Faith Forward with Jason McKnight: The Greatest Gift you can give your kids
As a friend and I ran together, he made a comment that has stayed with me. We were discussing our kids and family, and he said, “The greatest gift you can give your kids is emotional health.”
Unexpected. The longer I’ve thought about it, the more I agree. Of all the things we can do to help our kids succeed, being emotionally resilient is the best. It’s also the least discussed.
Emotional health can be defined as the ability to navigate whatever crosses your radar screen. You are emotionally healthy or resilient to the degree that you can handle whatever life throws at you without collapsing, exploding, or going off the rails. Some examples:
When your kids make you angry—sheer disobedience and disrespect—do you fly off the handle in a rage, terrifying them?
When you’re in a disagreement, do you go for the jugular, to prove you’re right? Do you retreat into your shell, timidly giving in just to stop the strife.
When your friend lets you down, do you trash them to others? Do you plot a mini-revenge? Or laugh at their misfortune?
When plans are disrupted, are your kids insecure about how you’ll react? Is it “gentle dad” or “crazy dad” today?
All of these are examples of emotional immaturity, emotional ill-health.
Emotional resilience means quickly returning to your baseline normal emotional level, from whatever intense anger, shame, fear, disgust you feel. Or whatever sadness & despair you encounter. These six big negative emotions will control us if we don’t learn how to guide them.
Healthy resilience means being able to quiet myself without making a scene or leaving a scar. Why?
These few examples demonstrate us “not interacting at our best”. Regulating emotional responses helps us keep our head, keep our identity, even when anger, disappointment, fear come our way. God created each of us and intended us to respond in life-giving, mature, healthy ways.
How can we grow in emotional health and resilience? Here are 4 tips:
First, and foundationally: the real you is not the upset you. God created you to be fueled by joy, not anger; to live in peace, not fear. The fearful, angry you is not “baseline me.” Getting back to the you God created is a paradigm that few think of, but is the first step in emotional health. The “at rest you” is the God-created you.
Second, learn how you can best quiet yourself and return to a joy/peace baseline. Five slow deep breaths always help. Ten seconds of pause never hurt. Taking a walk and telling God how scared, frustrated you are is good. I was once in a meeting where someone interrupted and judged me so much, that I was stymied and couldn’t even think straight. I excused myself, took 45 seconds in a different room—walking, breathing, venting to God!—and this got my mind moving again: “I can’t change them, but they don’t control my response.” I returned a different person, and the meeting ended on a better (not perfect) note. At least I didn’t explode in anger; a bigger win than you’d think. What do you do to quiet yourself?
Third, seek to keep the relationship bigger than this issue. Every marriage has disagreements, and some of these are very deep. But every marriage is worth far more than this disagreement. Why do I want to win so much, that I hurt my wife? Emotional maturity is when I place the current conflict inside the larger context of our relationship. Is the relationship worth more than me being right on this point today? You might still disagree; but without being disagreeable.
Fourth, know your own triggers, and watch for them. All of us have different buttons that we do not want pushed—just ask your family and coworkers; they know them. When that feeling hits, bring to mind, “I’m susceptible in this area; let me not overreact right now.”
For me, disrespect is a big trigger: anger and shame well up when I feel disrespected. At that point I do not function as the person God created. Learning this about myself changed how I parented: I used to grid every push-back question from my sons as disrespecting my wisdom, direction, authority. In fact, the guys were simply trying to figure out how the world works and where the boundaries are (most of the time). If I’d known my trigger earlier, I could have answered their questions on face value, and not seen a disrespect which wasn’t there. I could have saved them a lot of “mean dad” moments.
Four tips to take steps on the journey of emotional health. It’s never too late to grow—even if you don’t have kids or if they have grown and flown! Let your growing emotional resilience be a gift to all who share life with you.
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