When the House Gets Quiet: Deana Thayer on Empty Nesting

In this episode of "The ABC's of Parenting Adult Children," host James Moffitt is joined by Deana Thayer, M.Ed., from Focus on the Family. Together, they explore the emotional journey and challenges parents face as they transition to an empty nest. Deana shares her personal experiences and offers valuable insights into maintaining a healthy parent-adult child relationship.

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Richard Jones. I am an RN with over 34 years of Nursing Experience, much of that experience working with young adults in the corrections system. 

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Transcript

James Moffitt (00:01.368)
Hello and welcome to the ABC's of Parenting Adult Children. I'm your host, James Moffitt. Joining me today is a celebrity guest, Dina Thayer with Focus on the Family. Hey Dina.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (00:14.863)
Hi there.

James Moffitt (00:16.226)
Hey, so you're with Focus on the Family and you're known for your thoughtful values-based approach to family coaching and parenting strategy. And this episode will dive into the tools and truths that empower parents to lead with clarity as their children grow and grow up. So, Dina, I you to introduce yourself to the listening audience.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (00:36.603)
Sure, as you said, my name is Dina Thayer. I'm one of the marriage and parenting associates at Focus on the Family. I also serve in the communications department here, so I help really connect our work with the outside world. And that's really wonderful and gratifying just because we love being able to save marriages and equip parents. And I'm actually a pretty newly minted empty nester myself.

So your podcast really speaks to an issue that I'm living. I'm in this season. I care deeply about not only raising children who become functioning and contributing adults, but I'm in the season of having young adult children myself. And I enjoy getting to come alongside families and hopefully equip them to feel empowered to do a great job.

James Moffitt (01:29.9)
Well, you know, being an empty nester is a, it's a, it's definitely a new chapter in the life of parents. And we transition, you know, they're toddlers, they're preteens or young adults, teenagers. Let's not forget the teenagers. And, you know, we, we, as parents have to learn how to transition from one stage to the next. And a lot of parents, their kids go off to college or they buy homes or they have a career.

You know, they, they leave the nest, which is what we ultimately want them to do at some point, right? To be self-sustaining, good humans that are out in society doing their thing. Right. And, hopefully staying in contact with their parents. And then the parents are looking at each other going, who are you and what are we doing here? Right. They're like, because their identity is just, you know, dramatically changed. You know, they're so much of your identity as a parent is wrapped up in raising your kids.

Right. And, and helping your kids become the type of adults that we would be proud of, you know, out in the world. So I'm going to read this little blurb that you got here on Focus on the Families. Dina Thayer. Dina Thayer is a podcaster, speaker, and author with over two decades of experience in the marriage and parenting sphere. She originally served as a doula and childbirth educator before moving into parent coaching and podcasting. Most recently appearing on Focus on the Family, crazy little thing called marriage.

For the past decade, Dina and her husband Scott have drawn on their step-family experience to lead blended family ministry through pre-marital coaching, mentoring, and small group facilitation. Dina and Scott are newly-minted empty nesters with five young adult children. Wow, five. That's crazy.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (03:16.986)
Yes, it is the law and we have five between us. So adding the complexity of our blended family certainly made some of those teen years really special. When we met our kids were seven, eight, nine, 10 and 12. So we really went through it. We had many years with five teenagers in the home.

James Moffitt (03:41.001)
my gosh, I shudder at the thought.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (03:43.994)
I

James Moffitt (03:48.76)
So tell me a little bit about your parenting story. I mean, you just kind of told us that you had five kids. Tell us about how you and Scott met and all of that.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (03:56.099)
Yeah, I have a sure. Yeah, it's been a journey. have, of course, I had my first marriage. And so I had my two biological children with me during those times. And then I spent six years as a single mom. And that is a tall order kudos to any single parents, because that is no joke. And then I actually met Scott through a mutual friend. And it was beautiful. God.

God's kind in that way. He took kind of the hardest parts of each of our divorces and that was how we met this mutual friend. So that's pretty special. And once we met and he had been a youth pastor for 14 years. So I got to see that he really cared about young people. That really mattered to me as someone who was gonna go into parenting with this person. And we just celebrated 13 years of marriage with a vow renewal and

That seems a little funny to do it on year 13, but we did that because that was the year it became the longest marriage for both of us. So we just really wanted to make that a landmark moment. His first marriage was 12 years long. So neither of us had had a 13th anniversary before until this year. So that's pretty special. and getting into parent coaching was just a natural extension of the things I care about. You read my little bio there. I was in the expectant parenting world, helping families.

