Helping Our Children Through Disappointment Webinar

Welcome everyone and to Helping our Children through Disappointment. Brian Sutter is with me, and we are looking forward to getting into this. This is all too familiar of a topic for me, Brian. Sure. And let’s talk about disappointment. Let’s get into what that actually could look like in children. And I think for parents, we see it very relevant. But on this next slide, for example, the disappointments are kids kept from being included, being mistreated. These are painful things for parents to walk through with their kids. Unhappy circumstances. Sometimes they’re unhappy with themselves. And that is painful. Failure to excel at something, failure to succeed at something, losing a job, losing a spouse.

It runs the gamut of the age of that child too. Exactly. From small issues to mature issues, but they’re all painful. Disappointment. Exactly. And it’s a universal experience at one level or another, as we walk beside kids or adults, right? I mean, we experienced disappointment. Yes. Such an important life skill.

I heard this quote from somebody who was struggling and had a child who had gone through a great disappointment, and they said that, you know, a parent is as happy as their least happy child. And that really rang true to me that our own wellbeing as parents is very often tied to the wellbeing of our kids.

For sure. And so, this idea that a parent is affected by their children’s pain probably differs among spouses. Oh, right. One is really affected maybe even more or maybe carries that pain differently. Would that be a good way to say it? Yeah, or depending on what the issue is, sometimes you can relate to a disappointment while at other times it’s a little harder to relate and that’s probably going to impact how it hits you.

Which spouse or which parent necessarily connects. Yes, exactly. Yeah, and so, it’s this tricky place where, as we love and care for our kids, and we experience them going through things that are painful, it’s going to have an impact on us but what exactly that looks like is tricky.

Yeah, it is, and so that leads us to a little bit about the way this is going to lay out here Brian, what we’re going to talk through in terms of how we want to talk through this conversation. Even though our topic is helping our children through pain and disappointment, we’re going to look inward towards ourselves first because that is going to be of first importance.

And then we’re going to look outward towards our children and talk through some do’s and don’ts, which I think is really going to be helpful. And I’m going to have my ears on what that looks like. Because so often I find myself not doing the thing I should do and not saying the thing I should have said or saying the thing I shouldn’t have said, right?

But let’s first look at look at inward in ourselves here. And so, we have this idea of the oxygen mask on the plane, right? First take care of yourself and then take care of your kid, right? It’s hard to give what we don’t have. Speak to this importance here. I think it’s one of those things where we would all say we want to walk beside our kids or those young people that we’re caring for or involved in their lives. We want to walk besides them in a helpful way and sometimes our focus can be on what do I do to help them?

But I think this is maybe encouraging us to zoom out a little bit and say, okay, wait a second if I want to be helpful walking through disappointment, part of that’s going to be recognizing my own disappointment and being able to walk through disappointment. Well, and internally for me if I’m going to be as much use as I’d like to be walking beside, I’m curious if you have noticed a difference between how you counsel a young person and how you counsel your own children. Is there a difference because of the tie you have to your kiddos.

Oh, for sure. I mean, a thousand percent. Yeah. So, how does that look differently? Well, in some ways, it’s really unfortunate because it’s much easier for me to sit in the counseling room with a young person walking through something hard and just be present with them, try to understand their hurt, be patient and come alongside.

Whereas outside of that, and I’m doing life, and that’s when my kids’ disappointment shows up. It’s like, I don’t have time for this. I don’t have time for disappointment. We just got to keep moving and I can be so much quicker to be dismissive or do all of the things that I’m going to say here later that we shouldn’t do, and so it is tricky.

The counseling room sets it up for being able to walk through it reasonably well, whereas day to day life, I think, makes it much more difficult because it doesn’t happen in the window when you’re hoping it happens, it’s happening as life unfolds, and so you don’t schedule the appointments with the kids, you know?

We’ll deal with that tomorrow at two o’clock. Right. Sometimes the aftermath or the trying to repair gets scheduled, but when it actually unfolds, it’s hard. So, there’s a nice, controlled environment in the counseling room, but here’s what I want to put my finger on. You do great work in the counseling room, so it’s not like great work isn’t done there helping people through disappointment.

And somehow, why is it that I feel like my hands are tied at home to do the work that I can actually do meteorically well, I do incrementally worse at home. And I’ll give you an example. I’m a mathematics teacher. My livelihood is teaching people math. Teaching my own kids math maxes out everything in my head.

And I find that to be even more difficult. And as I’ve processed that, it is a lot of a me problem, not a them problem. When I’m in the classroom, I understand who I am better and who they are. At home, it all gets conflated. Yeah. And it interferes with the teaching. Yes. For sure.

