Parenting Before the Crisis: How Proactive Strategies Change Everything

Keywords

parenting, adult children, family dynamics, recovery, emotional wellbeing, financial literacy, proactive parenting, spirituality, life skills, communication


Summary

In this episode of The Parenting Adult Children Podcast, host James Moffitt speaks with Steve Ward about the challenges of parenting adult children, particularly those transitioning from adolescence to adulthood. They discuss the importance of adapting parenting styles, breaking generational patterns, and the necessity of proactive parenting. Steve shares insights from his own family's journey through substance abuse and recovery, emphasizing the need for emotional, social, and financial literacy in parenting. The conversation also touches on the integration of faith and spirituality in raising children, the significance of modeling behavior, and practical steps parents can take to prepare for potential crises. Ultimately, the episode serves as a resource for parents seeking to navigate the complexities of raising adult children with compassion and understanding.


Takeaways

Parents need to adapt their parenting styles as children grow.
Breaking generational patterns is crucial for effective parenting.
Proactive parenting involves preparation and awareness of children's needs.
Financial literacy is an essential skill for adult children.
Emotional and social skills are vital for children's development.
Modeling good behavior is key to teaching children values.
Recognizing early signs of anxiety can prevent crises.
Setting boundaries with love is important during challenging times.
Parents can make mistakes and still raise successful children.
Faith and spirituality play a significant role in parenting. 


Sound bites

"We are all holistic integrated beings."
"It's important to model good behavior."
"You need to change your approach."


Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Parenting Challenges
02:05 Navigating Substance Abuse in Family Dynamics
04:47 Transitioning from Teen to Adult: A Parent's Role
07:51 Breaking Generational Patterns in Parenting
10:29 Nudging Adult Children Towards Independence
12:42 The Importance of Life Skills in Parenting
16:19 Financial Literacy: A Critical Life Skill
18:42 Emotional and Social Skills in Parenting
21:13 Integrating Faith and Spirituality in Parenting
26:04 The Bur

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. 

Hello, James here !

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Please share this podcast with your friends and family. Now for today's guest intervi

Transcript

James Moffitt (00:01.311)
Hello and welcome to ABC's The Parenting Adult Children Podcast. My name is James Moffitt and I'll be your host. Today we have Steve Shaw as our guest. Hey Steve, how are you?

Steve Ward (00:10.882)
I'm doing good, Steve Ward, but I'm doing awesome. Thanks, James.

James Moffitt (00:13.855)
What did I say? Steve Shaw. Did I say Shaw? There's an attorney in South Carolina by the name of Steve Shaw and I guess he was stuck in my head. But yes, Steve Ward is our guest today and Steve tell the listening audience a little bit about yourself.

Steve Ward (00:29.358)
Well, I'm a parent. We work with lots of parents. A lot of that was born out of the fact that as our two boys got into the middle teen years and teen years, one of them struggled, one of them didn't. And so we went through some dark times there. But that inspired me to leave the business world and start a nonprofit ministry. And we do a lot of work with parents, especially parents of teens and young adults.

James Moffitt (00:55.519)
That's awesome. And where are you located?

Steve Ward (00:57.236)
Birmingham, Alabama.

James Moffitt (00:59.411)
Birmingham, Alabama, Roll Tide.

Steve Ward (01:01.72)
There you go. Yeah, we had to adopt an SEC team over here. My wife and I both came from ACC schools. we... Yeah.

James Moffitt (01:03.348)
Yep.

James Moffitt (01:10.043)
okay.

All right, so gonna read this little blurb off your pod man's profile. It exploring how practical life improvement steps can support parents and families of adult children. Steve Ward shares insights from his journey through faith driven solutions to common challenges. This episode could focus on actionable strategies to foster emotional wellbeing and spiritual growth and family dynamics. That's a really good little introductory paragraph.

And if you want to build off of that, then feel free to do that.

Steve Ward (01:44.728)
Yeah, mean, short version of a long story is three out of four members of my nuclear family struggled with substance abuse. So we were exposed to the world of recovery and, counseling and therapy and a lot of different ways. And it just really hit home with me that we are all, you know, holistic integrated beings, right? And we operate emotionally, mentally, spiritually, socially, and personally. And, but most of us don't pay attention to how do we live life better.

So our family journey inspired me to do a lot of research on that and write my first book. And that put me on a road. So seven years ago, I left the business world to start a nonprofit ministry to help other people live life better.

James Moffitt (02:31.391)
Well, that's wonderful. How long have you all been married?

Steve Ward (02:33.806)
We've been married 38 and a half years. Pretty cool. Yeah.

James Moffitt (02:38.198)
wow. Yeah, we just celebrated 35 this month.

Steve Ward (02:42.77)
good for you. Good for you.

James Moffitt (02:44.487)
Yeah, she hasn't killed me yet.

Steve Ward (02:46.862)
Well, there you go, progress. And this was a big year. We had our first grandchild this year. So that's, that's pretty awesome. Yeah. Yeah. It's especially meaningful because the son who had that daughter is the one who for a decade or so kind of went down a dark road. So it's, it's just unbelievably meaningful to see him as a dad now.

James Moffitt (02:50.451)
Cheers and chains.

James Moffitt (02:54.961)
wow, that is awesome.

James Moffitt (03:11.987)
So do you feel comfortable talking about his journey a little bit?

Steve Ward (03:16.162)
Yeah, I'm pretty comfortable talking about almost everything. And when I talk about him or my wife, it's all cleared with them. So I've been telling our stories for a while. His journey was, you know, growing up in elementary, just the best kid possibly could imagine. And he was a good athlete. He was popular. He was smart. When he was about going into middle school,

James Moffitt (03:25.341)
Okay.

