How to Parent When You’re Losing It (…Or Your Kids Are)

Teenage years are very hard and so we encourage parents stay relational. The best thing you could do is self-care and stay relational.

That will go a long way. How do we stay anchored in the storms and how do we remember who we are so we can remind our teenagers who they are. 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. Okay let's talk teenage years.

Let's do. As a parent. Oh no. Do you remember those years?

Yes you do. That was like 15 years ago. They were some of my favorite years. Oh I love the teenage years. And yet they were some of my most dreaded mistakes. Yeah I mean our listeners have heard and if they read our book they know about you in the snowbank. Yeah.

You don't need to tell the whole story but it was it was a frustrating time. Okay so we are with a bunch of our friends and we're all this big potluck and somebody says hey somebody's gonna pray so the entire room is silent. There's probably 30 people. There's probably 20 kids.

All from our church. And suddenly you hear someone say this food looks like poop. That's our son. And I give him the eye like oh you are in so much trouble. So that goes on.

I'm totally humiliated. Later we're leaving and I say hey hon could you walk your brother put your brother on your back because he didn't bring his shoes for some reason and take him out to the car. And then again the room silent but our son says I have to do everything in this family. And so now I'm following him out. He's carrying this son and now we are out of all the ears. And so I say you are in so much trouble.

That was so disrespectful and that was embarrassing. We get to the car there's a snowbank and he's putting his little brother into the car and I see this snowbank and the son is off-balance and so I take my shoulder and I just nudge him and he falls into the snowbank. I get into the car and I lock all the car doors. And now the son is pounding on the door. My husband the pastor is coming into the car. He says what's happening right now? So he finally gets in the car because I unlock it and I start crying saying I am the worst mom ever and I will never talk about parenting ever again.

And here we are talking about parenting with two dads who wrote a book about it but also have studied brain science as it relates to marriage and life and faith and now parenting. So welcome back to Family Life Today. We got Marcus Warner and Chris Gorcey with us. Thank you for being here. That's our pleasure.

Yeah we've already talked about. We need you guys so much. Not just us. Every parent needs you. I mean this latest book the four habits of raising joy-filled kids. Remind us what the four habits are and then let's talk about how do you apply them to adult age teenage age kids.

Absolutely. So the four habits are A, B, C, D and you can think A, B with the right side of the brain, C, D with the left side of the brain dominantly. But it is a attune to their emotions. Read their body language. B is help them bounce back from their emotion.

C is correct with care and D is develop discipline relationally. See I did that perfectly with the snowball. Yeah you did. Well honestly I'm listening to the story going every parent right has a story like this because what it means is that my emotional capacity got overwhelmed and the switch in my brain that controls whether or not I stay myself and act like myself had gone off and you turned into a different person momentarily. I did turn into a different person.

So as soon as your switch came back online you were mortified right because you're like that's not like me to do that. And so now your true self is having an argument with the false self that was up there a minute ago going you know will the real me please stand up and it's confusing and it's shaming and we've all been there right. Which is interesting too because the enemy of our soul says that's your true self. That person you just became that's who you are and then God is saying no it's not that's not who I created you to be. Exactly too many of us identify ourselves by our malfunctions and not by who we are when we're living with joy.

The identity of the brain is the highest level of brain function it's on the right side of the brain and really what we're talking about is how do I parent with my relational circuitry on as opposed to parenting with my relational circuitry off because when my relational circuitry goes off I do turn into a different person and that's what our kids kind of sense in us like which dad am I talking to right now right which mom am I talking to and what they're saying is you change right you know if you're feeling this emotion you don't act like you do when you're feeling that emotion and I get scared of you when you're feeling this emotion but I love being around you when you're at this one right so we all have those holes and that's part of what we're trying to do and growing our own maturity is filling out those holes of the emotions that cause us to turn into somebody else. So Chris how do we get the switch on? Yeah you know there's a couple of things that we can do to get the switch back on Marcus and I have an acrostic called cake.

