Tag: parenting

A few thoughts on Black Belt Parenting

Good morning! Depending on where you are we are 3-4 weeks into social distancing/shelter-in-place due to Covid 19.

How are you doing? How are you managing the changes?

I’m still working from home, coaching and counseling folks with online video and phone sessions. Things have slowed down in some ways and in some ways it’s been busy and exhausting. My wife is a science teacher for two schools and is also teaching online. My son’s back home from college and my youngest daughter’s in high school and they are doing school online. My eldest daughter is still settling into her new house with my son-in-law, she teaches kindergarten and he is a police officer.

This morning I started my day with exercise. I decided to make exercise part of my daily routine in early Dec. Today was 134 of my daily streak. I did 30 minutes of shadow boxing, stretching, I even did a few karate katas I haven’t done in several years. I used to teach kenpo karate 20 years ago.

I also wrote a book, Black Belt Parenting, a few years ago. It hasn’t been edited or published yet. I opened it up for the first time in 2.5 years and edited a couple pages.

I’m going to put a few pages on here to download soon, so in the meantime subscribe to receive a copy of my ebook, “Bridging The Gap Between Where You Are And Where You Want To Be”.

Here’s a preview:

Start with Success

When working with kids, with others, set them up for success. Start with positive interactions so that it empowers them. Don’t let them get discouraged. Don’t let their insecurities and self-doubt creep in. Don’t make them develop bad habits with flinching and turning away and being defensive. One of my favorite things to do is to teach beginners and introduce people to Jiu-Jitsu & Mixed Martial Arts,  Muay  Thai, Boxing and Wrestling. A technique I like to teach from the very start, after teaching people how to defend themselves against punches, is their first takedown. It’s fun to have the privilege of teaching people their first takedown and submission.  Most people their eyes light up, they feel empowered, they feel like a ninja!   

Now when you’re fighting, a double-leg takedown or a single leg takedown are probably the most common takedowns that you’ll see in the ring but what I like to teach for self-defense or in the gym is a front headlock.  One reason is my first week at Team Quest gym I learn the front headlock from Dan Henderson. The front headlock teaches you a lot of the principles and concepts of good wrestling and jiu-jitsu. You learn the front headlock and it can be a foundation for many other techniques you need to learn and know.    

     To get a front headlock you can start out by defending your opponent’s jab or cross and closing the gap, closing the distance, to get in range to be able to get to a single collar tie on them.  You put your forearm against their chest or collarbone and grab their neck with one arm while you check their shoulder, their bicep or the wrist by placing your hand or grabbing them to monitor their movement, to preventing them from punching you.   

Once you’ve established control and prevented them from punching you, you drive into them. and when they resist or stop you use a hand behind their neck to snap the top of their head down and catch their chin.  You bend them over, close your elbow and you have them in a headlock. You work isn’t done there because they could escape, they could change or levels and get a single or a double leg takedown on you so you need to put your shoulder in the back of their neck and you sprawl hips down to the mat.  You throw your legs back while throw your hips to the ground and make them fall forward, ideally face-planting or at the very least putting their hands and knees on the ground. You can then do a whole bunch of things from there. You could connect your hands and lock up a guillotine choke or a 10 finger choke. If they defend, you might have to switch to an arm-in guillotine or an anaconda choke. Or you could spin onto their back. You could also punch and knee from there.   

The main thing is not getting hit and snapping them down, getting the takedown, getting on top quickly and efficiently. If you clinch up with someone who is not used to working in the clinch it’s very easy to snap them down. Start with the basics, start simple start with success. When you are working with beginners, starting this way helps them develop skill in a fun and safe way 

On science and art

Martial arts and parenting are both a science and an art. There are principles that hold true for martial arts, communication, and relationships. The application, the variations are what create art. Both involve discipline and hard work. They also involve the soul and heart. Things unseen like courage and love. We can learn a lot through study through exploration and through verbal and written communication about both.   

We can have teachers explain theory or principles but in order to grow, you have to get on the mat. And do the work. You have to do the repetitions. You have to do what is  rudimentary. You have to learn and drill the fundamentals. You have to do the basics.   

Just like any other sport or art you use the fundamental elements, whether it’s letters musical notes or movement to create. And every time you create it to become something new. Even though with some martial art practice the goal is to do something perfectly correct, in the same way, every time like with forms or kata, the very act of being precise, every performance or expression of the can be unique.   

