Intentional Parenting Auto Pilot is for the Planes

Sissy Goff, David Thomas and Melissa Trevathan, with 75 years of collective counseling experience, see today’s parents are changing. These parents are honest. They’re more self-aware. And they want to learn what it means to be intentional parents, parenting with purpose and hope, not with fear and guilt. These three should know – they are currently counseling children and offering parenting consultations to hundreds of families via Daystar Counseling Ministries in Nashville, TN and as they speak across the country to groups of parents. Their collective wisdom and experience forms the basis for their new book, Intentional Parenting: Autopilot is for Planes (Thomas Nelson Publishers, March 2013).

Here are their “Five Best Practices of Intentional Parents.”

Five of Best Practices of Intentional Parents

When the three of us speak across the country to groups of parents, Melissa speaks beautifully to parenting out of fear instead of parenting out of love. When we parent out of fear, our kids never get the best of us, the most of us, or even what they really need from us. Parenting out of fear is a reactive form of parenting.

We’d love to invite you into more proactive parenting—thoughtful, intentional, strategic, and wise parenting. Or more active parenting—responsive, engaged, invested, connected parenting. It’s difficult to parent out of love when we are simply reacting to everything going on around us. We are postured to react rather than respond.

We always have options. Sometimes we choose fear over love. Sometimes we choose love over fear. You will continue to hear us invite you to extend grace to yourself in the journey of parenting. You are going to make mistakes. God can redeem the mistakes we make in parenting. He extends grace to us so that we can then extend grace and mercy to our children. Receive the grace and mercy that is available to you. And then do that thing we teach our kids to do when they fall off their bikes while learning to ride: get back up, dust yourself off, and try again.

Being an intentional parent means I get back on the bike and learn from the mistake I made last time around. Maybe I rode to close to the curb; maybe I didn’t brake soon enough, or didn’t have a firm grip on the handlebars. Try doing it a little different next time around. If you need to take a break for a while, that’s OK. We all need breaks. A chance to stop, breathe, gain some perspective, and then we’re more ready to try again.

We want to give you a taste of our 75 years of collective counseling experiencing, meeting with and walking beside children and parents, with our five best suggestions for Intentional Parenting. (The other six you can read about in our new book.)

Putting the PLAY Back in Parenting

To the parent who says, “Aren’t I too old to play?” We say a hearty “NO WAY!” Play has purpose for you and your kids. When we speak to parents, we talk about the need for every child to feel enjoyed by their parents. Every child needs time with their mom and dad that is not spent instructing, coaching, teaching, or even exhorting . . . just plain play together. It helps build a child’s confidence and increases the bond between you.

As a side note, we’re not only talking about watching your children play, although that’s important too. Kids want an audience, and it’s easy to think (especially after a hard day’s work) that by watching them play, you are entering in. You can watch them play tennis and dive off diving boards, but they also want you to jump in and get a little wet right alongside them.

At camp, the kids will beg the adult counselors to get in the lake with them. I cannot even begin to count the number of kids who have said to me, “My mom won’t swim with us. She doesn’t like to get her hair wet. Or, my dad comes to the lake with us, but he spends a lot of time on his phone because it’s hard for him to get away from work.”

Dive in. Get your hair wet. Get on the floor and play a board game. Laugh. Enjoy your children by playing with them. And then save a little time to play without them, as well.

Connect More Than Just Dots

Most parents think being connected to your child involves texting with two thumbs. We say b eing connected involves listening and looking for the invitation. As I write these words, I’m seated next to a set of parents sitting across the table from their teenage son. His hair is messy and disheveled. He’s wearing an old t-shirt and jeans. His parents are in dress clothes. My suspicion is that they are headed to church. It’s Sunday morning and they are having breakfast together at this really cool coffeehouse in Nashville. The food here is a nice way to get a cranky teenage boy out of bed on a Sunday morning, and to make the experience of church go down a little easier. They have strategically trapped him into conversation (and connection) with chocolate chip muffins and mochas. When he gets up to go to the bathroom, I’m thinking about high-fiving them.

They laugh together from time to time. They seem to go back and forth between topics, something surface to something more serious. OK, I confess that I did listen in on their conversation. I heard the dad say, “Let’s talk about getting your license in a couple of months.” The boy got this huge smile on his face and said, “Let’s do.” Conversations about all things happen better with chocolate as one of the ingredients, in my opinion. These are wise, creative parents, working hard to maintain connection during a particularly difficult season of development.

