The 4 Habits of Raising Joy-Filled Kids

How do you raise children to live joyful lives just taking the time to really connect with their children, give them your attention and just watch what happens. We just think everybody would be better off with more joy.

We think that if we can get this started a family level change a lot of things. Welcome to Building Relationships with Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times best seller.

Five love languages today join building secret to raising healthy children Marcus Warner and Chris want to have a word every parent written a practical and encouraging resource title before habits of raising joy filled simple model for developing your child's maturity every level. Find out more about it.

Five love languages.com Gary before we get started with the topic of on this parenting resource that is different than anything I think we ever featured I want to start with the date on the calendar today, September 11. It's the 20th anniversary of 9/11 what's going through your heart today about this difficult event in history.

Chris first of all I remember as many, many people do, where I was on that day.

Our staff work on church staff and our staff. Was it retreat and we just started the retreat was the first morning of the retreat and whenever we saw what we saw and heard on television. Our pastor said, guys, I think we need to go home and when you call the prayer meeting at our church tonight. So that's what we did.

We drove home and just gave up her retreat planning session and a call to prayer meeting that night we had over 100 people who came out for prayer meeting that night praying for our country. The other thing I remember is that the leaders in Washington stood on the steps and not an praying and saying God bless America and here's the other thing I think Chris you know, today we still have as much storm or maybe more than we had even back then. 20 years ago hope that God's people, especially today will reach out in prayer that God will bring healing to our nation and I would certainly encourage our leaders in Washington to do the same because we are very divided in our country and rather than finding unity. It was were fighting each other and that's never the way to build a nation that's my thoughts there's more prayers for today. You know I think of the children who lost parents get on that day, and now they are 20 years older than looking back in. So there's a lot of pain a lot of hurt and as parents we really want to give our kids you know healing in the middle of the turmoil the stress. I remember our children are coming home from school saying we don't know that we don't know what happened that the school is different schools decided not to let the kids know you know about the specifics and whether it was a good idea or bad idea.

It was just what happened.

And so they were getting the information trying to process all of it and so as we deal with this topic today and think about that issue of maturity.

That's what we want for our kids. Let me introduce our guests Dr. Marcus Warner is president of deeper walk international former pastor college professor.

He's written on everything from how to study the Bible to dealing with spiritual warfare to emotional healing. His heart is to equip people with practical tools for dealing with the root issues that keep them stock is co-author on the resource for featuring today. Rev. Chris Corsi, president of Thrive today, a nonprofit ministry focusing on training leaders and communities in skills that make relationships work. Chris is an ordained minister, pastoral counselor and author you find out more about them in the book are resource today before habits of raising joy filled kids@ 5lovelanguages.com.

Dr. Warner and Chris, welcome back to Building Relationships yes like to be with you again yeah think you were glad to be here, but I don't recall having a conversation with you about another book that dealt with joy failed marriages and there's a correlation between the two right joy, failed marriages, joy filled children, absolutely. It's the arteries, joy filled children. If you don't have a joyful marriage. So those two things are definitely related and almost as soon as we wrote that last book, people started asking us for parenting, follow-up, and so we are delighted to be able to do that now that you talked about how 15 minutes a day can make a huge difference in a marriage. Is it the same and raising children does it take longer than 15 minutes a day.

Well parenting deftly a full-time job, but it is funny what 15 minutes. Knowing that you can have at least 15 minutes of joy with your kid every day does make a difference to so I don't want to minimize that.

But absolute full-time job. Marcus, I just really hope that you know what we want parents to have the lens that a little bit of joy goes a long way and so just being able to leave a thread of joy through the interactions and the conversations with our kids will go a long way. Chris, let's define what you mean by joy. Is it different from simply raising happy children. Joy means Sarge brings concerned we are glad to be together.

So joy is relational in nature. When someone's face lights up to see us.

We hear it in their voice tone. We see it in their body language. Happiness is more circumstantial. So while we certainly want our children to have happiness. What's important is relational joy is what gets us through the good times as well as the bad times. So I like how Marcus says it that joy is relational happiness and that means were glad to be together and you know when big emotions arise, we learn how to get back to joy from our epithets earlier. Chris mentioned that this resource is different than other parenting books. What sets us apart from all other resources out there. Marcus, what would you say well it's got a unique model to it and that it is that it brings the latest neuroscience and attachment theory to bear, and then creates a simple model for people and so we had a lot of initial feedback from from readers saying I've never read a book like this before.

