What Your Teenagers Need from You

Ruth Chou Simons

A lot of times, our kids are just ready to ask those hard questions or distracted. So then our answers are because that’s crazy, and then you just want to move on, but they’re like, but why? And so the why actually requires the kind of margin, the intentionality that maybe we did factor in you.

Melissa Kruger

Hi, I’m Melissa Krueger, and I’m here today with two real life friends, Ruth Cho Simons and Sandy Taylor, and we’re going to be talking about parenting teens, which is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. And I have talked with you both a lot individually, Ruth and I shared a dinner, like a wonderful dinner that was such a good meal. Yes, the tapas with all the food, talking about this topic of parenting teens and how to do it. Hopefully, Sandy was one of my first readers of the book. Sandy is a trained counselor. Works with teens specifically, and I wanted her to read it through to make sure I didn’t say anything really off, and I had very few edits, and it was excellent. It’s so helpful to have people, but you are also both people that when I look at what’s going on with your families, I just love what I see in your relationship with your kids, like what we all know about parenting teens. We cannot control so much we cannot control how they turn out. We cannot control if they love Jesus. There’s a lot we can’t control. But what I see with both of you that I just respect, is how you’re entering into these years. So to start, Can y’all tell us a little bit about where you are location wise, what your family looks like right now? So Sandy, we’ll start with you. Sure, sure.

Sandi Taylor

So I live in New York City, as you know, and I have three teenage daughters. One is 19, Abby’s 19. Hannah is 17, and Margaret is 15. And like you said, um, I work as a counselor, and I see teens and their parents. I see women as well, but, but my specialties with teenagers. So I just love teens. I think we need to do better by our teens. Better.

Ruth Chou Simons

I need to say that teen years are wonderful. I love that better job advocating for how good it can be, so that it’s not coming into like. What do I need to do to prepare Ruth when

Sandi Taylor

I when people would find out that I had three daughters in the early years, they would go, Oh boy, I just wait till the teen years. I get walleyes too. Well, what’s so bad? Yeah, no. So yeah, we need to, we need to reframe that for sure.

Ruth Chou Simons

I love it well, we live in western Colorado, like in the mountains and but makes sense, because I have six boys. My oldest is 22 getting his master’s in some kind of fancy engineering thing over in University of Wisconsin Madison. So he’s not home right now. And that’s actually, well, he’s not gonna be home anymore. Like, that’s a weird stage. So it’s been a hard thing for that could be another conversation too, because so he moved out. He’s 22 then we have an almost 20 year old, almost 18 year old, almost 16 year old, 13 and 11. So I do have all teen boys, and I get the same thing though, Sandy, that whole like, Oh, my goodness. Oh, teens, how do you even survive it? And I, I kind of just love being able to tell stories of this season, because I wasn’t always given those stories, right? Uh, stories of how it can be rich, or how it can be better than you expect. So anyway, I’m looking forward to the conversations you too.

Melissa Kruger

I remember hearing, Oh, little children, little problems, big people, big problems. And you’re like, I’m sorry. Being thrown up today on today by a toddler felt like a big problem in my life. It was exhausting say that I’d feel all this fear, and I’m with you guys. I love the teen years. I love you too. And here’s the reality, I have friends who are walking through really hard, really like, hard things, and I do understand that big problem thing, but I love that. We can also all say there are some really great things about the teen years. And so I’m in, oh, that’s

Ruth Chou Simons

why I was going to say, I love the title of your book, parenting with hope, because that’s the issue. The issue is not, not the three of us are not saying, Oh, our children are perfect. Things are easy, or parenting teens is just so simple. It’s it. When you shift your mindset about what parenting teens is about, and you know that it’s like, there’s hope, there’s opportunity. I love the word opportunity because when you realize you’re not at the end of a journey, you’re just beginning a new version, that’s right. And so there’s so much opportunity that you can be like, hey, it matters. I’m gonna be I’m gonna stay diligent. I’m not gonna let off the gas and be like, Oh, I guess they’re just gonna turn out the way they turn out. We can we actually still have opportunity, and we can be hopeful. That’s

Melissa Kruger

such a good point. I just want to say, because it’s, it’s not the end of the journey. I think when

Sandi Taylor

we it’s a chapter in the journey, right? I think that’s how we have to see that whole story of their lives. This is the chapter. Let’s understand it. Let’s, let’s do the best we can. Yeah, and

Melissa Kruger

it could be a chapter. Whereas, if you think it’s the end, you parent in fear. And then you do a lot of things that make other chapters really hard. They’re like all in Sandy’s office years after, because we were trying so hard to control every decision they made that they’re like, I’ve got a good well, I’m in a similar season. I have kids who are 2320 and 17, and I’m getting ready to enter a new season, because this summer, I get another kid in my family who I love, that he’s coming through marriage, and I’m so excited adding to your quiver. Yeah, it’s pretty great. Like, when he’s with us, it feels like this. So it’s so fun. And I’m like, how to get extra kids in your family without having to raise them. This is great. So love it anyway. So that’s where we are. One thing I love about this discussion, we’ve got you in New York, which somebody, somebody might say you raised teens in New York. So

