Fostering Emotional Safety

Is your home and the emotionally safe place and your kids feel that way about.

Here's Kristi Straub. What if we had homes that felt like that felt emotionally safe, meaning, love without fear whenever I'm bringing to the table. I am coming home from school. Maybe I went bowling. Maybe I came home from work and I had a horrible meeting and someone berated me across the table white ass home with the safest place in the world for all those people to come if we make homes that felt like that that would really start to change a culture.

This is family life today.

Our hosts are David and Wilson on Bob Beam. What can we do to make sure our homes are emotionally safe places where kids can feel free to deal with their emotions know how to process those emotions biblically talk about that today with Josh and Kristi Straub's and welcome to family life today.

Thanks for joining us.

I remember when I was in college I just come home for the summer and are going to a Bible study and I'll never forget this Bible study leader was talking about, you know how you sometimes at school you get afraid you wonder what people think about you two. People like you kind of going through all of this and I'm going, you can relate to that. Then he said you know your parents have these feelings to and I was like no grown-ups ups don't have their feel pure pressure.

That's just something you feel when your kid and I was like oh like like this and when you leave, they get sad and lonely when you go off to college, and I thought I wonder if they really do have. I didn't go home and asked my mom because I would've been too weird but but it was like for the first time I thought oh it's emotions are not just something that kids have and then grown-ups. By the time you're a grown up. You've fixed all of the era fixed yeah, and I think that was kind of my mind until it's okay. Having emotions is something you do when you're a child when you're grown up now, you don't have those emotions anymore. You. You worked on that it is similar as you learn to stuff me I can never one time remember and sit at my locker and football locker room in college with my guys going hey guys we feel and how you go back and see what that would look like and trust that will talk with Wilson that I never have and I never walked into dry lines locker room ever walked up to going to Hayfield well it is something you could talk with your kids about. We got Josh and Kristi Straub joining us again today on family life today guys will go back thank you happiness.

Yeah, we love being with you guys what you've written a book for parents to read to their kids or maybe to read to one another. This is a kids book. It's called what am I feeling, but I actually as I was out of the book.

I thought I wonder about parents of teenagers, we literally have had bombs of teenagers put the feelings chart like someone she put it off on their mantle like under their television and they were watching some basketball. I don't know some I'm not about something, but it was some bath thing that's looking for answers when the kids are like Instagram, storing it in the why do you have a kids is character hanging from your mantle and see like because my teenagers need to talk about is in the back of the book of the book is a story book for kids and and this is probably for preschool, elementary school kids moms and dads read this to them and Mary.

25 then the back there's a chart with nine different faces nine different emotions so that you can put words to what it is you're feeling worse and laughing about this little chart but I'm not kidding. It is really helpful obviously for child before I fully fledged married adult single adult. I mean, Anna and I many times and conflicts early in our marriage. She would say to me, what are you feeling right now and I I'm not can I would like I've no idea. I honestly don't know. Sometimes I knew tomorrow but in that moment I had never been taught. I'd never process. I've been taught you stuff the way men don't cry only emotion he would shell with anger and it sounds crazy and you think I'm getting on and if that chart was anywhere I could go I could point out if you like the pirate is this a limited number of couples that instead they couldn't put this in our bedroom core nine basic emotions trained.

Obviously there is up (more and as adults we can narrow down more and he is not young fresh cherry dinner at Nina, there's much more willing to fear, guilt and shame adults that would be huge is what what are the corn on because I thought there were only five after I saw inside out.

I thought the really crazy. We just watch that movie for the first time. I know everyone is like having your counseling practice 109 that are on the chart, putting on who you talk to some C5 some say seven I mean we put nine in here but we have afraid and happy and jealous across the top, guilty, angry and sad and then surprised and embarrassed and brave and we chose ones that we felt like most especially preschool and elementary kids when he's feeling as primary emotions that they would understand. Contempt is one of the primary but the kid is and can understand contempt so we didn't put that one and you know you were talking about you know the locker room and you know and athletes and think when I first started talking about emotional safety and emotional intelligence which which is what am I feeling having a name that I sense like that beginning building block of the national safety important and so I was invited to speak to's joint special operations command at Fort Bragg and I was nervous. I was you know how to take Scripture out I was just talking about the research you are feeling. I was feeling nervous so afraid of slipping in and but the reality was is it resonated so much with them that now I speak it all. The Army Ranger battalions and with joy.

Special prayers command Army and Air Force because resonated particularly also with the wives because the very thing they're trying to turn off to survive in the battlefield is the very thing they have to turn back on to survive when they get back at home and so when I talk to men about this even sports athletes like emotional safety was linked to extracurricular and athletic success.