This is really going to be a breakthrough for parenting so we been encouraged by that initial reaction yeah I Marcus and I really wanted to to give parents some very practical tools the language and even a lens because you know it. Let's face it, parenting has its challenges day in and day out, and we really hope that this book would not only provide a language of you know what look like even build joy at different life stages, but there is also activities what we call habit builders in the book, so parents can actually put the material into practice. As the reading I think parents are looking for that is one of the problems that you say that you're addressing in the end this book before habits of raising joy feel children say in a nutshell, that our country is having a maturity crisis in your opening comments are reflecting on 9/11.

One of the things we see is that we have a very divided country in which people are not able to remain relational and act like themselves and and handle problems like adults and so in another book I call that sandbox leadership when you're not able to play well together in the idea here is that the family was designed by God to create joy joyful commute community is you know when God first created the world. He wanted a family for himself and it wasn't just so he'd have people to tell him how wonderful he was.

He wanted to share joy with those people. That's why he said I've come so that your joy may compete be completed, that my joy may be complete. That the fundamental purpose of the family is to experience joy together everything of what a revolution it would create in our culture.

If our families began to see themselves and catch the vision that are our core function here is to make joy. The foundation of what we do as a family and we now know that from brain science that the human brain runs best on the fuel of joy and so Marcus and I wanted to kinda cast this vision for parents to see that look God designed the brain to run on joy and if we don't build joy in our families and our communities. What happens is where highly motivated for what we would call pseudo-joys, which are those artificial replacements and so when you've got the fuel of joy present. The good news is the byproduct of joy will be maturity and so we really wanted to provide a lens for for parents just have some essentials to develop maturity in their kiddos.

I'm excited about jumping into this topic and I think that those who are listeners, especially those who are parents are going to stay tuned for the rest of this program. Looking forward to it. This is Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller "The 5 Love Languages" are featured. Resource is before habits of raising joy filled kids a simple model for developing your child's maturity at every level. Find out more about it at our website. Five love languages.com president of deeper walk international Dr. Marcus Warner is with us as well as the president of Thrive today Chris Corsi again. You can find out more about them and are featured resource@ 5lovelanguages.com Marcus and Chris a lot of couples begin their parenting journey. Thinking it's going to be easy.

I remember I had that idea when it gets difficult. They often feel that they're doing something wrong and I wanted we do wrong. What are we doing wrong. Marcus, what lies parenting so hard.

It's a great question if it is a lot of reasons for it, and one of them is that a lot of us have really good models growing up. And so, because that we lack skills. I know when I started parenting up a little bit like a pilot who was behind the cockpit with all these dials and I'm like I don't know how to fly this thing. I don't know if I should really be parenting. That's like Anda because I didn't feel equipped into like I had all the skills that I needed to do this and it was a little bit overwhelming as I think people tend to react to that leader over parenting or under parenting they avoid it.

You know or they dive in and they micromanage everything and so that kind of model is is one of the issues I think another one to his a lot of us bring a lot of brokenness into into the parenting process that we are not yet healed from ourselves and it leaks into her parenting in ways that were not quite sure what to do with them there. So there's a lot of things are going to just our lack of preparation. If you will, that makes this harder than we think it's going to be suppressed. Were you prepared to be a parent you know what I felt like I had 1 foot in the water and 1 foot on the beach when I became a father.

There were so there was so much joy and excitement to look at my newborn son and I can remember taking him home that day from the hospital and the realization hit me pretty quickly.

Like wow I'm responsible for another human being here and there. There was some there is some stress over that but yet I think we had other people in my life that had traveled that way before. So being able to have support have people who been there and done that before. Really went a long way. I think all of us are appreciative as we look back. For those individuals who were there to offer advice when we ask for it and and typically gave us really good advice.

So Chris, what, what are some common fears that parents will have to overcome. Because we can face this before and now we got this child that's exactly right. And I think every loving parent is afraid that they're going to fail and they're afraid they're going to somehow mess up their children and along the way we we start to fear basically being out of control.

Where were maybe our child's crying our child's need is present.

We don't quite know what to do and so there is that tension of trying to meet our child's needs.

While we fully even know what were doing because this is a new a new pathway for us and I think there's a few yell there's a fear that somehow going to be blamed for our child's mistakes and at the end of the day.

