Navigating the ever-evolving landscape of parenting can feel like braving stormy seas without a compass. Promising to be that guiding light, today's podcast explores the concept of intentional parenting, and how it can be the anchor amidst the turbulent waves of everyday challenges. Through the lens of personal experiences and community influences, we'll uncover how my parents, though unaware, were pioneers of this approach, and how crucial it has become in this fast-paced era.
Embarking on a parenting journey requires us to be acutely self-aware, making every decision with intention. Our next discussion orbits around the trials and triumphs of co-parenting and the transformative power of intentional parenting in healing and strengthening families. We delve into the transformative work of Homeward Bound, an organization dedicated to fortifying families with knowledge and skills, designed to prevent the need for out-of-home treatment centers or wilderness programs.
Lastly, we sail into the uncharted territory of coaching in parenting. Like a lighthouse guiding ships to safer shores, a parenting coach can be the beacon of support in decision-making, making the parenting journey a tad less overwhelming. We talk about how intentional parenting can shape family dynamics and patterns of behavior. As we cast our net wider, we await the positive, long-lasting transformations within our families. Don't miss out on this voyage to becoming a more aware, purposeful, and empowered parent.
Navigating the ever-evolving landscape of parenting can feel like braving stormy seas without a compass. Promising to be that guiding light, today's podcast explores the concept of intentional parenting, and how it can be the anchor amidst the turbulent waves of everyday challenges. Through the lens of personal experiences and community influences, we'll uncover how my parents, though unaware, were pioneers of this approach, and how crucial it has become in this fast-paced era.
Embarking on a parenting journey requires us to be acutely self-aware, making every decision with intention. Our next discussion orbits around the trials and triumphs of co-parenting and the transformative power of intentional parenting in healing and strengthening families. We delve into the transformative work of Homeward Bound, an organization dedicated to fortifying families with knowledge and skills, designed to prevent the need for out-of-home treatment centers or wilderness programs.
Lastly, we sail into the uncharted territory of coaching in parenting. Like a lighthouse guiding ships to safer shores, a parenting coach can be the beacon of support in decision-making, making the parenting journey a tad less overwhelming. We talk about how intentional parenting can shape family dynamics and patterns of behavior. As we cast our net wider, we await the positive, long-lasting transformations within our families. Don't miss out on this voyage to becoming a more aware, purposeful, and empowered parent.
There are as many ways to parent as there are parents in this world, but there is one way to parent that wins every time, and that's doing it intentionally. This show is about helping things go right before they can go wrong. Each episode is chosen to help parents like you, who may be overwhelmed or uninspired, find the ideas and motivation to give their best efforts to the people and place that matters the most. I'm Dr Tim Thane, author of the book and host of the podcast Not by Chance. I believe that a family's success and happiness is not by chance, so welcome to the podcast. Built especially for intentional families. Let's jump in. Hi everyone, thank you for joining me on the Not by Chance podcast, where we explore ideas and inspiration on how to be intentional inside our families.
Speaker 1:Well, today's podcast is going to be directly in the center of that goal. We're going to call it something like intentional parenting. I want to just cover a few things that may be a little bit unique or different from what you might think of as an intentional parent, because when we hear that, we think, okay, there's principles and there's the strategies, and we're going to think about that every day and apply them in our family life. Well, I'm going to go back in time a little bit to start with, because my wife Roxanne she asked me the question. She said, tim, did your parents practice intentional parenting? And I thought about that for a second because they would have never called it that, but I would say, absolutely my parents did. I think every parent that is trying to be intentional in their role their kids would say I've got a good parent not a perfect parent, but I've got a good parent, because over time, as they mature, they start to realize some of the things that my parents tried to teach me actually did hit home. They actually became part of the way I see the world. They gave me the skills I needed. They empowered me in some different ways. And though our parents are never perfect and we are never perfect as parents anytime we can be more intentional, we raise the bar.
Speaker 1:Okay. So back to my parents. I think that they just for them, you have to be more intentional. They just loved their family. They found each other, fell in love and had important values that they wanted to transmit to their posterity, to their children. They wanted us to be close, they wanted us to be good people, they wanted us to learn to work hard and be productive people and citizens.
Speaker 1:And out of that desire, that vision you might say, they did a lot of things on a pretty consistent basis, and one of those is that on Sundays we definitely had Sunday rituals that we did. We went to church every Sunday and it was there that I learned a lot of the values that I still have to this day. They also made Sunday a day for us to connect as a family, and it was just a great day for me most of the time because we had that experience at church together. Then usually afterwards, we'd either go to my grandma and grandpa's house, where all the cousins would come and congregate and we'd have dinner with grandma and grandpa, and or and sometimes both we would go up into the Huyuintas, which is a mountain range in northeastern Utah that we sort of lived at the base of, and we'd go up there and have a picnic and, of course, spend time intentionally as a family, playing games, talking, having a picnic, enjoying ourselves together. So if this is something that's done on a regular basis, they are living out their values. They're trying to help us by giving us exposure to our extended family, building those relationships, helping us develop a value system. So in those ways, definitely intentional parenting.
