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leadership parliament, we would call this an adaptive challenge because the challenge changes and it adapts over time, right? As we're working on it, it changes in front of us. Um so when it comes to this adaptive challenge uh one of my professors he he describes adaptive challenge uh the leadership through an adaptive challenge as helping your people an adaptive leadership goal is to help your people go where they need to go when they don't necessarily want to go all with while not knowing how to get there. I think that's a really good description of parenting isn't it? Parenting is helping your child go where they need to go when they don't necessarily want to go there. All the while not knowing how to get there. So, it's getting your child knowing that your child has to get eight hours of sleep, but they don't want to go to sleep and you don't know how to make them go to sleep. That's the adaptive challenge.

And what makes it even more difficult ha getting enough sleep for a newborn getting a newborn to fall asleep is very different than getting a 16-year-old to fall asleep. That skill has to develop over time and change over time. So in adaptive leadership there is no one method when it comes to um doing it well. But there are there are pathways that we can follow, processes that we can follow to discover the right way. And one of those um um pathways is to embrace the fact that we are going to disappoint our children. Right? uh Hifitz and Linsky they're uh professors leadership professors from Harvard uh they famously wrote that leadership is disappointing your followers at a rate they can handle that's leadership and you can replace leadership with parenting and it will mean exactly the same thing. Parenting is disappointing your children at a rate they can handle.

You have to embrace disappointing your children because our children may not want to do the thing that we know they need to do. But we have to do it at a rate they can handle. If we push too hard too fast, they burn out. If we don't push hard enough, they never change. It's finding that right temperature for change. So what does this look like? It starts with empathy. It starts with trying to understand our child because every child is different. That means that we take the time to listen to our child. Sarah's going to talk about that later. So that's where it starts. And then it's all about again finding that right temperature. We have to do things that increase the pressure. Things that increase the pressure are saying things like, "Honey, you know that in order for you to be able to do well on this task, you need to get eight hours of sleep or you have to get seven hours of sleep."

That increases the temperature. It puts pressure on them. How you lower the temperature is by by giving them options or giving them um ability to choose. the ability to choose. Actually, one of the most powerful ways we can lower the temperature is by letting our children know that we love them and that we're going to be with them no matter what happens. Right? They like to describe the relationship as the as the chamber in which change happens. So, making sure that our love for them is not contingent on what they do or how they succeed is so key to lowering that temperature. having, you know, inserting a joke lowers the temperature, right? So, it's finding that right temperature where they're motivated to change but not burning out. So, that's that's that's the overview of of um parenting. But because adaptive um parenting is an adaptive challenge and every child is so different, we want to approach the rest of this um time as a conversation. So

Sarah and I are going to engage in this conversation hopefully with all of you, right? So if any point when we're talking, if you have a question or a comment or insight comes up, we'd love to hear from you because this is what this is all about. It's not us just sharing knowledge with you. It's us learning from each other. Actually, one of the most powerful things that um I did as a youth pastor growing up was getting parents together and just talking. So we would have parenting meetings every month or so and really it became like parenting advice from each other and just commiserating one with one another and supporting one another and hopefully we can do a little bit of that today.

Now Sarah, I know you have some quotes that you want to start. Oh yeah, I'm going to start with a couple of quotes that I found that describe parenting for me. Here we go. Let's try this. All right. I take it that it is normal for an adolescent to behave for a considerable length of time in inconsistent and unpredictable manner. To fight his impulses and to accept them, to love his parents and to hate them, to revolt against them and be dependent on them, and to be more idealistic, artistic, generous, and unselfish than he will ever be again, but also the opposite, self-centered, egoistic, calculating. Such fluctuations between extreme opposites would be deemed highly abnormal at any other time of life at this time they signify no more than that an adult structure of personality takes a long time to emerge and that was anifro so strange is to be expected when my teenager comes up to me and hugs me one

moment and then the next moment screams out I hate you I don't have to put her into a mental health institution still. Yeah. All normal. All right. Quote number two. All normal. Um, this is by Rebecca Ames, who's the author of Positive Parenting. So often, children are punished for being human. They're not allowed to have grumpy moods, disrespectful tones, or bad attitudes. Yet, we adults have them all the time. None of us are perfect. We must stop holding our children to a higher standard of perfection than we can attain ourselves. So when I first saw this quote many years ago, it, you know, it hit me like a load of bricks.

It was a mirror uh to my life. So I printed out on a small piece of paper and I taped this to my bathroom mirror. I was really working on a lot of parenting, you know, challenges. And I read it every single day, sometimes morning and night, until I was practicing this without noticing uh that I would without noticing anymore. Um, and one day Amelia or my daughter walked by and she read this quote, you know, you know, she uh it wasn't embarrassing to her. She she saw it and she, you know, she I saw her standing there reading this quote and she said, "Oh, I like this." And it was so reaffirming that that what she was receiving from me was what was written on this sheet of paper. And I still have it up on my mirror today just as a reminder every day. If I forget, I just look at it and read it. um as a daily reminder. So

yeah, this is so great because you know as parents we always want our children to do better than we did but sometimes that desire pushes them to try to be perfect and nobody's perfect. Uh the next the next quote is a is a lament found in Psalm 13:2 and this describes my complaints when I was raising my young children. How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? This is Psalm 13:2. Yeah, this reminds me of what uh Ted Cunningham says. He says, uh, I have seen the enemy and he is small. Right? Sometimes children can really feel like the enemy.