We want to do a great job.

We love our children but the fear is this is so important to me. I'm afraid I'm going to somehow mess this up and that's what can cause us to over parent or to under parent and so really is learning to find that sweet spot in our parenting so that we build joy with our children and we learn satisfaction as as the age think that ideal self blaming follows on the child grows up because in my counseling office when there, I want to say a teenaged or even a young adult child is made really really poor decisions that are detrimental to their lives and the parents sit in my office and say what did we do wrong, you know it's it's taking the blame upon themselves for that and no question about it. Parents do influence the children in a very positive way or negative way.

So Marcus and let let's jump into this joy filled idea here. What is it mean to raise joy filled mature children and what's the connection between joy and immaturity.

That's right at the heart of the book and that is the connection is emotional capacity, and that is mature kids have the capacity to deal with the ups and downs of life and's and not get overwhelmed by them. So what we want is for our kids to see life as an adventure and there only to see life as an adventure. If they aren't afraid of all the emotions are going to feel and so what happens with every emotion that I can't handle. I instinctively begin to avoid things or to make me feel that emotion so I can handle shame.

I begin to avoid anything that causes me shame if I can avoid angry people that I avoid any anything. This would put me in the presence of angry people. After while my life begins to shrink and I just avoid more more things in life and I'm now living a fear-based life instead of a joy based life and so his parents what we want is we don't want our kids to be stuck in a in a fear-based living. We want them to have that joy foundation for life that says you know what I can handle the tough stuff I can do hard things I can face heart emotions and I can recover. And so what we want to do is try to help parents understand how do you raise those kinds of kids. How do you create what are the skills that these kids need to learn in Eskimo or focusing on here so Chris you mention brain science earlier. How does brain science informed the solutions that your offering yes so we now know developmentally that the brain has seasons where you can grow. Certain skills really well in certain seasons where it's harder to grow certain skills so we Marcus and I say you know what joy is, is a learned skill habit that we need throughout our lifespan and the first year of life.

For example, is all about joy and so when we know that it helps us understand why the terrible twos happen because that second and third year of life is when children start to learn how to get back to joy from negative emotions so that's usually when anger becomes rage and his parents.

We just kind of want to pull her hair out because that we don't quite know what to do in those moments with these big emotions happen and so brain science also tells us that that we need rest. So while joy is a high-energy emotion rest is that low-energy time to really recharge and so we know that their children need this rhythm of joy and rest. And so what Marcus and I've been able to do in the book is really helped to tease out what are some of those skills are those needs that happen at each stage of life. And when you know those seasons you can really focus on some of those skills that will grow and blossom and really prepare our children for adulthood jump in here to think that the model of brain science that were operating off of understands that there's a relational circuitry in our brain and that if it is on you get. I more creative.

I'm a better problem solver. I more intuitive and more connected and more engaged on that relational circuitry gets shut down.

I can literally turn into a different parent altogether like sometimes and that's why kids can walk around on eggshells around me because I don't know which member to get and Chris actually wrote an excellent book on this call to Joyce which is just talking about what happening in our brain when I relational circuitry's on versus when a relational circuitry is off. It's a part of what were doing is trying to help parents know how to live your whole brain. Parents of 1/2) and how do I raise whole-grain kids that I have to read those terms.

I think our parents can verify with identify Gary as a hosted or cohosted 1/2 brain cohost I don't know if you will not be Chris and Andrew have nine children, so they have a lot of experience in this area. Marcus, you say that you have a simple model. What is that model going to give us an overview of that. Certainly the model is ABCD.

So we just call this is the ABCD ease of parenting and you can associate AMB with the right side of your brain and C&D with the left side of your brain. So a is for attunement is the idea that we need to be reading body language and facial expressions of our children and meet them in those emotions before we do anything else. Too often, as parents we lead with problems instead of attuning with emotions first.

The other problem. We did have of this is, sometimes we expect our kids to attend us rather than us attuning to them and so when that happens I'm I expect my kid to read me is that and say can't you see how upset I am. Can't you see I'm already frazzled you know leave me alone and we are putting the burden on them to be able to read us instead of taking that burden ourselves. We need to be able to read them well attuned to their needs, meet them in those needs before we go to the next becomes right after that and that is once we meet them in those those emotions we want to help them bounce back from them serve and help them build balance, which is both about just giving them joyful experiences.

