This week on the podcast I’m doing something a little different. I’m answering some reader questions! Two types of questions that I receive regularly from parents center on stress and failure. So in this episode, I’m going to address how to manage the impacts of stress and failure for your kids.
There seems to be so much upheaval in the world today, both close to home and far away. I live in Florida and I know so many people who lost everything in Hurricane Ian. The impacts of stress and failure are very real concerns!
Managing Stress
Your kids are seeing these things happen in the world. You’re stressed. So, the first question I get regularly is how do I manage the stress of the rising prices, economic changes, uncertainty, and fear? I want to be gentle and kind in my parenting, but the rising stress is getting to me!
First, realize that you’re not alone. New reports are saying that 80% of families are dealing with some kind of stress, anxiety, or mental health situation in their homes.
Next, pray for yourself. It is critical to keep your thoughts in check and have a biblical perspective. Ask God to help you focus on what is good and right even in the midst of a terrible situation. Ask Him what He wants you to see and how to process your circumstances.
Third, keep yourself in the Word. You might only be able to handle one verse right now. Read that verse and hang onto what God is telling you in it. Consider reading a chapter from Proverbs each day. There are 31 chapters so you can read the whole book of the course of a month. Meditate on God’s Word and allow it to permeate your mind and replace the anxiety, negativity, and discouragement!
Finally, talk to your kids frequently. Don’t talk to them about the news highlights of the day; be careful what news you allow them to consume. Talk to them about how they are doing and how they are feeling. Don’t marginalize or minimize the feelings of your kids. Be there to listen to them! Help them move from an inward focus to outward by showing them how to serve others.
When to Let Kids Fail
The other type of question I regularly receive is about failure. When is it ok to let kids fail? What if there are very serious long-term consequences?
My suggestion is allow your kids to fail when they’re working on something like a LEGO project or a school assignment. They learn how to plan ahead and measure twice, cut once. These are needed life skills. They learn from these kinds of mistakes. You can certainly give suggestions, but I find it best to give them more freedom and room to fail in these kids of circumstances.
What do you do when the consequences are greater? I believe that stepping in when your child’s emotional well-being is at stake is appropriate. Things like bullying, being marginalized, and wrongful punishment are very different circumstances.
I ask these questions to help make a decision:
Is there a long-term ramification?
Is the life lesson that they will learn going to physically do harm to them?
Is the life lesson they will learn going to propel them forward?
Will this failure make them wiser or more aware or better in some way?
We have to protect our kids, but these question will help you decide if the situation is one where you should step in or allow them to fail.
I sincerely hope that you found the answers to these listener questions about the impacts of stress and failure helpful. If you have a question you’d like me to answer, email it to me through our contact form.
I’m excited to welcome Dr. Kathy Koch back to the podcast! Dr. Kathy has a new book about kids and resiliency. She’s back to talk with me today about this book titled Resilient Kids and to define and expand upon resiliency. This is about so much more than the trauma of living through a pandemic!
I recently saw a statistic from Max Lucado that something like 80% of young people are feeling stress, anxiety, and/or depression. The mental health crisis in our country is staggering! Dr. Kathy and Celebrate Kids are doing what they can to educate parents. She’s optimistic but realistic in the way that she teaches.
Kids and Resiliency
Dr. Kathy defines resiliency as “readily recovering from difficulties.” She says that it’s not about being bouncy and happy like Tigger about struggles, but bouncing forward or coming back to a right standing when something bad happens.
Here are some of the things Dr. Kathy and I touch on regarding resilient kids in this episode:
Walking with your kids in their struggles
How Mom should leave the room if prone to overprotect and intervene too quickly.
How struggles made kids stronger just like they made you stronger
How struggles help us trust in ourselves and others
The problem of toxic positivity
How learning something new is hard
Working on self-talk – “What makes you think that’s true?”
Using “I am…” statements
Using examples and pictures and giving proof to show progress or back up claims
Acknowledging your child’s feeling
Using the word “yet”
Telling your kids not to lie to themselves
Letting your kids see you ask for help
Raising the children you have and not the ones you wish you had
Reframing thought patterns
The differences between Big T Trauma vs Little t trauma
I hope you found Dr. Kathy’s conversation encouraging and equipping! If you like what she had to say in this episode, be sure to check out her books using the links in the resource section below.
About Dr. Kathy Koch
Dr. Kathy Koch (pronounced “cook”) is the Founder and President of Celebrate Kids, Inc., based in Fort Worth, TX, and a co-founder of Ignite the Family, based in Alpharetta, GA. She has influenced thousands of parents, teachers, and children in 30 countries through keynote messages, seminars, chapels, and other events. She is proud to be represented by the Ambassador Speakers Bureau of Nashville, TN. She is a featured speaker for the Great Homeschool Conventions, on the faculty of Summit Ministries, and a frequent presenter for Care Net, Axis, and other organizations. She speaks regularly at schools, churches, and pregnancy resource centers.