And too, when you’ve got that relationship, there’s so much emotional investment, and there’s so much, like, I should be able to make this happen, or you should, I should, I’m supposed to be the teacher, I’m supposed to be the counselor, and then it doesn’t go well, and then that can attribute to all this, and I think, too, one of the gifts for me, of being in the counseling office, is it’s required me to learn how to sit with people’s uncomfortable emotions, and that’s not something that I’m naturally good at.

And that shows up even more so with my kids that my weaknesses really get highlighted. And I think this slide speaks to this reality of like, if I can’t be able to sit with uncomfortable emotions like disappointment, I’m going to be in a really difficult position to be helpful to help walk that through. So, I think all that to say we’re going to look here. What does it look like to look inward to myself so I can get it into a better place?

That somehow, I get there in the classroom when it’s somebody else’s kid, but with my own I have a hard time getting there so there’s this idea of who am I actually trying to help in this moment. Sometimes as I’m trying to help my kid with a math problem, I’m really doing it for myself.

Yeah, like my kid’s going to be able to do this. You know what I’m saying? Yeah, it inflates my idea of I’m a good teacher. Yeah, and it’s really serving more trying to minister to my own pain rather than being useful to them and where they’re at and what they might need.

Speak to this idea of being careful not to service our pain when we are working with our children. Well, I think if nothing else, I think it’s just a really good question to ask. Why am I doing what I’m doing? And in many ways, some of the things that we do as parents, we’re doing because of our own insecurities or our own pain, and we’re trying to calm that down rather than thinking about what’s actually going to be helpful for them?

And that might mean that their discomfort, their disappointment stays longer, which will be more painful for us. But it’s actually going to be more beneficial for them as they learn how to walk through disappointment or that oh, okay, disappointment can be part of life and I’ll be okay on the other side. If we step in and administer our own pain, it may not go the way that’s actually going to be helpful for them.

So, for example, I might have the mindset that says, my child’s not going to fail a class. Right. Well, all of a sudden that pain is now mine. This is about me rather than walking through this disappointing educational experience with my child having the foresight to say this might be the road that they’re on.

Right. But the crisis is all I can see, and I tie myself into that crisis that is not mine. Right and I think an example of that would be, when my third grade daughter takes her pumpkin project into the school, you can get a sense that maybe not all the kids did those pumpkins, you know, and I don’t know what the motive is there, so I’m not trying to say that, but I think that would be an example of like, oh, Johnny wants to have the best pumpkin, and so, that’s so funny, because I think every parent with their oldest child has this story. For me, it was taking the project to the fair. I read the description like Josh was supposed to do this thing, right? You know what I mean? But when I got there, somehow, I had this inkling that I don’t think all 10-year-old boys really did it all by themselves. Yes, but that’s so funny. And it’s interesting to see it, even though you might be parenting a 17-year-old, to recognize that what we do at their third-grade pumpkin project is setting that trajectory and just being thoughtful about that.

Because at some point, they’re going to get into the arena where we can’t do it for them. And if they haven’t dealt with coming in third at the pumpkin contest, that’s going to be a lot harder. But what I see in this, really speaking to Brian, is this concept that there needs to be healthy separation between who they are and who I am. It’s kind of like who is who? Right, and separating us. Speak more to that concept. Yeah. And I think it even goes back to one of our earlier slides about a parent only being as happy as their least happy child. That’s very true. And yet there’s also part of us, like, how do we make sure that we don’t take on what is theirs in a way that’s beyond what we ought to. That we are separate, and we need to let them have their emotions and we can have our emotions, and we can come beside them in that. But also, just to be careful that it doesn’t become ours when it isn’t or that because I think too what we’re modeling there is then they’re supposed to take on what is ours. And that gets backwards too if that’s what they feel like. Oh, if mom’s taking care of all of my emotions or dad’s taking care of all my emotions, maybe that’s what I’m supposed to do with them.

So, let’s play that out. So, I make sure I understand that if we don’t have healthy separation between us, perhaps they might say, I’m not going to raise this disappointment because I know what this is going to do to Mom. Exactly. Mom or the child might think Dad needs me to be strong right now.

Yeah. So, if those thoughts are going through the kid’s mind, it might be an indicator, perhaps based on what you’re saying, that we don’t have a healthy degree of separation. Yeah. And I think in some ways that’s probably going to naturally cross a child’s mind in and of itself. But if they can register that and even share it, that can be something we have in our minds and we can speak into that.