Enjoy workouts and then also helping them learn how to recover back to joy from upsetting emotions. That's the a in the then on the left side of the brain more task oriented is correcting with care and developing disciplines relationally and this is that sometimes we have to correct her kids right it can all be happy all the time.

They do things that are wrong and we need to let them know that if they stay on that path is not good and well, and so but we want to correct them always with a positive vision and with a sense of having done the a and that the first one of the challenge and what are the chances that comes with that is that again we often lead with correction and then try to attune and build balance afterwards and I just want to point out here to read, not saying that you have to explain why to a kid before you correct them you want to correct them immediately, and with the why right. It's okay to explain why you're doing this but you don't want to have to prove your case before you correct the child or you're setting yourself up for arguments for the rest of your life. And then the last one D is the idea that skills bring freedom so we went highly skilled kids so that they have the most freedom possible in life. That means we want to be relationally connected to them as their learning skills like playing the piano and gardening and reading in all the different skills that give them more capacity to enjoy life and to experience things with freedom so ABCD is the simple model and its anchor directly in the kind of right and left side of the brain. Okay well I'm still back on a contrast the attune thing in it, but that makes an awful lot of sense, with what you said Marcus about fear that if you are fear based in your parenting and all the permutations that what that means you can't be attuned to your child you can't read you know you Gary talks about his son bringing him this music and rather than shutting him down actually asking him okay will what about that song makes you know strikes according in your heart. Tell me more about that when you're attuned you.

You asked things like that. Tell me more about that but when you're based in fear.

You you more directly say you should be listening to that because it has this word in it and that no melody is no good. That kind of thing when you say that Marcus, that's exactly the problem. So the way God designed a brain information flows from the right to the left and that means that God meant for us to start with attunement to go to building bounce and then go to the correction in the developing disciplines. There's a time to lead with the problem.

It is called a crisis so that the issue here is that if I'm constantly leading with the problem I'm turning everything into a crisis and that what that does is it just breeds fear so kids are constantly afraid of the next crisis that was going come in a crisis is simply defined as something that is overwhelmed, mom or dad.

And so what we wanted tenant to do instead is is say before I jump into the data before jumping to the problems I want to take the time to read whereby Charles at meet them there. Whether it's good or bad and and then go from there. So the story told by Karis is right on the money there because he took the time to connect with his child and what this meant to him and how it made him feel before going in any kind of correction and that's the way the brain is designed to operate.

That's the flow is designed to follow. I think their parents are listening to us who are you hearing these things for the first time because often just by nature. We operate on the moment and if the child done something that negative, then we we jump into that failing to deal with that attuning to where they are emotionally and what's going on in their life. So yeah, this this is going to be helpful just go back on this last when you mentioned and that is the developing disciplines relationally are skills is very interesting and I'm sure this before in the program but I was talking to a group of professional football players and their spouses and were sitting on the table and one of the guys said you know Dr. Emily said here. Here's our problem. We been thinking about this when we going to do when were too old to play football because that's all we know how to do that's all we've ever done since we were little kids.

We played football and we know how to do anything. If you have any other skills in the other guys chimed in around the tables of the electronic we don't dinner and one them so I'm teaching my son right now how to mow grass that's going to be an asset to that is really important is it not to teach them skills that are going to help them in relationships, but it's also employees are Chris, but it's also Blauvelt build a bond right, you know it it does build upon my wife frequently tells my mother. Hey, thank you for teaching Chris to do the dishes because as a normal habit after a meal I go to the sink. I do the dishes. If it's not something you really even think about is just part of what we do. So when we learned these you know these important habits and skills we will carry them with us the rest of our lives. I was with them daughter and her husband and her two grandchildren last week on a week of vacation and just was reminded again.

Our granddaughter who is now his just finished college. She's an excellent cook, she can cook anything she can bake anything and I'm thinking man who remarries the scales going to get a big deal here till that's going to serve her well wherever she goes. Our program is Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman. You can find us online@ 5lovelanguages.com. There you can take an easy assessment of your love language and see our featured resource today.

It's a book by our guest, Dr. Marcus Warner and Chris Cooper as he titled the four habits of raising joy filled kids simple model for developing your child's maturity at every level just got a five love languages.com Chris, I will ask you question about what we talked about this far and I see in my own parenting I used to define being a good parent as being in control and being able to control my kids behavior so success or failure was all about.

