Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 308 | Stage 3 of Parenting: The Counselor

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Ep. 308 | Stage 3 of Parenting: The Counselor · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  And so if you're not having deep conversations, you don't actually know what's going on, even if you're around them a lot. What's up, guys? Welcome to another 5-Minute Fatherhood. So we are now in part three of a six-part series on stage-based parenting. We talked about the comforter stage, the coach stage. Today, we're gonna talk about the counselor stage. This is ages 12 to 17, and we're gonna talk about the counselor stage.
• 0:27
  These are kind of the teen years that a lot of people dread, but this is a great stage for parenting. It's just a little more complicated. So what's happening in this stage is that kids, oftentimes they are becoming a lot more complicated. And so you have used maybe systems in the previous stage, and then you're noticing that because children in this stage think more abstractly, they can see things from multiple perspectives, they become much more self-conscious, they begin to resist some of the kind of relationships
• 0:56
  really clear trainings and they oftentimes, it'll look like they're reverting, but what's happening oftentimes in this stage is they are beginning the journey of making these beliefs and practices their own, as opposed to just responding to your systems or your thoughts. And so that's not a bad thing, but it can be a challenge for sure. And so we call the style of this stage, low control, high accountability. So what you wanna do is give your children enough leash in this stage
• 1:23
  to make a lot of decisions, but check in with them in very sort of heart-based moments in order to be counseling their heart. And that's really what's happening. You're trying to win their heart. That's the goal of the stage. And so you're allowing their experiences in life to really drive them to deeper wisdom,
• 1:46
  better understanding of who God is, why the gospel matters, and a deeper relationship ultimately with you as well. And so in order to do that, you have to have those heart-to-hearts. Our favorite tool for this stage is the one-on-one. And so what you want to do is if your children have had lots of experiences over the week,
• 2:04
  that maybe you haven't seen or been fully a part of. Oftentimes what's happening is the deepest things that are happening to your child are happening in your child. They're like internal. And so if you're not having deep conversations, you don't actually know what's going on, even if you're around them a lot, because a lot of that's happening, they're on an internal journey.
• 2:25
  And so you want to be present during that journey, but it requires you to have a heart relationship with your children and to have those have just time and space for those deep conversations. And then you can hold them accountable, but you want to make sure that you're not doing that in a micromanaging way in the moment. You want to check in with them, like I said, periodically.
• 2:48
  And you can do that at the end of the day. And then as they're getting older, a couple times a week, and then maybe towards the end of this stage, it's better to do it like once or twice a week that's in these kind of deep moments where their heart can really come out. And instead of just coming down on them or trying to create systems to enforce things, which you really wanna do, you wanna have some of those things, but you really wanna make sure that nothing is stopping the kind of heart conversations that you need to have with your children during this stage. And then-
• 3:17
  in the midst of those, in the softest moments, you can weave the gospel in there. One really big watch out during this stage is not to use the scriptures, the Bible, the gospel as a hammer. Like that doesn't tend to go well for kids. It's really, really powerful when you use the gospel, scripture in those moments where they're soft and their heart is connected to you so that it's
• 3:40
  what, you know, where they're open to it. And they really see the love of God and the grace of God and not just feeling the judgment that they might be feeling during this phase. But yeah, Jeff, what are your thoughts? I know you've thought a lot about this phase. Yeah, I mean, no thoughts on the sense of expertise. I have no idea. We'll see in a decade. Hopefully we, you know, get through it. The only thing I would say, and then I'm even writing, maybe I'll think about it because I'm writing it in the next book right now. You know, and we talk about this a lot is the hold onto your kids book. You know, this is when the attachment...
• 4:10
  you're kind of bearing the fruit of the attachment you built. And so make sure to bear the fruit. And another way to put it too, is the thing you have to, the absolute landmine you have to watch out for in the teen years is team switching, right? Don't let them switch attachment teams. You know, one of the best analogies, and I'm putting this in my book, so spoiler alert, you'll read it if you get it later. But is that that book, they use that example that I'll never forget if they were like, you know,
• 4:32
  what we treat as normal in teens because we're so teen peer attached that it is normal, you know, like the, you know, the, them hating the parent, them all of a sudden changing overnight into just like bitter and wanting to hide out in their room and just like angsty and secretive. And, you know, we treat that as normal. And then they basically, the author just goes like, would you ever, ever assume that that's normal if that happened in your marriage? Like if a
• 4:59
  bitter, secretive. She, you know, the author goes, what would you immediately think? You would think there's an affair happening, right? And there probably is. And that's, and so they call it an attachment affair. When you see a team do that, it's good, it's an attachment affair. And I just think that's brilliant, profound language that that's the landmine you have to be looking out for in this stage that I think Jeremy just gave all the solutions to, to kind of hold the relationship tight, hold the heart tight and really lean into that because that's what happens. If you're not pursuing their heart, then they'll give their heart to someone else or another identity is essentially what they're doing.
• 5:28
  And so, yeah, that's just the watch out thing, I think, that we have to be more sensitive to. Awesome. Guys, if you want to kind of come on the journey with me, I write an email once a week called Jeremy's Journal. And so in that, I'm kind of wrestling through especially this stage a lot because a lot of our kids are in this stage. So I'm constantly like working through kind of my own thoughts.
• 5:49
  my own failures, my own, you know, things I'm excited about or anything that's working in the context of those emails. So if you go to familyteams.com and subscribe to our email list, you'll get an email from me once a week. And you can check that out. And if you're in the thick of this particular stage or you really want to learn more about this stage, that's what a lot of those emails are about.