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Parenting teens can be hard. Parenting teens who are in crisis is even more complicated. You were never meant to walk through this alone.
Welcome to Through the Hard - Parenting Teens in Crisis, a twice-monthly podcast presented by Pathways to Hope Network.
Join us for honest conversations that drive out shame and show us how to navigate the emotions and uncertainty of parenting teens through crisis.
(00:01:17) - Well. Hi there. It's good to be with you again today. I'm so glad that you're choosing yourself in this moment. You know, all day long you give and you give and you give, and it's time to pour a little back in. So before we get started, will you just take a couple of deep breaths with me? Just two deep breaths with me. Thank you. I needed that. I actually needed that to calm myself down today. Not just today, but every day. I get a little anxious whenever I put the headphones on and get in front of a microphone. All of a sudden all of those impostor thoughts start popping in, like, who are you? And who do you think you are? And what right do you have? Look at your life. And then I'm like, well, you know what? I'm pretty sure that I addressed the fact that I'm not a professional, so so I, I need to just shake it off and get over it. I'm just a mom like you who's gone through some really tough times with her kids, who continues to go through really tough times with her kids.
(00:02:58) - And I'm just grateful that I get to be here with you today and sharing what I've learned. And so if you can walk away with some good stuff out of that, then great. And if you don't, then that's okay too. So today's episode is the number one factor that should be guiding our parenting. And you may have noticed in the title, I did a little play on words there and row parent instead of parenting t I n g I put t e n g, which I thought was kind of clever. I'm just saying. And I'm pretty sure no one's used that before, so I should copyright it. But if you see it anywhere else, you and I both know I just came up with that. So the number one factor that should be guiding your parenting decisions. But before we get to number one, there are also three other factors that guide our parenting as well. And I want to kind of go over what those are two. So the first factor, and I think the most obvious is that we learn a lot about parenting, watching how our parents parented us.
(00:04:19) - Right. We learned a lot about what we want to do and what we don't want to do. And aside from that, there's probably not a whole lot of information that is there. And so just that knowledge by itself can be a little bit challenging because as we think about our parents parenting journey, we're going to naturally see the flaws because we were directly impacted by it. We're going to see the places where we could have benefit from them showing up a little bit more in certain areas and maybe a little less in other areas. And so we're going to naturally, when we look back on our parents example, we're going to see those flaws. We're also going to see the differences. We're going to see the differences between who we were as teenagers and who our kids were as teenagers. I got into some mischief when I was a teenager. I know a lot of moms who do not deserve. They do not deserve for even a second what their teenagers are giving them right now because they were good, obedient children growing up.
(00:05:29) - And to you moms, I'm sorry you do not deserve this. You don't. For those of us who you know had some slip ups along the way, made our own questionable decisions, we kind of got this coming to us. Maybe not to the extent that we're receiving. It seems like some interest is being added on here for these years, but we do kind of got it coming to us just a little bit. So we're going to see our parents flaws. We're going to see the difference between who we were as teens and who our teens are right now, the difference between the things that we had to fumble through and the things that our teens are having to fumble through. And I think also another challenge that we're going to experience here is that for some of us, we didn't have an example. As parents, you know, we don't know really how to be a mom because we didn't have a mom or we don't know how to be a dad because we didn't have a dad. And so we're kind of doing the first generation.
(00:06:33) - And I think the blessing in that is that every time one of us is in the role of parent, we're kind of challenged to improve it a little bit. So, for example, my dad was not really an active part of my life growing up, and I really struggled with that. Like I wanted a father figure in my life so badly. And when he came to the end of his life, there was a lot of sadness. For me, not because his life was over, but because the opportunity for us to have the relationship that I so longed to have with him was now gone. And there was a finality about that and a sadness about that. And it took me a little while to be able to process through that. I went through stages of anger. I got therapy around it, you know, it was it was really hard because we tie so much of who we are into the way that our parents interacted with us. It's identity forming, right? But after I started doing some work around this issue and reflecting on it, I realized that my dad's dad was even worse of a dad than my dad was.
(00:07:53) - You know, my dad was absent, but I was aware that he loved me. I know that he cared about me. And my dad's dad was an alcoholic, was abusive. I haven't heard very many positive good things about him. So my dad, you know, stayed away from alcohol, at least through my childhood. So he was doing the best that he could do as well. And I think that's kind of the place that we come to, especially as we become parents. We start to see the humanity in our own parents. And really the big picture, because we're able to look at our flaws and where we are struggling and know that man, we wish that that wasn't an area we were struggling in. And it's something that we have to really work hard at and being intentional about healing within ourselves. So we're not passing those same things down to our kiddos. That's one of the factors that guides our parenting decisions. The second factor that guides our parenting decision is in our observation of other parents.
(00:09:03) - You know, this is why Mops groups are so popular, because you get around a group of women and they're all going through teething. They're all trying to get their kids to sleep through the night. They're all trying to work on potty training. You're going through these stages with other women. And so as a result of that, you're able to observe what other parents are doing and get feedback on what's worked and what's not worked. And you can get a lot of information that way and save yourself a lot of trouble. And not to say that it's going to work for every kid, but having that information is helpful in at least providing you with another resource. But then our kids hit the teen years. And all of a sudden parents. Parents kind of get really quiet. You know, we don't have support groups for parents of middle schoolers, although it should be a thing. And we don't have support groups for parents of teenagers, although, I mean, I am down to go hang out at the park with a sippy juice box and some string cheese and swing for a little while.