In our homes, we can get into a rut. We can get into a routine that looks the same every day: get up, get the kids ready for school, back into the car and go to school. Go to work. Pick up the kids from school, take them to activities. Get dinner. Do homework. Watch some TV, do stuff on the computer. Tuck them into bed, say goodnight. And then do it all over again. Even if we don’t change a thing about the schedule and the things that we need to do – if we change our mindset to be open and hopeful for something new, something amazing to happen in the middle our daily routine, it makes it more likely.  

Outwardly it may look the same but as our intent, our purpose and our focus shifts, it becomes something different. What we find is when we look at our day or our time on the mat in that way, with new, curious open eyes, when we enter into conversation and connection with new curious open hearts towards others we’re able to experience and see so much more. We experience what CS Lewis described as not seeing anyone as an ordinary human. And we realize how true that is. We realize what a gift every moment, every encounter, every day, is.  

On focus or flexibility

There is a tension with MMA and parenting.  

Do I become well-rounded or focus on one thing and make it unstoppable?  

Ronda Rousey and her game plan are a great example:  Close, clinch, throw,  get the armbar.  

Damian Maia: dominate the grappling, get the RNC.  

When we only have one tool, when all we have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  

That works when the only goal is winning.  

It doesn’t work so great in relationships, in parenting and marriage.  

When you run into the times when your A game doesn’t work, it helps to have a backup, a plan B.  

Because there’s one thing about life, there will always be a need to go to plan B, or C or D.    

Thinking and evolving

Early on in the UFC Ultimate Fighting Championship, there was a thin young man, Royce Gracie, a brother of a large family that founded the UFC to showcase their family’s martial arts style Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. Gracie Jiu-Jitsu has been come to be known as Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. It was a style of fighting new to America.  One of the things that appealed to early UFC fans was that it was No Holds Barred.  It was hand-to-hand combat in its rawest form.  Foul tactics like punching the groin, pulling hair, kicking people in the head were allowed. It allowed elbow strikes and wrestling on the ground with strikes. It was brutal.   

Early on in the UFC, they matched marital art style vs style.  They had people from different martial arts disciplines fight against each other as a way of proving which is the best martial art, who is the best fighter in the world? So there were people from Jiu Jitsu, sumo wrestling, Muay Thai kickboxing. Karate. Boxing.  What that first event showed is that you had to learn how to defend against being taken down to the ground because once you got taken down to the ground Royce Gracie was going to choke you or beat you with a Jiu Jitsu technique, a grappling technique. He was going to make you submit and give up with these finishing holds.   

You signify that you give up and other opponent wins in Jiu-Jitsu by tapping on the map 3 times or tapping on your opponent and the referee steps in to stop the match. If you don’t talk or submit then your arm or leg gets broken or you go unconscious from a choke. In the early days of NHB or MMA fighting one thing that was popular was theorizing and arguing about which style was better on the internet. People on the internet would say I’m a boxer or I’m a wing chun specialist and I wouldn’t get taken down. I would just punch them or I would just have to hurt them before they could take me down.  

Sometimes parenting is like that, without experience or limited experience we can be confident in a way that only the inexperienced can be.   

On proving yourself

Men aren’t the only ones that want to test themselves and find out if they have what it takes. I see this with moms too. They want to show the world and their circle of friends that they are a good mom. That they got the stuff, love, Mom-greatness. But there’s a difference between proving yourself to be trustworthy and proving yourself to be worthy.   

We want to show our kids and prove to our kids that they can trust us, that we’re going to provide, that they can feel safe and secure. That’s a part of being faithful. And being dutiful in the good sense of the word duty. The honorable sense of duty. But the urge to prove yourself worthy gets us as parents into ugly, messy stuff with our kids if it’s based on shame.   

When we are in proving-our-worth mode in the gym and we’re trying way too hard, we can hurt ourselves and we can hurt other people. And it’s the same thing in the family, when we’re trying to prove our worth and fight off shame. We’re not focused and attending to the needs of the moment because we’re trying to meet our own emotional needs. And we manipulate or hide, we play it safe and don’t risk clear communication. We don’t make clear requests. We fall short of getting what we want because we’re not vulnerable enough to acknowledge what we really want and what we really need.   