Steve Ward (03:44.11)
We moved from one city, we moved from Orlando back to Atlanta. I've lived in Atlanta a few times. And so he went to a new school and a lot of the kids there had known each other since kindergarten. So he had to form a new peer group and those he chose happened to be some that were making some bad decisions, including drugs and alcohol. So as it is for parents, right? When one of your kids is starting to make bad choices,

You know, at first you're frustrated. You don't know really what's going on. You're scared. You're trying to figure out the right steps to take. So you're on that journey of, know, has our son or daughter really changed that much of what's really going on in their life? And as evidence shows that it's getting worse and worse, it did. It got more dramatic. So at two different times over the next few years,

He needed to go into residential recovery program once for six weeks and once for a year. And yeah, I'm sure some of your listeners have been in that position when a parent has to take their son or daughter to a program like that and they're going to be gone for a year. That's that's a emotional time. It means a lot, but a lot of details in between of what it was like, but you know, over a period of eight or nine years, it was a struggle.

James Moffitt (04:44.563)
Good?

Steve Ward (05:08.744)
God bless him, he's doing very well now.

James Moffitt (05:11.903)
Good, that's wonderful to hear. Yeah, our listening audiences are, I would imagine, parents with kids between ages of 18 and 30. We also talk about the preteen and teen years as well. But transitioning from being a teenager to an adult is a challenging time for anybody, even in the best of circumstances.

Steve Ward (05:37.048)
Yeah. Yeah.

James Moffitt (05:42.207)
discussed in many occasions on this podcast about how while the adult child is transitioning from being a teenager into being an adult and developing their frontal lobe, know, like sometime around the age of 25, 26, 27 or whatever, parents have to transition as well. Parents go from the authoritative, I'm in your face and I'm, you know, controlling a lot of your life.

you know, telling you when to brush your teeth, take a shower, go to bed, get off the screen, do your homework, blah, blah, blah. And we transition into more of a mentor and support role. And sometimes, parents have to develop a little extra emotional intelligence and learn how to transition themselves. And I think that's a difficult stage for parents.

And so we talk a lot about that as well on the podcast episodes.

Steve Ward (06:45.208)
Yeah, well, we think a lot alike, you know, because we teach and write and have resources on just those areas. And I absolutely agree with everything you said. I mean, our kids are going through massive changes, you know, starting in the pre-teens these, you know, so you have the pre-teens into the teens, but then as you said, they go through another stage and parents need to understand that that means they need to change.

And I love the terms you used. mean, when they're earlier, right, we go through a period where we're a teacher and then hopefully along the ways we become a coach. And then that merges slowly into as you use the word mentor. I use the word coach as kind of an in-between stage because there's a period of time, right, where you are trying to help your kids not only learn practical life skills, but practice them as well.

And sometimes that takes demonstration and being there with them. But it's hard for parents. Parents are busy. They have a lot going on. Many of them, A, may have underestimated the challenges that their kids are going to be facing. And depending on what their schedule is like, maybe they haven't been able to devote some time to maybe studying what really works out there in parenting and seeing what the experts say. So we've tried to do a lot of that work for parents.

James Moffitt (07:42.558)
Right.

Steve Ward (08:11.758)
understanding that time is a constraint for them. So we try to take a lot of the best practices from the worlds of parenting, personal development, wellness, recovery, the Bible, and make them easy to understand so that busy parents can know what to do and take the most important steps at each of those stages. But you're right. I agree with how you described it.

James Moffitt (08:37.939)
Right.

I also think that one of the things that parents struggle with is that

How do we parent? We parent the way we were parented. Unless you're smart and you do a little introspection and look at how you were raised. I think all of our parents did the best they could with what they had, Well, I recognized immediately that I didn't want to be heavy-handed or as strict as my parents were to me and my sister. And so I knew that, I think it was Dr. James Dobson.

was the person I leaned on and listened to. He was a giant of the faith back in those days, probably still is. And so anyway, I listened to a lot of his parenting advice and I wanted, I tried to model myself as much as I could and get away from the negative, heavy-handed, authoritative, type of practices that my mom and dad both

had. He was a drill sergeant for 26 years. My mother was Austrian. She was European descent. They didn't have latchkey kids in Europe. know, grandparents lived in the same household and helped to raise the children like a village raising the kids, right? And it, and it takes a village to raise the kids. And I think one of the things that parents get caught up in is that, A, we're parenting our children. You know, it's hard baked into our, our, our psyche or psychology. That's just

James Moffitt (10:15.487)
That's the only way we know because you don't get a manual, right? So say if you're not careful, you're going to make the same mistakes. And so we have to break those generational bonds that are there, generational mistakes. another thing is, think parents, we have an idea in our head of who we think our children are going to become. Like my dad wanted me to be the TV man in Cleveland, Texas. You know, he had a little side gig that

When he got through with his eight to five job, came home and he had a storage building out in the backyard and he worked on TVs, you know, back in the seventies, back when they had vacuum tubes and he had all these big testing equipment and I helped him with it a lot. But he wanted me to be, he wanted to pass that down to me. He wanted me to take that over. He wanted me to inherit that. And I was like, uh-uh, no, I have no desire to, I wished him to that. And I was like.

No, of course I didn't say that to him like that. was just like, was at some point I was like, yeah, I'm not really interested in that dad. I know that looking back, you know, hindsight's 2020 and I'm sure that that probably hurt his feelings a little bit. because our parents, you know, as parents, we want to provide a direction for the kids to go, right? They got to go somewhere. So we got it. We got to kind of nudge them out. You know, we, one of the recurring topics that we have is failure to launch.

