The Joyful Parent: How to Get There

All right, so bringing our firstborn home from the hospital. Oh yes. You know what, 30, how old is he? 35 years ago. So CJ, 35 years old now, married, but when he was an infant, brought him home, put him in the crib, in our rental house, remember that place?

Yes. And literally stood over the crib looking down and what was I thinking? I have no idea what to do with this child. That's exactly what I was thinking.

I was like, I have no clue. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

And I'm Dave Wilson. And you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. You were thinking it too, but I also was thinking I never had a dad. So I don't know how to be a dad. I've never had a baby. I remember picking up your brother's, Ted, when he was a baby and everybody in the house was throwing them up in the air and I'd never done that because I had never been around babies. So I take him and throw him up in the air and he hits the ceiling. Remember that?

Yes. Everybody looked at me like, are you clueless? So there I am. Now I'm a dad and I have no clue what to do. And I think most parents feel like that and they bring their baby home and they're thinking, now what? And then they enter the toddlers or the two and three-year-old that's hard.

And then they have teenagers and each stage you're trying to figure out, now what do I do? And so we're all looking for help. And I am excited to tell you, we have in the studio with us today, help for all parents. We have two dads, right? Who we've had here before.

Cause you know, when Ann and I call you guys, you're the brain guys. We've got Dr. Mark Warner with us today and Chris Corsi. You've been with us before. We're going to say welcome back to Family Life Today.

Appreciate it. It's good to be here. Two years ago, you were here. You wrote a book called The Four Habits of Joy-Filled Marriages. Did I say it right?

You did. And I got to tell you, you don't know this, but after that time with you guys, we stole that material. I preached it at my church. We actually did a message on it on the Family Life Love Like You Mean It crew. We did. They asked us to do a workshop.

Thank you. I don't think we gave many credit. We took all the credit. Yeah.

No, we actually did because it was enlightening to us and to anyone that reads and hears this, how the brain functions in terms of joy. So all I got to say is I got to give you guys proper credentials. Marcus is a conference speaker and author who has spent over 30 years helping people organize and navigate some of life's toughest challenges. You're the president of Deeper Walk International, which is what?

Deeper Walk is our name, right? We help people have a deeper walk with God, identify and overcome the obstacles that get in the way. So a lot of that's woundedness, but a lot of it's also skills and just what does it look like to have intimacy with God? I love that one of our friends, Pam Mutts, texted us and she said, Marcus is one of the most practical theologians you will ever meet. And that's a compliment.

It is. Pam's a wonderful person. We love her.

We do too. And Chris, you spent 20 years developing interactive exercises that build relational skills and improve connection. And by the way, every time I got to one of those exercises in the marriage book. Yeah.

Right. I'm like, I'm not doing this. I always like, I was the guy saying, no, I'm not going to do this stupid exercise. And then you do it and you're like, oh my goodness. It really, it works. Just looking at each other and smiling.

Like what is happening right now to my heart? I was loving it. Yeah. So let's talk about your new book, the four habits of raising joy filled kids, a simple model for developing your child's maturity at every stage. Now parents are leaning in right now. They're like, wait, we're going to talk about this and we're going to talk about brain science with it. Yeah. I mean, that's why, explain what I mean by you're the brain guys.

Yeah. Well, both of us were mentored by Dr. Jim Wilder, who is a brain science researcher. He ran a counseling center in Southern California for 30 years. And he was in on the original stuff coming out of the UCLA med center when they first were able to take three dimensional pictures of the brain. So he's been studying this stuff and he's really about a 10 years ahead in creating exercises and putting this into practice. How do you actually help people get better?

And so Chris, you know, was mentored by Jim and the two of them, it was working with Jim that Chris began developing exercises to help people learn. This is what it looks like to live with greater joy. Cause one of the things we find out is nobody ever says, you know, my problem is I just got too much joy.

I think I'm going to go, I'm going to go to therapy this week. Cause I just said, you know, nobody says that. Right. So what is it about joy that is so contagious, so important and finding out that it's literally the fuel that on which the brain works has been driving a lot of what we've been doing. I mean, every person I know, including all of us sitting here right now and every person listening is longing for joy. We're on a search for joy. And you've even talked about how the brain has a joy switch. That's one of your other books.

Yes. Well, you know, your brain's an amplifier. God made our brain to amplify something and usually it will amplify whatever's in the environment. So if it's a, you know, if it's trained on joy, you can even go into a bad day and yet you can still amplify joy even under the really tough conditions. But if your brain is not trained by joy, you know, you ever talk to someone and they're mad and next thing you know, you're mad or they're anxious. And next thing you know, you're anxious. That's called marriage.

