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37: Faith-Filled Parenting: How To Talk To Your Kid About Healthy Friendships
250 Plays3 years ago
Jill Devine asked Hannah Lang and Laura Fleetwood to be a part of this new series about Faith-Filled Parenting. Hannah is the Director of Children’s Ministry at Messiah St. Charles. Laura is Jill’s spiritual mentor and mom to two teenage daughters. Hannah will tackle the elementary age (birth-5th grade) and Laura Fleetwood will tackle the secondary age (6th-12th grade).
Resources from Hannah:
*Article: How Do I Encourage Kids to Be Friends?
*Conversation Guide: Healthy Friendships
*Scripture Referenced: Proverbs 17:17
*Conversation Guide: Bullying
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Transcript
Introduction and Host Background
00:00:00
Speaker
The following podcast is a Jill Devine Media production. Christianity has become known for judgy people, strange words, ancient stories, confusing rules, and a members-only mindset. This is why I stayed away from the church for so long, but it's not supposed to be that way. I'm Jill Devine, a former radio personality with three tattoos, a love for a good tequila, and who's never read the entire Bible.
00:00:24
Speaker
Yet here I am hosting a podcast about faith. The Normal Goes Along Way podcast is your home for real conversations with real people using real language about how faith and real life intersect.
Series Introduction: Faith-Filled Parenting
00:00:37
Speaker
Welcome to the conversation.
00:00:42
Speaker
We are continuing our faith-filled parenting series and today we are going to be talking about healthy friendships. I'm Jill Devine here with Hannah Lang and what we've been doing, we have been taking some topics that parents really want some more
00:01:00
Speaker
resources, some more tools for their tool belts, their tool box, whatever you wanna call it, when it comes to some conversations and how you approach it through a faith lens.
Why Encourage Diverse Friendships?
00:01:11
Speaker
So we have been talking about the elementary kiddos first, and then Laura Fleetwood comes on and we talk about how you address these same topics with the secondary age. So here we go, how to talk to your kid about healthy friendships.
00:01:29
Speaker
When you first think about that, Hannah, you think, well, why do I need to have a faith lens on that? And I don't want to say that my child
00:01:42
Speaker
has to have friends that only go to church and only have the same views as her. I think that would be doing her a disservice. And I'm just using the older one right now as an example, but both of them, really.
00:02:01
Speaker
How do we promote that healthy friendship value through a lens of faith? Right. Well, when we're talking about our preschool and elementary kids, they're still just figuring out what a friend is, what a good friend is, what a friend does, why we should be friends. The faith lens really comes into, the Bible has a lot to say about how we treat each other.
00:02:22
Speaker
Oh, yes. Like a lot, right? Isn't that the second commandment, the biggest commandment, the first? Love God and love others. Yes. Exactly right. I love, look at you. Look at you pulling out some scripture knowledge. I love that. That's totally right. So Jesus said the greatest commandment is love the Lord your God and then love others. So both of those things are tied really deeply into friendship.
00:02:49
Speaker
We like to say there are some three basic truths that I like to teach kids. In the preschool years we say God made me, God loves me, Jesus wants to be my friend forever. So even in those basic truths that we want our zero to four year olds to learn, it's like God made me and loves me.
00:03:07
Speaker
Then you can start talking about how God made and loves other people too.
Teaching Values Through Early Friendships
00:03:11
Speaker
So that means we should treat them with kindness and love. Jesus wants to be my friend. What does that mean? Basically our preschoolers.
00:03:20
Speaker
Everyone's a friend in preschool. Your mailman's the friend, right? Your dog is your friend. The random person you wave at on the street is your friend. River loves my son River. He's one and a half and he loves to wave to people. He makes friends everywhere he goes. So I know it's super fun. He also waves bye-bye and he will give everyone kisses. He'll go like this and give them kisses when we say goodbye. So to a young one, friends are everywhere. And so they're just learning about what friendship means.