All right. And then Apostle Paul from Ephesians 6:4. Fathers, do not exasperate your children and instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. This is one I have to take to heart because I often exasperate my children mostly with my dad jokes, but I think that's why Sarah put it in here. So, we're going to talk to this afternoon about emotional health. Um but before we do, I want to share some assumptions first that we hold about uh emotional health that I want to challenge. All right. Number myth number one. Emotion is the enemy of reason. Oh wow. Yeah. This is this is difficult for me because a lot of times when I think about emotion and reason, I think they are incompatible, right? that in order to be clearheaded, we have to get rid of emotion. But that's not what you're saying, right? Yeah, that's right. Oh, I want to share one study that was done in 2012 by

um Blanchett and Campbell and they studied uh British war veterans and they presented them with logic um problems on three different topics. Topic one was emotionally um loaded and about combat. And then emot uh topic number two was emotionally loaded but not about combat. And then the third topic was not emotionally loaded and a neutral topic. I think it was about uh tea. Um and so what was the result of this study? They found that the the war veterans they reasoned the most soundly when uh they were solving logic problems related to topic number one. That that was emotionally loaded and about combat. So their emotions actually helped them make better decisions in this Yeah. In this study, it bolstered their ability to make accurate decisions about those logic problems when it was connected to something they already had experience in that was an emotionally loaded topic.

Wow. So then how do you handle the fact that sometimes when I'm feeling very emotional um like I'm really angry that I sometimes don't make the best decisions? Yeah. So I I tell this to my clients all the time. Um, you know, if you can last about a a minute to two minutes, 90 seconds roughly is the lifespan of an intense emotion and anything that happens after that is what your brain is telling yourself. So, you have a physiological response. It lasts about 90 seconds. Um, you can do things like, you know, deep breathing, go outside, take a walk, you know, um, do something sensory, maybe get a glass of water, those kinds of things, and wait till that intensity uh, dissipates. So, we don't allow our emotions to sit in the driver's seat.

Um, we want to we want to teach our teens, as I do, like in my practice with my clients, that it's data. Yeah. So, it's really useful information. So it's fundamentally information that comes in and we have to interpret what's happening physiologically because we experience something physiologically before we are narrating what's happening in our environment. So emotions can be helpful when we take the time to understand them and receive information from them instead of letting them like control our lives. All right. Um All right. Myth number two. Difficult emotions are bad for teens or children. This is hard because as a parent I my instinct is always to protect my child from everything that's difficult, right? Including difficult emotions, but you're not you're saying that it's not necessarily bad for them to feel these difficult emotions.

Yeah. So we we have gotten I think into a mindset where if there if we see distress on our child, we think that harm is happening to them. And I have a couple of different examples to show that actually the opposite is happening. Um so one example is the hobby of reading. So, um, an example from one of my children's, uh, you know, school time is, uh, they went to school and there was, I guess probably English, right? and they there's a recommendation for a book and parents are allowed to see like the title and the content and you see it and there's maybe death and bullying, maybe drugs or um some intense psychological experience that the protagonist is going through and there may be a reaction that this is too much for my child to handle or bear. Um but they've done a lot of studies on different exercises that build empathy and reading um fiction actually is a

tool to build empathy. Um and this can only happen when you're taking on the emotional experience of the protagonist in a book. So that's just one example from the world of reading. Yeah. So actually even even though the the this book is fiction, it's not real. If they put themselves in that position, it can actually teach them how to regulate their own emotions. Yeah. Let me find some. All right. Yeah. Um what it's actually doing is this invisible process of maturing your child. So another example is you know conflict within our families, right? Um that happens to us every week. Um you know when we're getting along we don't need to have high emotional intelligence. it can be quite low and you know you don't need to have any additional skills to participate in something when everyone's getting along.

However, you know, when we're when there's tension or a fight that lasts a couple days or we're at odds with each other in our family, this is the space that is the perfect time to build emotional intelligence in our our children. Um the caveat to this is that uh the tension that they're going through must be with an adult who has some int you know intellig em emotional intelligence and they're invested in you. They care about you and they love you and it's not the fighting that increases the intelligence. It's the conflict resolution that you walk them through that, you know, where the magic happens that's unseen and there's growth happening um to build their maturity and build emotional intelligence.

Yeah. So, when kids are bickering over who gets to sit in the front seat, that's not necessarily bad if we can step in and help them navigate and resolve that conflict, not solve it for them, but to help them navigate that well. Yeah. Uh, and then why is this worth it? Why is it worth putting in that like sometimes frustrating and aggravating time with our kids to help them resolve a conflict? Um, because every healthy experience that your daughter has in the future as an adult depends on her building that emotional intelligence at a young age. And I think that's that's really a worthy reason to, you know, put in that time that's so, you know, uh, character building for us as parents.

It's an investment in the future. All right. Third. All right. Uh, and our third myth. So with these amped up emotions, our teens are psychologically fragile. So we see a lot of storm and stress and we mistake it for fragility. We see the distress and then our reaction is we get worried. Right. Yeah. Because a lot of times when I when my teenager comes in with all these emotions, I'm thinking, "Oh my goodness, why are you so sensitive? You're being overly sensitive." Right. Um but that you're saying that's not actually a sign of emotional fragility. Yeah. That's uh that's more a function of our anxiety, not able to handle um like tolerate distress.

Yeah. And so that means that you might need to work on our distress tolerance a little bit. She's coaching me right now. No, no, no. He's better. They care themselves differently at school or they go out in the world versus at home, right? To school. And then um they have adults telling all day long they're didn't even have time to go to the bathroom, the whole they're they're in this like really state. Um, and what their willpower to hold that all in and they're regulating themselves at school or in a public place and then they come home and what happens? You like unleash all that, right? You get them in this at 3:20 and they're so cranky and grab and unhappy and hungry and thirsty. Yeah.

