Intentional Parenting | Project Launch

The day your child leaves home is closer than you think — and the skills they'll need to thrive won't build themselves. Learn how to develop the hard and soft skills your kid needs to launch well, and gain a practical plan to build them right now!

Parent Worksheet Download - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hjrf3S8PZfJGdZhH2j3k0cPfHs4Q9POC/view?usp=sharing

Hard & Soft Skills Handout Download- https://drive.google.com/file/d/15ic8Q57GycPuVMYuplwubalKvVw3jWE8/view?usp=sharing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome to Intentional Parenting at Mariner's Church. My name is Jared, and I am excited about this little solo episode. We're gonna take a little break from the normal format where I sit down with some pastors and friends and talk about the parenting that happens in our own homes. And I'm gonna bring you the content that I delivered at our most recent in-person gathering. A few times a year, about four times a year, we gather together as parents at Marin Reservine. And I prepare really a working session for us. I provide some resources here that I have on the table, as well as some content. And then the majority of the time is spent working at your tables as couples or as tables to create some things that you're going to bring into your own home so that you can feel like a more confident, intentional parent for the kids that you are raising. Now, I recently heard from a family in our church that came to the prior intentional parenting gathering, loved the working session so much. They they took these resources, they took this podcast, and they listened to it as a life group and they did the working sessions together. I love that so much. I love when a life group gets together and says, all right, let's kind of practice these things, let's see what this might look like. And so that's my hope for you. Maybe what you hear today is practical enough that you want to introduce this to some of your own family and friends as well. Now, before I get into the talk itself, I've got these resources available for you. There are two things that I handed out at our gathering. The first is this 11 by 17 paper. It has four steps in it. And I'm going to walk you through in this episode what those four steps are. But in the show notes, you can download this and print yourself if you'd like. I also have a second handout that'll make more sense later. That's available for you as well. Now, the idea for the talk this month was all about launching our kids well. I recently was talking to a gentleman here whose kids are well grown up now. They're actually my age, but he was telling me that years ago he ran our kids' ministry at the church. And he said, I want to remind you that you're not raising children. You are raising future young adults. And that really became the backbone for this whole session, that you and I might have a forward lean, realizing that the kids who live in our home are future young adults. And our job is to prepare them well for the launch that will inevitably come someday. Now, space is having a real moment in the cultural, uh, this cultural moment. Space is all over the place. You got Project Hail Mary and Ryan Gosling and the fun that that movie was. You also have Artemis II, which just recently had a very successful mission, kind of from Earth, out and around the moon, and came back without a hitch. That's an incredible achievement. It's a fascinating thing when you look at what went into just Artemis II, like what went into that mission. While the mission was only 10 days, it took three years. The crew spent three years training for the specific elements that would go into that mission. That doesn't account for all the uh the real life experience they had before that, all of the education and all the training that went into prior missions. They had three years specific to this mission alone. That rocket had so many components to it. The rocket itself took one year to assemble, but it actually had 15 years worth of technology combined into one rocket in order to get those astronauts out of orbit and into space. That's a cumulative of 18 years that went into a 10-day mission. So as you and I think about the kids that we're gonna launch into life on their own, we have about 18 years that we get to invest and work on creating an environment where they can develop the skills necessary to be successful in life. Now, I've done a ton of research on this. I'm sure you've read some books on it. Generally speaking, what our kids need to develop in order to be healthy adults later are hard skills and soft skills. And so we spent some time in this session really understanding the difference between hard skills and soft skills. Here's what Paul David Tripp says. He wrote this in his book, Age of Opportunity. He says, successful parenting is the rightful, God-ordained loss of control. The goal of parenting is to work ourselves out of a job, to raise children who were once totally dependent on us, to be independent, mature people who, with reliance on God and proper connectedness to the Christian community, are able to stand on their own two feet. That's the motivation that goes into a household of preparation so that we can launch our kids into the Word world well. So every mission begins with an objective. The first step in our working sheet here is naming what the mission is. We spent some time talking through what are the characteristics that you want your kids to have when they launch into young adulthood. And so that'd be my ask of you. Even if you just kind of did a little blue sky dreaming right now, what are the characteristics that you want your kids to have? Do you want them to be resilient? Do you want them to be content? Do you want them to be ambitious? What are the things that you want your kids to have? How would you describe them on the day in which they move out of your home? You might want to pause the