00:03:49
Speaker
but it is definitely informed by God's love for them and God's love for others. Can I interject? Yeah, please do. And maybe this is too young, maybe this is something for Laura, but maybe you have it for the elementary age, but there is something else that God wants us to do when we love others. He wants us to love
00:04:15
Speaker
others, whether they're like us or not like us. Absolutely. So how do you address that? Well, so preschoolers, they're experiencing the world for the first time. And we're teaching them things like colors and body parts. And so when it comes to people that look differently than you, that's a great opportunity to say, God made everyone different. God made people with
00:04:40
Speaker
white skin and black skin and brown skin. What color is your skin? God made people with brown eyes and blue eyes. What color are your eyes? God made people that are tall and short and even using that opportunity because that's where they are developmentally, where they're noticing differences to remind them God loves everyone. God loves you. Does God love people with blue eyes? Yes. Does God love people with brown eyes? Yes.
00:05:06
Speaker
So that's really a great way to bring that perspective into just understanding what friends are and who God loves. It is one of those when, and I know that there's many passages in the Bible, or maybe there's not, I don't know, you would have a better understanding, but when
00:05:26
Speaker
It's talked about how you look at life as a kid, your love for God as a kid. And it just kind of struck me when you were talking about all of the friendships. When we get older, and this is probably,
00:05:44
Speaker
We put so many labels on things, like best friends. And I feel that our oldest Lou, she has all these best friends. And I'm thinking to myself, you can only have one best friend, which is not true at all. That is not true at all. But she's like, man, do you know what a best friend is? And then I go back and think, how wonderful.
00:06:05
Speaker
that these are all her best friends. And I want her, she can have, I know that's gonna change, but right now let's just embrace that. Sure, absolutely embrace it.
00:06:20
Speaker
The basis of that, too, is them learning how to interact with others. So when you're playing with friends, it starts out as just parallel play in the preschool years, and then it turns to interacting with friends, and then it turns to sharing. That's a big component of a friendship.
00:06:36
Speaker
So I have some great resources that I'd like to share on this topic as well.
Navigating Elementary-Age Friendships
00:06:41
Speaker
I have these two things called conversation guides. There's a conversation guide for healthy friendships for preschoolers and one for elementary kids. I love it because it gets really specific with things to say and things not to say. So when we talked about how we treat others, some good things to say would be friends are kind and loving to each other.
00:07:02
Speaker
What does it mean to be kind? Jesus loves us. What does it mean to love others? Some other good things to say, our friends share with one another. Who do you share with? Who shared with you at school today? That's really laying a good foundation for healthy friendships. You can even, when your older kids start noticing, maybe someone was sitting by themselves at lunch today. How could you be a friend to them?
00:07:28
Speaker
in preschool, like I said, they're still just noticing other people. And then when you get to elementary, elementary kids are all about fun, right? And what's more fun than friendships. And like you said, it can change. Sometimes friendships change day by day, especially when you get into those older elementary years. I remember being in fifth grade and thinking,
00:07:47
Speaker
Does she not like me today? Or is she going to like me tomorrow? Or she didn't play with me at recess today? And those things start to get to be hard, right? You just scald like you know what's coming for girls, especially in friendship, right? It scares me. It scares me a lot. And I have to wait and see what happens. But yes, definitely. Because I think that I get really emotional about it because
00:08:17
Speaker
We talk about Enneagrams a lot and I'm just at a two and so I'm always taking on other people's emotions and their feelings and so if I even see, sometimes I want to be alone and sometimes kids want to be alone but I automatically think, oh they need somebody, what do I do?
00:08:37
Speaker
Well, I mean, some things that you can say to your elementary kid, especially for going through some tough friendship things, is, you know, friends forgive each other. What does forgiveness look like? Why is forgiveness hard? And just showing a lot of empathy because
00:08:54
Speaker
As we get older, I think we forget how dramatic everything can be in friendships, right? Like you could have a very best friend on Monday and by Friday, we are no longer friends. She didn't sit with me at lunch, right? Like it can be very dramatic and hard. So a lot of empathy and patience in listening to your kids and talking about friendship is I think really important, especially since you're reminding them that you're a safe person and you will listen to them.
Faith's Role in Parenting and Friendships
00:09:22
Speaker
And their drama is very important to you because as they get older, and Laura might talk about this, those friendship complications get way more complicated. Right, right, right, right. And if you establish yourself in the younger years as someone they can trust and someone they can tell things to, then you're going to have that built up relationship to talk about more complicated things when they get older.