And I have a child psychologist that's on our episodes quite frequently. He called it something else.

Something about, I don't know, I forget what he called it, but it was something, it was a little bit more subtle and a little more, a little softer around the edges, right? But we have, you know, 18 to 30 year olds that, you know, sometimes they just want to sit around the house and eat and sleep and play video games and get on social media. And we've to kind of nudge them and go, okay, well, you know, we need to transition from that.

James Moffitt (12:19.135)
into a little more adult white role for you. you know, think about going to school, go to a trade school, go to college, whatever, you know? So we, as parents, we kind of have to nudge them onto a path. And then once they're on that path, then we have to learn how to kind of let go of them a little bit and let them experience life and, and

Find out what they're passionate about. What makes you tick? What are you passionate about? And I think as parents, when our children fail to follow the path that we feel like they're supposed to be on, we kind of internalize that as maybe a failure on their part. When it's not really a failure on their part, they're just trying to figure out life. And there's a real difficult...

complex balance there that has to be followed. In other words, we nudge them onto a path, get them started, give them some guidance, and then, you know, it's like mama bird pushing the bird out of the nest. Okay, so here's where you're at, and if you don't flap your wings and get some lift between down and the ground, you're gonna hit hard. So, you know.

And luckily as parents, we're able to soften the trajectory of their launch into adult life, hopefully. none of us want to, we don't want any of our children to experience the bad consequences or the negative consequences of bad decisions that we made when we were young adults, right?

Steve Ward (14:06.178)
Yeah. There's a lot of things to unravel in what you said. You had a lot of wisdom just in that short talk. One is we are partly a product of how we're raised. That still means it's our choices as we grow up on what kind of person we're going to be. But we're all influenced by that. So if we understand that, that gives us some helpful insight. As with you, right? My father, I had great parents. But my father, as

maybe yours was, a creature of his generation. Right? So what I learned from watching him is that my job is to work real hard and support a family. In other words, he was a worker. He wasn't really big on the relationship, you know, so we got along great. I was never treated badly, but we didn't have a deep relationship. And even though later, including

James Moffitt (14:56.287)
Right.

Steve Ward (15:05.624)
Sadly, at his funeral where it hit me how he was proud of me and of his other kids, I never heard that growing up. So all of us are learning how to live life as we grow up, consciously or unconsciously. In our elementary age, teenage years, we're all trying to find the way we want to feel and avoid pain. And we develop these little strategies on how to do that.

Some of it's influenced by our parents and our upbringing and some of our choices. And what we don't know is that we take those with us into the adult age. Because a lot of us are just not intentional about developing the life skills to live effectively as adults. And unfortunately, you know, a lot of parents don't maybe understand the importance of that. A famous educator, I think his name was Howard Hendricks.

once said, know, most parents think their job is to raise a good boy or girl. I that's not their job. Their job is to raise a good man or a woman. So we should always be thinking, yes, we're taking care of them and we're supporting them and encouraging them along the way. But our objective is so that they can leave the nest. They can go out and be happy and balanced and effective and productive and have good relationships on their own.

I hopefully develop a faith of their own, right? That's what success is. That means avoiding the downside and some of the problems we face, but also trying to help them maximize who they have been designed to be. And that takes some thought. And that's why a lot of our parenting, we branded under the term proactive parenting, right? Which just mean it is a lot of what you said, right? It means understanding that your kids are changing and therefore you need to change too.

but to be proactive, to be balanced, be relational, be informed and thoughtful and to be intentional. And that takes some thought. Most of us, we have a plan for our finances and we probably build a plan at work and we probably build a plan for our vacations, but how many of us have a parenting plan? Where we just thought about each of our kids individually and

Steve Ward (17:26.966)
saying what are their strengths, what are the areas to watch out with, what are they struggling, and how can I walk alongside of them and mentor them and coach them in a way so that they can become the person they are meant to be. It takes some thought and intentionality to do that.

James Moffitt (17:41.895)
Right. Well, one of the things that you brought up, and one of the themes or one of the topics that we talk about sometimes is financial literacy. Like my parents were great with finances. They bought a house in 1969 or 1970. was on, I think, three quarters of an acre or something like that. I don't know. It was three bedrooms, two baths, brick house.

think they paid $30,000 for it back in the day and they got a 30 year mortgage and paid it off in 15. So I remember that and I remember my dad sitting down with a checkbook and paid, he paid bills on a monthly basis. He wrote out checks, stuck them in an envelope, know, licking a stick, stamp on it and put it in the mailbox. And, but they never taught me budgeting. They never taught me finances, you know? And so financial literacy is a very, very critical.

life skill that I think parents should be teaching their preteens, teens, and adult children because finances, they're not handled correctly. It can create a whole world of problems, right? And it's really expensive to live, as you well know. let's say our children go to a four-year college. They've got student loans, whatever.

Steve Ward (18:55.266)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (19:07.497)
They get out and they're trying to find a role in the chosen profession that they're in. because they're just now beginning in that role, they're not going to make a whole lot of money initially. You know, they're going to start out at the bottom of the toilet bowl. And so, you know, when you go out on your own, you got to have deposits. You got to have a pet deposit. You got to have white deposit, gas deposit, water deposit. You got to have all these deposits, including the first month and last month rent.

right? If you're renting an apartment or whatever. And we as parents can soften that blow a little bit by providing some underpinning, some help them with a little bit of finances if necessary. anyway, financial literacy is certainly a skill that we should be teaching our kids.