Speaker 1:Another one was, and I think the very strongest. One of the very strongest values that was passed down to me by my father mostly, but also my mom watching her example is the value of being a hard worker, and I just remember being at home on a Saturday and wanting to just relax after maybe a week of school and sports, and dad would be outside working. Maybe he's torn apart the backhoe and he's trying to put the engine back in it or something else, building a corral for the animals out back. Then I knew I just had this sense that I better get my my work clothes on and get out there and help him. I knew that if he was out there for very long without me it wouldn't be a good thing. He would let me know and my brothers know we should have been out there helping him, and so I never felt comfortable staying in the house when when he was outside working. But I think about you know.
Speaker 1:Roxanne said well, that was kind of a simpler time, wasn't it Tim? And I said yes, it was. It really was a different time. It seemed like the societal culture, at least where I lived, and I think really across the country, was in support of traditional family values and the values that most people have. The values that most parents had were fairly common, even from different political parties or different religions or walks of life. There was still a set of core values that for the most part, I think we we all believed in. I look at it as this river of life that's kind of flowing in a certain direction and as long as we sort of get in that river and our parents are trying to be intentional about what they're doing, there was a lot of support outside the family For a lot of these same principles and ideals. I know in my small town if I did some dumb things, if I did something dumb and an adult caught me doing that dumb thing small enough community that I knew it was probably going to get back to my parents. But I also knew that this adult in front of me that is maybe calling me out on being disruptive during class as teacher they are consistent with the values that my parents had. So I think it was a lot easier back then.
Speaker 1:You didn't have to think about being as intentional as I think you have to be today. All right, so let's talk about today. You know what are we up against as parents. It is quite a challenge, isn't it, if you think about the environment we're in, where there are so many voices. Our kids have access to the internet. Their values are not really consistent, it's really all over the map and they're being pulled in every which direction. This is a scenario that calls for incredible leadership in the home and in the family, and, of course, that has to be given by the parents. And so where, in the past, you could essentially kind of figure it out along the way as a parent and get better over time, and in the meantime, you've got the support network around you and you've got a lot of society pulling in the same direction. That really isn't the situation that we have today. There's really not a lot of time. The exposure to information and outside influences is really early, through TV and so forth and, by the way, I'm thinking about TV, but it's been going on for quite some time where you look at the sitcoms and TV shows and so forth, and most parents in the past, recent past, they're portrayed as buffoons and it's really the kids that have all the real. They're really the ones that are smart and they often treat their parents really poorly, and so even the influence of media coming into the home makes it important for parents to be that much more intentional about what they're teaching.
Speaker 1:Another thing is going on because life is challenging on the planet today, in our society, we know that there's more mental health challenges than there has been in the past. There's definitely more therapy going on. There's more medication happening and being prescribed to adolescents and to children than before. So we're reaching out, trying to get help in all of these different kinds of ways, and again, it's a call for parents to learn more about their particular role and how powerful they can be in terms of changing the family environment, which, in essence, will ultimately affect the children in positive ways.
Speaker 1:You know, back when I was getting my PhD and we'd moved to Virginia and I started delving into organizational behavior and management because I was sort of interested in that big human system, even though I was there for marriage and family therapy. I was really interested in how marriage and family therapy models would enable someone to intervene in a larger human system like businesses, and so I started looking at what do businesses and organizations like that do. That's very intentional, and some of the things they do made us look really bad in the family side. Because in an organization, if you get hired into an organization, what are you gonna do? You're gonna be given a title, right, and along with that title, you're gonna get a job responsibility. It's gonna be even written out here's what your job is, and along with the position description and title, you're probably gonna get a lot of training to help you actually succeed in that particular job. And so they're incredibly intentional, in fact, as, in fact, in addition to all the training, there's ongoing meetings, there's getting together and consistently communicating about the project you're working on and how is it coming and how do we coordinate our efforts so that we get this outcome that we want. You're sent to conferences to learn more about your position, or more about learning and growing and developing yourself so that you can rise up in the organization, and so think about the intentionality of successful organizations and what they're doing.
Speaker 1:Now compare that to what we usually do in family life. For some reason, we have this belief that if you can procreate and have a child, you suddenly are gifted the knowledge, the ability, the wisdom, the experience, for some reason, to raise that child from infancy up till they're adult and you launch them. That's sort of the idea that something's innate within us and we know how to be a parent. But as times have gotten more challenging and complex, it has exposed, honestly, the weaknesses of the parents and, in many ways, our ability to manage what's going on inside our home. We're having to reach out more and get help outside of that. So my purpose, one of the big missions I have in all the work that I've done over time, is to strengthen and, in some cases, heal and prepare families and, starting with the parents and those leaders, to be able to make their family system into something that is preventative and in nature of some of the negative diagnoses that are out there, the mental health issues that are coming, and so that's really been my mission all along.
