expert you. 

And it starts by understanding that all of the needs your child has, from their first day to their last, center around one common need: the need to be seen. A lack of adults caring and connecting with our kids can be detrimental to our kids’ emotional health and well-being, and can certainly limit their ability to believe that they are worth loving by us and by God.  This separation from the truth of their self-worth limits their ability to thrive, overall, and impacts any ability for them to feel that they can make a significant impact on the world around them. 

This sounds like we just added more fuel to the fear fire, but in reality, this is a golden opportunity for us as parents.  Why?  Because out of anyone our kids know, we have the greatest access to them.  The possibility for us to CONNECT with them, encourage them, coach them, and connect with them is ours to own first and is the key to preventing despair and to providing hope.

Thank you for joining us for this series. Half of the parents I know would not undergo something like this. You should be proud of yourself. It also tells us that you are not doing as bad as you think you are.

Your kids need other influences. This will require humility and vulnerability on your part. Vulnerability will allow you to move surface-level connections to deeper connections. And this is so important at earlier ages that we think because we don’t live in the 90s or 00’s any more. The ‘school bus’ is the new ‘basement’. Even if our kids don’t have phones yet or are very limited, their friends have unlimited access to everything.

That’s why we want to widen the Circle of influence. You are not the only influence your kids need. And you may not feel like the biggest influence in their lives. Is it:

o   Their friends?

o   Youtubers?

o   Tik-Tok theology / philosophy?

o   Teachers? 

From what you do know about the influences in their life, where will they be in 4 years? Is that okay with you?

Now, what if we moved from being reactive to what is happening in their lives to being proactive? What if we sought out people to place around them in an attempt to set them up for success? 

Here are just some people you can surround them with:

o   Coaches

o   Family friends

o   Small Group Leaders

o   Maybe for you, it’s your local church staff 

When I think back to my late elementary years through my high school years, I had consistent people around me who were not just friends my own age. There were 

o   Family friends

o   Adults at church who knew my name + my family

All of this means we can’t coast along. We need to be INTENTIONAL and PROACTIVE about who we surround our kids with. Passivity in our parenting will not do our kids any good. It could actually do them harm. 

So here’s a challenge as we end today. Invite the outside influences to attend your kids’ events together.

Welcome back to Keeping Your Influence through the Teenage Years. We’ve moved past the phases and now we’re going to talk about how to maximize your influence.

No one has more potential to influence your child than you. But notice that word POTENTIAL! You have to work at it! One of the best stories I have heard about someone was about Koby Bryant. When he was on the USA Basketball Redeem Team at the Olympics, the entire team would be out at night partying. But he would stay in, wake up early, and practice. He had a natural gift, but he still worked hard and developed that gift.

Ayren Nelson is on staff here at Hope, and he is an amazing speaker—but you know what he does? Work at it.

So my question for you is, are you working to develop yourself and your own influence? Where are you getting mentally, emotionally, physically, or even spiritually fed? There are a lot of books about influence and leadership out there that all say different things, but one thing they seem to all agree on, is that you can’t pour into others from an empty cup. So where are you going to fill your cup?

Now that we’ve addressed the personal-side of influence, let’s talk about your kids and how you can maximize your influence in their lives.

Number one is key, and it seems simple: Spend time together. This is a non-negotiable. I say it’s simple because I think we would all say it’s important. But does that belief actually align with how we live our lives? Where does your time go? Do you take the time to slow down, prioritize those relationships over accomplishments, to create family rythms and routines?

One of the things I am most looking forward to as my kids grow up is creating Moments in their lives. We really don’t have many rites of passage into adulthood in our culture, and it’s led to this suspended adolescence. But one thing I plan to do is to make meaningful moments with my kids—that we can do together.

When kids turn 11, we take a trip to Houston to see where I grew up and places that are significant to me. At the receiving of the license, fly to NYC for 2 nights, then drive back together. During the first year of college, go on a weekend backpacking trip in Western North Carolina.

Second, a great way to maximize your own influence would be to commit to learning. There are a ton of resources about the teenage brain and development. Download some of the apps they use and play around with them for a few days, exploring what you can do on them. Search the internet for great parenting hacks. There are a ton of ways that we as parents can continue to learn and grow, and my encouragement to you is to simply start somewhere. 