Steve Ward (19:54.158)
It's part of a broader portfolio of the practical life skills it takes to live life effectively. Financial literacy could be one of those. But even what's harder sometimes for parents to grasp is that there are emotional skills. We hear about emotional intelligence. There are social skills. There are mental skills. How do we deal with our thoughts? How do we make choices? We have personal skills.

intentional about what we're or are we working on those things that are important? I would even suggest that there are spiritual life skills, right? And on their own, people are trying to cope with life, so they're gonna make that stuff up. But parents can be incredibly helpful in helping guide their kids to develop those life skills. I think parents, in many days, are the heroes of our generation, so I'm very, very pro-parents.

Because of my respect and love for parents, I also have to be real with them sometimes, right? Is that we can let our busyness and distraction become our worst enemy at times. you know, there's too many parents, you know, you know, they measure the success of raising their kids with, I'll say with three key metrics. Now I'm not saying they're actually conscious of it, but they're thinking, okay, are they doing okay in school? Are they engaged in some activity?

James Moffitt (21:17.182)
Right?

Steve Ward (21:20.12)
You know, whether it be band or sports or whatever. And the third is, they creating any problems, you know, for us or, and if those three metrics seem to be going okay, they think everything's okay. You know, that may or may not be the case. You know, I mean, you know, our kids may be dealing with anxiety, but they're scared to talk about it. They may feel disconnected from their peers. they may not understand what kind of person they're growing up to be. And so that.

gives them a good degree of frustration. They may think that the future seems bleak at times, so they're hopeless. And when those are the cases, they're human beings, right? People do what they do for a reason. They're going to look for a way to feel the way they want to feel. And that could either be through the people they hang around, the behaviors they do, or the substances they take. mean, getting into substance abuse, right? That sounds funny, but that's a very logical choice.

James Moffitt (22:06.324)
Right.

Steve Ward (22:18.542)
16 and you don't have a sense of identity yet and you really want to fit in and you know, you feel left out, you feel disconnected and guess what? You find drinking alcohol or smoking weed or something like that gives you a connection to a group of people and it makes you feel good for a while. So we do what we do for a reason and parents just need to be very aware and conscious that that's going on with or without their involvement, you know.

James Moffitt (22:49.737)
need to step away for about two minutes. I'll be right back. And I'll be able to cut this out when I edit the video, so don't worry about that. When I get back, I want to talk about the faith part, integrating faith and spiritual things into raising children. I'll be right back. Sorry.

Steve Ward (22:51.276)
No worries. Okay.

Alright, I'll be here.

Steve Ward (23:06.998)
Okay. All right. No worries.

James Moffitt (26:00.243)
horrible timing.

Steve Ward (26:02.284)
good. Yeah.

James Moffitt (26:03.347)
Yep, all right. All right, so we'll get back to it and we'll start talking about how faith, integrating faith and spirituality into the proactive raising of our kids.

Steve Ward (26:18.424)
Yeah. Well, as I mentioned before, we're kind of designed as integrated beings, right? That's how God created us to be, right? How did he tell us to love him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength and then to love others? Well, guess what? I just ticked off five areas that help define how we are designed. Our heart, soul, mind, and strength, right? We are emotional beings. We have mental capabilities. We interact socially with other people. We have our will.

James Moffitt (26:27.924)
Right.

Steve Ward (26:47.81)
which is our personal intentionality, and we're designed to interact with others. So it's a social connection skill. All those areas are important, but there's only one of them that's supernatural in nature, right? Which is our spiritual connection to God. So that's really the wild card in us as human beings and in how our kids will develop and what their life is like, but it also influences our parenting, right?

We need to understand that they are a mix of all these emotions. just spouting the Bible at them or making sure they go to Sunday school and church and thinking that's going to lead them down a healthy spiritual path is a naive assumption. It may or may not. Those are good things to do, right? Very good things to do. But we're trying to them develop their own spirituality themselves, right? And find the truth.

James Moffitt (27:21.373)
Right.

James Moffitt (27:36.831)
Well, I think it's.

James Moffitt (27:43.103)
think it's important that as we raise our kids that we model good behavior to them. Like how do our children learn compassion and love and peacefulness and kindness and all the fruit of the spirit that talks about Corinthians. Well, the best way for them to learn it is for mom and dad to model it with one another and with them, right? And so it's important that we don't take the mantra of

Steve Ward (28:05.858)
Yeah, yeah.

James Moffitt (28:12.829)
Don't do as I do, do as I say, right? That's the way my dad was like, you you just do what you're told. Don't worry about what I'm doing because I'm an adult and I'll just do what I want to do. You know, I was like, well, it's kind of a conflicting, there's a little bit of a conflict there, you know? And of course I didn't, I didn't dare challenge him in that, you know, but I think we both agree that modeling good behavior.

in our daily lives is probably the best teacher.

Steve Ward (28:42.988)
Yeah. Well, I hope it's encouraging to parents and it's meant to be to help them understand how big an influence they are. And this is very well proven, right? And it's improving on the downside. Like even when teenagers are acting like they don't want to listen to their parents, which is a little bit natural for most teenagers, research shows over and over again that by far parents are the biggest influence on when, how, and to what degree our kids

decide to drink and take substances. But on the upside as well, starting at an earlier age, even when they're young, pre-elementary into elementary, their understanding of God is going to be formed largely by how the parenting figures, their mom and dad, appear in their life. That's the person who has authority over them at that point. So they're going to

form, you know, form how they view God from how this authority figure that's in their life all the time interacts. And the example we set is absolutely huge, you know, just in terms of faith, right? I mean, if we, you know, think that our kids will be more healthy being brought up in the church, so we dutifully drag them to Sunday school and church every, you know, every week and think that's enough,

But yet, they don't see us living out a life of faith. if we pray occasionally, it's a cursory, perfunctory, pre-meal recited lesson. And we never pull out the Bible, and we never reference our spirituality. And it doesn't seem to inform who we are. And we aren't kind and compassionate and serve others. Man, I hate to say it.