Yes. So Marcus and I wanted to give a language that, you know, what joy is possible. God designed the human brain to run on glad to be together. Joy, where faces light up, you hear it in the voice, you see it in the mannerisms, you see it in the body that you walk into that room and somebody is glad it's you that just walked through that door. And you're saying this is really important because those words joy filled are both in your marriage book and in this parenting book. Joy filled. You're saying this is one of the most important things you can bring into a family or a home. Why is that?

Yeah. Most people think joy is the icing on the cake of life, but it's actually the fuel that drives it. And what happens is your life is either going to be run on joy or fear.

It's really, those are the two fuels. And so what we're saying is we want joy filled kids and the opposite would be fear filled kids, right? Nobody wants to raise a fear filled kid. So if we're going to help them overcome those fears, they have to learn how do I get back to joy from my various emotions? Because we all feel shame. We all feel anger. We all feel all of the emotions.

The question is, can I recover from those? Can I stay myself when I feel those? That's what maturity is all about. And joy and maturity are actually directly related is think about the most mature people in your life or the ones that you go to when you need to get some joy back, right?

It's like, I need to talk to somebody who's going to help me get my joy back. And you look for someone mature who isn't going to be overwhelmed by what you're saying, isn't going to get blown away by this. They've got enough capacity to handle what you're talking about. In the same way, we want our kids to have capacity.

We want them to have that emotional capacity to be able to do the hard things in life and still live with joy. I mean, I'm thinking of James one. Did you think that too? Like consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials? Yes.

So is James saying that too? No matter the trials that you're going through, the persecution which the church was going through, you can still be joy-filled regardless of your circumstances? You know, that's right.

And that's a very important distinction that Marcus and I make in the book. That happiness is just, you know what, I'm happy because a new movie is coming out and I've been wanting to see this movie. Joy is, I'm going to share this with you, even the trials, even the tribulations.

You know what, I'm not alone for someone is with me. And we have a God who is a good shepherd who's glad to be with his sheep. And so when we think about God being with us, I mean, part of what's beautiful about heaven is we know that joy is going to be there, that God is going to be glad to be with us. And so what Marcus and I are trying to do here is share this message that, you know what, joy is a reflection of heaven and the brain is designed for joy, that literally when you see someone light up to see you, it physically changes your brain. Your brain is changed every time you see someone light up to see you. Like that's powerful. Just that, like right there.

Your brain is changed when someone lights up when they see you. Yeah, absolutely. Literally.

Yeah. And I think as a parent, when you were talking about fear-based, joy-based with our kids, my first thought was, well, what about us as parents? Because I think we live often in fear as a parent. We're afraid of so many things. When they're little kids, you think, you know, they're afraid they're going to get hurt.

And then they become teenagers. You're like, oh, I used to be afraid. Now I'm really afraid because now they're making the decisions that are life altering. So how does a parent, cause I'm guessing you're going to say a parent sort of has to carry joy if he wants to pass it on to his kids. So how do we get from fear to joy?

Yeah, that's kind of shocking, isn't it? Most of the problems that we run into as a parents come from our own fears. So our opening chapter is why is parenting so hard? And the fundamental answer is we're afraid. And that is one of the reasons we're afraid is we can be afraid because we know we don't have skills. We know we grew up in a home that lacked skill. So you're like, this is Dave and I, when we bring our son, terrible backgrounds, we're going to mess this up. So we're fear-filled.

So you start off fear-based and that leads to one of two results. You either under parent or you over parent. So if you under parent, I'm avoiding parenting because I'm afraid I'm going to mess this up. When I over parent, I'm trying to control everything because I'm afraid I'm going to mess this up.

You have just diagnosed the two of us. Who's the over under? I am definitely the over. And I'm the under.

Just want to make sure she knew. And I always thought I was right and she was wrong, but you're saying both are wrong. Or you're saying both are fear-based. Both are fear-based. It's a completely different system in the brain.

So when you run on fear, you're just trying to solve a problem. It's not relational. You don't need the relational parts of your brain to just solve a problem.

My son's about to cross, run into the street. I just have to stop that. Your brain doesn't need all the relational pieces.

It just, okay, there's a problem, fix it. And so joy is desire driven. That means, hey, I really want to be with you. I'm glad that you're here. I'm glad that it's you. And I'm glad we're in this together.