Why, because if it's bottom of the ninth and there's a three to counts game seven World Series you're down by around your man on third and you're the coach, would you want hitting in that moment you don't want home run hitters batting 100 with runners in scoring position. You want the guy who's batting 350 or 400 yards is going position.

The guy who can come through under pressure and research over and over and over again shows that the ability to come to under pressure is linked back to that sense of emotional safety and emotional intelligence because that by understanding the batters box. He is thinking about what dads gonna say to him if he screws up, or what his wife are who you know that voice that's just hanging there. Instead, he's in the moment remembering every pitch that he studied that's got to be coming out of the pictures hand while because he can come through under pressure and that moment so for the first time in my life. I know why I through the interception that lost the state championship in high school, Ono try to make a joke, but never connect my emotions so that that moment where you thinking something of them will know I was at all but you know there's all that going on going on in your head lying on the relationships you have no family.

Your parents are dads pressuring you to be. And you know in the sport. You never really loved it but never really talked about it. Yeah it's very powerful because it didn't matter what stage or on the NFL. Whether you're a businessman whether your you know a pastor no matter where you are more emotionally healthy your marriage and the relationships you have at home, the better you're going to show up on the stage that your call to what's the goal here for parents, are we trying to get our kids to be able to to identify and then control their feelings is that the aim or are we trying to get them to feel more deeply what their feeling. What is a dream and for Elizabeth. Good night. That emotional safety right this is sort of the angle and again at the time that musty life and familiarly right a lot of people are familiar with emotional intelligence right we can I know what that is been last year Google came out with the study and they studied their top performing teams. They wanted to see basically testing their hiring process. Our week every hiring the right people at Google so typically they would hire right for the stem skills which make sense, science, technology, engineering, and what they found.

I think from the way they wrote the study.

It even floored Google yet so the top three were emotional safety, empathy and emotional intelligence with the top three things they found among their most productive teams than Google. So for some start changing the hiring process to focus on the soft skills, not necessarily the hard skills because the hard skills can be taught, but what you can't teach is whenever you're in a room with a collaborative group of people, and someone brings up an idea and that idea is not a very good idea and you know it might not be a great idea but you're not bullying that person putting that person down that person feel safe in that team to bring up any idea and they know that they're going to be a part of that team that the ideas at least going to be put on the table, whether it's not accepted or not that that human is valued within the context of that team that would be emotional safety that I could show up and I can be fully present and not have any fear of what I meant to bring to the table. It's really an evening talking about really, what's the angle here.

What if we had homes that felt like that felt this term would be emotionally safe, meaning, love without fear.

So there is not theirs except whenever I'm bringing to the table and coming home from school. Maybe I will delete maybe I a girl picked on me and what I wore that day. Maybe I came home from work and I had a horrible meeting and someone berated me across the table, maybe mom is just feeling hopeless, rejected sort of losing a sense of purpose why ass home with the safest place in the world for all those people to come home to tend to be looked at across the dinner table on the couch and I want to hear how your day lies. I want to hear what happened to you today and I don't need you to shop is anything you're not. I don't need you to fix me.

I'm not trying to fix you I just accept you for who you are and what you're bringing and if we couldn't make homes that felt like that would really start to change a culture generation. Maybe a world I think her parents listening even for myself and my kids would express this is what happened. I was bullied I think what I would do as a parent, oftentimes as I jump to fixing your problem inside jump to that so quickly I didn't sit there pain is that typical because I would like you thinking how can I fix their situation. Absolutely.

And don't you find you as a parent that often their feelings feel bigger. To us, right, typically because of our story, though I know our daughter remember her coming home and she had big emotions. I am a grown-up child with a motion for stealth test and she will feel sadness sometimes and it triggers a place for me and I remember early on, she went and she said to me money. Sometimes I like to feel sad. I like how sadness feels and I thought I meant my brain to get yeah, you're going to struggle with depression known in a no no no no no you can't like sadness.

No, not like that in her own with we see it through our lands of our story and maybe the places that we still carry wounds and sell what felt to her, what with probably a run-of-the-mill regular everyday emotion felt huge me and so we can start to blow it out of proportion and then where the lens awake at night trying to fix this. How I make. She needs to be a happy girl. I wanted to be a happy girl okay and okay so if I recognize that I struggle with sadness. I don't like to feel it for myself. Maybe I had a history that maybe it was in my home okay. Maybe my daughter she might have a propensity for sadness, depression she might mind to carry for her. I can just sit with her now that we know got reaction to fix which is where we fill all the pressure right because we have had solution, the answer is text that often we just sat with him in there feeling the least a cultlike beat up member team knowing you know when he get down to eat out like it's really posture where we just get down on their level I level and we can just sit with you saying that is more important than actually fixing the problem that's more necessary because you raise resilient kids there going to run into bullying the rest of their lives. They're going to run into places where they feel rejected for the rest of their lives.