Do you see the ingredients involved in this time of connecting? Creativity (the time, the food, a cool coffeehouse), laughter (mixed with heavy topics), and enjoyment.

We forget the importance of mixing in these ingredients as we journey forward in parenting. We can get so set on instruction, teaching, correction, and discipline that we forget the importance of enjoyment, laughter, and creativity. They don’t have to be mutually exclusive of one another.

The Essential E – Encouraging Your Child

Of all the things encouragement offers your child, hope is perhaps the most important. As you encourage your child, you give them grace for who they are right now, but also you give them hope for who you want them to become. But with the right type of encouragement, you also point them to a hope that runs much deeper. Your child will place his or her hope in a lot of things over the years—new friends, parts in plays, winning football teams, homecoming dates, SAT scores. And when those things fall through, discouragement will follow. Your encouragement, in those times, is invaluable. A middle school girl I meet with said that her mom puts a new Scripture on her mirror every day . . . just to encourage her. A high school girl told me how much it means when she knows her mom is praying specifically for her and for what she’s facing that day. The encouragement of these moms is a genuine expression of their hope. When your encouragement rises out of that place, it has more impact than you can imagine.

In all of the complexities of growing up today, children and teens need hope. They need life and healing and relationship with you, as their parent. And they need you to offer these things out of the overflow of your heart. Encouragement is not just the words you say. It’s not just the truth and hope that you offer. It’s the way you live His truth and His hope out. Sensitivity to your child’s heart and confidence in God as your protector, provider, and redeemer is what truly encourages. You offer hope as you point your children toward God.

In Intentional Parents Mercy Runs Deep

My friend, Julie, is a professor at a university. She happens to also be an amazing artist. She created a painting that hangs in her home with a quote by Plato that reads, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

I want my kids to grow into an understanding that everyone they meet is fighting some kind of battle. We could all use some kindness and mercy. The more we extend this to our children and to people around us, the more familiar it feels to our kids.

Equally important is that they see us extend grace and forgiveness to ourselves. Moms, you, in particular, expect a lot of yourself and have a hard time forgiving yourself. Never lose sight of the reality that your daughters are watching closely and learning how a woman handles failure, disappointment, and adversity, among other things. Dads, our sons are tuned into the same channel. We are the first place they learn how a man navigates these same experiences. Do they see a guy who shuts down, goes off the deep end, or spews emotion all over his family? It’s vital that kids see us being kind to ourselves (and others) and willing to forgive (ourselves and others) when we blow it.

It’s not uncommon to sit in a parent consultation and hear one or both parents say, “We should have come in months (or years) ago.” I’m quick to respond to that statement by saying, “Well, I’m grateful you are here now.” Sometimes we have trouble letting go of the “I should have” moments.

Letting go of the things we wish we’d done opens up more space to focus on the things we can do now. Regret is a powerful force. It takes up a lot of emotional space and doesn’t leave much room for intentionality or creativity. We aren’t talking about forgetting the past or acting as if it didn’t take place. Those are two different forms of denial. We are recommending learning from the past and taking that knowledge into the present and the future.

Intentional Parents Are Free…Free Indeed!

I attend an Anglican church. It’s one of the more progressive Anglican churches where they intersperse hymns with worship choruses. Church members are very engaged in the service, although there isn’t a ton of outward expression. Suffice it to say most people are not waving flags and dancing in the aisles. Most. So on this particular day, I was sitting in my pew toward the back of the church. It was the last song of the service, which usually is a rousing, anthemic song, such as “In Christ Alone” or “Mighty to Save.” Most of the church was on their feet . . . on their feet in their pews, I should say. But there was a ten-year-old girl toward the front of the church who was just not having the stuffy standing around any longer. She was out, in the aisle, dancing freely. I watched her for a few minutes, and then saw a woman I guessed was her mom quickly moving toward her from the back of the church. “Uh oh,” I thought. “That’s not going to last long.” Her mom walked up to her daughter, took her hand, and then—it was as if I watched this moment pass over the mom’s face—she started dancing too. Free.

I have to admit that I was shocked. I fully expected that mother to put her daughter right back in the pew. But maybe that’s because I’m not very free myself. I think, in that moment, the mother made a decision. “Should I make her sit in the pew beside me or should I join in her worship? Is it more important to not look foolish in front of people, or to respond to what I feel stirring inside me with my daughter? Does it matter to me what they think? Do I really feel free?”

It could have gone either way. It could have been that the mother saw her daughter’s dance as an attempt to get attention. She could have been embarrassed for her daughter and embarrassed for herself. But in that moment, she chose to believe and act on something different. Free.