So I'm the under sort of guy, sort of, and again, you're making me sound like I have no rules and no boundaries. I always had that, but there was a tendency for me to say, let them go. What's the fear in that?

What am I afraid of? Well, some of that's good. Yeah. Right. Some of that is good.

All right. So what is happening here is that you, what we want is our kids to learn how to face their fears and not be afraid of them. But what makes that possible is that they know that we're going to be there with them.

They're not going to be alone in it. What really messes kids up to sort of says when they get in these overwhelming emotions and they're essentially said, well, go to your room until you figure it out. And like, I'm three years old, you know, and I'm feeling rage. And I just called you an idiot, right? Because I'm three and you're, you know, standing in front of me and I'm mad. You're like, we don't do that here.

You go to your room, young man. And we're, we're dealing with the problem, but we're not dealing with the person. Right? So what we're talking about here is getting away from that left brain parenting that treats our kids like problems to be solved and getting into the right brain parenting that treats them like people connects to them, attunes to them like people first, and then gets to the problem solving second. At the end of the day as parents, we have to learn how to manage what we feel.

Right. And I'm as good as my ability to manage what I feel. And so my children are watching me.

How does daddy handle this big feeling? Because ultimately our children will learn by our example, good, bad, or ugly, right? Your relational brain learns by watching other people. So that's why we will sometimes do things. We resent like, Oh, I sound like my dad, or I sound like my mom because your relational brain learns by watching other people. So with that example that Marcus gave the child has to learn, show me how to handle this big feeling because I'm going to act out right now.

And then you show me a better way. So when we, you know, punish them and we don't stay relationally connected to show them a better way, they're just going to learn, you know, whatever they have to work with. And often the things that we come up with on our own are not very good. We need other people who, who have traveled this road before, who have a very clear idea. This is who we are. And this is how we behave under these conditions.

I thought it was good too, that you start out and you've been talking about like characteristics of low joy parenting, you know, that I was reading some of those and identifying like, Oh, Oh yeah. Uh huh. And I have to admit this. I did everything wrong.

That's what I thought. I did it all wrong. And so talk about that. When we talk about low joy parenting, what are we seeing?

Yeah. Low joy parenting comes from the fact that I am fear-based in my parenting and it's usually because I didn't get what I needed. So we talk about six big negative emotions. And the idea is that on the right side of your brain, there are six core emotions that we feel instinctively as a reaction to things. It's not because we're thinking about something. We didn't, it's not like cognitive therapy where we thought our way into it.

We're just reacting to these things. And every child has to learn how to keep the higher levels of their brain on and functioning with all six of these emotions. And so to whichever one, you don't learn how to keep your higher level brain functions on, you have a hole in your maturity development. So what can happen is like, you might be really good with sadness and you might be really good with anger, but you know, you can't handle sadness and you can't handle anger. So what my hat is that represents a hole in your maturity development where I'm good with this emotion. I'm not good with that one. So a lot of us are good with parenting our kids when they're having shame or they're having sadness or they're having, you know, disgust or something like that, but we can't handle it when they're having something else because we never developed that capacity.

We're missing that. And so our low joy is coming from the fact that we don't know how to handle these emotions because nobody ever taught us how to. So let's say we're triggered when our kids do something. Like if our kids get super angry and then they lash out and say terrible things and now we're triggered and we start lashing out. Is that a low maturity? Should that be a little clue?

Like, Oh, yep. No, that's a clear sign of low joy, low maturity, low capacity, because essentially I've now gone down to their level and we're two kids every day. It's really helpful to know your children.

They're looking for an example of you show me how to navigate this, show me how to manage what I feel. And right now I'm really mad and I'm going to do what I know to do. And sometimes that's really ugly, right? It's very messy.

And, and with parents, when that joy tank is a little low, then what'll happen is I will just get angry and I will see them and I will raise it 10 more and I will get more intense and bigger consequences. Well, I got to ask this though. I mean, cause I'm sitting there going, so what do we do if I'm that dad? Yeah. And I, and I know what the spouse is thinking.

I'm married to that guy. I don't have the problem, but he has a problem. She has a problem. So it's like the dad or the mom isn't mature enough to even see what they're doing.

You know, a third party can see it. You can see it at the grocery store in aisle seven, like look at that parent, but we have a hard time seeing it when we're doing it. So how does a, it's like an immature parent is what you're saying, right?

