Season 03 Episode 2
💬 Show Notes
Welcome back to another episode of Connected Parenting Minute! In this insightful episode, hosts Will and CarrieAnn Standfest explore the profound role that relationships play in the healing process, particularly for children. They delve into the concept that healthy relationships are the catalyst for healing, drawing wisdom from experts like Dr. Bruce Perry. The Standfests emphasize how crucial it is to model gratitude and genuine apologies to foster an environment where children feel seen and valued.
Will and CarrieAnn share personal stories and practical advice on navigating the complexities of parenting, especially when dealing with teenagers. They discuss the importance of not shielding children from every difficult situation but instead using those moments as opportunities to teach resilience and emotional intelligence. This episode is packed with actionable tips to help parents cultivate strong, healthy relationships with their children, ensuring that everyone in the family feels heard and connected.
Don’t miss this deep dive into how to build a more peaceful and understanding home. Tune in and learn how to navigate the challenges of parenting with grace, one connected parenting minute at a time.
Show notes created by https://headliner.app
🗣️ Quotes from Will Standfest
“Relationships are the catalyst of healing in our lives.”
🗣️ Quotes from Carrieann Ann Standfest
“When there’s a hurt that’s occurred in a relationship, that hurt is healed in a relationship.”
🗣️ Quotes from Dr. Bruce Perry
“The more healthy relationships a child has, the more likely he will be to recover from trauma and to thrive. Relationships are the agents of change, and the most powerful therapy is human love.”
Season 3 Episode 2 of the Connected Parenting Minute Podcast
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🔑 Episode Keywords
Parenting, Connection First, Trauma Informed, Teenagers, Relationships, Healing, Healthy Relationships, Adoption, Attachment Cycle, Emotional Intelligence, Parenting Challenges, Parent-Child Relationship, Apologies, Trust-Building, Emotional Processing, Teen Behavior, Conflict Resolution, Parenting Advice, Family Dynamics, Connected Parenting
#connectedparenting #healthyrelationships #emotionalregulation #traumainformed #childdevelopment #familydynamics #apologies #gratitude #parentingpodcast #connectionbasedparenting
Show notes created by https://headliner.app
Music by https://lesfm.net/
Show Transcript:
Connected parenting minute is about parenting using connection first, trauma informed principles
Will: But that’s what’s going. But that’s what’s going on. I mean, it really is. When we think about that, that stressed out, overwhelmed kind of reaction from your teenager a lot of times is expressing that there’s something going on. You’re listening to the connected parenting minute with Will and CarrieAnn Ann Standfest. this podcast, is a conversation about parenting using connection first, trauma informed principles. Because when you lead with connection, everyone feels seen, which is the foundation to a more peaceful home. this podcast reminds you that you don’t have to, to be a perfect parent, but we can all get a little better. One connected parenting minute at a time.
Will Standfest welcomes you to the podcast with a fantastic topic tonight
Hello and welcome back to the podcast. My name is will standfest, and we really appreciate you joining us here tonight. With me, as always, is the lovely CarrieAnn Ann Standfest.
CarrieAnn: Hey, everybody.
Will: So we’re glad that you took a few moments out of your day to listen to our podcast, and I just hope that we’re helping you along the way in your parenting journey. Tonight, we have a fantastic topic for you.
CarrieAnn: We really do. it’s an exciting thing just to get an idea for a topic and then be able to kind of brainstorm that a little bit and hash it out of what we’re gonna cover and how we’re gonna present ideas. I was very inspired today because we got to talk on a parent panel, which was really, really fun. It’s for our former adoption agency, and they ask adoptive parents to come in and just tell it like it is.
Will: Yeah. You know, real life experiences, they get.
CarrieAnn: To ask questions and, you know, from our perspective, we get to come in and say, hey, this was something that was really important learning piece to us because we’ve been through that process, too, and we knew what we were thinking going into it, and now we can speak to that from a perspective of knowing what we’re handling. So I had lots of words today. There was, well, the two of us and then another lady, and she was lovely. But when we, you know, got the questions asked to us, I found myself wanting to talk a lot. And I kept going, oh, here, will, you need to turn. You need to turn. And you had lots of great things to say, but I just found today I had lots of words.