And so that's not how they're, you know, functioning out in the world, but they come home. And you, if you have a sturdy home, then they're able to come home and do let all to all day. You know, one thing I learned from a a parenting podcast was don't try to ask them 20 question, right? Because that is their worst. That's that's their lowest point. They're hungry. Start asking them questions. They're going to get really aggravated. Just sit there and listen. Let them talk or let them sit sit in silence. I had to learn that too. Now I with one of my kids who I know really needs it. I just drive home silently, which is really hard for an extrovert.

But it's a short drive. It's only like seven minutes together for seven minutes. All right. And then we're going to talk about this in a minute, but this is are my guiding definition of mental health today, which is it's the right feelings time in the right setting. uh it's not about uh what we mean is that the emotion is appropriate to the environment and that it's proportional given the situation. Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of what you're seeks to say fact that emotions even ones that we frame as being negative or difficult emotions are not things that we need to be scared of. Yeah. Right. Uh and then thirdly, um children come with built-in unconscious defense mechanisms that we don't teach them, but they've picked up and learned how to do on their own. Um that help combat emotional o uh overload.

So, they're doing these naturally throughout the day. Yeah, that's good. So, and they're learning how to do them well for themselves. Yeah. So um somewhere along the way we became afraid of unhappy in our present culture we do this a lot um in young children uh whenever I would see my child especially out in public with people watching right and then they're crying I would run over and hush them try to get them to stop or um shush them it's a hund sentiment of why Um, and you might say to a young child like, "Oh, it's so hard to say goodbye, isn't it?" Yeah. I love to start sentences with, "You didn't expect three words that you can plug into scenario." So, expect that you wouldn't be included in the sleepover and you were the only one that, you know, invited.

So you hear shutting it down. So this um if you rush to longer the route to get go takes so much longer then you echo what you're saying and mirroring that. um it pushes them to actually oh their experience first. Yeah. So then feel affirmed and they're able to arrive at their own adaptation and come to a solution. Yeah. Because if you if you shut down their emotions, then you're in a combative state with them and you're they're trying to prove to you that their emotions are valid and you're trying to shush them and so you're fighting against each other instead of working together to walk through the emotion. Yeah. They'll have a secondary response to come back and say, "No, but it really was, you know, and they'll try to try to validate why their tears or their emotional response is valid, but they won't do it with words. They'll do it with actions." Yeah.

Yeah. So like I think the thing that I face at times where I to validate and acknowledge their emotion what I see and which I have here it's like they're like yeah and then their emotion explode even bigger and louder. Yeah. Is that just natural course they I patient need to so when you start validating their emotions it actually releases the floodgates even more of that emotion. Yeah. Then I'm like, am I doing the right thing? Like why are they not, you know, calming down? Are they why are they going higher up with the I mean Sarah can speak to this, but I think it may be you doing that and them responding in that way is actually showing them that they can trust you, right? Because they gave you initial bit of emotion and they want to see if so then they're going to give you more, right? So, it's not a bad thing.

It's not a bad thing. So, I don't think so. Yeah. I think Joey answered that question already. So, I I'll give a different example from um my my practice. I have a small part-time practice in mostly adult clients. About 40% are um medical students and residents and physicians. Um, and at my intake, one of the questions I like to ask is, growing up in your family of origin, did you have emotional safety with your parents? Right? So, that basically means, could you come to them and tell them what was happening to you or what you were going through or a need that you have and then they responded to the need.

Um, and sadly, most of the responses are, you know, no, I didn't. Or some of the times they'll be I did with one parent, whether or father or maybe even like a grandmother or somebody. Uh, and then there's a unicorn and once in a while some people say, "I had emotional safety with both parents." Like, wow. You know, how did you a really healthy family? But it's it's so rare. And uh for the ones that answered no my practice that basic needs being assertive anxiety and depression is a direct correlation in how they're functioning in their workplace. And we talk about their my parents didn't want to hear it or I would about something and it was just ignored. Um it's actually so um this kind of setting it builds an adult who can't even recognize what their emotional response is.

It it become it's so basic right that's what happens as I think this kind of home where they don't have a sturdy um sturdy parents whom they know they can handle, you know, what they're bringing as children or as teens. So, we actually want to pause here a moment and give you an opportunity to process this for yourself. Thinking back to your parents and when you were children, did you feel like your parents offered you emotional safety? Like, did they I was going to actually have you just share with the person next to you, but First of all, what's your name? Yeah. Oh, if you want to if you want to parents, you know, from the shut up and stand over there.

I thought that was healthy. So, like boys don't cry. Men don't cry. Yeah. Yeah. That is often a message that boys don't cry. All right. But I'm going to let you do this now so that you have an opportunity um with each other. Did you feel like they provided you safety where it was okay for you to express even difficult emotions to them and then they would and an ability to did you feel like they were the message was don't about we don't talk about these things. Right. Okay. I only know whatever I before I even Heat. Heat. Oh, brother. I know that So good. But just just if you feel comfortable, you don't have to raise your hand if you don't want to.

For those of you, how many of you would say that you at least had one person or one parent in your life um where you could go to for emotional safety? Like raise your hands if you feel comfortable raising it if you don't have to. You have at least one parent you could go to. At least one. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's it's hard to feel shut down, right? Like when when when you're expressing something that's important to you and then all of a sudden the most important person in your life at that point basically says, "Oh, this is unimportant and this is not worthy of expressing. It's hard. It's hard to receive, right?"

And yet parents often we do it because we think it's loving. We're like, "Oh, I need to teach them resilience to get through this." But in what what we're doing is we're communicating your emotions are not important. Yeah. Ignore them. Question. Yeah. Question. I have a question. Well, I guess it's kind of a question, but um it seems though that our society has gone towards more of validating emotion. Yeah. Yet we have more fragile children emotionally. Yeah. So my question would be um what makes someone emotionally fragile? So if you were to come up with a definition of emotional fragility, what would that be? This is for the room. Not just for Andy, just for the room. Like in your mind, what is an emotionally fragile person?

