On making a comeback with your kids

photo credit: https://unsplash.com/@morganddl

If you’re like me you like comebacks. One of the most thrilling, exhilarating, amazing things in mixed martial arts is when someone snatches victory from the jaws of defeat. When a fighter is down on points or when they’re on the brink of losing consciousness. When they’re way behind and everyone in the room in the arena knows they need a knockout to win, their opponent knows they need a knockout to win, they know that they need a knockout to win, and it happens! Even more than that, it is when you see someone who clearly just will. not. give up.

No matter how beat down you are, no matter how you’ve been dominated, when you’re sparring, when you’re in a fight and you get some damage and you take a few hard shots, you have a choice: you can either tell yourself Oh no, my eye is closing! or He’s stronger! He’s faster than I thought he would be. My best stuff isn’t working. I’m throwing my hardest shots, he’s just shaking it off and he’s walking through it! You can start worrying about losing. Or you can start getting focused on adapting, going to plan B, making adjustments, and focusing on finding a way to win.

I think that’s one thing is that great fighters have is this mindset that no matter how far they might be behind on points that they are going to get the knockout. They are going to catch the guy in a submission. Until the final bell rings believe and are determined they’re going to find a way to win. And I think we have to have that mindset as parents. We have to think of things over the Long Haul. We have to think that if what was working with our kids isn’t getting through. We have to keep changing the angles. We have to keep at it and stay active because maybe the 4th or 5th shot isn’t going to get through but maybe the fortieth or fiftieth shot will. By shots, I don’t mean punches and kicks, things that will damage them. I mean acts of love, bids for connection, consistently and faithfully showing up and pursuing them. Maybe we try something new that we’ve heard is supposed to work. When you are focused and listening and learning and adapting to your child. When you seek to understand them, not just inflict your agenda on them, you can innovate, you can create, you can find a way to get through, to win. As long as you’re willing to be there for your kids, it’s never too late.

You can’t control whether they’ll respond, all you can control is to make yourself available. So if you’re a dad who’s wanting to restore your relationship with your kids even if they’re in their twenties, even if they’re in their thirties, even if they’re in their forties, even if they haven’t talked to you for a long time – you can do this.

You can only control what you’re willing to do and if you’re willing to reach out, if you’re willing to humble yourself, if you’re willing to apologize, despite how things started and how grim things are looking, something good might come out of it still. You might have an epic comeback with your kids. And that would be so much more exciting, exhilarating beautiful to see than any MMA match could ever be.

Encouraging and Challenging Your Kids

One tension in the art of grace-based parenting is teaching kids that while grace and love are unconditional, skill, excellence, responsibility, success and trust aren’t.
Those take work, effort, initiative, character, and intention.
Encouragement without challenge is boring and enabling and can lead to entitlement.
Challenge without encouragement is discouraging and exhausting and can lead to a performance-based life.
Encouragement and challenge are inspiring and empowering.
But it’s so hard to provide just the right balance; it’s the balance of grace and truth.
How have you encouraged or challenged your child (young or adult) to grow, tryout for something, stick with something, be more responsible, get a job, stretch outside their comfort zone towards their potential without causing them to think they aren’t “good enough” or what they do is never enough?

On our plans for our kids’ success

On parenting:
Formulas, curriculum, techniques, strategies, tools.
Philosophy, values, goals, mission statements.
Homeschool, public school, private school.

They all can work

until they don’t.

One key is paying enough attention to if/when they don’t and adjust.
Not using them as a way to check out, to avoid having to work and deal with the responsibility of parenting.

The best plan can’t overcome an unengaged parent.
Even if there was such a thing as a perfect parenting plan/tool/formula we’d still have the problem of being imperfect parents.
It’s why we need grace & forgiveness and wise friends and mentors on the journey.

When you stop talking

In the busyness of life, it’s easy to lose track of those closest to you.
It isn’t helpful to assume negative things about your kids or your spouse, to assume they’re blowing it or off track somehow.
On the other hand, it isn’t always wise to assume they’re fine either.
Assumptions prevent understanding, honest and trust.
They allow hiding, lack of accountability and self-deception.

The answer is to courageously initiate conversation.
To overcome avoidance and risk rejection
to get to the heart of what is really going on in their lives.

Going first with transparency, leading with an invitation, not an interrogation, being willing to be wrong about your interpretations and hunches, having a mindset of curiosity instead criticism helps too.

On grace in parenting

On grace in parenting, something I’m still learning,
Giving up control doesn’t mean giving up.
Letting go, not being controlling, doesn’t mean
you don’t care
you are quitting
you are unloving
you are not doing enough
that your kids are going to turn out bad
you aren’t in charge anymore

It doesn’t mean that you are failing as a parent.