Will: That’s good. So here’s a chance you could get more words out and to help more parents tonight.
CarrieAnn: That’s the hope.
Relationships are the catalyst of healing in our lives
Will: Well, tonight we are going to be talking about relationships.
Will: Specifically, the idea that relationships are the catalyst of healing in our lives.
CarrieAnn: Say that one more time.
Will: Relationships are the catalyst of healing in our lives.
CarrieAnn: M that is a really good point.
Will: That’s just the title of the episode. There’s more points beyond that.
CarrieAnn: it is, it is good. But just to think about that, you know, healing, because, you know, we experience hurt, and then what people typically want is they want to feel heard, seen, you know, important, but they, they want to feel at peace.
Will: Yeah.
CarrieAnn: And when we talk about healing, a lot of times that can bring peace.
Will: Absolutely. I mean, that’s the, that’s the ultimate goal of the healing. Right.
Will: Is to move from hurting to a peaceful situation or state of mind.
CarrieAnn: Exactly.
Healthy relationships promote healing, says psychiatrist Bruce Perry
We have point number one tonight is that healthy relationships promote healing.
Will: Healthy relationships promote healing. And that quote is most, I think most directly said by the great doctor Bruce Perry, who’s an american psychiatrist, a senior fellow at the trauma academy in Houston, Texas, an adjunct professor for psychiatry. I could go on. Man’s genius.
CarrieAnn: Yes.
Will: Either way, Doctor Bruce Perry says the more healthy relationships a child has, the more likely he will be to recover from trauma and to thrive. Relationships are the agents of change, and the most powerful therapy is human love.
CarrieAnn: I love that so much. There’s so much built into that.
Will: There is.
The idea that healthy relationships are what build healthy healing is important
And we can unpack a little bit of that for to kind of talk through some of this, because that’s the fundamental, that’s the fundamental thing we’re trying to talk about tonight is this idea that healthy relationships are what build healthy healing.
CarrieAnn: And, you know, we’ve learned a lot about this through the process that we’ve gone through of adoption. But this applies to, you know, families that have never adopted as well. And this is, this is kind of how I like to think about it, because we’ve been able to apply so many of these principles to the kids that have been born to us as well. Everyone experiences hurt.
Will: Oh, yeah.
CarrieAnn: And we are definitely not perfect parents. And when you think about it, we, we have these interactions with our kids where we’re not perfect, they’re not perfect or even great at the moment, if we’re being honest. And we cause hurt with our kids, you know, and our kids cause hurt to us. But when we look at it in this way, we can say that there can be healing that happens, and the more informed and the more information and wisdom that we gain, we’re able to lead our children in that.
Will: Yeah, absolutely. Because when there’s a hurt that’s occurred in relationship, that hurt is healed in relationship.
Will: Right. When the, when the two siblings are squawking and fighting and going back and forth. The only way that’s made right is eventually, when they honestly do want to reconnect. It’s not the forced say, tell your sister you’re sorry. Sorry.
CarrieAnn: Right.
Will: That whole thing, that doesn’t teach them anything except the bigger person makes you say what they want you to say.
CarrieAnn: Yeah. There is truth to that. we’ve come to the point where we don’t necessarily make our kids apologize to each other. We’re not perfect at that.
Will: I try to not make my kids apologize to. I know that that’s not helpful.
CarrieAnn: There is a balance.
Will: It still strains out because that’s the way I was raised. Right. When you’re stressed and whatever, you’re just like. And you just say. And then you’re like, no, you don’t have to say that. That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry.
CarrieAnn: Right. Well, there’s the element. I think we had this conversation on the way back from our million hour car ride recently that when our kids are little, we want to give them an example because you can’t do something you haven’t seen or you don’t know how to do.
Will: Sure.
CarrieAnn: And so when we make an example and we show our kids, well, this is how you apologize. This is what this looks like and stuff like that. You know, at a certain point, they’ve already, you know, they know how to do it and they know what that looks like. But you can’t, you can’t force it. And we also don’t force our kids to forgive their siblings right away.
Will: No, definitely not.