James Moffitt (04:58.702)
Aww.

James Moffitt (05:07.745)
Okay.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (05:20.674)
with their birth and preparing for that. And then something was just bugging me about it. I loved it. It was beautiful, but it's a little bit akin to how much we prepare for a wedding. For example, we want people to be doing premarital coaching and they plan their wedding and the flowers and all the things, but how are we helping them prepare for the marriage? And I started to feel the same way. I loved being part of birth. It was a special thing.

But I thought I really want to walk alongside people once they're parenting that little baby and helping shape it into the person that they hope they'll be when they grow up. And that's how I made that shift into the parent coaching side of things and the parenting podcast that I was able to do.

James Moffitt (06:05.784)
So do you have your own individual, parenting podcast or is it through focus on the family?

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (06:11.034)
My podcast is all done, sadly, one of the beautiful, most beautiful seasons of my life. But my co-host got an amazing job offer that even I said you need to take it. So we but we recorded for five seasons and then we continued to pay for syndication for some time so that parents could still find the show. And it really matches what you're doing. I love what you're doing because the premise, our podcast was called Raising Adults. So the premise was

rather than raising a 30 year old who's still on your couch playing video games, how do we parent in with the future in mind, with a future focused mindset so that we're actually raising fully functioning, capable, contributing members of society eventually? And that's what I care greatly about.

James Moffitt (07:01.198)
All right. Well, that's great about the podcast. Uh, after the F after the episode, I'll get you to email me the, the, uh, link to it so I can share it with the listening audience. So I've got, I've got some questions that we can run through. think, um, well, I was going to tell you, my wife and I, we've been married 35 years and, we have four children that, uh, left the nest one way shape or another. Right. And, uh, I have one son that, uh,

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (07:20.29)
Wow.

James Moffitt (07:29.166)
Both of my, my last two children, you know, we'd lost two of our children to complications, cancer and other things. And, uh, so my son Justin and, uh, I probably shouldn't say his name on air anyway. I already let the cat out of the bag, but my son and my daughter were teenagers back in 2015 and they were doing the typical teenage thing and they dropped out of high school. And of course we freaked out about that and we're like, Oh, what are you doing?

And, he went on to get his GED. They both went and got through GED. My son went to, Trident technical college and got his two year degree. Went to college of Charleston, got his four year degree. Then he went to law school up in Virginia for three years. And now he's a practicing attorney. So we're very proud of both of them, but I'm especially proud of him and what he's done with his life and the direction he's taking it. He's doing very well for himself. So anyway, that's kind of a little.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (08:12.698)
Wow.

James Moffitt (08:25.112)
bit of background on my parenting story. this is my, this is my do what?

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (08:27.31)
That's neat because you just illustrated how most things are not worth freaking out about. You just illustrated that most things we freak out about end up over time not being worth freaking out about.

James Moffitt (08:40.202)
Right. Well, you know, when they did that, you know, my wife's a special ed teacher. She's got a master's degree. She's got a bachelor's degree. She's very highly educated. and she'd been doing special ed teaching for 25, 30 years loves it. She's, know, we're both in our sixties and, we looked at her kids and it's not like we sat around and smoked over, had alcohol parties all night. You know, we, both work jobs. both went to school, you know, after work.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (08:54.722)
Mmm.

James Moffitt (09:09.102)
you know, online school, in-person school, you know, so we felt like we were modeling, you know, to our children and the things that's necessary to be successful in life. Right. And when they just dropped out of high school, I was like, what, where, is this coming from? But anyway, we got past that and, they're, they're both doing pretty good. So here's a question. Number one.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (09:22.745)
Right?

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (09:27.386)
James Moffitt (09:37.378)
And there will be a, a multiple choice exam at the end of this. No, I'm kidding. That's for you listening audience. I want to see if you're paying attention. No, I'm just kidding. So what are some of the biggest challenges parents face when their children transition into adulthood?

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (09:56.141)
How long is the show? I'm kidding. There's several though, to be fair. I think some are on the side of the adult children and some are on the side of the parents. So challenges for the kids is asserting independence. They're trying to individuate from their parents and figure out where does my parent end and where do I begin? That's a big challenge for them to take on.