The verse is “train up a child in the way he should go.”
It’s not “Make a child go the way he should go”

It does mean you may not measure up to others in the comparison game
It opens you up to finding other ways to avoid feeling anxiety
feeling embarrassed
besides anger, shame, disapproval or power to get conformity.
It does mean you have to find a different way of measuring success besides what’s seen, on behavior
And that’s kind of weird and hard to put your hands on.
It opens you up to being disappointed that everything doesn’t happen
your way and the way you want.
It opens you up to just flat out feeling betrayed because you’ve been lied to or disobeyed.

But that’s a good thing.
For you and the kids.
Because, despite the frustration, stress/anxiety and even pain of it all,
you will actually have a real, living, breathing relationship between a real, live, amazingly human person and not some fabrication of a life that falls apart when you stop micro-managing it.

Parenting and Identity

Parenting is more about your best behavior than your kids’.
And realizing it’s not about behavior ultimately.
 
It’s about identity.
 
You can’t create a great story for your family, your marriage – you can’t be heroic in the face of your challenges – without facing and knowing your backstory.
 
You can’t get to “this is us”, without discovering “this is me”.

I went to a marriage counseling training last week, one of the interventions we learned was how to work through the aftermath of a fight.

One of the keys, besides self-awareness of feelings and listening well, was talking about a memory, a story from your past that brought up those same feelings.

It helps us identify our triggers, it helps us become more aware of how we react.
“None of us get out of childhood without a few crazy buttons.” – John Gottman.
When we understand this, we gain more self-control, we are able to stay calmer and objective (we prevent getting flooded).
This helps us problem-solve, brainstorm, compromise, collaborate and come to agreements more easily because we aren’t overwhelmed (and overwhelming our kids) with our frustration, grumpiness, anger or even rage.
We are able to give our best selves to our family.

Eight Coaching Questions for A Great Start to School

Eight Coaching Questions to Get Off To A Great Start with School

Hope you’ve had a good summer.

We had fun taking ~3500 mile road trip through CA, AZ, UT, NV, ID.

Hadn’t been to Disneyland in 8 years, it’s changed! And we had a chance to go to California Adventure for the first time as well as Monterey Bay, the Grand Canyon, the Narrows at Zion National Park, the Hoover Dam and Las Vegas.

As with most year, summer seems to go by so quickly. With our kids, every year is a formative year.

John Maxwell teaches that we don’t grow just from getting older and going through things, we don’t grow just from our experiences. We grow from evaluating our experience. We can’t control what we go through but we can control what we take away from our experiences.

And we can process our experiences in a way that grows and teaches us by choosing what we underline and highlight what we take out of hard experiences and positive experiences. They don’t have to be painful, challenging experiences. We can grow from mundane, every day, positive things too. With our kids, we can take it for granted that they are doing well or that they are managing the stress and challenges of the new year.

Sometimes kids can be left to fend for themselves, without being intentional as parents to check in with them. Sometimes we can get busy and focused on activities and results and we may neglect asking how they are doing emotionally. One way to process and support your kids is to debrief with them and listen for what they are going through, what they are experiencing.

Our kids learn more what they go through together with us, than what we tell them. Experience is one of the most powerful ways our kids learn.

So, what are your kids experiencing?

This year, ask your kids questions and listen well to what is going on in their hearts and minds.  Doing it early is a way of showing them that you care about them, that you’re with them, that they’re not alone.

When you do this early in their lives, later when they are questioning whether they want you around, or whether they want you involved, when they’re struggling with whether they want to be transparent and disclose what’s really going on with them, they will because there will be a lot of trust, a foundation of lots of support and encouragement that you’ve built up.  They’ll know that they can always come to you.

One of the joys, one the best parts, of parenting is when your kids trust you and are open with you.

Here’s eight questions for debriefing and coaching your kids:

1. What was that like?

When you observe them going through something with a sibling or someone on their sports team, ask them what was it like? You can ask this in the car, around the dinner table.

2. How did you feel?

Asking them this helps our kids develop self-awareness, an awareness of what is going on inside themselves. Being able to understand what is going on inside and giving them a vocabulary, an emotional vocabulary, to understand and express themselves can be very helpful for boys and girls. Not only will it help them identify their own emotions but it will help them develop empathy and emotional and social intelligence. It will help them increase their other-person perspective, an awareness of how they impact their peers, how they impact other members of the family, how what they do affects you.

