Focus on the Family

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Melanie Shankle: Are my parents paying attention to me? Are they looking at their phone? Are they engaged? Are they listening to what I have to say? Are they paying attention to who I am? Because I think when they experience that unconditional love at home, then they take that confidence out into the world.

John Fuller: Melanie Shankle is back with us today on this best of 2025 episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, talking about how God brought healing and hope for her in her life, in her marriage, and her parenting, and how you can set a new path for your family. Thanks for joining us. I'm John Fuller.

Jim Daly: Last time we talked with Melanie about how our different upbringings affect the way we live as adults. I've experienced it. Being in tune with those snaps, those things that you do and then going, "Where did that come from?" If that's something you're saying to yourself, you need to stop and listen to this program because those are the behaviors that we learn as children from our parents.

I'm hoping as a parent my boys got a lot of positive things, but I don't want to believe that it was all positive. I'm sure I gave them some things that they can work on to be better dads than I was. That's the attitude we want to talk about today with Melanie about moms and daughters mostly, but dads, you're part of this too.

We covered last time a lot of territory. If you haven't heard that yet, I want to encourage you to go back, go to the website, get the download. You can download the app and all the episodes are right there. It would really be helpful to listen in context to yesterday's program and today's program. I'm looking forward to some of the conclusion that Melanie's going to bring to her life story today.

John Fuller: She's captured a lot of this in the book *Here Be Dragons: Treading the Deep Waters of Motherhood, Mean Girls, and Generational Trauma*. Of course, we have copies of that book here for you. Just stop by focusonthefamily.com/broadcast for the links.

Jim Daly: Melanie, welcome back to Focus on the Family.

Melanie Shankle: Thank you. Happy to be back.

Jim Daly: I really enjoyed our conversation yesterday. Like so many of the viewers and the listeners, I was metal to magnet with your comments because so much of what you're saying I experienced as a child as well. Part of it is just that trauma of what did I go through? As you said last time, as a child, you just think this is normal until you find out it's not.

That's really what you covered, going to college and seeing normal and your husband Perry coming to visit your mom and him observing, "Okay, this is not normal." In many ways, there's a hole in your heart because of that. The sadness of what you missed. That's what we want to do is to help people become healthier. I know your heart for your mom, even though she's passed away now, but that would be your heart that she could have come around, that she could have dealt with these things and become a better believer and a better person because of that. That's our goal, that we can all do that, especially our own lives, looking at the log in our own lives.

Let's pick up. One of the things you mention in the book is people that go through trauma tend to have a pretty good sense of humor. I think the reason is humor comes from God. I just think He knows it's a coping skill that makes life a little lighter when you can laugh at some things, especially yourself. That's really healthy. You had a dog, Piper. Speak to the humor of this situation, how it applied to the drama you were experiencing with your daughter, with your mom, and how you were parenting.

Melanie Shankle: We have two dogs. They are still with us, Piper and Mabel. They are Blue Laceys, which is actually the state dog of Texas. Most people don't know that. They kind of look like a German Shorthair, but they have a blue coat like a Weimaraner. They are high-energy, active dogs. We have a ranch that they go and run on, and they track. They're great little dogs.

Piper, about five years ago, we started noticing her paw was really inflamed. We started to notice that it was getting bigger, so we took her to the vet. They ran all kinds of tests and they said somehow she had contracted some sort of fungal infection through an injury to the paw. She swims in water that is probably not the cleanest down at the ranch. The problem kept getting worse.

We took her to different specialists. We're Aggies, so we took her to Texas A&M, which is the premier vet school, to get them to look at it. Ultimately, everybody came to the same conclusion, which was the only way that you're going to stop the disease is to amputate the leg. We really didn't want to do that because it just feels so extreme. It's a front leg. She's a big dog. She's an active dog.

We really thought about if this was the right thing to do. But she was otherwise perfectly healthy. There's no reason to think that she won't be fine on her three legs. We waited for about a year and it got worse. The medication wasn't helping, and so we finally had to make the decision to amputate that leg.