I think that just sets up a healthier dynamic as far as a possibility, whereas this idea here that we’re referring to that we want to stay away from, in counseling we would call enmeshment, where two separate people become one in a way that’s unhealthy. And again, like we talked about earlier, you’re going to have impact on each other, but we just want to be careful that when one is really struggling, we can feel that, but we can also be present to be a help, that they don’t have to protect us from what’s hard for them. So, you’ve just illustrated that intermediate space because there’s another ditch on the other side of being completely unattached.

Right. Or detached. Yes. Or out to lunch. Yes. Which, I might say, sometimes is a way that we handle our own pain. Oh, for sure. So now I’m going back full circle. It still is about me a little bit. Exactly. If I am detached and I’m just like, listen, I don’t have the bandwidth for this. Right. You figure it out, or, yes, you get yourself up because that emotional weight of actually carrying this moment is too daunting or too intimidating, too exhausting. Right. Which is also okay. So, we have detachment on one side and enmeshment on the other side. Is that a good way to see it?

Yeah. And I think even going back to our last point, that’s where it’s really easy. We can move on to the detachment side and then convince ourselves, oh, I’m just helping them learn how to do it. Or on the enmeshment side, we can say, well, I’m just trying to help them do a good job. And again, you might find yourself on either side of that ditch at different times, but be careful if you’re only on one side all of the time, that’s when we’re going to be setting up really unhelpful lessons and patterns.

Good. That’s good. And so, this idea of being able to absorb emotions and living in this emotional world with our kids, because disappointment is always linked to an emotion. I mean, maybe I’m wrong on that. In my experience with my kids when there is disappointment, there’s always emotion present.

And so, part of the skill set seems to be understanding the emotional space, how to interact with it, with my own emotions. Yeah. So, you painted this picture of having an appropriate interaction that doesn’t take it on, but yet receives it. Yeah. Is that right? Yes. Don’t take it on but receive it.

Yeah, and it’s a little bit like you’re trying to walk this tightrope that you’re going to find yourself on either side of, but even if that can just be a mindset of like, huh, I wonder, am I taking this on too much or am I too detached? Yeah. Those can just be helpful questions to keep us between the lines. Can you give more of an example of what it would look like to not take it on, but to receive it?

Is there any more guidance on when we get sideways or when somebody has taken on too much? Yeah, that comes to mind. I think that will be some of the things that we’ll get into when we talk about the don’ts and the dos later. And that’s fine. I can wait for that too.

But I think it’s hard and it’s tricky and if you find yourself having a hard time sleeping where your mind is just spinning on the hurt that your child is going through, certainly we would expect that at times, depending on what kind of disappointment we’re talking about, but that might be a sign that maybe I’m taking this on more than I ought to. Or if you just have no idea of the sort of things that would be disappointing to your child, you’re getting closer to the totally detached side of things.

Yeah. Well, this really leads to this concept of emotional health, which is what you’re saying here too. One of the ways to be healthy is for us to be emotionally healthy. Right? Isn’t that what you’re asking here? Yeah. Say a little bit more about that. And I think even just the modeling piece may be something to highlight here just to recognize as you walk through day-to-day life, and you experience disappointments. The way that you talk about that, the way that you handle it is just a great arena for your child to observe and learn about what it means to be disappointed to experience that and to walk through it.

And so, I think sometimes as parents, we are on the side of never talking about our disappointments and sometimes we only talk about our disappointments. But, you know, I think if we can recognize and even share, hey, I am disappointed, or this is a bummer and then to demonstrate what it looks like to be sad or impacted by that disappointment. And then to walk through it in a healthy way and that’s okay. We’re going to move on into the next thing or I think it would be good just to pause and have a prayer or whatever those things sort of look like. And to do that with the small things can be really helpful for kids to observe.

Are you really suggesting, too, that our kids pick up cues and learn a great deal on how they deal with disappointment as how mom and dad deal with disappointment? Oh, yeah, exactly. Yes, they’re picking up much more by what we do than what we say. We’d like that to be different but a lot of times the learning is taking place and they’re observing how we’re walking through it more so than what we’re saying. That makes a lot of sense.

Okay. So, that brings together this idea of looking inward before we look outward. So now we’re going to go to this outward piece of helping our kids in their place of disappointment. And so, the first point I think, Brian, that we want to make is that life is full of disappointment.

Yeah. And that’s a hard reality, but I think it’s a really important reality that we come to terms with, and we help our kids come to terms with. That the goal isn’t that you won’t have disappointment or difficulty. The goal is to be able to recognize it and learn how to walk through it well.

And I think this picture brings to mind this idea that the Lord doesn’t promise really straight, narrow, easy paths. He wants to give us the kind of feet that help us walk through the difficult paths that are there. And that’s the reality of the world we live in.

