Parenting: Surviving & Thriving through the Teen Years Becoming Whole

Raising a teenager is hard work. Full stop.
Gone are the days of playdates and lessons on using our inside voices. Before you now, is a teenager - a growing, constantly changing human. With all this change, you might find yourself wondering, “Why is there no Moms groups for teens?”
This is it. Therapist, Rebecca Baker, joins the podcast offering the support you need now. Rebecca, Josh, and Kit sit down to discuss some practical steps to pave the way to better communication with your teen. It begins with awareness. And that awareness starts with you.
Shrugging off the parenting struggle with a “Big Kids, Big Problems” attitude may end in a standoff or a slammed door.
Relax those shoulders. Listen in for some life skills leading to better conversations and how to give your child room to explore how they’re feeling as they’re feeling it. Connecting with your teen starts with learning to connect with your own emotions, your body, and your community. This is hard work, but you can do it.
Learning how to evolve and shift with your teen, giving you both the room you need to grow - this is your next step to “Becoming Whole.”
Highlights:
What do you say to a parent who says, ‘I know my kid’s struggling but they won’t talk to me.’ How do you help parents who find that to be true? You invite, invite, invite, invite
pay attention to the small things so when the big things come up they know that you’re going to be there and they can talk to you
to catch them getting curious about something or trying something new, to be able to point that out and shine a light out it and say I see that and I see you and I love it
Questions:
Think about how your body reacts to stress, excitement, anger. Where and how do you feel it? Make a note of those mind-body connections to use later in connecting with your child.
GIVE IT A NUMBER! Try using a number scale of 1-10 to identify how big a feeling (good or bad) feels in your body.
Make space to Connect: Go for a drive, Bake something, Go for a hike.
What you pay attention to will grow. Pay attention to what you pay attention to with your child. Try to shine a light on the good, curious, funny moments too.

Resources/Extras:
Dallas Willard on The Mental Life “The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God” “Now we need to understand that what simply occupies our mind very largely governs what we do. It sets the emotional tone out of which our action flows, and it projects the possible courses of action available to us. Also, the mind, though of little power on its own, is the place of our widest and most basic freedom. This is true in both a direct and an indirect sense. Of all the things we do, we have more freedom with respect to what we think of, where we will place our mind, than anything else. And the freedom of thinking is a direct freedom wherever it is present. We need not do something else in order to exercise it. We simply turn our mind to whatever it is we choose to think of. The deepest revelation of our character is what we choose to dwell on in though
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