It felt so drastic and so scary to do that to her. What I will tell you is three hours post-surgery, Piper was up running around and did not even know the difference. Even the vet said, "This is remarkable." But he said she'd been compensating for that diseased paw for so long that she probably didn't even realize all the ways that it was keeping her down. All of a sudden she was free.

That was at this time where I was processing and I was dealing with everything with my mom. I thought sometimes the only way to bring healing is to cut off the source of the disease. That was like a sermon that God gave me. It was like a word in the form of a dog amputation where I thought, "Doesn't this apply to our life?" Sometimes there are relationships, there are places that have just become so toxic and so diseased that the only choice you have is to cut off the source of the pain.

Jim Daly: Melanie, that has to be such a struggle as a believer because the Lord also says always forgive. How do you reconcile that? I'm totally on your side, but what a difficult thing to do as a believer especially to say, "I'm going to amputate this relationship because I need to be free of that toxicity." That's big. And it's your mom.

Melanie Shankle: And it's your mom. So you also think honor your father and mother so that it will go well with you. That is one of the commandments that's tied to a direct blessing in the Bible. Those were all things that as a believer, I wrestled with for a long time. Where I landed, and what I would encourage anyone if you're in that same situation, was for me, there had been many years leading up to the time that I actually cut off the relationship with my mom.

That happened when my daughter Caroline was six when I made that decision. I was 38 years old. I'm trying to protect my daughter, and ultimately, I'm trying to protect myself because she's continuing to cause so much chaos that I began to realize I can't be the healthy mom and wife I want to be if my mom is continually coming into my life and creating chaos and making me feel terrible and causing me to have days where I'm down and depressed and crying.

I had wrestled with it for years. There had been lots of different behaviors, and I talk about a lot of that in the book, things that had gone on and different things she had done. I'd had times where I had thought, "Is this the time that I say I'm done?" At one point years before, I had written probably a 10-page letter of, "Here are all the things that you have done and this is why I'm walking away from this relationship."

But here's what God kept bringing me back to. When you do this, you have to be able to do it without bitterness and without anger and with forgiveness in your heart because otherwise, you're going to perpetuate the very cycle you're trying to break. I personally, by the time I came to that decision, really was able to say, "I forgive you for what you are. I'm not walking away with bitterness. I just can't maintain this relationship for my own health."

Jim Daly: Melanie, we touched on this last time, but one of the things—and of course your mom had bipolar, so there was mental illness—is control issues. For that mom that's listening right now and she has that teenager or that 20-something and is exerting that kind of control, how does she get a grip on that? How does she self-analyze and say, "I am wounding my daughter"?

Melanie Shankle: It's a great question. I think one thing for me is one thing my mom always said anytime I would confront her as I got to be an adult. I would say, "Mom, here's what you've done. This is what I can't accept." And she would always say this phrase, "I can't think of one single thing I've done, Melanie. I can't think of one."

At that time, my daughter was only five and I thought, "Well, I can think of 50 things that I probably did wrong last week." It's being aware of our own failings. Where can I be better? The biggest thing for me is, are you allowing your child to be who God created them to be? Are you allowing them if their personality is different than your personality?

As a woman, you have a daughter and you're like, "It's going to be a mini version of me." I learned really quickly my daughter is not a mini version of me. She's got a very distinct personality that's all her own. You have to be able to surrender that control. To surrender it and to trust God with it. That can be a daily thing.

The amount of times I prayed for my daughter, "Lord, I trust you to smooth out her rough edges and to leave the rough edges where they need to remain, where that's part of who she is, but give me the wisdom to know the difference." Because I did not want to suffocate that personality or that will or that spirit in her in my need to have her look a certain way or to be a certain way or to achieve these certain things. Ultimately, the control is us just seeing that child as another version of ourselves or an extension of ourselves as opposed to their own separate creation.

Jim Daly: You know, this isn't part of the book, but I'd love your answer to this because I'm thinking of moms where some of that is fear. It's not just control. It's fear. I think in the Christian community particularly, as parents, we have a lot of fear for our kids. We fear that they will become drug addicts. We fear that they'll become alcoholics. We fear that they'll get addicted to pornography. They're not unhealthy fears.