Not actually having the emotion itself, but not knowing what to do, how like not not knowing how to process, process the emotion. Yeah. Is federal like holding on or suppressing. Yeah. So either ignoring the emotion or which actually Sarah's going to talk about later um but not knowing how to regulate self-regulating those emotions often um results or it it shows as anger so expressing that emotion in inappropriate ways. Yeah. And then uh the another way is um just meltdown or not not meltdown but overwhelmed feeling looking overwhelmed. Yeah. And not doing not being able to just do anything. Yeah. So maybe maybe if that's the definition of emotional fragility, maybe the challenge is not so much um refusing that we acknowledged their emotion too much. Maybe the challenge is we didn't properly teach what to do with the emotion after we acknowledged it.

Yeah. Right. like we have there there is acknowledging it but there is also a teaching of so then what do you do with this strong emotion right and I think that's that's actually what Sarah's going to talk about a little bit next after she gives a definition of emotion I don't know if there's anything else that you want to add or any other questions or comments did you have a definition of yeah I mean just yeah I mean I agree with what you guys are saying basically the opposite of resil Right. And just more it just seems like there are more they get overwhelmed young people who u let their emotion and whatever like take over and they don't know how to regulate it and you know that that was just a question because it seems like we you know psychology in general and parenting and all this is like you look at the books it's all about this. It's

all about like acknowledging your is and they're doing all this and doing all this and yet all the people here who didn't get any emotional right acknowledgement we all we have our own demons and I think that's that's the thing that the demons come out in different ways right but I I would agree with you that perhaps um In our efforts to acknowledge and affirm emotions, we didn't put we didn't give them tools to actually navigate them. We just said, "Oh, yeah, that's great that you're expressing emotion, but that's not it, right?" And I think that's what Sarah's going to talk about next. Um, as a definition of emotional health. So, this would be the opposite of emotional fragility. So, we'd love to get your take on this like this definition of emotional health.

Go ahead. Um, So yeah, the def the definition we're going to work with today is having the right feelings at the right time and then being able to manage those feelings effectively. So I think there is some lopsidedness and what you're kind of talking about is in all these books and the popular culture it's like okay express yourself and share and talk and express but then uh there is uh yeah it's it's lopsided in teaching the children our children how to actually deal with that right so you're you're what you're uh what you're um seeing is children who don't know what to do with those emotions I mean, I have my own theory, but there's only acknowledgement, but not the teaching of what to do with it.

I I think what what they're telling kids nowadays more, and I'm old, so I know, but um they're saying, "Yeah, it's okay if you don't want to do this and it's okay not to do this." Well, that's not true. Yeah. Sometimes you have to brush your teeth. I hope at least twice a day or whatever it is that you've got to manage. I think the modern day parenting is especially with the gentle parenting. They're saying it's okay if you don't want to do this. You know, let me do it for you. And and it's that second part of it. Yes. I think is what's tox right? you don't allow them to get the resilience to be able to manage things, right? That's the second part of it. The first part's fine. I mean, yeah, it seems like both both um sides of that pendulum swing. Either denying emotions completely or making a god of our emotions on the other side. Neither

are healthy, right? And both can be damaging to our children. I agree. But here then this definition of emotional health hopefully is a little bit more balanced that it's not just having the right feelings at the right time but also learning how to manage those feelings in in a in a way that's healthy. Defenses. Yeah. Yeah. So these are these are some ways that uh we manage feelings, right? Yes. So, this is a very uh shallow uh discussion about healthy defenses. There's, you know, dozens of them really. And I'm only going to highlight a few. The ones that are higher quality distort reality and and what's happening around us the least. Um, one of the least effective defenses is denial.

And it it can only it can be helpful for a shortterm period if if there's overload. Um but in the long run it's really ineffective to stay in a place of denial. So some higher quality defenses are you know humor which is self-explanatory. Um one one psychology word sublimation uh using a constructive outlet for an unwanted emotion. So, this might look like um your child turning their, you know, distress into their sport that they're into or their hobby or I have, you know, one child who I can tell when she's not super happy cuz she'll go to her room and it'll be really clean in an hour and I know there's something happening there.

Sublimation, a constructive outlet. Yeah. Because it's like emotions can have a lot of energy like different emotions can have a lot of energy behind it like anger right and that energy needs some outlet. Um so instead of punching a wall which I may or may have done not done as a child um they pour that energy into something constructive or something that they enjoy. A a second one another psychology word is externalization. Um, we all do this, adults, teens, kids. Um, it's I find it healthiest to think of it as a form of unpleasant communication that your child doesn't know what else to use. So, it feels very unpleasant and we have a task and I'll get to that in a minute. Um, but think of externalization as they come home in a bad mood from a bad day and then they take their instead of telling you how they feel in a mature way. I had a bad day because this

happened so I felt this and I think this is unfair and the end. Um, instead they'll come home and you'll you'll feel this, you know, there's like that black scurly cloud uh above them and then they'll hand it to you and you know it's happening because you feel terrible. Uh, instead of telling you how they feel, they make us feel how they feel. Um, so it might ruin your day, but it can also help us empathize with what our our children are going through or how they're feeling. When you feel scared, it means that they're, you know, having that same emotion. And so our task in that is, you know, it's a challenging one. I I've done the opposite so many times.