podcast now and just think about that. What are those three words that you would love to be the actual descriptors of your young adult when they are ready to leave your home? Because then the basis of the rest of our time is figuring out how do you build a place in which that can be possible. So as you think about that idea, let me walk you through what it looks like for us to build the hard and soft skills that go into a successful launch of a young adult. Hard skills. Really the question is what can they do? Can they do it? What are the physical things that our kids are able to do? Things like cooking, budgeting, laundry, managing appointments, basic car maintenance, grocery shopping, navigating conflict, paying bills, the things that are a part of life that your children will, they'll not always be your children in your own home. They're going to be young adults someday. Can they do those things? They've got to learn them in your home. The second are soft skills. Soft skills are the things like resilience and self-awareness, emotional regulation, knowing when and how to ask for help, delayed gratification, follow-through, repairing relationships after conflict. These are harder to foster, and yet most research would say healthy adults have soft skills dialed in. They are grown and mature in those soft skills, the ability to bounce back, to repair, to be self-motivated, to understand their values. Those kinds of things are mission critical for the health of our kids. Now I want to give you a little science summary. I'm not a scientist. Don't hold this. If I say a couple things wrong, I apologize. But this is a summary of a book that I read that really helped me understand what's going on inside of the developmental phases inside a child's brain. This is from a book called A Whole Brained Child, and they talk about the differences between the upstairs brain and the downstairs brain. Now, the downstairs brain is the aspect of our own brains that come hardwired within us. This is like really our limbic system. Most of that is right there in the lower brain. That's what they call it. It's not physically lower, but they're just referring to it as the things that come hardwired within us. Anything that is responded to the fast, reactive, it happens even from birth. That right there is part of the downstairs brain. So then what's the upstairs brain? That's the prefrontal cortex. It's the higher parts of the regions of the brain that handle planning, reasoning, empathy, emotional regulation, moral decision making. Every quality on the soft skills list essentially is connected to the upstairs brain. Here's the critical insight from a whole-brained child. The downstairs brain comes hardwired from birth. The upstairs brain is still being developed into our mid-20s, which means when our kids have an outburst at target and they're throwing a fit on the ground, or when your teenager lashes out and says some incredibly hurtful things, they are operating from their downstairs brain. The upstairs is not yet formed. It is not yet complete, it is unable to do the kinds of functions that we need them to do in order for us to have healthy interactions. So, this whole idea, what we're proposing in this working session, is that we view our home as a construction site for the upstairs brain. How do we build an environment in which our kids can wire their brains in a very healthy and effective way so that they can develop both hard skills and most importantly these soft skills that are going to be leveraged for the rest of their life? All the things that we want for our kids come from really building an environment in which we can help them be shaped and formed into the person that God has called them to be, who they want to be, and then ultimately they are capable of standing on their own two feet once they move out of our own homes. Now, Kara Powell, she wrote a book called Sticky Faith years ago that had left such an impression on me when I was a youth pastor, and it continues to be important to me as I'm now raising teenagers in my own home. She talks about one of the most important soft skills to develop in our own children is self-authorship. What that means is the ability for our kids to write and to create what their future is going to look like. And the spiritual life becomes critically important in the construct of her book, but also what I know you and I want. We want to have kids that are not just resilient and good friends and manage conflict. We want children who, as future young adults, they love God, that they follow after Jesus and they live in the ways of Jesus so that they can be a part of the great mission, the great co-mission to change the world around us. This is one of the things that Kara Powell says in her book. She says only 20% of college students who leave the faith plan to do so during high school. The remaining 80% intended to stick with their faith, but didn't. How you express and live out your faith may have a greater impact on your son or daughter than anything else. You see, if you and I want to have kids who are resilient and disciples of Jesus, we have to prepare them for the world that is out there. And faith becomes such a critical component. Now, as you're going to learn, and I'm about to walk you through some various age categories, is that at various ages, even when we think about hard skills, soft skills, and spiritual skills, we need to understand the developmental ages of our kids so that we might be able to come alongside them in an age-appropriate way so that we give them the best chance for success in the future. So the second set here, the next step on our working sheet that is provided for you in the show notes is to identify what are those hard skills and soft skills based off the age of your children that you want them to be thinking about right now. So we provided a second sheet that's also in the show notes that really provided in three categories. There's