What if we're living life following an old game plan?  What if we're requiring our children to learn a game plan for life that has expired?  What if life by design is better than we ever imagined?

Join Doug and Janet in this episode as they vulnerably share the story of spending much of their Easter Sunday in the parking lot of a casino--sorting truth from lies about life by default and life by design. Find challenge and inspiration in these take aways from episode #43: 

• Conformity is not the plan for childhood; transformation is the plan.  Maturity is a transformational experience.  We can't manipulate maturity.
• We only have so much time with our children.  Will we spend it manipulating our kids to get them to conform? or will we, even clumsily, begin to discover what it means to meet their legitimate needs in the ways of love?
• Will we risk finding others who are willing to do this life, too--and offer our kids an honest childhood--with conversations instead of simply compliance and conformity?

Follow this link to listen now--or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher or your source for podcasts.  Reply to this email with a question you'd like us to talk about on a future episode--and share BRAVE LOVE with your friends.  Together, there is great hope!

PART 1 started a discussion about giving our children an honest childhood--which is more than simply a good chance at success.  We can manipulate our children to work and perform, but manipulation damages trust instead of builds it.  Trusting relationships are necessary if our children are going to grow up, instead of simply meet traditional performance standards for college admissions.

Join Janet and Doug in PART 2 as they continue to offer practical ways to relate with our children--instead of manipulating them.  PART 2 offers these take aways:

• Experiencing life as a parent is more than simply having a toolbox full of good parenting strategies.  There is no formula for loving bravely--and there are sound principles we can trust.
• We can find time for real conversations about our habits of responding to cultural influences instead of personal convictions.  These conversations can be more powerful when we are vulnerable enough to say, "Me, too."
• This kind of honest conversation is happening in homes where families are building habits of engagement--rather than simply habits of evaluation.

Follow this link to listen now--and share BRAVE LOVE with your community.  Let us know what questions you'd like us to address on a future episode.  We'd love to hear from you.  There is great hope.

In a culture of busy-ness, efficiency is strangling our parenting strategies.  Because we are so often short on time, we manipulate our children instead of raise them.  We're not the first generation that has defaulted to manipulation--so when we want to learn new parenting strategies, we must look for truth instead of tradition.  We need the wisdom that comes from healthy relationships, instead of new tricks developed in our performance-obsessed culture.

Join Janet and Doug in this episode as they offer parents a bucket of courage to raise their children for the full human experience, instead of simply for success.  They offer these take aways:

• Manipulation is often the choice we make as parents when we are running short on time—or patience.  How we spend our time has more impact on our children’s lives than how we spend our money.  
• Our children need to learn what it means to be fully human—not simply what it means to be busy or what it means to be the best.  We get to teach them. 
• The human experience, by design, happens in community—not primarily in a peer group or on a screen.  Our children need a source of wisdom and empathy and mature connection.

Follow this link to join Doug and Janet on this episode--and please share BRAVE LOVE with your friends.  There is great hope.

Janet promised to include links to two prior episodes.  Have you heard these?

https://janetnewberry.com/what-do-we-do-with-emotions-at-home-part-1/

https://janetnewberry.com/how-do-we-help-our-children-with-emotions-part-2/

In a performance-obsessed culture, we get what we deserve.  We must be perfect in order to earn the best prize.  Messing up means missing out--so the temptation is huge for our children to lie, cheat, or steal whatever they think they may never earn all by themselves.

Brave love reminds our children that childhood is about growing up--not measuring up.  Brave love reminds us all that asking for help from a trusted source isn't cheating--it's vulnerability.  

Join Doug and Janet as they distinguish between transactional and transformational parenting, and offer these take-aways:

• Short term solutions and long road relationships are both hard.  The long road of building relationships of trust is the only path to maturity.
• Lying, stealing, and cheating all happen because we are afraid the truth about ourselves is not enough.  Love reminds us who God says we are--and that it's ok to ask for help.
• Transformational parenting helps children sort lies from truth--and offers to help our kids live a life of integrity rather than a life of fear and hiding.

Follow this link to listen now--and share this episode with your friends. Let us know your thoughts and questions.  Together, there is great hope.

The struggles are real.  It seems every day we end up bribing our children to eat good food, and manipulating them to do their homework.  Bribing and manipulating works.  And these short term solutions teach our children habits of relating that aren't healthy--in the long run.

Doug and Janet start a conversation today that includes these vital questions:

1. What are we inviting our children to trust?  What is the source of strength we are offering?
2. What are we protecting our children from?  (long term pain or short term pain?)
3. What are we risking?  What are we willing to risk? Parenting is an epic novel, not a short story.  This episode offers these take-aways to lend you strength in your important relationships:

• Parenting on the long road invites our children to live in freedom from their convictions--instead of the under the bondage of our control.
• Parenting on the long road invites us to look for causes and unmet needs--instead of quick fixes and short term solutions.
• Long road relationships invite us all to be safe--and known, instead of requiring us to be perfect--and afraid or empty.

