Dear grace-girl,
The time we have left with our girls before they graduate high school is dwindling like sands through the hour glass (Can you name the soap opera that used that line?!?! I digress…), so I strongly desire to connect with them.
My answer to Question #4 from
this newsletter that offered four questions to help you walk into Summer with grace is
connection, which marries beautifully with what you want to know about based on how you voted in a readership survey.
We are moms who care deeply about connecting.
For the purpose of this email, let's define connecting as loving our kids/teens in ways they feel loved. So how do we connect with our kids? How do our teens know in their knower that they are loved?
Let's start by determining
what hinders connection. In talking with my girls, observing those around me, and chatting with other moms, love inhibitors take two forms: (1) external deterrents
– what's happening on the outside and (2) internal deterrents
– what's happening inside ourselves. External deterrents can look like
busyness and
phone usage. Because we've covered those in previous newsletters, let's focus on internal deterrents.
Two major internal deterrents are:
- Being too strict
- Not being a safe place to land
We want to love as God loves us; we want to parent how God parents us, but our fear (manifesting into excessive rule-making as a way to control potential outcomes) and misunderstanding of our kids' generation/specific kid behavior + subsequent judgment (meaning we may not feel like a safe space) can stymie our connectivity. Ask me how I know…
Parents who love well give rules, commands, guardrails, structure, and best practices to their children just as our friend Jesus does for us. So clearly, I'm
not saying we shouldn't have rules or that our kids dictate our schedule, rhythms, or their curfews. I
am saying that strictness, excessive rules, and saying “no” based on our fear does not help us build connection.
(To read more about fear-based parenting, go here.) Arbitrary rules designed to control that are capriciously enforced have the potential to push our kids away.
Parents who are safe places for their children love like the Lord parents us because we are a rock, a shelter, a safe refuge in the storm that is school and growing up. Kids who do not believe their parents are a safe place will have a hard time connecting with mom and dad. A safe place looks like not overreacting when they share a failure or mistake. Seeking to see understand our child's point of view and being humble enough to change our mind. Keeping the attention and focus on the child and not pivoting the conversation back to us. Learning what we can about what it's really like to be a kid or teen in today's world.
A safe place is where a child sees delight in the eyes of her mom.
So, how can we connect with our kids graciously? What does it look like to connect with our kids during Summer? Here are three ways:
- Listen: Listening is the most basic (and most difficult!) way to connect. If you're anything like me, you're listening for the moment to share advice, a resource, or solution. You're also not so great with the game face. And yet, listening is one way our people feel loved. Listening to your child tell you about MineCraft or the history of Taylor Swift's musical career may not be what you want to listen to, but it's the fastest way to your child's heart. (And it sets you up for success when your child is older because you've built a track record for listening.)
- Initiate…
(Y'all, #3, which is shared here, is gold, so please, please do not miss it.) 
