Changing the Story: Parenting Differently Than I Was Raised

SPEAKER_01 0:00

God reshapes generational patterns through humility and intentionality. So one of the difference b differences between me and my parenting skills and that of my parents, parents of the seventies, is that my parents didn't go to church. My parents were they did they did not embrace any kind of faith. Faith in God I don't care what your God's name is. It could be Jesus, it could be Muhammad, it could be Buddha, it could be a whole host of gods. There's a lot of gods out there that people worship. And the scope of this podcast episode is not to discuss the differences or the right or wrongness of the God that you may worship. The God that I worship changed my heart. And he helped me to look at my parents through a lens of forgiveness and a lens of compassion, a lens of mercy, because I because I had a life-changing experience with Jesus, he took that old stony, hateful heart out of me and he put a heart of flesh in me. God gave me the ability to forgive my parents, because without Jesus and His grace and my heart and his forgiveness of my sins, I would have never been able to forgive my parents for what they did to us. God is my witness. I would have never been able to forgive them. But because Jesus reached down from heaven and saved me, and because he wrote my name in Lamb's Book of Life, and He gave me forgiveness, and He gave me hope, and He gave me purpose for my life, I in turn was able to receive that love that God gave me, to receive that forgiveness that He gave me, to receive that purpose that He gave me. And I was able to look back through my eyes, through my experience as being a child of the 70s, and I was able to forgive my parents for the generational curse that they gave me of bad parenting. So God reshapes generational patterns through humility and intentionality. Because God loved me so much that he died on the cross for the sins of mankind, past, present, and future, I was able to humble myself and forgive my parents for what they did or didn't do. That doesn't mean I ex I excused their behavior. Doesn't mean that they didn't do wrong. But God reshapes generational patterns through humility and intentionality. I intentionally pursued a relationship with Jesus. Intentionally. And that's because I heard the gospel message. I had friends in high school that were believers, and they belonged to families that were were were faith-based, and they recognized that I needed a friend. And they loved me despite of who I was. They loved me despite of what my upbringing was creating in me, and they led me to the cross. They led me to people that could tell me about God's love in my life that I needed. I had desperately, I desperately needed love. I desperately needed acceptance. I desperately needed to be forgiven. I desperately needed to know that I was a person of value, that I was a I was a teenager that had value, that that not everybody in my life was like my parents. So God resapes reshapes generational patterns through humility and intentionality. So I intentionally pursued a relationship with Jesus, and Jesus intentionally saved me. He intentionally wrote my name in Lamb's Book of Life, and He intentionally put my feet on a new path. So what did I keep? Not everything from your childhood was broken. Traditions, values, or strengths worth preserving, work ethic, faith, resilience, humor, loyalty, honoring the good without denying the hard, recognizing that flawed parents can still give meaningful gifts, traditions, values, or strengths worth preserving.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

There comes a moment in every parent's life when the role they've known for years begins to change. The children they once carried, guided, and protected become adults. And suddenly the questions become different. How do you stay connected without holding on too tightly? How do you continue loving well when relationships become complicated? And while every family is different, no parent should have to navigate these questions alone. Each week, James Moppet brings together experts and parents who have walked this road before to explore the realities of parenting adult children. Through honest conversation and practical wisdom, listeners find hope for the journey ahead. Whether your relationship is thriving, strained, or somewhere in between, there is hope, there is healing, and there is always the possibility of a stronger connection. ABCs of Parenting Adult Children. Helping parents navigate loving their adult sons and daughters well.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Hello and welcome to ABCs of Parenting Adult Children podcast. My name is James Moffitt. Today I am going to be talking to you with in the Growing in Grace episode number six. This is a Growing in Grace special video series, audio series, where I talk to you about being a child of the 70s. So this is episode six. So sit back and relax and enjoy what I have to say. So growing up, we all carry pieces of our childhood into adulthood. Some we treasure, and some we spend years trying to heal from. Today I want to share the parts of my story that shaped the way I parent, or maybe I should say shape the way I parented, what I chose to change, what I chose to keep, and how those decisions helped me build a healthier home for my family. If you've ever feared repeating the patterns you grew up with, this episode is for you. So let me share, this is, you know, this weekend is Father's Day. Today is Friday, the 19th, or Juneteenth, and a lot of people have off today because it's a federal holiday. So I want to share an image or a memory that I