CarrieAnn: There’s, we give our kids permission to say, I’m not ready to forgive you yet. And normally they come around. Right. Because, you know, they know that relationship’s important, too. But there’s an element where if somebody’s really hurt, you don’t want to force that.
Will: You want to make space for feeling hurt and needing time to process that.
CarrieAnn: Right.
Will: And that’s okay that, you know, you’re kind of making space, their feelings. You make a really good point that there’s a difference between showing your kids how to apologize and forcing them to apologize.
Will: Right. Because there’s a, there’s a training aspect of it for kids that don’t know how to do it, either because of their age or because of their experiences, life to date.
Will: And then there’s the you have to do it right now piece. And that’s the p. And to be clear, we’re saying that the you have to apologize right now piece, the part that youre not going to really get heartfelt apologies out of that.
A friend of ours told this story about his kids being grateful
And so a good example of this, a friend of ours told this story the other day and I thought it was really great. He was talking about how in his family he was really frustrated that his kids werent very grateful. And he was going on and on and hes like, ah, hes like, I was really frustrated. I had a couple of weeks where I was really wrestling with this, where im like, we do all this stuff and whatever, and the kids are just, they never say thank you. They never say anything about that, whatever. And hes like, I just griped and griped and griped about it. He’s like, and surprisingly nothing changed. It was so shocking. Weird. And then he said, I don’t remember what he, what he said was like the catalyst that kind of flipped the switch for him. He decided that rather than griping about the kids not being grateful, he would go out of his way to say thank you for everything. And so every time a kid would bring him a glass of water, a kid would pick up the laundry, a kid would take something out to, you know, take something, take the trash out, any little thing he could find. And he’s like, I would intentionally look for every little things where I was saying it multiple times a day. Hey, thank you so much for that glass of water, baby. Hey, thanks for taking care of the trash. Hey, thank you for doing this. Hey, thank you for doing that. And he’s like, sure enough, he’s like, he probably took about a week, but somewhere in that ballpark, all of a sudden we were doing something, and one of the kids was like, hey, dad, thanks for taking us out for dinner. And the other kids like, yeah, yeah, thanks, dad. and he’s like, all of a sudden, the kids say thank you all the time because I just modeled that.
CarrieAnn: Right?
Will: It wasn’t this. You have to say thank you. Why aren’t you saying thank you? Oh, my goodness. Say thank you right now. That’s not what, that’s not what led them to a place where they genuinely wanted to show gratitude.
CarrieAnn: Right.
Will: And I think it’s the same way with apologies, in the same way with healing and stuff like that, is that it has to come from a genuine place and it’s better caught than taught.
CarrieAnn: Yeah. You live in an environment where, you know that, you know, people want good relationship and they’re, they’re fighting for it, essentially, and they’re trying to make those connections on an active basis that that environment is going to eventually bleed over. You know you’re going to catch that.
Will: Yeah, absolutely.
CarrieAnn: Yeah. Well, and that talks about, you know, we’re, we’re still talking about that. Healthy relationships promote healing.
You know, when we talk about the attachment cycle with infants
You know, when we talk about the attachment cycle with infants.
Will: Yes. It’s a great way to explain it.
CarrieAnn: Yeah. Well, why don’t you, you’ve got the stuff in front of you.
Will: I’ve got the screen in front of me. She can’t see the screen right now.
CarrieAnn: So I’m flying a little blind.
The attachment cycle is something that happens throughout our lives
Will: All right, so the attachment cycle is something that happens throughout our lives. It’s a, it explains how we form relationships and trust and attachment with each other. And attachment is just kind of like the scientific name for a measure of relationship between two people. You’re saying you have good attachment. It means the two of you have a really good relationship. It’s just a more scientific sounding term.
CarrieAnn: Right.
Will: And so the easiest way to understand the attachment cycle is to picture an infant. You’ve got an infant and they have needs. Thankfully, they’re simple.
Will: You know, they’re hungry, they’re, they’re cold, they’re, they, they want to hug, they’re tired, they’re wet, you know, whatever the, whatever the issue is.
CarrieAnn: Right.