A low joy parent. How do we grow up? Well, one of the things Marcus and I talk about in the book is, you know, in those moments we want to remember quieting is a good thing. Anytime I can pause and quiet that actually helps me to catch my breath. So with my children, if in those moments where there's a blow up and I find I'm really angry, the first thing I'll do is I got to pause.

I got to breathe. I got, I want to get relational again. And we also have exercises in the book where we have parents get together with other parents and tell your failure stories, but how you learn something valuable. And so you hear these redemptive stories from others.

Okay, well give me an example. When you lost it with your child and how did you recover? How did you handle that? And your brain also learns from stories.

Yeah. So if I don't have that joy or I don't have that particular skill, but I know some friends who are really good at that skill. I could say, Marcus, Hey, I've noticed you're really good at handling your anger with your children. Can you tell me some stories of times? Like how did you learn this and give me some examples of how you did this that basically updates your brain. So the next time you get angry, your brain says, Oh, wait a minute. I have something on file here.

I can pull from that file and use that. So a lot of the times as parents, we just need, you know, that's something I don't think parents do a lot of. We do marriage.

Well, I mean, in some ways, even in a church, we have married small groups. You don't have as many parenting small groups where you get parents in a room like you're saying and saying, Hey, let's talk. You got teenagers. I've got a four year old. What did you learn when you had a little guy and what, what I need to do and vice versa, you know, there should be a small group that comes out soon. You know about that. Maybe there is one called no perfect parents. Okay.

Anyway, that's the end of my little ad, but what were you going to say, Marcus, about that? Well, you know, I say the title of our book is the four habits, right? And the first of the two habits are directly related to this. And the first one's attuning. And what attuning is essentially is reading body language. So the first job of the parent is to read your kid's body language. And if you see that they are really angry from their body language, then you go to the next one, which is help them bounce back from their anger. So you do that by validating it and you validate it non-verbally. So you're like, well, what do I do?

So you first, you, you non-verbally validate the emotion. And so maybe you get an angry face look on your face too. Like, Oh, you're really angry. Aren't you? And then you use words like, yeah, clearly you're really angry about this. This is really making you mad. And then like, why don't we both take a deep breath right now? I'm going to comfort this.

I'm gonna say, don't worry. This isn't going to happen. This isn't going to happen. Let's look at it a new way. Let's come up with a new plan. And my goal is to get them back to feeling like themselves. And then we'll do a correcting what's going on.

So that's the C is correct with care, bounce back, bounce back, correct with care. So you take terrible twos. For example, the biggest mistake most people make in the terrible twos is they're completely behavior focused and they just want this to stop, right? I don't want this attitude.

I don't want this, you know, explosion. I don't, I just want it to stop. And so they skip a tuning and they skip helping the kid bounce back emotionally and they go straight to correcting the behavior. And what we're saying is that correcting the behavior is a left brain task that is treating the child like a problem. We need to make sure we treat them like a child first, help them recover emotionally, give them a model of how that I'm not overwhelmed by your anger. It's not in my world that you're mad at me. That's a sign of maturity, right?

If them getting angry at me changes who I am into a different person, that says more about my maturity level than them. And it's very important here because this is really helpful for parents. Look, the worst conditions for the brain to process pain is when I feel alone. The moment I feel alone, that puts me in the toughest conditions to manage what I'm feeling. So what Marcus is saying is very important because what we're saying to our children is, look, there might need to be some consequences here, but right now I see you. I hear you. We're in this together.

We're going to get through it. And that says, Hey, you're not alone. And that actually helps your child to have the best chances of recovering and correcting the behavior afterwards.

So this is big. When I was reading this, and as I was thinking about this attuning part, that's the part that I didn't do. And I skipped straight to correcting because I'm thinking this is my job as a parent. I'm going to teach you, train you and correct you.

But it was interesting. We've just had lunch together. And it's been great as we've been talking about this, like, Chris, you are the most attuning person and validating person I've ever met.

I'm sharing these stories at lunch. He's like, Oh, I felt like this guy hears me. He sees what I'm saying. Like you're saying the guy you're married to doesn't. No, what I'm realizing is I didn't do that to our kids.

Like just to validate, oh, you're really mad. And what you guys are saying is what Anne feels is what our child feels, right? Yeah.

When we as a parent attune. Yes. Yeah. It's like weeping with those who weep would be the biblical way of looking at this. Let's just weep.