Parenting is hard. Deciding how to implement parenting advice can be even more difficult. There are a lot of parenting books out there. I even wrote one myself! Sadly, many parenting books can come across as being the only right way to parent your child. You might start to think, “What is wrong with my child?” when doing what the author says on page 76 isn’t working.
In this episode, I want to encourage you to be careful of who you choose to listen to when it comes to parenting advice and give you some practical filters for deciding which parenting advice to follow.
Any advice you get from people must obviously be filtered through Scripture first. The Bible tells us to train up a child in the way they should go, but what should that training actually look like? I can tell you from my experience that training up my oldest child looked very different from training up my youngest and different still from my friend’s kids. We give instruction and have similar goals, but the path to reach the end may look different for each child.
How do you determine which parenting advice to implement?
Know Your Children
You have to start by knowing your children. Authors, bloggers, and podcasters generally have a genuine desire to impart their knowledge and research to help you, but they are just one resource. Even my book, Parenting Beyond the Rules is one resource, not the definitive source.
It’s all advice worthy of consideration, but not all advice is going to work for every child. One of your kids may need more words or answers or firmness while another may need more relationship or gentleness. Knowing your child will lead to the best path for that particular child.
Get a Second Opinion
When you hear parenting advice you think you should implement, get a second opinion. This comes in the form of prayer, talking to your spouse, and even your child. Ask God to speak to you through the resources you’re consulting and show you the best path. Talk to your spouse about their opinion on a certain method and how it may or may not work. Your spouse can sometimes see things you cannot!
Parenting for the Long Haul
What do you want in 5-10+ years for your kids and your relationships with them? If the parenting method or advice you’re employing is taking you down a path away from your long-term goals in favor of momentary external behavior control, then take a second look. I wanted to reach the hearts of my kids not just get them to sit still in a chair for a period of time.
Parenting is hard. We’re all looking to do it “right.” I admonish you to take the parenting resources available to you and run that advice through the filter of what would God have you do for this child in this season to help them become the person God made them to be while also building a solid long-lasting relationship with your child.
There’s a new term in HR departments around the country: quiet quitters. It refers to people who don’t want to overexert themselves. They do just enough to get their paycheck and not get fired. Your children have the opportunity to take the marketplace by storm in this quiet quitter culture!
Have you ever seen this tendency to do just enough in your kids? They do just enough in their math work or put just enough sentences in that writing assignment paragraph. The problem with the quiet quitter mentality comes back to integrity. Even at this early stage, you can work with your kids to show them how to have integrity in their lives.
The Bible tells us that if we don’t work, we don’t eat. Sadly, culture has shifted to a lot of people who don’t want to work but want to spend a lot of time eating and shopping!
Pursuing Excellence
This is a great opportunity to talk to your kids about doing things with excellence and greatness. Show your kids how to give their best. I’m not suggesting that you sacrifice your family for work, but there is a relative balance that can be achieved when you do your best and have integrity.
What Are Companies Looking For?
Corporations, businesses, and the marketplace in general are all looking for people who will work hard. The world needs thought leaders who know how to put in a good day of work. It’s time to teach our children character qualities to reach that goal. They need to learn about:
Perseverance
Diligence
Determination
Grit
These qualities will give your kids the ability to add value and make a difference in the world.
Find Your Kids’ Strengths
One of the best ways to practically help your kids develop these qualities is by helping them find their strengths. I often talk to parents and students about finding their strengths so they can pursue their unique calling. When you have this understanding of yourself, you can add knowledge, skills, and hard work to build a fulfilling life. People are not just handed a life, they build a life, a career, and a family.
We are made by God to build things and add value to the people around us. Work doesn’t have to be something we dread. We’re not raising a generation to live in mediocrity. We’re raising a generation to lead, be innovators, and be risk-takers. We want them to shine a light for others to make a difference and an impact.
To reach this goal, we have to model this lifestyle and character. We must talk about these attributes with our kids. Show your kids the possibilities. Show them how to have a good work ethic. Don’t let them become quiet quitters!
Are you immersing yourself in today? Or are you wrapped up in taking pictures “so you won’t forget?” Or consumed with what someone else is doing? Or thinking about work that needs to be done? I have the same temptations and I want to encourage you to focus more on immersing yourself in today rather than the cares of tomorrow.
How many times when you’re on vacation or on a nature walk with your kids, do you pull out your phone and take pictures? You start snapping pictures of everything because you want to remember it all. You want to be able to look back and relive the moment later.
