Episode #6 - The Hard Kind of Listening

What happens when your child has something hard to say… and everything in you wants to fix it, stop it, or shut it down?

In this episode of Inner Lights, we continue the conversation on listening—but this time, we go deeper into the kind that truly matters. The kind that requires patience, restraint, and courage.

Because today’s kids are navigating situations many of us never had to face—and too often, they’re facing them alone.

This episode explores what it really means to be a safe place for your child, how to listen without reacting, and why that moment—when they choose whether or not to keep talking—can change everything.

*****

If this episode stirred something in you… don’t let it stop here.

Start the conversation.

Ask one question.
 Pause a little longer.
 Listen without rushing to respond.

And if you’re willing, I would love to hear from you.

What are you noticing in your own home?
 What feels hard right now?
 What questions are you carrying?

You can reach me directly at ljames@dreamswithoutconstraints.com
.

Your stories, your questions, and your experiences are shaping this work—and helping more families create calm, connected homes where kids feel safe to be seen, heard, and understood.

You are not alone in this.

And neither is your child.

Join my private Facebook group here: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61587358019012.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:06

Hello friends. I want to start today a little differently. I want you to imagine something with me. Your child walks into the room, they hesitate, they look at you and you can tell something's off. And then they say, There's something I need to tell you. Let me ask you something, and I want you to really sit with this. Do they keep talking or do they stop? Because of how you respond in that next moment. That moment right there, it matters more than we think. Because there's a kind of listening that feels easy, and then there's the kind that changes everything. And today we're talking about the hard kind. Welcome back to Inner Lights. This is a space for parents who care deeply about the kind of home they're creating, the kind of connection they're building, and the kind of inner voice their children are developing. We've been talking about listening, but today we're going deeper. Because it's one thing to listen when your child is telling you about their day or something funny that happened at school. It's another thing entirely to listen when the truth hurts. When they say when what they say scares you, when it challenges you, when every instinct in your body wants to jump in, to fix it, to stop it, or to shut it down. That's the kind of listening we're talking about today. It's going to be a little heavier, but I think it's important in its time. There have been a few things recently that I haven't been able to shake. One was a conversation on the Mel Robbins podcast with Gabor Matei. Mel shared a story from her childhood, something that happened to her when she was just nine years old. As she told the story, Dr. Matei asked her a simple question, Who did you tell? And her answer, no one. And then he said something that stopped me in my tracks. He said essentially, the trauma wasn't just what happened. The trauma was that she had no one to tell. She was alone in her trauma. As a nine-year-old child. That hit me. Because it shifts the question, doesn't it? It's no longer just what could happen to my child. It now becomes, would my child come to me if something did happen? I also came across a post on Facebook from Officer Gomez. I've recommended him before, in my Facebook stories. He talks about sex dortion, real situations happening to kids online, kids who think they're talking to someone their age, who are manipulated, threatened, and trapped before they even realize what's happening. Many of those kids don't tell anyone. Not because they don't want help, but because they're scared. They're also ashamed and embarrassed and afraid of the reaction they're going to get. Then on Netflix I saw the show called Predator of Seville. It's an interesting one for sure, but so sad because what stayed with me wasn't just what happened to those young women, and there are dozens of them. And it went on for years. It was how every one of those women carried their story alone for years. Because they didn't feel like they could tell their parents. Because they were drinking too young, or out too late, or partying and being wild, as kids do, right? So here's the thing: our kids are carrying more than we think, and they're carrying it at a younger age. The hardest truth of that is often they're carrying it by themselves. So here's what I want to gently but honestly shift. Our job is not to create perfect kids. Our job is not to prevent every mistake. Our job is to be the place they come to with the truth. Even when it's messy, even when it's uncomfortable, even when it's hard to hear. Because if they don't come to us, they go somewhere else. Or worse, they go nowhere at all. And I want to say this with so much understanding: this is not easy. Because when our child tells us something hard, everything in us reacts. We want to fix it. We want to protect them. We want to make it stop. Sometimes we minimize it. It's not that big of a deal. Sometimes we jump straight to consequences. We panic on the inside and it comes out on the outside. But here's the truth we have to sit with. The moment we shift into fixing, we stop listening. And when we stop listening, they start holding back. So what does this kind of listening actually look like? Well, it looks like slowing yourself down even when your mind is racing. It looks like letting your child finish without interrupting. It looks like not correcting their version of the story in the moment. It looks like resisting the urge to lecture, solve, or react immediately. Sometimes it looks just like sitting in silence, letting there be space, letting them feel heard before anything else happens. If you need something simple to hold on to in those moments, it's this. Tell me more. That one phrase can keep a door open that might otherwise be closed. And this isn't just about reacting in the moment. It's about building safety before any moments like this ever happen. Parents, I'm telling you, these kinds of questions start to open doors, and our kids need to hear these kinds of questions come from their safest people. So here we go, here's a few questions. What is something kids your age are dealing with that adults don't really understand? Has anything happened lately that didn't sit right with you? Do you feel like you could tell me anything? Even if you thought I wouldn't like it? And finally, what would make it easier to talk to me about hard things? And if your child does share something serious, you could ask, how did that make you feel? Or what do you need from me right now? Do you need listening? Do you need help? Or do you need both? Is there anything you're worried might happen next? So, parents, I'm gonna ask you a few questions too, not to make you feel bad, but to help you think. Would my child come to me or avoid me if something serious happened? Do I react in a way that invites honesty or shuts it down? Do I listen to understand or to respond? Have I created a home where truth feels safe, even when it's messy? These are not easy questions, but they certainly matter. Okay, so I am bringing Jason back into this conversation again this week because we uh we had some pretty good feedback from last week, and it seems that you are now a fan favorite.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Wait, I thought you brought me back because you loved me, not because people liked us together. I mean well both. I mean, I I know I'm pretty. Real pretty.

