Focus on the Family

Jim Daly: Hi, I'm Jim Daly. We're getting ready to celebrate 50 years of ministry at Focus on the Family, but the celebration wouldn't be complete without hearing from you. Maybe Focus helped you survive the toddler years, navigate the teen years, or reminded you that you're not alone. If God has used this ministry to encourage you, we'd love to hear your story. Call now to share it with us at FocusOnTheFamily.com/broadcast.

John Fuller: This is John Fuller and please remember to let us know how you're listening to these programs on a podcast, app, or website.

Michelle Nietert: You do not put a kid who's got a broken arm, let's say they're struggling with anxiety or something already, you do not put them in a canoe to swim upstream with one paddle. They need other people on the boat to help them move that boat along the upstream of our culture today.

John Fuller: That's counselor and mom, Michelle Nietert, and she's back with us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller and thanks for joining us.

Jim Daly: John, this is such an important topic. How do we strengthen our children, particularly our girls, in this book *Strong and Secure*? Michelle's done a great job raising the right issues for us as parents to be over the target on: a girl's identity, her sense of self-worth, her relationship with Christ, all the foundations so that the other things culture will throw at them can be managed in those contexts.

If you didn't listen to the broadcast last time, get the app. That's the best way to do it. You have access to everything that we do, both the podcast and the broadcast. It's just Focus on the Family Broadcast app and you can find that in your app store. I'm looking forward to today. We're going to continue the discussion with Michelle and talk more about securing your daughter's spiritual well-being, emotional well-being, and physical well-being.

John Fuller: I really liked how she framed it in terms of helping our kids grab onto the father heart of God and He's our source. You mentioned the book, Jim, and we have it. It's called *Strong and Secure: 100 Devotions for Young Women*. As a listener, you can learn more about Michelle and this devotional on our website.

Jim Daly: Michelle, welcome back. It's good to have you with us again to continue this discussion. I feel like my whole parenting experience is just in my brain, things I need to remember to do, a creation of a list, I guess is how I would express it. Make sure we're reading the word together and we did that when the boys were younger more often. Now in their 20s, I'm sending them more scripture every few days.

Hey, this caught my attention, here's why, thought it might apply to you. You've got to find ways to keep bringing the word in front of your young people, whatever age, high school or college. What do you do to try to keep that connection spiritually, especially with your daughter at a distance? She's in college, but your son's still at home.

Michelle Nietert: The other day Nolan came in and he was just overwhelmed. He had woken up late and he needs uniform shorts and we don't know what happened to them, but they weren't in the house. We think maybe the gym bag. He runs track right now. He woke up in a mood.

This is what I want to tell parents. This is why you stay grounded while your kids are having that mood. It was a little tough. I was up that morning and by the grace of God, I had already listened to some scripture. I said to him as he was in my room frantically looking, "I got you. You need to go take your shower, but before you do, I just said Alexa, open the Bible app and read us the word of the day."

We just listened to that together and he was like, "Mom, how did you know that was going to fit?" I said, "I happened to hear it a couple minutes ago." I had already done that that day. Then he went up and took his shower. We did not find the shorts, so we had to get to school early to borrow some out of lost and found. Borrow I use lightly.

We got there and on the way there he said, "Mom, thank you for staying so calm when I was so upset." He noticed that I was a spiritual extension cord of God's peace to him in the midst of that difficult time and he expressed some gratitude, which is rare. That doesn't happen all the time.

I think that is so important. Then I looked at him and I said, "Now I know I need to pray you find shorts when you get inside there, but how else can I pray for you today?" He's like, "I got a test. I think I'm ready, but I got a test." I'm like, "Okay, thanks."

Especially with my daughter far away, I ask her a lot how I can pray for her. Sometimes I will notice things and you've got to be careful with that so you don't sound like you're preaching at them or correcting them because kids take advice as criticism when they're in college. I think it's really important that we be aware of that.

We continue to share God's word. If God lays a scripture on your heart, I love especially they like the memes, so they like you to find the photo with the scripture and share it with them. I do that a lot with them as well.