00:09:47
Speaker
This just kind of hit me. Everything kind of just started connecting like a puzzle. How many episodes in talking about faith-filled parenting and these topics? And when we were discussing these and how we were going to do them and what we were going to talk about, and we were honest, we said behind the scenes, some of this stuff we really
00:10:16
Speaker
There's not a faith component that really needs to be a part of it as far as forcing it subpar, cheesy. But just listening to you speak and thinking about these episodes, it's our character. And who God wants us to be. And who he designed us to be.
00:10:49
Speaker
those things that I was really worried about and still worried about, but like, oh, you have this conversation and you have to bring God into it. You are bringing God into it when you talk about being kind to others and sharing with others. And maybe, I'm so glad you're not laughing at me because maybe this is something that people are like, yeah, we already knew that Jill, but it's clicking.
00:11:02
Speaker
And it's clicking. Yeah. I love that. I can see it in your eyes. I know. It's clicking.
00:11:16
Speaker
Well, you don't... I mean, something that I've experienced. I'm a new parent. I totally used to be super judgy about parents before I was a parent because you don't know how you're going to handle something until you're in that situation. And I just think it's really beautiful how God gives us these kids.
00:11:38
Speaker
He, they're his kids really, but he lets us take care of these kids on earth. And it's our responsibility to help them learn about who they are and who he is and how to treat other people. And it feels like a big responsibility, especially when you throw in that faith component of like, am I gonna say the right things? Do I need to shape everything they understand about Jesus by the time they're three, right? But we have the beauty of time.
00:12:04
Speaker
Right? And we're going to make mistakes and we're going to say the wrong thing and we're not going to be able to explain it all in one conversation, but some good things can only happen over time. And so when we talk about, you know, faith or technology or sex or whatever it may be, starting in these younger years, up through elementary, no matter what we're talking about, I find having a faith component to it so, um, just,
00:12:33
Speaker
encouraging, relieving, energy giving, because I know that God's on my side. I know that he's really doing the doing. I know that his Holy Spirit is going to be with me and he's going to take care of my kids and that God loves them way more than I could ever love them, which blows my mind. I mean, I never thought I could love anyone as much as my son. Oh, I know. Right? And it gives you a little bit of insight into how much God loves your kids.
00:12:59
Speaker
and how much God loves you. And so there's grace and there's comfort in knowing that as we're having these conversations about faith, friendships, technology, sex, whatever it may be, God is with us. He's with us. He's helping us do the thing. And there's forgiveness and grace that covers it all. But I'm glad that I have my faith to inform the way I have these conversations with my kids.
00:13:26
Speaker
I'd like to hit pause on this week's conversation to talk to you about how I'm able to even get you this week's conversation. And that would be through Zencaster. I've been using Zencaster since the day I started my podcast on my own at home. And it was recommended to me through a podcast course that I took. I have seen Zencaster grow so much since I started that right before the pandemic hit.
00:13:53
Speaker
And I have seen how much then Castor has put into the development of making it easier for individuals to be a podcaster. One thing that I want to highlight is that I actually used a different hosting site. And what that means is a different site to get this podcast out there for you.
00:14:17
Speaker
through Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, all the different platforms. I was recording all of my audio through Zencaster and then using another platform to distribute all of the episodes.
00:14:33
Speaker
Now I switched to Zincaster because that became a new feature that they offered and it just makes sense. I'm able to do everything in one place and I love that. Streamlining it, making it easy. That's what Zincaster is doing and they want you to experience it too.
00:14:52
Speaker
I want you to experience it as well. Go to zincaster.com slash pricing and use my code. Normal goes a long way. You'll get 30% off your first three months of Zincaster Professional. Like I said, I want you to have the same easy experiences I do for all my podcasting and content needs.
Guiding Children in Setting Boundaries
00:15:11
Speaker
It's time to share your story. And speaking of stories, let's get back into this week's conversation.
00:15:18
Speaker
So let's make sure that we haven't missed anything for these parents. What other tips and the resources do you want to provide before Laura talks about that secondary age? Yes. So friendship, like I mentioned, I've got these conversation guides. I just want to read a few of you or a few of these options of things you can say when having a conversation about healthy friendships with your children. So I think a
00:15:45
Speaker
great way to talk about friendship, especially in the elementary years, is to help your kid create a list of qualities that make a good friend. Name three words that describe a good friend, or tell me about a time a friend made you happy. Tell me about a friend that made you sad. Friends forgive one another. What does that mean? If you saw your friend being mean or rude, what could you do?