SPEAKER_02 9:49

Pretty funny.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Oh, funny looking.

SPEAKER_02 9:53

All right, Jason. I'm actually bringing you back into this conversation because you are living it day to day in school, and you're seeing kids in a different environment than um parents see them at home, and you are seeing some of the hard things that kids are dealing with and the ways that they are handling some of these hard realities. So I want our audience to hear this from you, not just in theory, but in reality. Well, today's questions are kind of tough, but I think it's just giving us a place to open doors for conversations. So, from the school perspective, what are kids actually dealing with right now that most parents don't realize?

SPEAKER_00 10:50

Ah, well, here's what I would say, and I this is a hard question, but I love the question because it's it's a challenging one because we don't always know what kids are dealing with. It's true, they don't tell us everything. And and quite honestly, moms and dads, you really don't want them to tell you everything. One of the big things, some things you just they need to not be able to tell mom and dad. Anyways, that's for a much later episode, right? So, what are kids dealing with right now? I would suggest every parent, grandparent, anyone listening, jump on over to the interweb and Google the National Center for Exploded and Missing Children. It's called Nick Nick. National Center for Exploded and Missing Children. Incredible website. Incredible, and it will have some resources in there and will show you firsthand on what kids are dealing with, what they could deal with. Doesn't mean every kid is, but it means that they could, and I'll tell you right now, it's frightening. It is a wake-up call, it's a call to action, but also has some resources. Let's say horrible case scenario, your child sends a nude selfie to someone, and that someone let that photo get out, and now it's on the internet.

SPEAKER_02 12:12

And you've seen that.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

Not the pictures, but I have seen that actually. Uh I know it has happened. Yes. Matter of fact, at a a school we work really close to, uh, some kids um had their pictures make it out into the internet and were leveraged for AI pornography. And this heartbreaking uh National Center for Explored and Missing Children have a pathway to get that stuff taken down. That's why I'm saying make sure you get out there. So, what what are kids dealing with? It's it's gonna vary a whole lot because they have access to technology and because the world is at their fingertips, they are much more adept at it than you are as a parent. We've had the Nick Nick group come in, have some ambassadors for that group come in and do parent webinars, and some of them are experts in um child forensics, so investigating uh crimes against children, and they would tell you that they don't assume that they know everything going on because kids access, they know how to get around parent filters, yeah, they know how to uh leverage new ways to communicate. Matter of fact, I don't know if people knew this. You can do a status update on WhatsApp. WhatsApp's a big thing with kids, so they can do a status update to engage in cyberbullying or to do a suicide ideation or something like that. And so these uh my point is it's always changing. What are kids dealing with? Depends on what vendor it is.