James Moffitt (30:20.595)
Right.

Steve Ward (30:36.334)
Because like I said, parents are the heroes. But they need to know that's not a neutral position. They are modeling for their kids a life where God's not very important, and we're all supposed to figure this out on our own. So it's absolutely critical that we have a real, and when I say real, that includes vulnerable and transparent faith that we live out in front of our kids. That doesn't mean we're perfect. It doesn't mean we make mistakes.

We're humans too. Kids understand that, but they are, especially when they get into the teenage years, they are incredibly adept at reading a lack of authenticity. And if we say one thing and live out another, our credibility just goes right through the floor. know, so we've lost one of our biggest superpowers, right? Which is just the ability to model how to live life effectively when we aren't

James Moffitt (31:24.553)
Right.

Steve Ward (31:34.402)
transparent and we don't set the right example for

James Moffitt (31:38.111)
Right? You know, transparency is very important and being able to say you're sorry when you mess up, you know, I think it's important that we be humble enough to admit when we make a mistake and let the kids know that, okay, I didn't react right. I didn't react in a proper way. know, my emotions got in the way or, you know, cause that's the way my dad was. He'd had a temper.

Steve Ward (31:44.706)
Yeah. Yeah.

James Moffitt (32:07.441)
And there were times with my kids that I reacted the same way he did with me. You know, I had to backtrack and go, I didn't want to do that, but I did. I'm sorry.

Steve Ward (32:15.022)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, again, I think one of the things I love hearing some of the comments of parents who come to our seminars or use our resources, because one of the things they say is it, to be freed from the burden of perfection is, it is a wonderful release for them. And it also inspires them to say, I need to do my best, but I don't have to be perfect. And as you just said,

It is a powerful lesson to say to one of our kids, John or Mary, I just think I've been too angry lately. And there are reasons that are causing that, but that's on me. And I won't apologize for that. I know it showed up on you. I want to apologize. And I'd like to ask if you would forgive me on that. And I'm going to be working on it. And you have my permission to call me out on it occasionally. If I get too angry with you,

Let me know because I sincerely want to get better and I hope you'll forgive me. That's an incredible life lesson for our kids.

James Moffitt (33:20.583)
Absolutely. Yes. Absolutely.

James Moffitt (33:29.023)
Let me ask you one of these probing questions.

How did your, I think you already answered the first one. What critical steps can parents take to aid their children in recovery?

Steve Ward (33:43.576)
to help if their children are going through recovery or if they're going through recovery. Yeah. Yeah.

James Moffitt (33:48.351)
What critical steps can parents take to aid their children in recovery?

Steve Ward (33:54.016)
I'll answer that in two parts. The first is coming at it from a standpoint of what can you do to prevent recovery being needed? In other words, what inspired me to do what I do now, right? Is that three of the four members of my nuclear family had substance problems and, and in recovery, I saw that what you learn there is it's not just a black art for dealing with substances. It's a balanced lifestyle.

James Moffitt (33:57.853)
Okay.

Steve Ward (34:21.88)
to live life effectively. And if you live life effectively, by the way, including the way God designed it to be lived, we will tend to prevent those self-cause problems in our life. So I thought, why don't parents raise their kids this way? So whether your kids are in elementary age or in pre-teens or the teens, even if you haven't foreseen or seen warning signs that there's a...

you know, a mental health or a substance problem, you need to be preparing them to live life well so that they'll avoid those things. And we have a methodology called Paces for Parents, that's an acronym. The P is for preparation, right? Understand that they're changing and you need to change too. The best way to be the best parent you can be is to be the best person you can be. So to get ready for that preparation, to be proactive, the A in Paces is for awareness, to know.

that they're changing and to want to know what's really going on inside of them, to be aware of the challenges they're facing and to be aware of what you're going through. The C in Paces is for connection. It gets harder to talk to our kids when they're teenagers, but to connect with them where they are with empathy and with compassion, but yet still with truth and setting consequences when they need. The for Paces is for education.

You're going to have to learn some new things and you're going to have to help them understand new things because they're facing challenges. And that might mean you need to pause from your busy schedule occasionally to, go listen to a podcast or take an online course and, make sure that you're developing the skills so that you can walk alongside with them. And then the S in paces is for steps, do you have a plan in place? Doesn't have to be exhaustive. It doesn't have to be 10 pages, but have you thought for each of your kids?

Here's the challenge we're trying to help them walk through, and here's the opportunity we have to help them develop. And if we do these things, it will tend to help them do that. So my first answer is to think proactive and to help prevent those from happening. That said, sometimes stuff happens. we have material for, and by the way, I would say this to a parent, you can be the best parent in the world, and one of your kids could still struggle.

James Moffitt (36:30.707)
Right.

Steve Ward (36:41.006)
Don't be shocked if that happens. It can happen to any kid. And let me say something else. You can make lots of mistakes, and your kids can still turn out fine. I'm not trying to minimize the responsibility of parents, but I'm trying to say, you don't have to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. Just give it your best shot. Give it your best shot. And when you make a mistake, learn from it and get better. But when they start struggling, you know,

James Moffitt (36:55.401)
Right.

