Welcome and Episode Introduction

Part 1 of 4 · Ep. 1112

John Dehlin [00:00:31] Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis Podcast. Today we are doing a joint release through two channels, the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis Podcast as well as Mormon Stories Podcast. Now that the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis Podcast is coming under the umbrella of the Open Stories foundation, we are looking forward to more cross pollination. And so we're releasing this today, live, streaming it through the Mormon Stories Podcast Facebook page. And we're already getting way more viewers, so that's a good thing. My name is Dr. John Dehlin. I am so excited to be here with you again. It's May 7, 2019 and I am joined as always, by.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:19] Hi, Margi Dehlin. Good to see you all.

John Dehlin [00:01:24] It's good to have you. Thank you for joining us.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:26] Thank you. Good to be here.

John Dehlin [00:01:27] And as always, the amazing, the thoughtful, the talented, the wise, the resilient, the strong. Did I forget anything?

Natasha Helfer [00:01:37] Oh, my Atlanta. And my sump pump, which sometimes makes noises in the background.

John Dehlin [00:01:44] Natasha Alfred Parker joining us from Wichita, Kansas. Natasha, welcome.

Natasha Helfer [00:01:48] I'm so glad to be here. Thanks for having me. We're getting a lot of rain here in Wichita, so there's a lot of sump pump noises in my background is all I'm saying.

John Dehlin [00:01:56] That's all right. Well, we're glad to have you. And today we are thrilled to be covering a topic that so many people care about and want to know about. The topic is Parenting after a Mormon Faith Crisis. And just already from the feedback we've received, there are several episodes that are going to spring forth out of this topic. This is just going to be one of many, but we're going to spend at least two, two and a half hours today talking about parenting.

John Dehlin [00:02:28] And today is meant to be an overview because there are subtopics that are also very important. But before we do that, let me give a little bit of explanation for Mormon Stories listeners. Many of you won't know that for the past year, starting in January 2019, Margi, Natasha and I started a new podcast called the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis. You can find it@mormonfaithcrisis.com and originally it was not released under the Open Stories foundation, but we talked to the board and the board has agreed to let us bring this in under the Open Stories foundation as a nonprofit podcast to join Mormon Stories, Mormon Mental health, and a thoughtful faith podcast.

John Dehlin [00:03:15] So now we have four podcasts, of course, Dan Witherspoon's Mormon Matters. He's going off to do his own awesome thing. And we bless him. But anyway, this podcast has been going for some time and we're up to 27 episodes so far. Just to give you guys a sense for what we've covered so far,

John Dehlin [00:03:41] some

John Dehlin [00:03:41] of the topics have included making peace with Mormonism. Are the stereotypes true about Mormons who have a faith crisis? What are the causes, the most common causes of a faith crisis? What are the most difficult aspects of a faith crisis? Understanding the Mormon conversion process. Understanding the deconversion process. Coming out as a non believer to family members.

John Dehlin [00:04:04] Tips when navigating a faith crisis. Communicating with believing family and friends. Communicating with church leadership, ward members and neighbors during and after a faith crisis. Communicating with children during a faith crisis. And then we just did a four part series that I think is really, really important on the essential role of grief and anger and depression in a Mormon faith crisis.

John Dehlin [00:04:29] This is also merging in all the episodes that we did on Mormon Transitions Podcast a few years ago. There's some great content there that you'll see us folding into this podcast. And so this is going to be ultimately a one stop shop of everything that you need or that your family or friends or someone you know care about needs to go through a faith crisis and to come out healthy on the other end. We are also working on a book called the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis that Natasha and Margi and I are working on.

John Dehlin [00:05:01] And so there's lots of good stuff in the works. We would love it if you guys would share this episode on your wall or with friends or in groups because we want as many people joining us as possible.

John Dehlin [00:05:17] But let's, now that I've given you that overview. Oh, also, we need your support. If you value this content, if you value this sort of effort, we need you to go to MormonFaithCrisis.com and click on the donate button. We've got a handful of donors so far, but for us to keep this podcast alive, we need people to become monthly donors.

John Dehlin [00:05:41] 10 bucks a month, 25 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month, whatever you can afford. One of these episodes is worth several hundred dollars in therapy and you're going to get, by the end, 100 or 200 episodes. Not just for you, but for posterity as well. So please support us. It'll make a big difference. And so.

John Dehlin [00:06:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:05] Am I forgetting anything?

Margi Dehlin [00:06:07] Nope. I think you covered it, Natasha.

Natasha Helfer [00:06:10] I think we're good.

Mission Statement and Guest Introductions

John Dehlin [00:06:11] All right, so let's talk about our mission. Each time we do this episode, we have a mission that we share because

John Dehlin [00:06:19] we want to make sure.

John Dehlin [00:06:19] People understand what we're doing and why. So, Margi, what's our mission of the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis?

Margi Dehlin [00:06:25] So our mission is to provide positive, practical, and personal tips for navigating a Mormon faith crisis. We call it the three P's. And it is also for those wishing to understand those in a faith crisis.

John Dehlin [00:06:40] So we're trying to keep this friendly to believers and non believers, relevant to believers and non believers. Something that will build understanding and bridges.

Margi Dehlin [00:06:50] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:06:51] Natasha, do you want to add anything to that mission?

Natasha Helfer [00:06:56] Well, I think our main message is, you know, it's just kind of in the title, the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis. A lot of times people who are going through a faith transition don't necessarily feel like that's a gift. And people who are living around the person who are dealing with the faith transition also don't necessarily feel like this is a gift. You know, if you're marri married to somebody and they're changing their belief systems, it can feel actually very threatening and very upsetting and very sad. And, you know, these are kinds of all the things that we're addressing. At the same time, I think what we want to infuse is hope and also understanding that on the other side of pain and discomfort and growth comes beautiful, wonderful possibilities and things that weren't necessarily in the cards before a faith transition.

Natasha Helfer [00:07:46] So whether you shift in your relational intimacy, whether you shift in your parenting styles, like we're talking about today, some of that is hard and painful, and some of it can really bring forward things that people then feel really wonderful about. So it's kind of like the loss of innocence of anything. Most of us miss innocence in some ways. Most of us have painful processes of losing innocence, and yet most of us wouldn't want to go back to innocent parts of our life before we kind of appreciate the growth. And actually, this is very kind of, you know, symbolic. And Mormon theology is this idea of growth and trials bring, you know, experience and things that are helpful to us in the end. So we have this hopeful message.

John Dehlin [00:08:36] I love it. Thanks for sharing the hope, Natasha. All right, so we want to make sure everyone knows that this podcast is available@mormonfaithcrisis.com it's on YouTube. Under Mormon faith Crisis, it's under itunes. You can subscribe to it there lots of different ways you can consume this. You can also go to the Facebook page.

John Dehlin [00:09:01] The Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis. And all the episodes are there. And again, we'll be selectively sharing these episodes in the Mormon Stories podcast feed. And of course check out Natasha Helfer Parker's Mormon Mental Health podcast if you're looking for specific topics around mental health.

John Dehlin [00:09:19] And make sure and donate to each podcast. That means a lot to you. Don't just donate to one thinking you're giving to all. It's really important if you want to see a specific project thrive and live on that, you donate to that project. So donate to Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis if you like that, donate to Natasha's Mormon Mental Health if you like that, etc.

John Dehlin [00:09:41] We do provide coaching separate from our work with the Open Stories Foundation. Natasha, do you want to talk to us about your role as a coach and what you provide coaching for?

Natasha Helfer [00:09:51] Yeah, so I work in. In faith transition work. Of course. I'm a certified sex therapist as well. So I deal a lot with sexuality. I deal with the intersection of those two things, parenting concerns, kind of a myriad of mental health issues. So you can find everything that I do in my online practice. And all of those things are hopefully somewhat clearly delineated on my website, which is natashaparker.org so whether you want to see me professionally or you're interested in my podcast or products, I have some books and webinars that are available. Most of that you can find through following some link on my website.