SPEAKER_02 13:54

Well, and that's really scary. I would I dare say, and I work with kids who are in third grade to fifth grade, I would say that kids are dealing with a lot more right now than parents realize. And that parents go for those kids who don't have phones, who whose parents think they are very protected. If they are in school with children who have phones and who have access to the internet, and I would say most of them have full access, there aren't enough controls. Even if your kid doesn't have a phone or access to these things, they're around kids that do. So their exposure to things outside of our comfort zones is way greater than we want to even know about. It's huge, even in third grade, probably even younger than that.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

I would assume younger and younger, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 15:01

Absolutely. All right, so when we've got kids that maybe have gotten into some trouble or are making mistakes, doing things that we wish they wouldn't do, what do you think are some warning signs that parents could or should be paying attention to?

SPEAKER_00 15:23

Well, the first thing I want to say is this is a call out, this call to action, moms and dads. And I want to say that there's gonna be a couple of times I'm going to say that call to action. The first one is no longer assume that your kid wouldn't make a mistake. No longer assume that your kid's gonna lie, no longer assume that your kid would never smoke a cigarette, would never bake, would never drink, would never do drugs. Do not make that assumption. It is appropriate to say it is not okay in our household. It doesn't mean the kids wouldn't, right? They're gonna try things. They are going to try this. So there's a reason I say that. Uh I see that all the time as a pushback on something happened because you know we our kid would never do it. We're not okay with it. Yeah, I'm I wasn't okay with a lot of things that our kids didn't vice versa. Anyhow, I think I need you to repeat the question. I just started yabbering.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

You're good at that. I said, my question was what are some of the warning signs that parents should be paying attention to?

SPEAKER_00 16:34

Thank you for bringing me back to the topic at hand, warning signs. There is not a single warning sign. Here's what I would say. Know your kid.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

You know your kid better than anyone, or you should. And I would challenge everyone knows their kids more than anyone, but know what the normal signs are. If if I, as the principal of a school, can walk by a kid in a cafeteria and tell that something's not right, then a parent can. Yeah. You tell by nonverbal communication, right? A shift in maybe how they're dressing. Could be, hey, they're normally talking to a group of friends and they just happen to be sitting by themselves, or uh, as a parent in the house, are they coming in and going straight to their room when they don't normally do that? Are the conversations that are around the dinner table on the way to practice or these other things times short? What what's the what's going on that's different? All right. Yeah, so maybe it could be soft warning signs, or it could just be that everyone gets to have a grumpy day.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

Well, that's true too. Yeah, for sure. All right, so I I talked about earlier kids getting caught in situations that scare them or make them very uncomfortable, even embarrassed, afraid of the consequences that they might face. When you know that kids are caught in these kinds of sticky situations, what are they most often afraid of?

SPEAKER_00 18:08

I think this is another one that really varies. It'll vary a lot from house to house. Sure. It could be uh they're afraid to get in trouble. And that a lot of times is what I see is that kids are afraid that if I I did this thing, I'm gonna get suspended from school, which hardly ever happens, but that's their fear. Um they are embarrassed. Uh that's one thing to go back to the National Center for Exploring and Missing Children. A lot of times kids don't report things like um sexting and uh use of a of uh a selfie, uh inappropriate selfie and inappropriately got up because they're embarrassed. Uh so that could be a reason, but start early. Think think back to hey, what's your five-year-old? What's something that they they might might not want to tell you? What could be a reason for it? And so, like I said, it's gonna vary.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

Yeah, it's true, I think, but uh I think kids are afraid of our reactions, they don't want to disappoint us, and maybe historically we've reacted poorly, yeah, and it's not too late to fix that. Absolutely, right? I mean, I know I've messed up.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