Other issues that they often have is around what now gets jokingly called adulting. So figuring out how do I manage maybe my finances or how do I decide where to live or how do I navigate friendships? Those are all pieces of being an adult, setting up your own dentist appointment. That even can be a challenge if they're not used to or haven't flexed the muscle.

of trying some of that out by themselves. And that's why I'm a big fan of start letting your kids and having your kids do that while they're still home. So it's not such a shock. That's really helpful. And then there's challenges for the parents though, too. And that is transitioning from being an authority in the child's life to more of just an influence. Hopefully you will still have influence and you'll be able to speak into their life and be an important

that they would still choose to come to, but that can be a tricky transition. And I think sometimes particularly for moms who can get their identity quite wrapped up in being a parent, that is a real challenging thing to let go of and to say, you know what, I need to move into the identity of more of a coach and not the authority over the child. And then there's just, need to acknowledge that there's loss.

there's actually empty nest syndrome now has been identified because there's actual grieving that takes place as parents make this transition. So those are just a couple of the challenges I see on both sides of the coin there.

James Moffitt (12:08.462)
That's awesome. I have 15 questions, but we're just going to hit some of the top ones, right?

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (12:16.302)
We'll just crank through as much as we can do, James. That's fine.

James Moffitt (12:18.99)
That's, that's right. So what role does faith play in navigating the parent adult child relationship?

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (12:27.63)
Well, I think if you have a faith paradigm, your faith is going to play a large role because so much of this letting go process is also understanding, at least for me as a Christian, probably for people with other faith paradigms, it's also about trusting God with your child and knowing that there's a point at which your influence may not ever end, but it really changes considerably.

And so we have to be able to rest in knowing that, wow, God loves my child even more than I do, which is really hard to fathom, but to trust that because he loves them, he wants what's best for them and he's got it. And I think that for a type A person like me, that's not always easy, but I had to really work to say part of this letting go is also entrusting my children to God's good care as they transition into early adulthood.

James Moffitt (13:23.906)
Right. How can parents set healthy boundaries with their adult children, especially when they still live at home?

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (13:32.527)
The boundaries thing is probably the biggest struggle because there can be even a little bit of a power struggle between that adult child and the parent. So a couple of things that are really helpful, especially if your child is still at home is you've got, there do have to be boundaries. Let me say that first. So you asked about how to set them. I think there's parents who would even question, do we even have to have any? Yes, you do. Or it gets very muddy and the line will get too blurry.

over who's in charge, whose house is it. So it does have to be clear that it's your home. And I often encourage parents that I'm coaching to be bold about it's okay to have house rules. It's okay to expect courtesy. So a couple of examples with that are you could choose to have some kind of a financial component. And that might mean that you just want your child to have some skin in the game, especially if say they're working full time, but living at home.

They have an income. So even if it's just a token and it's more symbolic of adulting, charging the child rent might make some sense. We actually charged our kids rent, but set it aside and then gave it to them when they moved out. They didn't know we were doing that, but we actually set it aside so they had a good little starting point to make maybe a deposit on an apartment or what have you.

And yet, while they were living with us, they still had to go through the motions of, I'm paying to be here. It's not free hot water and electricity and all the things. So that's one thing that parents can consider as a boundary, some financial boundaries. Maybe in other areas, you might have your adult child contribute to the groceries or something like that. So that's one category. Another one I think falls under what I mentioned about consideration. If it's your home,

Certainly if you have a 24 year old at home, it might feel really demeaning for them to have to ask you if they can go out with their friends. So maybe you remove that and say, you're allowed to tell us what's happening, but we do expect you to tell us so that we kind of know when to expect you to come home. We aren't wondering what's going on because let's be honest, there's something different about when your child's under your own roof and it's 2 a.m. and you haven't seen them yet.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (15:49.445)
The worry is different compared to the out of sight, out of mind college student. They might be out till two, but you didn't know it. So there is just still something different about that. And I think it's okay for parents to say as a consideration, just like you would give consideration to a housemate or a roommate, you let us know kind of when to expect you, will you be home for dinner, those kinds of things. That's different than asking permission, but it's still really connotes some respect for the parents.

James Moffitt (16:18.35)
Well, I, when we had, uh, young adults living with us, uh, I kind of set a boundary in that, know, your mom and I go to work at eight in the morning or nine in the morning. We get going and get home until six or seven o'clock depending on traffic. And I'm like, you know, we, I told my kids, said, I locked the doors at 11 o'clock and we got to sleep. I turned the on the alarm, I locked the doors. And so if you know, if you're not going to be home by midnight, you know, I think I said midnight.

I said, if you're not, you know, you're not going to be home at midnight. I don't want you, I don't want to be awakened in the middle of the night by the alarm going off and me grabbing a gun going to looking for the intruder. Right. I didn't certainly don't want to shoot one of my children. do love. Right. And so if you know, you're not going to be home by midnight, this place is locked down. We're asleep. We don't want to be disturbed. Go, crash on somebody's couch or recliner or something until the morning. You know? And so I kind of set that.