John Dehlin [00:10:31] And I have people tell me every week that Natasha saved their lives or saved their marriage. So Natasha is a gem.

Natasha Helfer [00:10:38] Thanks, John.

John Dehlin [00:10:40] Margi, do you do coaching?

Margi Dehlin [00:10:42] I do. I do do coaching. You can find all things coaching and all things that I am interested in and passionate about@beautyinthenow.org what types of things

John Dehlin [00:10:53] do you coach for?

Margi Dehlin [00:10:55] Relationships, health and wellness. Kind of themes around identity, grief and loss. Kind of all the things that accompany major life transitions.

John Dehlin [00:11:04] Healthy marriage relationships.

Margi Dehlin [00:11:07] So it would be parenting. It would be, yeah, marriages. It would be authenticity or boundaries in relationships.

John Dehlin [00:11:15] How about womanly things? Define just like emerging as a post Mormon middle aged woman.

Margi Dehlin [00:11:24] So that would be identity.

John Dehlin [00:11:25] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:11:26] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:11:26] All right.

Margi Dehlin [00:11:27] Define.

Natasha Helfer [00:11:28] That was good, by the way.

Margi Dehlin [00:11:32] Go deeper, please.

John Dehlin [00:11:34] I like it. And then I can be reached@johndelun.com coaching I love specifically faith crisis work and mixed faith marriage work and healthy marriage stuff and sort of healing from midlife crisis stuff and even infidelity. Those are things I really love working on. So check us out if you need help and let other people know really quickly. We do have one event coming up that's kind of really important. June 7th through 9th is the thrive Beyond Mormonism Conference. We're doing it in Salt Lake City at the Maverick Center. We've only got, like a dozen spots left. We're going to be selling out. We have a max of like 250 people.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:23] It's going to be fabulous.

John Dehlin [00:12:24] And so if you are planning on coming, you better sign up, like, literally today because there'll be no spots tomorrow. But the list of people coming to this event is sort of mind blowing that we're getting so many amazing healers all in the same place.

John Dehlin [00:12:42] So this includes. Margi's going to be speaking. Natasha is going to be speaking. Julie de Azevedo Hanks, Christian Moore, Anthony Miller, Leah and Brinley Young, John Larsen, David Bacavoy, Jenny Morrow, Zelf on the Shelf. That's Samantha and Tanner, Alan and Katie Mount from Marriage on a Tightrope. Steve Holbrook, Crystal and Sean Escobar. So many amazing people talking about all sorts of amazing themes. Faith, crisis, marriage, relationships, parenting, spirituality, finding community, healthy sexuality, mixed faith marriage stuff.

John Dehlin [00:13:17] You just got to check out. You got to check out thrive if you're going to be in Salt Lake or want to be in Salt Lake. And the best thing about thrive is making friends and finding community. Karaoke.

John Dehlin [00:13:30] The $75 slot per person covers two and a half days. Two lunches are included and karaoke. And it's gonna be amazing. So go to thrivebeyondmormonism.com to sign up for that. It is not an Open Stories foundation project, but it probably should be, but it's not this time. Maybe it will be next time.

What's Working This Week

John Dehlin [00:13:52] All right, so with that, it is time to launch in. We have the what's working section that we do every week, which is just us sharing something that's working.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:05] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:14:06] So, Margi, what's working for you in your life these days?

Margi Dehlin [00:14:09] I'm itching my eye. I'm sorry. Okay. You know, I have a number of things that are working, none of which are particularly deep.

John Dehlin [00:14:19] Still, that's okay. Last week, nausea's what's Natasha's what's working was nothing's working.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:24] I love that, by the way.

John Dehlin [00:14:26] She set a famously low bar for

Natasha Helfer [00:14:29] the what's Working segment and was completely real.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:33] That was like a. It was so.

John Dehlin [00:14:34] It was profound. What are you talking about? It was super profound.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:38] So in my arsenal of simplifiers for the everyday. And these things do matter, as it turns out. So the MVP would be dry shampoo. Lately. I'm just saying. So, yeah, I have simplified. Oftentimes when things get busy, the first thing I simplify is kind of my morning routine. And so dry shampoo has come in clutch for that. The second thing I just kind of wanted to offer that is also just sort of a pleasure. A simple thing is I love like smell or fragrance, so like essential oils or diffusers. But I've been trying to upgrade slowly some of my kind of beauty choices to be cleaner. And so in that, like, along with that, I have found some fragrances for spring by a place called Skyler. Maybe you've heard of them.

John Dehlin [00:15:32] But now real quick, people are going to think this is some product.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:34] Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

John Dehlin [00:15:36] We do not do product endorsements.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:38] No, they're just things I've been enjoying. So I have this aisle fragrance smell that I've been wearing it, but it's kind of fresh and then so you can actually go on. It's just been fun. So I'm a fragrance person. It helps me kind of with the season, celebrate. And I literally smell it all day. And so it's been nice to kind of know that I'm wearing kind of cleaner, some cleaner products. And then last, what's working for me, I am going silver. I've got some silver in my hair. And so it's been really fun this week to take a little bit of time to find some, some gray hair, silver hair, mentors.

Margi Dehlin [00:16:15] So I've been doing that just kind of to see other women, what works for them. And so that's been something that's been fun for me. Those are all working things that are just sort of. They're on the lighter side. But, you know, they came to mind for me this week.

John Dehlin [00:16:30] I love it. Thanks for sharing. Natasha, what's working for you if anything? If anything.

Natasha Helfer [00:16:38] If anything, yeah. Hopefully I've figured out something within the week, so. Well, one thing that's working for me is Margi. Margi is always a really good reminder of mindful practice. So I actually did some of that this week. So I have this app that kind of records some affirmations in your own voice. And so I did that and I've been kind of trying to sit with that in the morning and I know Margi has mentioned it before, but I also recommend it as the calm app. So I've been listening to some things on there to help me at night and also in the morning, so trying to, you know, like, practice what I often preach.

Natasha Helfer [00:17:19] Sometimes I'm better at preaching than practicing what. How could that be the case? And the second thing that's working for me because it's been really rainy and stormy is Sparkles. So I'm wearing my sparkly sweat sweater and my sparkly earrings.

John Dehlin [00:17:38] Oh, I love those sparkles.

Margi Dehlin [00:17:41] Because sometimes you have to create your own sunshine, you know, Sometimes you have

Natasha Helfer [00:17:46] to be your own sparkle.

Margi Dehlin [00:17:47] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:17:49] Sparkles by Natasha.

John Dehlin [00:17:53] I love it. What's working for me is now that the weather's a little bit better, we are doing canyon hikes. So Margi and I went up to Mill Creek Canyon and we went on a super long hike. And this time, instead of just going along, what is it, the pipeline trail, we found some trail that goes up higher in the mountain. And there's a lot of solitude. Nature, running water, you know, buds sprouting out from bushes and trees, flowers, blossoms. We even found like a femur bone in a tree.

John Dehlin [00:18:31] Last time we were walking, which was weird,

John Dehlin [00:18:35] but we talked and we connected and we saw some beautiful sights. Get out and enjoy nature. Yes, that's what's working for us. A quick shout out to all the people that are joining us on Facebook Live. Lisa writes, sometimes you're born to sparkle. She's talking to Natasha.

Margi Dehlin [00:18:58] That is true of Natasha.

Natasha Helfer [00:19:00] Somehow. Now I want to turn this into, like, a brand. Sparkle.

Margi Dehlin [00:19:04] That's right.