But the point you're making, I think clearly, is the Lord is going to have a path for your child because ultimately, He's in control. We have got to somehow figure out that, "God, we trust you, even in these dark spaces now with my 17-year-old, my 22-year-old." I think in that moment when you're suffering as a parent because your child has become a prodigal child, how do you manage that fear and turn that into trust and be able to exude that to that child so that when you are making a connection, they feel the Lord's love and your love for them, not agreement on the behavior. I know somebody's going to say, "Yeah, but what about—" I would say, relax and trust God. It's so hard to do.

Melanie Shankle: It's so hard to do. But I read this—I wish I could credit whoever said it because it wasn't me, but it's genius. "Worry is believing that God isn't going to get it right." When I read that, I was like, "Oh, that is so convicting." Because anytime I'm worrying, it's ultimately about a scenario that I think should work out a certain way.

Our kids are going to walk these hard paths and for some, that's going to be a prodigal road where you see them walk away from the church or from what they've grown up believing. But you have to love them through that. The condemnation only pushes them further away. The guilt and shame only push them further away.

There's a loving way to say, "I don't necessarily agree with where you are or the decisions you're making, but I love you and I always will." There's nothing you can do that is going to outrun my love. For them to feel that and to see that example of Christ-like love from a parent is to me sometimes the very thing that can bring them back.

The other thing I feel like God has really convicted me of with my own daughter who's 21 now is I kept wanting to step into all these situations. God so clearly said to me, "I can't be her Savior if you keep trying to be her Savior." He was telling me I'm meddling. We want to protect our kids from all of these things and sometimes God is like, "No, it's these very hard paths and these things that I'm putting in their life that are developing who I want them to be." It's hard to watch that as a parent.

Jim Daly: Right. And as you're describing that unconditional love, who does that fit? That's the Lord. That's us. That's all of us. When you demonstrate that, you're actually showing the character of God. It doesn't mean you avoid truth. We're so bifurcated in our thinking on this, like it has to be all love or all truth. It can be both. You need to be able to do that artfully and skillfully as a parent particularly.

John Fuller: We so appreciate Melanie Shankle and the story she's been sharing from her own personal experiences and the insights. Let me just say that her book captures much more than we can present these past couple of days. *Here Be Dragons: Treading the Deep Waters of Motherhood, Mean Girls, and Generational Trauma*. Contact us today to get a copy. The details are at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.

Jim Daly: Melanie, you wrote in the book about mean girls. That realization for you that your mother was the first mean girl in your life. Again, a devastating revelation. I so appreciate your ability as a young person to be able to think that through and come to that conclusion. But speak to that. That your mom was your mean girl to you.

Melanie Shankle: You don't want to think that, but I've talked to so many women since then that have said, "I've had a similar experience where you have your mom as the one who is tearing you down. Your mom is the one that is constantly measuring you, who is competing against you, who is jealous of you."

For whatever reason, I had this weird realization when I was pregnant with Caroline and my mom had made the comment to my sister where she said, "I'm so tired of Melanie telling me how good her life is." I remember thinking at the time, "I wasn't even a mother yet, but I thought I was just telling, I was just sharing life like I'm optimistic and life feels pretty good right now."

She had seen me walk down some hard roads as a teenager and go through some hard things. So to be on the other side of that, why wouldn't there be happiness in there? But it was like her ability, she had a gift of being able to throw away any chance at happiness she ever had. So it made her seem to resent any that I ever found.

That is what a mean girl does. You view any other woman's success or accomplishments or achievements as less than maybe you can have for your own as opposed to a rising tide lifts all boats. Why don't we look at it as one woman's success means that's more success that I could ultimately achieve or that she's had great success here, but God has this path for me and I'm going to have success and achievements on this other road?

Jim Daly: That's a healthy perspective. Unfortunately, we're talking about unhealthy people. That is a sign, though, for a person that maybe is in the fog about it. Just that analysis to say, is she ever happy that something good in my life is occurring? Whoever the "she" is. Could be a mom, a girlfriend, a sister, whatever.

Let me ask you the reflex of this. Caroline, your daughter, ends up with mean girls in her life. That's got to be troubling. Why is this happening now to my daughter and it happened to me? What was that circumstance and how did you intervene?