had, a pleasant memory that I treasure. I was raised in a small town called Quinlan, Texas, which is in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. And I remember I was out in the yard doing boy chores, you know, outdoor chores. Boys did outdoor chores. My sister did all the inside chores. So I was outside doing something, weed eating, pulling weeds around a tree or something like that. And my father had a yellow riding mower. And he rode up to me on that mower and turned it off, looked at me, and said, You want to hear something funny? And it wasn't very often that my father told me funny stories. So needless to say, I was somewhat shocked and surprised. And I was like, Sure, Dad, I'd love to hear a funny story. He said, I have an arrangement with your mother. He said that her arrangement is that she can grow anything she wants out in this yard, front yard, backyard, as long as it's okay for me to run over it with the riding mower. Well, he thought that was the funniest thing. And I I thought it was pretty funny too. I laughed. We both laughed, we both chuckled, enjoyed the moment. Then he turned the mower on and cranked it up and turned around and went about his business, and I went back to weeding the weed eating the tree or whatever it was that I was doing. But it was pretty funny. Yeah. Your mom can grow anything out in the yard as long as I'm able to run over it with riding lawnmower. So that was one of the pleasant memories I had of my father. Another one that I have that's pleasant was my dad would take the time to sit at the kitchen table after our supper and after the dishes were cleared and the kitchen was cleaned. He would sit there and he would play all manner of board games with me and my sister. And back then, I think we had as kids, we had fun with that, but we really didn't appreciate the sacrifice that he was making at that time. And looking, you know, hindsight's 2020. So I remember looking back at that now, and I I recognized the fact that he had always probably worked an eight-hour day at Terrell State Hospital as a TV man, and he was probably tired, but he made an effort to bond with us children and to play board games. We played I don't know, Monopoly. We played we had this one game that had a board and you had pegs. I think it was called Trouble or something like that. And there was a bubble in the middle of the board that had dice in it. And so you had the goal of the game was to move all your pegs around the around the board back to your home base, and whoever did that first one. So you'd pop that bubble and you'd get a number. You'd get a you know, whatever the number was. I think there was a single die in there, and you'd move your pieces around the board, and if you landed on one of your opponent's pieces, then you could pull it up and throw it back out and take their spot, you know, that space. And I don't know how long that game lasted, maybe an hour or so. But we had the biggest fun playing that game. We played Monopoly and we played uh Rummy and we played spades. I think my mother got involved in that when we played Rummy and Spades card games. And uh my dad and I, I think we played chess at some point. But anyway, we we kind of, I guess depending on our age and the mood, uh, we kind of rotated between board games at the kitchen table. And this was back in the in the 70s, mid to late 70s. And uh so anyway, those are those are a couple of memories I have that are pleasant of my dad. And we also he had a green 17-foot trihole bonito boat, had an outboard motor on it, and we'd go out on the lake on that thing. Of course, my mother was terrified of it because he always, you know, people that own boats like to, you know, crank them up wide open and bounce off the waves and all of that. And of course, we kids, we had a we had a great time uh riding in the boat. And like I said, my mother was always telling him to slow down because she wasn't she was not that thrilled about the ride. And uh during the summer times I wound up having to clean the bottom of that boat with a brillo pad. So that was one of my outdoor chores that I got to do. So that the bottom of that boat was uh pretty clean, probably one of the cleanest in the neighborhood. But uh anyway, I just wanted to take the time in honor of Father's Day that's coming up to share those pleasant memories with you. So, what I changed, what I kept breaking cycles while honoring the good. So I shared some positive memories of my dad, and so I'm honoring the good things. So in this episode, I'm going to open up about the parts of my childhood that shaped me, both the painful and the meaningful. I'm going to share the intentional choices I made to parent differently, the values I chose to preserve in the early moments when I realized I wanted to build a healthier emotional environment for my children. So this conversation gives hope to parents who fear repeating the past by showing that change is possible even without perfect examples. So as I have said before, when when I became a parent, I realized that I was doomed to carry forward the generational curse of my parents' bad parenting. And the only way that I was going to be able to break that parenting cycle, that generational curse, was to recognize the negative things that my parents did and to be intentional in relearning some of those skills, those parenting skills. And I listened to James Dobson a lot on the radio, and he had he had a lot of wisdom and he had a lot of biblical knowledge. And so I tried to absorb as much as I could from Dr. James Dobson. And I I would like to think that while some of my parenting skills from my parents probably leaked out from time