And so I love all your acrostics ABCD cake. We try to keep it easy here so the C is just for curiosity so we can notice am I relational right now am I curious about what you're thinking so curiosity is a very quick way to go you know what I'm not curious right now because I'm really mad at you that's a good sign I'm not relational and the A is just for appreciation can I feel appreciation so appreciation is just what we call package joy can you think of something from your day that was good and can you feel that and so when our relational circuit is off we can't feel appreciation we're like no I'm just really mad so if you can take a moment and just pause and catch your breath and think about something that was good one of God's gifts to you that can actually help to get this relational circuit back on. I mean are you saying that even as Ann is walking out to the car with our oldest in front of her she could have possibly even though she's frustrated from what happened inside the room just right away going okay what am I thinking what am I feeling am I curious about how CJ's doing a you know I could be thankful right now I got a son this is awesome. Yeah with a little bit of practice so if I would have been there the first thing I would probably had you do is just take some deep breaths and just you know breathe you're really upset right now just take some deep breaths.

Chris where were you? Just take some deep breaths. But we can do that with a spouse though too. Yes we can yes we can and just remembering you know it just takes a little bit of practice if you practice it on the good days it'll show up on the hard days.

If you don't practice it's definitely not going to show up on the hard days. And the K in K is just kindness do I feel like being kind? No I don't. So when that circuits off you don't want to be kind you want to you know yeah want to blast this child here. The E is eye contact do you have eye contact with your child or not you know kid you feel like looking your child in the eye right now and again when we're in non-relational mode what we call enemy mode right the people I love feel like enemies instead of my son that I love. We don't want to look at him or we want to give him the eye of death because we're really mad. And I think too what was going on with me I was embarrassed.

Yes very complex. Yeah I was embarrassed because what did this do it made me look bad as a parent and so really that's very self-centered you know instead of taking that breath being the parent having my switch on being able to look at CJ what should I have said then you know what's that conversation look like after I'm calm and he's calm. Well it could look a lot of different ways of course let me say one thing about cake here which is that it's both a way to assess where I'm if I am fit to be having this conversation.

Oh that's good. Yes right so the point here is that if I am walking out to a car and I am feeling about my son no curiosity no appreciation no no kindness and the only eye contact I want to make with him is to stare him down right then what it tells me is I have a problem okay and my problem is not my son my problem is that half of my brain has shut down. Just knowing that is helpful right and so I'm going my problem that I need to fix right now is I need to get the right side of my brain back online so that whatever I say to my child I act like myself when I do it. So say nothing. Yeah it's better at that point to say nothing yeah and work on finding some curiosity and finding some appreciation and thinking of a way to do this with kindness and then engaging.