Melanie Shankle: Everybody warns you like junior high's going to be terrible. And it is, by the way. Nobody ever says, "The best years of my life were junior high." Those are really hard years. So I was prepared for those years to be hard. We got through those pretty free. It was not bad.

When we hit her sophomore year of high school, which ironically was a year she had just gotten her braces off, she had just made the varsity soccer team. I was like, "Life is good. She's got a good group of friends. This is going to be great." About a month into that school year, all of a sudden, I started to hear and see when I would pick her up from school because she still wasn't driving yet. I could tell something was off.

She would be like, "Well, this person said this today or this thing happened." All of a sudden I started to watch this friend group implode. What's so hard about this as a mom is these were girls that we'd had in our home. These are girls that I've driven to slumber parties and have had sleepovers at my house and have been at our house before dances. I've curled their hair, I've put their makeup on, I've let them eat my good ice cream. Even the good stuff.

To all of a sudden see this shift was heartbreaking. To try to figure out because as a mom, I never wanted to be the mom that's like, "Well, my kid wouldn't do anything wrong." So you're trying to ask the questions of, "What did you do? Did something happen? What caused this behavior?" It really centered on one girl, ironically, who was a girl that Caroline felt bad for, who she had brought into the group.

This girl, for whatever reason, out of her own insecurities, her own jealousies, her own brokenness, just went on this attack against Caroline. The cruelest text messages she sent, the things that she threatened. For me as a mom to be able to see where she would send these texts that would say, "I don't care what lies I have to tell about you, I will destroy you. I will destroy your reputation." I thought, "Well, she's admitting that she is willing to lie and tell these mistruths." Caroline was like, "I keep trying to talk to her, there's no reasoning with her." The situation, I watched it just escalate over the next two, three, four months and it was heartbreaking.

Jim Daly: How did you coach Caroline to manage this? That's probably the biggest issue for the parent because you can make a lot of mistakes as a parent at this point. Because you want to clean house, take names, show up in the schoolyard. Let's get this over with.

Melanie Shankle: Exactly. You're like, "How do you?" Because we very much wanted to raise her because life is full of difficult people and difficult relationships. So initially you're like, "We want her to know how to handle this. She needs to learn how to advocate for herself and how to do that."

But it got to a point where you're like, "This isn't getting any better." She was doing all the things I was saying: "Take the high road. You have to remember my people-pleaser personality. Take the high road, be kind, just keep being kind, it's all going to be fine." And it wasn't getting better. It was like the nicer she was, the more she tried to take the high road, it was almost like the worse it got.

There finally came a day where Perry comes in again. This is my husband who I described previously as being very discerning. He's a truth-teller. He and Caroline have very similar personalities, so they tend to get each other in a way that sometimes I don't. There was one day, it had been going on about four months, and she had come home from school. She was sitting there and was crying, telling us about another terrible day where somebody had cornered her in the bathroom and the things they had said.

He looked at her and he said, "This is enough." He said, "This is war." He said, "You do whatever you have to do." He said, "You tell the administration that you're going to go to the administration." He said, "And if it gets physical, you punch them in the face and I'll meet you in the office." She thankfully did not have to do that. But what I saw happen when her dad gave her permission to fight back and advocate for herself was like a light went on in her eyes. She needed to know it's okay for me to stand up for myself in this situation because for so long she had just been trying to manage it and she needed to know it was okay to say enough is enough.

Jim Daly: I think that environment, too, where people are trying to persuade this person to kill themselves. Vile stuff. We have to advocate. It's like you get a diagnosis, you have to advocate for your own medical well-being. You've got to get engaged. You can't just stand back. I'm so glad that your husband did that. Some people might disagree with that. I would not. I would say that's the point where you've got to move forward and set the boundaries. David was a great example of this. There's a part of defending yourself that we need to reinstitute. It's okay, you don't have to take it, take it, take it. And you need the wisdom to know when to do which, really. But when they're encouraging you to take your own life and those kinds of things and you're a teenager, that's way over the line. What are some ways that parents can help their children understand who God created them to be? When you look at it, it's about identity. And that's something Jean and I have tried to make sure our boys understand. Your identity in Christ. But it takes a lot of forethought as a parent to connect things. How would you do that?