The last way you can maximize your own influence as a family is to be united and move together in the same direction. What I mean by this is establish those qualities you want your kids to possess as they are graduating high school. What kind of man or woman, in your dream-world-scenario, are they?

Once you’ve done that, repeat them. Encourage them when you see these qualities. Use our post-game-reviews as a way to talk about how they may have gone away from these qualities. Some practical questions to ask ourselves with our kids is:

• You know what kind of person you want them to become. How does that look as they enter into the social media world?

• How does that look as they’re in 8^th grade and distancing themselves from you?

• How does that play out as they’re in 6^th grade and experiencing some stuff that seems WAYYYYY out of their league?

• How does that play into their freedom and independence with driving?

These are all things to consider as you aim to move forward in one direction as a family. 

And these years focus all around the idea of purpose. Here, you are an affirmer of who they are and a refiner, guiding them towards who they need to be. 

Affirm who they are, your values as a family. If you don’t lead your family with vision and a 30,000-ft view of what you all stand for, then that is going to die with you.

We also can refine their skills and interpersonal skills, and help our kids join those together with their passions.

One of the big questions I have gotten consistently over the years from high school students is “How do I know what I am supposed to do with my life?” It’s a great, big, intimidating existential question… but it doesn’t need to necessarily stress us out.

As parents, we can help them realize the gifting and talents they have. We can help them verbalize the passions they have. And we can help acknowledge how they’re wired (their personality)… and then we can guide them to combine all three of those.

Where their personality, their talents, and their passions collide is where they should be looking to make an impact.

Some of the questions they’re asking in this phase are:  

• Where do I belong? 
• Why can’t I? 
• How can I matter? 
• What will I do? 

And here is the kicker—THEY NEED TO SERVE. In a phase all about purpose and figuring out what they want to do, they need to go out and do it! You don’t develop your skills on the football field watching a game on the couch. You don’t learn to manage people really well by JUST diving into a book. You get some experience early on.

Data collected from more than 5 million children and teens from all backgrounds and situations consistently revealed that “Family Support” (you as parents in your changing roles) and “Service to Others” [one hour a week or more] directly correlate to success in life.

Fun fact, remember how earlier I said your brain goes through the scientific method twice? Well the second time it happens is during puberty in the middle school years. Again, they have observed the world for years and have formed hypotheses. Now they’re testing those hypotheses and will be forming new conclusions about the world.

And they’re doing all of this while their brain is changing, their bodies are changing, their friend groups are changing, and so much more. Because they and the world around them are changing, your role also needs to change.

In this phase, you are an Unconditional Pursuer and Coach. Do they know that you are devoted to them no matter what? The two questions they need answered by you, whether they verbalize it or not are:

• Who likes me?
• Who am I?

This is an opportunity to call out their attributes that makes them… them. Call out what they are good at and gifted in, often. Let them know you are on their team and that you love them—even if they groan while you do it.

They NEED YOU! But they don’t need the same you they did when they were 7.

In this phase, there is MEDIUM freedom given. As they get older, we want to continue to trust them with a little bit more, and continue the “post game review”. But we are also going to add in an element: The pre-game huddle.

The pre-game huddle prepares them for what they will be walking into.

In both, the huddle and the review, we can reinforce the benefit of learning, of focusing on Integrity and Decision-making, and remind them that in every situation, there is Hope.

Things start to really change in our role as parents in the elementary years. You are still the Air-Traffic Controller, but you are letting the plane call some shots. In this phase, we start thinking ahead, to teach them and set them up for success in 4th and 5th grades for 6th and 7th grades. 

One tool to do this well is what we call the post-game reviews. Every single day, our kids will fail at something, or let us down, or make wrong choices, or find themselves in an unwanted situation. Our job isn’t necessarily to protect them from these, but to guide them through. The post-game review is taken from the sport-world where teams meet after the games, maybe have a film-session on Monday rewatching the good and bad things that happened on the field.

The post-game review in our kids’ lives is the same thing. It’s taking time to celebrate the good that happened, and use the bad as teachable moments. We can start teaching them to focus on character and self-improvement, personal responsibility, and even how to handle difficult conversations.