So, this mountain goat here has been equipped with the feet, the muscle, and the agility to overcome obstacles. Yeah. I think that’s what it does. Yeah. And to have a pasture of ease is not actually according to its design, which is really kind of interesting to think that we have also been equipped. Really what you’re suggesting is we have been equipped, but perhaps those skills need to be honed and grown and matured to walk through disappointment as much as we would like to advocate disappointment or do away with disappointment. Right. But Brian, as a parent, it’s very easy to go down that road where all of a sudden, I want to fix it.

Yeah. And I thought of an example and then I retracted it because sometimes you need to, right? My, point was, well, maybe I need to call the teacher. You know what I’m saying? I need to call the teacher, which I’m a teacher. There’s a ton of appropriate places to call the teacher. Yeah. But sometimes when we try to step in to control a thing, what are we trying to do? Yeah, so that’s a good reminder. Yeah. And I think it’s just a mindset sort of thing and I think it sees difficulty as an opportunity more so than something that we just avoid.

And I think even to your point, just this past weekend, I forget which day it was, anyway it was with Cash’s basketball coach. His buddy said, oh, coach is really upset with you. And I was like, well, I don’t think so. I’d emailed him and I thought we were good, but he was really nervous. So. Yeah, I’m like, do you want to go talk to coach or do you want me to and it felt like one of those places where if he would have been willing that I think that would have been good because I was 99 percent sure that we were totally in the clear, but also it was it was pushing him to a place that was probably beyond his skills.

Yeah, and so to do that together, hopefully it wasn’t modeling, but you don’t always know. Are you overstepping and taking on too much, or are you undershooting and not giving them enough support? And those are hard calls to make. I see you really pivot here with this idea of not just trying to take out disappointment in our kids’ lives, but have this be a growing experience, right, an opportunity of growth which requires a growth mindset in all of us. Me as a parent, seeing that my child is in process, and this is going to be instrumental in their growth but even more difficult probably to see is a kid’s viewpoint that getting cut from the basketball team is going to in any way be a boon to my life.

There’s just no way for me to compute that, right? And that’s one disappointment, but then now amplify that all the way up the scale of things our kids deal with and young adults deal with in terms of setbacks and disappointments, right? I know, for example, rejection in marriage and all kinds of things.

These things are hard. So hard. Yeah, one of the things that comes to mind as you’re talking about that, we would observe, I think, that those who have gone through a lot of disappointment or difficulty, when that’s done really well, they come out as just the most amazing, beautiful, strong, God honoring individuals.

That’s not always the end of the story, but there is so much potential for growth in that. And it doesn’t mean that we wish that or want that, but it does have the opportunity to generate a lot of growth and maturity. Yeah, it’s fascinating, too. I think if you were to look at how we mark the timelines of our life, you would find that those major disappointments very much are markers in the formation of who we’ve become, right? Right. They have a significant impact. Oh, for sure. For good and bad. And I think that even more just substantiates the need to do this well with our kids so that this can be a moment that brings about a great deal of healing and health. And so, I think we want to know what it is that we should not be doing?

So, we promised the dos and don’ts. All right, be careful not to do the following things. Yeah, share about this, what should we not be doing? Oh, well, so I think, if nothing else to just have this first one in the background because the reality is you’re going to miss it a lot of times. So don’t miss it that they’re disappointed.

You know what? Honestly, sometimes you’re like, hey knucklehead, they’re disappointed. Right. You know what I’m saying? Oh, yes. Okay. Yeah, I’m listening. And part of what’s so hard about that is because the things that are disappointing to them seem so small, especially when they’re young.

It’s just like, what? Yeah. You know, and so therefore it’s so easy to miss when this friend doesn’t text back, or this project doesn’t go the way they thought it was going to go, or the Sunday school event got canceled, or whatever those things are. On our minds, these are barely on the radar, but these are huge things in their day-to-day lives.

And therefore, it’s like, oh, that got canceled is kind of a relief maybe for me, but it’s a significant thing to them. And we honor them as people when, if it’s big to them, it’s big to us. Exactly. And as you gave that example, Brian, I had to think that’s kind of what I expect of God. You know what I mean?

Sure. And that is a part of my God frame. And I think we’ll even talk later that he cares about the little stuff. Yes, and I think that’s a great point even in modeling. Oh, that matters to you is starting to create that picture of oh, even somebody who’s infinitely bigger than me could care about this thing that has to be peanuts in his world. Yeah, that’s good.