Speaker 1:And years ago I ran into a guy and he asked me what do you do, tim, and what's the history of your career? We got into that conversation and I was a little embarrassed because I told him all the different little businesses I'd started or side projects I'd had and so forth. I said I know it feels a little schizophrenic, doesn't it? And he said actually, tim, no, it's really really clear. Everything you have done has been to either strengthen and kind of lift up your own family or it's to do that for other families. And I said thank you so much. Thank you for helping me realize that I haven't been just schizophrenic and crazy with all the different things I've done. And he was right, there was a theme that ran all the way through it.
Speaker 1:I really strongly believe that every effort that we put into improving ourselves as an individual and then as a parent in that role or as a co-parent in that relationship, will pay huge dividends down the road in terms of our children's mental health, their confidence, their feeling of well-being and, ultimately, the track that they end up on Now. All of us are going to have lots of hiccups and challenges along the way and even with intentional parenting, we definitely have our challenges during this time in the history of the world. But really, this is the place to put your time Out of all the things you could put it into. So we're going to get into a little bit more of what that actually looks like now when I thought about okay, what is intentional parenting? Yes, it might entail studying parenting books, identifying key principles and skills and then trying to apply them in our family life. But if you break it all the way down, once you get that knowledge and you have the awareness of your own self and what you're bringing to the table in that role as a parent, what you really have is one choice after another, after another in the moment.
Speaker 1:And if we are intentional, we're aware of what's going on in the moment, we try to put away the things that are occupying our mind. When we're trying to engage one's one of our children in something, we do our best to try to be present in that moment. And that's a thought one of the parents on our Not by Chance Facebook page mentioned and I thought that was a fantastic point that you have to be present in order to be intentional. And if you're intentional, or if you're present and you're intentional and you've got some knowledge in there and you've got some caring for your child, then what it is is you get to make choices. How am I going to choose to handle this situation? Am I going to choose to manage my emotions in this moment when I feel like letting them go? Am I going to put away my own judgments and criticism for a minute and just listen? Try my best to be influenced by my child or my teenager. Am I going to try and align with my co-parent, even though I don't really agree with what they're doing and thinking, for the sake of our children, so that they're not confused? There are choices to make multiple times a day as parents and I would say we either default into old habits and the way we feel in the moment, doing what we. You know, if we wake up and feel depressed and unmotivated, then does our parenting really suffer that day, or do we make choices anyway because we have a greater vision for how we want our family life to go.
Speaker 1:I want to speak for a second to the parent out there that doesn't really have any serious issues in their family yet. Maybe they've got younger children. A lot of times I'm speaking to the parent that's got kind of an emergency room case where their child is really struggling and is creating a lot of pain in the family system. Those parents tend to have their ears wide open. They are in tune. They're really trying to soak in as much information as they can because they're looking for answers. They're looking for ways to solve problems that they haven't been able to solve yet. But it's different if you're a parent before these things have happened. Your children are younger. This topic of intentional parenting might not be quite as urgent to you.
Speaker 1:I remember when I was in my PhD program, my wife and I decided that we would put on a class for couples who were going to be married so pre-marital groups in a workshop, and we did our very best at putting together marketing materials that would be attractive, that would hit the nail on the head and people would read that and say, oh, I want to get that training. What we found is it was like pulling teeth to get people to sign up for our workshop. We weren't very good at reaching them, probably, but the other piece was there wasn't this urgency. They hadn't really gotten married yet, they hadn't gotten into the challenges of married life, and so they were still in the honeymoon phase and what we had to offer didn't seem all that important. I guess I'm speaking to you parents for a second here just to say I can tell you that anything you can do to develop skills patterns in your life, the way you communicate with your children along the lines of building that trusting relationship between you and them, resolving issues in a fair and consistent way, a whole host of things. If you can learn to do that early and develop the patterns now, you will prevent the need for possibly therapy. You'll prevent the need for more extreme measures to try and correct the situation inside your home.
Speaker 1:Another question might be what if you're a parent and you've got a co-parent who's disengaged and you're the intentional parent and it's almost like the more intentional you are, the less engaged they become and you get this cycle going and you might call it the over functioner parent and the under functional parent, and that's a real pattern. It's a real cycle that takes place. My advice to you would be to try to understand where your co-parent is at Review some things like the stages of change that Prochaska has put together. Try to think about where is my co-parent at today. How can I invite him to just take that next step or her to take that next step? Because there's a lot of power in the two of you being engaged in the process together.