to time, I would like to think that I was able to bypass some of that and be a different type of parent. So the core message is you can break patterns you didn't choose. The moment you realized I don't want to parent the way I was parented. If you're a child of the 70s, you recognize the fact that you didn't want you don't want to do that, or you didn't want to do that. Becoming emotionally available instead of emotionally distant. That means engaging with your children emotionally, being present in their lives, observing them, observing their moments, observing their moods, observing their happy times and their sad times. Listening instead of controlling. That was one of the things I didn't have as a child. My parents didn't really listen to me. The only thing my parents were listening for was for me to explain why I screwed up, why I disobeyed them, why I behaved badly while I didn't meet their their expectations of perfection. Why? It was always why? Why are you doing that? Why did you do that? Why are you going to continue doing that? I never I never had an opportunity to share my feelings, my dreams, my hopes for the future, my experiences at school. I was never able to express those things to them. And even if I did have the opportunity to do that, I really don't think they were listening to me. I don't think that they were present in that conversation. Listening instead of controlling. So that means take the time to close your mouth and open up both ears and just active practice active listening. Listen to what your child is telling you. This goes for an adult child, right? If you're a if you're a parent of the 70s and you're listening to this, maybe you're maybe your your children who weren't parents or kids of the 70s, maybe they're listening to this thinking, wow, these are some of the generational curses or a generational curse or choice of parenting that my parents made that I don't want to do with my kids. So if you have an adult child, learn how to listen. Listen to what they're saying. Don't listen with the thought of, okay, how am I going to respond to this? Or how am I going to fix this? Especially with dads. Dads are horrible about that. Dads are fixers. We're genetically disposed to listen to a problem and map it out and fix it. Your adult children don't need you to fix their problems. They need you for you to be emotionally present and to listen to what they're saying. Listen to how they feel. Listen to what they experienced. And then at some point, you may have the opportunity, if they allow you to, to share a story or two about how you experienced the same thing and how you worked through the problems or worked through the issues. But yeah, listen, listen actively to your adult children. Or if you're a parent of a teenager or a young adult, practice active listening. Choosing connection over fear-based parenting. Listening instead of controlling and choosing connection over fear-based parenting. What does connection mean? Connection means having a relationship with your child that does not involve you trying to impose your will over them, with you trying to mold them into the shape of a perfect little soldier or robot. Choosing connection over fear-based parenting. I can't stress that strongly enough. When I was a child, I was obedient. And I was obedient because I didn't want to get a beating, or I didn't want to listen to my mother grill us and lecture us for forty-five minutes to an hour to where I was unable to stand any longer. I remember many a time going to my room and closing the door and sitting on my bed and my back and my legs felt relief because I'd been standing so long. And I took my sister and I both took emotional beatings all the time. Not physical beatings from my mother. She liked to slap us in the face. I'll take that back. She loved to slap us. Wow. Please, if you're slapping your children, stop. Don't do that. That's not good. It doesn't it does not convey love or compassion or mercy. Don't slap your children. Choosing connection over fear-based parenting means that you want to communicate in such a way with your children that you make a you have an emotional bond with them. You have a relationship. And it's not fear-based. It's not performance-based. It's not based on your vision for who they are going to become as an adult. Let your children be who they're going to be. Let them be children. Let them be young adults. Let them be teenagers. Children make mistakes. That's how they learn. Okay? You can still be connected to them, have a relationship with them, support them, encourage them. That doesn't mean that you have to endorse their bad decisions or their bad choices, but you can be there as a support person. As if when they're teenagers, you can be mom and dad, right? You can love them. Yeah, you you have an opportunity to teach them about the consequences of their decisions and maybe, maybe uh kind of buffer them from the experience, from the consequences of some of their mistakes. As young adults, as adult children, you won't be able to do that anymore because when the adult child makes a mistake, they have to learn the consequences. Because that's how they learn. That's how life teaches them. Apologizing when needed. Wow. I don't think my parents ever apologized to me or my sister, because they were our parents and they knew best. Remember, I was a child of the 70s. My parents were very authoritarian. They were very rules-based. They were very performance-based. They wanted us to be perfect. And they never apologized when they screwed up. So mom and dad, you're gonna blow it. You're human, okay? Trust me, I know. I did it with my children. But I made it