You can over do that, you can be overly concerned with other peoples’ feelings, you can become enmeshed. But taking the first step of being aware and communicating how you’re feeling can also help with exploring and choosing healthy boundaries. It will help teach them the difference between being empathetic and feeling guilty and responsible for other peoples’ feelings.

Pixar’s Inside Out, if you haven’t already watched it, can be helpful in going deeper with this.

3. What did you notice?

This question sometimes is answered with physical observations, internal or external.  This question can help you see what your child is focused on or concerned about.

4. What did you tell yourself?

This introduces the concept that we have some control in way we respond to different situations; how we react and respond emotionally or behaviorally – whether it’s what we do or what we say – is greatly influenced by our self-talk. We can also increase self-awareness with this question. Sometimes when I ask counseling clients this question they respond, “I don’t know. I didn’t tell myself anything.” If you’re kids respond that way, that’s fine, just give them some time and space to figure it out and answer. Sometimes they don’t intentionally or willfully tell themselves anything. Sometimes automatic, core beliefs or our emotions drive our behavior.  Going back to question #2 How did you feel? And working backward can help reveal what is driving that emotion and reveal what they are telling themselves, maybe subconsciously. This can help with teaching anger management and self-soothing.

Brene Brown has described this in her book Rising Strong describes this as “the story I tell myself”, she notes that when we are in pain our brain searches for meaning to try to cope with the pain. And our brain will make up a story to try to make sense of and deal with the pain. Even if it’s wrong. It feels better than not having a story.

So, what did you tell yourself?

5. What does that say about you?

This is something I’m really passionate about, helping dads to speak truth into their kids’ lives. How your kid answer is one of the keys with whether they struggle with self-worth or self-confidence, with worry and anxiety. Or on the flipside with whether they become confident, compassionate, generous or brave. What does that say about you? When they are going through things.

It’s tough. When our kids are struggling or going through pain, our knee jerk reaction is to jump in there and reassure them.  My girls and boy have had different insecurities and have different struggles as they grown and are growing up.  It’s just like listening and being there for your spouse, instead of jumping in, allow them to express the depths to which they are struggling, try to listen a little longer.  Allow them to open up even more. What they start with may actually not be the most important issue, it may just be today’s symptom of it.  Often, with hard things, our kids will test the water. If they put out something and we jump all over them and cut them off too quickly, you may not get to what you need to get to. We have to handle it well.  If we minimize their feelings, tell them how to feel and think or what they need to do too soon, we disempower them. We have to let them struggle. Allowing them to struggle allows them to put down their mask and take off their “costumes”.

When we take the time and don’t rush, we earn the right to suggest other things that are true, other things that they could tell themselves. We can point them to the truth of Scripture. We can hold space for them when they are discouraged and bear patiently with them as they wrestle with decisions and ambivalence or sadness. When they feel that you’ve understood, when they’ve had a chance to vent without judgment and being shut down, you’ll feel the shift. They’ll start to talk about what they might do.

6. What do you think you’ll do next time?

You’ll know you’re asking this question too early if they “Yes…But…” you.

Asking this question, What do you think *you’ll” do?, instead of Have you tried this? Or Why don’t you do this?  Will reveal whether they are done venting and if they are ready to talk about problem-solving and what they’ll do next time.

7. What went well?

This question can help your child get unstuck and shift to problem-solving mode (Again, don’t get impatient or manipulative and ask this too early).

Most situations, if it’s not just something awful, have something to learn, something to takeaway, positive or strength, something that they did well. This helps our kids to get comfortable with ambivalence. For example, if they go to a party or you have a Thanksgiving Dinner, parts of the time or day may be great and fun and there will be parts that didn’t go great or didn’t meet your expectations. This question can help your kids with negativity, criticism and allowing the negatives to erase the positives with experiences and with people.

8. What would you like to try next?

This question helps our kids not worry about perfection.  This introduces or reinforces the principle of a growth and learning mindset.   We evaluate our experiences, highlight the positives, learn from the negatives and think solutions or adjustments and courageously try again, trying an experiment, trying to observe and improve and what we’ve been through. This question helps them understand that we don’t expect perfection, that we understand that they are growing. And we can say, honestly, that “You did a great job. You’re awesome.” And there’s to experiement with, adjust and learn. We want to give our kids truthful feedback. We don’t want our kids to be like the poor people on American Idol who they thought they are great singers when they are terrible. Somehow, no one’s been able to tell them the truth.  I guess their friends and family were well-meaning, they probably wanted to support them unconditionally but in the long run it doesn’t help our kids to not tell them the truth about where they are at. Their self-worth or how much we love them isn’t based on them being perfect.

