Joey was so typical to come in at 11 o'clock with his curfew, and then he would want to come and just talk. And I'm exhausted, I'm in bed by 10 o'clock kind of mom, but I knew that it was so important that he knows that I want to listen. That's Melissa Hannigan who wants to help moms and dads pursue inconvenient parenting. And we'll learn more about what that is and why you should pursue it today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.
Thanks for joining us, I'm John Fuller. John, several years ago, before we had boys, Jean and I, before we had Trent and Troy back in the 90s, I remember a donor couple said to me, aim to love every stage of parenting. And that's what they experienced. I thought that's really a great idea, you know, because some people say, well, I really love the elementary school years and didn't like the high school years so much. But if you aim to enjoy those years, I think you have a better outcome relationally with your kids.
And it's a bit more positive. And I just really appreciated that because I truly did love every stage of parenting. Now they're in their 20s, feels a little better, a little more distance, they make their own decisions. But I'm proud of them. They've got great hearts, they're good young men, and I'm looking forward to continuing to watch them grow. Every parent knows there are challenging times and seasons in raising children.
Everybody said, yes. But, you know, parenting can be inconvenient. That's probably a good way to look at it.
I don't know. And Melissa, we're gonna get to you in a moment. But I don't know that it draws people in to say inconvenient parenting, but it is true. And what I like about this book, Inconvenient Parenting, is it really smacks a parent right between the eyes about aiming for that so that you can have a more joyous experience.
Yeah, maybe smacks gently and with some great stories. Melissa Hannigan is a homeschooling mom and an author. And as you said, Jim, the book that we'll be covering today is called Inconvenient Parenting, Activate Your Child's God Given Traits.
And we've got details about this book and our guest in the show notes. Melissa, welcome to Focus on the Family. Great to have you for the first time. Thank you so much.
It's such an honor to be here with you guys. Now I like this. Do you just put water on kids, activate your child's God given traits, just add water. I wish it was that easy, right?
Isn't that the truth? I love that. Four drops for this and three drops for that. So give me your overall target here. What were you trying to achieve with the book? So my heart was to get parents to think differently about their kids, about their purpose as parents. You know, I talk about these 12 traits and a lot of them can be challenges that our kids have. And if we're seeing them as inconveniences, if we're seeing them as bad behavior, then we're going to parent in that way.
But if we see them, we acknowledge that they're inconvenient, but we see them differently. We see them as God given gifts. We see them as ways that our kids are experiencing the life around them. It changes our mindset and it helps us to parent differently. And so, you know, I talk about playfulness and how sometimes our kids can get a little overly playful.
I know, right? But if we see that as God created us with an intention to be playful as a way that we learn and grow, we change the way that we think about it. And we're more encouraged to see our kids playful. Let me ask you, just generally the 12, why don't we just say them? We're not going to have time to go through them all, but why don't you just list them for us and see if the parents are connecting with that. Okay. So it's wisdom, wonder, vitality, sensitivity, flexibility, curiosity, creativity, imagination, flexibility.
No, I said that already. Inventiveness, playfulness, humor, and joy. And I came across these 12 qualities from an education researcher, Dr. Thomas Armstrong. He called these genius qualities and he was really looking at ways to make classrooms the best environment for success for students.
Use these outcomes, these attributes. Well, his idea was if we bring these attributes into the classroom, our kids have the best potential to be geniuses. Now, not off the charts IQ genius, but reaching their fullest potential.
That was his objective. And I came across it in 2020, homeschool mom stuck in the house like, yes, I need some fresh ideas and perspectives of ways that I can infuse these qualities into our classroom. What I didn't expect was to realize that these were God given qualities that God placed in me and in my children. And as I embraced them and celebrated them and activated them for my kids, I saw our family blossom and thrive. That's good. Let's speak to the early days when you were applying this, because I think one of the lessons you learned, you had a nice house and you and your husband doing well, had a good income and you decided, okay, let's downsize. Now, maybe that was forced.
I don't know. You can describe that, but what were the cost benefits of that experience and how it impacted your kids? Right. So yes, we were to the world standard successful in Houston. We had everybody is in Houston. And that's the culture that we were in where it was like, keep up with the Joneses. Everybody's got the nice new car.