I see you're sad. I'm going to share it. And the good thing is with a little bit of practice, this is a habit. I don't even realize I'm doing it. Like I didn't realize I was doing it. Do you see it, Marcus? Oh, yeah, I know.

Chris is definitely the most attuning person, male, especially. I don't even realize it just because it's just these habits I've learned. Now, when I started my journey, there was no way I would have minimized. I wouldn't have been able to enter in. I definitely wouldn't have been able to validate because I didn't grow up with these skills.

This is just because of some work in my own life to get here. So it's encouraging to hear that because it didn't come naturally. Well, we've actually spent most time on the first of the four habits, the attuning.

But let me end with this. What would you say to a person or mom or dad who's like, I'm just really bad at that. How do I get better at attuning? Yeah, that's a good point. You learn to pay attention to the body language, first of all, and remind yourself you have to make it a task that you're learning.

And it takes at least 30 days for your brain to develop a habit, right? So you've got to make it a task at first. Say, I got to pay attention to their body language. What emotion am I seeing here? Can I name that emotion accurately? Can I name how big that emotion is?

So a lot of times, Chris mentioned minimizing. Sometimes we minimize our kids' emotions because it doesn't feel like it should be that big to us. So we assume it can't be that big for them. And we're afraid they're going to become whiners and dramatic.

And so there we get again into the fear. Yes, that's right. Exactly. And so the thing to do there is to meet them in how big it is for them and then help them dial it back down from there. So instead of just saying, don't ever get that big with your emotions, just stay at this level, which is kind of the message we send. We need to meet them in how big this is for them and then help them dial it back.

Yeah. And that's why this is good for parents to do as a group, like you mentioned. To do these things as a group, we can see where I'm weak, you're strong.

Where you're weak, I might be strong. And so doing this with other parents really is valuable. And it's interesting as I'm smiling, because as I listen to you, I'm like, that takes so much maturity. You know, it's like, you're being so rational when I'm in that moment, I'm so irrational.

But you said it earlier. It's like, you know, it's a moment to pause and go, okay, take a deep breath. This isn't just for the kid. This is for mom and dad to go take a deep breath. What's the first habit?

Oh, a tune. Okay. I mean, it actually can be done, right? I mean, as I hear you say that, I'm like, this can be done.

This can change a home's culture and environment and atmosphere. If a parent can learn to, okay, I'm going to start with understanding their emotion and matching that, and then walking them with me out of it. That's a beautiful process. I was thinking too, Dave, as you said that, I think as we take a breath and we take a step back, just to say a quick prayer too, because God's in it. He helps us to kind of regulate and to take a breath and to get perspective. And the Holy Spirit, I mean, when you look at the fruit of the Spirit, even love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, he's always there to help if we ask him. I'm just thinking to myself, what parent hasn't longed for some help to adjust the emotional thermostat in your home?

I mean, there are days when the thermostat is way chilly and you'd like to warm things up a little bit and you just don't know if it's safe to do that. I think what we've heard today from Marcus Warner and Chris Corsi is a great first step for us as parents to know how we can begin to warm things up when our children have made it chilly in the house, when their emotions are causing things to be tense in our home. How can we move toward joy? Marcus Warner and Chris Corsi have written a book called The 4 Habits of Raising Joy-Filled Kids, and we want to make this book available to every Family Life Today listener. Those of you who are tuned in, we'd love to send you a copy of the book. We're just asking if you would help with the cost of producing and syndicating this program by making a donation. Every dollar you donate to Family Life Today helps us extend the reach of this ministry, helps us reach more people more often with practical biblical help and hope for their marriage and for their family.

What you've heard today has been made possible because of listeners like you who have given in the past. So if you're a regular Family Life Today listener and you've never made a donation to Family Life Today or if you're a Family Life Today listener who's donated in the past but maybe it's been a while, make a donation today and ask for your copy of the book The 4 Habits of Raising Joy-Filled Kids when you get in touch with us. You can donate online at familylifetoday.com or you can call 1-800-FL-TODAY. Again, the website familylifetoday.com or get your copy of the book The 4 Habits of Raising Joy-Filled Kids when you make a donation by calling 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Now tomorrow we're going to hear from Marcus Warner and Chris Corsi about how we can pursue a joy-filled home and raising joy-filled kids if we struggle to get to joy ourselves.

With everything that's going on in our lives, the stress and the pressure, if joy is hard for us, how can we raise joy-filled kids? We'll hear more about that tomorrow. Hope you can be with us for that. On behalf of our hosts Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.