I say a lot in the office to people who are not believers that hope deferred will make the heart sick. In fact, that's how teenage girls end up depressed. They're struggling with some anxiety or some external pressure and then they all of a sudden think they can fix it and they try to fix it and then they can't fix it. They try to get their friends to help them fix it and then their hope gets deferred and it makes their heart sick and they end up sometimes even clinically depressed because of it.

We can weave that scripture in, but if we're going to do that, we as parents have to be in that word, knowing that word, letting it come. I really believe it's meant to breathe life in and through us. I do have some parents who are reading this devotional themselves. I had a mom ask me, "How could I use this devotional because I don't think my daughter will read it when I give it to her in college?"

I said, "What if you look through it because I'm writing about the difficulties teens are facing and young adults that we treat in our counseling center all the time? What if it just gave you words to say and questions to ask?" She came back to me and said, "I've had the best conversations with my daughter. I didn't realize one of her friends was going through a bad breakup and how much a bad boyfriend can affect you."

She learned some of the topics that they're living through better, especially when it's your first. Your first is always difficult.

Jim Daly: Let me take us back to that reaction when your son was out of sorts because I think it's really important. The other response I'd like to describe it and then have you respond to it because in that environment, you as the parent can be sucked in. You now are anxious about the poor planning that your teen has displayed and it's pushing your buttons.

Michelle Nietert: It is. Not only that, I feel like I didn't train him well enough. He's disorganized. What's wrong with him? Why can't he keep up with his stuff? That's the wrong response in a crisis moment for a parent to give, even though it's running through our heads.

Jim Daly: Well, that's the hook. How do you back out of that frenzy as the parent and not fall for the bait? I'm not saying your teen is baiting you per se, but they're in a frenzy and you have to be the adult in the room, like you did. But if you are more easily prone as a parent to get into the fray emotionally and go, "Well, why didn't you plan? You know I'm busy. I've got all this going on today. I don't have time to look for your shorts. That's your job, not my job." This ends up in conflict rather than shalom, God's peace.

Michelle Nietert: You're right and that's probably what would have happened. I had two clients cancel that morning by the grace of God. So I wasn't getting ready for work like I normally am at the same time he's getting ready for school. On a typical day, I'd be like, "Nolan, I don't have time for this. I've got to get my own makeup on and get in the car" and stuff like that.

I think that's reality. I think though that we want to try as much as we can to not take their bait. I think it's the bait of the enemy trying to cause destruction in our lives. Let me say this. There are days that that would have been more my response. You know what you do then?

As I'm dealing with kids who hear other kids talk about their parents and they're coming back with parental resentments and complaints, if you want to prevent that, then you tell them it was a bad day and you're sorry. You both had a bad day and you commiserate together and you apologize for the fact that you didn't do any better job than them of regulating your own emotions.

The thing that I think about more than the list, because I know I'm a list person too, I am learning to get out of the list. This is part of dialectical behavioral therapy and mindfulness and that is being present. It grounds people and I am learning that in the midst of the frenzy of the shorts, what's more important is my presence than how we look to the school, how he looks in the midst of this.

That's the other thing I think I've really learned. I have learned that so what if you have to pay for an ID badge? It's not the end of the world. Sometimes we as parents, when our kids are showing their character weaknesses, we globalize those weaknesses just like we do in our marriages. We globalize those weaknesses and we awfulize them. Those are terms for cognitive distortions and we make them bigger deals than they really are.

I think we approach our kids with what I see in Jesus' life with His messy disciples, and they are messier than our kids, I think, when I really get in and read those gospels. He continuously extends compassion, accountability, but compassion. My mom had to run my tennis skirt up to school when I was a kid. I relate to that. I had those messy moments.

I can't find my keys some mornings. I think sometimes we even have a greater intolerance for the things we see in our kids that are inside us as weaknesses. We wish we could correct that and that is God's job. That is not our job to do. It is God's job to see if He can break that generationally in the next generation. He does that by the spirit being stronger in them, not by us working harder at making sure the shorts are there.