Boundary. of course they didn't like that. They just wanted to come and go as they pleased. And I was like, eh, no. And it, it, it's just, it's just consideration, you know, being considerate of one another as family members. And, and so that, so they're, you know, parents are not sitting around at one o'clock in the morning going, Oh my God, I don't know where my child is. They're not responding to texts. They're not answering their phone. Are they in the emergency room or are they in jail or in an accident? You know, all these horrible scenarios start running through your head. And so it's.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (17:24.794)
Exactly.

James Moffitt (17:44.462)
It's only, it's only considerate for, for them to let you know, you know, where, where you're, where they're at and that they're okay. And, and I think that young adults are, you know, they, they look at it as, they're just trying to control me and they're trying to tell me what to do. And I don't want them to know where I'm at and what I'm doing, blah, blah, blah. You know? And so it's, it's kind of a, I guess it's kind of a power struggle there, but, that's the reason why you set that boundary.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (18:14.326)
It is. Yeah, absolutely. And the way you did it, that's another, that's just a twist on a similar idea. So you're saying, Hey, we need to get our rest because we're working. So after a certain point, don't try to come back. That's it's just a twist on a similar boundary that falls under that consideration and respect. Exactly.

James Moffitt (18:35.8)
All right, so let's jump to questions on blended families. You spoke about blended families earlier. And I think that's a topic that's not really highlighted much or spoken about too much. I think a lot of people, they think about, well, I'll speak about 60 year olds. I was raised in the seventies, graduated high school in May of 1980. And so back in the sixties and the seventies, when you talk about family, you're talking about...

moms and dads and, you know, children. typically it's the same race, you know, and you didn't have, I didn't know of a blended family when I was in high school or grade school for that matter. know, so, so now that, know, in 2025, you know, uh, or at the turn of the 21st century, it became more of a thing, right. And it's more, I guess it's more acceptable. It's not, there's not a taboo attached to it or anything like that or a stigma.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (19:17.166)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (19:33.292)
Back then there was a huge stigma back in the sixties, you know, and luckily we've all grown up and gotten past that. Right. At least most of us have, hopefully most of us have. Right. I want to give as many people as much credit as possible here.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (19:44.142)
Hopefully, hopefully, yeah.

James Moffitt (19:50.594)
So what unique challenges do blended families face when parenting adult children?

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (19:57.339)
Well, I mean, the big one is that it's possible that not all the children in the home are your biological children. And so your ability to affect change with those young adults is different. That's just the reality. My three stepchildren have grown to love and respect me. We have a great relationship, but there's still areas of their life I can't speak into the way that my husband can because he's their dad.

And that is, that's an ongoing challenge. certainly time really helps with this. When you're a step family, the longer you're together, the more the parents just feel like parents and it's not as big of a deal. But man, in those early years, it's, it's tough because you don't have earned authority just by virtue of being related by blood. You really have to work at it and

and earn it over time. so Scott and I have just a policy that we speak into each other's lives, but anything that's going to be hard to hear to an adult child comes from the biological parent. And that just has saved us a lot of conflict by just doing that down biological lines if there's a harder conversation to have.

James Moffitt (21:19.064)
Gotcha. Okay. Well, I think that stepchildren, you know, they're, they're kind of thrust into that position. You know, they didn't ask for that. Right. And, so they're like, I think there's a little bit of underlying resentment there. You know, they're like, great. I'll have a new mom and, or a new dad. And I, you know, I have to respect them and, and be kind to them, but I don't have to like them and I don't have to listen to them. Right. You know, and so.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (21:29.338)
Exactly.

James Moffitt (21:48.952)
So yeah, it is tough. It's tough for, it's tough for the kids as well as the parent.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (21:54.935)
It is, and you're exactly right. They didn't ask for it. So we have to be sensitive to that. And that just takes time and grace, a lot of grace for each other. While the kids are still maybe grieving the loss of their parents aren't together anymore, or maybe there's been the death of a parent. There has to be room for that. And they deserve to get to feel that loss. And it just takes time. So I love that you said they didn't ask for it. It's one of the key elements that

parents and step parents need to be aware of. This might be a great thing for you, your remarriage, but maybe your kids aren't seeing it as a positive, at least not at first.