Will: But the infant has, the infant has a need they are hungry for, say. And then what does the infant do? They express their need. And the only way an infant knows how to express their need is crying. Is crying. But that is a, that is an infant’s way of saying I need something.
Will: And then it is the parents or the caregivers responsibility at that point to respond to that need.
CarrieAnn: Right.
Will: So the infant has a need. The infant expresses that need by crying. And then the parent come and comes and responds to that need. They feed them, they change them, whatever it is. And then from that, the infant trusts the parent.
CarrieAnn: They learn to trust the parent.
Will: They learn that they’re, when they, when I need something, that my voice matters, that somebody will take care of me, that I can trust this person, that I am safe in this world, that there are people who will take care of me in this world. Because that happens, I think, a hundred thousand times in the first year of life.
CarrieAnn: Right. That’s why you testify. And we’ve talked about this before, but it’s so worth repeating because of the fact that it is a vital part. I mean, the infant analogy is a really simple way to express that, but as our kids get older, those needs could become much more complex and a little bit more complicated. when I say little. I mean, a lot more complicated to be able to decipher.
Will: So you mean like the teenager has a need and then he gives a snarky response to his mom.
CarrieAnn: Right.
Will: Or stomps off down the stairs after perhaps breaking up with his girlfriend or losing his job.
CarrieAnn: Right.
Will: Or getting a bad grade on a test that he doesn’t really want to talk about right now, but he’s kind of stressed or embarrassed about it.
Will: Or maybe somebody called him a name.
CarrieAnn: At school and he doesn’t want to share that, but he’s really frustrated about that.
Will: And you have a surly teenager that is expressing a need.
Will: How many of us recognize that surly teenager is expressing a need? Hands up. Anybody? No? Okay. Yeah, me neither.
CarrieAnn: I.
Will: But that’s what’s going. But that’s what’s going on. I mean, it really is. When we think about that, that stressed out, overwhelmed kind of reaction from your teenager a lot of times is expressing that there’s something going on.
CarrieAnn: And that’s hard as a parent. You’re like, hey, you should have your stuff together because you’re older now and you should understand this. But truly, there are so many things that teens still need help with.
Will: Well, and so do we.
CarrieAnn: Yeah. Right.
Will: I mean, how often do we have a bad day? And like, I don’t know.
CarrieAnn: I’m grumpy, but I’m really grumpy. Leave me alone.
Will: Right.
CarrieAnn: But we can express that, right?
Will: And in healthy ways sometimes. Can we?
CarrieAnn: We try to sometimes. All right. That is really. All to say is that, again, healthy relationships promote healing. So, fighting for having healthy relationships with our kids is worth the work?
Will: Yes, absolutely. Be right back after this message.
CarrieAnn: We’re hitting the road this fall. Come out and say hello. We’ll be leading a breakout session on connecting with your teens. First, join us at the Christian alliance for Orphans CAFO conference in Nashville, Tennessee, September 18 to 20th. Also, don’t miss the replanted conference in Chicago, October 24 to 26. Visit cafo.org. that’s cafo.org and replantedministry m.org to learn more and register today. Want to book us for your next event? Email us using infoconnectedparentingminute.com. we’d love to work with you.
Point number one, we can’t protect our children from everything
Will: And now back to the show. Point number two, we can’t protect our children from everything.
CarrieAnn: Mmm m. That sucks.
Will: We can’t protect our children from everything.
CarrieAnn: It’s true. It’s so hard, though, because as a parent who loves my kids dearly, I want to protect them.
Will: Yeah, absolutely.
CarrieAnn: From hurt, from disappointment, from embarrassment, from all the things that I know feel icky to me.
Will: From heartbreak or rejection from your best friend. Like, all those icky situations that we had to go through growing up.
CarrieAnn: Right. We want better for our kids, and that’s, I think that’s a hallmark of a good parent.
Will: Absolutely.
CarrieAnn: Is that you want your kids to have life better than you did.
Will: Another good quote I heard recently.
CarrieAnn: Yeah.
Will: Is like, you know, that you’re a good parent because it’s hard. Being a bad parent’s easy. You just don’t care.