Steve Ward (37:08.578)
We have other material from this parenting teenagers is called parenting in a crisis. You know, when, by the way, if, if, if you've been prepared, then you're not naive. You understand that when they're in the teenage years, the odds of them trying substances is huge. Three out of four out of them will, and they will certainly have friends who are doing it. And many of their friends will deal with anxiety and depression and hopelessness. That is reality. See, if you're prepared for that,

That means when they're a teen years, you need to be looking for things, right? You need to be looking for early, like early signs of anxiety as an example. And don't just say, well, Susie's going through a stage, she'll probably grow out of it. No, ask Susie what's going on and ask her what's bothering her. And it's best, this is not one conversation. This is an ongoing dialogue and help, you know, so when they're moving into crisis mode,

All of this has to accelerate. Accelerate in terms of its urgency, but also in terms of its specificity. For example, awareness. Awareness, if you just start to feel like something's going on, there's probably a pretty good chance something is. Where there's smoke, there very often is fire. And whether you call it parents intuition or just you've observed enough little things over a period of time that you've seen a trend, you need to be aware.

James Moffitt (38:25.428)
Right.

Steve Ward (38:35.936)
If you're starting to see things, you need to ratchet up your awareness, right? You need to very specifically be looking for warning signs and don't overreact if you see one or two things, right? Teenagers are going to do stuff, but look for a trend. Is their trend moving in a positive direction? So they're developing their own emotional aptitude and awareness and they're making good choices. Are they trending upward or are they trending downward?

and be really aware of that. And things like setting boundaries and consequences become more urgent and more specific. Because if they're now making, for example, choices that include substances, the game has changed now. Because these days, A, they could be involved in driving under the influence for themselves or a friend, which is a life altering or life ending choice at times.

B, these days, the number one cause of death now, starting at age 18, is one drug, it's fentanyl. And there's a lot of reasons why that is the case. And it's not a scare tactic, right? This isn't a dare program. It's reality to say, your son or daughter can be at a party and they can not feel like they're fitting in.

So they have a couple of drinks and hey, now they're part of the crowd and they're more relaxed and their best friend could say, hey, I have this pill. I think it's a Xanax. I think it'll relax you more. It's just, it's a prescription. Why don't you take it? That pill could be laced with fentanyl. And so again, I understand what I just portrayed is not meant to be a scare tactic. It's happening all over the place. that's why

James Moffitt (40:29.543)
Absolutely, absolutely.

Steve Ward (40:32.076)
You know, policemen and women and, you know, medical people, that's why on their hip right now, you know, they're, they're carrying around, you know, something called Narcan, right? Which is to help prevent, death from an opioid abuse, which is what fentanyl is. So the point being it, as you detect a crisis, everything needs to accelerate in terms of your timeframes, but also in your specificity. But that doesn't mean.

I would say in the harshness of your tone, you know, you can set tough boundaries and tight consequences and you can stick by them 100 % of the time. And you can do that out of a position of love and caring and compassion. And you can do it without anger. I'm not saying it's easy. It can be hard, but parents in a crisis have to be willing to make tough choices. And that doesn't mean they have to be

demanding or cruel or mean or yelling all the time. They can still do it from a position of compassion and love and calmness, but you have to be prepared for that, right? You have to have anticipated ahead of time and set a boundary that says, okay, you you're 14 or 15 now. We know a lot of your friends are drinking and we know that a lot of them are probably smoking marijuana. Let's discuss what our boundary is going to be and what the consequences are going to be.

James Moffitt (41:34.942)
Right.

Steve Ward (42:00.8)
and calmly set that. And so then if they make a mistake, you're just saying, okay, we're now going to allow the consequences of your choices to occur. And you can calmly enforce that boundary you've put in place. You don't have to react emotionally and go crazy on them and lock them in a room for six months and take away their phone and think that's going to make everything better. So that's why being intentional and proactive becomes important, but it has to escalate.

when you're in, if you're detecting early signs of a crisis.

James Moffitt (42:34.655)
Right? Good stuff. I guess you could say we're the overseer or we're the watchman by the gate, we're the watchman on the tower, right? We're watching for signs of danger. And that's part of being an adult and it's part of being a parent is that we want to steer our children away from danger. We don't...

We don't want them to experience a fentanyl overdose or heroin overdose or LSD or cocaine or any of those drugs, right? And a lot of people, adults included, imbibe or use gateway drugs, marijuana and other alcohol. know, alcohol is...

It's almost a acceptable drug in America, you know, and alcohol addiction and kills people on a daily basis, you know, mothers against drunk drivers, you know. And anyway, that's the reality of parenting in 2025 or any year for that matter. We have to be aware of the dangers and do the best we can within our ability to educate ourselves and our children, right?

Steve Ward (44:01.57)
Yeah. You know, when I had decided that the cause of our life experiences that I felt called toward some type of ministry sort of kind of nonprofit endeavors, I was kind of plotting my exit strategy. I was with IBM for 38 years, right? So when I was plotting my exit strategy and trying to form what nonprofit ministry future will I move toward? I've been pretty transparent with the pastors of my church, right? They knew about our background. They knew I was moving in that direction.

And the youth pastor came to me one time, and this was a youth pastor who'd been doing it for 25 years. And he was imploring me to say, in your ministry, please, please include a focus on parents of teenagers. He said, let me tell you what it's like at the high school up the road from our church. He said, similar to what you just said, James, is that drinking alcohol and smoking weed or something like that.

James Moffitt (44:38.207)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Ward (45:00.85)
not looked down upon. It's normal. Even kids who may choose not to do it, they don't think there's anything wrong with it. That's normal. What he said is that the problem is from there a lot of them are starting to take pills where the danger goes up. And if they, if the oak-boyed pill that they got out of the medicine cabinet because the mom and dad got them at the dentist or the doctor, if they like how that makes them feel but they don't have the money to buy those things over the internet, which you can do.