And if were helicopter ring if you will, and trying to fix every one of their situations. We hijacked that process of building resilience of teaching them how to handle their emotions and help them problem solved through those difficult situations that we moved to a new city with our oldest was 11 years old and I remembered that her first few months in the new school in the new city trying to make friends. It was not going well and I knew that she was not happy at school. I remember dropping her off at school one day and I was thinking maybe I should go with him and try to set up a meeting with the teacher may be the principal and just so you know she's a hard time could we maybe pair up with somebody call some other parents and so could someone so invite her we would have been nodding like I'm driving away, and there was this little tap on the shoulder.

This little voice goes, what have been the times of greatest virtual growth in your life hasn't been the times when things have been hard and you've had to learn how to lean them to me and you had to learn how to rely on trust and and maybe I'm doing the same thing in the life of your 11-year-old and maybe you just leave this between me and her and I thought but I'm a grown up so I can deal with that she is only 11. But the God of the universe is sometimes take our kids through hard things because to your point. There's resilience being developed. There's learning how to trust in him being development and if were trying to super engineer everything so that they don't have any of these experiences we were shielding them from things in life there to face later and I would say if that's happening within you.

There's probably something in your own story and those fears are coming up right love without fear.

You know if there's a fear coming up for your child and we have written real fears for our children.

If there's a feeling I need to hijack the process. It's might be a rupture in your own story to go back and kinda take a look yet. I was thinking when you are saying what you're so beautiful. What would be like if our children came home to a home that was emotionally safe. Here's my first thought that requires parents who are mature enough to be a processor only motions and lead the way and that and so many. I went back to your chart of the nine emotions tell me if I'm wrong. Six of them are not fun emotions there. The kind emotions you want to run away from from being afraid to jealous to guilty to angry to sad to embarrassed right so what we do as adults.

So many of us, we just run away from those we sue those we medicate those anyway you want. You've seen that. So how does an adult become emotionally stable enough so that they can lead a home that becomes that emotionally safe environment for their family. You just described. I'd say what 98% of homes in an America where none and I can't tell you the number of people in my personal life. I mean, you know, a lot of the moms Covina red book with their kids and have contacted me, behind the scenes.

I don't think I feel anymore.

I didn't know that, like I'm trying to teach my kids know not to throw a temper tantrum than what Stephen there sad or withering. I don't even know and I think I don't even know when I'm sad I'm just the same all the time and you start to recognize there was probably somewhere along the way. We just started to turn down the volume stuff down and there's a lot of really great ways demeanor culture makes fun of it right like wine o'clock coming Netflix binging right there is so many ways that we can just noun out and we actually celebrate you know we eat it away we drink it away. We as a culture do a really good job so this is where people I think I like this is to make it's too overwhelming.

I want to go back out on a deal with hard stuff. I don't want to think about. We know what I've walked through the help my kids but it's exactly what you're saying we cannot lead our kids where we haven't been, but emotionally know is more functional and emotionally volatile it is to appoint yes but there's a place in which it will most likely catch up to you and a lot of times that happens in your close relationships maybe at your marriage or that of your house, our body feels, you know whether it's a T trauma or t trauma.

There's different types of traumas that we experience throughout our lives because we humans we live in a fallen world. I believe it therapy is not for crazy people. It is for broken people, and there's not one of us on the planet that hasn't been broken to some regard and so don't shy away from that. If that's part of your journey. Because we are all about becoming more and more healthy emotionally, spiritually, physically, in every area of our lives so that we can be the best we can be for our kids and for the Lord. So some people just kinda relaxed even keel their emotions are study unstable and and you know that they get happy and get sad but they're just kind in control and other people are kinda like will you talk about that free motion right hand up just a steady person.

I am so if your kids got five kids and that's what we had.

If summer emotionally study unstable and you go.

This is what you want you want to be like this. The ones that are highly volatile.

You go we gotta fix you to be more like down but you're saying that's not the right way to parent while here's the thing that the child then will typically get the message and I can speak to this here too much here to do matter too much and it's I have literally said those words to our son you're too much and I realize that they flew out of my mouth when speaking over him and I think what we talk about in this book right was talking about given a name and then give it to God and ask him what to do with it.