Sandi Taylor

I get it whole nother conversation. I’m like, well, it’s all I ever knew. Yeah, and grew up in the suburbs in the south, but I I’ve never parented anywhere that’s

Melissa Kruger

right. And I’m parenting kind of in this Christianese south, but sometimes it’s muddy, you know, and you’re out west, like we’re all in these different locations. So I’m really excited about this conversation. God, though, right? Yes, where we are, yes. And same truth, same truth, and so but I do think it’s nice for even our listeners to know, like we’re all coming from different places. We’re all boys, you’re all girls. I’ve got a little bit of both, so it’s just kind of fun. I’m excited about this. So my first question for you both is, when we enter this parenting journey, you know, we all know that there are certain principles that have guided us along the way, so even when you go back to the little years, we have principles that kind of remain fixed. We have practices that change. We’ll talk about that in a minute. So what principles, if you were talking to a younger mom, would you look and say, Hey, these are really important principles that I would want to pass on to you. Why don’t we start with you? Ruth, I don’t know if you I think

Ruth Chou Simons

I understand the question correctly. So I’m like, I don’t want to get it wrong. But an overarching principle for us has always been that we have to go first as parents. So if we want our children to understand the gospel that we have to like confess first, we have to model that first. If we want to tell them about how the Bible’s worth reading, well, then they need to witness that. And so along with that, the principle has really been that we’re the primary influence in their lives. So then that doesn’t change as the practices change. It doesn’t change as seasons change. Meaning. Rather than say, Hey, I’m going to take my kids to church and let church do all the hard work of like discipling them at home, we just do homework, or, you know, or, right? We send them to Christian school, and that’s the primary influence. Or somehow, one summer a week, I mean, once week in summer, they go to VBS, and that’s somehow they’re where they’re going to get it. We just said, okay, even if they do all those things, we have to be the primary influence. So I don’t does that, right? Yeah, you’re the example, yeah, yeah, that’s been a leading principle for us. For sure,

Melissa Kruger

that’s good, and that’s a hard one. It’s

Speaker 1

a hard one because they’re watching. Let’s just export

Melissa Kruger

the examples, like, let other people be up. But no, and I actually think that’s one that carries out even more importantly, in the teen years, yeah, because what I will say is, you can maybe fake some things with younger kids, but teenagers up

Sandi Taylor

when they hit the teen years. Yeah, it’s

Ruth Chou Simons

very easy to want to handsome even your teen a book, and say, this wise person wrote this book that will help fix all these issues or answer your hard questions, but nothing That’s right. Yeah, same as you really making the time that’s right.

Sandi Taylor

Yeah. And I think I had had that as a thought as well Ruth, but I also think for us, it was one of the main things, was what, what matters, what matters to the Lord? Because I think we can get down, like, what, what matters to God needs to matter in our home. So does it really matter what they’re wearing to preschool or to middle school, right? Or, or, or, and so that’s, that’s God’s word, that’s loving him, that’s loving others. It’s who they become is more important than what they do. It’s, it’s, it’s keeping primary things primary, and that can be really hard. I mean, whatever context you’re in. I mean, in New York, it’s like you’ve got to have your child signed up for, you know, 17 activities, and you got to go to the right school to get it to the right college. Because if you don’t do that, then are you going to blow up or something? I don’t know. I mean, the right two year old priest, the right two year

Melissa Kruger

old, yeah, Melissa knows Aaron’s, like, ancient, yeah, and

Sandi Taylor

so, and that’s, I mean, every, you know, every context, has its its markers, right for what, what is going to make a successful child. And I think we go to the Scripture and and keeping him first. And, you know, a wise mentor of mine one time said, Is this going to matter in five years? Is this going to matter in 10 years? And that is a question we’ll probably talk more about this in a little bit like that has been a big one for me in the team years like because you. You have to be really thoughtful about, am I going to am I going to lean in here? Am I going to take up friction with my child about this? Because this is really going to matter in the years ahead, and I think there was a lot of wisdom in that. So, yeah. So that’s been a principle that whether they’ve been a toddler or a teen, that has stayed same, yeah. And

Melissa Kruger

that’s really good too, because when you’re focusing on, What Does God care about? Like, every home is going to have extra house rules, just meaning we all are going to have ways our family works, whether it’s what time you have to come in that’s clearly extra biblical. I mean, yeah, like, we’re all going to have that. But when you step back and say, how many of those am I going to add? Right? That’s going to become right, increasingly important in the teen years, because the kids, if they if we’re always know, if we’re always bringing the rules past what God has said, they’re gonna get they’re gonna I feel like start filling one in a box, and they’re gonna start, yeah. Then I start pushing out that box, yeah. And whereas you want to always say, these are God’s rules. Those are always followed. And even understanding, Hey, these are mom and dad’s rules, we maybe can have a conversation about it, which is a little different.