Jim Daly: Another example that you had about presence, and we touched a little bit on this last time, but to explore it a little bit more because it's so critical. So much connection is made in this idea of presence because that's where there's a calming effect for your child, which is a good thing. You would tuck your son in at night, I think, maybe your daughter too, and in this case tickle his back, I think was an example.

Michelle Nietert: Not exactly. Okay, so here's the thing. We are so good with the "God, I feel sad" generation, the little preschoolers. We tuck our kids in, we wind them down at night. But here's why we're seeing anxiety in 10-year-olds: because they go to soccer practice and they do all this stuff and we're rolling them into bed to just try to get them to sleep and we're tired too.

Then they lay in that bed and all the anxious thoughts have time to crowd in. I think it's really important for us as parents, as they get older, to still take that moment. What I have done is, and this is part of somatic healing therapy, I didn't even know that because that didn't exist when I started this. I had a friend who was a massage therapist and she taught me the important of healing touch and relaxing touch.

I have rubbed my kids' back just real gently, not full-on muscles, but at times I have and here's why. Sometimes I will touch my kid's back and let me tell you a great example of this that ended up being very spiritual moment for us. When your kids get past the age of elementary school and you're tucking them in, sometimes they have to come tuck you in because you're in bed before them when they get to this high school age and college age, especially when she was home from college.

She so outlasts me now. But I said to her when you go to bed, come say goodnight to me still. She came in one night and she was in high school and I was rubbing her back and I'm like, "Oh my goodness, your neck is like a knot." She said to me, "I'm so stressed. I have this due, this due, this due."

We talked about the list, right? My first thought was, "Yeah, and I watched you watch a show, drink your coffee, go with your friend." She's mobile by then. She had time to do it. But that is not the time to bring that up.

In that moment when your kid is about to go upstairs and try to get the rest of it done, I said, "Can I pray for you? Can I just pray that God would give you focus and make it faster and just have the grace to help you out like I need when I'm under a book deadline, if I'm honest." You relate to that.

I prayed over her. I looked at my email one last time before I went to bed and an email popped in from one of the teachers and said, "I don't know why, but I'm going to postpone this test. I just have a bad feeling about it. I don't think you guys are going to be ready." I thought, "Oh my gosh, God answered our prayers right." We got to experience God together in that moment.

She came popping downstairs real quick and goes, "Mom, did you see it?" I was like, "Isn't that amazing? We got to experience God together in that moment." I think there's lots of things we can do as parents just to really, it's called attunement in the psychological world.

What it means is fully paying attention and we do this as therapists not only to what somebody's saying, but the all the non-verbal cues because we know 93% of everything that's communicated is non-verbal. I think there's a lot of things like that that we as parents can work on that breed real strong connection with our kids. I think it's something for us to become aware of ourselves. I think it's good for us to learn to attune to our own bodies and help ask God to make us aware of that.

I ask God to make me aware of things that are unseen. Doesn't scripture talk about that to focus on the unseen? So I want to see in my kids' lives the unseen that they're not talking to me about through their bodies and then through the spirit because there are spiritual battles which you referenced earlier in the last episode, Jim, that our kids are battling that I want to participate in the warfare of in their lives.

John Fuller: That's Michelle Nietert and she's our guest today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, covering some of the principles in her excellent book *Strong and Secure: 100 Devotions for Young Women*. This really is a great tool for you to use as she indicated earlier, even if your child isn't going to use it with you, but go through this book with your child, strengthen those bonds and help them rely more on the Lord. Get a copy from us when you call 800-A-FAMILY or stop by FocusOnTheFamily.com/broadcast.

Jim Daly: Michelle, one of the things that we can fail our children with is our inability to listen intently. You speak about that very expressively. I think because we're moving fast, it's not a guilt statement. It's just in my head, in my list remember to slow down and really listen, which for me as an extrovert, I'm assuming that might be true for you, it's one of the hardest things for us to get a hold of because we want to keep moving.

Really to be still so we can hear the other person and in this case our children. Listening to the body, that's great, observing those things, but then actually listening to what they say rather than doing the lecture. It's really hard because we've done life and we were 17, we were 25, we kind of know the game. We know what's going on. We know what's best for you.

