For day two of Don’t Mom Alone Live, Jim and Lynne Jackson are back to talk all about relationships and answer listener questions.

If you’ve ever felt like a bad parent because of your child’s disobedience or struggle to referee the sibling arguments and fights in your home, this episode is for you! The Jackson’s share their Peace process and how to be confident before God in how you are parenting.

It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. So we need to have confidence in our ability to be peaceful and not let this child’s behavior define me or tell me that I’m a bad parent. And have the long-term view that God can do anything in a child’s life as I persevere in encouraging and teaching and training.

They share great practicals for blended families and for how to navigate parenting when you and your spouse or co-parent aren’t on the same page. We also dive into teaching your children empathy and social cues as a way to foster great friendships.

In the end, our goal can be to equip our kids to be conduits of God’s grace to the world both through their relationships with others, but it starts with their relationship with us.

When I thought about that the kind of relationships in life that Jesus bought for our kids on the cross, not just with each other but whatever relationships they’d have. I just had this image of “trickle down grace” starting from the cross and just trickling down through us to our kids and then out to the world and our kids. We can grow to become profound dispensers of grace in life to others.

What we chat about:

• Getting feedback about our kids that makes you feel like a “bad parent”
• Keeping the long-view when you are training your children
• There is a dramatic increase in anxiety and depression in children, teens and young adults. It is five to eight times greater than it was 50 years ago.
• What to do when you and your spouse aren’t on the same page with parenting
• Ask penetrating questions when your spouse is struggling to parent in kindness.
• “What are you hoping our kids will learn right now?”
• Blended family dynamics and how to co-parent well
• You are building trust with your kids and when you are confident before God in how you are parenting, you can be at peace with how someone else is parenting
• Ask kids: What do you want to tell me about how you’re feeling and how your time went?
• Sibling rivalry and how conflict is an opportunity to teach our children how to reconcile
• The Peace Process the Jackson’s teach: Calm > Understand > Solve > Celebrate
• Celebrating that your kids reconciled is an important step to future success
• When your kids feel encouraged and successful when working through conflict, you can see the momentum begin to change
• Learning empathy as a family and equipping your kids to be more successful in friendship
• Quick connects with individually with your kids can be more effective than playing with them for longer periods. Find ways to show that you delight in who they are!
• Use mission trips and giving back to the community as your vacation/connection time as a family

Links Mentioned:

• Previous Episodes with Jim & Lynne — Ep 80 , Ep 81, Ep 98, Ep 200, Bonus Sibling Conflict

SocialThinking.com

“You are a Social Detective” book **

How to Develop Empathy in Kids (Part 1)

How to Develop Empathy in Kids (Part 2)