Natasha Helfer [00:19:05] There probably already is one.

John Dehlin [00:19:06] Sparkle by Natasha.

Margi Dehlin [00:19:08] Seriously.

John Dehlin [00:19:10] Andrew writes, Hi, Natasha. You're doing great things. You, John and Margi have done so much for Ashley and me. So glad you're with us, Andrew. Andrew also writes what's working. He says, apparently the universe is working for me and with me. I'm a big fan of putting your authentic self out there, then sitting back and listening.

John Dehlin [00:19:30] So thanks for sharing, Andrew. Several of you are excited to come to Thrive. Lois is coming. McLean, Rachelle is excited to come, and of course, Kristen and Erin, the Glue sisters are coming. We're super excited to have them.

John Dehlin [00:19:51] So anyway, thanks so much, everyone for joining us. And Lindy just joined. Lindy is one of our co planners on Thrive. Hey, Lindy, thanks for coming. All right, so we are going to now dive into the main topic for today, and it's parenting. Now, we acknowledge that not everyone who goes through a faith crisis is a parent.

Why Parenting Is a Top Faith Crisis Challenge

John Dehlin [00:20:12] And we also acknowledge that not everyone who goes through a faith crisis needs help with parenting. Having said that, if we had to make a top five list, maybe even a top three list of the things that the people we work with talk most about, it is parenting.

John Dehlin [00:20:31] So we're going to dive into it. We do want to let you know that we've already released an episode on the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis about parenting. And the episode is named something to the effect of communicating with children during a faith transition. So a lot of you were like, oh my gosh, how do I talk to my kids about God? Or how do I talk to my kids about the loss of faith or scripture or what we're doing?

John Dehlin [00:20:59] We just posted a link to that episode in the live feed because we want to make sure you guys know about that. We won't be covering that today. So this isn't how to talk to your kids about religion, how to tell your kids you're leaving the faith episode. That's outside the scope for today's episode, mostly because we've already covered it.

John Dehlin [00:21:22] So what we are going to focus on is just sort of like once you no longer have the word of wisdom necessarily to rely on. Absolutely. Once you no longer have the law of chastity that you hold. Absolutely. And even at a macro level, once you no longer have prophets, seers and revelators telling you what's right and what's wrong, bishops telling you what's right and wrong, some of you may not be attending church, some of you may not have a theology at all. Others of you may.

John Dehlin [00:21:58] It can feel very destabilizing to stop being orthodox within a Mormon context or to even go inactive or leave the Mormon Church if you choose to do that when you're worried about your kids. I think so many of us have been conditioned to think that if you, if you aren't orthodox Mormon and. Or if you leave Mormonism, that your kids will become immoral or dark or moraleless or even, you know, bad people, dishonest drug dealers, prostitutes. You know, we are imbued with so much fear. What's that?

Margi Dehlin [00:22:42] Sex workers.

John Dehlin [00:22:43] Sex workers. Thank you.

Natasha Helfer [00:22:46] Which in of itself is a valid choice.

John Dehlin [00:22:49] Likes to remind us on this believer friendly podcast that sex working is a valid choice.

Natasha Helfer [00:22:57] It's a choice. People have agency. And.

John Dehlin [00:23:05] So.

John Dehlin [00:23:06] Yeah, and so there's so much fear around it. And having said that, literally billions of

John Dehlin [00:23:11] people around the world raised their families outside of Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:23:15] And anyone who's ever, you know, hung

John Dehlin [00:23:18] around non Mormons, whether it's Jews or secular Jews or Catholics or atheists or agnostics or Muslims or Hindus. You know, pick Buddhists, pick your religion or secular tradition, you will be able to find amazing parents raising amazing kids.

John Dehlin [00:23:37] And so I think at the outset, wow.

Why Parents Don't Need to Panic

John Dehlin [00:23:40] Can we start with just this idea,

John Dehlin [00:23:42] Natasha and Margi, that people don't need to be super afraid?

Natasha Helfer [00:23:49] Yeah, I always start, you know, I do quite a bit of presenting on Faith transitions and parenting. And I always start with this idea actually, like, believe it or not, like, lots and lots of people raise really great kids and lots and lots of people have really significant problems with their kids.

Natasha Helfer [00:24:08] And that just kind of is true of all kinds of families that come from all kinds of backgrounds. And I think in general, we try to again, have that equational approach, like, oh, if I'm a drug addict who neglects my kids, my children will be awful. And the reality is that many people come from very traumatic, very chronically abusive homes, homes that actually thrive and do very well.

Natasha Helfer [00:24:34] And then there's people who really provide a very stable environment and have a lot of kind of assets as a family, and their kids don't always thrive or maybe meet expectations like parents would hope and expect. And I even love how even in our own Mormon story, we've got right from the beginning of the Book of Mormon, an example of a family system that's very mixed. Like, same parents, lots of different results. Right. And their children, Nephi, you know, all those, all those kiddos that they had. So I think that sometimes we think we have more control than we do have as parents.

Natasha Helfer [00:25:13] And we want to balance that with the idea that, yes, what we do matters and we still don't have a lot of control. Right. So kind of those two things. And there's lots of different parents parenting styles that can be effective and there's not just one right way to do it or one right religion or one right culture where healthy, well balanced children come from.

John Dehlin [00:25:38] I love it.

Margi Dehlin [00:25:39] Yeah, this kind of plays on one of the first shifts that happened for me amidst learning about the idea of conscious parenting. And that is that structurally we come from place that on some level talks about our children as empty containers, if you will. They come into the world and they're a void of morality or goodness or. And so, you know, a lot of the, you know, kind of structures are about we must teach, we must, you know, fill that container or our children will not be good. You know, and so one of those, the first major shifts is this idea of coming. Our children come desiring to do good.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:29] They have kindness and a built in sort of sense of morality and, you know, caring about other people. And I think that's interesting because just that shift of sort of that empty container is fear. Oh my gosh. Because then when you transition out, it's like you're back to the empty container, right? And you're thinking, we have to, we have to fill. And now we have to teach. And now We're. We have to do all this where the church was kind of helping us before. But once you shift to this idea of, you know, my child wants to do good, they actually inherently want to connect with other people.

Natasha Helfer [00:27:05] They want to be good to people.

Margi Dehlin [00:27:07] They want to. You know, then it. You have this trust, you have this. It relaxes that sort of anxiety response. So that's something.

Natasha Helfer [00:27:16] A shift.

Margi Dehlin [00:27:17] That was one of my first kind of shifts coming out is just to realize structurally where we come from and why we feel this intense anxiety, along with the fact that, you know, parenting hits us, you know, very deeply because it's around, you know, clearly humans that we love dearly,

John Dehlin [00:27:37] you know, that is such a. I didn't have this in my notes, but I'm making my notes now, Margi. That is so important. So you're just. You're jumping out with point one, aren't you?

Margi Dehlin [00:27:45] Well, it seemed to kind of like

John Dehlin [00:27:46] hit you, just this idea that you are whole, we are whole. We have goodness within us. There's this assumption that we need an extrinsic moral authority, number one, to have any motivation to be good, and then, number two, to tell us how to be good.

John Dehlin [00:28:07] And then, if I had to add a problem with kind of orthodoxy and parenting, it's something that I find problematic theologically, that not every believer believes. And so I hope those of you who are believers will have patience with me as I talk about something sensitive.

John Dehlin [00:28:30] The core Christian paradigm that I was raised in begins with this idea that we are born in sin, that we're born flawed or broken, that we're born inherently wicked, and that if there isn't some sort of atonement that can wash us clean and wash us clean every week, that we are fallen, depraved, wicked people.