 It’s  just like the incomplete fighter who only defends himself; you can’t win by just defending yourself. You’ve got to open up, you’ve got to risk swinging for the fences. You have to risk getting countered and being open to return fire. In a fight, we don’t want that, you don’t want to get hit by return fire. We don’t want our opponent to connect with us. But in relationships we want our partner, the person standing in front of us, to connect. That’s the goal and so when everything within you just wants to hole up and wall up and defend yourself. With the right person, or with the right people, safe people, you have let them in in order to connect  

Advice for young dads

Facebook reminded me, I wrote this four years ago today.
Little did I know I’d need to follow my own advice.

When you write for others, you write for yourself.
When I write for dads, I write for my kids and myself.

One bit of advice for young dads: learn how to dance!

Maybe you’re like me and some times daydream of times you’ll have to step up and come through for your daughters in some way
One thing I almost guarantee she’ll do when she’s older is ask you to dance.
Not the spastic punch dancing to Raffi or kids songs that you might do at playtime or in the kitchen but the kind of dancing where you hold out your arms and she reaches up and put hers on yours. You put one on her waist and you have to look into her eyes while not stepping on her toes.
This is far more likely than needing to arm yourself to track down bad guys and rescue her from them or even answering a call to come fix a flat tire.
But those seem doable, not dancing.
If your gut reaction to this suggestion is “Anything but that! I’d rather get dipped in acid and crawl through broken glass!”, then you are exactly the dude who needs this because the more you feel uncomfortable with that, the more likely it is doing this will be meaningful to your girl.


My baby recently wanted to dance with somebody, I sent her brother out to do the job (because he’s a pretty good dancer). For whatever reason, he wasn’t feeling it.
Those brief moments watching her alone, just waiting, seemed like forever.
I’m glad he didn’t dance with her because I eventually did. It was my job and my privilege. My joy.
I felt self-conscious and awkward until I focused on her.
It was great. Really great.
It was also too short because the song ended too soon, before I could really figure out what we were doing with our feet.
I just wish I had been ready sooner, I wish she hadn’t had a moment of doubt or waiting.
So, I hope when you say “I’d do anything for her”‘ as uncomfortable as it might make you, that you’ll include dancing.
It’ll be worth it.

On Muscle Memory and Retraining Habits.

One of the challenges with fighting is it’s both the most natural and unnatural thing to do in the world. It’s natural to want to hit somebody when you’re angry. It’s not natural to throw an effective punch. It’s natural to want to want to defend yourself when someone is trying to punch you. But it’s not natural to defend yourself the way a mixed martial artist or a boxer defense against punches.

At a high-level, martial artists don’t try to defend punches by blocking. They defend by getting closer and keeping their eyes open. It’s natural to turn away. It’s natural to stay out of harm’s way. It’s normal to withdraw. So whether it’s defense or doing a proper armbar, martial arts is about training responses, training habits that are unnatural until they become natural. You do this be repetition, hundreds even thousands of them over hours and hours, years and years of training to develop muscle memory. You develop movement without thought. It makes you faster, more effective. You train reflexes, that don’t involve your higher conscious part of your brain.

One problem that can arise is sometimes you have to unlearn muscle memory. You have to unlearn habits that aren’t effective, that don’t work or aren’t as effective. In family and in relationships you can develop mental, emotional and behavioral habits in response to certain situations. And a vital task in healthy relationships, marriage and parenting is identifying negative communication, behaviors and relational habits that you learned from your family of origin or other experiences and relationships. And then develop new habits and patterns and form new emotional muscle memory.

It takes hard work, lots of it. It takes repetition and consistency. It takes humility and lots of problem-solving and experimenting, It also takes determination and support to stick with it because under stress we revert to our old habits.

Encouraging and Challenging Your Kids

One tension in the art of grace-based parenting is teaching kids that while grace and love are unconditional, skill, excellence, responsibility, success and trust aren’t.
Those take work, effort, initiative, character, and intention.
Encouragement without challenge is boring and enabling and can lead to entitlement.
Challenge without encouragement is discouraging and exhausting and can lead to a performance-based life.
Encouragement and challenge are inspiring and empowering.
But it’s so hard to provide just the right balance; it’s the balance of grace and truth.
How have you encouraged or challenged your child (young or adult) to grow, tryout for something, stick with something, be more responsible, get a job, stretch outside their comfort zone towards their potential without causing them to think they aren’t “good enough” or what they do is never enough?