Which we totally did later yeah because the switch was back on and I was back to myself. Exactly which is why you know your kids still probably look back on their childhood with joy overall is the general feeling right. We've all got these moments where well yeah that was not a joyful moment in my child you know but the goal here is that I knew and this is where kids know I know that my dad was happy to have me around right that's a joy bond that means that you're gonna have a joy filled kids when they know instinctively you know my dad loves having me around but then they also learn my dad doesn't like having me around if I have this emotion or this emotion you know and so what happens is they form a fear bond with you when they have certain emotions and a joy bond with you when they don't. Do kids of all age have that? Yes even teenagers so especially yeah yeah which is where we started this thing right is that is how does this apply to the teenagers and you know when I don't know what to do my default setting is validate hmm right I'm like I don't know what to do with you right now so I need to attune try to read your body language and see if I can't validate your emotion which means I don't have to agree that you should be feeling this way I just have to recognize my son or my daughter right now is feeling a level 10 sadness and I don't know why I don't think they should be feeling that sad but they are so what I don't want to do is minimize it and go well it's not that bad you shouldn't be you know exactly you know stop being sad start being thankful aren't you a good Christian right yeah that's not that's not gonna be helpful there what we need to do is meet them and their big sadness like you are really sad right now aren't you so this is something is really really bothering you and so with the tone of my voice with the expression on my face with my words I want to let them know that I see them if I am accurate then their reaction should be nodding right yeah that's right that's what's going on I can mess it up too I can say why are you so angry and they're not actually angry right yeah yeah that's not gonna work so validating has to be accurate and you are validating their right brain emotion what you're not validating is any narrative they are expressing or any beliefs that they are stating in other words you don't say I feel like I'm the biggest loser in the world well you don't validate that by saying well you know you are the biggest loser in the world right now you're reading what's the emotion behind that so you're feeling a tremendous amount of shame right now aren't you that's what this is and so you're walking them through that and you validate their emotion and then once you've done a good job of validating then you can move to comforting what most parents the mistake we make is we try to comfort kids of all ages without validating the emotion first and it sends an unmeant message we don't mean to send the message but that I don't care about you I just want you to get fixed for my sake for my sake it feels like selfish parenting to the kid and it's helpful to know for teenagers the teenage brain is going through a housecleaning so what that means is there's a whole rewiring going on around puberty and so whatever skills were there they will still be there after this housecleaning process but if they weren't there they're gonna be really harder to learn after the housecleaning so that's why parents want to pull out their hair sometimes with teenagers because there's hormones there's emotions everything is big everything is loud and it feels like everything's difficult well that's because the brain is very irritable during this housecleaning and so basically the brain is saying what do we use we'll keep whatever we don't use we're gonna start getting rid of so teenage years are very hard and so we encourage parents stay relational the best thing you could do is self-care and stay relational that will go a long way how do we stay anchored in the storms and how do we remember who we are so we can remind our teenagers who they are hmm I found to that the biggest challenges we face in the teen years are emotions that they didn't learn how to bounce back from as children so in other words when they get to be teenagers they're now feeling really big emotions and as kids we weren't able to remain relational with them and comfort them and they didn't get that really solid foundation and so now as teens they feel doubly alone with this emotion and when I feel alone with an emotion it's traumatizing to me so when I feel like I feel so much shame right now and I can't tell anybody you know I'm just gonna hide I'm not gonna let anybody know or I'm so mad at the world and I'm so angry you know but my parents don't care and so what happens is teenage years are get especially hard because they're having really big emotions and with no expectation that those emotions are going to get validated and that there's going to be any kind of connection to them other than a correction like stop having such big emotions you're ruining my day listeners right now with teenagers are saying yes yes yes and I think what's hard too is because as parents are trying to build relationship many times the teen will push them away and the parent will leave in our parenting book we said that in the teenage years it's all about relationship but a lot of parents are like so what's that look like because they're pushing me away they're actually flipping me sarcastic remarks and sort of acting like I'm an idiot and getting their car cuz they now can and driving away and yet I'm supposed to be pursuing a relationship but they don't want it but yeah do they so pursuing relationship out of fear makes you a doormat right what do you mean by that well it's like if I'm like please don't run away from me please we have to be in relationship please I couldn't handle it emotionally if you don't like me hmm that turns me into a doormat they perceive that they pick up on it they know they can walk all over us and get away with anything you know we haven't talked a whole lot about the C and the D right the care of the developing disciplines relationally but there is I have to be stubborn as a parent on things you know so I may lead with this and I am meeting them in their emotion but it doesn't mean I'm not going to correct especially with teens what I