John Dehlin [00:29:04] I'm not saying that people who believe that are bad or wrong. I'm saying, for me, I found that to be a real important opportunity for parenting to erase that notion that we would teach to our kids that they're depraved, that they're fallen, that they're broken, that they're unwhole, that they're unclean. And instead, like you said, Margi, to start with this idea that you are whole, you are good, you are perfect. Now, that doesn't mean that you will always do healthy things right, or that

Margi Dehlin [00:29:41] you just leave your children to their own. You know, you're good, so carry on, right? That's not what that means. It just means that you come from this place of, I think, abundance in thinking about Your children that they have what they need and that maybe we facilitate. Facilitate experiences and processing, that they are able to connect with that part of themselves.

John Dehlin [00:30:07] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:30:07] Bring it to light.

John Dehlin [00:30:08] And this isn't me saying that the atonement's bad or that Christianity is bad. And I know a lot of Christians who believe in a very flexible approach to Jesus and the atonement. And even if you don't agree with me, that's fine too. We try and model differentiation here. But all I'm saying is I don't like this idea that we're fallen and broken. And I don't even like this idea of sin.

John Dehlin [00:30:36] And I certainly don't love the idea of extrinsic moral authority and sort of a patriarchy needs to be what guides and leads you. I really like starting with this idea that we're whole, that we're good, that we have the goodness within us.

John Dehlin [00:30:54] It's not even a parent's job to tell the kid how to be and what to be. We do need to protect our kids. Just like don't let them touch the stove, don't let them cross the street until they learn how to be wise.

John Dehlin [00:31:08] But I just love that we're able to start from this foundation of them being whole and complete and worthy. And then it's instead of a sin model, it's a learning model.

Margi Dehlin [00:31:18] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:31:19] When you make a mistake, you're not a sinner and broken. You are a human that just is learning. And every mistake you make as a child is information. It's data to then learn to make better decisions. Natasha, I want to bring you in. We're getting lots of great comments from our listeners. Krista writes, yes, the scarcity we were taught in the church feels like a fear tactic they use to create dependency. Yes, Krista, some people do experience that. Penny writes, I have never fully understood the atonement. I agree, Penny. I didn't fully understand it either. Penny also writes, I've always felt that people are inherently good. I've never understood repentance because of this. Okay, so Natasha, what would you add to kind of this opening idea that Margi shared, that we are full containers in an abundance mentality versus an empty container and a sin shame unworthiness mentality?

Natasha Helfer [00:32:18] I don't know that I would add much. I think, you know, when I think about kind of Mormon theology again, I think that there's. There's a wrestle within Mormonism where on the one hand, you know, as a young woman, I grew up repeating every week the set the six or seven, you know, kind of young women's values. And one of them is divine worth, right. So we have this idea that we divine, that we have divinity within us, that we have, you know, that we're very special, we're children of God. Right. We have these kinds of worth building types of concepts. And then yet the culture seems to weigh very heavily on this idea of, you know, worthiness, which I've written a lot about, that, you know, when you start seeing yourself as less than or unable to glean the, the I guess the approval of a divine being or that you have to, you know, kind of hustle for that, you know, it's.

Natasha Helfer [00:33:18] It becomes very problematic to people's concepts of self compassion, self esteem, self regard. So. And you know, Brene Brown's work shows a lot about what shame does. And we don't do well in kind of toxic spaces of shame. Now I think in the church, as I talk to different members, you'll see a great variety of this where some people really feel like the gospel teachings really help them have higher self regard because of this divinity type of message. And you'll have lots and lots of people who feel like they never measured up, they were never good enough, they never were enough per se. So I just want to make room that people coming from Mormonism or in Mormonism have different relationships with these concepts.

Natasha Helfer [00:34:10] And yet I think in general, as I talk to many people who work with lds, people in the mental health field, we do see perfectionism as an issue. We do see, you know, kind of this sense of, you know, the checklist type of stuff, you know, where people are always trying to. It's almost like a rat race of righteousness instead of money per se. And we have a lot of messages messaging around wealth and how people, you know, if your kids all get married in the temple and if it's like all these ways that we kind of measure whether or not you've done a good enough job and life doesn't work like that.

Natasha Helfer [00:34:49] And so really great people suffer, I think very unnecessarily because of how we function in these ways. So. I agree. I'm just saying all this kind of, as you know, complicating a little bit what you're saying, which is when we shape our children, when we, when we approach our children as from a, from a space of trust and a place of wholeness, I think we avoid some of these cultural things that cause harm within our upbringings that we got in our upbringings, I think.

Margi Dehlin [00:35:22] Yeah. And what I Love to kind of focus on, which is another kind of conscious parenting value, if you will, is it changes how we relate to our children. When we're feeling like we're coming from a place of trust, that we are generous in the way we view our children, in the way they're making choices, it changes actually our behavior, which is one of the core ideas of conscious parenting. You know, in traditional parenting, it's very child focused. It's very behavioral focused. With conscious parenting, it's very connection focused. And so, you know, parents act differently. They act differently when they're feeling threatened and a great deal of fear and risk than when they actually are feeling like they're coming from a place of, you know, a little more hope, a little more wholeness themselves.

John Dehlin [00:36:23] I have that problem a lot. I have always parented well, I have often parented from a framework of fear. Fear that the kid will have premarital

John Dehlin [00:36:35] sex, fear that the kid will get

John Dehlin [00:36:37] into drugs and alcohol, fear that the

John Dehlin [00:36:41] kid won't be able to succeed financially

John Dehlin [00:36:45] in the world or find a good mate or raise a good family. And I think we, I think religion,

John Dehlin [00:36:53] some, or let's just say certain types of religion can often operate from a

John Dehlin [00:36:59] framework of fear and reward and punishment. And I think that just like you

John Dehlin [00:37:07] said, Margi, what I've learned is when you operate from a place of fear, number one, you pass that fear of

John Dehlin [00:37:14] the world onto your kids. And I think no matter what, I

John Dehlin [00:37:18] don't want my kid fearing the stove. I want my kid knowing how to use the stove. I don't want my kid fearing crossing the street.

John Dehlin [00:37:28] I want my kid learning how to

John Dehlin [00:37:30] cross the street safely. I don't want my kid fearing sex. I want my kid knowing how to

John Dehlin [00:37:35] have healthy, intimate, fulfilling sex. I want my kid not fear, fearing

John Dehlin [00:37:41] that they won't have a prosperous career.

John Dehlin [00:37:43] I want my kid learning how to

John Dehlin [00:37:46] pursue a healthy, happy career. So I love this idea of getting

John Dehlin [00:37:53] rid of the fear model. I love it. Very good. Okay, we are getting some really good

Listener Comments and Preparing Kids for a Faith Shift

John Dehlin [00:38:03] comments from our listeners. So let's just share a couple. Let's see. Christa writes, you want to read Krista?

Margi Dehlin [00:38:15] Oh, we already read that one.

John Dehlin [00:38:16] Okay, let's do Emily.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:18] And of course, being raised in a secular home can produce wonderful children. But parents joining the church can disrupt childhood negativity. Negativity or negativity. Okay, negativity. I saw this firsthand. It's not the place place a religion or their structure. It's the nature of changing course.

John Dehlin [00:38:36] That's great point.

John Dehlin [00:38:36] Some people become better parents when they join a religion.

John Dehlin [00:38:41] And some people without a religion can be great parents.

John Dehlin [00:38:44] And there are plenty of religious people

John Dehlin [00:38:46] that are awful parents.

Natasha Helfer [00:38:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:38:47] And there are secular people that are awful parents.

John Dehlin [00:38:49] And you know what?

John Dehlin [00:38:51] You know what becomes of children raised by secular parents who didn't do a great job? You know what happens to those children?

Margi Dehlin [00:38:57] They join a religion.

John Dehlin [00:38:58] They become religious.