I’ll confess. I have a ton of pictures on my phone. I tell my kids that I take so many pictures so I can remember everything. But, I feel a little convicted about the number of pictures.
Not Fully Present?
How often do you take pictures but forget to be fully present in the moment? I’m not saying that you shouldn’t take pictures. I just want you to truly experience the moment you’re in. When you look back at the pictures, do you remember what was going on around you? It’s kind of hard to relive a moment that I didn’t really live in the first place. Was I distracted instead of present? I encourage you to embrace where you are whether is it a waterfall, a vacation destination, or a typical day.
Sadly, these days, when you’re out and about, everyone is on their phones. They are missing what’s right in front of them! Don’t get caught up in trying to do more or that feeling that you might be missing out on something. Stop missing out on what is in front of you because you’re looking five steps ahead. Immerse yourself in today!
What is going on in your life today that you might be missing because you’re not fully immersed in today? You can’t go back to where you once were in life. That’s now history. This moment only happens once. The enemy loves to rob us of our time. He loves to see us busy. The enemy wants to distract us. He is trying to make us believe that we can multitask. Resist and choose to be present today.
Regrets and Living in the Moment
What do you regret not doing or not doing more of? Do you wish you would have traveled more? Wish you would have been in the corporate world? Something else? I made decisions in my life that meant I had to pass up opportunities in order to be present with and for my kids.
If I was out on the boat with the kids when they were little, I couldn’t be consumed by what others were doing that might be more interesting or more fun. In some ways, you could say I was oblivious to what others were doing because I wanted to be fully present with my kids, but I also had the luxury of not having instant access to social media when my kids were that little. But, I could have easily allowed myself to be consumed with news headlines instead of reading that bedtime story. You have the opportunity today to help a child with a math problem, show them how to cook or ride a bike, and more. Be there and be present!
Be Interested in Your Kids for Long-term Relationships
Your kids want to know that you’re interested in them. When they know this, they want to be around you. My adult children pop over to the house regularly. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t have a kid come by the house at some point. These relationships don’t happen by accident. It takes a vision of the future and intentional work on your part today.
Don’t go through life taking pictures of places and activities where you weren’t fully present. Immerse yourself in today!
I’ve recently come through a very difficult season in my life. Trial after trial kept coming. I couldn’t get through most days without at least a few tears or without feeling exhausted. For me, this season carried a lot of death and painful losses. For you, maybe it’s saying goodbye to someone you love, a financial situation, or a wayward child. How do you get through trials?
In my 20s, I was full of hope and expectations. My 30s were much of the same, running towards my goals for my life. But trials hit us all at some point in life. I wrote an article on this topic of trials recently in the Homeschooling Today Magazine. I shared how when we’re in the midst of trials, it’s easy to get discouraged and frustrated. It’s hard when we can’t accomplish what we’re used to accomplishing!
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How do you survive these times of trial? I have some suggestions and encouragement for you!
Ways to Get Through Trials
Give Yourself Grace
First, give yourself grace. You’re not likely going to be able to perform at the level you’re used to, especially if you’re a very driven person like me. Plates will wobble and fall in this season. It’s ok. Be honest with yourself as you take stock of what you can and cannot do in this season. The world around you isn’t going to stop, and it’s easy to become discouraged.
Visualize the Way Through
There is a difference between being in the dark, knowing that God is in control, and living in the darkness. Take hold of your thoughts. Picture something different. Visualize how you will get through, how you will move forward, and take a baby step forward.
Find Comfort and Rest
Find something that brings you comfort and rest. Look for the little things. Words from Scripture. Your morning cup of coffee. A hot bath. Sitting still for a few minutes.
Lean on Your Friends
Find friends you can count on. Friends are not there to be your therapist. They may give you nuggets of wisdom from time to time, but they play a different role in our lives. Cling to them as they walk beside you. They are there to have coffee and have fun with you. Let your friends help you find joy, even if just momentary joy.
Sit in the Solitude
Remember that trials require a fair amount of solitude, too. You need that quiet time to listen to the voice of the Lord, ponder Scripture, sit alone, and let Him work in you. Allow Him to show you what you need to learn from the trials.
Determine to Be Resilient
Be resilient. This doesn’t mean pretending that your trial isn’t happening. It means not allowing yourself to get stuck. But also recognize that trials take a larger toll on you as you get older, and you might be slower to bounce back. Make the decision to keep pushing through, and you will eventually find solid ground again.
God is Growing You Through Trials!
Trials help us develop a strength we could never have found on our own. God uses them to grow and stretch us. He shapes using trials. Trials make us better ambassadors for God. They allow us to learn compassion or empathy we would not otherwise have had. It’s hard to really walk with someone through a trial you yourself haven’t experienced. I’m so thankful that God’s mercies are new every day! Embrace those trials!