So, this idea of not talking them out of their feelings is something you’ve spoken to before. Yeah. Say more about that. Yeah. Don’t try to talk them out of their feelings. I think one of our natural tendencies is when a child experiences an emotion is to get in there and say, okay, are you supposed to be feeling this or not? And then trying to convince them, oh, you shouldn’t feel this, you ought to feel this. And emotions really don’t work that way. You know, if we could all be happy, we would flip that switch. We would all do that. None of us enjoy feeling sad or disappointed. If we could feel happy all the time, and we could force that to happen, we would surely do that.

And but sometimes we expect that for our kids, like, oh, you’re not supposed to feel this, you’re not supposed to feel that. Let’s just get over here and they just don’t work that way. So, we’re putting them in a position to try to bring about something that isn’t even feasible and may not even be helpful.

That is good. That is good. And we’re going to get to the do’s but something that Craig Stickling taught me as we were working through some disappointment with one of our children. He was helping and he didn’t talk them out of the feeling, but he did help them see the size that feeling should be. So, our terminology was small bucket, middle sized bucket, and a really large bucket.

Okay, we’re angry right now because of this certain thing. Should it be a small bucket angry, a middle bucket angry, or a large bucket angry. And that became really helpful vocabulary because at home, we could use that. Then, okay, how sad should we be? This is sad. This is sad and you should be sad. Scale the sadness. Yes.

Yeah, and I think that’s where, again, you’re letting the emotion be there. You’re not trying to talk them out of the emotion. Yeah, you’re like, okay, this is what you’re feeling. How big is it? Okay, as we look at some of the circumstances how big would we anticipate it being based on those circumstances?

And you’re starting to give them language to be able to articulate that and think through that, which I think is so key. Whereas if you’re just trying to talk them out of the emotion, you’re almost always just dismissing. Well, you’re basically saying it shouldn’t be there, or it’s small and insignificant.

And the reality with emotions is that they’re just going to show up sometimes and not even have a reason. So, when they sometimes show up and there’s not a direct reason. You wake up and you’re just kind of sad. If you’re talking them out of it, there’s no space for what to do with that. Whereas how do we just acknowledge that you can feel sad, and you can still be wise, you can still make wise decisions, and let’s focus on that. We’ll see if maybe something comes together why the emotion is there, and if not, I bet it’ll just change in time. Exactly, yeah.

Don’t rescue them from feelings. We do this sometimes, don’t we? Yes, it is hard not to for a lot of us. Yeah, it is going back to something we’ve communicated already, but it is hard to see somebody who you care about experience painful emotions or painful experiences, and that automatically puts you in a position of wanting to try to just make the pain go away.

But then generally what that leads to on a practical level is offering solutions that bring temporary relief, but actually set them up for really unhealthy, unhelpful ways of dealing with difficulties. So, for example, what that might look like today, it often looks like giving a child a screen in the midst of their disappointment or certain kinds of foods for young kids.

Those would be very common ways that we use to rescue our kids from feelings. There’s something I think really profound about how we assess the situation based on their feelings. So, if you’re a parent, the sadness, for example, is really painful to sit with. So, if they could just not be sad but be happy, then we’re all good, right?

We’re all good, right? Okay. Now, again, another silly teacher analogy here, but I have found as a teacher that my teacher wellbeing is very much tied to the grade book. That is the numbers that reflect what my students know in theory. Sure. Right? Sure. And I just know this in myself.

I have the ability as a teacher to bump everybody a grade letter up. Like I could do that. I’ve got the authority to go in there and make the adjustments. And I promise you, if I were to do that, it would change my mood immediately but yet change nothing about the reality of the situation, right? You know what I’m saying?

Yes, and so I see that as you raise this point about resting in the front feelings, it’s almost like that will fix the situation when it doesn’t. It helps bring temporary relief but I think in the long term it moves us out of helping them grow and into more just keeping them stunted so that the next time they face a similar situation or a more difficult situation they’re only option is going to be to fix the books because they don’t know how to just be sad and trust that if they can just be there, eventually that’ll pass and they’ll be able to move into helpful behavior that that will help in the growth piece.

And so, Brian, in these examples, a lot has been on feeling and emotion. So, as we think about another thing not to do. And we really talked this, you’ve mentioned before, don’t convey that unwanted emotions are bad. And I think that really has a lot to about what we’re talking about right now.

Yeah, certain emotions are bad. So, say more about that piece. Yeah, I think it’s just another one of those points for parents to recognize that we don’t want to really put emotions in a bad category versus a good category. But to see emotions is something God has given. Some are comfortable and some are not comfortable, but a lot of times they give information to us. And there’s helpful information if we’re willing to explore what might be behind them. And if we don’t make space for the emotions that are uncomfortable, then it’s really hard for them to move into and enjoy the pleasant emotions too. If we’re saying these emotions are bad, we’ve got to stay away from them, accidentally we’re cutting them off from some of these pleasant emotions too.

