Is the "Discipline That Connects with Your Child's Heart online course for me- answering questions

0:00 [Music] hello everyone i am so glad you're joining us today for this last episode in our series where we've been discussing some of the content that's taught in the discipline that connects online course if you've been following along you know that for the past four weeks i've been interviewing jim and lynn jackson co-founders of connected families and the authors of the book discipline that connects well these last weeks have been really fun because jim lynn and i have been taking bite-sized pieces

0:26 and pulling it apart in order to apply it to our parenting it's also been fun because every week we've been hearing from parents who have taken the online course and they've told stories of how these messages of safe loved called and capable and responsible have changed the way they have been thinking and interacting with their kids i interviewed these parents and let me just say it warmed our hearts to the fullest almost every one of these parents were

0:52 in tears at some point in their interview because they were so thankful that they had found discipline that connects that it was bible-based parenting help and it was really bringing change and you know to us there was just nothing more fulfilling than hearing that our work was really impacting lives for god's kingdom today we're going to change it up a tad and we're going to have a conversation about the online course we want you to have all the details that

1:19 you need to really feel comfortable registering and so i would like to invite jim to the studio hi jim we're here together we've been here the whole time i know i think probably everybody knows that too it's fun to be here i know we love doing this well i'm really looking forward to this episode because stacy you've been an amazing moderator for this course and you're going to make it clear what it means to be part of this course part

1:43 of the benefit of course is you and your presence in it and your heart in it and your moderation of it and you're live you're there you're watching you're listening you're interacting and engaging and it's just so awesome to have you on the team and in the seat and thank you give you a chance to talk about your passion for this course and some of the logistics of it as well that's right that's what we want everyone to know

2:02 today but first we want to give them a little tiny bit of the background because i just think it's fun so you and lynn wrote the book discipline that connects it was shortly after that that you produced the first discipline that connects with your child's heart online course give our listeners just a snapshot of what that process was like the first time well i'll tell you i mean it was lynn and i we pulled up a chair

2:24 next to our fireplace in the basement with sort of a guiding outline and yeah just started talking and take one take two take five take seven take eight and you know after a while i don't know if it ever relays in the finished product but it was really painstaking and on so many levels we didn't really know what we were doing and just in terms of the logistics and the recording and how do you put this out

2:44 there for the world to see and since then you know our team has really gathered around all of this and created a structure and a format and a process that works for everyone for the whole team so that when we come to the course content it's well thought through it's tested it's tried we use scripts and give the best of the best of our information as best as we can with a you know with a modest budget and all the things but

3:08 it's great it's been really something to see this course grow and to see people all over the world literally taking this course and getting back to us and telling us how they've benefited and valued and i never dreamt in our wildest imagination that we'd be here just a few years after starting it's amazing isn't it so from those days in your basement with probably your kids behind the camera maybe they were uh you know what we did but yeah family

3:33 friends neighbors and the course was excellent we had thousands of people go through it and got a lot out of it but we knew that there were some things that we wanted to change up to fit into the way that people receive video and learn from video in this day and age right some of those things were that we wanted each video segment to be the same time period we wanted to narrow it down just kind of make it sharper

3:57 anyway sharper and we also wanted to make a course that would be a little bit more usable for small groups and churches yeah i just really would love our audience to know what it was that compelled you to go from just agreeing sort of to help us moderate a little bit to diving in and taking on this multi-faceted role that you've taken on as the project manager the producer the director all these things what what compelled you to do that you

4:20 know what compelled me to do that was my two daughters right now i have an almost 16 year old and a turning 14 year old like next week but when i very first learned about connected families it was through your weekly emails and they were powerful and i could read them and i started to see my parenting change in ways that i wanted that change and it was sort of a tug of war in me but then a few years later

4:48 i got hired to be the online course moderator it was a few you know hours a week but i i saw the change in myself and the way that i viewed parenting and i knew that there were thousands and thousands of people that would want to hear this too and so i moderated and then as i was moderating and getting into the course and taking the old version i thought there's a lot of ways we could improve this

