I speak frequently about how to keep kids safe online. I’ve found two camps of parenting styles when it comes to technology and internet usage. On one side, some parents decide to give no access at all to technology. On the other side, they allow their kids near unrestricted access.
If you’ve been around the Equipped To Be Podcast for very long, you know that I’m not a proponent of restricting all access to technology and the internet. At the same time, I’ve found that giving too much access without much monitoring and deep conversations with your kids can also backfire. I’ve talked to employees at some of the large tech companies and received varying responses about how to handle kids and tech, but it usually comes back to watching and monitoring. That’s a lot easier if you’re tech-savvy!
These days, it’s more likely a question of when, not if, your children or one of their friends will encounter bullying. I believe that the best middle-ground approach to tech usage is to use parental controls AND to have close relationships with your kids.
What does this look like in practice? How do you keep your kids safe online?
Conversations about Technology and Online Spaces
Relationships are at the core of having a balanced approach to online safety. Here are some things to consider when building these relationships and having these deep conversations.
Talk to your kids about why internet safety matters for their future. They need to understand the why. This is the principle behind the rule.
Give your kids some basic guidelines about internet etiquette. If you wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, then don’t type it online. If you wouldn’t want it done to you, then don’t do it to someone else.
Ask your kids about their friends. Except for some of your highly sensitive kids who may be more likely to respond openly, your kids are likely not going to answer direct questions. Ask if their friends are encountering issues online. Open deeper conversations about your experiences and your friends’ experiences help your kids be more vulnerable.
Encourage Common Sense Practices
Implement some simple guidelines for device usage in your home like:
Use devices in open spaces.
Set time limits
Encourage to not always be on a device.
Engage with people, nature, and books.
Help your kids understand that with freedom comes responsibility. They need to know that you’re looking out for their best interests. It’s not about control but about their safety.
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.
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!
What shapes family relationships? How can your kids grow up to be close friends? I wish I could tell you that you can build sibling relationships using a simple three-step formula. It can be simple, but it does take work and more than three steps to create an environment that will strengthen sibling relationships.
Our family gets together on a regular basis. It’s just who we are. We drop things and rearrange schedules as much as we can to get together. It might be a birthday or a family movie night. At least once a week we try to get together and as many as can show up. I love that my kids want to be around each other. It’s so much fun to watch their conversations and see their close relationships now as adults. It took many years and a lot of work to create an environment for those relationships to grow, strengthen, and thrive.
As Your Family Grows
When you introduce a new child into your family, the dynamics shift. The other kids didn’t get a say in whether or not this new little one could join the family and a measure of chaos exists as sleep is disrupted and schedules have to change. This can lead to some resentment. Take time to look at these issues through the eyes of your older child or children. Understand that the older siblings didn’t ask for siblings. They didn’t get to choose a boy or girl, how many siblings, if they would share a room, and more.
Ways to Strengthen Sibling Relationships
Here are some things to watch for and remember as you create an environment and a family dynamic for sibling relationships to be strengthened:
Watch for bullying. Some kids will act up when you’re not looking. Even Christian siblings are not immune to this.
Keep tabs on how your children are getting along. Help your kids understand how the words or tone they use will land on their siblings’ hearts.
Teach them to respect their differences and uniquenesses. Show your kids how each of them fits into your family.
Remember that you can’t force your kids to be friends. Friendship is a commitment to love one another. It means working things out when something goes wrong and it requires forgiveness. Your child has to make this choice.
Remember the ages and stages of your children. The middle school years are very hormonal and the high school years often come with requests for space. Relationships will change as the years go by.
Help your kids identify what’s at the root of frustrations with a sibling. Help them learn to see past the flaws in each other.
Mom and Dad, it’s up to you to cultivate an environment that causes sibling relationships to grow. The goal is that they’d be friends long after you are gone. We want them to respect each other for who they are and not what they do. Each child belongs in our family because God placed him or her here. Encouragement, care, compassion, respect, and entertainment. These all play a part in strengthening sibling relationships.