John Dehlin [00:39:02] Nicole says you're speaking my truth, Natasha. So, Natasha, Nicole's giving you a thumbs up.

Natasha Helfer [00:39:08] Thank you. I want to go back to Emily's comment. I'm not exactly sure if I'm reading this correctly. I'm not exactly sure I know what she means. So one of the. Because you're responding to it differently than I would have. So just bear with me here for a minute. When she says people joining church can disrupt childhood negatively and it's the nature of changing course, I'm wondering if she's mentioning something along the lines of when we change or shift or don't have structure, somehow that's what hurts children.

Margi Dehlin [00:39:45] Interesting.

Natasha Helfer [00:39:46] Okay, so I just want to. Because I think this is a fear. So whether or not she meant that or not, I do think it's a fear. I hear a lot is, aren't we going to conflict the children? This is what I hear. If we're shifting and changing, are the kids going to get lost in the confusion? Are we going to harm our kids by kind of, you know, taking them along on this faith transition when it created structure and community and friendships and morality, you know, in a certain space?

Natasha Helfer [00:40:19] So my typical answer to that is that I think that most childhood upbringings, I mean, we do know that stability and structure is fairly important, especially in the younger years, like two to seven, two to eight, like bedtime routines and having certain amounts of family traditions and things that they can kind of count on. And of course, if you've got a kiddo on the autism spectrum or anything like that, that even becomes more exacerbated than her need for a routine and structure. And at the same time, I think there's a healthy mix between offering structure but also giving opportunities for kids to have to learn how to be flexible.

Natasha Helfer [00:41:06] So I think that we can do a lot in our process of this shift that can lean into flexibility without fearing that the kids are going to be confused and traumatized and that they're going to just, you know, completely fall apart just because there's been a shift in life. I mean, lots of shifts happen in life. We want to prepare our kids for shifts, whether they're faith shifts. Or a variety of other things can happen. Unemployment, divorce, change of schools, moving. I mean, there's death in the family, right? I mean, there's lots of things that kids are going to have to face, face that require flexibility.

Natasha Helfer [00:41:47] And so I would really encourage people to see a faith transition from that lens, that it's not that we have to be scared or that we're going to confuse or ruin the children, but in this process of shift, which we might see some regression or some concern or some angst around that, what tools can we then provide to make flexibility of value in our home as well?

Margi Dehlin [00:42:11] I love that. Can I just say, I'm so glad you brought that out. And it almost feels like it goes back a little bit to empty container a little bit. Because if you kind of feel like we're kind of wired for change, that's something inherent to kind of being alive, then I really love this idea that as parents, what we really desire for our children is space for practice, right? So change is inherent. It's coming for them. They will have it as part of their journeys. So if that is true, then this is a perfect place to start them with a coping skill, tool belt where they connect with themselves during this process to, you know, start cultivating their own, you know, tool belt of coping and navigation skills which then they can return to and edit for the rest of their lives.

Margi Dehlin [00:43:10] But I love this idea of practicing and you are there, you can provide support for that, you can provide awareness for them. And so they're practicing the support in their, you know, kind of childhood teen years as opposed to kind of trying to not have any change. And then they go out at 18 and have, you know, very little practice with navigating that on their own.

Natasha Helfer [00:43:35] And just a few thoughts that come to mind on how to do this. I often talk to parents about tone. A lot of how we tell a story can be self fulfilling or system fulfilling. If you're confused and you're going through your own transition and you're constantly in an angst and angry and upset and causing all of this turmoil in your family system, that's probably going to be a little bit more of a dramatic tone for your kids to have to deal with.

Natasha Helfer [00:44:03] Where if you can sit together as a family system, and first of all, your tone is calm where you can validate confusion. Like say, we're kind of going through a confusing time, we're changing a lot of the ways we think as a family, or at least your parents are changing some of the ways we think. And it's making us act differently and it's making us think of different decisions and I'm sure that's affecting you. So I'm guessing this is kind of confusing just to name that can be very beneficial for kids. And then is your tone again? You know, like I always call it that dun, dun, dun tone.

Natasha Helfer [00:44:40] Right. Like, come here. Everything's changing versus you know what? There's some things that are changing and we're kind of light hearted about it. Right. And so kids will kind of get a sense of how scared or worried they need to be about any particular change with how you're role modeling that change and why. I think this kind of ties back to our grief podcast that we did these last few weeks where you really kind of have to do your own work so that your kids can benefit from that. But if the idea is that somehow I'm going to create a nice little bubble where I am a fulfilled, complete person as a parent, we're all setting ourselves up for failure.

Natasha Helfer [00:45:22] You're not going to be that for your kids. Right. Like my new mantra is don't be a chronic abuser. Don't be a helicopter parent. Be. Oh, what's the word I love to use? It was on my be. It's not. Hold on.

Margi Dehlin [00:45:39] Oh, I know what you're talking about.

Natasha Helfer [00:45:41] Be mediocre. Your goal is to be a mediocre parent. That's the love. I. That's the word. I love that word because it implies that you're going to be so, so sorry. Instead of having this idea that I'm going to be this amazing, wonderful, always in tune, always have the best answers. If you can pull off being a mediocre parent, halla frickin lujah, that's great.

John Dehlin [00:46:08] And the reason why that's. And it goes against all of our

John Dehlin [00:46:11] perfectionist, striving kind of natures.

John Dehlin [00:46:16] But ultimately your job as a parent

John Dehlin [00:46:19] isn't to tell your kids what to do and answer every question perfectly and to model perfection. It's your kids job to figure out

John Dehlin [00:46:29] who they are and what they want to be and what's important to them and how they can best navigate the world. And so I like the idea that

John Dehlin [00:46:37] that takes a lot of pressure off because the truth is, and Shefali Sabri

John Dehlin [00:46:43] will get into this, how we fundamentally

John Dehlin [00:46:45] misunderstand our role as parents.

Margi Dehlin [00:46:48] Absolutely. And in all these situations, this idea of connection over control. Right. And so Natasha, when you're talking about, you know, sort of the energy or feel or drama you bring to a situation of kind of telling your kids about introducing the idea of change. I love this sense too, of connect, connection, you know, asking your children how they're feeling, asking them, you know, Leah just talked about naming what they're feeling. You know, life provides. Life is wise. Life provides these instances of, you know, teaching, or if we're not going to say teaching, it would be like providing opportunities for our children to connect with themselves amidst a process.

Margi Dehlin [00:47:35] And just remember differentiation. As parents, you know, we can be feeling something, and our children may have a relationship with the church we don't have, or they may still want to go, or they still have. And in that case, you can reassure them the things that won't be changing, you know, in a situation and really, you know, go off kind of that connection piece. Which leads me to another concept, which is.

John Dehlin [00:48:00] Wait, are you from. From Connection?

Margi Dehlin [00:48:02] I was going to, but I don't have to.

John Dehlin [00:48:04] No. Are you going to do connection over control?

Margi Dehlin [00:48:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:06] Okay. I want to set it up. I don't want to give it short trip.

Margi Dehlin [00:48:10] Okay. Anyway, I loved what you said, Natasha, about that, about the idea of sort of, you know, the drama we bring as opposed to an energy where it's like, yep, this comes with life. And we're. We're. You know, I'm shifting at this point, and you may not be. How are you feeling right now? And here are things you can expect that, you know, maybe changing in my behavior. But here's what's not going to change, because I really care about you.

John Dehlin [00:48:37] So I love it.

John Dehlin [00:48:39] Mary Lee is asking connection. She needs a class about connection. We're gonna. We're gonna give it right now, Mary Lee, or at least an introduction, exploration. So can we jump into connection over control? Is that all right? And then Natasha will do the circumplex model next. Okay.