James Moffitt (22:33.184)
Right. Right. It reminds me of the Partridge family. The big colorful bus with those eight children and a nanny. had a nanny. They had a good.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (22:38.083)
Hmm

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (22:43.992)
Yeah, well, and even decades ago, we saw Blended Family on TV with the Brady Bunch, which is amazing, but yeah.

James Moffitt (22:49.91)
Right. Right.

I wonder if everybody kind of got that. I wonder if they were like...

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (22:57.218)
I don't know if everybody clocked that because it was not as prevalent for sure.

James Moffitt (23:01.613)
Right.

Well, and I think blended families, not only when we talk about blended, we talk about, you know, people that are married, remarried, bringing their own families together, right. As a cohesive unit, but to take it a step further, you may have, let's say a Caucasian parent with a non-Caucasian parent with non-Caucasian children. Right. So there, there are some racial barriers, and, and intricate.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (23:28.27)
Mm-hmm.

James Moffitt (23:34.094)
issues that go along with that, which we don't have to get into that here, but.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (23:37.135)
And that can happen even in a first marriage. My first marriage, I wasn't married to a white person. Now I'm married to a Caucasian, but I wasn't the first time. So, and I would say even, like you said, with decades going by, what is taboo or whatever, even when my parents were growing up, very different than now.

James Moffitt (23:40.79)
Right. That's true. Yeah.

James Moffitt (23:59.894)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. It was, there was a huge stigma over all that, back in the sixties. Let's just say racism was alive and well back then. Some people would probably argue that it's alive and well today. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, or I don't think it's as prevalent or as strong as it was back in the forties, fifties and sixties. Anyway, I'll go out on a limb and say that here.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (24:06.147)
Hmm.

James Moffitt (24:30.188)
What are some practical ways to foster unity in a blended family, especially during holidays or major life events?

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (24:39.298)
Okay, I've got a couple ideas here that have really been helpful for us. And the first one is you've got to communicate with the kiddos about their traditions that they had before in their quote first family so that you don't risk shutting down a way of doing something that's really meaningful to them. My husband and I stepped in it big time our first Christmas.

We had not talked about how the families opened to gifts and the two families, my family with my first marriage, his family, they did it very differently. And so we really risked upsetting our kids with what, why is this so different? So that's a thing you've got to do, talk to each other, but also invite conversation with the kids and find those things out. And you might have to compromise. That's what we had to do.

The second thing, and this is equally if not more important, is then you create some of your own new traditions because that really bonds you as a family. So we ended up doing some things around the holidays that weren't part of our traditions with either of those first families and they became really special and meaningful. We also created a family nickname that kind of bonded us. So this is our identity as a new blended family. I really encourage that.

Whether that's just combining the last names of the two people, I've seen that done, or if you just come up with something else. But bonding is important, especially in a blended family, because you're having to manufacture it. Again, it doesn't come automatically through that blood relationship.

James Moffitt (26:25.486)
All right, you said a family nickname. Is that something you can share?

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (26:29.144)
Yes. So our blended family nickname is TD7. And that's because my husband's last name is Thayer. And of course, so are his children. My biological children, their last name starts with a D and there are seven people in our family. So we go by TD7. It's even the name of our text thread together. Our family text thread is called TD7. And we can check in at restaurants as TD7. It just helped.

a lot with the bonding to have our little nickname. And we came up with it pretty early on. So it kind of helped out, just solidified us. Yeah.

James Moffitt (27:02.993)
that's awesome. That's cute. I never thought of that.

So what inspired you to focus on intentional parenting and raising adults rather than just raising children?

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (27:17.55)
Well, I shared part of that motivation earlier. was the focus so much on the lead up when I was in the birth space that started to trouble me. But the other big piece about intentional parenting for me is that if you do things with intention, it does change the trajectory of these adults that we're talking about today. If you're winging it, so to speak, when you're parenting, I think we see a lot more of failure to launch. We see

kids who are a little bit unmoored when they start adulting because there weren't foundational principles laid out while they were growing up. So parents have to be really intentional about what matters to us and our family, what are our values, and then do we actually parent toward those. For instance, you could say all day long, our family really values diligence. But if you aren't modeling diligence by doing your work faithfully at your job or even around the house, whatever it might be,

Kids are gonna notice that mismatch and they're gonna say, I'm not sure that is really what's important. But if you say, for example, integrity is important to us and you model that, it makes a difference. I still remember my kids were small. I left the grocery store, I'd already checked out and I realized there was like a 12 pack of soda on the bottom part of the cart that they hadn't scanned.