For fearful anxious parents

It’s hard to give up fear because in many ways fear can keep your kids safe.

Fear can keep you safe.

The problem with fear is that trust can’t exist in an environment of fear. And there can not be true connection and intimacy without trust.

There is a different way to keep yourself safe. And that’s wisdom, strength, and connection.

Yes, I want my kids to be safe and I want to protect them when they’re little. But as are growing up, and when they’re all grown up, I actually want them to shed safety.
I want them to be brave.
I want them to live like warriors.

Parenting and Identity

Parenting is more about your best behavior than your kids’.
And realizing it’s not about behavior ultimately.
 
It’s about identity.
 
You can’t create a great story for your family, your marriage – you can’t be heroic in the face of your challenges – without facing and knowing your backstory.
 
You can’t get to “this is us”, without discovering “this is me”.

I went to a marriage counseling training last week, one of the interventions we learned was how to work through the aftermath of a fight.

One of the keys, besides self-awareness of feelings and listening well, was talking about a memory, a story from your past that brought up those same feelings.

It helps us identify our triggers, it helps us become more aware of how we react.
“None of us get out of childhood without a few crazy buttons.” – John Gottman.
When we understand this, we gain more self-control, we are able to stay calmer and objective (we prevent getting flooded).
This helps us problem-solve, brainstorm, compromise, collaborate and come to agreements more easily because we aren’t overwhelmed (and overwhelming our kids) with our frustration, grumpiness, anger or even rage.
We are able to give our best selves to our family.

How To Not Raise Entitled and Enabled Kids: The E’s of Excellent Parenting

Had a fun break with the family for Spring Break.  On the five-hour trip back home, we had a good conversation about parenting.  It started out with the ideas of Entitlement and Enabling vs. Empowering and Equipping your kids. And we ended up thinking of a bunch of different ideas that started with the letter E.  We hope you enjoy it too.

Entitlement.  As parents, we don’t set out to raise entitled kids but it’s easy to justify giving your kids privileged or special treatment by saying you love them and want whats best for them.

Enabled. One of my professors on parenting explained enabling your kids as doing something for them that they could do themselves. Another aspect of enabling your kids is letting them get away with not suffering the consequences of their behavior.  Again, it’s easy to justify this by telling yourself that you want to love and protect your kids.  You want them to know that you always have their back or that you want to show them God’s grace or faithfulness to them.

The problem with this is you as the parent can end up feeling responsible for everything. Raising entitled kids can be exhausting, excruciating and embarrassing.  How does it feel when you are at work or working on a group project and someone on the team doesn’t pull their weight, do their share?
It’s exhausting.  You can end up resenting the other person. Well, it’s the same when your kids don’t pull their weight around the house.  You can end up feeling like you are doing everything (because you are), feeling unappreciated and bitter.

Empowering.  It’s not unloving to require and train your kids to work hard, give their best effort, be diligent and finish what they start.  It’s not cruel to ask them to do things with excellence.  To do chores.  To work for what they get.  To set goals.  To delay gratification.  It’s actually empowering to your kids to give them freedom and responsibility around the house and gradually more as they get older.  A child 8-10 years old could start to help out with laundry.  They certainly could be doing their own laundry by middle school and especially in high school.  It’s actually honoring to them to not give them special privileges, just because.  It’s fine to give them gifts and to show you love them in special ways.  But when they start to expect or feel entitled to have things, or always have things their way, it’s no longer special.  It becomes common.  And it actually sets them up for disappointment and failure later in life because you aren’t teaching them how the real world works.  Their teachers and professors aren’t going to give them special treatment.  Their boss at their work place is going to expect them to work, to problem solve, to take responsibility.

Equipping.  Not enabling or entitling your kids doesn’t mean you don’t love them, it’s doesn’t mean you won’t protect them, that you are leaving them to fend for themselves in the cruel, harsh realities of the world.  Parenting with excellence means you take a coaching and equipping mindset to working with them.  You provide the tools, resources they need and you also train them on how to use those tools.  You explore, process, experiment, debrief and work through things together.  You still have their back and at the same time, you are equipping them to stand on their own, to risk and put themselves out there in different areas, to be brave.