Introducing the Control Model of Parenting

John Dehlin [00:48:57] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:48:58] So connection over control is a concept that we found through Shefali Saberry. There's three books that we strongly, strongly recommend for parenting. And in fact, we're assembling a reading list of books and a listening list of podcasts that we're gonna share, you know, in these blog posts or in these podcast posts so that you can have lots of references. But three books that Margi and I kind of look as the holy trinity of parenting. Okay, that's dramatic. But good books on parenting are all from the same author. Shefali Sabery. That's S H E F A L I, right?

John Dehlin [00:49:41] Shefali.

Margi Dehlin [00:49:42] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:49:42] Saberry T S A B A R Y.

John Dehlin [00:49:45] Is that right?

Margi Dehlin [00:49:46] True.

John Dehlin [00:49:47] And it's basically Eastern Secular Buddhism merged with parenting. And the first book that we read by Shvali Sabery is called the Conscious Parent, and it's an introduction to merging executive Buddhism with parenting.

Margi Dehlin [00:50:03] Yeah. The way I think about the Conscious parent is it's very meta. So it's kind of philosophical in nature, which can be frustrating for people starting out who want to see more practical, like, what does this look like? So I will say that it's highly philosophical.

Natasha Helfer [00:50:22] It's frustrating for Mormons.

Margi Dehlin [00:50:25] Yes. Right.

Natasha Helfer [00:50:26] Because you want.

Margi Dehlin [00:50:26] You want the practical, the secure, the. Just tell me. Just tell me what I need to do. And the Conscious Parent is very foundational. I love the book. I don't normally start people out on the conscious parent because I find they get frustrated.

John Dehlin [00:50:41] Which leads us to the second book, which is my personal favorite by Shfali Sabery, and it's called out of Control, and I think it has a subtitle.

John Dehlin [00:50:49] Right.

John Dehlin [00:50:50] But basically it's a book that digs deep into contrasting the control paradigm or the control model with the connection model. And really quickly so that we list all three and we don't forget what's the third book?

Margi Dehlin [00:51:03] So the third book is called the Awakened Family, which is my favorite as just a whole entity because you'll get a little bit. She goes over the myths of kind of traditional parenting. And then in the back section, you'll find a lot of practical. You know, it looks different. Conscious parenting looks different, you know, to. In every scenario, depending on the child and the parent. But it gives some of the more grounded. Hey, here's what this can look like. Here are some ways that it's different from traditional parenting.

John Dehlin [00:51:35] So, okay, and so check out those books and I'll set it up so in some people's experience in orthodox religions. And again, I'm always gonna, with Natasha, try and provide disclaimers that this won't be everyone's experience. This isn't a condemnation of religion. There are lots of people that do parenting and religion. Right. But sometimes in the religion model, especially the orthodox religion model, it's a paradigm of authority and extrinsic source of morality or control and this notion of control by rewards and punishments. And so it's very simple. It's this idea you parent like you understand God to be, which is, we've given you commandments as parents, as your home gods. You know, we've given you the commandments, the written on the tablets of what you're supposed to do and who you're

John Dehlin [00:52:39] supposed to be and how you're supposed to Live.

John Dehlin [00:52:41] And if you obey the commandments as given to you by your parental prophets, we will reward you with kindness and praise and maybe even attention or money and approval. And approval and worth. And if you. But if you break the commandments, we will punish you. We will punish you with negative attention, which can actually be a reward, by the way, which is a subtle complexity in psychology. But we'll quote, punish you with negative attention, with criticism, with, you know, withdrawal, withdrawal, with a withdrawal of disapproval, with a downgrading of your. Of your worth or a perception of your worth, and with curfews and with groundings.

John Dehlin [00:53:36] Maybe even don't give you a car if you don't go on a mission or don't give you money if you don't go to church. Like, it's basically this kind of like, lay down the law commandments and then punish or reward. And there's lots of different ways to do it.

John Dehlin [00:53:52] Is there anything else you guys want to add to the kind of the control model of parenting before we talk about the connection model?

Margi Dehlin [00:53:59] You know, one thing I just like to do is provide an understanding of why we are this way. And I think it's very understandable being that, you know, if we look at sort of our primary layer of like, sort of culture, our culture is very authoritarian, authoritative model when it comes to children, like we all know, well mannered child, a polite child. Our culture is quite Christian in sort of the way we perceive a lot of things in our culture. So we have that as a layer where you get a lot of cultural dictates of what a good child is and what it looks like.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:45] And then you have this layer of personality, probably our experience. And for many of us, not all of us, but for many of us, what we experienced as children was most likely an authoritative or authoritarian structure. And so that is what we've seen, that's what we've grown up with, that's what we've. That is how we have, you know, experienced love. And then the final layer, of course, is the religious layer where that is again reinforced because our concept of God is very authoritative, authoritarian.

Margi Dehlin [00:55:17] And so we come by this honestly, we come by this idea of control and experiencing love and relationship through control in a very honest and also amplified way. There are layers to it.

John Dehlin [00:55:33] Natasha, anything on the control model before we talk about the connection model?

Natasha Helfer [00:55:37] Well, just that when I talk about this, I always kind of tease our Mormon and that I kind of, even though I get it, why this is, you know, kind of seen as authoritarian from God, but really you know, I see this more as Satan's parenting style than Heavenly Father's parenting style.

Natasha Helfer [00:55:55] Right. Like, the whole idea of, you know, we're going to control the outcome, we're going to know who's going to get back here. We're going to have a idea of the ultimate, you know, measuring stick. All of that supposedly according to Mormon doctrine was rejected. Right. And so the plan of agency and choice and personal progression and personal agency and even the invitation to become as God, appear of God is quite different in Mormonism than, I think, a lot of the more Christian sects that keep, you know, you always under God. Whereas this Mormon idea that you kind of get invited to become a peer at some point.

Natasha Helfer [00:56:37] So, again, I feel like we have some of these concepts in our upbringing or in our theology, but we don't lean towards it culturally. We don't. We lean towards the authoritarian. Even in our ways of talking about God. In most Sunday meetings, we lean authoritarian versus this agency God that we supposedly believe in. So I just find that interesting.

Natasha Helfer [00:57:00] I find that kind of a comical way to kind of call ourselves out. And by the way, when I use the word Mormon, like I just did previously, you know, like, Mormons don't like philosophical books. I mean, all of us, I don't mean just practicing believing Mormons. I mean all of us who've transitioned or who've left, we have a lot of that intrinsically within us of being solution focused, of being checklisters, of wanting information.

Natasha Helfer [00:57:28] Some of that comes from Mormon culture. Some of that comes, like, Margi, you talked about American culture, that, you know, culture kind of values independence and solutions and goals, you know, instead of just kind of ethereal, you know, more Buddhist or more Eastern philosophies, you know, around being and accepting and thinking and contemplating. So I just want to teach us as Mormons, I mean, all of us, all of us who come from that in one way or another.

Margi Dehlin [00:57:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:57:58] Isn't it true that there's so little that's uniquely Mormon? I mean, we think we're so unique and different. All the good, you know, we go on both sides. Only good families can be Mormon. Only moral people can be Mormon. Only good marriages are Mormon. Only healthy people. That's all hogwash. And, you know, Mormonism is bad and, you know, we have all these awful things and the church is bad and the church is harmful and it's patriarchal and it's controlling. You know, neither of those are true. There's good and bad everywhere.

John Dehlin [00:58:30] Right.

Natasha Helfer [00:58:30] Well, and we come from a very Puritanical society here in the United States. So to think that our entire culture hasn't been very formed by the puritanical movement that started this country is to be kind of ill informed. Yes.