How do you listen and bite your tongue not to just spew advice? Which sometimes advice is good, but it's a different role as your kids get older, even in teen years. How do you do that? How do you listen intently?

Michelle Nietert: I think the first thing you do is you listen with your eyes. That gets back to that pivot we talked about in the episode with the screens. We need to put our eyes on them and some of us are doers and we're busy doing. I think one thing we need to accept is sometimes our kids are going to tell us stuff we might even be, gosh, can I say it, a little bored as we're listening? I think we need to accept that and do that well.

Here's what I think we do next. In this stage of life, this older teen, young adult stage, we are no longer teachers, we are coaches and coaches ask great questions. If I were to tell a parent how do you become equipped in this stage more than anything is don't learn the scripture, ask them what scripture they would use in this situation. Don't give them advice, ask them what they think they might consider doing.

I think you listen and then you question not with like an intent to dissect, but I think you question with curiosity. It's not an interrogation thing. It's more of a like, "I'm unwrapping a present and you're the present and I want to get to know all the details of my present." So when I have a teenager in my office, that's what it's like.

I take that same skill and I apply it to my kids. This is a gift from God that's unfolding before my very eyes and developing. Young adulthood, they're not done. My 18-year-old's got six years left of brain development or up to eight. That brain's only a third of the way done. So I'm curious about what's still developing there.

Asking the questions. She has a boyfriend. How's it going? What's been good lately? What's been hard lately with that relationship? I think when we ask and then sometimes we just say, "I'm glad you shared that with me. That's something I can pray about" instead of coming back with, "Well let me, you know, I'm an expert right in relationships. I mean I've been trained by John Townsend and Henry Cloud on boundaries. I can tell you what's healthy and what's toxic and what's narcissistic."

One time I did say to her, I said, "Sometimes I want to make sure that," and this is how I think you do it. You do it where you're showing them that you're for them when you do give the advice. I wonder a lot. I said, "I'm wondering if he is balancing his own life with your life. He just seems to be around a lot."

What I really said is that relationship seems to be getting awfully close, but I did it in such a way it sounded like a question. I didn't make an observation or a judgment. She said to me, "I love it. You know I've been thinking about that too, Mom. I think I probably need to talk to him a little bit about that. I felt a little bit about that. I'm glad you noticed it. Some other people have noticed it. I think it's hard because I want to feel connected." She sometimes hasn't.

We're navigating hard things with our kids. A lot of parents I know who are listening to this, you're so jealous because you wish your kid would talk to you like this, right? I've read a lot of books like *How to Listen So Your Teen Will Talk and Talk So Your Teen Will Listen*. I think there's a lot of things we can pick up in skills with that ourselves as parents. But I think the biggest thing is set your agenda aside and try to learn more about theirs.

Jim Daly: That's good. That's really good. Right at the end here, we need to emphasize this idea of identity because it's so crucial, especially again to our daughters. *Strong and Secure*, you've inclined it to the daughters in our families. I think it's one of the reasons that so many kids coming from Christian homes go off to college and kind of lose it.

Because they've been under good guidelines, solid parenting parameters, those kinds of things. Now all of a sudden, they've been taught the "do-nots" but they don't understand why. They go into this college environment and drinking is available and partying is available and other things are available. So their ability to discern is not as strong as it could have been.

In that context, wrapped in identity, how do we get our daughters in the best position possible right here at the end? This is the million-dollar question: to survive that environment. Not just survive, but to thrive as a believer in Christ and to do well.

Michelle Nietert: First of all, I think it's more about the "dos" than the "do-nots" and we focused on that. I think it's also, I changed my mind about this. I didn't want my kids to date in high school, but then I realized I wanted them to have their first breakup under my roof. So we started loosening the parameters in the last couple years.

My parents when I asked them their biggest parenting mistake with me, they told me like when I was a young therapist, I asked them this, that they thought you hold on and then you drop them off. Actually, my mom said we should have let one finger go every year until you were ready to go. That's a good metaphor.