Ruth Chou Simons

Sandy just said, you know, who they become is more important than what they do. I just love that, and I feel like we should really put a pin on that, because I think when we have that as a foundational principle, then we’re really modeling what is important to God, right? Like our sanctification. So you go back to the whole I’m modeling for you, that it’s not just whether or not you made the right sacrifices, you did the right things that I’m modeling for you, that you know in the same way that God’s after your heart, like in our home, we’re going to come all the way back to even if, in our sinfulness, sometimes we get off track or whatever, we always come back to Okay. The focus here is, who are you becoming in this journey, not just whether or not your grades show that you did great or that you got these awards or accolades, or if you got into the right school. And I think for parents, that is an idol. We have to die too, because it’s just so easy. And this is, I think, what you were alluding to, too, where in parenting, especially with teens, when you’re controlling things, a lot of times it’s because you’re like, vicariously hoping to like, live through your child’s successes and that that they’ll reflect right on your parenting. And you start like telling up all the ways in which you need to feel good about yourself. And I can’t think of a more detrimental thing for them understanding the heart of God than when we start applying our own rules, our own Pharisaical like it’s my

Sandi Taylor

kingdom versus thy kingdom. And that, that has been a mantra that I I learned the hard way. I mean, you’re always we’re always messing up in that regard. Because I want my children to adapt to my rules, and I want them to look the way I want them to look versus and that’s my own brokenness. That’s my own idolatry, and I It’s okay. What is God after? To your point, Ruth, he’s after, after. They’re hard, yeah? And we have to keep that in front of us, yeah,

Melissa Kruger

so well, as you’ve gone on this journey, so we have certain principles that we’ve held to. Like, one of my principles was, you know, in general, we want our kids to obey us, meaning, like we’re going to give rules in our family, and we need you to obey Well, now, when there were two that might look like, Hey, you’re not allowed to run into the street, so that the principle was, obey mommy’s voice, you know, or whatever. And we didn’t have a lot of discussion about that. It was the practice of that was, don’t run in the street. And it wasn’t like a conversation as we’ve moved into the teen years, my practice has had to change. I don’t in the same way give certain rules. I mean, some things are more discussion oriented at like, for instance, what time curfew is going to be sure that, you know, that’s clearly a Melissa rule. That’s not a god rule. You know about things, but if I give a curfew, I still expect them to obey it. Yeah, that’s right for them to still obey me. The principle of obeying your parents is still happening, but now the practice of that changes, where we have a conversation. So one of the big things with my teens that would be like, well, you know, we’d have a conversation. I might say, hey, 11pm seems reasonable, and if they push back, I’m gonna listen. Whereas, like running into the street, there was no pushback. There was no, can I please play in the street for 30 minutes? Nope, it was just a no, no or whatever. How have your practices changed a little bit as you’ve moved into the teen years?

Ruth Chou Simons

I was like, smirking and laughing over here when you said, you know, like, kind of like, that question of, when is the right curfew, you know, I was like, oh, or why can’t I become a professional Minecrafter? Like, that was an actual, legitimate question. I mean, I was like, I’ve never been asked that before by can he it was number four of six. He was, but, um, but it was really a true question in his like, early teen years. He was like, but people are making a real living. Like, yeah, being a professional somebody. He’s doing it, somebody’s doing why? What? There’s a lot of entertainment value. There’s a lot of skills and all. And so whereas in the little years, you might just say screen time is this much yes, but then when they’re older, even if that screen time is has been somewhat there’s boundaries, he might be working some stuff in his head that going in a direction that you need to have a discussion about, yes. So it’s not just that, hey, these rules apply. It’s more like, Oh, now you’re becoming you’re, you’re, it’s formational. Like, everything is always formational. But in the teen years, it’s starting to work itself out in big questions, like, do I have to go to college? Can’t I make videos about people playing Minecraft? That’s a real job, too. Apparently, Melissa and so, you know, I was laughing, thinking, okay, so that really required me not saying no, because no, you know, like, I mean, I wanted to be like, in this house, we do not sign up to be professional Minecrafters. Like, it was more like, Okay, so let’s talk about what you love about Minecraft. That’s right, what what do you see? What do you see other people doing and having in their lives? What is so rich about their lives that you think you want that excitement in order? Like, what is it that you want from this? Yeah, describe to me what you think that person is doing with their lives. What? What’s you know? And so as you’re asking these other questions, and you’re really saying, I’m so fascinated by Minecraft. Tell me all about it, then it really changes. Rather than me being so fearful, don’t get me wrong, I was fearful. I was like, oh my goodness, we’re about to lose somebody

Sandi Taylor

to YouTube. If you had just shut him down and said, That’s crazy, seriously, like, yeah, you would have lost him. Yep, you know. I mean, what that would have said to him is, you know, you’re not taking what he loves seriously, and you lose that good working relationship that I think is so critical in the teen years. So wise. What