And I was able to give a real life example of the right thing is we're gonna go back in and let them know about that because one of our family values is integrity, which means you're doing what's right even when no one's looking. So anytime we can model those things, that's called parenting with actual intention. And that's why I'm passionate about it. You've got to mean what you say and say what you mean if you're gonna raise kids who become those responsible functioning adults.

James Moffitt (29:05.368)
Yeah. Children, children learn about life, you know, primarily through watching their parents, you know, and in a lot of parents, like my parents were like, don't do as I do do as I say, you know, and that, that flies. Okay. If you're a toddler or if you're, know, six, seven, eight years old, but after that, after the child gets to the, to the point that they can actually reason and think things through all of sudden, they're like,

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (29:20.26)
Mm-hmm.

James Moffitt (29:33.582)
Wait, why are there two sets of rules? Why are there adult rules and then there's children rules, you know? And if you, if you carry that on, you know, and if you don't model, you know, we talked about marriage and the importance of, uh, you know, a faith based marriage and who the father is, who the mother is, what the roles are. And it's like, if you want your, if you want your kids to understand what it means to be kind, gentle, loving, compassionate, a person of integrity.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (29:38.681)
Yep.

James Moffitt (30:02.508)
You have to model that in your marriage because if you don't, kids, the kids are watching and they're like, Hmm, okay. It's like you said, you know, if you say that, that integrity is, important, but you do things that don't reflect integrity, like not paying for that six pack of Coke or 12 packs of 12 pack of Cokes, right? If you just go, well, they missed it. So it's ours now. You know, that's kind of unethical. Doesn't show a lot of integrity, you know, and, and.

the, what do the kids learn? They learned that, as long you're not caught, it's okay. Right. And, that's not what we want to teach our kids.

How has your work with Focus on the Family shaped your approach to parenting and family dynamics?

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (30:49.018)
It's been an interesting full circle moment to be here actually because I grew up getting some focus on the family by osmosis. My mom listened to the radio program with Dr. Dobson as I was growing up. I actually got the magazine Rio for teen girls. So it's really interesting. If you had told me back then I would ever work for the organization, I would have thought, no way. And I just wouldn't have believed it. So.

James Moffitt (31:01.944)
Right?

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (31:16.164)
Focus has had an impact on my life even while I was growing up. So to be here now is really special. And I would say the way that focus has most impacted my approach to parenting is I think it's laced it with more grace because being at focus, I'm learning there are so many expressions even of faith-based parenting. People do it many different ways and where we can find that

common patch of grass to stand on though is often the why. It's the biblical worldview that we share, even if how we manifest that in our parenting looks a little different from household to household. And I think I've just grown in grace for that and seeing there's different ways to do it. I obviously have strong feelings about parenting and I do believe there are some things that are truly best practices.

but it is also nice to work in a faith-based organization and see that there's still variety.

James Moffitt (32:17.474)
So how did you come to be part of the focus on the family organizations or family?

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (32:26.094)
I moved here. I mean, that was a big part of it. I was coming from Washington state and I was moving to Colorado. So I started looking for jobs in Colorado. And of course, focus on the family is here. And I started looking and I was so fortunate to find a role that really aligned my experience and my education with things that I care about.

So I think that was just God's kindness as we were moving out of state to provide me with very meaningful work.

James Moffitt (32:57.89)
Yeah. What a huge blessing, right?

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (32:59.779)
Yes.

James Moffitt (33:01.282)
So talk to us a little bit about your education.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (33:05.828)
Yes, my background, so why I like doing things like this, for example, is my background combines education and speaking. So my undergraduate degree is in speech communication. My master's is in education. I'm working on a doctorate in educational leadership because I care about educating couples, families, parents, and helping them.

Like I said, at the top, feel equipped to do this well. think sometimes parents really feel ill equipped and we have a real, what I call an epidemic of child centered parenting going on in our country right now, where parents are almost afraid to parent. And I'm passionate about helping parents feel equipped to be the parent and not be nervous about that role that they've been given by God. And so my education really speaks into that.

because I'm one of those rare people who does enjoy public speaking and I care a lot about educating and equipping parents. So when I'm doing education work, even in academia, I'm not focused on the K to 12 space, grade schoolers and all that. I'm looking at how do we educate adults because I care about exactly what we're talking about today. So that's kind of how my education plays into it.

James Moffitt (34:25.742)
All right, so let's segue into the role of parents and how the role of parents has changed, let's say from 60s and 70s on up into 21st century. What has happened to the parental role? How has it morphed and how is it maybe bad?