I made an intentional decision to change my behavior as a dad. I would I'd blow it, I'd screw up, and I realized it. And after after the emotions cooled down and everybody was on a better footing and better able to face one another or be in the be in the same room, I learned how to apologize. You know, I would call my children by name and I'd say, Hey, the other day when I blew up at you for whatever it was that you did, or maybe the mistake that you made, or maybe it was a chore that they failed to do, or maybe I don't know. A whole myriad of things can happen in a family dynamic, right? So I'd apologize and say, Hey, I'm sorry. I lashed out at you, I I responded to you in a way that my dad would have done it with me and did do it with me. He was a very he was a rage a holic. He was uh he had a a temper, he had a short fuse. I don't know why. There are many I can't make excuses for him, but I know that being a parent is a lot of work, a lot of responsibility. It's very stressful. Can be very stressful. And so maybe that was some of the reasons why he would yell and scream at us or you know, use his belt on us, or you know, he was a golden gloves boxer back in his day, and there'd be many opportunities for him to to use his fists instead of his words. So when you screw up with your children, teenagers, young adults, just apologize. It's okay. It's okay to be humble, it's okay to to exercise humility, it's okay to be vulnerable, it's okay to to admit that you made a mistake. You didn't handle the situation correctly, and you recognize that and ask them to forgive you. Say, hey, I'm sorry. Now they may not they may not forgive you immediately. They might be angry with you for a while, depending on how bad you screwed up. They have a right, they have a right to that emotion, right? We have happy emotion, we have sad emotions, and we have anger. And if your children are angry with you because you blew it, let them let them be angry. Give them some time to cool off, give them some time to process those emotions and process that situation, and there's a good chance that they will recognize the fact that you intentionally admitted to being wrong. Because there's many, many times in a child's life or a young adult's life that they're going to be wrong, they're going to make decisions, they're going to act out, they're going to yell at you. Maybe they'll use curse words, maybe they won't. Maybe they'll break furniture. Maybe they'll throw something across the room. Those are all valid emotions. Those are not valid actions. That's not a good not good behavior, and it probably needs to be addressed because they maybe they need to manage their emotions differently. Maybe they need to manage their emotions more constructively. Just as I, as a father, needed to do that. I needed to have some emotional intelligence, right? And I had to learn how to process what was going on in my family through a lens of grace, through a lens of compassion, instead of being angry, instead of being mad about what happened, right? Ultimately, is that going to change anything? Being mad about something? No, it's not going to change anything. All it's going to do is build walls. It's going to uh drive a wedge between you and your family members. And that's not what you you to be connected and have a relationship, you can't be building walls. You can't be doing things that's going to cause your young adult or your teenager to build a wall between you and them. Because once the wall is built, it takes a lot of trust and work to break it down and build a bridge. So just don't do it. Creating a home that feels emotionally safe. Wow, that was the furthest that was the furthest thing from the my reality as a child of the 70s. Creating a home that feels emotionally safe. So creating a home that feels emotionally safe. Wow, that is so important. Now, emotional safety doesn't mean that you can condone or support bad behavior, fits of temper, fits of rage, cursing, being emotionally verbally abusive towards you as a parent. That's not what I'm talking about. That's that's behavior that has to be managed. And you have to educate your your teenager or your young adult that that's not acceptable. It's not acceptable out in the world, and it's not acceptable in your house, in your home. Creating a home that feels emotionally safe. So you as a listener, when I tell you that, you should feel encouraged knowing transformation is possible. If your home is not a place That feels emotionally safe to your spouse or to your young adults or your teenagers. And that's something that you can intentionally change. So let's talk about this from a faith perspective. God reshapes generational patterns through humility and intentionality. So one of the differences between me and my parenting skills and that of my parents, parents of the 70s, is that my parents didn't go to church. My parents were, they did, they did not embrace any kind of faith. Faith in God. I don't care what your God's name is. It could be Jesus, it could be Muhammad, it could be Buddha, it could be a whole host of gods. There's a lot of gods out there that people worship. And the scope of this podcast episode is not to discuss the differences or the right or wrongness of the God that you may worship. The God that I worship changed my heart. And he helped me to look at my parents through a lens of forgiveness and a lens of compassion, a lens of mercy. And because I was a child of the 70s, but that because because I was born again, because I had a life-changing experience with Jesus, he took that old stony, hateful heart out of me and he put a heart of flesh in me, and he put a the ability, he gave