Everybody's got the bigger house. And that was the push for our family to try to keep up. But what we lost in that was time together and connection. My kids were all spread out in different areas. My husband was traveling all the time. And so we were lacking in relationship. We were lacking in time within the family. And I share a story in the book about kind of this aha moment that occurred to me when I was listening to my son who was, I think in second grade at the time.
So he was little and he was talking with his friends and they called themselves jerks, junior educated, rich kids. And I thought, oh, absolutely not. I do not want my child to grow up to be an entitled jerk. That was the opposite of what we really wanted for our kids. But the trajectory that we were on was definitely pushing us down that way.
And so I began to pray whatever it takes, Lord, re gain our hearts for you and reconnect us as a family for relationships. That one right there. I mean, I want to be careful because I do know a lot of great people in Houston that are quite successful. And it's true in LA and Denver and, you know, the back woods of someplace.
That's not really the point. It's the idea of how you integrate your life, how you create an atmosphere where you are having dinner together at night. There's so many good transfers of values and what you teach your kids through the dinner table. I'm a big believer in that. And Jean did a fantastic job, you know, making sure we always had dinner about 6, 6.30 and we were together and no phones at the table. And so you can be successful and you just have to have some disciplines to get that across. And that's hopefully what you're aiming for.
For sure, yes. We were in a wonderful church in Houston. We loved our community that we had. We had great people in our life that were successful and they were pursuing the Lord with all of their heart and their family was thriving. But that was not our experience. And there were other things going on outside of our family that was drawing us away. Not just the money, but lots of things that I just knew in my heart that this was not where God wanted us to be. And so he did. He answered my prayer, not the way that I expected.
Isn't that always the case with the Lord? But we did. We moved from Houston to Florida and downsized significantly. And we still, I mean, we still had paid our bills. We still were, to the huge world standard, we were living wonderfully still. We had food, we had clothes, we had our needs met. But more importantly, we had time.
And when God took us out of that environment, it really shaked up our priorities and our focus. So let's go into a couple more of these traits. One is wisdom. I love, you link that to Proverbs 11 two. One of the things I do still with my 20 something boys is I text them scripture that catches my attention. They always heart it back.
So it's good that they're reading it. Thank you, Trent and Troy. But this one was when pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom. So let's speak to wisdom. I thought it was fascinating that from a non-Christian perspective, Dr. Armstrong included wisdom as one of those qualities, right?
From a Christian perspective, we know that the beginning of all things is wisdom. And so my heart as a parent is to impart in my kids wisdom above everything else. I want them to know where to go for truth. I want them to be able to discern truth from almost truth, right? Because culture is throwing some things at us that might sound kind of right.
If we don't know God's word backwards and forwards, we're not going to be able to spot those lies, right? And so how do we do that as parents? Well, we have to model that to our kids. And it starts with humility in ourselves saying, I don't always have all the answers.
I know the source that I need to be going to. And so allowing my kids to see me relying on God's word and elevating God's word as the ultimate source of truth, where we go for everything. And then helping my kids in practical day to day questions that are going to come up. We talk about curiosity too. How do we get our kids to know how to answer those things for themselves as they move out of our house? Because that's our ultimate goal, right?
Is to prepare them to launch well. And so rooting them in wisdom is absolutely the foundation and the very first step. Hey, Melissa, regarding kind of what you were saying earlier a moment ago about modeling, you said that you took up crocheting. Was that, or at least you learned something about modeling through crocheting. I did. What was that about?
Yes. So I started, actually I worked at a correctional facility for teenage girls and one of the activities that they did was to crochet. And as a counselor, I found that they were more open to talking to me if their hands were busy and if my hands were busy. And so I let them teach me how to crochet and it was a slow learning process. But my children at the time, I just had my older two, they saw my mistakes. They saw me messing up and having to take out the stitches and start again. And I went to people that knew what they were doing to learn how to do things. And as I got better, I would go to YouTube and watch tutorials on how to make baby booties as we continue to have more children. But I wanted them to see that mom has to learn things too, right? I don't know everything. And there are lots of things that I'm still learning to this day. And so that was one of those examples of me demonstrating in front of the kids. Let's move to sensitivity.