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (34:33.914)
Mm.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (34:48.44)
Hmm. It has shifted. And I mean, I wasn't alive during some of the decades you mentioned when you were talking about racism and stuff. I wasn't around, but I can say that parenting, I think there was a lot more comfort by the overall culture with parental authority. We were just more comfortable with it. And even adult authority, I would venture to say, because it wasn't rare for me growing up to even have maybe a neighbor correct me.

if I wasn't doing something right. We were okay with that in our society. And now that is shifting quite a bit. Parents do not want other adults telling their kids what to do. They don't see that as a welcome, hey, thanks for having my back. I'm making sure my kid is behaving. It's really seen as an intrusion. And then what I spoke about a moment ago, the fear factor is really creeping in. Whereas parents felt, I think confident, hey, I am.

I am quote the boss and they didn't mind putting boundaries up and discipline wasn't as challenging. And now we have a real generation of parents who are working so hard to be their child's friend that they're really missing the boat on some key parenting stuff. That's what I'm seeing even as a parent coach.

And now being in this sphere for about two decades is a real shift to almost being nervous. Well, I don't, but I don't want to upset my child. And I think that's the wrong goal. If you're aiming at happiness, it's the wrong goal. We, we can't control whether our kids are happy anyway, but what we do want to aim at is are we going to help them navigate the world successfully? And that might mean we upset them a time or two as we teach them. And that's really what it is. It's not being a stinker.

I'm not saying go and be this authoritarian, horrible person to your children, but you're your children's first and best teacher. And so when we fail to train our kids, we're really setting up the next generation to not be able to succeed in the world. It's not a fair depiction of what life is really like. If we keep solving all their problems for them, if we're afraid to put down boundaries.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (37:01.636)
they're getting a false picture of the world. And that's what is sad for me and why I do the work I do because I think that does kids a disservice, really.

James Moffitt (37:11.31)
think back in the earlier generations, I can only speak to, you know, what I was raised up in, you know, in the sixties and seventies. A lot of times, um, grandparents live with the parents, right? In other words, back then, I think, I think it was just understood that it takes a village to raise people, raise children and adults, right? It takes a village. takes all of us, you know, whether it be grandparents, parents, the YMCA, what other, you know, the church.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (37:17.465)
Mm-hmm.

James Moffitt (37:40.002)
you know, whatever, organizations that our children were part of, it was kind of just understood that, hey, these young people need direction. They need, they need structure in their lives. They need, they need role models in their lives that can teach them the same principles that we're trying to teach them at home. Right. and, and I think that I know that they're there, back then, there was a,

definite parent child relationship, you know, and we weren't my parents. My parents were not trying to be my friend. You know, my dad was a drill instructor for 26 years. My mother was European. She was from Austria. You know, they were that stereotypical authoritarian family. Like, you know, you do what you're told her there's going to be consequences. You know, a lot of times the consequences was physical. You know, there were spankings, you know, there was, you know,

There was a lot of abuse that I had to get over. There was physical and emotional abuse and, you know, they, they, they, they swung the pendulum all the way to the right, way too far, you know, and, and I think parents, we, everybody has their childhood, right? And some, some of our childhoods were great. Some of them sucked, you know, and, and I attribute a lot of what my sister and I went through as in that my parents probably didn't have a good childhood.

You know, they, you know, parents parent the way they were parented basically, unless you, unless you can recognize oops, I didn't like my childhood. So therefore I'm not going to do A, B and C that they did. And I'm going to learn how to break that generational curse. But, but one of the things that was there that was good is there was a parent child relationship and they weren't trying to make me happy. They weren't trying to, they weren't trying to be my friend. They were being my parent and they were teaching me.

life skills and teaching me not to lie, not to steal, you know, and, and, and to be a good human. And, and I think that, I think that has changed somehow. It's somehow it's morphed into, I want to be, I'm, I want to be your best friend. You're going to be my, you're my best friend. You know, like, and it's like, you're not doing your, you're not doing your children any favors by setting up that kind of a relationship. Right.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (40:03.672)
You're not. And I think you're exactly right. When you were talking about the pendulum, I think we often see this general generationally. The generation after will then go so far the other way. So there were there were probably homes that were unsafe and were abusive decades ago. And we recognized, hey, that's not a good plan. But what happened is now there's.

so much over here with gentle parenting and not wanting to intervene. And we've got to find our way to the sensible middle that says, you are a position of influence in your child's life. And it's okay to do that carefully and with emotional intelligence and not just be a dictator and finding finding that balance is, is really what I love to help.

parents with because you're exactly right. We can fall in the ditch on either side and we have to be careful of that.