Ruth Chou Simons

I learned about that because I had he was number four, and so I had a few that didn’t ask those kinds of questions or didn’t try to push my buttons quite so much. But what I learned about number four was that right now, he’s not obsessed about that anymore. Right now, that’s not his lifelong exactly, and it wasn’t because I told him it was a stupid dream. It was because we kept talking and asking questions, and so he started feeling safe to talk to me about his random ideas, like the ideas that really don’t make sense, how he won’t make me proud and might be embarrassing. He was like, let me just try it, see what happens. And because I was more interested in knowing why he thinks that, more interested in his happiness, knowing him. What makes him tick? What is it that he’s experiencing? The more he was like, okay, so I just

Sandi Taylor

played that out. Now maybe I can move on, right? So we have actual

Ruth Chou Simons

conversations about what to do with his life, which he still doesn’t know. But it’s now conversations that are more fruitful because I established the pattern like it’s okay, old was he re when you have that conversation? Say, when we had that conversation, he was 13.

Sandi Taylor

Yeah, and your child at 13 is very different than they are at even 15, right? I mean, I mean every year. I mean a 13 year old that’s like, the height of emotionality, and they’re, you know, it’s big feelings, and if you had just shut that down. I mean, the wisdom is, okay, this is going to be ever changing. They’re ever changing, whether it’s what they do for a living or, you know, I mean, this could be a million things. So just keeping that, I mean, I think that’s the big theme, is keeping the that is the big difference, I think, between how practices play out is it’s, it’s, I’m, I’m grand, you know, I’m control central when they’re little, and then when it gets to the teen years, it turns into conversation. You’re a coach or you’re a thought partner. You’re still, we all know, we’re still making the decisions, right? But it’s the approach is different, and it’s really critical in those teen years,

Melissa Kruger

yeah, I like to say you lead with a conversation, not the rule. Yeah, it doesn’t mean you don’t have an internal rule. Yes, that’s right. Don’t have a place. You’re trying to play it first. Yeah, yeah, it’s a back door. Whereas a toddler, it’s fine to lead with the rule, right? Don’t run in the street. We’re also

Sandi Taylor

trying to coach them and train them and equip them. We’re not they’re gonna leave us one day. I mean, they’re moving toward independence and autonomy, and we wanna raise adults who are capable and they trust the Lord, and they know who they are, and they know how to grow, and they know how to deal with change and uncomfortable and all the stuff, and to walk with them through that. I always say lead with relationship, not rule. So that’s gotta have the alliteration, but it’s it is very different, and you have to fight the fear.

Ruth Chou Simons

Just one really quick thing about practice too. I feel like when you have little ones, you can choose when you want them to talk to you. You can be like, this is the time. This is, that’s how we’re going to have a conversation. And you literally can sit them down and it’s like, right then and there, that 510 minutes is when you’re going to talk about something. You can’t make that decision for teens. And so one of the things that I’ve had to really learn about practice is I can’t, I can’t assume that I can squeeze in a really important conversation. With my team in the five minutes between two things we have going on, I actually have to make sure that there’s some margin where they perceive that there’s nothing else competing for my time and energy if I want something to overflow and come out. So that means, and it doesn’t mean that my schedule is always like I’m just sitting there, like I’m available. I don’t want to make it sound like that. I just mean in I need to change my heart, to not assume that all those important conversations are going to happen just because I have time now, just because I got done with my emails, now’s the time you’re going to talk to me? No. Rather, I need to be willing to say, Hey, I’m going to go take a walk a little later. Do you want to join me? Or, that’s right, I’ve got nothing going on Saturday morning. We go to breakfast, or I’m actually home tonight, and I’m going to put away my phone so you don’t see you don’t think that I’m sitting there really busy, because a lot of times our kids are just ready to ask those hard questions, or be like, right? Can’t I be a professional mind kind or distracted, or distracted, and we can’t, and we seem to never have time. And so then our answers are because that’s crazy, and then you just want to move on, but they’re like, but why? And so the why actually requires the kind of margin and the the intentionality that maybe we didn’t factor in when, when the kids were

Melissa Kruger

little. You know, that’s right. So I think one principle is teenager parenting still takes time. Yes, it’ll look like it does.

Sandi Taylor

Well, the danger is, Bucha, they can get around on their own, and I don’t have to have sitters, and I can go back to work, and I can go out with you know, I have all this extra time. We still need to be there, because, to your point, Ruth, they want to have conversations on their terms. Yes, they’ve been at meetings all day, in school, in class, with the coach or whoever, and they’re at the dinner table. That’s a meeting they showed up for that they’re not that they didn’t schedule themselves. And they want that autonomy. They want to do things on their terms. We have to be there and we have to be available. And it’s not going to always work. But I think that is a myth. It’s like, okay, they don’t really need because it’s funny in some ways. You think, Okay, I’m here and nobody wants to spend time with me, but then all of a sudden they do yes, and so you just have to be available.