5:12 so that it could be a little bit more user friendly for people so you've got some experience looking at systems and helping improve them yes and i love that and we knew that and so we called stacy into action and here we are today and you get to interact with just about every i mean there's been thousands of parents now and you get in some shape or fashion to interact with almost everyone right it's so cool like jim you know that i'm

5:34 a missionary kid pastors kid i've lived in other countries very sort of intercultural world so when we started getting registrations from people all around the world and i got to interact with them and say hey hi from ethiopia and hi from australia and you know wow guatemala i wish i could everywhere i wish i could tell people right now how your eyes are lit up talking about this it just was a delight it was like another way that

6:01 the world becomes small as we build this online community it was just fun so let's take just a second here to talk about the parents you've referenced that they're coming from all over the place but what are they looking for when they decide to register we were even talking before we started recording that it is a hard day and age to parents yeah you know this is the only age that i've parented so i can't really

6:22 compare to other ones but i feel like it's really difficult because i feel like there's so many pressures on parents right now and so they're coming to the course really looking for tools number one i suppose they want tools but they also want confidence like i'm walking through this and i i can do this you know it's hard i feel like parents are working more than ever their kids are involved in a lot there's just so many

6:47 pressures from all sides it feels like school wants this church wants this jobs want this family is and so it's hard i feel a lot of compassion for the parents coming well and i know that in the context of the course there's opportunities for parents frequently to give input to ask questions of each other to talk about their experience with the ideas that they're learning and you get to see and interact with with all of that what do you think has

7:13 been the impact on parents as you've watched this process happen i think one of the biggest points of impact are that parents come into the course feeling a lot of shame right there's a lot of regret as a parent because you look back and you're like did i deal with that right am i ruining my kids honestly i've thought that right like what is the future going to look like this is all my fault just a lot of shameful thoughts that are

7:39 going on i'd say the biggest impact is that we bring god's grace to them and one of the changes in this online course was that we started to interview families that have gone through the course in the past and get their testimonies about the changes that they've seen in their life and one of them was a mom named amy and she has two sons and her oldest has autism and she tells the story in the online

8:05 course of having looked back on her parenting and felt so much shame for the way that she had dealt in anger responded and don't we all relate to that right so there's amy but in some way and her son is unique as are all our kids but that resonates with me i'm the author of the course with lynn and like i still today with 30 something children say gosh i wonder if i screwed it up yeah

8:28 like what's wrong with me what did i do wrong so this message of grace really permeates the course because as amy went on telling her story she talked about how she just had a coach say to her are you going to stay in that stuck place that was a powerful moment in the course for all the parents that are watching it's like i don't want to stay stuck there and so she talks about what receiving that grace looked like for her

8:53 yeah it was like saying i'm forgiven and i can move on and then she can pass that on to her sons which is if i'm not defined by my past behavior my sons aren't either and i can pass on that grace so to me that's the starting point of the impact that we've been seeing so from so many different angles with so many different experiences it sounds like there's this common thread that you get to be in the middle of which is that

9:16 god's grace invades our messes teaches us that our value doesn't come from how our kids behave or whether we made the right or wrong parenting choice or not but that we're defined by who we are in christ and from that place of growing into that fullness we do what we do and we do the best we can and when we blow it we say so and when we have a quote unquote success you know we don't pat ourselves on the back like

9:39 well you know i'm the greatest parent that is and so now i puff my chest and tell people about it i love eugene peterson's rendering of come all who labor and are heavy laden and i will give you rest he says come to me if you're tired and you feel beat up and i'm going to teach you the unforced rhythms of grace and really in this course and your presence in it i'm getting weepy because of how serious

10:01 i am about this your presence in this course helps parents experience these unforced rhythms of god's grace and it's okay to be in your challenge and in your struggle and yet we've got some stuff for you and we want to so many tools yeah so many tools so let's turn the corner now and talk specifically about some of the course logistics how does the course work what's different about this course from other experiences parents might have had