Do they act well in this setting in.

Are they out of control or are they in control and so it was more.

It was less about them and their behavior and more about me being able to do what I thought they ought to do your corral them heard them and that I see as a big problem even in the church that we only look at the outward appearance, rather than what's going on inside talk about that.

Yeah you know it that's that's what I really like about this book. A lot of parenting books really focus on behavior modification. How do I you know how do we guide our children to do what we really want them to be able to do what I like about this book is.

It really focuses on character formation, so Marcus and I make the point that look when you build joy with your children and actually help them to learn from these important relational skills for one learn how to be the best version of themselves as God created them to be and so they learn and anchor when the hard stuff in life happens and the storms come they learn how to roll with that. How to continue to stay relational. Even under hardship and so you know it's understandable.

Wheat we certainly want their children to behave well and to make us proud. But now we can focus on how do we empower our children to be the best versions of themselves, and to learn how to suffer well when things go wrong, and these are this is a foundation that they will build a relational house on for the rest of their lives. I'm assuming that some of our listeners are parents of infants and some of elementary age children in high school students and maybe even young adults.

So Marcus, what are some of the key differences between parenting at these different stages of the process.

Yeah, there could be some enormous differences. For example, in the infant stage, you don't really discipline your child is the goal. There is not so much controlling behavior. It is really all about building joy and bouncing back from upsetting emotions literally in infants brain turns into a different personality with every emotion that they feel at some one of the jobs of a parent is every time that we attuning to them in their upsetting emotions and help them bounce back from that.

We are training their brain to state the stay the same person regardless of how they feel that's huge Justin about self because if I don't, I can still be 60 years old and turning into a different person whenever I feel anger whenever I feel fear, because I just never learned how to migraine just never let it master that that skill of how I see myself so that's big in infancy. Also another key thing that happens between before about age 4.

Infants really can't understand negative commands so their brain just isn't advanced enough and so if you think I'm a times we tell a little kids two and three years old.

It don't like it. Was it don't hit your sister right what their brain hears is blah blah blah. Hit your sister that their brain is unable to to know what you mean by that so the best that they can do is read you and their reading your there attuning to you in reading your body language and saying I don't think they actually want me to get my sister but it's what they said so now they're fighting between what they understood. Your words to be a mother. Understanding your body language to be some kids do learn to read their parents really well and so it feels like my kids understand negative commands that they really don't understand just how hard that is for a little kid stop and think about all the mental gymnastics you have to do to use a positive command instead of a negative one now is like a set of don't touch that stove.

It's hot you what you say you gotta say something like, put your hands under your sidewalk towards me right get on something positive to do because their brain can can process that quickly and we can go on being there and we do this in the book we talk about what are what are some the things that have changed between infancy and childhood, physically in the brain are some things that are changed between shot childhood in the adult years because of space at puberty. There's an enormous brain change that Chris Christie described you want. Take time to go into that he told what happens. The brain at puberty. Chris yeah you know puberty is an exciting time for John young adults, but it's also extremely daunting and it's parents is to be very scary because during puberty. There's so many hormonal changes going on it.

It makes it really hard for the teenage brain to quiet and so what you have are teenagers who just don't stop because it's hard to stop and so another thing that happens is there's a housecleaning process that happens at puberty, where the that the skills are the habits that you don't really use very often they the basic basically the brain just starts to click those those places and said you know what I don't use this.

Let's get rid of it because the brain is an energy conservation machine and the things in the skills and habits you do use the braces. Hey, let's put some more bandwidth behind these because I'm using the skills and so where this plays out is if it's hard for me to return to joy from big feelings before puberty. It's going to be especially hard. After puberty, so ideally we want to we want to plant the seeds early in life, so that by the time that housecleaning happens at puberty.

My children already have some practice and some ability to use these skills. Now the good news is even after puberty, we can still learn these skills we can we can grow new habits.

But what happens is this going to take a little more climbing is going to take a little bit harder work in order to instill those habits so puberty is a is a very important time on many levels for families and their many parents who say to themselves. I don't know what to do during the stage like this can be very very helpful to them. You Marcus when you were talking about the infant doesn't understand negative terms. I was to remind the males in the airport this Saturday and there was a father and mother and the father had this little list to me about less than two years old and no tier was just crying and I don't know what happened and the father said I said stop it said stop it and look it just cried louder and louder letter finally picked up that little kid and put them up on his chest and his head laying on the shoulder and the kid to stop crying is an illustration of the point right and that is that we he had his brain is brain science backwards. This happens a lot in the terrible twos, especially that if we will attuned to our kids and help them bounce back from their emotions, they will correct their behavior on their own when we reflect that around. We create a bigger problem sometimes and it needs to be another topic, and that is the technology. How is technology changing parenting today. Marcus, you will start with that.