James Moffitt (41:00.504)
Well, I think emotional intelligence is a, is a huge topic and it's, it's something that needs to be spoken about in, in parents, let's just say married couples drag emotional baggage into their marriage. That's, that's unresolved. Right. And it's to a large degree it's unresolved because the emotional intelligence is just not there. You know, they don't, they don't, you know, a lot of times people don't even know there's emotional baggage or what to do about it. Right.

And it rears its ugly head when you're in the middle of a relationship and all of a sudden your wife or your husband looks at you and go, you know, I don't appreciate what you just said or what you just did. And this is how it affects me and how it affects our marriage. And, and then, you have to hopefully, you know, calmly talk through the issues and figure out what's going on. uh, maybe sometimes it requires talking to a life coach or talking to a family therapist or a marriage counselor, you know, or.

Pastoral care at your church or whatever. And there's nothing, we're all human, right? We're not perfect. We, we're fallible. We make mistakes. We drag all this stuff into our relationships and we're broken people. Right. And so, I mean, that's one of the beautiful things about church focus on the family and all these different organizations that are there to support families and support parents, support raising, you know, adult children and all that stuff. I just started on a rampage there, didn't I? Or rant, not a rampage.

I just started on rent.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (42:25.758)
Rant. That's all right. Happens to the best of us.

James Moffitt (42:31.254)
Yeah. So, this is good stuff. So, how should parents handle situations where their adult child makes decisions that conflicts with their values?

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (42:45.668)
Well, this will depend a little bit on whether your adult child is still in your home. You have a little more leverage there because you're providing them a place to live. So this is so hard for parents, but they have to understand that if you've got a child at home and they're making decisions that really just do not work for you, whether that's because of your beliefs or generic family values or whatever it might be, you do have the ability

to put some boundaries around that. Like, hey, this behavior, you're welcome to choose that behavior, but you can't choose that and still live here. That's one way. Other families allow those things and that's a choice. I'm not excited about it because I think what we really have to convey to kids who are making poor decisions is that I still love you no matter what, and it's okay for me to have my own boundaries around that. So if my child's doing something in my home that's uncomfortable for me,

I have the absolute right to say that can't happen in my home. Now, when your kids are not living with you, it's a lot different. You are welcome to let them know, and they probably already know what you think, but I always make sure my kids know where I stand on things. We're not shy about it, we're not subtle about it, but I also am very aware that I may not be able to affect change.

And I will even say that to them. I understand that you are an adult now. You are able to make this decision. I also want you to know it doesn't impact my feelings about you. I love you to pieces. I am a fan of you. I'm in your corner. That said, I need you to know this doesn't match our paradigm and here's why. I even will go so far for some of my more cerebral kids. I have one that's very analytical. I will bring in the research and say,

this choice you're making, the research says it's not great and here's why. And I also don't believe it's moral, but let me tell you what even the social scientists are saying or whatever it might be. If you've got a kid who does better with higher reasoning, you can even appeal to that and say, here's statistically why this isn't a great plan. So there's lots of ways to approach that, but I do think it depends whether they're in your home or not because you have a different leverage when they've already moved out and it's a lot less.

James Moffitt (45:09.088)
Right. Well, Dina, I think we could probably talk for another two hours, but, there's, there's so much we haven't touched on that maybe we can, have another conversation at another time and talk, talk about some of these other things that are on my list here. so I'm going to say at this point, I'm going say, and that brings us to the end of another episode of ABCs of parenting adult children. Big thank you to Dina Thayer for sharing her experience, wisdom and heart with us today.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (45:14.874)
I

James Moffitt (45:39.64)
Dina's insights remind us that parenting doesn't stop when our kids grow up, it simply changes shape. If today's episode resonated with you, be sure to follow or subscribe so that you never miss an episode. And if you know someone navigating the challenges of parenting adult children, share this episode with them. It might just be what they need to hear. You can find more resources, past episodes and ways to connect with us at my website at parentingadultchildren.org. Follow us on Instagram at parentingadultchildren125.

And if you have a story or question you'd like to share, send me an email at talkpac.me. That's talkpac.me. And Dina, thank you for being here. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Deana Thayer, M.Ed. (46:22.522)
Thank you for having me and shining a light on all these important topics. I appreciate it.

James Moffitt (46:27.168)
Absolutely. And to the listening audience, I'll say thank you for the privilege of your time. Have a wonderful day. Share this episode with everybody that you know, your parents, parenting friends and, friends, family, and coworkers, right? Have a wonderful day. And thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Bye bye.