lots of ways that you could slice age groups. This is how I chose to do it ages five through 10, then 11 through 14, and then finally 15 through 18. Let me just give you some examples of some hard skills and soft skills, and then I'll go through just briefly each of these age groups that you might want to think about for your own kids based off their ages. So ages five through 10, some hard skills might be simple meals. Can they make their own lunch? Can they put together a bowl of cereal in the morning so you can sleep in on Saturday? Can they do basic laundry sorting? Can they help you lights and darks and pull the socks out of there? Can they care for a pet, making sure the dog gets a walk every so often and the cat gets fed? Um, how about household chores and partnering with you and the ownership of the home? Not financial ownership, just ownership of responsibility, um, handling small amounts of cash. Okay, what about soft skills for our five to 10 year olds? What about sitting with discomfort without us coming in and rescuing them all the time? Or how about the really important skill of being able to say sorry and actually mean it? Or following through on a commitment, naming emotions out loud, basic conflict with siblings and learning how to create a little bit of repair and not just keeping peace in a home. Here's what's really fascinating about what I saw in the research. Throughout all the books that I read, I felt a conviction that a lot of parents today are subconsciously, perhaps inadvertently, raising children who are going to be forever dependent on them. Raising kids who are going to need the parent to always take care for them, to always provide for them, to even rescue them, both emotionally or physically at times. You see, if we're gonna launch young adults into the world, they are gonna have to not need us. That's that picture we saw from Paul David Tripp in that first quote. We want to build kids who we can release into the world. That doesn't mean that you no longer have a relationship with them, but it does mean that they're not gonna depend on you in the ways they used to. And that's appropriate. That's called maturity, that's called growth. That's even maturity and growth for us as parents. Okay. Ages 11 through 14. What would it look like for kids in this age group? Hard skills might look like build being able to cook a full meal independently. They can do their own laundry from start to finish. Basic budgeting with allowance, making their own appointments. How about that for a thought? I don't know if they can handle the, you know, those automated systems. I get so frustrated, I'm constantly like, speak to representatives. So that's the skill they need on that one. Navigating public transit or perhaps doing errands alone. That's a wild one to consider, but think of the skill they're developing if they're able to do those things. How about soft skills in the 11 to 14 age group? Tolerating failure without collapsing. It's one of the things that I think rigorous academics and athletics get to teach our kids. Failure will be inevitable in either of those ways, a bad grade on a test or a difficult game. How do we help our kids feel strong enough that they can handle failure without a complete dismantling? That's an important life skill. Or how about asking for help from people other than their parents or close family members? Like, does our kids, do they know how to ask a teacher for assistance? Do they know how to pull a coach aside and say, I need help with something? That's an important soft skill. Or how about the ability to disagree respectfully with their peers, with somebody in authority? Do they know how to disagree in a way that's not going to escalate a situation? Or perhaps even just self-awareness in general, or perhaps in conflict. The ability to know what's my part, what's my role in whatever the circumstance might be. Okay, last category, 15 to 18. This is it. Things are about to escalate a lot in these examples because they're about to move out. At the end of this last category, theoretically, they're gonna move on to college, they're gonna move on to that gap year, they're gonna move on to perhaps their career. Things are about to happen. And so what happens in this age group is all about how you and I need to start releasing. And I'm gonna give you that as we close here. Here's the 15 to 18 hard skills. Can they cook regularly for the family? Can you imagine that? Your kids making a little chicken Alfredo for the family. That'd be incredible, wouldn't it? Managing a bank account or a debit card. This is something we're about to do with our son right now. He's gonna have his first internship this summer. We're like gonna get him a bank account so he can see what that number looks like. He's gonna have his own card because I'd rather him learn now what it looks like to spend too much and run out than that happen when he's a freshman in college, right? What about scheduling and attending appointments alone? We've started to send him into some places on his own, and it's really kind of fun to see the trepidation, but trepidation today is confidence tomorrow. And so we're trying to start stretching him out. I'm sure you're doing some of these things too. Um, like I mentioned for my own son, maybe it's an internship, a job, sustained responsibility within the home. Okay, soft skills, 15 to 18. Owning consequences without deflecting, repairing serious conflict, delayed gratification. Can they work towards something and not feel a sense of reward or accomplishment right away? Living by their own values, even when no one is watching, reaching out to mentors beyond family or community mentors that might help them advance in the things that they care a lot about. So, as you can tell, there's a lot of escalation that happens over those different age groups. And that's the design. This is the exact thing that we are supposed to do. Okay, last part here. Let