That's another one. A term that's becoming more common today is emotional intelligence. I mean, that started back when I was in college, you know, we talked to IQ and then EQ came on pretty strong and a person's ability to feel smartly in a social context, that's really your EQ.
A lot of salespeople have high EQs because they're just reading the room constantly. You grew up with that gift of sensitivity. You talk about that in the book. But you didn't always value that gift.
So explain, you know, why not? And how do you embrace what God has given you? So I always felt like I and probably I had family members and friends tell me that I was too sensitive, you know, you feel things too deeply.
I would I couldn't watch certain TV shows because I would be so emotionally attached to the character that it would just make me super uncomfortable. And I remember taking like a spiritual gifts inventory when I was in high school. And the top spiritual gift that I had was mercy, which in my mind was just connected to sensitivity. And I'm like, Lord, I want something practical, give me a gift that I can use. I felt like sensitivity I, I could or mercy, I could cry with somebody I could be next to them.
But I didn't see it as a practical gift as a teenager. Now as a grown woman, I am so grateful for the people in my life that are gifted in mercy and sensitivity, because we have benefited from people that are willing to just be with you when you're hurting and when you're sad. And as I've parented, you know, now four of my children, at least one of them is very sensitive.
And so I have, I have seen myself in her a lot of ways. And I've been able to parent her in ways that maybe I wish I could have been parents. And so I see again, I see God's goodness in, in preparing me to be her mom. You know, I write, and one of the things that I really want parents to understand is God chose us to be the parents for our kids. He created each one of them, whether there are biological kids or adopted kids, he placed us together in a family.
And so when we rely on him and seek him for discernment, he will prepare us and equip us to parent the way that he wants us to. Yeah. You, you linked in, you mentioned a moment ago about working with incarcerated women. And you talk about that in the context of EQ.
So bring those two together for us. And, and I think the point you're making in the book was that most of these women don't have high EQs. They don't have a kind of emotional intelligence. Describe that and what your observations were.
Yeah. Most of these girls, and they were 12 to 18. They were never taught how to handle their emotions in a healthy way.
Lots of them had various different backgrounds. Most of it was traumatic and abusive. And in those homes, they were never given the language or the tools to handle their feelings. And so the only thing they knew to do was to rage and to lash out, which is what led them to most of their problems that ended up incarceration.
And so as a young mom at the time, I had two young kids. I really paid attention to that and said, I want to teach my kids the tools because it's so much easier to teach our kids when they're young to recognize, Oh, you're, you're feeling angry right now. Well, when we're angry, we don't hit.
When we're angry, we, you know, depending on the circumstance, we take it to the Lord or we breathe or we go for a walk and calm down. And so giving our kids those tools is really what I took away from teaching these girls. Now, is it hopeless if they're a teenager and they don't have these skills?
Absolutely not. They're things that can be taught. It's a lot harder when they're already in these pattern behaviors. And so, you know, one of the things that I really try to point out in the book is as parents, let's not ignore these conversations about emotions. Let's talk about them. Boys and girls, they're going to feel things.
God created us with the, with emotions and, and we need to help to teach them how to express them in a healthy way that can honor the Lord and to help can make relationships stronger instead of destructive. Let me move to another trait. We're trying to cover as many of the 12, but you know, we're only going to half hour, but humor. Yes. Oh, I like that one.
Yes. Isn't it interesting that Dr. Armstrong identified humor as a genius quality, like something that geniuses possess is humor. Why is that? Because humor is what turns our brain off from this like self evaluating, we're overthinking things and it lets us relax. And in that relaxed state, we are able to produce so much more.
Our brains are able to think creatively and to be out of the box. But when we are stressed out and we are focused, it's not as easy. I experienced this as a homeschool mom when we're doing a difficult math lesson. I am not the best at math. My husband is the math guru in our household, but sometimes he's out of town and I got to do it and it can get frustrating and there can be tears and gnashing of teeth sometimes.
I don't know the answer. Exactly. But I found that if we can just infuse a little bit of humor, a little bit of silliness, it just breaks the tension and allows us to take a breath, put things in perspective and realize is this really worth crying over?
It's math. And so humor helps to break the tension. It helps to bring a little bit of levity into our families because things can be really hard sometimes. Sure.