Ruth Chou Simons

And it’s also a myth to think that if you ask them a question and they grunt or they don’t have a real big answer for you, that they’re done like they’re not interested. Usually it means that you plant a seed and then you go do something, and don’t ask and try to talk to talk to your friends while you’re doing it, and they’ll wander in. And most of the conversations I’ve had with my teens happen where we have the the beginning point of a conversation earlier in the day, and they don’t say much about it, but then later on, I might be doing folding laundry, or I might be packing for a trip. Come on, they wander in, they sit on the edge of your bed, and then they’re like, you know, thinking about what you asked earlier, and then that opens, yes, right? Yeah, YouTube always

Melissa Kruger

right before, Oh, yeah. Especially with boys, I don’t always right before bed. Yeah? I mean, I just feel like with boys, especially, it’s a little different my girls, just my girls. It could be with other people’s girls, they’re ready to talk more, more, right? That’s true. More options for them, yeah. But with my boy, I feel like I really have to be on his terms, because I get a lot of the granting with the first the first go questions. Yeah. So Sandy, you counsel a lot of teens. What are you seeing in your office on a regular basis? And how would you encourage parents? So, yeah, you’re seeing probably some trends, and what encouragement can you give to parents about some of the trends that

Sandi Taylor

you’re seeing? Yeah, so seeing a lot of worry, a lot of anxiety, and worry about school, worry about friends, worry about where you’re going to go, go to college, worry, worry about faith and differing opinions than their than they have. You know that differ with their parents. Worry about the worry. So there’s a lot of anxiety out there. And you know, I think anxiety has gotten a bad rap, because anxiety is and one of the things I talk to teens and parents about is, like, it actually is a God given good system that’s telling us something, right? It can protect us. It can, it can warn us about an unhealthy relationship. If my girls are back, I’m so anxious about this test, I’m like, Have you studied yet? And they’re like, No. I’m like, Well, when you that’s anxiety being your friend telling you go study for the test. Silly. So, so we have to, so there’s a lot we can we’re great at treating anxiety like that’s the good news for parents. So we to read another is unhealthy anxiety when you’ve got the bells going off and the heart rate up and there’s no threat or it’s really out of proportion. But we’re really, really good at helping teens with that. And the thing I would say, just encouragement for parents, the 222, things. One is, don’t be afraid of uncomfortable emotions. I think that we’ve really we’re afraid of feeling sad or uncomfortable. We’re afraid of being unhappy. And we know the Bible’s never said, God has never said the goal is happiness, right? And that’s going to be part of the landscape of life, of adolescence, of adult. I mean, it’s life is. God is good. And so I think not being afraid of uncomfortable emotions. But, you know, are teens handling them well? Are they coping with them effectively? Because that’s just going to be part of the teen years. And they have these, these, really, their brain renovates in the teen years. And so the first thing to renovate is that emotional center. And so they’ve got all the big feels, and not a lot of perspective, like a comparatively weak perspective center. And so it can, it can feel really scary, but it’s that’s normal, like, that’s typical. And so I think parents can be really afraid of that. So we have to, and we have to brace embrace them for ourselves as well. You know, you a lot of anxious teens have anxious parents. You know, to your original point in the conversation, Ruth, it’s we model like, how do we, how do we manage our own distressing emotions that come and go, so that, I think, is a really hopeful encouragement. The other thing I would say is, and this has been the theme of the conversation so far, is all of the research, like the all the psychological research show, shows that the single most important force for good, obviously, aside from the Holy Spirit, we know that it’s God that is ultimate, that is one really good working relationship, relationship with a loving or caring adult. And it makes all the sense in the world. How do we grow in our faith? We grow in the context of a safe, loving, Grace based relationship with Christ, right? That’s the context where we can fumble and make mistakes and ask for forgiveness and and take risks and all the like and so, but the key is a working relationship. So if we shut our teens down, if we are not there to listen, if, if they feel like we’re not safe or they can’t trust us, that’s that’s when we worry. So, so protect the relationship. And it doesn’t mean you give them everything you want, but you have conversations, you treat them like they’re the neighbor that they are and and, yeah, so I would say relationships and not be not being afraid of emotions. That makes sense. Yeah, yeah.

Ruth Chou Simons

Can I throw in there that most of the time, generally speaking, when you’re about in the teen years, is also when, as mamas, your body’s changing too. Yeah? I mean, we keep talking about this too funny, but like, I wasn’t totally ready for the way I was gonna have big emotions and not a lot of this or whatever. Like, I’m laughing looking at you, like, describe, like, not a lot of processes and a lot of, like, emotions. And I’m going, Yeah, I’m kind of a little bit of that. I don’t know if I’m thinking with this or back here right now, you know. So there’s some big feelings. There’s a lot of changing seasons. My kids are 11 years apart, so I’m like watching the little people still grow up while trying to parent an adult, you know, and and all that. So I think there’s a there’s room to one. Give a little grace for yourself, even recognizing like you’re going through a lot of changes too, but also to your point being being diligent to like, preach to your own heart in anxious times, right? Because we don’t want to inadvertently be passing on all this anxiety that really just needs to be processed through meeting with a good counselor, or sharing with our spouse, or really spending time with the Lord and really going, Okay, Lord, I have anxious thoughts, and I’m not gonna just put it all on my teen child while they’re going through stuff too. You know, that’s right to spend some time on that in