CarrieAnn: I try to tell our kids that sometimes I’m like, dude, if I didn’t care so much, I would just let you do whatever you wanted to. Like, legit. Like, this is tough.
Will: You just don’t care. Why won’t you let me have my phone and do all the things with my friends? Like, because I care about you.
CarrieAnn: Right.
Will: Because not all those things are good for you.
CarrieAnn: I know. Oh, my gosh, that’s so tough.
Will: So be encouraged. If parenting is hard for you, it’s because you’re trying to do it well.
CarrieAnn: Good job.
We do our children a disservice when we shield them from difficult situations
All right. As much as we want to protect our children from everything, we do our children a disservice when we try to shield them from every difficult situation, especially in a relationship.
Will: Ooh.
CarrieAnn: A disservice. A disservice. Like, there’s an element where you might have to step in for something. But I truly believe, as our kids grow older, the best thing we can do is ask good questions and get them to come to a place of recognizing if a relationship is healthy, if a relationship is not held like a peer relationship, and what they can do. I recently had a conversation with one of our kids, and they were just trying to figure out, what do I do in this situation? Like, this is really tough. And, first off, I was so glad that that child came to me to ask me good questions.
Will: Yeah.
CarrieAnn: But in return, I just asked a lot of questions. And then at a certain point, I’m like, do you want my advice, or do you want me just to listen? And they’re like, I’d really like your advice. And, I said, okay, let’s. If I were in this position, from what I’ve learned in my lifetime now, this is what I might consider. And when we left that conversation, I felt like that child had a better grip on maybe what might be going on and how to navigate that in a way that was healthy.
Will: Yeah.
CarrieAnn: But I got to walk that child through that by asking good questions.
Will: Yeah, that’s so good.
CarrieAnn: It is good. And it’s hard because we want to jump in, we want to fix it for, for our kids. But really what they need us to do is partner with them. And because they, they are their own person, they’re going to have to figure out this, this out their entire life of how to navigate relationship. And so when we just are listening ear and we’re able to, you know, again, ask them, do you want my advice or do you want, me just to listen? I mean, it just, it can help them feel seen, but give them the tools in order to, you know, move forward and, and be able to navigate that, that relationship or those relationships.
Will: Yeah. And I think that’s the key piece we’re trying to say here is because we can’t protect our children from everything forever.
Will: Like we need to use our homes as the safe place to learn to navigate both hard situations and hard emotions.
CarrieAnn: Yeah.
Will: Cause that’s one of the things that, that’s one of the things that’s kind of a big tenet of connected parenting that people don’t, that people tend to make light and tend to kind of poke fun at. Oh, it’s touchy feely, oh, your emotions are okay and all that. And I actually read a story the other day about a guy who grew up with spanking.
Will: And how, well, I was a difficult child and when I got spanked it was okay. And I’m not going to try to wade into this situation completely, but it was an, there was some interesting reflections that he had because he talked about the idea that, you know, he got, he had sworn to after he got into a fight with his sister. And then he’s like, well, you wait till your father comes home and he got spanked. And then he’s learned not to swear in front of his father.
Will: And it was a conversation between him and a therapist and kind of unpacking this whole thing. And one of the things he talked about, he’s like, she’s like, okay, and so what did you do in the future when you got into a fight with your sister? Well, I tended to hit her or I tended to get physical and things like that.
Will: And you know, they kind of walked through this and his own reflection was just, maybe I was just an angry kid. He’s like, and I sure as heck learned to never swear in front of my father again. But I would swear at school all the time.
Will: You know, and it was just one of these things where there was an anger piece there.
Will: Right.
CarrieAnn: Yeah.
Will: And sometimes we can unintentionally teach our kids that their anger or their fear or whatever that big emotion, that big reaction is, we unintentionally teach them. You’re not allowed to show that around me.
CarrieAnn: Yeah.
Will: Right. And that’s. That is not the message we’re trying to send to them.
CarrieAnn: Right.
Will: You know, we’re trying to be like, that’s not the right reaction in the.
CarrieAnn: Situation or maybe that’s not appropriate.
Will: Right. And that. And that’s a good thing to teach your kid.
