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In Part 2 of Storied Parenting, Chris and Beth Bruno talk about their paradigm of parenting that shifts everything from how we handle correction with 4-year olds to how we encourage 14-year olds. Our children are stories to be discovered. Our role as parents is to awaken in them the story they were meant to write.
Chris and Beth Bruno host conversations at the intersection of psychology and theology. This podcast is powered by ReStory Counseling.
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Want to know what it takes to Restore Your Life? We are Chris and Beth Bruno and we lead a team of brilliant story work counselors around the country all committed to helping you come alive. We call it the ReStory Approach. So if you're a story explorer, kingdom seeker, or just a day-to-dayer, you've come to the right place. Welcome to the ReStory Podcast.
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what it was like.
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to do several parenting conferences around the country. And that was super fun to do that with you. Those were the days. Those were the good old days. Having just read a book all about a global pandemic that sends people off into outer space, that feels really gloomy. Yeah. But yes, I do. But there were days when we were able to.
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gathered people together in one big space and talk about parenting. And including Kenya, including Kenya, right before COVID. That was weeks before COVID. Weeks. Yeah. So that was really fun to do that with you. And that feels like a long time ago and yet it's only, you know, only a couple of years. And there's something that we, uh, we did with those parenting conferences.
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an approach that we take with our parenting we talked about in those places. And so we want to unpack that a little bit. And as part two of our series of story-based parenting and story informed parenting. Yeah. I think it comes out of, um, you know, being an Enneagram one and being very focused as a young mom on getting it right. Yeah. And getting all of the books.
01:58
and trying to figure out all of the things around all of the things that come with raising a child. It was exhausting. And if you know there was a ton of self-contempt and comparison and perfectionism and judgment. I mean it just was a lot of pressure that I and I alone put upon myself. But I also felt like it was coming from God.
02:25
I felt a little bit of the weight from some of the verses that maybe were, I don't know, they just kind of summarized for me all of those parenting books. And if there's one that summarizes it all, it's Proverbs 22, 6, train up a child in the way he should go. And when he is old, he will not depart from it. Yes. And I just felt all the pressure of what that meant.
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Well, and we were trained that if you train in the appropriate ways, if this is just kind of how the books are written and how the sermons are taught, it is if you do the right training in the right way at the right time for the right amount, then the child will grow up and they will not depart from the way that you have taught them. Overwhelming pressure. Overwhelming pressure. And I'm not alone.
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You know, I might be alone or rare or one of, you know, nine in terms of my perfectionism with if we're talking about the enneagram, but I am not alone as a parent and as a mom, especially wanting to get it right. And so it's just it took time to come to a new, different, more freeing perspective. And it came from studying that verse.
03:46
Well, and it came from studying that verse, which we're going to get into in a second, but it came from having this storied lens of what is the story versus what is the right way. Yeah. And that shift in lens allowed us to have a different approach to this verse. Right, right. It was coming to understand story at play in everything and in our lives for us to then have that perspective, that lens.
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on raising our kids. And we could, you know, we also have come to kind of interchangeably use the word glory. Really a belief that God has made us in his image to bring his glory to the world, that there is a glory in us meant to shine on the world.
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Yes. And that is this idea of having, you know, a masterpiece that as a parent, you know, I always thought my job was to create a masterpiece. It was to create and shape and mold and sculpt and form out of clay this masterpiece. And it was coming to understand, oh, no, no, no, no, no. The masterpiece is already there. God has already formed the masterpiece. It's my job to discover it.
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And what a shift.
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Right? What a shift just in what you just said, said this. It is not my job to create the masterpiece. It is my job to discover the masterpiece that God has already created that in and of itself. I hope everyone listening just took a collective deep breath. Oh, like what if that's actually true? And what if actually we could approach our children from this lens of what is this glory that is written into their lives? And, and as a parent, it is my job to pursue and discover.
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rather than all the right ways and all the right times and all the right moments and in all the right amounts to craft and create it myself. Yeah. Well, and it changes what we see. It changes what we are constantly on the lookout for. It shifts our perspective of our kids from constantly correcting mistakes and shortcomings and sin and badness.
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identifying, naming, calling out, they're the ways in which they reflect God. Yeah. So one of the most basic, simple kind of examples, real-life examples I like to give is around Legos. Legos. I hate stepping on Legos. Well, here's a perspective shift. Yes. You've got a four-year-old boy and he's having a playdate.
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and Legos have been played with for hours, and there's, you know, castles and all the buildings, and it's this, you know, beautiful set, Minecraft in the flesh, on the floor. And the playdate's over, and it's time to clean up. And the moms come and say, clean up time, and your four-year-old son is very intent on getting every last Lego in the bucket and organizing his room, putting it all back together.
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And the friend has had a blast. This is the fun friend. And right towards the end, right when most of all the Legos are back in the bucket, the friend laughingly kicks over the bucket and spills them all out. Cause this is the fun friend, the jokester friend. And your son wallops out and hits him. And in that moment, there's the choice.