00:16:10
Speaker
provide opportunities to talk about tricky friendship stuff. And I think a great way to encourage your kids to have God's truth in their heart is to memorize little Bible verses that could inform friendships, right? So maybe they memorize the Bible verse that says, a friend loves at all times.
00:16:32
Speaker
or maybe they memorize a Bible verse about forgiving others, or maybe they memorize a Bible verse about love God, love others, right? And those little truths that you could have be mantras to pull out every time you talk about faith, then you're reminding the kids, this is what God says about friendship, and we can trust God's design for friendship. I like that, where you can take scripture and make it a mantra.
00:16:58
Speaker
You know, some people have phrases they like to say. Yes. My father-in-law loves to say, many hands make light work. Or, you know, throw kindness around like confetti is something people say a lot. I love that. Right? But you could take something that Jesus says or something that you hear in Scripture and have it be one of those mantras you say over and over and over when you're talking about friendship or conflict or whatever it be. So that becomes part of your child's internal dialogue. The words you use
00:17:25
Speaker
serve as a foundation for how kids view themselves and form friendships. We are continuing the conversation on faith-filled parenting, how to talk to your kids about
00:17:36
Speaker
healthy friendships that secondary age, Laura. I mean, as Hannah and I were talking when you're little, I think my oldest has 10 best friends, you know, and we talked about that. But when you start to get older, you start to see these friendships form. And I know from first hand experience how important they are. I have some best friends from
00:18:01
Speaker
my middle school days. And that's super important to me. But we want to make sure that our kids are being great friends themselves, but also surrounding themselves with great friends and healthy friendships. What would you offer to that conversation?
00:18:21
Speaker
So here's a few principles I think that are helpful to keep in mind. The first is that having different kinds of friends is good. People who are different from you are great people to be friends with. Yes. Your friends don't all have to come from the same background, from the same culture. That's one thing I love about my youngest daughter. She has friends from so many different cultures.
00:18:48
Speaker
And I just think it's a beautiful way for them to experience the uniqueness of the people that God has put in the world. So encouraging that, but also encouraging them to be wise about who they spend their time with, because who you spend your time with does rub off on you. So, you know, my kids have friends who are not Christian. They have friends who are of different faiths.
00:19:13
Speaker
I think that's awesome. They have conversations about those things. But I also want them to be careful of, are the people that I'm surrounding myself with, are they doing anything that I'm not comfortable with them doing? Do they say things that make me uncomfortable or that I wouldn't want to say?
00:19:37
Speaker
like warning signals that might come up that you could tell your kids to watch out for. And it's also important to let them know it's okay to be friends with someone and then to move into a season where your acquaintance is. So maybe with someone like me who
00:19:57
Speaker
is that Enneagram type two, who cares about others, doesn't want to hurt others, doesn't put their feelings up first. I mean, how do you approach that with the secondary age? Like, how do you say, okay, it is okay to look out for you? Yes.
00:20:16
Speaker
OK, so I might be asking for myself. There's this conversation that's coming to mind that I heard with Reese Witherspoon and Glennon Doyle on Glennon's podcast. And it was all about friendships and the complexity of navigating female friendships as an adult, even, let alone as a kid. And Reese said something really interesting. She said, yeah, she can think back to times in her life where she should have closed a friendship
00:20:46
Speaker
instead of just letting it wither away, kind
Managing Friendship Endings and Conflicts
00:20:50
Speaker
of like it's kind of like ghosting a boyfriend and not being direct and saying, actually, I think that we should end our relationship now. The same thing can apply to friendships and it is very uncomfortable. So uncomfortable. But I think
00:21:10
Speaker
that we can get to a place where being authentic with our feelings and authentic about what's right for us in a season is more important than a temporary uncomfortableness. And in the end offers the other person like more value because we're being upfront and honest. Right. Same thing with the breakup. So I think as we are talking with our early adolescents and teens about friendships, it's important to
00:21:41
Speaker
to focus on reconciliation, so when there is a fight, which there will be fights, to not let it go unresolved or untalked about, but to come in with a humble Christ-like attitude and say, hey, we had a disagreement about this. What's your perspective on it? What's my perspective on it? Can we come to an agreement where we can move forward as friends? If not, that's OK.