One of their friends is going to suggest these days what it sounds like a reasonable alternative. Hey, I know something that's cheaper than those pills and it makes you feel better and it's easier to get is called heroin. He said, that's what's going on with some of them. And some of the kids are hopeless enough that every once in a while they'll attempt suicide. James, these days,

I've heard the statistic a thousand times and it hits me every time. 19 % of young people contemplate suicide. That's almost one out of five. And about 9 % will actually attempt it. So that's crazy. And so that influenced the direction of what we did. And by the way, he said, you know what the norm is for parents? Because he dealt with hundreds of parents. He said, they're scared to death.

James Moffitt (45:58.633)
Well, that's crazy.

James Moffitt (46:17.524)
Right.

Steve Ward (46:20.418)
They don't know what to do, so they circle the wagons and don't get any help and hope that it goes away.

James Moffitt (46:26.687)
Steve Ward (46:27.83)
Not good. Absolutely worst thing you can do. Yeah.

James Moffitt (46:29.247)
The worst thing you can do.

But I understand that, you know, unless you've actually dealt with it personally or experienced it in your family growing up, you know, and also parents our age, you know, we're baby boomers, right? And we were born and raised in the sixties and seventies and eighties. And back then, remember, I remember today, my parents told me that whatever happens in this house stays in this house.

Steve Ward (47:01.763)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (47:02.847)
What happens here stays here and it doesn't go outside that front door, right? So we were taught at a young age that we do not talk about issues going on in our families, right? And so the emotional intelligence, the emotional awareness, and over the years, family counseling, therapy, all of those things have evolved. Thank God they've evolved.

Steve Ward (47:11.256)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (47:32.911)
You can get, I tell people all the time, call 211. That's a united way. Tell them what your issues are, what the problems are, and they'll hook you up with whatever programs are out there. There's pastoral counseling. Churches have pastoral counseling. They have family counselors. They have therapists. And it may not be free, but a lot of these therapy sessions, they'll let you pay according to a sliding scale, depending on how much money you make or don't make, right?

So, and that's a real issue with parents in that they're juggling a budget and trying to get bills paid and they may think, well, we can't afford that. When in fact, there might be a resource out there that you can't afford, and sometimes it might even be free.

Steve Ward (48:05.078)
and we'll

Steve Ward (48:23.16)
Yeah. You ask a while ago, what are practical things that parents can have in mind during these stages? And I kind of mentioned the positive proactive things aligned with this methodology called PACEs. But let me tell you the downside. In other words, what parents can look out for and avoid. And I'm going to mention five statements that I have heard way, way too much.

I often hear them from parents when they're in the crisis stage, right? They've found the pills or their son or daughter has been brought home with a DUI or you know, something's going wrong. And I've heard it change from parents who've lost a son or daughter. And I'll mention quickly these five statements because they are clues for parents to say, excuse me, if any of these thoughts are in your head,

James Moffitt (48:52.447)
Thank

James Moffitt (49:08.456)
Steve Ward (49:20.692)
It is a signal. It's a wake up call to do something. The first of them is, and I'm going to say these in the past tense because I hear them in the past tense and this is when it's saddest. I'll hear. We didn't think it could happen in our family. That is incredibly naive these days. It can happen in any family. Statistics are roughly the same, whether you are church going or not. It can happen in any family, even if you're a great parent.

James Moffitt (49:37.215)
All right.

Steve Ward (49:49.336)
So that's why preparation is needed. So don't think it can't happen in your family. The second is when Johnny or Susie was struggling, we didn't know their situation was that bad. So this is awareness. Pay attention in the early stages to loneliness or isolation or anxiety or depression or peer pressure or all those things. Don't say we didn't know how bad it was. Pay attention, talk to them.

James Moffitt (49:54.495)
Right.

Steve Ward (50:18.878)
Listen to them listen some more and do that. The third thing I hear is well when they became teenagers, it was hard to talk to him anymore You're right. It is harder that means therefore you need to change your approach and change your tone and it's not just to become their friend and their buddy but it is to listen with empathy to try to Understand their world as they are feeling it The fourth I hear is well when they were struggling we didn't know what to do

I get it, but you can go find what to do. We, you know, out there in the world and steps has practical resources that will help you know what to do. And the fifth thing I hear, which is maybe the saddest is we waited too late and we should have done something sooner. And I've heard that from parents who've lost a son or daughter. know someone who lost both of his sons and you don't want to.

You don't want to be the parent saying one of those things. So flip it around and it adds up to being prepared and aware and connected and educated and have a plan with steps in place.

James Moffitt (51:27.775)
That's awesome. I think I need to have you on again sometime in the near future so we can talk about more of these things. I know there's a lot to talk about and I don't think we're going to have time to touch everything. There's like six or seven more questions I could ask you but we're getting up to the 50 minute mark. So you like to tell the listening audience about your resources on the web or whatever books or whatever that they can get a hold of.

Steve Ward (51:55.406)
Yeah, the easy place is to go to lifeimprovementsteps.com. Again, that's lifeimprovementsteps.com. And they'll very easily be able to see a set of resources we call online toolkits for proactive parenting. They can see an easy to use online course on raising teenagers, parenting in a crisis, biblical parenting, parenting kids, grandparenting, improving your relationships, and things like that. And not laborious.

text heavy things to go through, but short, easy to consume videos, practical things. We're called steps for a reason, right? That's the name of our ministry. So practical steps they can take, questions they can ask themselves. So if they do anything, go there and get started down that path. because you don't have to be perfect, you can't live your kids' lives for them, but you can make a difference in their lives. You can. I really want to encourage you.