would tell my kids a lot is my goal for you is I want you to be successful all right what I mean by that is I want you to be a high achiever I want you to have lots of friends because friendships really big in the teen years right I want you to be have a lot of friends I want to be the sort of person that people like hanging out with I want you to to have a family of your own someday I'm casting this picture for them this vision of I want you to have a successful life the path you're on right now is not going to get you there it sounds like we've got to make a correction here so there have to be some consequences right now for what you've done and what you're doing the attitude you're displaying and that you've displayed we are not going to be tolerated in this house okay we are putting down some boundaries but I have done the validating and the other things first I've met them where they are in their emotions first but now I'm correcting them and saying but this is not going to keep happening this way yeah so if you only have attuning and building bounds and you never get to correcting you just spoil your kids is that true for the toddler too or the child up to four years old or even later we always tell parents you can't spoil babies or toddlers like they're in receiving mode and so ultimately it's about the parent fear well I'm afraid if I do this my child's going to get spoiled and in the book Marcus and I really you know try to bring this home in bold letters as you cannot spoil an infant they are receiving but you can be an example to help them better learn how to manage what they feel because they're going to take that training and they'll use that every day of their life especially when they get into the teenage years where their brain is going through the big housecleaning and so ultimately how do we help people manage what they feel and how do I as a parent not be fearful and I help parents what are your fears here with your teenager what are you afraid it's going to happen well I'm afraid my child's not gonna like me yeah you know I'm afraid they're going to be mad at me okay well those are valid fears now how do you stay your relational self how would you navigate this without that fear so it really helps to identify what are the fears that are driving this bus let's acknowledge them let's give them to Jesus let's give an example my son or daughter is depressed I feel like they're suicidal my fear is they're gonna take their life yeah that's a very big yeah it doesn't get much more extreme yeah right so there were a lot of steps to get there first but secondly once you are there what you want to let them know is I'm here for you all the way and whatever is going on no matter how dark this gets one of the mistakes especially Christians I think tend to make it when it comes to hopelessness is that we want to cut it off and inject hope yes instead of allowing people to fully express the level of hopelessness they're in tell you sort of illustrate like dr. Wilder was telling me like he often gets asked to come in and sit in on you know the hardest client and somebody oh and he's in as a guest and somebody's like this person is really depressed they could really use some hope please inject some hope into them and so the person says well you know sometimes at night I you know I would just wish I wasn't here and he looked at him said you know and I bet it gets even worse than that doesn't it the person looked around like yeah it does it gets darker than that and he they went on to express that sometimes I think about killing myself and doing this stuff I said you know what and sometimes it gets even darker than that doesn't it they're like yeah you know sometimes I've even thought about this but nobody has ever let them fully get into the dark to feel what they need to feel to feel what they need to feel and know that somebody is still happy to be with me in my darkness hmm this is kind of like Job's friends they did a really good job sitting with him for those days when they just sat there at the moment they started to try to explain it or justify it or fix him what miserable comforters you are job said like if only they could have stayed silent so in a sense sometimes you know people just need to feel seen heard and understood I need to be able to feel my hopelessness and if I am sitting with my friend who's hopeless if my brain knows how to get back to relational glad to be together joy I'm not afraid to go to that level of hopelessness because I've been there before and I know how to get back if I don't then I will try to stop it I'll minimize it I'll try to put the fire out and then the person is going to feel misunderstood because I'm trying to fix it or I'm trying to shortchange it so it's very good especially for parents to know like your children ultimately have to learn how to manage what they feel which means as parents we have to learn how to manage what we feel right and there's a time to getting professionals involved so we're not trying to say this is a replacement for that yeah but it's like if you're getting you know professional help in there your job as a parent what is it I'm supposed to be doing and part of this is to let them know I'm happy to be with you no matter how dark things get for you that you're not alone yeah a lot of us say that right I'll be here for you you know but they kind of already know where our limit is on how far down we'll go with them so that's why our own capacity has to grow in these areas and we have to push into it it's not easy what I'm saying too is that feeling that our kids or even our spouse gets that like they want to be with me yes they are excited that I'm here yeah no matter what age or even a spouse that is really key it's well have you ever seen your kid you know and in some kind of a meltdown or whatever and had the thought you know what I'm the perfect person to be here right now because I know exactly what to do I'm gonna go in here I'm gonna you know I'm gonna take care of and you're genuinely happy to be with them in the middle of their meltdown because you're not overwhelmed by what's going on you're thinking to yourself I love this kid I'm exactly who they need right now I'm gonna come in here and be with them as they get through this help them recover and you're thinking that because and you may not be telling yourself I'm the perfect person