Sandi Taylor

the book. But there’s you, and our children were little, and they, I don’t know, they fell and scraped their knee, and they look at you because they’re not, I mean, they’re probably upset or crying, but they’re looking at you for how big of a deal is this? It’s the same thing in the teen years. And I talked to parents about having a not shocked face. Yes, I’m like, no matter what comes out of their mouth, yeah, just go, okay, yep, I love it. Okay, yep, okay. And you know what we’re doing is we’re saying I can handle that. Yes, doesn’t matter how bad you whatever. You tell me, yes, I’ve got you. And you may get grounded. You might, I mean, who knows what’s going to happen, or we might need to get extra support, but I can handle it, which means I’m going to help you figure out how to handle it. It’s so important, yeah,

Melissa Kruger

but if they see us, like, if we hear a friendship problem, right? And we’re now trying to solve it behind the scenes, like you didn’t get invited to the party, I mean, they’re going to shut down and never tell you again, right?

Sandi Taylor

Yeah? Because that’s losing the good working relationship, yes. And that’s right, we have to fight to keep that

Melissa Kruger

because we can’t solve their issues. No, we walk through their issues with them. That’s right. Like, my goal is not to kind of clear the way so you never have hardship, but to say, I’m going to be with you, because what we’re doing is modeling what do I promise

Sandi Taylor

James, one. It’s the testing of our faith that develops perseverance. Yeah, perseverance like to maturity and completion. And so we don’t want to subvert that. We want to foster that. We want to allow our teens to have opportunities, to have to turn to the Lord, right, to grow in their own which is what ultimately we all want. We want them to know and love Jesus and walk with Jesus. And so it’s it’s not, it’s not easy. It’s not,

Melissa Kruger

you know, that’s what we need, yes, and that’s why we’re still walking with the Lord in the midst of all this. That’s right, yeah. I mean, we don’t graduate from our need of God in the parenting years. You know how

Ruth Chou Simons

we role play when the kids are really little? We role play, like, how to reconcile? Yeah. I wonder if the three of us need to role play and, like, practice the no emotion phase. Yeah. Say that, say this Craziest thing to me. I’m going to work

Melissa Kruger

on it. Yeah, it’s actually not a bad thing. I feel like women’s ministry helped me do that. You know, when you’re sitting across from people and you’re like, I’m just going to act like what she told me was the most normal thing ever, because I don’t want to make her feel unsafe telling me this. I

Sandi Taylor

had my diet, yeah, in my clinical training, I had one. My professor say, you need to be able to say the word suicide the same way you say hamburger, like we just need to not, we need not to make suicide or, you know, and just the way that we and again, it’s because whoever the person is before you that’s suffering, and we’re talking about our teens, it’s just really utterly critical we say, All right, I’ve got you Yeah, so we can handle this. Yeah, that’s

Melissa Kruger

right. That’s right. We don’t have a lot of time left, but I do want to, I have two more questions for you. The first is technology. So this is, this is something in our generation that’s really different of parenting that we don’t have 20 years of research on social media and its impact on kids and so you have smartphones and their impacts on kids. It really is a very different world our kids are growing up. I mean, like, if we wanted to find out information, we had to go to encyclopedias, yeah? Like, those are gone, right? Because now there’s Google, yeah. I mean, Alexa, you’re just finding out your information at the drop of a hat. You get it so quickly. So our kids have access to tons of information. They have access to tons of other people like never before. What wisdom do you have? You know in a sound bite that we can give on, how do we deal with technology, with what we know today, what some what are some guiding principles you would offer about technology?

Ruth Chou Simons

Their desire for it will not decrease with more usage. So like giving them access to something, it’s not like you can put it back in the box, and so it’s always served. It’s go slow. I think one of the things that we’ve always just done as a family is, you know, they start with an iPad that they can use at the kitchen table. They’re not up in their bedrooms. They’re not by themselves. They’re not carrying it in their pockets, because it’s an iPad and it’s not social media and it’s and, hey, Mama, can I search on how to build forts? Well, one time, I helped them search on it, and it did click over to something really inappropriate. So like, they are targeting our kids, but then he’s right there with us. You know, it’s like using Right, right, so, and then when they get old enough to and for us, it’s usually when they’re starting to sleep over at somebody’s house, or start driving, or that’s when they start having a personal mobile device. And none of our none of our kids. And I’m not saying this as rules, I’m saying this as testimony. None of our kids are on social media, except when they are an adult and and even the adult doesn’t really want to be on it anymore, because I think they’re starting to see that it’s not bringing them any good. And so I think just go slow as a principal. Go slow and maybe be okay with not going with the flow. Be okay with starting that conversation early and saying, Hey, we’re we don’t need to do it just like everybody else.