(00:10:14) - Like, I think it needs to be a thing. Actually, within the last year, I just started to do a fellowship group for parents of teenagers at our church, Evergreen Christian Community, and this was something that God put on the hearts of two other moms who have teenagers that are struggling. And they came to me and said, hey, would you be willing to lead our group if we started one? We think it's really needed. And so as we were brainstorming what the names would be, one of the mamas suggested parents of teenagers and we could use the acronym Pot for sure. So but somehow the church just I think had a problem with the new pot group showing up on Wednesday nights and what exactly was going down there now, we ended up changing the name to Encouraged and Equipped, which, you know, depending on where you are right now, you might choose either one of those groups based on the title. And that's okay. That's where we're at. We are where we are. But I think what happens is that once those teen years start to hit and things start to go wrong, all of a sudden now it's like, man, these are bigger issues and bigger problems.
(00:11:33) - And we start to experience shame for the fact that this wasn't somehow on our radar magically, and we knew how to cut it off at the pass. You know, like these are all brand new situations that we've never had to experience, but we do that to ourselves. We kind of start to heap some of the shame on and that keeps us isolated. And so we're not able to observe other parents as they're navigating some of these more challenging experiences with their teenagers, which I think is why I felt such a call to do this is because I felt like there needed to be a place where people could come and talk to each other and have those conversations about, this is what I'm going through, and other people to say, yeah, I've experienced that before, and I did this, you know, and just to normalize some of what is going on, I use that word a lot. But that is really the crux of it because because when you have big stuff going on and you find the courage to go and talk to a friend about it and open yourself up to the possibility that you may be judged or wounded for doing so, and your friend God love her in her infinite wisdom of never having raised a teen who's really in crisis says, well, I would just take away their phone.
(00:13:04) - Why don't you take away their phone? And it's so funny. I have this conversation with so many moms and when you know, you know. So those of you who just laughed when I said, why don't you just take away their phone? You know, if it was as simple as taking away a phone, you know, like, oh my gosh, why didn't I think of that? Take away the phone. That's genius. And they're well-meaning. But if you have a kiddo that's really in crisis, this is not going to be solved with taking away a phone. It's not even going to be solved with taking away electronics. You're in the thick of it. And so because the experience of people around you is so limited, support groups can really help to provide resources or even just a sounding board that understands sometimes, most of the time, actually, you don't even need an answer because you're going to find your answer when you're ready to find it. I'm going to say that again. Nobody is going to give you this answer, the answer that you're looking for right now.
(00:14:07) - It's not coming from anybody else. You're going to find the answer when you're ready to find the answer. When your heart's ready for it. When you are ready to make that move, that's when you're going to know, okay, this is the next thing that I need to do. And until then, you're just in this process of evolving and trying to figure it out. So the third factor that guides our parenting is our access to any type of media. So books. Podcasts like this one. Internet articles, specialists, any any type of research that might be out there. As you start to look into those things, those do help guide your parenting decisions as you're making them. And I'm going to go through I planned on doing this before I started recording, but I didn't. I'm going to go ahead and put down a list of books in the show notes that I think might be helpful. If you are somebody who likes to read and take on information that way. But there's also a ton of podcasts out there, endless resources.
(00:15:18) - I mean, there's so much information out there. It's almost too much information. It can be overwhelming, but I think it's always a good idea to have some type of information flowing in, because you never know when that thing is going to hit and you were ready to hear it, you were in the place to hear it, and all of a sudden you know that that's the next step you need to take. So I was talking to a mama this morning, actually, and she was saying that. And that's been my experience too, is that you can have somebody say something to you over and over and over again, different people even. And then one time you hear it and all of a sudden it just hits right and you're like, oh, that's it. It makes sense now. And that's what happens. So being intentional about listening to podcasts every now and then, reading a book every now and then, not obsessively, but just bringing in new information does help to kind of trigger those aha moments when you're ready for them.
(00:16:16) - Which brings us to the number one factor that should be guiding our parenting decisions. The number one factor that should be guiding our parenting decisions is. On the job training. That's right. On the job training is the number one thing that should be guiding our parenting decisions. The sad reality is, is that most of our learning is going to come from the moody, sullen teenager who's been assigned as our teacher. I know. That's our teacher. Yeah, that's our teacher. And we are doing on the job training. Being a parent is the best way to develop parenting skills. See. We teach them and they teach us. And in them we see our flaws and their flaws intertwined. We see our mistakes and their mistakes woven into one. We see the limits of their humanity and of our humanity. See they're learning and growing, and so are we. And as we watch from the front row every failure, struggle and attempt to do it different. They witness from the front row every one of our own failures, struggles and attempts to do it different.
(00:17:48) - They're learning to not be led by every thought which enters into that brain of theirs. And we're learning to stay calm despite the discomfort of watching some of those thoughts turn into actions. They're learning mostly the hard way, in my opinion. Which decisions serve them and which don't. And we're learning to step down from our decision making positions into the more appropriate roles of advisor or coach. And just like learning anything else. It takes repetition and introspection and repetition and failure and repetition and introspection and repetition and failure. And you get it. So the next four episodes, we're going to talk about the four stages that we go through as a parent who's learning to parent a teen in crisis. There's four stages that we go through as we're learning to parent this teen in crisis. Are you curious which stage you're at? I think you're going to find these pretty interesting, and I definitely think that it's going to help you assimilate some of your experiences. I'm really excited about this. So until then, my sister or brother remember that each person that we meet is both our student and our teacher, and that applies to your children as well.
(00:19:21) - So what are you learning?