I think this is where as parents it takes all the burden off of us. We want to jump in and fix it chop God's job and this is our way to point then to him who created them with volatile emotions where they even killed one is they begin of the pilot or something where or when you have seen on stage and be dramatic and there good and it's their gifting, but it's not something we put in then it's something he did and he is the one he can have to coach them through it. And so to continually point them back to the face of God and start to hear his voice for themselves, not mom and dad's place. That's the goal. And when we do that we can get to a place in our own lives where you know I'm I love baseball. I played baseball as a wrestler would love nothing more than for my son to do those very things. Right now he's in the music and guitars and dancing and singing, which I can't do it all. But I've learned to come to a place where I'm not trying to live my unresolved childhood through him and I'm's instead celebrating who God's created him to be not more, and who he's not and I think as parents a lot of times we hope that our kids are going turn out a certain way and we went up on your own agenda on our kids and the reality is that the more healthy we are as adults. The more we can step into God's creating our kids to be in who he you know and step into their story and celebrate that, so I'll tell you something that happened on family life today, more than a decade ago we were interviewing Dr. Robertson Republican who was the former president of Columbia Bible College and seminary who had stepped down from his role as the president because his wife and develop Alzheimer's and her hair had become so it is required him to be home with her. He said she is always anxious if I'm not with her and always happy. If I am with her so I must be with her. Now I remember him sharing a story about a conflict they have had. This was back before her Alzheimer's had started, but they were in conflict and she was expressing her frustration or anger. Her emotions were sadness and he was explaining to her logically why what she was feeling was not how she should be thinking right that she was trying to correct the feelings and in the middle of the conflict. She looked at him and she said Robertson logic is in everything and emotions are nothing and all of us who are wired toward will. Here's how you should be thinking so that your emotions are more normal me to remember emotions are nothing there a part of the warning system part of the database that God's given us to say what's going on in my life. I may live more out of my head that I do have my emotions, but I should be paying attention to what my emotions are telling me because in order to make the right choices, both mind and heart have to speak and don't think his parents. We can speak into that I was with her granddaughter last year as a three-year-old.

I have all sons and so there wasn't a lot of drama that some grease splattered on my face and she started screaming and crying and I thought she got burned by this grease as we were cooking together and I took her over to the couch and her parents.

It said she's pretty dramatic so I said what happened what's wrong did it burning.

She said no but you I feel so's for you and she's crying so hard. Realize I said look how empathetic and plain like that where you feel for me can't give you the gift of feeling for others in your compassionate for them. What a great gift, whereas if that would happen with my family growing up, my parents would've said get control of another was shut down that drama because that's ridiculous but I like that we can explain that identify the word kind of celebrate who they are but I love the idea of taking it to God because God created us. He's always celebrating over us and to teach our kids to take it to God first, I think is huge part of how we do that is by helping them identify right what is it I'm feeling you have the charger get out the book you read through it again and you help them give language to be able to identify what is going on their heart and understand that's not what controls your behavior. You we don't live out of our emotions, but we also acknowledge that that's a part of who we are gods made us to be in Gaza. I think this is a book that a lot of moms and dads are to go. This is exactly what we needed to coach us to God is it's it's not just telling us what to do. It's giving us a tool to do it with our kids. Thank you guys for right time talking with us about. Thank you guys, even a gift. Absolutely it makes me feel copies of the book in our family life that a resource center you can order the book. What am I feeling helping kids learn to manage big feelings and little bodies go to family life today.com to get your copy of the book or call one 800 FL today in the title the book is what am I feeling and you can order unwanted family life today.com or call 1-800-358-6329 that's one 800 F as in family L as in life, and then the word today. Well I hope whatever you're children's emotions have been here on this Christmas day.

There have been good emotions. I hope all of us of experienced the love and the joy of the peace that comes from remembering what this day is really all about.

Hope that's been part of your experience or will be part of your experience as the day goes on. Hope you have a Merry Christmas and I hope you have a great weekend. Hope you and your family are able to worship together in your local church this weekend and I hope you can join us on Monday when Pastor Dean and Sarah will be with us to talk about what he calls unsaved Christian will explain what he means when we get together on Monday so I hope you can tune in for them think our engineer today.

Keith Lynch along with our entire broadcast production team on behalf of our hosts David and Wilson on Bob team will see you back Monday for another edition of family life, family life today is a production of family life of Little Rock, Arkansas crew ministry help for today hope for tomorrow