Will: But we have to teach it to them in a way that they hear it.
CarrieAnn: Exactly.
Will: Because a lot of times when we come down or we have a big reaction to them being inappropriate in that situation, just because swearing at your sister because she knocked over your lego tower is not an appropriate reaction.
CarrieAnn: Right.
Will: But that’s not what that kid learned in that moment.
Will: He learned, don’t swear or you’re gonna get into big trouble. Don’t.
CarrieAnn: Swear in front of somebody that is going to tattle.
Will: There you go. That’s probably. Yeah. And what he potentially could have learned is when your sister does something like that, it makes you really angry. We have to find healthy ways to express this anger.
Will: There’s a whole different. That’s the goal of this connected parenting piece is we’re trying to find ways to help our kids process their emotions in a healthy way, to navigate through difficult situations. Which, again, is what we’re trying to say here, is we can’t protect our children from everything that they need to be able to experience these. These situations, these emotions.
CarrieAnn: Right.
Will: And work through. How do I. How do I rupture and how do I repair, how do I build healthy relationships? Because someday we can’t. Like, we.
CarrieAnn: We won’t be there.
Will: Even if, hypothetically, they lived in a bubble as long as we were alive, we will die before they do.
CarrieAnn: Right.
Will: They’re going to move on, and they’re going to have relationships outside of this home. And so having your home be a safe place to practice and learn and get better at relationships and emotions is really the goal of this parenting thing we’re trying to do for, sure.
We can teach our children how to cultivate good relationships by sharing how
CarrieAnn: I did read that. Cause you sent that to me. Oh, the comment section was something else.
Will: So, yeah, as soon as I started telling that story here, you can send.
CarrieAnn: All your comments to, not us.
Will: That’s fine. I’m a big boy. I can take it.
CarrieAnn: No, I’d love to.
Will: I would. I would have that discussion with somebody else. I present that as it was an interesting reflection by a person who had been through that.
CarrieAnn: Exactly. Well, and it’s good, again, to ask the questions and to be curious about our kids.
Will: Yeah.
CarrieAnn: But curious about their behavior, because it’s. I wish it was as simple as, well, just don’t do that.
Will: Yeah.
CarrieAnn: But typically with our kids, and especially with kids that weren’t born to us and, you know, and I’m just talking about the spectrum because we have both in our home, there is more to the story.
Will: Yeah.
CarrieAnn: And so being curious about that helps us reflect and helps us figure out what’s actually going on.
Will: Well, and you’ve said, even for kids that are born to us, you told before, you, you have stories that happen, things that happen at school or things that happen in a friend’s house or whatever like that. Not. Not every detail of every story of everything that’s ever happened to me made it back to my parents when I was living in their home.
CarrieAnn: Right, right.
Will: So there are experiences that your kiddos that were born to you have had outside of your home that affect the way they look at different situations that you don’t always understand. And so the being curious part is huge.
CarrieAnn: Yeah. So point number two is we can’t protect our children from everything.
Will: And we shouldn’t.
CarrieAnn: And we shouldn’t. All right, going into point number three quickly, is that we can teach our children how to cultivate good relationships by sharing how we navigate good relationships.
Will: We can teach our kids how to cultivate good relationships by sharing how we navigate good relationships.
CarrieAnn: I like that. again, show your kids how. Teach your kids by showing them.
Will: Yeah.
CarrieAnn: You know, and being open with them about your relationships. Now, sometimes you might not have great relationships with other people, but those can also be a learning experience.
Will: Yeah. that’s true.
CarrieAnn: I mean, there is an element. The thing that I love about teens especially, is that we get the opportunity to have actual conversations with them.
Will: Yeah.
CarrieAnn: And I think we miss out on that when we’re so busy arguing over the little things that we want them to do, but they don’t think that they should do and not that they.
Will: Don’T think they should do. They just think they’re infinitesimally important. Less important than anything else.
