Affirmation: The Struggle to Stay Positive

0:01 so Lynn let's talk a little bit about affirmation and I don't know about your path to affirmation but mine has been a rocky one I what do you think in terms of affirmation has that come naturally for you or have you had to work at that not at all when I was a little kid my mother I can remember her sending me up to my room to write lists of things I was grateful for because I could you

0:24 know I'd go on a field trip and I'd talk come home talking all about the one thing that went wrong in the midst of this cool field trip that was sort of my personality I morphed over time into an overachiever and a perfectionist and I was really hard on myself and of course then that overflows and I was hard on my kids as well so let's throw kids into the mix of that now you've you've already got this inclination towards

0:47 looking with a critical eye uh to now having messy you know kids running around how did you do that what were the maybe contributing factors or things that made it difficult to affirm kids especially kids yeah well a big piece of it was Jim kind of morphed into the role of fun Meister because he was this happy go-lucky guy didn't really notice the messes wasn't really motivated to hold kids accountable for chores and I kind of morphed into the Taskmaster role

1:15 which meant that I felt like I was always following children around going okay did you finish everything what went wrong what was left out uh what didn't get done and I just felt really stuck in a pattern of negativity yeah so you've got fun dad and you've got Taskmaster mom trying to get all these things done um how did you deal with that particular challenge well it I I developed a deep conviction that I wanted to affirm my

1:42 kids and it centered around Philippians 4:8 finally Brothers whatever is true honorable right pure lovely if good repute if any excellent anything worthy of Praise let your mind dwell on these things and I just camped on that verse I shared it with my kids um I we we gave them both of us gave them permission to respectfully confront us if they felt like we were being negative critical missing things that they had done well and then we just flesh that out in

2:08 everyday life I remember my daughter telling me about a day when I'd asked her to clean the kitchen and she had done the floor and was really proud of it and waiting for me to notice and I came in and said but you did you didn't unload the dishwasher and it just crushed her so what giving a safe space for her to express that Express her disappointment apologize reconcile and get back on my pony and ride that

2:33 journey of learning to affirm just did that over and over um and you know it's just a discipline to work when I had to deal with something negative I wanted to find something positive well and you're you're starting off by saying that I wanted to affirm my kids and I think most of us as parents would say that we really want to affirm our kids but it takes that effort to to make that happen and so your choice to look at things

2:59 through the flip iians 48 lens and and do that takes effort but tell me a little bit about what the impact then I mean what was the payoff for your uh looking through that lens well a a couple of really big payoffs one was over time it changed and our kids noticed and they have each expressed to me at different times how they've appreciated how hard I've worked at changing this entrenched habit and in that the second payoff is I think I've

3:29 modeled for them how to deal with personal adversity it's seeing something in myself I really don't like do I want to give up and just say this is who I am I'll just always be negative and I was so tempted to do that so many times or do I want to persevere grab on to the grace of God and say by his strength over time I can change this and I felt like that was maybe even the most

3:52 important thing to model so I just wanted to share this with parents because it is a difficult challenge but it's so valuable to work at it and it's not something that where we ignore the the misbehavior no okay we're not going to do that that's not what I'm talking about but this this sense of the message flowing through of child you are safe with me child you are love no matter what that that comes right out of that

4:18 with child you are God's workmanship I can see the good in you even in this difficult situation it's powerful message and we're going to focus equal amount of time on that as much as the misbehavior perhaps yeah