Expectations.  Having healthy expectations is a part of growing and stretching your kids to reach their potential.  As parents, we don’t want to put too high expectations on our kids but what I’ve seen a lot of parents with too low expectations.  Often, parents in the interest of protecting their kids from failure, disappointment or rejection, set the bar low.  Kids are often capable of so much more than we think.  I was watching a jiu jitsu video that talked about the metaphor of a “Goldilocks tension” and I think it applies to expectations.  We don’t want expectations that are “too cold”, too low, and we don’t want expectations that are “too hot”, too high.  We want to set expectations that are “just right”.  Expectations that are too low, lead to boredom and missed potential and growth.  Expectations that are too high, put an adverse amount of stress and pressure on your kids and that can stunt their growth as well.

Empathy.  So, how do you know if your expectations are too high, too low or just right?  You do that by listening and listening well with empathy.  One key to empathy as a parent, is focusing more on what your child may be experiencing and less on what they are doing, on their performance.  And you’re not the only one who needs empathy, your kids do too.

Emotional Intelligence.  Empathy is one of the pillars of emotional and relational intelligence.  EQ has been shown to be more of predictor of a person’s success than intelligence. Delayed gratification is another pillar.

Endurance vs. Expedient.  It’s hard to empower and equip your kids, it requires a lot of trust and courage. On both your parts.  It requires patience because it will be messy.  Things won’t go smoothly at first, things won’t get done as well and as quickly as you would just doing it for them.  But you won’t always be there for them, they will have to grow up and do things on their own someday.

It’s sad, very sad when I’ve seen teenagers treat their single mother with contempt.  Their mother did/does everything for them and these kids had no gratitude for the sacrifices their mom made (or at least they didn’t express it).  It was sad for the kid but also the mom.  She poured out herself, bent over backwards, to love and provide for her child and her child barely could stand her.  They had no respect for her.  They either struggle with selfishness or self-hatred or both.  I’ve seen entitled young adults who struggled with anger and resentment at their parents because they feel ill-equipped for life.  They haven’t had to problem-solve or bear the weight of responsibility and get overwhelmed by the demands of adulthood.  And they struggle with imposter syndrome and feeling behind in life.

So, don’t just give into what’s expedient, what’s easy.  As the kids get older, don’t continue in the habit of taking the path of least resistance.  Learn to be mindful and intentional about your long-term goals with them. And be patient, consistent.  Get help and support if you have to.

Enforce.  One way to be patient and consistent is with enforcing consequences and discipline.  It’s easy to justify being lax with discipline and consequences by telling yourself you are being caring and compassionate and loving.  But often being exhausted and wanting to avoid the stress and upset of conflict is the main reason for not enforcing consequences.  It really isn’t about what’s best for the kids, it’s often what will feel best, for you, in the moment.

Expose and Eliminate the Elephants. Instead of avoiding conflict, instead of building resentment or emotionally manipulating your kids with passive-aggressive indirect behavior, it will benefit you and them to expose and eliminate elephants, to call out entitlement, laziness, disrespect, and other behaviors and attitudes that may be poisoning your relationship and family life.  It’s easier to do this when those negatives are baby elephant size, not full grown elephants.  But even if they are huge, be brave and start to work on it. Sometimes, just the act of exposing them, shrinks them.  If you call it out, then everyone has a chance to be aware and take ownership of making it better instead of it being your solo project.

Example.  Might daughter suggested this one, besides enforcing consequences and making rules and throwing your weight around, she recommends parents need to be good examples of what you are trying to teach and require of your kids.

Energizing.  If you start to be more intentional about equip and empower your kids you will replace exhaustion with energy because you will no longer have to bear all the weight of responsibility for how your kids and home are doing. You will not have to wrestle so much with resentment, bitterness, worry and hurt feelings.

Encouragement.  This is hard work. Remember, your kids aren’t bad.  They may need some maturity, course correction, training and equipping, but they need encouragement and acceptance most of all.  You will need encouragement when they changes you are attempting don’t seem to be working, when you have a bad day, when it seems to be getting worse instead of better.