Yeah. So, when disappointments arise, we really have a great classroom to grow as emotional human beings. Yeah, right. And I think as we grow as emotional human beings that contributes to flourishing and being able to actually experience the sorts of things we want to experience, and they want to experience emotionally.

If we can get healthy in that space and learn how to operate in this emotional world, that actually helps expand the possibilities. Yeah, that’s good. Let’s move along then to the things to do. So it’s not just about not doing some things but it’s interesting that all of these that you conveyed missing it trying to rescue them from it and all of that.

I mean those things just come naturally. It’s just like I don’t need to be taught how to do these things and we do them. Some of these other things maybe we need to be taught how to do so let’s talk about them. How do we help them do this? Yeah.

Well, I think even in this, just to see where there’s disappointment, that really, in many ways, you’re just helping them walk through grief. You’re helping them walk through the sadness that comes along with an expectation that’s not met, whatever that is. And if we can help them recognize the emotion, if we can help validate the emotion.

Yeah, that makes sense and be a partner that’s walking beside them who has walked down this road many times on other topics. That’s just going to put them in a much better position to walk through it. You know, I’ve heard it been said that emotions are somewhat messaging to us like lights on a dashboard and that type of thing.

Maybe they’re telling me if I’m sad, I should grieve. That’s what it’s telling me to do. Very often though, I interpret my emotions to say something different. For example, disappointment telling me that I’m bad. Or disappointment telling me that I am a failure and will never turn out to be anything. Right. Those things are very gripping. But really what you’re doing, you’re pivoting in this and saying, oh, no your sadness is telling you to grieve. Let’s do that.

Yes. Say a bit about what we mean by grief. Then what’s the goal of grief? Well, I think that the goal of grief, what it’s really trying to communicate, generally speaking, is that there’s been a loss. There’s been something that hasn’t gone the way that you had hoped. And so if that’s the case, then if we can identify what that is, and walk through it and put what I would call helpful meaning to it, make sense out of it in a way that is consistent with the biblical worldview, is consistent with them being created in the image of God and so on and so forth, then I think that’s going to put them in a really helpful position.

And then I think too, on the other side, you can also start to talk through grief or disappointment as almost always useful because of expectation. So, let’s think about that situation. And were your expectations maybe out of line with what was actually likely to happen?

And if so, then you get to move into that area of, okay, let’s make sure that our expectations are close to what is likely to be reality because the distance between reality and your expectation is disappointing. Exactly. The further those things get apart, the more disappointment you’re going to experience.

That’s really good. This idea of making meaning I think is what you said. Yes, the meaning they make has a lot to do with this next point about helping them manage stories. Yes, because I think God’s created us as meaning making beings. That’s what we do. It’s part of being intellectual creatures that are able to think and develop amazing things by God’s gifting and that we are always trying to figure things out. That is really helpful, but one of the things that we have to be careful with is that our mind is always putting meaning to things in an emotional sense, and it’s that internal chatter that’s always going on that most of us don’t even realize is going on.

If we can help our kids recognize the stories that they’re putting to or the meaning that they’re putting the things that have happened and then help them evaluate, is that story accurate? Yeah. Is it not accurate? Or what? What would be things that we’d want to speak into that would help clarify the meaning or that the story is really helpful.

And let’s just put this on for size all the way down to a young child rejected on the playground or to a teenager rejected in a romantic interest or girlfriend or boyfriend to an adult who’s going through a divorce. Okay, so, yeah, I am an unwanted person.

Sure, so lots of stories can run. So, as you think about disappointment in those three different settings you can see very easily where managing a story can really do damage. Oh, it’s so powerful and that’s where I think if we can help our kids recognize the difference between what’s actually happened, the event, whatever it would be, and those three would be good examples of events, the emotions that they experience. And then the story is separate. The story is the meaning that we’re putting to these things. We want to make sure that the story is aligned with Scripture. Yeah. And that’s a tricky thing to do, especially if you don’t identify this story.

Because as we walk through life, we assume the story is just an event. We merge those two and if we can help our kids start to piece those apart, then they can work with a story that I’m making meaning of something. Right. This very much circles closely to their identity and that kind of thing.

Something I find that I has been profoundly difficult is walking with my kids through identity, walking through with my kids when perhaps they’re not happy with who they perceive themselves to be. This can be a really dark and difficult thing. Yes.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this idea of helping them with their own identity. Yeah, because disappointment is high stakes for that question. Yeah, and because I think this is actually maybe a zoomed in aspect of their story, but I think it’s a zoomed in aspect that’s really important for us to highlight and it’s the story that says what does this mean about me?