How does your child think? How do they process the world around them? If you have multiple children as I do, you have probably seen that one child can be extremely different from another child in your family. This is because each of your children is uniquely created by God!
This is episode eleven of a series I’ve been doing on my book, Parenting Beyond the Rules. From the beginning of parenting, I wanted to know how my kids tick and what ticks them off. We have already talked about how the goal is to reach the finish line with your relationships with your children intact. You want them to know that you are their greatest cheerleader and that you are trustworthy. Part of that process is to help each child find how they were uniquely created and this requires a lot of observation on your part.
Expansionists vs Reductionists
Children are expansionists. They are explorers and adventurers. They see the world as full of possibilities. Kids wonder what if and what’s next. You as an adult have likely become a reductionist over the years. Sadly, you’ve learned that the big ideas and plans don’t always work out. You don’t dream big dreams in the same way you used to, you don’t try new things, and you’ve stopped being as adventurous.
We have to fight this reductionist tendency in our own lives for the sake of our kids! It’s up to us to breathe life and adventure into our kids. You have to walk with them to discover the person God made them to be and keep that natural wonder from being pulled out of them by the world.
Doing Life as a Family
To do life together as a family, you have to know each other well and celebrate how each member of the family is different. Your kids also need to understand that no child is better than another because of their gifts, or lack of a particular gift. Create an environment where they know: you are celebrated for who you are, the gifts you’ve been given, and the wins you experience, but you will never be canceled for screwing up. As a parent, you should never compare one child’s strength to another child’s lack of a strength.
Personality vs Character
It’s important to first recognize the difference between personality and character. Character is shaped over time. It includes things like learning not to lie or cheat or steal. Personality on the other hand is how God has hardwired you. These are your child’s natural tendencies. Some are peacemakers while others might be achievers, and others are influencers. If you watch your kids carefully, you’ll see these natural tendencies coming out in their actions.
What is a Strength?
We want to set up our children to succeed at that which they’re good at. You as the parent need to help your child discover their strengths. A strength is something that is natural and top of mind for your child. They can do that thing near perfect, over and over again, like it’s second nature. A strength becomes a strength when knowledge and skill are added. You can be really good at something and have no interest in it, so that’s not a strength. When you start paying attention to your kids and really become a student of them, you will see these little things and the picture will unfold before you of who your child is uniquely created to be.
Assessments
I strongly suggested that you put together a notebook on each of your kids. Keep notes about things you see in them. Save personality type assessment results in this notebook too. Here are a few assessments to consider as you study your child:
Strengths Explorer – for Middle School age
The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman
Myers-Briggs Assessment – for older children and adults
As we finish this series on Parenting Beyond the Rules, I want to remind you that your kids need rules, limits, and boundaries, but as they grow and change, these guardrails also need to adjust. There’s freedom in pivoting! You will have to pivot over and over again as your child passes through various life stages. Pray and ask God to give you wisdom and discernment to point your kids in the right direction as you learn more about how God uniquely created each of your children.
When you have a baby, there is unimaginable joy. It’s hard to understand how much a mom or dad loves their child. But, we have to be careful to not put conditions on that love as they grow older. There are hindrances that can pop up to giving your kids unconditional love.
Hindrances to Unconditional Love
There are four hindrances to giving your kids unconditional love that can completely derail your relationships:
Unmet expectations – This might be in the form of your needs you feel like your child should meet or performance metrics that your child isn’t living up to.
Fear of rejection or rebellion – Don’t let the fear of being pushed away keep you from loving your kids.
Not knowing your children – Learn how each of your children best receives love. The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman is a great resource for discovering your child’s preferences for receiving love.
Your past relationship with your parents – It’s easy to follow in the footsteps of our parents’ parenting style. If you didn’t have a good relationship with your parents, you still have the opportunity to change your legacy.
Kids want the affirmation of their parents. If they don’t get that affirmation from you, they will look for it somewhere else. We all have a deep need to be loved and receive love. Ask the Lord where He wants you to change so you can better give unconditional love to your children.