10:25 or seen online i feel like there's a lot of difference and i know you were just talking about me being the moderator and so i'm a little bit tooting my own horn here but i think that that actually is a really big difference because i've registered for courses in the past they mark it you register you take the first session and you never hear from them again and you forget about it but we are really conscious that we're

10:45 trying to build a community of people and so we invite people to come register it's a two and a half month period so when they come in you introduce yourself and i'm constantly on there like welcoming people answering questions i'm sending a short weekly email to keep people on track and so that's a big difference a big one i think our international community is a difference too we already mentioned that but it's a really fun one we have

11:11 so many different people we have adoptive families single families we have families that are created all sorts of different ways and so it's been fun like the last time it ran we had two different families on different continents both with triplets that connected isn't it isn't that just fun yeah that's really awesome we've had adoptive families who've connected with adults from their child's birth country that's also kind of fun so the community there is just really fun

11:37 and then through the platform that they're on they interact with their on their own schedule and yet they can interact with each other messaging back and forth in the context of a publicly viewed forum right yes so not publicly viewed it's only the people that have registered public to those in the course right right right which means that it's a safe place there's no one collecting any data on them so that was important to us so it's a safe place to comment and

11:59 build community i've had a lot of parents say that they really appreciate the fact that they can read other people's comments and feel like they're not alone so when the course does exactly what we built it to do and it's just a nutshell what do parents get from this course that they take with them into their futures they take with them this memorable framework for parenting that is also biblical and that is that we teach the four messages

12:25 that we've been talking about over these last four episodes of the podcast actually right you are safe you are love no matter what you are called and capable and you're responsible for your actions and each one of those messages is either one or two sessions that you go like in depth with and they take that magnet so we say it's a framework it's on a magnet if they register they're gonna get a whole packet of information with a workbook and all

12:49 sorts of things in it inside that packet is also a magnet that you put in the fridge the magnet we say it says it all right that's right that's what we say here at connected families because people have told us that so many times but it's really a pathway through their parenting that they adjust and make their own use their own language in a sense as they walk through that with their kids so what about registration

13:11 cost you know those specific things that everybody wants to know about right the course costs 119 we scholarship quite a number of people and it's a super easy scholarship process they can just go online no tax records necessary no they just answer a couple questions and it automatically gets sent to them we're so thankful that we can offer that because of our donors that sponsor that for us yeah so they just go online they can register that means they set up a

13:38 password and a login and then they can go in and the course is all online so you can take it any time zone that you live in any time that works for you it's all there there's no like people ask us this there's no do i need to be online at a certain time no it's all online and you take in your own schedule so in conclusion here what i'm hearing and it's not written on our outline of

13:59 things that we should cover here but there's a community of people forming around these ideas around the country and even around the world and they're starting to encourage one another and there's groups popping up and we find out about this right in other places and you also have some engagement with small groups and nearly i don't know if it's every day quite yet but there's a new group signing up to take a small group experience with this course say just a

14:24 little bit about that right this online course that we're talking about today where individuals can register we run it two times a year we do that so that we can build that community it's open for like two and a half months but if people are interested in doing a small group at their church they can run it anytime that they want to and so yeah that's been just a real life-giving place for people there's often people who go through it

14:46 individually and then they get together their people whoever it is and they go through it again and i bet you they get just as much the second time out of the course yeah well it's fabulous and again just such an honor to be part of a team of people who have put together a resource that's of so easily available so easy to learn and parents tell us all the time right like i can do this i learned something

15:10 today and i left the course and i went and put this into action right and it helped my child it helped me in a profound way right it's powerful and you walk away feeling like wow i just showed up for my kid in a way that i'm really proud of and that honors god and honors my child and so i just i'm so excited about the course and i encourage everyone come and join me online it's

15:34 fun and we'll do it together well i wish you all could meet stacy in person and benefit from her energy and her passion for being the parent god made you to be that's right and we look forward to seeing all of you on the course [Music] welcome you