me just kind of walk you back through those age groups and equip you as a parent. So if you have kids in the five to 10-year-old age group, the primary method here is we're gonna do things together. This is about apprenticeship. This is about us coming alongside our kids, helping wire up what's going on in that upstairs brain, both in physical skills and in soft skills as well. So, practical strategy when you think about the hard skills in their life, you might want to assign a real domain in your home that your child can own. The table doesn't get set unless your child is gonna do it. That's their domain. Whenever you have a family meal, they're gonna put the plates and the forks and they're they get the napkins out. That's their world. If they don't do it, we eat with our hands. Like show them that this is their responsibility. So it's not help me set the table, it's the table is yours to set. And that happens sometime in this category. Practical for the soft skills, this might look like helping them develop an emotional vocabulary. When your kid is feeling joyful and proud of themselves, help them find words so that they can articulate what they're feeling. A sense of accomplishment, a sense of my hard work went into something and I felt like I achieved something really great. I feel proud of myself of what I was able to do. Or even on those negative things, when they're upset, they're throwing a tantrum, giving them language where they can actually start to sort out the difference between I'm angry and I'm hurt. There are two very different things happening there, but in that lower brain, it all feels the same to them. So a way to wire the upstairs brain is to help them find words and affirm it when they do say those, those things. Okay, 11 to 14. Some of the things in this age group, this is really where an unbelievable opportunity opens up for us to build a very deep relationship with our kids. These are, I think, some of the most fun years. They're their personalities are really shining through, their interests are coming to the surface. They become like really fun people to be around in a different kind of way. They don't feel as dependent on you, but they still need you in so many ways. I love this age group so so much. Now, what we want to do as parents here is we want to do some things together, then we want to supervise some things that are happening. And then by the time they're getting into 13, 14, we want to really release things over to them. Here's an example of what I think is important. There's an idea here of natural consequences. You felt this before. When you tell your kids, hey, it's gonna be a little cold at the at the baseball game tonight, you should bring a jacket. If they say, I don't want to bring a jacket, when they're 11 to 14, you go, okay. And then you don't rescue them when they're freezing at the baseball game. You don't go to the MLB shop and buy them an angels hoodie. Instead, you let them be cold. Because next time when you say, hey, it's gonna be a little chilly, or you might want to bring a coat, uh, an umbrella, they're gonna have that natural consequence in their mind and they're gonna make the decision for themselves. It's a good example of how we tend to as parents, well, I can't let my kid be cold. They're gonna get pneumonia and die. Probably not. I mean, I don't know. I'd, you know, don't hold me to that. But I'm just saying they probably won't. And so let them be cold for a couple of hours so that next time they put that sweatshirt in the car with them. This is the small ways in which we can come alongside our kids, helping them grow, right? Okay, practical for the hard skills. What might it look like for you to give your child in the 11 to 14 framework? Give them a real budget, not just an allowance where they've got 10 bucks a week to manage, but an actual budget where they know I want to buy skincare routine things, I want to buy some new, you know, shoes or a backpack for school. Give them a budget where they can manage an amount of money, not large, but just so they can understand what it feels like to have some money in the bank, some trade off decisions that have to be made, where they have to feel what the weight of responsibility feels like. This is a really Fun thing where you and I can come alongside and we can walk them through how to make good decisions. Okay, what's related to that is the soft skill. I think that I have been very guilty in my own home of I can create a great conversation. I'm speaking to the soft skill now, where I can create a debrief with my kids and I can kind of walk them through what they're feeling and learning. And then I make the critical misstep where I go from debrief to the lecture. I sort of help them put words to things on their own, and then I tell them the other things that they missed. And I've got a three-point sermon for basically everything in life. And so I have tried to learn as my kids are in this age group right now. I have an 11-year-old and a 14-year-old. And so I'm trying very hard to just debrief and let them learn. And then I'm done. I let them figure some things out. I'd rather have more frequent debriefs without my lectures than the occasional debrief where then I just spout off everything I think they need to know. Easier said than done. Pray for me. Okay, it's hard. Now, why does this work so well? Because what's important is you're helping build the observational skills in that 11 to 14-year-old age group where they're developing self-awareness, they're making their own mental connections, and they're growing in the process. Last step, ages 15 through 18, this is all about stepping back intentionally. Hey, we call this intentional parenting. By the time you and I have 15 to 18 year olds, 18-year-olds in our home, we got to take that step back. It's no longer our job to prevent failure for our kids. We have got to let them have elements of failure so that they can feel what