I I was darn near perfect, I don't know what you're talking about, but kidding, of course. You know, we were talking with our our youngest earlier today on our way back from Mr. Lunch, and I asked her the question of what did we get right? And there's a couple of things that she said, and one was she said forgiveness, and that was something that took her a second because we caught her off guard with the question, right? But it was forgiveness in that I made a mistake and it's okay, and that means that I can give a worst case, your kid gets busted for smoking cigarettes at school, right? The consequence happens, and it continually comes up that hey, you better get this together, not like last time when you were caught smoking cigarettes at school, or not that our daughter was caught smoking cigarettes at school. No, that's right, she wasn't caught. I'm sure. No, just kidding, Corey. Maybe but that piece to go, hey, you messed up, so what? Move on, right? The world's not gonna end over those things. It goes back to last episode what we talked about was mistakes should be celebrated. Absolutely said mistakes are expected, respected, inspected, inspected, and reflected, yeah. Yeah, and then it becomes something in the past. Uh, I tell this to every one of my kids at the school that come back in after having had a suspension for something, right? Because that you're gonna walk back in. I'm gonna love you as much as I've ever loved you. I'm glad you made a mistake and it will never be held against you. And I never ever ever bring it up unless I'm celebrating.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

Then if I can do it and I'm not the parent, you can do it as the parent. Yeah, and so it comes with uh also you gotta model some of those things too. Yeah, I have a question coming up I can talk about modeling.

SPEAKER_02 21:14

Well, you do actually, because the question is if you could give parents one piece of advice, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 21:21

That's a perfect segue. That I feel like I need a like a $20 bill for that segue. Okay, so this is where I go back to the modeling thing, and I'm glad you had that question because I was thinking it. We talked about this last week. You you've got to model for your child when making a mistake is okay. So let's give a scenario where you way overreacted or even minorly overreacted to a situation. You cussed at someone that cuts you off in traffic and your kids in the car. Own it. Pull up at the house once you calm down a little bit. It and turn around and look at them in the car and go, you know what? I didn't handle that really well. I'm sorry that you had to listen to that. I just I I love that idea of kids hearing adults apologize to them. As a school principal, I do that.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

Like I I it maybe once a month I've got a situation where I need to circle back to a kid and go, you know what? I'm really sorry for how I handled that. That about two weeks ago, I was in a hurry and was not listening to this young lady tell a story and she felt unheard. I came back to her in like an hour, pulled her back out of class and brought her down and said, Oh, you an apology. I did not give you a chance to talk. And the look on her face was, holy cow, our principal, an adult, just apologized and is making this right.

SPEAKER_02 22:54

I was just about to say she probably was not expecting that or didn't even know how to handle it because I'm gonna be honest, adults don't apologize to kids enough.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

Why not?

SPEAKER_02 23:06

I mean, it I think we always think we're right.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

Well, I mean, some of us are always right. It's a hard burden to bear. No, but I think you have to. Why why wouldn't we want to apologize to people? I mean, we we apologize to our spouses, our colleagues, or we should apologize to these people, our parents. Like, why not? And I what an incredible model for them to see that hey, it's okay if I make a mistake.

SPEAKER_02 23:35

No, and then also modeling forgiving ourselves when we do that, you know, that's another thing too, because kids can hold things against themselves too. They are their own worst critics. Actually, we all are our own worst critics.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

Well, you and I talked about this before, not part of the podcast, but it kind of came up last week too. Was we've got to be able to model that it it is okay to make mistakes. We've got to verbalize it, right? You gotta be able to talk about it out loud. And sometimes it could be acknowledging what's working well.

SPEAKER_02 24:19

Yeah, absolutely. And and writing it down, I think you talked about my gosh, yes.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

Okay, so this is the one, this is where I want to do a challenge for everybody. It's okay for me to challenge everyone.

SPEAKER_02 24:30

Let's do it.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Okay, so we're gonna give about 30 seconds of pause. And if you're driving or you're at working where you can't write something down, you don't have access, then you're just gonna pause and get your mind ready that you're going to know that you've got a task coming. If you're aware you can grab something to write on, post-it note, back of a piece of toilet paper, whatever, grab it. Maybe not toilet paper, don't do that.