Enjoyment.  Lastly, implementing and being more intentional about the positive E’s for parenting will not just allow you to experience excellence in parenting.  It will allow you to enjoy the experience of being a parent, of being in a healthy mutual relationship with your kids.

Eight Practices To Let Go Of Perfectionism in Parenting: Part 2

Eight Practices to Let go ofPart Two of Eight Practices to Let Go of Perfectionism in Parenting

You can view the first four practices in part One.

These are from a Periscope video I filmed last year. You can watch the video or read the edited transcript below. The transcript includes one practice I forgot to mention in the video.

Practice #5 is Authenticity

The next practice for letting go of perfectionism and performance is to practice authenticity and to practice imperfection. To courageously let others know who you really are warts and all. And doing that with your kids.  I think this is really hard in some families especially if Dad is really busy with work. If he’s just kind of tired and exhausted and distracted and focused on sports and hobbies; if he’s just distant and disconnected.  And so the kids wonder: “What does he really think of me?” It’s sad, that can be such a trap, at home for kids and for families where “Dad pays attention or Dad shows up, when I play soccer or play baseball.” and “Dad gets excited and pays attention to me when I’m doing really well, in sports, but if I’m not, then he’s not really into me.”

Practice #6 is Getting Support and Accountability

Practicing vulnerability is hard. I hear and see this when people talk about Facebook how it’s hard to be vulnerable, it’s hard to tell the truth about where you struggle. And what happens to a lot folks is they struggle on their own, keep it hidden, until it gets unmanageable and then things blow up and it leaks out somewhere.

So, tell others the truth.  Share with safe people. You don’t have to broadcast everything to anyone, but finding folks that you can really disclose who you really are can help you learn to trust that it’s worth it. One of the best things that our family has done this year (we took a break for a while) but we’ve got a small group of friends from church that we get together with once a week  and that’s been great to get support and talk with other parents about where they’re at and where we’re at. To get encouragement and support.

Practice #6 is the practice of having fun as a family. One practice I forgot to include in the video is a suggestion from my son: practicing having  fun and being playful.  Humor and laughing at yourself. If you struggle with perfectionism or anxiety, it can be difficult to loosen up and laugh. My son likes to invent board games and weapons out of cardboard.  My youngest and I like to express playfulness with verbal and physical comedy.  It’s hard to be perfectionistic when you are trying to make someone laugh by making goofy faces!

Humor can be threatening and misused.  As with the other practices, if this is something new or difficult for you, you may need to go slow and get some support for this one.  Our favorite memories as a family are the times we can laugh together, when the kids can tease me.  It reminds me to take a break from all the weighty matters matters in life.  It also helps me not to take myself so seriously and to be too hard on myself.

Practice #7 is Self-Care  clearing your mom or dad if you struggle with perfectionism is to practice self care. For folks that have faith and are believers part of that self-care can be a prayer and worship.  Managing your stress as a mom, as a dad, by simplifying an overwhelmed and busy schedule can really help with with healing up and and getting off this rat race, this treadmill and getting some perspective about what why are we doing, what we’re doing, why are we so busy and tired and overwhelmed.  Practicing self-care and pulling back to evaluate what you’re doing as a family and who are you trying to please and who are you doing it for can help you figure out things.  To figure out what things are unhealthy, things that need to go, things that in your schedule that you need to cut out or have healthy boundaries about and say “no” to.  This will give you the space to pay attention to your heart, to pay attention to your stress level and pay attention to your kids and be aware of how they’re doing.

“Shifting from human doings to human beings” you’ve heard that phrase.  It takes time. It takes time to just enjoy sitting and being and not doing anything. I think stillness, the discipline of stillness and solitude and silence and not being busy is increasingly being lost.  I know we feel that as a family running around, especially right now with Christmas performances, concerts and things like that. But it’s great to just be able to spend some time, an evening, or a bit of time in the morning disconnected from screens, not having to be entertained but just hanging out and talking and going for a walk or just enjoying the deck and the sunshine.

So, that’s what I’m going to go do. I hope that you guys have a great weekend. If you’re a mom or dad that struggles with perfectionism in yourself or with your expectations and perfectionism or controlling behavior and speech with your kids I hope that some of these things might resonate with you.  I encourage you to take action one or two practices. If it seems overwhelming, just get started.  I hope the best for your family. If you have any questions or comments feel free to comment below or tweet me on Twitter and send me a message. I would love to hear if you have any questions or if you have any suggestions for future blogs or videos. 

