“I just don’t feel like I can tell you anything.”
“You judge everything I say.”
“I know you won’t want to listen to this.”
These are all phrases that our preteens, teens, and young adults might say to us—IF we do not open our hearts to them early and often, creating a safe place for them to talk to us.
A pivotal, crucial time to talk to our kids is when they need a safe place to talk.
Every fall I want to share this….and every fall I make my way through the poem again, look at pictures, cry, and put it all away until next fall. Then I repeat the cycle.
Until this fall. Seventeen years ago today we lost our last child, a little girl we named Carly Grace at twenty-one weeks gestation during an intrauterine blood transfusion. The details are in the free verse poem that I wrote seventeen years ago this winter.
I don’t have answers for mamas who are grieving such devastating losses. But I do know this…writing this poem, reading it over and over through the years, talking about Carly with family and friends (especially our children), and thinking about her really have helped me.
So if you are suffering a current loss or a loss from long ago, don’t be afraid to share it. Don’t be afraid to talk. Don’t be afraid to tell that it hurts like mad. Because it does.
In my 52 Times to Talk, I have recently been discussing the Recipe for Rebellion—and how you can talk to your kids to avoid those “ingredients” that lead to our children rebelling.
Rules Without Relationship is the final ingredient—and probably the most critical of all of the ingredients to avoid. (Of course, without relationship, we as parents have no desire or motivation to try to explain rules, listen to their appeals, or remain consistent in our parenting.) Relationship must be in place in order to keep our children from rebelling against us.
One of the ways that our children begin the disrespect spiral is when we let them “talk back” to us. At first, this can be simply questioning us with a slightly raised voice. But before we know it, it can become full-fledged disrespect. And the more we allow it, the more it happens.
Welcome to another Wondering Wednesday video episode!
This is a special episode as the question came from a young mama who was a student of mine several years ago in language arts and writing classes. When I get a parenting or homeschooling question from a former student, I run, not walk, to get it answered for them. It brings me such joy to have helped these students with language arts, writing, speech, or debate—and now to help them with parenting.
When you want to avoid rules without repetition….you need to repeat and be consistent!
Recipe for Rebellion
Rules Without Reasons
Rules Without Response
Rules Without Repetition
Rules Without Relationship
Our last couple of times to talk have been times in which we avoid the first two ingredients in The Recipe for Rebellion (Rules Without Reasons and Rules Without Response). In other words, they were talking to give reasons and talking (or not talking!) in order to allow a response.