Have you shared the BRAVE LOVE podcast with your friends?  Sharing your parenting journey with friends will lend you strength.  There is great hope.

We almost can't believe we risked recording this episode.  If we are trustworthy at all on this topic, it's because of what we've learned through our struggle--as much as what we're enjoying in our ongoing healing.

This episode is for the benefit of the next generation.  We moved immaturely into marriage #1...and marriage #2.  We took all we knew--and all our immature habits of relating.  It wasn't enough.

Doug and Janet humbly offer these take-aways in their first ever BRAVE LOVE episode on the topic of marriage:

• Only in trusting, transformational relationships can we experience each other's love.  Transactional relationships may be part of a good business model, but they build a weak and fragile foundation for marriage.
• Only when we experience each other's love can we find the safety to be seen and heard--and discover our God-given identity, including our dreams.
• Only when we experience love--can we grow up and enjoy maturity in the world God designs, instead of hijack maturity in the world we might build for ourselves.

Listen now--and subscribe.  Thank you for sharing the BRAVE LOVE podcast with friends and family--and for leaving a review. There is great hope.

We don't experience brave love in our places of perfection; we experience love in our places of real need.

This episode is a conversation with four siblings (ages 16-26) who not only live together--but work together, too.  These three brothers and one sister are the band, "Willow City Music." We asked them to share about growing up--not measuring up, and how they work through the struggles that are a part of real life as a family.

Thank you Beecher, Ezra, Liza, and Asa Proach!  We had a blast recording this episode with you.  Hang on to the end, friends--they give us a spontaneous taste of a great new song!

Doug and Janet wrap up this episode with these life-giving take aways:

• Children benefit when they watch parents love each other well.
• Children benefit when they experience the love of their parents.  Experiencing love is not the same thing as knowing our parents love us.
• As parents, we get the privilege and responsibility of discovering all the ways our children will trust us and let us love them well.

Listen now--and subscribe.  Thank you for sharing the BRAVE LOVE podcast with your friends--and for leaving a review!  

There is great hope.

Being the parent of a newborn, love seems to happen naturally.  As our children grow, relationships can get challenging--and love can get tangled with control and manipulation.  Our children can unintentionally learn things (from us!) in ways we never intended.  

Take heart!  You don't have to get everything right.  Brave love offers opportunities to learn from our mistakes--in ways that help our children, too.

Join Doug and Janet on this episode, and linger in these take-aways:

• Grace allows us to admit when we're wrong instead of hide when we mess up.  Parents (and grandparents)--we get to model this.  This is a great habit for children to develop when they're young.
• Children are designed to grow up to be young adults.  Adulting isn't to be avoided at all cost.  We find deep satisfaction when we can take care of ourselves (including ask for help,) and take care of one other person at the same time.  This is the life of an adult.
• Any species that fights its own maturity is an endangered species.  We are designed to grow up--and find maturity deeply satisfying.

Listen now--and subscribe.  

Thank you for sharing the BRAVE LOVE podcast with your friends--and for writing a review.

Together, there is great hope!

Our children don't take the journey to the land of "rebellious" in a day.  It's a journey to a distant land.  It's a long walk of the soul.  Rebellion doesn't get fixed--and it can be resolved.  

Our conversation with Wynema Clark continues in this episode--about rebuilding trust and learning how to live in healthy relationships with our teenagers--instead of toxic relationships.

Doug and Janet offer these take-aways to encourage parents loving bravely:

• Put relationships first. Healthy relationships bear the fruit of maturity--naturally.
• "The evidence of maturity is our capacity to love and be loved." (Education by Design, Not Default by Janet Newberry)
• The goal is not fixing behavior, but rather restoring relationships.  Healthy relationships allow time for resolution of significant issues.

There is great hope.

Our friend Wynema Clark joins us on this episode to begin a conversation about 3 questions she sent us on a text message:

1.  What does brave love look like when you are just now hearing about it and your 15 year old is out of control?

2.  A lot of parents that I get to talk to want to connect with their teenager but their kid has absolutely no interest in being within a 10 ft. radius of them.  How do you cultivate that relationship?

3.  How do you walk a kid with no interest in you or what you have to say toward maturity?

Brave questions on this brave love episode--with these 3 take aways:

• We are all invited to experience the love of God as a child.  As we grow up, we are all invited to share the love of God as the Father does--especially in our parenting relationships.
• We have authority (and wisdom) as we get older and gain maturity--not so we can "Lord over" or "grade and evaluate," but instead, so we can help.  Our children won't let us help them if they think our motive is for them to please us instead of trust us.
• For some of us--our children are older than 15.  Trusting the transformation of brave love for ourselves and sharing brave love with our children is still our great hope.

This is part 1 with Wynema; join us in the next episode for part 2.  Listen now and subscribe.  There is great hope!