Eight Practices To Let Go Of Perfectionism in Parenting Part 1

Eight Practices to Let go of

Eight Practices to Let Go of Perfectionism in Parenting

Here’s a recording of a Periscope video I did last year on perfectionism in parenting and an edited transcript below.

Today’s blog will be the first four practices.  The next blog will be on the second half and include an additional practice I forgot to include that my son recommended to me.

Here’s three signs that you might have an issue with perfectionism in parenting I didn’t included in the video:  feeling Stressed out, Shouting a lot and struggling with Shaming your kids or feeling Shamed.  If you feel that way or notice this going on, if you notice decreased joy in your role and work as a parent, if you feel decreased closeness with your kids even if you spend a lot of time with them or if you talk a lot with them but don’t feel connected at a heart-level, I hope watching this video or reading this blog will help you and your family.

Transcript:

This is something I work on with a lot of adults. I see the effects of their parents’ perfectionism, their stress and anxiety, on them. I hesitate to talk about this a little because I don’t want to come across as shaming parents. Because that’s one thing about perfectionism: shame feeds it and it doesn’t help to feel bad. Feeling bad about your parenting doesn’t help, long-term that doesn’t sustain change. Feeling bad about who you are and how you’re doing as Mom or Dad just feeds that vicious cycle.

At the same time, I do want to encourage parents to be aware of how protectionism affects their kids because that’s one of the ways that perfectionism is harmful to kids and families is that it makes parents really self-focused and selfish.

My kids are 19, 16 and 12 (now) – girl, boy, girl – and this topic, this issue of perfectionism and performance-based love and acceptance is something kind of near and dear to my heart because I just want my kids to experience grace and unconditional love. But it’s so tough and we can we can slip and get sucked into focusing on behavior, focusing on how we look outwardly to other people to other families and get caught in comparison and jealousy and things like that.

So, a little bit about my family for some context then we’re going to talk about practical ways to let go of perfectionism. One of the key ways that this is a challenge and difficult – or has been in the past – for our family, is that each of my kids have been involved in musical theater and music and performance so we’ve had lots of talks about “How do you balance working hard, to do your best, to do things with excellence to do quality work and not get sucked into your self-worth and your approval and your sense of yourself being based on what you do?”

I’ve always tried to affirm and notice the kids for who they are regardless of how well they do with auditions or school work, test results in projects to turn in things like that. But it’s tough, I got to admit, I can slip it into that myself and brag and boast about when they do well.  And with social media that’s a challenge that I see and I hear folks talk about a lot in the counseling office about feeling discouraged and anxious, less than, not good enough, because they see how well other people are doing, how well other families are doing, how well-behaved other kids are in the grocery store or at church and they start feeling discouraged and feeling like they’re failing as a parent.  So here are eight practices, I hope will be encouraging to you.

Practice #1: Self-awareness. To replace performance and perfectionism and getting caught in that trap, the first practice is self-awareness and identifying what’s driving any type of perfectionism, procrastination, avoidance or controlling behavior as Mom or Dad.

For me, one of the things is insecurity. Honestly, when my kids are doing well that’s a boost, that makes me feel good. And we want to be proud of our kids but I notice – self-awareness – that I know I’m getting off track and getting unhealthy when how well they’re doing…I’m more concerned about how I feel, how that makes me feel better, than how they feel and how that’s growing them and how that’s helping them gain some self-confidence. And I’m losing track of what their experiences, and what they’re going through, are teaching them about life and character and forming them into the people that I hope that they will be. So self-awareness, practicing self-awareness about where you’re at with this, can be really helpful.

Practice #2 is Patience: the other thing that can help with parenting and communication is being patient with your kids.  You might have heard the phrase “tiger mom”, it’s from a book written by a mom who really drove her kids down in California. (I didn’t read the book, I’ve read some articles and interviews with her.) There can be a culture of pushing kids academically with music, with extracurricular activities, with the kind of the goal of making it in the ultra-competitive college application process and hoping that they stand out.