Speaker 1:The most intentional thing you can do to be an intentional parent is actually to work on yourself. Go back to the very core of self-awareness and understanding what it is that are your triggers. How do you manage emotions in stressful situations. Can you stay calm under pressure like that, when a child doesn't listen to you over and over again and does the same thing over and over again you told them not to do? Can you stay patient in that situation while still holding a boundary? I kind of surprised my wife because she asked me the question what's one thing you'd say that I should do to be an intentional parent? And I told her that start with yourself. And she was kind of taken back and she said you know, I've been this whole time thinking about what I was going to do in my parenting role, kind of the action I was going to take with my kids, and you flipped that on me and said no, start with you. And so intentional parenting is actually starting with you. And that really was kind of a fun little aha that the two of us had together.
Speaker 1:You know, over the years at Homeward Bound our process was to, when a child was in a situation where they were trying to prevent the need for an out-of-home treatment center or a wilderness program, we'd go in and give the family the shot in the arm upfront with a lot of information and they were trying to stop this downward spiral that was happening, and so our model looked like this we would get an assessment, basically over the phone, about what's going on and what are the challenges happening. What are the trigger points Like? What are the mood disorders? Is there anxiety? Is there depression? Is there addictions that we need to address? What's the parent-child relationship like? How do you problem solve together? And so we get a feel for all of that, and then we'd go into the home over the course of three days. So it's an evening all day the next day into the evening and about a half a day the third day.
Speaker 1:A lot of the parents would say are you gonna stay in our house? And honestly, we did stay in a few houses along the way, and you can imagine all the information and data you would pick up by being in the home of a family that's struggling. There's no hiding right. You get to see it with your own eyes all the non-verbal, the eye-rolling, the stomping upstairs, going to their bedroom when a difficult topic comes up, when a boundary is trying to be held. You get to see all of that. Often you don't see that in a regular therapy situation, and so then what we would do is we would sort of download for the family and the parents in particular.
Speaker 1:But all of these parenting principles and techniques and skills. We would teach them how to communicate with one another and then we would, on purpose, bring up some of the challenging topics they had and then we'd coach them through it, almost like holding their hand while they are trying to resolve an issue that has been troubling the family for a very long time and they've never been successful at it. But with you standing kind of over their shoulder, whispering in their ear, reminding them of the skills they're trying to use, they suddenly became really good. They'd manage their emotions better. They'd take a time out if they needed it. If the child stomped upstairs and slammed the door, they didn't come yelling after them because we're holding them back, saying, hey, just give them a few minutes.
Speaker 1:And then we'd reconvene and bring when the teen was ready again, and what would happen in those moments is they would see what intentional parenting felt like and looked like, and it was bridling themselves at times when they needed to. It was to sit back and actually really listen and be changed by what the teen was telling them. It was to withhold judgment and let the process play out until they could find out where their wants overlapped each other and ultimately they'd come down to a plan on how to handle things like how much screen time should we allow them to have and when should they have the screen time? How does that interplay with their other things? They need to do the responsibilities, the chores.
Speaker 1:But what was so fun to observe here is that the effect of them intentionally doing it really, really well with the help of a coach was that they had very different outcomes around these conversations and around the behaviors, and obviously the collapse of the dynamics wouldn't collapse like it normally would around these topics. And what it did is it made them kind of say you know what, applying principles, being thoughtful about the way I communicate, holding a boundary even though part of me wants to avoid the conflict, but doing it in a way that's patient and consistent, it actually works, and so that would. You'd see the light bulb go off and they'd trust you and they'd trust the process. You know there's a big part of me that wishes I could. You know, it's that therapist part of me that wants to be right in the family system and kind of watch over your shoulder and remind you of the things that you really wanna do when you really don't want to do them, and then watch these good outcomes take place.
Speaker 1:Well, here's a little plug for the app that's coming out soon. We're really excited about it. In a lot of ways, it is like having a coach in your back pocket that you can pull out at any time, and it's going to be. It's going to have notifications to remind you of the things you're trying to do. It's ultimately going to help all parents who use it be more intentional with what they're trying to do. So I guess my mission to strengthen, heal and fortify families is now going to happen through the app, and that's that's really exciting to me.
Speaker 1:So just think about what would you do differently if you had a coach whispering in your ear around everyone else? Little moments of opportunity, those decision points of how you're going to handle it. If this has been helpful to you, I hope you'll like and share this, this podcast, with your friends. Also go to our website, trustycom that has two Y's on it T R U S T Y Y dot com and sign up for early access for the app that's coming out, hopefully in September. Until next time, keep parenting intentionally and notice the positive impact that has on your family. Parents, your time is valuable and I'm grateful you spent some of it with us. What you're intentionally doing in your home life is inspiring and unmatched in its importance and long-term effects. Ask yourself what am I going to do because of what I've learned today?