Okay. You know? Yeah. And, and I think that’s such an important question for us as caretakers or parents to have in mind as our kids work through things or experience life. Helping them, you know, sort through what this means about me in a way that’s true is so important because that’s not what they’re going to naturally do.

And I think if we can even do it proactively, that can be really powerful. If we see something coming up, let’s say they’ve got a test on Friday, and we know this is a big deal, and already my child wonders about, am I smart? Okay, so we know that’s in the background, and they’re going to have this test, and we go up to them Thursday night or Friday morning and say, I know you’ve got that test coming up, but I want you to know I love who you are as a person. That doesn’t shift one iota whether you get an A or you totally fail this. You are welcome here. You’re loved by your dad or your mom, whoever’s communicating that and just trying to speak into that in a proactive way would be just an example.

Because those are the sorts of moments that can have a significant impact on that little Maya that’s trying to figure out what this means about me? Yeah, I think that is excellent. We’re going to have two more points to make on this particular item here. And then we’ll have time if any of our listeners have questions, they can unmute themselves and ask that question.

So, you can be getting ready for that if you’re at all interested. We’ve touched on this already, Brian, about God images and a crisis in a moment of disappointment. Yeah. I know I have heard statements like, why did God? And why doesn’t God? And that’s not fair.

You know what I’m saying? They’re raising some really big things so I think disappointment is a place where faith can be founded, or faith can really fail. Yeah, no question. Yeah. And so, I think, this too, much like the identity pieces is a really important aspect of the stories piece.

What does this mean about God? What does this mean about who he is? And his view of me and his care towards me, and that comes right into center focus as we walk through disappointments and our kids walk through disappointments. Yeah. And we can be sure whatever their disappointment is that they’re walking through today, there’ll be another disappointment down the road that’s likely to be more difficult.

So, if we can keep this view, that question in mind, that’s part of what their little mind is going to be wrestling through, whether they’re 25 or 5. To be able to say, what does that look like? What’s the story that I’m having about God? Does that align with the actual event? Does that align with the Scripture, how God describes himself to be in the Scripture?

And if not, then to make space for the emotions of that’s really confusing or that’s really disappointing. And then we can say, I’ve been there, and that goes back to modeling. Or we can say, I think David’s been there, let’s read this Psalm together and see how he didn’t know how to make sense out of this either.  I don’t know where else to turn and I don’t know how else to view you God, but this doesn’t make any sense to me. I hear what you’re saying. I hear honesty and the way that you’ve just talked about that very up front.

I don’t understand what you’re doing. This doesn’t make sense. And so, it sounds like you would allow into your thinking some of that raw and honest interaction about God and with God. I think sometimes we can be a little bit like, well, God’s right and who am I to say anything, you know, let’s not talk about that.

Sure. Yeah, but I do think it seems like those in the Scriptures are very honest about that and I think if we can allow for that and even in this space, if we can be proactive in trying to build up what the view of God is in the Scripture before the storm hits, I think is really helpful, too. That probably takes us back to not wanting to be detached, and we don’t want to be enmeshed, we want to be in this sweet place of being connected and aware of what’s going on.

And that then allows us, I think, to be proactive. Just this idea of helping them grieve, helping them with their God image. I think even in our conversation, a word that comes up here is a lament. This is a topic that we’ve done a podcast on. I’m sure there’s some webinar content on lament. There are articles out there. It’s a really beautiful way to take our pain to God. And so, if our listeners are interested in looking more into that, you’ll find that much of the Psalms are a lament and a really healthy way to take our complaint on to the broad shoulders of God. It’s really an act of faith because God, you’re big enough to handle and hold this.

Yeah, so here it goes. Yeah, and I have found trying to help my children limit. It’s been a good exercise. How do I do that? Thinking that through and sometimes you have to model it, and you have to do it with them and learn together. And if there’s space for them to ask questions or what about this or how about that. You said sometimes you have to really coax it out of them, right?

Yes. Say it. Yes. What is it? Yeah, I hear it. And that comes back to being able to manage our own disappointment well. Like we talked about the front end, if they don’t think dad is able to hear what I have to say and is not able to not just totally melt down and go into a hole or get really angry and frustrated, then they’re not going to be able to do that.

And then they’re left to try to sort through those stories themselves which I don’t think we want to do where we can help. Okay. And then finally, again, this was our last point here, Brian, you say give them hope. Yeah. I think in the midst of all of this if there’s anybody that has reason to be hopeful, it’s us. As followers of Christ, we know the end of the story.