Finally, when you ask these eight questions, it takes time.  To do it well it takes focus. Cutting down on distractions, carving out the space and time is important. When you do this with your kids, they will learn that they can put themselves out there and take risks. It will also help your kids not to quit when things get hard.

Our kids used to do musical theater. It always amazed me that they would do auditions in front of a panel of judges and their peers. They’d prepare a scene of dialogue or a song to present. And they learned that when they didn’t get the part that it was ok. And they were going to be ok and that was fine. It was still fun because they would find a way to still participate or be a part even if they didn’t get a main part.  And that was a beautiful thing that has translated to other challenges they’ve faced, like applying for jobs or taking on leadership roles.

How do our kids get brave?

They do that by having a sense that we are there for them. That we are going to walk through the risk with them.  We’re going to listen. We’re going to tell them the truth. We’re going to hold them accountable. We’re going to call them out when they’re getting off track. (It’s something my kids have told me they appreciate.  It’s hard because I want my kids to like me. It was really a struggle when they were younger.  But we’re learning.) We’re going to cheer them on. We’re going to honor their unique perspectives and their choices.

We help our kids by going through stuff with them. And we listen and support them better when we’ve worked through our own anxieties, fears and insecurity. So, maybe run these eight questions by yourself.

I hope these questions will help you coach, connect and support your kids in a deeper, more meaningful way this year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A parenting lesson from Mayweather vs McGregor

Took my youngest to her first PPV, McGregor vs Mayweather.
It was fun.

Had me thinking about fatherhood.

A lot of guys, especially if they come to marriage and fatherhood later in life, find it difficult to crossover from areas of their strengths into the arena of relationships and healthy communication.

They may be extremely successful and competent in sports, in living independently, at work or with their military service.
They may be extremely motivated because of their own childhood to be a great dad and husband.
But lacking a role model or experience or confidence they can feel inadequate or even scared, talk themselves out of it or give up.

I know I was with my eldest daughter.
I threw myself into training and competing in MMA because it made feel good.
All the while neglecting her and my wife.

I didn’t give myself a chance to win.
A chance at significance and greatness in their lives.
It took a lot of pain, a year of wake up calls to make the changes I needed to make.

He lost but McGregor inspired a lot of people.
He lost but he still won.

I encourage you and other fathers, just get in the arena of relationships.
Swing for the fences.
Learn the fundamentals and basics of empathy, communication, resolving conflict.
Learn how to listen.
Go to counseling or get coaching if you have to learn the skills.
Be humble enough to be a beginner.
And can use the focus, effort and passion that you use to win in other areas and apply them to your relationships.
Give your best at home too.
A lot of those skills can translate.

You may be awkward at first, it might not be awesome.
You feel like you’re failing and you’ve gotten knocked down.
But trust me guys, the battle to be a great dad is worth it.

Encouragement for Dads and Daughters

Hi guys,

It’s a been a bit since I’ve blogged.  The end of the school year gets a little crazy in our family.  We run the gauntlet of musical events and graduations (one week we did two recitals and three concerts).

I was a “guest” on the Launching Your Daughter Podcast recently.  Nicole Burgess a colleague of mine from the Selling The Couch Facebook group invited me to write some encouragement for dads and daughters for Father’s Day.

Part of me jumped at the chance, part of me was nervous to share them. Despite the fact that most of what I shared, I’ve shared with FB friends.

You’ll also hear another reason why our family life has been a little crazy lately (big announcement!).

You can listen to the podcast here. 

I hope it encourages you.

(I just realized, my post a letter To My Daughters On Dating is still the most viewed blog post in the past two years.)

Be in your kids’ corner

Someday your kids will have to fight their own battles.
They’ll have to step into their arena, into their own cage match.
The door will shut and you won’t be able to join them inside.
And they’ll have to stand on their own.

But doesn’t mean they’ll be alone.
If you’ve put in the work at building a solid relationship, if you’ve prepared them well, they will let you corner them.
They’ll want you in their corner.
For instruction, for encouragement.
They’ll listen for your voice above the crowd.

But they won’t listen for your voice through the noise if you aren’t with them in the grind.
Coaching and leading them in the day to day work on the mats of life, of school, of growing up, of navigating relationships and discovering who they are.
You don’t earn the right to corner them on the big moments, the big battles in life, without consistently being that voice in their lives.
If you want to celebrate the wins, be there for them in the lows.

If you aren’t sure what that means, Dad, it just starts with listening and being curious.
They will teach you what they need just by being there and showing up for them.
Every day.