If a teacher at school calls us out for not making wise choices, or a friend gives their honest opinion, we don’t want to push them away and reject what they have to say. A teacher calling our kids out for something may not be a bad thing, but typically as people, our go-to reactions are defensiveness and deflection. Maturity is realizing there is something to what he or she said. And as parents, we can use post-game reviews to guide them towards maturity.

So, in this phase, there is GROWING freedom. Maybe riding their bike around the neighborhood, or going to friends’ houses and learning how to handle interpersonal relationships. Maybe it looks like more access to screen-time.

Regardless of what it is, the Post-Game reviews are KEY! 

What they need in this phase is a safe place for them to explore feelings, outbursts, and the feeling of failure from failing to meet expectations 

My 4-year-old, Elliott, in shame, puts his hands on his face and hides himself when he realizes he doesn’t meet our expectations. Our 9-month-old, Luke, doesn’t. Elliott is realizing that there is this, unwanted feeling of shame from failing to meet the standards he has observed all these years; and the baby hasn’t experienced this yet.

In this phase of life—the preschool years, you give LOW freedom, again too much would be completely irresponsible. When he was 3, we caught our middle-child dragging his balance-bike up the stairs so that he could ride it down. That is a bit too much freedom.

Things start to really change in our role as parents in the elementary years. You are still the air-traffic controller, but you are letting the plane call some shots. In this phase, we start thinking ahead, to teach them and set them up for success in 4th and 5th grades for 6th and 7th grades. 

One tool to do this well is what we call the post-game reviews. Every single day, our kids will fail at something, or let us down, or make wrong choices, or find themselves in an unwanted situation. Our job isn’t necessarily to protect them from these, but to guide them through. The post-game review is taken from the sport-world where teams meet after the games, maybe have a film-session on Monday rewatching the good and bad things that happened on the field.

The post-game review in our kids’ lives is the same thing. It’s taking time to celebrate the good that happened, and use the bad as teachable moments. We can start teaching them to focus on character and self-improvement, personal responsibility, and even how to handle difficult conversations.

If a teacher at school calls us out for not making wise choices, or a friend gives their honest opinion, we don’t want to push them away and reject what they have to say. A teacher calling our kids out for something may not be a bad thing, but typically as people, our go-to reactions are defensiveness and deflection. Maturity is realizing there is something to what he or she said. And as parents, we can use post-game reviews to guide them towards maturity.

So, in this phase, there is GROWING freedom. Maybe riding their bike around the neighborhood, or going to friends’ houses and learning how to handle interpersonal relationships. Maybe it looks like more access to screen-time.

Regardless of what it is, the post-game reviews are KEY! 

In this phase, You are a protector and caretaker. We can think of ourselves in this phase as an air traffic controller—We are controlling the flights, the flight paths, the landing, taking off, everything. In this stage, you give no freedom, because that would be irresponsible, because babies are 100% dependent on us as caretakers. In this phase, babies need your presence and continual reassurance that you are there.

And then we get closer to the toddler years. *Fun Fact, toddlers go through the scientific method. Maybe you heard that and experienced a form of PTSD, but do you remember learning the scientific method back in middle school? It explained that first we observe the world, then we form hypotheses, then we test these hypotheses, then we collect data, then we analyze the data, and finally we form conclusions. Well it’s what our brains do at two different times.. the first of which is in the toddler years.

Maybe you have experienced the “terrible twos”… or as we have in our home, the “throat-punch-threes”. These are years where our toddlers are testing every boundary in existence. But they’re doing this, to some degree, against their will—It’s how their brain is wired. They have formed hypotheses from the observations they’ve made in those first few years of life. If I whine, then _____ happens. If I cry at night, then ____ happens. If I’m in a store and reach for something, then _______ happens.

But now they’re testing these hypotheses, and it looks a lot like teenage rebellion. Maybe you’ve heard the term “threenager”. It’’s a pretty common phenomenon. May be why you have a whiny, defiant, difficult three-year-old. They need reassurance, boundaries need to be held and reinforced, and there needs to be consistent parental figures who will lovingly and gently remind them that they will be there no matter what, the rules are there for a reason, and that they can not push you away.