Sandi Taylor

That’s right. And the other thing you can do because, I mean, the counselor in me kind of when, if I put my counselor hat on, our teens need friends, and Middle School is huge, right? And what’s happening is everybody’s getting digital technology in middle school. You can give your child a phone that has no browser, it has no app, it literally only texts and calls text and talk. So like our children are taking mass transit in New York in middle school, so I need to be able to get a hold of and they also, I’m not making plans for my seventh grader. They’re making it on a text chat. So it’s kind of like only as much as they need to stay in touch with their real life friends, because that’s we want the real life friends. That’s been something that, yeah, wait as long as possible, if not forever, but then also, they just need to be able to connect with their real life friends. That’s right. So that’s that’s worked for us?

Melissa Kruger

Yeah, I think, I think society will move along on this. I have a big belief the high school I went to had inner courtyards where people used to be allowed in high school to smoke, until what did we find out smoking causes cancer, and now, of course, no one was allowed to smoke by the time I got in high school, it was not allowed for a smoking courtyard anymore. And I really do think there one day will be Surgeon General advisories on social media and on some of these things. So I think we’re in this uncomfortable space where it hasn’t caught up to what what the research is. Yeah, it’s

Sandi Taylor

pretty much a mixed bag. Right now. If you really go out there and read and don’t just read one resource, it’s, it’s mixed,

Melissa Kruger

yeah, sure, yeah. And so it’ll be interesting when we get that data in. It’s too soon to see, okay, what impact is this having on people and so in that in between, yeah, this is where I think one again, having the conversation. Conversations. Why do you want a cell phone? Why is it important? Because there could be different reasons. And so, and it could be social, like, I just want to be able to text with my friends, right? And you can get the text and talk,

Sandi Taylor

right? Then, then that that makes sense. And then, you know, also, I’ve talked to my girls about the algorithms, you know, like you just hover. Somebody sent me a golden retriever video the other day, and, I mean, all of a sudden, all I had and I was like, Whoa, you get a you get a 14 year old who wants to get fit for soccer practice, you know, for soccer tryouts, and next thing, and she searches that the minute you search, okay, but here’s the great thing about teens, and this, I know we need to move on. If you talk to like a 1314, 15 year old about that and tell them basically how they’re being manipulated by the algorithms. It’ll make them mad. Yeah. And it, I mean, there are lots of ways to talk to your teens about this that I think are really good coaching and training and app thing for life. Yes. So

Melissa Kruger

anyway, because I do think this is a season where we can’t just restrict because they’re getting ready to go into the world. So you need to be helping train their brain. Think about

Ruth Chou Simons

that. How do you think about sharing those facts in a factual, non emotional face? Yeah? Like, what do you think about that? Right? Yeah. Versus a mom that’s, like, panicky and scared and wanting to, like, control everything, then they turn off, you know? So they go

Sandi Taylor

underground and they do it somebody else’s house, like, working relationship. That’s

Melissa Kruger

right, that’s right. So all of these, all of these things. Well, okay, this is kind of a hard question. As you look back on parenting, are there any regrets? None, none. Right. I

Sandi Taylor

mean, like, Are there I did it perfectly, Melissa, are there anything you look

Melissa Kruger

back though, and say, Wow, if I could tell my younger self, hey, just let that go. Or, you know, just don’t take that so seriously. Or are there any anything? Yeah,

Sandi Taylor

I was mentioning this to you before I have my first child is very different than me, and I you don’t really know that, like in the very like, you’re sort of figuring that out when they’re a toddler. She’s super introverted. She’s such a great kid. I’ve learned so much from her. But I thought God was going to give me a child just like me, right? And so I kept trying to make her extroverted. I would take her all these social things and and finally, I realized I’ve got a parent, the child that’s in front of me that God is good, which means I need to slow down. I need to be prayerful. How do I need to what approach? What does she need? What’s best for her? How do I encourage her gifts and her wiring and all of that? And I, God, love her. I still, to this day, apologize. I’m so sorry I kept making you go to all these really social things all the time. So I do have regrets about I it was again parenting for my kingdom, and I don’t I wasn’t intending to harm her in any way, but I it must have been tough for her so that I do have that regret. I wish I’d slowed down and really kind of understood that better.