CarrieAnn: Right. That’s a whole nother podcast. We’ll continue on that. But the thing that I do love about them is you can have those conversations. You can say, yeah, I had this great friend when I was in high school, or I had a great friend when I was in college, and we, I mean, we did everything together, but this happened or this happened or this happened, and now we’re not so close and that doesn’t feel good or I don’t like that, or. Man, we still have a great relationship, but this is how we did it. And there’s so many pieces there that you can just mull over with your kids and help them to be able to have a framework for how they start to develop their lifelong or seasonal friends. I’ve learned that recently is sometimes we have friends that are for a season and that’s okay.
Will: Well, and that’s a good thing to embrace, that there can be seasons to relationships that they, they can. Some. Some relationships come and go and some less stay the stand the test of time, so to speak.
CarrieAnn: Yeah. And it doesn’t make either good or bad if they’re just different.
Will: Yeah, for sure. And I think there’s. And I think the key to having teenagers that can have those conversations and those reflections is talking to your, middle schoolers.
CarrieAnn: Yeah.
Will: When they’re, when they’re still not quite up to that level, but making them feel like you respect them like that.
CarrieAnn: Yeah.
Will: Right. That’s, that’s huge.
CarrieAnn: That is huge because.
Will: What was the saying I heard? You can’t spend twelve years ignoring your child and telling them to stop, not bother you and whatever, and then hope to dive right into a relationship at 13 years when they turn teens. And you think they’re cool now.
CarrieAnn: Yeah.
Will: Because you spent twelve years training them that they need to just go away and leave you alone.
CarrieAnn: Right.
Will: And then at 13 years old, they will.
CarrieAnn: There are so many things we could talk more about on this topic. We’ll have to, we’ll have to come up with more, more podcasts about that because I think there’s so much to unpack with that concept of, of how you start cultivating this in your younger kids, especially if you know, you’re in that season where they’re not quite to the teenage years or, oh, man, I have so many words tonight, but that’s okay.
We can teach our children how to cultivate good relationships through sharing our experiences
Will: All right, well, I think we’ve given them enough words for tonight, so let’s recap our three points and then head on out.
CarrieAnn: All right, so point number one is healthy relationships promote healing because relationships are.
Will: The catalyst of healing in our lives. That’s where it all happens.
CarrieAnn: Absolutely. Point number two is we cannot protect our children from everything some point, and we should not. Right. We have to let them grow. But being able to walk alongside of that with them is a privilege.
Will: It is. And point number three, we can teach our children how to cultivate good relationships through sharing our own experiences in relationship.
CarrieAnn: Yeah. Authenticity with our kids can help them. Even if it doesn’t seem like they’re listening, they are watching what we do.
Will: So many things are. Even when it seems like they’re not listening. Right?
CarrieAnn: Yeah.
Will: Kids do not know how. Do not know how to translate what they are thinking inside of their brains to their face.
CarrieAnn: Oh my gosh. that’s another one too.
Will: So be encouraged. Your kid is probably listening to you more than you think. Maybe not.
CarrieAnn: But that’s also a good reason to be afraid sometimes.
Will: It’s all good. You are a good parent doing good work. And again, if you’re. If you’re finding yourself in a really challenging season in parenting right now, or if you’re having a little bit of a hard time, I’m going to encourage you. You’re having a hard time because you care.
Will: Because you want to do it well.
CarrieAnn: Right?
Will: And so we are on your side. We would love to. We would love to chat. If you have a question or a specific situation that you’d like to unpack us, reach out to us. You can use info onnectedparentingminute.com and you can get ahold of us. We’ll set up a phone call, or we can just chat over email, whatever. We would love to unpack a situation with you. If you’re having a hard time, if you’re struggling right now, please reach out. We would be happy to help. And again, thank you for taking a minute out of your day to listen to the podcast. If you found this podcast encouraging or helpful, please share it with somebody else. Tell them how great it is and how they should be listening each and every single week to this amazing podcast that you found.
CarrieAnn: Give us a five star review sometime too. That’d be awesome.
Will: That would be fantastic. And before we go, we want to Remind you..
CarrieAnn: , you don’t have to be a perfect parent,
Will: but we can all get a little bit better one connected parenting minute at a time.
Outro: Thank you so much for listening to my mom and dad’s podcast. I hope you feel really inspired today and remember to subscribe for the next episode.
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The Connected Parenting Minute 