Margi Dehlin [00:58:45] One last thing I will say about control, just because we're going to show sort of something in contrast with connection, is control tends to be. Not always, but it tends to be very behavior focused. So we're not talking necessarily about what the child actually feels. What we want is what it looks like. And it's just very behavior like obedience or listening to me or this idea of respect is what that looks like and what I'm like. And so that is something that's going to contrast quite a bit with connection. But I just wanted to kind of make that point.

Downsides of the Control Model

John Dehlin [00:59:25] All right, so we've identified the control model. And I'm going to just say the downside of the control model, from my perspective, is that, number one, it kills intimacy. Because ultimately the Mormon teaching of free agency is actually one of the things I really like. But if your approach as a parent is, do what I say, follow me, you know, punishment. If you don't do what's right, nobody likes you. I don't like to. Margi always reminds me whenever I'm being controlling with my kids, she's like, how would you feel if I talk to you the way you're talking to the kids right now? And if anyone knows me, they'll know that I absolutely hate control and I

John Dehlin [01:00:15] hate being told what to do.

John Dehlin [01:00:17] Well, our kids are no different. Right. So when somebody's telling me what to do and criticizing me and nitpicking me all the time, it makes me not want to be around them. It makes me sad, it makes me, you know, just unhappy. It kills my energy, it kills my motivation. And so one of the downsides of the control model is it's demotivating and it kills intimacy.

Margi Dehlin [01:00:41] That's right. Another thing it does is it can reinforce a sense of tantruming in the parent. So as we're very, very, you know, attentive to the behavior we're seeking in our children, seeking to control in our children, we are often flying off the handle. We're really upset at them, we're really angry. And that is why in this model, the focus is actually on the parent being aware of their own reactions. And this idea is that our children, it is a spiritual practice of sorts where our children allow us to see the parts of ourselves that need healing and resolution. So you would ideally be aware of the fact that as you're trying to control your child.

Margi Dehlin [01:01:28] What is really happening is the child may fall in line temporarily with you, but will most likely disconnect and disrespect you on the inside over the long haul. Right. And that's if they do conform or with certain personality types, you will have people acting out of rebellion because one of the things we all really, really value is agency and this idea of. So, you know, either way, it's kind of a lose, lose.

Margi Dehlin [01:02:00] And even if you have an obedient child that is compliant, what you lose in that situation is this sense you are duplicating a model that is extrinsic. What you want is in essence to say, my will over your will. Listen to me, I'm the extrinsic authority. I'm going to tell you how you need to behave in this as opposed to more of a connection model where what you're really seeking is for the child to have an experience of connecting with themselves. And so I just wanted to say that in the control model we become this extrinsic force of, just listen to me. Your mind and your emotions and what you're feeling and your values.

Margi Dehlin [01:02:42] Right now, mine trump yours and I am disrespecting your process so that I get to have what I want. And so, you know, as we're talking about wanting respect from our children, in those moments, we are actually not embodying this idea of respect. And you can do that with a 5 year old as well as a 16 year old.

John Dehlin [01:03:05] Lindy writes, Holy moly. My dad parented 100% through the control method. And now as adult, our relationship is strained. It has minimal love, intimacy and respect. Thank you for agreeing with us, Lindy. That's what we want, Lindy. We want everyone to agree with what we're saying. We welcome. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, yeah. Natasha, I want to bring you in. We're talking about the downsides of the control model. Anything you want to add?

Natasha Helfer [01:03:34] No. I ran across the out of Control book years ago and really, really loved it. It's a challenge. I mean, it's a challenge with me and my husband. We both grew up, like you're saying, in authoritarian type households. Probably him more than I. And I think I can see I probably lean more towards this model that we're talking about, but I still fail at it on a fairly regular basis. My husband uncomfortably leans towards it and I can see the fear in him that as our kids make mistakes or maybe they're slacking or they're Doing this or that. I can almost see, like, oh, my gosh, I haven't held them accountable.

Natasha Helfer [01:04:16] That's the word that he uses. A lot of times I haven't held them accountable, and now I'm failing them because they're not maybe whatever, you know, X, Y, and Z as far as these behavioral outputs. And that's a really hard thing to fight against, that fear, you know, because I think that we all come to parenting, for the most part, with wonderful intentions. We only want what's best for our kids. And then in the process, you know, we try a lot of different things. Margi, what do you think about my thoughts?

Returning to Values as a Family

Margi Dehlin [01:04:51] John, can I just say, I love what you were just talking about, this idea of how empowering it is to come back to values as a family. I love that we actually did a Mormon transitions podcast called Creating a Family Culture, I believe, where we kind of touched on that a little bit. This is a wonderful time for this layered approach. Values are kind of part of that as well as. Can you help me? Can you pull up the.

Margi Dehlin [01:05:25] So it's like a multi tiered approach where what you have is you kind of start out with values, and then underneath values is this idea of embodiment, where as parents, you embody these values that you've kind of put out. And then the next layer would be rituals and traditions that help support the values that you talk about. So whether that's like a family dinner or, you know, for peace, it could be.

Margi Dehlin [01:05:52] Or nurturing. It can be doing backs before bed, and then just this idea of a home environment, the space and the feel of your home. But it's a really creative, empowering thing to go about with sort of freedom and intention and creativity to sort of, you know, start from the beginning and create as a family the type of experience you want to have in your home. So I love that you mentioned this values idea.

John Dehlin [01:06:29] Yeah. And I'll just add absolutely to that. Those of you who have listened to

John Dehlin [01:06:35] the Leah and Cody Young, Brinley Young

John Dehlin [01:06:38] episode, the Youngs give a great example of how they've implemented this idea of values. When Leah was losing her faith in Mormonism and Cody was still holding on,

John Dehlin [01:06:50] they felt like they had nothing in

John Dehlin [01:06:53] common and nothing to guide their family.

John Dehlin [01:06:55] But what they did is they went

John Dehlin [01:06:57] through a values exercise where putting theology and religion and doctrine off the table and even putting this fight about truth claims and the historicity of the church

John Dehlin [01:07:08] off the table, they did a values

John Dehlin [01:07:12] inventory, which was basically, what are the things we value in our family? Things like honesty, kindness, service, compassion, love, charity, fun, recreation, joy, physical fitness, humor. There are all sorts of things that a family can value. What's crucial is that you not focus on what you no longer believe and that you not focus on what you're angry about or what you've left, but that as a family, you focus on what you want to be about and what you want to work towards. And just like there was the proclamation on the family that we all hung,

John Dehlin [01:07:51] actually we never hung it, but that many of you hung in your homes.

John Dehlin [01:07:55] What you could do is you can cross stitch or macrame or stencil or get on Etsy, or get on Etsy, engrave, paint, whatever you need to do. Make a family constitution, a family proclamation of yours, of your own family values.

John Dehlin [01:08:12] And you put that up there and

John Dehlin [01:08:14] you talk about it, you reinforce it, you have family meetings about it. But there is, religions do not have

John Dehlin [01:08:22] a, a monopoly on values or morals by any stretch.

John Dehlin [01:08:27] And so you don't need to worry that your family won't have an anchor, that your family won't have a foundation. Create the foundation intentionally and the benefit is it can be yours. It's not going to be some set of values that you don't feel excited about that were handed to you by somebody else. And it doesn't even have to just be the parents. The kids can participate in the creation of the values.

Margi Dehlin [01:08:49] I would actually say that's crucial that the kids be involved in. Or again, you're having this external frame come in of the parents saying what the family will be. But it's so much, the kids have so much more of a buy in. They feel part of the process. If they can actually be part of that, you know, what do we, and it also can be a key kind of place of connection.