They bring that to us and then you react and get mad back at them. How dare you talk to me like this or how can you like, you know, you can't talk to your um your your sister or your your your mom or your dad. Um our task is to not take it personally. That's it. That's the task. we ignore all the the garbage that we've just taken on and it's a loving act that we can provide for our child taking into light the bigger picture. The forest is um it's not about you. They're not upset at you and to not take it personally. Our job is to take that trash and to dump it and not sit with it or stay with it or personalize it. But we we take it personally so often. It's so easy to, but when you see this happening and you start identifying it better, you're you you'll start recognizing like, oh, they're externalizing. They came home,

they had this big outburst. Um, they got angry or impatient or emotional, and it's not about me. It's not about me. And I've noticed that um we recently had an incident in the I think in this past year um when my daughter was in the throws of her adolescent uh spike and she came home and there was some distressor at school. It was a major meltdown crying and tears and like hysterics and internally I felt upset, bothered annoyed. I was like flustered. I I didn't feel well. Um but somehow magically uh her dad and I were both there. We managed to externally on the outside remain calm, have a calm face like demeanor and she seemed to calm down and then she left the room and about 15 or 10 10 or 15 minutes later she came back in the room and she had a completely different demeanor and she said uh she was crying but for a different reason. She said, "Oh my I

don't I don't know why I don't know why I was, you know, had that reaction. I don't know why I was crying like that." Um, and she she came back to us and she wanted a hug and you know, we gave her kisses. Um, and I thought, "Wow, good thing she couldn't tell what was happening inside because I was not having a calm reaction inside. I felt upset and annoyed. Um, it disrupted my day, you know, it was but somehow in that moment, I was able to to not take it personally and dump her trash and then have this like beautiful moment after." And then I said to Joey like, "Wow, it's really worth it to like literally bite my tongue and practice acting on a certain face." And and that moment is such a clear moment to me of why it's worth continuing the task of um get triggered, don't take, you know, not take it personally and then uh and let

it go. Yeah. And that's so hard because it's you said they hand over their their trash to you. It's more like they throw their trash at you, right? Um like I don't want it. Um but but that that actually I I like how you said it before that there was that's actually an act of trust in you because they don't throw their trash at everyone, right? They don't. So them throwing the trash at us, we take that personally like, whoa, you must like me the least. which is why you're dumping all this bad stuff at me. But in reality, it's because they trust you the most. They trust that even though they throw the garbage at you, you're still going to love them, right? And so, um, that that act of doing that defense is not so much a teachable moment in that second. It's more an opportunity to show how sturdy our love is for our children. that even

when they don't do the things they know they should do um that we're trustworthy enough to take that not be personal not personalize it and then just put it aside and be there for them right now Sarah is it is it okay to correct them at some point and say what you know it's not that healthy for you to constantly be dumping um trash at other people like how does that happen yeah cuz I know that some people are into that. I think soon. No, we don't have a no limits household. There are rules and boundaries. They know what their expectations are about how to treat each other and us with respect. Um and they're told when they're not being, you know, civil and I like civil better than respectful actually, but civil and respectful um towards others when they're in a bad mood. They don't have the permission or right to then just spew it out of everyone else.

Yeah. Yeah. So then what what's going on inside inside us inside the meat? All right. Yeah. Uh seismic shifts. Um so I'm just briefly just to set a a foundation and a refresher for all of us who've probably taken um child development, but it's been a long time for me. So um briefly we have latency which is ages 6 through 10 and things are relatively stable um emot on the emotional front and then adolescence presently is defined at starting at age 10 to 11 all the way up to age 19 by the worldwide health organization. And so the thing that's happening there in the brain is um their neurons are forming at a rate four to five times that of adults. So they're adding on and building and then they're also subtracting ones that are underused. So that's called pruning.

Yeah, that's that's the the summary of their development there. So in adolescence, their brains are literally rapidly changing changing like physiologically changing. And so I thought that before my kids were you know this the the peak age 13 14 I thought I was bracing for high school as this time of again storm and stress. I thought okay four years of it's going to be up and down. That's what I remember from my own my own childhood. But actually um you know the studies show that emotional intensity peaks at age 13 to 14. So if you have a 13 or 14 year old you might be nodding or seeing like this is true or you had you know you've had a child go through that age. Um and it actually starts much earlier than high school. So, junior high is really the big time of storm and stress and that was such a eyeopening experience for me. Uh, when my kids

survived junior high and left junior high, I said, "Wow, I have so much newfound respect for junior high teachers and pastors, they're doing really the heavy lifting. And by the time they're stabilizing at age 15, 14, 15, you know, then high school gets them and it's, you know, they're they're already in a status of being stabilized then." Yeah. which is why I'm not a junior high basket. Is it the same for uh girls and boys? Yeah. So, um, there's some things that are, well, there's a whole books and chapters on this, but generally speaking, girls are developing socially, emotionally, and physically earlier than boys, which is why there's a lot of social problems and bullying um in the fifth, sixth, seventh grade is the girls are taller, they're faster at sports, they're um they're advancing faster in like academically also is is generally what is happening.

So you might have an outlier as a boy who's, you know, exceptional, but generally that's happening. And so that's threatening to boys generally and and it causes um bullying from boy to girl quite frequently, more than I u knew was occurring really. Junior highs are scary. So yes, um studies show that raising adolescence is even more emotionally demanding than caring for children under the age of five. Wow. Uh just sit with that for a moment. Uh when our children are under five, you know, it's physically so demanding on our time and our our our bodies and it's physically very demanding. And then um but in adolescence we need to switch gears towards emotional training.

