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Today's episode has to do with parenting, and it's not something that I've talked all that much about in the podcast, but I'm going to be doing more as we head back into the school season. But right now, it's still mid-July, and if you have kids who are home from school and in your space and in your home, I can imagine that there are times when you may wonder, how do I get these kids to listen? How do I get them to obey? How do I get them to do what I need them to do? They're driving me crazy because they're on top of each other and there's stuff to get done and now the house is a mess and they tear in and out of here. Whatever it is that you're going through, I want to give you a few tips for building relationship with your kids. But maybe your kids are already grown. These still work. These still work because people are the same. No matter who we are or what age we are, whether we recognize it or not, we all need to be in relationship, to be understood and cared about and to understand what the rules are.

I'm going to give you three takeaways as you try to figure out how to get your kids to listen or how to have an impact on your young adult children's lives. The first starts with modeling. Look at your own actions. Are you able to manage your own emotions? Are you able to regulate your needs? Are you able to listen to yourself when you have intense feelings and find out what needs might have some desire to be met that you are ignoring or that are being minimized, or that you're judging and criticizing yourself for? Because if you're doing that to yourself, it's likely that you're not listening to the needs of your kids with a present solution, focused mindset. Maybe you are. Maybe you deny yourself and you're just amazing at listening to your kids' hearts, but your kids need you to model taking care of oneself. It is not selfish to meet your needs and take care of your needs and notice what your needs are so that you can manage them.

It is modeling for your children how to be good caregivers to themselves as well as how to love others. They need to see you making good choices in the way you live because that's how they learn to live. The way you talk to them; that's how they learn to talk to themselves. The way you talk to yourself; that's what they see. That's how they then talk to themselves. When you can understand what they're going through rather than just beat into existence compliance or harsh correction, but understanding and compassion and grace. They learn to internalize understanding, compassion, and grace.

When you work on relationship with an open door policy that says you are welcome here even if you're not perfect, they learn relationship is more important than rules. Now I will tell you it's nice when the household rules get followed. It's nice when things are clean and the kids comply and when we have a close relationship. But if you find that you're having these stuck points where nothing is getting through and you're judging yourself as if you're a bad parent or feel like all you do is complain and grumble and correct and yell, I want you to think about these things. Are you modeling love and respect like Jesus would? See your kids towards yourself as well as to them and to your spouse. Start with modeling a well lived life.

Secondly, give understanding over insisting on compliance or harsh correction. Understand the feelings, understand the needs that they have, understand what they are not capable of developmentally, and give them options.

Give them choices, teach them, come alongside them. Understand if they don't want to do something and instead of it's okay that they don't want to do something, but they must do it. It's okay to feel that way. And when we feel like that, there are some ways we can deal with it. We can do a little bit now and we can do a little bit later. We can do it all now and get it all over with. We can do it later, but it might be on our minds this whole time. Which one would you like to do right now? A way that you come along and problem solve with them allows them to realize there's more than one way.

They don't have to get rebellious. They can listen to you, they can listen to themselves, they can listen to the Holy Spirit, they can have grace, and they will comply. They may not comply in the exact way because relationship is more important than rules. Listen, talk, show respect, and respect doesn't mean that there aren't times when someone is being willfully disobedient, that you don't have to have punishment or discipline. But you do have options to focus on modeling the behavior you would like to see, speaking with a gentle answer that turns away wrath, giving grace, love and respect, and offering that understanding and empathy while you cultivate relationship. Because in a relationship, I've never met a kid who doesn't want to be loved and valued. They may have had lots and lots of trauma on them and look like the worst kid in the world, but listening, care, love, and valuing is never going to hurt them. And they may need rules and tough love in those ways sometimes.

But if the relationship is there, the respectful modeling is there, the understanding is there, the choices of healthy ways to manage things and deal with things are there, they're going to be a lot less frustrated and so are you. Which one of those would you like to work on today? Because we can all stand to improve our relationships our care, our empathy, our understanding, and how we live our lives. To model after Jesus, feel free to go and pop into Instagram or Facebook and share the thing that you'd like to work on. I'd love to hear from you. Take care.