And I think that that we can be hopeful as we walk beside them and we say, see, when we celebrate on the other side of disappointment, when they’ve gotten through it, we help them see that and recognize that and say, I told you I thought we were going to get through this. And then they experience that.

And then the next thing comes up and say, oh, I know that’s really hard. And okay, let’s see how we can walk through this well. And as they build up this picture of, oh yeah, hard things come, disappointments come, but there is hope. And then, you know, what an exciting thing as they start to get that concept, and we start to be able to share. Our hope starts to build too getting through this but then ultimately just in the big picture of things that that there is always hope and to be able to champion that.

I think too knowing when circumstantial hope is hope at all. Sure. And when non circumstantial hope is always present in Christ. So, for example, a lot of the disappointment that I want to say to my kid is, well, next time, or it won’t happen again. Or this is what we’ll do so it doesn’t happen again.

Right. Those are all circumstantial things. And there’s a good place for that. That’s good stuff to do and grow as a human being. But there are many things I cannot guarantee. So, you have to have that circumstantial hope accompanied or almost carried by a non-circumstantial hope, which has got to have God all over it.

Oh, absolutely. And I think that’s where one of the things we as parents often do, rightfully so, is we say, it’s going to be okay. But I think we have to define what we mean by that, because we don’t mean that the circumstances are going to turn out the way that we’d like to. What we’re saying is, even if the circumstances don’t turn out, it’s going to be okay because of a deeper reason that we know who is in control, we know who’s in charge, and from that standpoint, it will be okay, but sometimes if we don’t explain that, they think, oh, okay, that means it’s going to turn out, and then it doesn’t, and then we’re a liar.

Yeah, and that’s not even what we meant. Right, but according to their script and according to what they understood, it didn’t come to pass. This really brings us to the end of our content here. We just have 10 minutes or so to the top of the hour. If anybody has a has a question that they want to put in.

You can chat it out. Arlan, maybe you’ve got some. Okay. We’ve got a chat that did come in here. Let me read it to you, Matt, while you and Brian can think about this. It says as we walk with other parents, what do you recommend from the self-disappointment that can come from how we are parenting? The challenge of finding the balance of all these things through different seasons of parenting or as you walk with parents who are feeling disappointed in themselves on that journey. Are there any kinds of recommendations or thoughts you might have more speaking to the parents who are navigating through disappointment themselves?

This strikes too close to home. So, Brian, you’re going to have to talk about this. Yeah. Well, even just from your comment there, Matt, I think I would say that we’re in good company there. I think that as parents, as we walk forward in our parenting journey there are going to be a lot of things that we feel disappointed about. Maybe that’s towards ourselves how we’ve handled different things and even in that to then engage that journey that we’ve talked about.

Yeah, there is going to be grief. There are going to be things we look back on when we were sad, and we wish there were some that we would have done differently, or we see the outcome of how we handled this thing or that thing. And to be able to acknowledge that, to move into the grief process ourselves, to put ourselves in a community that can speak into that and encourage us.

And also, just at the end of the day, coming back to that hope piece of recognizing that we don’t take full responsibility for outcomes, including our kids. And trusting the Lord’s good hand to even use our missteps along the way for his good purposes. There are two things that came to mind with this.

One is a thing that you had mentioned a while ago, but basically, how resilient kids are and by and large if you show up for your kids, you’re doing pretty good. Yes, you know what I’m saying? So, I don’t know and maybe that’s just lowering the bar to make me feel good.

But I think just to get the sense that none of us do it perfectly. And to have this as a part of self-reflection and disappointment is very near into my life. But I will say this is the second point. I am finding that my kids now are getting some really good relationships with other very, very good people, strong human beings in their life. Okay. I’ve got a son doing coffee with just some top-notch brothers in the church, for example. And you know what? I know that he’s expressing disappointment with them, and I think they can do it better than me. And so, I can give more examples. To four of my children in these types of situations, I’m kind of almost backing off as a parent.  Many of us have a community that wants to step into that and they’re able to do that.

So, find comfort and grace in a larger community that absorbs some of the parenting. Yeah, I know for sure, and I think that’s great. I’m way too close to it sometimes to do it. Well, yeah, if there’s opportunity for that, I think that’s a great point to lean on the community around us.

Great question. Thank you for that. Thanks, Brian. Yeah, it’s been a pleasure. Appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks, each one, for coming on. Again, this will be recorded and disseminated on our website if you’re interested or want to pass it along, but God bless you, each one as you work with your children and grandchildren and the children in the church through their disappointment.

It’s a powerful place, an important field to tend. Yeah. So, thanks.