Yeah. So when they're younger we have sleepless nights because our infants won't let us sleep. When they're older we have sleepless nights because our teenagers won't let us sleep. So then what um what what can we expect from like these this developmental stage? Yes. Sure. There's another um one other aspect that I I wanted to highlight was something called separation individuation. Um and it's also known as a time of life when your parents become completely embarrassing or mortifying to you. Um they become annoyed by our traits that do match their identity and then those that clash with and don't match. Um and this has happened you know in our family. If you already had an interest in something and then your child discovers that they have an interest in the same thing um but but they don't want to be identified with you that's individuation and again you know it's it's a difficult task but again your task is to not take it

personally it's not a rejection of you as a person you know you used to have this like I had one very cuddly like um affectionate child and suddenly like all of a sudden just stopped right like well it tapered off and then it stopped she does a little bit now. Um, but it's a process of who your child is becoming. So, behind this word, what we're what we're celebrating is my child is becoming more independent and they're developing their own identity and their sense of who they are and they're sorting through, oh, I don't want to have this in common with my parents or like Yeah. So, it's uncomfortable in the moment, but if this doesn't happen, then later on the problem is a failure to launch, right? because they they are too imshed with their parents. They never learn to separate from their parents.

And so it's very uncomfortable this process where they're going hot and cold. They want to be with you that they don't want to be with you and they want to be with you and they're trying to figure out where they end and we begin. Um if they don't go through that though, um then they become too attached with us and then they need us all the time. And then just a note about what we talked about earlier with having limits and and you know clear expectations and boundaries in our family. Um we don't give our children permission to mistreat our us or our sibling um or to walk all over us or run their family run our families or have their emotional lives be in the driver's seat. Um, when we have a tense moment, I try on my good day to say, you know, something like, "Excuse me." We don't we don't speak to each other like that.

We don't talk that way in this family. Um, and I will give them, you know, three options for how they can respond when they're in a bad mood and they need to regulate their emotion. Um, I say, "You can be friendly. Um, you can tell me what's wrong and be civil. Uh, or you can let us know that you need some space." And then you're allowed to have that space for a set amount of time and and then we'll check, you know, check in on you. Yeah. So the boundary is set, but it's done in a calm, kind, and clear way. And that's I think that's really the key because Yeah. And it's so hard to do.

It's so hard to do because in the emotion moment, we're feeling very strong emotions, right? And so being able to communicate to them um the information without pouring that negative emotion on them, that's like that's the key to this process. That's the balance. All right. So, these are some tips um that um Sarah's put together for how to navigate this developmental stage with with kids. All right, we're going to I think try to cover five today. So, number tip number one, understand that conflict is messy and or but unavoidable. Um so, someone asked about the differences between boys and girls in the development. Um so one thing that is also different that they found is that the ability to take on someone else's perspective for girls it uh it increases significantly at age 13 uh and then in boys to wait a couple years is age 15.

So 13 in girls 15 in boys. Um the ability to see something from someone else's perspective while holding their own perspective in the same space. Um but consider this exercise um with your team to try to help them uh see someone else's perspective. So it might sound like I'm going to try and describe the situation from your perspective and then when I'm done tell me what I'm missing and where I'm off track and then ask your teenager to do the same thing for you. And there's something about articulating uh something from someone else's perspective that almost inevitably makes you see things um and you know in in another person's point of view and increases your compassion for their point of view.

Yeah. Yeah. I remember in a parenting I mean a a marriage seminar you talked about how a therapist would ask a couple in conflict what would your wife say about this situation? And then what would your husband say about this situation? And so that that forces us then to put ourselves in that position of the other person. And it inevitably grows some kind of empathy. All right. Tip number two, uh help your teen or child emotionally regulate. Um so again, um we can't provoke prevent uh emotional pain in our teens. we are in the business of helping them manage their discomfort when it comes up. Um, and the first thing that we can do to help them regulate is offer to let them talk. And my kids don't always take me up on this and they they have each other, so they already have a built-in friend. Um, so, you know, it's probably different depending on the dynamics in your house, um, who your child is closer

to. But if they do take you up on it, um the simple act of talking about it, uh it shows it works and it it puts it in a different mindset, right? Because once we have to name the emotion and talk about it, then we're processing it with a different part of our brain than than just that fight orflight emotional center of our brain. Yes. Yeah. So one theory is is that when we move the emotional existence from a physiological response to one that has language and thought uh then we can form it and then let that let that go. So pause here for a second. Any questions or comments or thoughts about the tips so far?

All right, let's move on. Uh, tip number three, a sixletter word starting with L. Who said that? Ununice. Thank you. Listen, so I wish I was the first person telling you about this skill. Um, because the more that we are desensitized to a skill, there's a tendency, I believe, to believe that we've already mastered it. We've reached a state of um competency and there's no more that we need to learn to improve that skill. Hold on a second. There we go. All right. Yeah. So, it's easy to think that we are um we're listening many times when we're really not. Um, I think we're as parents, it's easy to have a tendency to think, "Oh, we have more life experience. We have more wisdom. We have something really like a a gem we can drop at the end of their story.

We've been in that situation, you know, a dozen times. So, I have something really good that I can drop at the end. Um, that will fix and make everything that they've shared better." Um, but that's not listening. That's just called turn taking. So to truly listen, I have an exercise um for you. And I let's see. Yeah. It's to listen without the task of saying what can I what advice can I give this person at the end of their story because I have more life experience and I have more wisdom than you. So yeah, sometimes it's let me fix you. All right. This is a This is an exercise. Um, imagine for a second that you are a newspaper editor and your teenager is one of your reporters and she's reading to you a newspaper article about an aggravating teacher um or a friend that she's having, you know, an interpersonal relation uh interpersonal problem with or just some other kind of, you know, any distress.