Let me ask this question. We all have temperaments and we have our own bents as adults too, as parents. So I'm thinking of the parent that humor has not been a part of their life. They think it's a waste of time. There are people like that and I know them and they're good people, but humor is, it feels maybe even unbiblical. It's not serious enough, trivial. It belittles things. I lean into humor.
Now some would say that also is an escape mechanism. God gives us humor to manage trials in this life, I think. And in that regard to the parent that might be even saying right now, yeah, I don't really have a good sense of humor.
It's a waste of time to develop it. How would you notice or try to infuse humor if you're coming from that temperament? Yeah, well, first of all, I think humor can look different for different families. You know, some people are the slapstick, silly, practical joke, prank humor, and other people are more intellectual humor, you know, of, I don't know, I can't think of an example. Words people. Yeah, words people.
Exactly. And so just because they may not see themselves as funny as maybe somebody that's more outgoing and gregarious doesn't mean that they don't have humor. I believe that God has created each one of us with humor, a capacity for humor.
And so I would say, number one, be go easy on yourself. Don't think that you have to be this comedic genius in order to embrace this quality of humor. But there are ironic things that we can look around the world and see there are silly looking animals that you go, God has to have a sense of humor.
Like that is a silly looking platypus. It doesn't make sense to me, but it's funny. And so just being willing to laugh, you know, at things. Our kids are hilarious if we have eyes to see and laugh at it.
And the other thing too is embracing that. A good friend of mine said, you know, God has a sense of humor and it doesn't come from the other guy because of the levity in it and the fun. And even some of the scriptural references in the New Testament where he is laughing, like the Pharisees don't like that.
They think he's drunk. He's laughing and having a good time with people. Laughter does the heart good like medicine. I mean, God intends us to laugh and it, and physiologically it's good for our bodies. It creates release of serotonin and those good feeling hormones.
God created us with that intention. You know, I, I talked to a nurse friend as I was writing this book and she said that she used humor in the hospital when patients were facing really painful procedures. If she could just make them laugh a little bit, it took their pain tolerance. They were able to endure a lot more difficult pain. And, and I could say from personal experience, our family has been through some really hard stuff in the last year and being able to keep a sense of humor and find things to laugh about has been so good for our family.
That's the evidence. I wanted to end here because you and your husband and your kids have gone through a traumatic experience with the loss of your son. And I know that's hard and maybe you can just share with us when you look at that kind of situation. My brother and his wife lost their son in his twenties and you know, it's, it's devastating. I think it's the greatest loss any human being can suffer is the loss of a child. So in that regard, you can still wake up and say, okay, I still believe in God. I don't understand all these things. I'm not going to try to, I'm just going to trust that God knows what he's doing, but that's hard.
Absolutely. I mean, I started writing this book two years before, you know, we're sitting here today, books take time and it was set to launch August of 23. And my son had a tragic accident in June, the beginning of June. I was actually scheduled to come here to focus the second week of June.
So we were literally getting on a plane, getting ready to come here. When tragedy struck, he dove into a swimming pool and fractured his neck. And the idea was he was going to be paralyzed from the waist down and he had such faith. He's like, God, I can still do the things you've called me to do from a wheelchair. I was so proud of him. He has grown, he grew into such a strong, faithful, Godly young man.
But while he was in ICU, he had several strokes and then never woke up from those strokes. And so we had about a week where we were sitting in the hospital, just kind of waiting for him to pass away. And of course you can imagine, I had all kinds of emotions, my husband, my daughters, but God was so good and so faithful. And I could sit here for an hour and tell stories of God's goodness in the hospital room, his presence with us, Joey's faith before he went unconscious, especially, you know, I talk about joy and what was one of the qualities. And right before he went into surgery to repair his spine, our local basketball team in our church wanted a verse to put on their jerseys in honor of Joey and kind of support him. And without missing a beat, he quoted James 1-2, count it all joy when you face various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance and perseverance must finish its work so that you're mature and complete. And I looked at my 16 year old son laying in the hospital bed, paralyzed from the waist down and thought he trusts the Lord. And it was such a conviction to me, like whatever happens, count it all joy. And so that's, that has been our family motto through all of this. It's been hard and it's been heartbreaking.