00:22:09
Speaker
and let's just agree for now to be civil to each other and to be acquaintances. Like what a healthy way to deal with conflict, right? But not an easy one. No, not, who likes conflict? Nobody likes conflict, but there's so much beauty
00:22:25
Speaker
in doing it. That's what God calls us to do. Well, I was going to bring up what you said in the very beginning. And this is something that I talk about a lot with my girls is that I want them to have friends that look like them. I want them to have friends that don't look like them. I want them to have friends that have different ideas than them. And that is what
00:22:45
Speaker
I mean, I know I'm not probably getting it right, but isn't that in Acts maybe, or I can't remember the actual scripture, but that's what God wants us to do. He wants us to be around people that are different than us. It's what you said though, when they start to give you this certain feeling, a person that's different or like you, like you or different than you. Yeah, it doesn't matter. That's when you have to lean in because I,
00:23:13
Speaker
It would be really, really naive of us to think that all of our kids will be only friends with Christian kids. I wouldn't want them to be. Right, because it is a teachable moment on both ends, as long as both parties are working together. Yeah, I think it comes down to respect. Yeah. Teaching your kids, your teenagers, what it looks like to respect others and what it looks for others to respect you.
00:23:41
Speaker
And if you start sensing in a friendship that there is a lack of respect, then maybe ask some deeper questions about, is this a person that I want to give close access to in my life? Because we have different levels of friendship, just like Jesus did. He had all of his followers who walked with him all the places. And then he had his 12 disciples.
00:24:06
Speaker
and then he had his inner three, right? So I think we can use that as an example with our kids to say, hey, you know, it's great to be, let's think like a soccer team. You're friends with the people on your soccer team, but you're probably not telling all of them your deepest, darkest secrets because you don't know you can trust them, right? But you're friends with them, you're nice to them, you know?
00:24:31
Speaker
And then you've got your smaller group of friends, right? That maybe you hang out with more. But even in there, are you really sharing all your stuff? Probably not. Your inner circle is the most important. They've seen the ugly. They've seen the ugly. They love you anyway. They're going to be where you invest most of your time and your energy. That inner circle may change. Right. And that's OK. But so it's helping them understand that. That you can be friends.
00:25:00
Speaker
with people, but not give them access to your heart, to where they could hurt you on the same level as someone that you let in. And let's also be honest that your friends, even your best friends are going to hurt you. Like we're just sinful people and that's going to happen. And so that's where that reconciliation is. I would encourage parents to encourage their kids to always work out conflict in person.
00:25:29
Speaker
and not over text, because so much can be misinterpreted when you're texting back and forth, and you also text things you would never say in person, you know, and yet it hurts just as much, if not more, because you can constantly go back and read it. Right. It's right there reminding you.
00:25:53
Speaker
So it's just helping our kids have a good picture of what friendship the role of friendship should be in their life and helping them evaluate who they let close and knowing that conflict is going to happen. So let let me show you how to work through it. Don't work through it for your kids at this age as teenagers. They don't need their parents stepping in and you know trying to resolve
00:26:22
Speaker
conflict. It's time for them to learn how to do that. When they're younger, you can sit by their side maybe as they are having this conversation with their friend, but by the time they're teens, you coach them up front and you make a safe space available for them. Coach them on maybe some ways to open it and close the conversation, but then let them do it. It's one of those things you learn by trial and error.
00:26:51
Speaker
And it can be hard to let go like that, but we don't want to be meddling in their friendships. We want to be mentors. And we need to be there to listen. Yes. Yes.
Transition to Media Influence on Children
00:27:03
Speaker
All right. We tackled friendships. So how about we talk about the media? The media. The media. Oh, my goodness. Oh, how to talk to your kids about the things that they see on the news. Oh, yes. Not easy, but we're going to talk about that next.
00:27:21
Speaker
This world is hard and sad and scary sometimes and that's never what God intended and he didn't want the world to be like this anyways. And so when you talk about like hope that goes beyond your circumstance, that's where you bring the faith component in. I think asking questions like, how do you see that event impacting your life? Because that's something that
00:27:44
Speaker
their processing is how does this war going to impact me personally because remember teens are very self-focused.