Ruth Chou Simons

Gosh, so many regrets, not, you know, not so many like I can think of exactly. It’s more like my I regret having a weak, like attitude towards like, anger, anger when I know that I know lashing out doesn’t help, right? Yeah, but now that I’m a little older, I’m like, wow, that was not a lot of self control, right? So I I can’t think of one time where I actually got the actual results I was hoping for because I lashed out. But I think the one that I would want to draw attention to specifically, and it’s pretty vulnerable, I guess just even share it. Because, you know, we do share a lot of our story on social media and stuff. And I am so great. Troy and I are good parents together, but we are very different. And I think a lot of times, husbands and wives are a little different. It’s such a great and it’s so easy to I would say, oh, regret that I would have is to when I’ve not used the self control to not analyze my husband’s parenting or my husband’s attitude in front of my kids. I I’m not speaking really ill of him. I’m not necessarily pitting them again, not not bad enough like that, but I’m in some way analyzing and critiquing something so that I could ultimately seem like the wise one. And I’ve never, ever, there’s no fruit from that. There’s no good fruit from that. And so I regret having been less of a teams at times, and more of like, like, I’m my team, you know. And so that that would be a regret is now I look back and want to tell my younger self, you don’t parent alone, yeah, you know. And if you’re a single parent and you’re not, you know, you’re not married, then there is somebody in your life that you need to lean on. And so you don’t need to carry everything by yourself and make yourself and make yourself to be the strongest and the best that you can welcome somebody else and somebody else’s like, healthy contribution in your life, and not put them down or not criticize or critique them just because you’re struggling. Yeah, and so yeah, that’s a great something you

Melissa Kruger

said at the beginning of that about anger. One thing that. Light bulb moment for me was it’s his kindness that leads to repentance. But I think sometimes I parented as though my harshness would lead to repentance. So if I was Hey, why are these on the floor? Whereas I can actually use a mature tone and say, Hey, I have asked you to pick up your things. I need you to do it, and if it doesn’t happen again, there’s gonna be a consequence. Like, I can say that in a nice way and still mean what I say. But I think sometimes in the teen years, it’s tempting to use a harsh tone to correct and I was like, that’s on me. Yeah, my tone is on me. Yes, that’s right, you know, and my choice of being impatient or unkind, that’s not godly. That’s not a godly way to discipline. You know, I need to find right ways to kind of help them see the right path, versus thinking, Oh, if I’m just short tempered with them, then they’ll figure out what they’re supposed to do, right? That’s not how God parents us, right? Yeah, he’s kind to us, to draw us in. And that was one of those moments. Was, huh, I can actually really just be kind and still have expectations, right? Of my team, right? Well,

Sandi Taylor

you talk about that in your book, and all the research shows that it’s firmness and warmth, right? It’s having high expectations, wanting our expecting our children to be the best version of themselves, who God’s calling them to be, while being warm in relationship, yes? And that’s the secret sauce, I think, yes.

Melissa Kruger

Well, this has been such a good discussion. We would all say we are not perfect parents. Oh, my word. I would say one of the biggest ways to lead is in repentance with our kids, as you mentioned earlier, Ruth like being good apologizers is a really good example, and maybe in the teen years even more so. And that’s that’s a wonderful thing, because we are sinners parenting centers, and so what we actually, one of our jobs, is to teach them how to what do we do with the sin problem? And we’re all managing that as well. And thankfully, we have a God who gives us so much grace. So I think we would want to say to everyone listening, God is with you in this parenting journey, and you’re not alone. You may feel alone. You may feel like your kid is dealing with things that no one else is dealing with, and I think that’s really true the parent parenting in the teen years, but God is with you, and He can give you what you need. Well, one thing. This is a deep dish because of Courtney and I’s love of deep dish pizza. So I do want to ask one fun question before we leave, what’s something that you’re loving right now? Because, like, I’m very excited, because tonight we are going to share some deep dish pizza. What’s something in your life, just a fun thing that you’re loving?

Sandi Taylor

Okay, this is really shallow. I have gotten into, like, the Wordle and the New York Times connection, yes, okay. I’ve never done games on my phone ever, but I have a client who’s like, you need to do that, because we talk about brain breaks and restoration, and there’s a place for that, just short kind of and and now I’m like, now, but now I need, like, self control, because no, you’ve done you’ve done your two, no more if

Melissa Kruger

you’ve done strands yet, that’s the new one.

Sandi Taylor

Okay, have to add that.

Unknown Speaker

So good.

Ruth Chou Simons

I’m really into, like, mushroom coffee right now. I know it’s, I don’t even

Sandi Taylor

know mushroom coffee, like, literally, must have, like,

Ruth Chou Simons

powdered mushroom. Like you have, like mushroom, it’s like, supposed to be good for you. It tastes good. I kind of like it. I mean, it’s got like, a dark, earthy flavor to it. And I like stuff like that. So I’m kind of into it right now. So where do you get it? Um, they it’s like matcha powder

Sandi Taylor

album, okay, okay, there’s

Ruth Chou Simons

like, all sorts of, like, mushroom all sorts of,

Sandi Taylor

it’s supposed to be good for you, yeah. So that’s fun.

Melissa Kruger

That’s really fun. Well, that makes

Ruth Chou Simons

a difference with anything. Keep us posted. Well,

Melissa Kruger

thanks for joining us for this episode of the deep dish. I’ve loved talking with you both, and what we always want to encourage is to have deep conversations in your real life. So we’re glad you’ve joined us for this one, but I know there are real women out there who would love to sit around a table with you, who are listening and join in to have a deep conversation with real friends in real life. But thanks for joining us.