to be here but you kind of have that confidence like I know to do hmm I'm not I'm not overwhelmed by this let's dive in so a lot of us as parents don't have that right because we don't actually have a picture in our head of what I'm supposed to do right so we have to grow that over time if we if we can only start where we're at so if you're starting your parenting years without a lot of these skills you're like well I guess I know that it's part of my homework now is beginning to develop skills on how I recover from emotions so that I can pass those on to my kids and you know at the end of the day our children need to know they're not alone whatever we can do as parents to remind and show our children you're not alone that will go a long way because a lot of times as parents we feel like we have to have all the answers we have to fix this we have to put the fire out as we learn to manage what we feel we're showing our children and demonstrating this is the kind of people we are I love how Jesus wept when he came upon the grieving community for Lazarus like Jesus knew what he's gonna do but he wept he shared he didn't tell him hey there's no need to be sad you don't have I don't know he actually entered in and shared the the communal grief and that's just so helpful for parents to hold on to like look you don't have to have every right answer but just get good at just being with your children and letting them know they're loved I'm glad to be with you even in this mess I'm glad I can be with you and walk you through that that is just it's life-changing that is such a great word for parents of any aged child and you said your child is longing to look at your face and see that you are happy that they're your child I think that doesn't change when they're a teenager or adults that's right it just doesn't change they want to know are you still pleased that I'm your child and when they feel and sense that from us even when we're disciplining them they feel secure that's it they'll use that for the rest of their lives that no matter what happens here I am loved I belong I'm going to be alright no matter what mmm and that's what we mean by joy filled yeah and the goal here is to start a joy revolution right we live in a very low joy culture we live in a very low joy Church for the most part and a lot of us were raised in low joy families and what we're really after here is if we're gonna start a joy revolution in the culture it's got to start with the families and we're better than the Christian families huh right so we know we know the answer right we know the end of the story yeah that's right I find this so often Christian families have been so focused on behavior yes that they've been focusing on making sure their kids behave like Christians and I look back God created us to be part of his family and what does he want for his family he wants us all to love each other to love him and for there to be joy to be fulfilled or our joy to be complete so it's all going back to that how do we kind of fulfill God's original intention for creating humans in the first place you want a joy filled family and when he sees us there's a smile yes and our sons and daughters should feel the same thing from us yeah thank you guys it's been awesome so good thank you it's been so good what do you think your kids would say if at dinner tonight you ask the question do you think we're a joy-filled family I mean for the most part not all the time nobody is all the time but do you think that for the most part our family is joy-filled and if they said yes it would be a good follow-up to say what is it that produces joy in our family what makes us joy-filled and if they said no then ask the question what do you think it would take for us to be a joy-filled family and get ready for those answers maybe get a copy of the book we've been talking about this week met Marcus Warner and Chris Corsi have written called the four habits of joy-filled kids it's a book we've got in our family life today Resource Center in fact we've been sending this book out all week to those of you who can help support the ministry of family life today I don't know how many of you realize this but this program every day this podcast if you're listening to it as a podcast is all possible because listeners like you make it possible family life today would not exist if it weren't for friends of the ministry donors who step forward and say this is important to me and my family we think it's important for our culture and our community and we want to help expand the outreach of family life today so thanks to those of you who have given in the past if you can give today to support our mission to effectively develop godly marriages and families who change the world one home at a time go to our website family life today calm to make a donation or call 1-800 FL today and make a donation online again the website is family life today calm or call 1-800 3 5 8 6 3 2 9 1 800 F as in family L as in life and then the word today and ask for your copy of the book the four habits of joy-filled kids when you make your donation now Dave and Ann Wilson had the opportunity to continue their conversation with Marcus Warner and Chris Corsi talking about whether it's really impossible to spoil a toddler it's one of the things that came up this week they also talked about the difference between empathy and sympathy just lots more about how we create joy-filled kids that conversation is available on the family life today app if you've not already downloaded the family life app go to the App Store for your device and just type in family life as one word download the app and you'll have access to this additional bonus content with Chris Corsi and Marcus Warner you've already got the app it should be right there available to you and you can listen to more on this subject with Dave and Ann Wilson now tomorrow we want to talk about the importance the value of boundaries a lot of times we think boundaries constrain us or constrict us well Ashley Hales joins us tomorrow to talk about how appropriate boundaries can actually open things up for you in life we're gonna talk about what it looks like to lead a spacious life tomorrow I hope you can join 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 you family life today is a production of family life a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most