that feels like. Our kids need to become fully responsible of full domains in their life. They've got to do their own laundry. They have to manage their own appointments. They have to have their own bank account because they're about to move out of your home. At least that's the plan, right? That if they're going to move out of their own home, they have to know how to do some things. Let's help them to do those full things while they are in our own home. So they have their job, they have their man and the money that they're managing, they have the basic life skills of cooking and doing their own laundry because eventually, inevitably, they're going to have to do it on their own anyway. So that's what I would say on the hard skills is help them find that job. Help them get into a place where they have a regular commitment, where people are depending on them to do something and to show up, that we might give them full ownership of something in the home as well. That dog that they used to just walk, now that dog is their dog and they take care of it and everything that comes with that as well. On the soft skills, this is where we really do want to try to match what are those kids' values that give you an indication of their character, and how do you help them to make wise decisions in line with their values, in line with their desires and goals for their life, so that they have their own motivation once they leave your home. That's challenging, and yet it is really, really important where we can allow our kids to make their own decisions, where they can understand the context of what they're choosing, allow them to make their own decisions, even if it feels like a different one than you would make. We've got to allow them to do some of these things. And then lastly, we have to resist the urge to monitor everything in their life. Like right now, I know I can log on to, you know, my kids' school work and I can see every missing assignment. I can see every email interaction with the teacher. Right now, I'm monitoring some of that stuff because I want to help them write better emails to their parents, to their to their teachers. I want them to know that when they have a missing assignment, they're leaving points on the table. They could easily get those points if they just turn something in on time. That's responsibility. That's interaction with authority. But I'll tell you, once they get into that junior year, I'm not paying attention to that stuff anymore. That's on them. They have got to figure it out. That's scary if I don't help them now. You understand exactly what I'm getting at. So the third step here is that we as parents, we pause and we ask ourselves a three-step question. What's the hard skill that I'm going to transfer over ownership this month? Secondly, what's the soft skill that I'm going to cultivate over the next 90 days? And then as parents, what's the one thing that I'm going to stop doing? Those are three really important questions. What are you handing over? What are you cultivating? And what are you no longer doing for them? Because they need to figure it out on their own. The final step, step four on here, is the conversation that you need to have this week. Maybe you and your spouse need to sit down and say, hey, let's get aligned on the hard skills and soft skills. Maybe we need to agree on what the thing is in which we're going to stop doing. We're no longer putting lunches together. They've got to figure that out on their own. Not on their own. You'll show them how to do it, but you're not going to babysit them anymore, right? Figuring out what's that thing that you are going to stop doing. Again, I tell you, we try to make this as practical as possible because if we are equipped with the practicality of what it looks like to do this as intentional parents, you will feel more confident. And I believe you'll actually raise these great future young adults in your home. Last thing, Psalm 127. I love this verse. This is verse three. It says, Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him. So our kids are a gift. They are a heritage from the Lord, they are a reward. And then it says in verse 4, like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one's youth. So think about this. If kids are like arrows, just like the whole Artemis II mission, they had an objective. They had to do all the math and the configurations in order to go and do exactly what they wanted to do. They set the trajectory so that they could have a successful mission. Our kids are like arrows, which means they are fine and true. They are straight. They are crafted in such a way that as we aim and release, they go in the direction that we pray for. Now, you do not have full control over your kids. They have free will as well, but it's in our homes where we try to build a relationship and a rhythm that sets them up for success. And I would just say as I close, pray. Pray for your kids, pray for their futures, pray for the hard skills and the soft skills that you want. Allow the Holy Spirit to work in and through you in the kids that you are raising. At the end of the day, they were God's kids first. He entrusted them to you as great stewards. But at the end of the day, they are always God's children. We must release them back to Him and trust that God is their heavenly Father as well. This is easier said than done, and yet we will grow in the process as well. And so I'm so grateful for you. Thanks for hanging with me throughout the last few minutes here as I kind of equip you with the session that we do in person. Our next one is gonna be happening on July 18. So I'd love for you to mark that date in your calendar. Come and join us at Marin Reservine. We're gonna be hanging out on Saturday afternoon and we're gonna do another great working session as we continue to grow in confidence as we are becoming these intentional parents. So thanks for hanging with me. I hope you have a good day.