And yet we can count it all joy. We know that Joey knows the Lord and is in the best place. We know we will see him again. And, and I have such a deeper appreciation for the path that God led us to Inconvenient Parenting, the memories that I've made, the sacrifices that I willingly laid down my career, my own preferences, my late night, he was, Joey was so typical to come in at 11 o'clock was his curfew. And then he would want to come and just talk. And I'm exhausted.
I'm in bed by 10 o'clock kind of mom. And, but I knew that it was so important that he knows that I want to listen. And those truths that God kind of grew in my heart as I wrote this book, I have such gratitude that God prepared us. We were talking about sensitivity and the ability to talk about our emotions.
The fact that we had put that in place long before tragedy struck has made processing grief with my daughters so much easier. It's not simple. It's messy. It's hard. And there are days that I truly say, Lord, I don't know what to do because one daughter wants to wear Joey's clothes and the other daughter gets emotional when she sees any of his things. And what's the right thing to do?
I don't know. But because we have created this culture of openness, of talking about feelings, of being aware of what's going on inside of us. And that was the Lord's faithfulness to us in preparation and getting us to the point where we can count it all joy no matter what comes. And so God has been so good to us, even in the hardest of times. And my heart is that any opportunity that I get to share with parents, they may not have lost a child, but we all go through hard things. Well, and I think that the key there, Melissa, and we got to wrap it up, but it's such a poignant place to do this.
But one thing that I've learned, and I'm leery of the formula, you know, the formula, what we're talking about here at Focus on the Family, when we talk about effective parenting, like talking about your book, Inconvenient Parenting, is predictive outcomes. But guess what? God created Adam and Eve perfectly. And they had something called free will. And they acted on that. And I'm thinking of that parent, too, that they did the right thing.
They were intentional. And yet their 25-year-old is not with the Lord because the culture is eating them alive. And, you know, just stay committed and stay in love with that child. That's the best advice I think both of us could give. But if you're that parent that thinks the formula will produce the right outcome, don't live there. Trust the Lord, not the formula. And then be consistent in your love for that child. This has been great, Melissa.
Thank you so much for the effort of writing this, Inconvenient Parenting. Activate your child's God-given traits. And you identified those 12. And to get more of that, go to the website.
Hopefully, maybe we can list the 12 attributes. And then get the book. And to make this kind of a two-way win-win, like we often do, make a gift of any amount. If you could do it monthly, that really helps with the budget. One-time gift is good as well.
Whatever you can help step into the ministry and help us help others, we'll send you a copy of the book as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry. It's a fun way to do it. And so much gets accomplished that way.
It's not just your gift. It's thousands of others that will do the same. And when you do that, it gives us the ability to save marriages, to help parents through crisis, save a baby's life, save someone spiritually.
We had 190,000 decisions for Christ last year. Do you want to be part of that? I hope you do. So get in touch with us and get a copy of the book.
Yeah. Donate generously when you call 800, the letter A in the word family, 800-232-6459. Or stop by the show notes for all the details. We're also going to be posting a link to our Seven Traits of Effective Parenting Assessment, which is a free online survey that reveals the strengths in your family and your parenting approach. It'll give you some ideas about improvement points. It's really easy.
It takes about 10 or 15 minutes of your time. And we really recommend you go ahead and take that. Melissa, thank you so much for being here. And again, I'm so sorry for your loss, but the reality is your son will be an eternity far longer than we will. Amen. Well, thank you for joining us today.
And coming up tomorrow, we'll hear from Bill and Pam Farrell talking about midlife and marriage. And then I realized all that life was demanding of us. And I'm like, you are so right. It's not you. It's not me. It's just life. But it's not what we want to do. What we want to say is it's not me and it's not life.
It's just you. Thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. Are you more connected to your technology or to God? Lighthouse Voices welcomes Samuel D. James as he explores the impact of digital addiction on your faith. In a free live stream event, he'll help you navigate a tech saturated culture and rediscover the reason you were created to live in harmony with God. Mark your calendar for September 10 at 7 p.m. Eastern and register for this free live stream event at LighthouseVoices.org. That's LighthouseVoices.org.
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