Um, so here's your task as a parent. As soon as your reporter comes to the end of that article, your job is to craft the headline. It's very short. Um, and you're distilling a very long story down to its uh compelling essence. And this does take some effort. It should feel like this is a little bit hard to do. Um, but the payoff is, you know, really worth the the try. So, one scenario loosely taken from one of my kids uh lives is your child comes home and tells you, "Okay, Mr. McConnell, he's the worst teacher ever. He told us the test was on Friday, so I stayed up super late on Thursday studying and I missed, you know, my friend's like play at school. I didn't even get to go to that and I didn't get enough sleep." And then we went to class and he found out half the class wasn't ready for it. So, he postponed the test till Monday. And I'm

so mad. I'm so mad. There's been a version of this. So, um yeah. So, then what would be the headline that you give back to your your um teenager? Why don't you turn to the person next to you and share what your headline would be? All right. Anybody want to share their headline or their neighbors headlines? or we can or Sarah can give an example of her own headline. I already heard a better one in the audience than the one I came up with. So, let's Yeah, I heard one from over here. I think maybe maybe Hannah's husband. I don't know. I think he said one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, but it's good.

It's perfect. It's really good. That's really good. Yeah. Love that. Anybody else want to share? All right. Yeah. What I love about this is because a a lot of times my mind goes to they're telling the story. My mind is, okay, so how do I fix this, right? Or how do I fix them so that they don't see this as a problem, right? Like just, you know, just suck it up, become stronger, become more resilient, right? You know, this life happens, right? Um and uh so that's that's where my mind goes to. And maybe eventually that that needs to be the response, but in that moment that's not what they need because in that moment they're they're dealing with the emotion, right? And so we have to we we try to jump the emotion and get to the logic.

But we can't jump emotion. Emotion is a part of who we are, right? So then then we need to acknowledge the emotion and how difficult it is. And that then makes them open to listening to the content we give them later on. Because if we jump the emotion, they won't even hear the rest of what we say because they're still in the motion, right? So it's it's a process to help them navigate that emotion so that they can hear us better later on. Then yeah I'm offering classes after this the other room in the room next door. No, it it is true. And you know, it does feel very awkward at first. But it's like any kind of skill, the more we do it, the more comfortable we we we feel with it, right? Because this is not something many of us are have been modeled or taught when we were younger.

So, it does feel like I'm trying to say things that aren't me, right? And that's that's very very hard. But at the same time there is a growth that we can experience as parents as well in learning skills as well. Yeah, that's true too. Yeah, that's true. Welcome to parenting. It's a hard job. Oh man. Yeah, I I understand what you're saying because because Yeah, perfect. come back to me. I love that. Yeah. You You open the door. You leave the door open for them to be able to come back. I love that. I I haven't used that before, but that's actually what I'm hoping will happen. Maybe it's better to just verbalize it because uh when I've done this in the past, um I'm hoping that later on now that I've shown that I'm a safe person, they're going to come back to me. So like, what should I do?

Right? That's the that's like gold as a parent, right? When a child comes up to you and says, "What do you think I should do here?" Right? They're offering now they're offering their trust to us. Um so yeah, maybe making that more explicit. Yeah. A lot of times Yeah. And it also depends on the age of the child and how long we've been with them through all of this. But yeah, many times I'll find that I don't have to correct. They will self-correct um by a certain age because they that's in their mind. And so just piling on actually is not helpful to them because it encourages them to fight back.

He's just lumping you in. I I Yeah. I So, I think at that point using um what Sarah said earlier could be one way to do it. Say, "Hey, so I'm going to share with you what I hear you saying and then you tell me if I'm correct or not." So, it sounds like you're saying that that you really wanted to do this thing, but you sacrificed for this and your sacrifice was a waste, right? Um because now they've given all the other people who didn't work hard and didn't sacrifice a reward and you're actually punished now for for this, right? Similar to what she has said and then they'll they may say no that's not it.

Like but it it gives them the opportunity then to correct you and to understand that better. So um whatever you say it doesn't have to be the right thing. You've now opened the door for them to have a conversation with you about it. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone, Vana just gave some great advice. Tell your child you should pray about that. Yeah. Is that the concern? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's your desire. And then there is sometimes a concern like if I tell them I don't know too many times, will they stop coming back to me because I don't know, right? Yeah, that is that is a worry. Yeah. Yeah. But the reality is there are very there are a lot of challenges as our especially as our kids get older that are difficult and there aren't clear answers, right? Um so maybe some things that we can do is what would we do in that situation when we're facing that that that thing like we didn't have an

answer, right? Um what would we hope we did in that kind of situation? And maybe that can be a starting point. And maybe prayer is the start of it. You know, it's not a right answer. Like it's it's us saying, you know, this is acknowledge this is a really difficult thing. It's not it doesn't seem like there's a real right or wrong. Maybe we should take some time to think about it and pray about it and then talk about it afterwards. Yeah. asking. Yeah. That's wonderful. I love that question. Is do you want to vent about this? Maybe this is what what husbands should ask their wives as well. Is this something that you want to vent about or do you want a solution? Right.

True. They're just trying to survive. They couldn't pay attention to anything even if they wanted to or had the desire to. Yeah. We've we've actually talked a lot about this already. Maybe we can just bypass it. This idea of showing empathy. Um it's come up in the questions quite a bit. So um let's let's go to the last one which I think we've talked about a little bit. I think this might be the most important slide of all. Um but yes, as parents, um you know, I I grew up in a I guess partially functional, partially dysfunctional. Um you know, my mom did her best and tried, you know, tried with my sister and I and I think that's why we're as, you know, as normal as, you know, that we are today because of her investment in our growth. Um, but I didn't grow up in a a home that felt emotionally safe. Um, you know, anger especially was expressed in an unsafe

way. Um, so it, you know, th those that's a particular emotion that really uh gets a bad rap is anger because of the way that it was shown to us growing up in our um immigrant family homes. Um it it does feel awkward and or it did feel awkward and then sometimes it still does when I tell my child like Omar is very angry right now. You know, I need to go to another room. I need some space from you. I can't talk to you right now. I'm very angry. Um and and so managing our own uh managing our own emotions is one of the most effective ways to help our children manage their emotions. Um, so learning this is I think probably the most important work you can do is looking at yourself. You know, how can God change my heart? Um, it's such it's a long process for asking God to change something that's in your heart that is