No matter what they're going through or what you're going through, there are things that you can do that can help. And if you find a struggle, if one of your kids struggles, it's not unusual. But amazingly, if you hang in there with them, your relationship with them will be bigger, will be even better than it was before. And you will be in a position to help them.

And God is incredibly creative on using our tough times to do some of his best work.

James Moffitt (53:24.351)
I wanted to bring your website up so people that are watching the video can see it. Do see it?

Steve Ward (53:26.85)
Yeah, I do. If they clicked on that top button called Toolkits, they would see one called for a whole section on proactive parenting. And it has all those resources I just mentioned. Go down one more to proactive parenting. There you go. that. You know? So if they page right down, they can click on resources like that. Those are some that I just kind of rattled off. And there's more there as well.

James Moffitt (53:44.095)
Okay. All right. I did.

James Moffitt (53:55.483)
good.

Steve Ward (53:57.806)
easy to use, easy to understand. They can go through them and use them at their leisure. I'd urge them to share them with other parents that they know. And I mentioned this one more thing, right? At steps, we're not making this stuff up, right? What we're trying to do is to mine some of the best wisdom that's out there, right? We study a few disciplines, which are recovery, the Bible, wellness,

personal development, psychology, neuroscience, those things. And if you look across those disciplines, there have been things that have been proven to work in a parenting context. We just try to pick those best practices and make them easy to understand and put them in practical steps so that parents actually can see what to do. It's all good.

James Moffitt (54:46.911)
That's awesome.

James Moffitt (54:50.943)
Well Steve, I appreciate you being on the podcast today. Again, I want to invite you to come back for another episode at some point so we can dig a little deeper into some of these things. I know we were unable to touch everything, there is a, like you said, you have a website. We showed it, I shared it. And lifeimprovementsteps.com. It's real easy, just like it sounds.

Steve Ward (54:59.854)
I'll be glad to-

Steve Ward (55:18.158)
That's it. There you go.

James Moffitt (55:21.087)
So to my listening audience, want to say thank you for the privilege of your time. You can listen to the podcast on Captivate FM, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, and Public Radio. You can watch the video episodes on rumble.com. And also I'm uploading them to my YouTube channel. And that's youtube.com slash at Chief Propellerhead. Or you can just look, you search for James Moffitt on YouTube and you'll find me.

We have a website called parenting adult children org. That's a common spelling parenting adult children org You'll see the website provides contact information. You leave me an email. You can send me a voicemail There's a blog where I go in and I update it to show upcoming show schedules for the next 60 days And there's a place to leave a review for this podcast episode at the very top. You can you can click you do this

Let just bring it up and share it so people can see.

Let's see.

James Moffitt (56:32.863)
Parenting adult children podcast. There we go. And share. I'm trying to get better at this.

James Moffitt (56:42.847)
to get better at sharing things.

James Moffitt (56:47.962)
Alright, so there it is. ABC's Apparenting Adult Children. You've got home, episodes, about, blog, reviews, contact, and follow. So there's a lot of information here. you click on the blog, you'll see a lot of posts in here. I go in and I actually create a post for each one of my podcast episodes, or I try to anyway.

James Moffitt (57:11.363)
Like I said, there's a lot of information here. Just scroll through it. Reviews. Here are some reviews I've gotten. If you're on Apple Podcasts, I think 88 % of my listening audience uses, has an iPhone or an iPad or a MacBook or whatever, you know, and everybody likes to visit Apple Podcasts for their episodes. Right there on that screen, you can actually leave a review for that episode. So I would encourage you to do that as well.

James Moffitt (57:44.799)
Back to where I was.

James Moffitt (57:49.279)
I try to release a new episode every Friday morning at 8 a.m. and then the Monday before I release magic clips to my Facebook parenting support group and which is facebook.com slash tough love parents. And then I just started recently. I've got an Instagram channel is which is parenting adult children 125 and I have a TikTok channel now. So this old fart is getting into TikTok.

I've been resisting it for years, all my social media gurus are telling me that if I want to expand the reach of my podcasts, I need to get into TikTok. So I upload little magic clips to TikTok for both of my podcasts. So you can see me on TikTok too. So anyway.

Steve Ward (58:37.954)
There you go. So you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Yeah.

James Moffitt (58:42.845)
Yes, you can. Well, I spent 30 years as an IT specialist, so I've actually got the technology part of it down. I would just, I was just being resistant to TikTok because I'm not real fond of it. You know, it's from China, you know, all the negative connotations that it has. It has a lot of garbage on it, but it's like any social media. You have to take the good with the bad.

Steve Ward (58:49.902)
Yeah, ha, you're a fiend.

James Moffitt (59:08.121)
and just have to filter out all the bad and just stick with the good stuff. And so just, I get bored, I watch the cat and dog videos. Those are really fun. All the other gardens, I just kind of scroll past it and don't watch it. But I like putting my, I got it like 30 second or 60 second magic clips that Riverside helps me to create. And I put those up on a social media platform so that people can see what's upcoming, you know, and they can listen to it and go.

Steve Ward (59:16.13)
Hahaha

James Moffitt (59:36.517)
well, I like that. have to go look. I have to go listen to that or go watch that or they'll go, well, maybe I don't want to watch that. Maybe that's not for me, you know, which is fine. It's a resource that's there to educate and to help parents get the resources that they need. So now that I've rambled on for 10 minutes, I'm just going to say bye. Everybody have a good day. Thanks for being here. And Steve, thank you for being here.

Steve Ward (59:52.322)
Hey. Yeah.

Steve Ward (01:00:00.098)
My pleasure, I love what you do James.

James Moffitt (01:00:02.591)
Steve Ward, I'm gonna get your name right this time.

Steve Ward (01:00:04.258)
Hahaha