Yeah sure the technology is changing parents.

First of all that is most parents today have grown up as part of the technology generation that had so their brains have not are not as well practiced in relationships and relational skills is up from some former generations because technology is a non-relational experience and so we we it creates a different kind of bond and it's actually a form of avoidance.

Most of the time and so now we got parents who been affected by it and then we they tend to use technology to babysit the kids and so will happen is instead of kids growing up without just a ton of of a relational connection. They grow up with a ton of screen time. Just think about you know you been to Third World countries like the only bit of Central America plays like this in people and in just great poverty, with a lot of suffering who are actually very joyful. You like how is that possible, why why are they so joyful and the answer is because they don't do anything alone. I mean, there always. It's me and my people going through all of this so they have relational joy even when they're missing the happiness of other things in their life and they know that if I'm going through a big emotion are not going through that alone. I'm with people so technology tends to interfere with that process of forming those relational bonds that our kids need and if were constantly pushing them towards technology when their little to buy us some time in our babysitting. Then they just grew up thinking that that's normal. That becomes their default setting now to okay when I'm having an upset emotional just go yell myself with technology. Yeah. And Marcus is is right you know what's happening is phones especially rewire our brain and how this shows up with children as well as parents is it's harder to turn off and so in studies on on phone use. They found even students were taking test with their phones turned off. Students are still thinking about their phones even though their phones turned off. It's put away even while trying to focus on the task they still think about their phones so it really does go a long way to put the phones down and get some of that face-to-face connection to that will go a long way for building joy. The parents do that Chris, because it allowed parents to think or say. I know how to do this anyway with their own screens and and I gave them you know phones when they were little and you back up from that yeah you know what it what helps is even to provide a context with children. Why do we want to do this we know what were alert now is joy happens face-to-face. So were going to have phone free time every evening as a family and hear some of the benefits here. Some of the things you we still make it fun. We still make it meaningful. But we do have to understand turning the phone off people actually have withdrawal symptoms if the minded with their phones.

In a sense, so let's yeah let's affirm this is a big deal, but let's find other ways to make connection, meaningful and engaging and fun building the a new habit can be stronger than focusing on breaking the old habit and so part of what you're doing and weaning them off of the technology is making sure that there are technology free times for their building relationship and a lot of times once people find the satisfaction and joy of relational bonding.

They don't crave the technology as much. This is Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller "The 5 Love Languages" . I guess I Dr. Marcus Warner, a deeper walk international and Chris Corsi have thrived today were talking about the four habits of raising joy filled kids. I simple model for developing your child's maturity at every level.

It's our featured resource@ 5lovelanguages.com Marcus in our conversational marriage. The last time you were with us. We deal with pornography. How can parents help their kids deal with the pervasive nature of porn today unless it is a really powerful force in our culture today and it pornography is unique in that it seeks you out and so there's a couple things this one of them is the very process of building emotionally mature kids minimizes the likelihood that they're going to become addicted to porn at the same time having conversations with them earlier and earlier in life about helping them think through, but good. What's bad helping them think through this things is what we're finding is that the first exposure to porn is starting to come as early as preschool for some kids, and it's becoming a habit. By the time they're 11 years old so they aren't even to puberty yet for a lot of these kids before it's become habitual because of that I have to be preemptive in bringing it up and not just casting it is negatively don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, but giving them a concept of what is the proper role of all of this wise it's important to leave it alone and in part of this is that we want you to have a joy filled life. We want you to raise a joy filled family. This isn't going to get you there. What you yeah yeah it's a complicated thing. Let's go back to the home marriage relationship.

Again, what does a healthy marriage relationship do for a child so you know what are the things I heard Chris's kids safe to take he and his wife Jen is why you mommy spent so much time smiling at each other like you know that's that's a pretty good question here is like if that's happening you know you're doing something right and what happens is that just the, the environment around the child has an enormous impact on their development.