Melanie Shankle: One of the things we tried to tell Caroline from early on was to feed scripture into her life where it's like, "You are God's workmanship. You were created for a purpose. He has a road He wants you to walk. You are wonderfully and fearfully created. You are exactly who you were supposed to be for this time, for this generation."

So can we look at life out of an—we always tried to raise her to have an abundance mentality instead of a scarcity mentality. God has abundant things for you. He has abundant life for you. To find her identity in who He created her to be because I think the world wants to tell, especially I feel like our young women, so many messages about what they're supposed to be or how they're supposed to look or what success really looks like.

But we're like, "No, this is what God says are the most important things. For you to model the fruits of the Spirit, for you to operate out of joy and peace and kindness and patience." And I think that's so important. I think the other thing that a parent can do and one thing we really tried to do is home should always be their safest place. Just a place where you know you are unconditionally loved, your whole self is welcome here.

We're going to walk you through any hard road. We're going to listen. I think that's—we're going to listen and not just preach, but we're going to actually listen to how you're feeling about things and what's going on with you. A wise older mentor told me when Caroline was little, she said, "You have to listen to her when she's young because if you don't listen to her now, she's not going to talk to you later."

That was so smart because sometimes when they're four and they're telling you about their dream from the night before, you're like, "Oh my gosh, how long is this going to go on?" But it's true. They start to pay attention. "Are my parents paying attention to me? Are they looking at their phone? Are they engaged? Are they listening to what I have to say? Are they paying attention to who I am?" Because I think when they experience that unconditional love at home, then they take that confidence out into the world.

Jim Daly: Caroline today is doing fine. She's in college.

Melanie Shankle: She's great. She's in college. All during high school, you know the thing you say as a parent, you're like, "You don't want to peak in high school. This isn't the time." They tend to come around. And I was like, "When you get to college, you're going to find it's a bigger pool. You're going to find more people that share your interests. You're going to find people that have the same spiritual depth that you do." And that has really been true for her.

Jim Daly: Melanie, this has been so good. Thanks for your openness and your boldness. Day two here, we never said it, but *Here Be Dragons* relates to the old maps in antiquity that would be done where shipwrecks would be found and they would consider them a dark thing, a dragon thing, and they would mark it as "here be dragons, be careful." What a great life map example that is for all of us, not just moms and daughters, but dads and sons and the whole family. Thank you for being with us today and last time.

Melanie Shankle: Thank you so much for having me. Really enjoyed it.

Jim Daly: And if this has resonated with you, which should only be about 90% of the listeners and viewers, get a copy of Melanie's book, *Here Be Dragons: Treading the Deep Waters of Motherhood, Mean Girls, and Generational Trauma*. Just put your hand up if that applies to you. Get a hold of us, and if you can make a gift of any amount or make it monthly, we'll send you a copy of her book as our way of saying thank you. I often do this: if you're in a place where you can't afford it, we're a Christian ministry. We'll get the book into your hands and trust that other believers who support Focus will add a little extra to take care of the cost of that.

John Fuller: Your generosity is appreciated. You can donate through the website, focusonthefamily.com/broadcast, or give us a call: 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY.

If you enjoyed this program, we have an entire audio collection featuring 20 of our best of 2025 shows. This free collection features encouragement to overcome trauma, refresh your marriage, improve your parenting, and grow in your faith. You'll hear from our most popular guests like Michelle Nietert, the late Gregory Jantz, British evangelist J. John, Lee Strobel, Dr. Gary Chapman, Sheila Walsh, and more. Look for that free audio collection at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.

Plan to join us next time. We'll hear from Becky Harling. She'll have thoughts about the lost art of listening.

Becky Harling: Most of us want to be able to express what we're feeling and be able to figure out what we're feeling and be able to figure out the answer to our own problems. So as you're drawing them out and they're processing, they will come up with the solution and then it gives you an opportunity to affirm, like, "Hey, that's a great way to solve this."

John Fuller: That's next time on Focus on the Family. Remember, when you get in touch, let us know how you're listening on our website, through our mobile app, or on our podcast feed. I'm John Fuller and on behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, join us next time as we help you and your family thrive in Christ.