07:38
There's the parenting choice. My son is bad and hit a child. Do I correct that and that is the entirety of what I focus on? My bad son, who hits other kids? Or is there something more here? And when we are looking for the more, when we are able to see that our son reflects an ordered God who loves
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organization and things in their place, things that work in rhythms and sequences and times, right? That is how our son brings the glory of God to the world. And there's beauty in that. How then do we talk about that situation differently? And that is a simple example. Imagine all of the other examples that come from having a storied
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lens toward our kids. And it's not to say that we're not going to respond to the behavior that has happened with regard to hitting his friend, but it's not going to be the first thing that we do. Not going to be the bereft of naming the goodness that is in him that motivated him and frustrated him at the frustration of his friend. It's just also.
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and even more so going to be calling out, you are, you love order. And that was frustrating for your friend to tip over the bucket. Yes, and I love that you love order. Because God loves order and you are like your God. And that right there, those words, that languaging for our kids, whether they're three or four or 13 and 15 and 25,
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of awaken and it is coming to that different understanding of that verse in Proverbs that gave us words for awakening
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our kids. Yeah. So unpack that a little bit. Okay. Cause that's the first time you're using the word awaken in response to where we're at, where we're at right now. So what do you mean by awakening? Well, in that moment, it, with those words, we are awakening, awakening our child to understanding more of their glory, who they were made to be. And that is actually a better interpretation of Proverbs 22, 6.
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that the word train in Hebrew is the word “chanak” and It it actually is the same word used for this this process that when a mother was giving birth and she was always attended to by a midwife and the midwife would receive The newborn and prior to giving the newborn to the new mom to nurse To begin to breastfeed the midwife would dip her little finger
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in crushed figs and dates. And that sweet, with that sweetness on her pinky figure, she would rub the roof, the palate of the baby's mouth to stimulate thirst, to arouse and awaken, to thirst and hunger for more. That word is “chanak”, and that is the same word used in that verse, to train. And so a better interpretation of that verse is to arouse and awaken our child.
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to thirst and hunger after more. More of what? More of who they were meant to be. More of who God's glory is in them to bring toward the earth. Yes. That is what we are to help our kids do. Right. That's our role as a parent. And so a way to say it in story terms is to awaken in them the story that they were meant to write.
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So all of this is in your favorite mini-course that you have online right now at Fairs and Lovely. It's my favorite because it informs a whole new way. It's the foundation. Of parenting. Yeah.
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And just like I said, like I've watched transformation happen in mother-daughter relationships, when mom learns her story, what we talked about last week, I have also been witness to transformation happen when parents begin to look at their kids differently, when their lens, when their lens changes. Yes. And when their interpretation of their role shifts, when they stop being the sculpture.
12:24
the potter and they start looking for the masterpiece that's already present. I have seen parenting change. What, what does that mean? Like, unpack that just for a moment. Like what has actually changed entire dynamics, the cycle, the, the constant, Oh, we're, you know, we're in a season of this and this kid is doing this over and over and over again and at frustration, like nothing works.
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this kind of discipline doesn't work and this kind of thing doesn't work and we don't we're stuck we don't know what to do and oftentimes this is when like I'm not gonna I'm not gonna go doomsday but this is when things could really shift for a kid's like identity and who he or she believes themselves to be because it's just this tense environment when that cycle gets so stuck.
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And what I've seen happen is parents get off the cycle. Yeah. That when they stop, when they're able to start naming glory and awakening their kids to a bigger story that they're a part of, and that they're actually writing with their behavior, it diffuses the kid's frustration. It diffuses their sense of, I am a bad person.
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I'm always in trouble. I'm a constant failure. I'm dumb. I'm stupid. I mean, it diffuses that it, it's just, it's that quick sometimes. Well, and to go back to your example with the Legos, to go to that child and have them blessed for their desire for order versus cursed for their inability to control their emotions. Now they're,
14:14
You know, it's the difference between being honored for what they are versus told that, hey, you're a bully and you need to control yourself. It's a, it's a big difference. And I just love it that, you know, this awakened approach to parenting, this story-informed approach to parenting is actually that our children are a story to be discovered and not a child to be corrected in a story to be corrected. And that I think is the shift you're talking about. Yeah.
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Yes. So it's also on fierceandlovely.org, many courses, and all of these are all a cart. They're just $10. They're not that long. They're all on demand and they come with about a 40-page workbook for parents to just kind of work through and process. And I love this one because this is really the core of our approach to parenting. And if there's one thing that I want our listeners, who are parents, to dive into, it would be...
15:13
Awaken. Yeah. Well, and so next week we're going to continue a conversation about, uh, the storied approach to parenting. And this is something that comes up all the time and it doesn't matter how old your child is. They could be one, two, they could be 15, 16. It is with regard to their sexuality. And so we're going to talk about that next week. Yep. Thanks for joining us today on the Restory Podcast.
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If you're curious about our parenting paradigm, you can purchase the mini-course for just $10 on fierceandlovely.org. Head over there to mini-courses and check out Awaken. And if you're currently raising tweens and teens, feeling overwhelmed by their world, head over to my Fierce and Lovely podcast for a new series on parenting through tough issues our teens face.
16:07
This month I'm talking about big feelings with author Elizabeth Lang Thompson, disordered eating with a registered dietitian, self-harm and self-injury with the social worker, and cultivating friendships with author Alexandra Kirkendall. Join Chris and I next week as we continue to talk about story parenting and dive into story sexuality. See you then.