The desire as parents for our kids to be successful and be able to graduate high school and get a job and take care of themselves – that, that’s legit – but it really helps to get some perspective and to be patient with their growth, and patient with their maturity level. Allow them to be kids. Stretching them but not pushing them to the breaking point and causing lots of stress and anxiety. I talk with a lot of single adults who are still struggling to find their way they don’t have it figured out and their parents really pushed them.

Having your kids just follow your agenda and expectations doesn’t set them up for success because then they don’t have the ability to problem-solve and discern who they really are and what they end up doing, or pursuing, doesn’t end up being a good fit for who they are, the way of doing things, their personality, their strengths, their temperament. That can be really confusing and disillusioning: when you pursue a college degree, a career path, and get the message that “this is going to make you happy and this is going to make you successful” and you’re just miserable.

Practice #3 is practicing Presence.  This is a whole other topic (blog), but just listening well, spending time with your kids to hear how they’re doing with school how they’re doing with relationships, how they’re doing personally is practicing presence. Listening for how they’re feeling and viewing themselves, what their self-image is, what the messages that they’re telling themselves are, can be really helpful.  But that means spending less time on TV. That might mean spending less time on social media or even Periscope. Setting healthy limits so that you can spend time because those conversations come in the middle of spending time, in the middle of the rhythms of the day and rhythm of the week.

Practice #4: Praise and Positivitity. Another practice is praise and positivity.  And that can be with yourself.  Our kids observe and know the things that we really believe based on the things that stress us out and make us fearful and anxious.  They sniff out the hypocrisy in the things we really value. For example, if we are really critical and negative of other people, other families, then they pick up on “That’s not OK.” and “This is what Mom and Dad are expecting and if I don’t want to be criticized if, I don’t want mom or dad to think poorly of me, then I’d better not look like or act like that person.” And if we speak critically or negatively of other families that can be damaging because they likely pick up on where we’re judgmental and that makes them at risk to be perfectionistic and inauthentic with other people.

So work on your issues.  Don’t pass on your negativity.  Don’t pass on your anxiety.

I’ll post the next four practices is part two of this blog.

If you struggle with perfectionism as a parent or with the affects of a parent’s perfectionism, what do you think of these practices so far?

How might you incorporate these practices in your life this month?

On Being Strong and Known To Your Kids

On being Strong for and Known to your kids

What they don’t tell you about being a dad
(whoever “they” are)
is that as your kids become young adults,
young men and women,
you are faced with a choice,
a choice to be this idealized version of “Dad”
or to let them in, to who you are.

Really that choice is always there but it’s especially hard as they get older.
They have more power to be disappointed in you.

But what I’ve learned so far
is you don’t stop being Dad, “superman”, their “hero”, their “knight in shining armor” any more then they stop being your “princess”, your “boy” or your “baby” when they get older.
You just become a different type of hero, you start to play a different role.

They may not look “up” to you in the same way but they can look “in” to you, if you let them.
Instead of the the final word, you become an advisor.
You point them to the truth and let them discover what they need to for themselves, on their own but available.

As Dad or Mom, you still go first, initiate, the more real you are or become, you lead the way and show them how to be real too.
Like the Velveteen Rabbit taught us, to be real is to be loved.

I’m learning how to replace the need to be respected with the connection of being known and trusted by speaking deeper harder truths to my kids,
things that, if I had heard and learned earlier, I wouldn’t have spent so much time trying to figure out on my own.
Things that don’t have to do with what’s on the outside, things of our hearts and who we are.

It’s not that they don’t need my advice but letting them in on the stories and process of how I came to came to that advice – explaining the Why and How I learned the advice I’m sharing, not just telling them What to do – helps them become the whole-hearted and resilient people I hope they’ll become.

As a parent, and especially for dads, the lie is that if you are weak and vulnerable, they will be anxious,
lose their sense of security,
their sense of being protected,
that you always have to be strong for them.
Never let them see you sweat,
never let them see you cry

The truth is, we show them the truth of how real life works
when we are vulnerable and we show them something more than
being strong
and being “OK”.
We teach them about faith.
We teach them about relying on God, on God’s grace and love.
We teach them to rely on others, on community and good friends, not our own strength and performance.
And we teach them to be connected in their humanity and imperfection
by connecting with them in this way.

Vulnerability is risking them thinking less of me
to give me a chance at really connecting with them.

I’m giving up being strong for the kids for being vulnerable with and being brave with them.