me, God gave me the ability to forgive my parents. Because without Jesus and His grace and my heart and his forgiveness of my sins, I would have never been able to forgive my parents for what they did to us. God is my witness. I would have never been able to forgive them. But because Jesus reached down from heaven and saved me, and because he wrote my name in the Lamb's Book of Life, and He gave me forgiveness, and He gave me hope, and He gave me purpose for my life, I in turn was able to receive that love that God gave me, to receive that forgiveness that He gave me, to receive that purpose that He gave me. And I was able to look back through my eyes, through my experience as being a child of the 70s, and I was able to forgive my parents for the generational curse that they gave me of bad parenting. So God reshapes generational patterns through humility and intentionality. Because God loved me so much that he died on the cross for the sins of mankind, past, present, and future, I was able to humble myself and forgive my parents for what they did or didn't do. That doesn't mean I excused their behavior. It doesn't mean that what they because I forgave them doesn't mean that they didn't do wrong. But God reshapes generational patterns through humility and intentionality. I intentionally pursued a relationship with Jesus. Intentionally. And that's because I heard the gospel message. I had friends in high school that were believers, and they belonged to families that were were were faith-based, and they recognized that I needed a friend. And they loved me despite of who I was. They loved me despite of what my upbringing was creating in me, and they led me to the cross. They led me to people that could tell me about God's love in my life that I needed. I had desperately, I desperately needed love. I desperately needed acceptance. I desperately needed to be forgiven. I desperately needed to know that I was a person of value, that I was a uh I was a teenager that had value, that that not everybody in my life was like my parents. So God reshapes generational patterns through humility and intentionality. So I intentionally pursued a relationship with Jesus, and Jesus intentionally saved me. He intentionally wrote my name in Lamb's Book of Life, and He intentionally, intentionally put my feet on a new path. So what did I keep? Not everything from your childhood was broken. Traditions, values, or strengths worth preserving, work ethic, faith, resilience, humor, loyalty, honoring the good without denying the hard, recognizing that flawed parents can still give meaningful gifts, traditions, values, or strengths worth preserving. One of the things that my dad taught me as a child was that if if something's worth doing, it's worth doing right the first time. If something is worth doing, you do it right the first time. That way you don't have to redo it over and over and over again. My dad was a hard worker. Both my dad and mother were very hard workers. They worked every day. And on the weekends, my dad worked in his family TV shop. He worked as a TV man in Terrell State Hospital from eight to five, nine to five, whatever the hours were. Then he went to East Texas State University in the evenings to earn a degree. So work ethic, they had a my parents had a wonderful work ethic. Resilience, humor, loyalty. My parents taught us the value of loyalty. My parents taught us the value of of protecting the family name. They would tell me if you go out into the out in public and you do something stupid, or if you go out and you break the law and get in trouble with the police, if you go out and you do something shameful, they they taught us that the value of a family's name and its reputation and that it was to be protected and preserved, honoring the good without denying the hard. So ultimately, my parents were good people. They weren't monsters. They did a lot for me and my sister. They adopted us from a in a Schaffenberg, Germany, in an orphanage, and they provided for us physically where we would not have experienced that. My sister was two and I was one when they adopted us out of the orphanage. And so I'm very thankful for that. Recognizing that flawed parents can still give meaningful gifts. Parents aren't villains, they're humans. Gratitude and honesty can coexist. Healing doesn't erase history. Gratitude and honesty can coexist. So you can honor where you came from while still choosing a different path forward. So in closing, or in summary, I'll say, your childhood may have shaped you, but it doesn't have to define the way you parent. You can honor the good, heal the hard, and choose a different path forward. Remember, you don't need a perfect past to build a healthier future. I'm proud of you for doing the work. Keep going. Your teenagers and your young adults depend on you for that. And you're doing the hard work, the healing, the forgiveness, the humility, the compassion, the mercy. Doing that hard work will make you a better person, a better spouse, a better parent. And you will ultimately be changing that generational curse in your children. And you will be helping them to become better people. And in turn, they will be better parents because of it. So I'm James Moffat. This is ABC's Parenting Adult Children. Special Growing in Grace video series, Children of the 70s. And I would ask you to subscribe to the YouTube channel. There's a parenting survey on top of the website. It's parentingadultchildren.org. Parentingadultchildren.org. At the very top of that website, you'll see a parenting or parent survey. Please click on that and take it. And thank you for the privilege of your time, and we'll talk to you later.