If I am in a house that is characterized by joy. II kind of absorbed that picked that up. My brain reads that it absorbs that if I'm in a high anger, high anxiety, family, work, mom and dad are constantly anxious about something they're constantly angry about something, even if it is not at me.

My brain picks that up and begins to assume that that's what's normal and that's what I should be looking for life.

So instead of looking for what there is to enjoy your life. I my brain learns to look for.

But there is the fear that's right, in our marriages provide examples of how relationships can work and in the good times but also how do we recover from the bad times I can think of at the time my wife Jen and I were having a disagreement and noticed my son sitting there, listening, and so we pause our conversation and just check in with our son and said hey how are you doing your mommy and daddy are working out this now. This problem and we basically said you are and you don't have to fix this were okay.

We still love each other were willing to stay connected while we work this out. So even hardship provides an opportunity to really demonstrate this.

This is the kind of people we can be where we hold on to love and we still affirm each other even while we disagree or we work through problems and it became a very meaningful meaningful demonstration for our son even more than we intended it was it was a great return to joy moment you know if the child says why are you and dad always arguing with each other that would be a wake-up call right after let's get personal. Marcus is learning about joy and brain and the brain impacted your own parenting. When did you first start thinking about this and how is it impacted your own life. So I first came across the brain science about 10 years into my marriage when I found the materials of Dr. Jim Wilder and he just unpacked a lot of this in an Chris and I both owe a tremendous debt to him in terms of launching us in this understanding of the brain and what happened then was I I began to realize that I was very fear based in most of the things that I did and it showed up in my life. In terms of avoidant and that is I would avoid anything to do with parenting that I wasn't completely comfortable with and so I began to realize you know what this lease become a focus of these become a priority.

So my daughter was about nine or 10 when I can have that revelation. My son was a new born infant and we were just began to and as we became intentional about this idea that joy support for marriage enjoys important to our our kids. We became since about the idea that we want to make sure that we have joyful experiences were all together on a regular basis like every day you don't want to say to go by without everybody feeling like they did something that made them feel bonded and joyful together so we are at a rental car place once I met out I was getting a car to go speak and that my whole family happy to be with me in overbite.

My grown daughter was chatting away with my wife like best friends and mice teenage son at the time jumped on my back and gave me a big bear hug, and we all started laughing and the guy behind the counter looked at us with disbelief and he's like, will you adopt me that it's been a long time since I've seen a happy family right and so how is the power of joy. She will share from your own experience. Yeah, no, I have to say joy just having the language of joy, something that I wouldn't of had for my own upbringing I would've understood what joy even meant and so thankfully now my wife and I can be proactive at you doing the kinds of things that produce joyful moments. Having the language learning how to get back to joy when things go wrong.

I think one of the biggest takeaways is just learning how to stay relational with my children. Even when things are difficult even during big emotions. Being able to stay present still glad to be with my children. Even when they're mad at me, maybe for not you know letting them have a cookie before dinner. Whatever it is just having the lens of the language for joy as really changed my life and change my family. Marcus and Chris so why don't you just take a moment, as we close the program and share with our listeners what you hope will happen if they read this book Marcus to go first certain label in a nutshell, we want to start a joy revolution right we just think that everybody would be better off with four joy.

Nobody goes to therapy because I just have too much joy in their life and and how much better with our families be if everybody knew that my family is a place of joy, how much what I change or culture. How much would it change or churches.

We think that if we can get this started a family level it could change a lot of things. Yasmin you know I think my take away would be that just encourage parents to know parenting is hard, but one of the best gifts that you can give your children would be your attention as Marcus said, your your joy is what happens when you share your attention so just taking the time to protect time to really connect with their children convey our joy show them and tell them that were glad to be with them. Give them your attention and just watch what happens. Watch the good things grow when you do that hello think both of you being with us today, and I know that our listeners have heard this and I know they're trying to digest it and I would just really encourage our listeners to get this book and work through it. Just a chapter by chapter and discuss it with your husband and wife and make some changes that you realize need to be made. Again, thanks for your investment. Not only with us today, but in putting this bus on the Marcus Warner and Chris Corsi this day and again the title of the featured resource for habits of raising joy filled is a simple model for developing your child's maturity every level.

Find out more.

Five love languages.com again five love languages.next week how to make the best decisions. Life is hard.

Doubt is rising because you join us in one week.

Thanks to Janice Todd their work today. Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman radio ministry and thanks for listening