so embedded that you find so difficult to change. Uh, when my kids were younger about up to about nine or 10 years ago, um, you know, I picked up the things that I learned from my from my own family. Um, this is not easy to to share, admit, but you know, I had a parent who had a really bad temper and I picked that up and it didn't appear until I had children. So, I didn't even know it was like within me to have that side of myself. So, I had my young children. They put so much stress on your your the family and the primary caregiver who stays at home. Um, and I found myself just like exhibiting my anger towards them the way that it was shown to me, right? Right? I'm like, "Oh, where did this come from? I've never noted this about myself." So, the impatience um like losing my temper, yelling, uh not every day all the time, just when there

was some huge trigger and then there was some meltdown by a child and all these forces are converging in so many things all at once, then there would be like a big blow up and I didn't know how to handle it. So, I really had to um you know, there's a whole long story, but I really had to ask for God to change my heart. What I was told was how we interact with our children, what they see about us is how they experience God. And I thought I don't want my children to uh be old enough, this is my true uh to remember their mom as being this like angry person, this person who like yelled at me, who I was afraid of because I grew up like that. Um so I wanted so badly to be to show give them a different family than the one that I had. Uh it took a lot of like prayer and time on my knees

and reading and listening and just get falling down and getting back up again, having like ruptures in our relationship and repairing and repairing and repairing over and over and over again until um you know I can I can say now it's been about nine to 10 years where um I have not lost my temp for my children. The anger is gone. It's dissipated. I I I know when I'm angry, but I don't lose my con like I don't get out of control. Um where it frightens even me like where did that come from? So yeah, praise God for being able to change our ourselves and our hearts when we really truly ask for it.

Yeah. And then there's a last wrap up. Okay. Yeah. Do you want to uh summarize Joey? Yeah. So, basically, if I were to summarize this is that the goal like was brought up is not to it's not to um raise emotions up as king, right? The goal is not to be afraid of emotions and difficult emotions and not to communicate to our kids that difficult emotions are bad and they will um disrupt our relationship together. That I am a ste that I'm a safe person where you can have difficult emotions and we can process it together and go through it together so that we can get to the other side. Right? So that really is summarizing all of what we talked about um up to this point. And um I we're we're out of time. So I was going to talk about um a little bit about spiritual um techniques and things that we can do in our homes to create an

environment where they're more likely to follow God. But I would summarize it really in just two things. One that Sarah already talked about and that's our own disciplehip. The most important thing most the best gift that we can offer to our children is the gift of a parent who is learning to love like Jesus loves. Right? That's the most important gift that we can give. If you take anything else away from this, it's it's really should be that is that we are growing and that allows us to be that emotionally stable person for for our children. Um, the second thing that I that has been helpful to us is I've really discovered over the years that small repeated habits in the home can make a profound difference. You know, we all we often think it's the big things that make an impact on our children, but it is the small repeated things that make the longest impact on them. And so,

there's some things that we stumbled into by happy accident. I think a lot of best parenting happens because of accidents, right? But different different um habits that we instilled from when we when the kids were younger and then later on we added some uh that enabled us to be a part of our children's lives and to and to hopefully lead them to continue to follow Jesus after they they leave our home. And they're nothing huge, right? Like one one thing that we do is um on Thursday nights we have f family dinner night and um our our kids rotate and get to pick where we have dinner together. It's from when they were young it was something that they're very excited to do. And so we know that at least that night even as our lives have gotten busier the kids are older that night all of us are sitting together at a restaurant without any pressure of dishes and everything

else um just talking together. Right. So that's been huge. Um, another habit that we've had is just no cell phones at the dinner table, right? So when we're eating, cell phones are away, gone, they're not there, right? Small habit. Um, another small habit, we end the day with prayer. Uh, every day, no matter how busy our lives get, um, and we have missed a few times on this, but um, we try to at least for a couple minutes come together, pray together. Usually the prayer is um it goes into like a conversation and we talk about their day and all of that. It just happens because we're all there. Um but sometimes if there's not a lot of time, it's just like a minute or two of prayer together and then we go on our ways. The last one is one thing that I started to do is um I pray for my children. Um, I prayed for my children when they woke up because I

won't go into the story, it's too long, but basically I was waking them up in a very disruptive manner. Um, I was clapping in their rooms really loudly to wake them up. And uh, it was it was it was uh they were they were very unhappy every morning. Um, I I read something that inspired me to try something different. So instead, I went into their rooms and then I would kiss them and then and I would pray over them. Just something simple like uh I would say to them um God help Amelia today to learn to love you and love others with all her heart. That's it. Very short. Give her a hug and wake her up that way. Right? And it was surprising to me how much of a difference that just one little shift made in our morning and made in my relationship with with my kids. So little things, they're not big, but if they're repeated, they have the power to

set things. And so if you're interested in that, there's a book we're going to recommend. It's called Habits for the Household. Um really great book on on how to do that. And there's some resources that Sarah has to share there. Um uh if you want to talk Sarah about the last Oh, I think we can wrap up and I'll just share the last two pages um are books that Joey and I have uh either one of us have read uh that have helped us in our parenting journey. This page and then page two. Techwise family was great for us navigating the whole with our kids. Yeah. All right. Let's pray together.

Stand. Listen, we want to thank you for being a God of grace and for each of these parents. We shared a lot of content, a lot of um sort of high-minded ideals, but the reality of parenting is that it's never that clean, never that beautiful. We all make mistakes. And we're grateful that we serve a God who gives us grace and resilient children. Thank you for loving our children and giving us the privilege to parent them.