SPEAKER_02 24:55

Napkin.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Napkin. There you go. Thank you. Toilet paper, where did that come from? Anyhow, get ready to write something down. Okay, so you got 30 seconds of silence. We'll just listen to the background music. I'm not actually timing the 30 seconds, by the way.

SPEAKER_02 25:15

Okay, let's go.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

Let's go. You ready? That was close enough to 30 seconds. It was okay. I want you to write down, journal something that you feel like you do well as a parent. It doesn't have to be perfect, just something well. Something you're like, you know what, this was a cool move. It could have been a year ago, it could have been five minutes ago, anything. The reason we do that is because we focus so often on what we don't get right. This is human nature, that we get caught up in all the things that aren't right. Yeah. Okay, so you write that down. There's a reason for that. The reason is that it's easier to replicate what works than to stop what doesn't. Say it again, yeah. Yeah, easier to replicate what works than to stop what doesn't. You can process that out loud, say it, scream it from a rooftop. But it's true, and so you get caught into this place of repetition, and you live in that moment of well, here's what's working. And what we do a lot of times as adults is that we do this perpetual cycle of the things that aren't working. Like we we know the things that didn't work with us as kids, and yet we sometimes somehow go back to that as our own with our own kids.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

That's what we're familiar with.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

That's a perpetual cycle. So you can go, okay, that didn't work. I will do this. You have to replace that behavior with the thing that works, and then you practice that.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

Very good.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

Practice account. We talked about this last week, right? Yeah, find somebody that you practice those things out with, and then you need to share those things that you feel like you do well, and then here's the hard one. If you've got a kid that's old enough that you can have that conversation, go tell them. So, you know what? As a parent, I think I'm doing this okay. Felt good about this. What do you think? You think I'm doing this okay? You get them to have that conversation with you this works. Open that two-way dialogue, it's an appropriate thing to do.

SPEAKER_02 27:17

Absolutely. Very good advice. I like that a lot. So I guess um we're gonna start to bring this to a close now. But there are some simple truths we need to be very clear about with our kids. We don't want to scare them, we don't want to make things all fear-based, but we have to be honest. Not everyone online is who they say they are. Once a photo is sent, it cannot be taken back. Scammers rely on fear and secrecy to keep control, and you will never be in trouble for telling us the truth. Most importantly, kids need to know this and they need to feel it all the way to their bones. You are not alone, ever. And I also want to say this clearly. I think it's a real challenge. This is way easier said than done. But I believe we need to delay access to phones and social media as long as possible. I'm not the only one saying this, by the way. It is out there. There is not a lot of good in kids having those things, and we can say it's because we want to have access to them on the phone or whatever excuses we have for it. But this entire world being available to them on phones and social media is not okay. And it's not because we don't trust our kids, it's because the environment they're stepping into is not built with them in mind. I think that's huge. This is not about control, it's about protection, it's about pacing what they're exposed to until they're ready to handle it. Here's what I know to be true. Kids do not need perfect parents. They need safe ones. They need to know that there's nothing they could say, nothing they could admit that would make us turn away or stop loving them. Because when they know that, then they don't carry things alone. And that changes everything. So start small, ask one question, pause a little longer, listen a little deeper, and let's be the place where their lights don't have to hide. Thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

And as always, let your lights shine. Now that we've now that we've closed out this uh episode six, I'd say we have a call to action. Here's our call to action, I'd say. If you're out there listening and this struck with you, I'm going to invite you to comment in the comment section. I'm going to invite you to share with some folks. Let's open this conversation to be beyond us as speakers, this podcast, and you as a listener. Let's open this as a conversation within our community of friends, our community of family, and let's have this discussion broad. Think about the things that you're dealing with as a parent. Drop something into the comment section and let's continue this conversation down the road. How incredible would that be, Lisa James?

SPEAKER_01 30:50

That's the dream. That's the dream.

SPEAKER_00 30:51

Let's live it.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

The kids are worth it. Thanks, folks.