You know that voice, that critical, condemning, judgmental voice that you would never use out loud with other people but you turn it on yourself, right? It may sound like you're stupid. Oh, you're such a bother, no one wants you. Oh, you should eat better, you should do this differently. That's not right. What's the matter with you? That's not perfect. You have to keep striving to be loved. You have to do more.

You have to try harder. You can't mess up. What's wrong with you? What's wrong with you? You're not good enough. Those are lies. Those are not God's truth about you. They are not who you are. And we need to recognize them for what they are. They're lies of the enemy, they're self-sabotaging.

They're trying to get you to survive in some way. They're trying to help you to avoid some sort of pain or to make sure everything's okay or to make sure everybody's okay or to make sure that your environment's safe. But they're not helpful because they're not telling you the truth. There's strategies that are kind of on default in the background strategies that say, well if I beat myself up for this, then I don't have to worry about that because I'll get this in control. And then when I beat myself up about it because I couldn't get it in control, then I really feel bad because now not only did I not control things, I didn't get things taken care of, but I've fallen short of what I thought I should do. And now I really feel down on myself because everything feels unsafe. Everything feels like the weight of the world is on my shoulders and I'm the problem and it's all bad. And then we get into these cycles and then we do things like overeat or avoid or scream at the husband or the kids or shut down or turn to the substances like alcohol or the wine to cool down.

It's a vicious cycle and the crazy needs to stop now. So how do we stop the crazy cycle? Right? We learn to slow it down and tell ourselves the truth. The first thing we need to do is to catch it. So notice the negative thoughts that you have and how often you have them. Catch yourself. If you need to journal it and put it down or put it in your phone, then do that. Capture it as it's happening. Just be aware; you don't have to change anything yet.

Just be aware that's the first step is bringing awareness to the way that you self talk. That puts you down, criticizes you, labels you, judges you, shames you, criticizes you. That's not of God. So the first step is awareness. Bring awareness to it, capture it, write it down, note it somewhere that says wow, these are the things I say to myself and this is how often I'm doing it. Maybe it's all day long, maybe it's only in this circumstance. Maybe it's when I feel like this or that, right. Notice those things that can tell you more information about it.

So first, notice the negative thoughts, the negative self talk. Secondly, notice how you are triggered into that, the circumstances, the situations, the types of time of day or times in your cycle, or certain work situations or certain circumstances with your husband or with other people. Notice when those happen, because those are your kind of trigger points. And if you can notice both of those things, then the third step is to stop doing it and to replace it. So stop it.

And then the fourth step is to replace it with something helpful, good, true, gentle, graceful, kind, and along with that, to stop putting yourself into the triggering circumstances or situations. Now, that may not be like avoiding something. You may not be able to get away from the triggering circumstances, but find out what is making that trigger and manage that.

So if, for instance, I get triggered whenever I'm around a certain coworker, but I can't quit my job. But the coworker makes me feel like I need to criticize myself and be a lot harsher on myself when I'm doing fine at work. But I feel that way around this coworker, it might just mean I'm going to see if I can work down in a conference room rather than around the coworker. It might be, how can I spend as little time as possible around her and still be able to get my work done? But you can do that in other circumstances. If your mom sets you off, if your mom's a trigger, like you didn't do well enough at something, or you didn't call her back in the right time, or you didn't answer her questions fully enough, something like that, then we just kind of notice what's going on. Notice that's when we start getting harsh on ourselves, beating ourselves up, and we say, okay, I only call mom on Tuesdays, or mom isn't going to get a response from me today, or I'm going to look at mom as part of the problem in the cycle. And recognizing that gives me power to let it not have to bother me as much. Because I realize that it's the dynamic with mom.

It's not me being this awful, horrible person who doesn't measure up. Okay, so whatever your circumstances are, acknowledging, noticing, changing, telling truth, and strategizing about how to minimize the triggers as you stop and tell yourself the truth is very, very important. I hope that's helpful today. Grace, not perfection. Kindness, not judgment. That might be something you want to write out and put on a sticky note on your mirror or put it in your car so you see it every time you get behind the steering wheel. Grace, not perfection. Kindness, not judgment.

All right, I hope that helps. Go take on the day.