Raising Healthy Kids to Be Free

Raising healthy kids is not easy, particularly when their kid-ness scrapes against our control issues. Case in Point: I have been learning lately (getting schooled) about my tendency to micro-manage. My mentor suggested to me that I may find things especially hard with my kids right now because I am trying to be everything to them—more than I am meant to be. And I think she’s right. We are meant to meet the needs of our children. But trying to “keep them ok” by scurrying around trying to answer every single request, or making sure all their i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed… this is different. I don’t always do this literally, but sometimes I can feel the strong pull toward wanting to, at least internally.  

Controling My Control Issue

The other day, my 3-year-old daughter was waiting on her dad to finish something in his office so she could show him her berry-filled oatmeal before taking the first bite. She was calling for him every 30 seconds, and my anxiety level was rising because he was not coming soon enough. I was standing at the kitchen sink and I had to stop myself from intervening.

I waited. I prayed. Breathe, girl… I got the revelation of the opportunity at hand: I could rescue her from having to experience any delay, teaching her nothing, or worse (entitlement), or I could help her figure out what to do when things around her are not panning out her way at the moment.

And then I found the words (Thank you, Lord) to help Yona see her options—different ways she could respond when the wait was getting too long, as opposed to (my way) trying to get Shane to hurry up and answer her. It was not his dilemma, it was hers. She was hungry, but she wanted to show him her oatmeal. What should SHE do?

They Will Deal How I Deal

This has not always been how I deal with my own disappointments, I am still learning it even now. But I can see so clearly (even through the example above) that however I deal with things will be how my kids will learn to deal with things. So it is really important to me to respond to situations and other people in a healthy way, so that I’m raising healthy kids, and so that they have a better chance at healthy relationships—healthier than the kind I had for too many years.

How Do We Get Healthy?

It’s one thing to say we want to make sure we respond in healthy ways, but at the end of the day, whatever is inside is gonna come out, and not because we gave it permission. The stuff inside has a life of its own. Our buttons get pushed and we run out of Niceness and then the real stuff shows itself. It’s just how it is.

Pursuing our emotional health is a journey. If you are wondering where to begin, good question. I am still being challenged every day and growing up a lot as I am on this parenting adventure. Its a constant set-up.  

However, I went through a pretty intensive season of counseling and inner healing for about three years beginning in 2011, and it changed my life so much that I wrote a book about it called Return to Real. You can learn more about Return to Real here, or check it out on Amazon. 

They Deserve Our Best 

Instead of trying to prevent our kids from experiencing delay, disappointment, pain, or conflict, they will learn and be empowered to do life well if we will walk them through how to face hard things, big or small, in a healthy way, teaching them that they can make good decisions for themselves and be ok, even when people around them aren’t meeting their expectations, or things are not going their way.