Margi Dehlin [01:09:12] What do we value? What's important to you? You know, how would that show up in our home? How would we say that? How is that lived? These are all like wonderful, wonderful ways to kind of connect and explore around values. And you can even choose values that, you know, maybe you received from being a member of the church, but you reframe them, you make them your own. So you may still want contribution or service, but it looks very different now, it feels different. And it's in a way that kind of honors you. So get creative and utilize and have everyone, you know, be involved in that creation process.

John Dehlin [01:09:53] Yeah, super important, super valuable. And Natasha, thanks for bringing that up. And also, Margi, I love your chain of sequencing. Come up with the family constitution of values that, then you embody.

John Dehlin [01:10:06] And by the way, there's always that

John Dehlin [01:10:10] saying who you are rings so loudly in my ears that I cannot hear what you're saying. The most important Shefali Saber. He talks about this the most important thing you can do as a parent is embody how many of you as parents, nag your kids about their use of social media and are always on your phones or on social media? Right?

John Dehlin [01:10:28] How you embody your values is going

John Dehlin [01:10:29] to be way more important than some Sunday school sacrament meeting, lecture or sermon that's given.

John Dehlin [01:10:36] But have your values.

John Dehlin [01:10:38] Embody them. Create rituals and traditions around the values,

John Dehlin [01:10:42] and then create a home and environment that reflects all this.

John Dehlin [01:10:46] And we did share in the live feed the episode from Mormon Transitions that will eventually migrate to Mormon Faith Crisis. That's called Creating a Family Culture. I.

Part 2 of 4 · Ep. 1113

Margi Dehlin [00:00:30] Can we go back to control for a second?

John Dehlin [00:00:33] So you covered the circumplex model and values and rituals and spiritual practice. We'll probably come back to that.

John Dehlin [00:00:38] But what we really want to get

John Dehlin [00:00:40] back to is control and connection.

John Dehlin [00:00:43] We were talking about how the control paradigm ultimately fails, the downsides to it, and we were talking about how it's demotivating, it's extrinsic, and it can create lying and rebellion. It doesn't teach self awareness or self control. It models bad behavior on the part of the parents. It kills intimacy. It's not fun. And I'm just gonna say, just personally, that I retained my very controlling, punishing, fear based approach to parenting long after I lost my orthodox Mormon belief, especially with my daughter Maya. I was always about curfew, about who you with and what boy are you with, and I'm scared you're gonna have sex and don't have sex and don't you make out and how long are you in the car and did you go parking somewhere and you're five minutes late for your curfew and I don't want him around, you know, that sort of. And I'm probably mischaracterizing how I was.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:47] You had some really wonderful moments of showing up as well.

John Dehlin [00:01:50] But it's certainly in my mind and in my emotions, I was feeling all those things. And the downside of that is that it taught Maya number one, that sexuality is scary, that it's dirty, that it's bad. And like Esther Perel says, you bring that dirty sexuality into your marriage. Right. But it also, it was a fear mentality. It made her scared all the time. It made her relationship stressful. And most importantly, it killed my intimacy with Maya for a while where Maya felt like she probably couldn't be fully honest with me. She felt scared to tell us the truth. She didn't want to share her happy experiences with us. If she was sexual, let's just say theoretically, she certainly wasn't going to want

John Dehlin [00:02:36] to talk to us about that.

John Dehlin [00:02:38] And ultimately it led to a position where she wasn't always safe, where she might get herself in situations that she wouldn't have wanted to get herself into or that she would need help getting out of. But because she felt scared and not close to me or us, you know, she probably, you know, wasn't always safe as she. As safe as she could have been if she could have called us at any time or talk to us at any time about anything.

Natasha Helfer [00:03:09] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:03:10] So there are a couple things in there that I would Love to highlight. And the first thing is another aspect of control that is difficult is that you may control behavior on the surface, but oftentimes it drives those behaviors underground. And that is what ultimately, you know, I think. So then you have split your child into behavior that they may show around you, and then you've got the behavior that happens kind of in the dark or, you know, underground. And so just for an overall healthy paradigm, that's something that's probably not so desirable. So this idea of, you know, driving behavior underground, and then, yes, on some level, without going into detail, Maya as an explorer, as someone who was very, very lit up and alive with her life, very much a developmentally appropriate young woman, I do feel like what you also sacrifice is when your child may be facing something large or uncertain, or they're less apt to trust you with it.

Margi Dehlin [00:04:22] If that behavior comes, if your relationship is defined by judgment and kind of obedience, and. And then you will not have influence. You will not have the relationship where they're confiding and you're able to be there for them. They, at times in life when they may need you, are more left alone. And that is something that we have really, really come to value. Maya was our teacher that way. And we have shifted a lot of things from our experience with Maya as the amazing human being that she is. So a little side on that.

John Dehlin [00:05:05] Yes. So that's for all those reasons. That's why control, from our perspective, isn't the optimum model. So now, if it's not control, what is connection? What is connection, Margi? Natasha, how do you know if you have it? How do you foster it? And what are the benefits? Do you want to go first?

Natasha Helfer [00:05:32] Before we go into that, can I just share a few things you just said? First of all, there's a quote that I just shared actually on my Facebook page.

Natasha Helfer [00:05:39] It's more about partners and sexuality.

Natasha Helfer [00:05:41] But Ellen Bader, Ph.D. says, When you

Natasha Helfer [00:05:44] forbid a partner from doing something, you invite them to keep a secret.

Natasha Helfer [00:05:49] And I think that that is very

Natasha Helfer [00:05:50] much what you're talking about. And I think as parents, it's hard to balance that because then you're like, well, am I just supposed to be okay with anything?

Natasha Helfer [00:05:55] And anything goes?

Natasha Helfer [00:05:57] And we're not talking about that.

Natasha Helfer [00:05:59] And I think that's what we'll get

Natasha Helfer [00:05:59] into with connection type parenting. So I'm not going to go into that very much right now.

Natasha Helfer [00:06:03] But I also want to say that

Natasha Helfer [00:06:05] the research has been very clear that when they talk to trauma survivors, sexual assault survivors, especially women and. And they ask why they did not tell their parents or their father in particular. It's because they were afraid of the reaction the father would have about either the perpetrator and that then the father would get in trouble by going and killing this guy or hurting this person or something along those lines.

Natasha Helfer [00:06:35] So in other words, they did not

Natasha Helfer [00:06:36] trust their parent to be able to handle the information of their pain and suffering. And that is profound. When you think about what we want to be as parents, you know, if our kids have the idea that you can't handle my truth, you can't handle my thoughts or my ideas or my behaviors, then we do invite this sense of secrecy and the sense of just being kind of divorced from huge aspects of our children's lives. And that's just. I think we just have to decide to choose.

Natasha Helfer [00:07:10] Do I want to have authority and

Natasha Helfer [00:07:13] accountability, or do I want to have conversation? You know, do I want to have trust? And you really can't have both. So you kind of have to decide which approach you're going to take.

Natasha Helfer [00:07:27] Now, when I make mistakes, because I

Natasha Helfer [00:07:29] don't always stay in my trust space, I do repair attempts. I go back and tell my kids I lost it. I'm sorry. I reacted stronger than I would want. And so hopefully I'm regaining that trust because you're not going to be perfect at this whole process.

Margi Dehlin [00:07:44] So important. I just not to plug my own blog, but I just did a post on apologizing to children as a conscious.

Natasha Helfer [00:07:53] You should plug your own blog.

Natasha Helfer [00:07:55] There's nothing. You know what? By the way, here's a thought I have. This is totally tangential. We constantly apologize for plugging our own

Natasha Helfer [00:08:05] stuff and for making money. I want to do a podcast on that. John.

Margi Dehlin [00:08:11] Word.

Natasha Helfer [00:08:11] Whoa.

John Dehlin [00:08:12] Natasha's unleashed.

Natasha Helfer [00:08:14] We just went somewhere different. Sorry.

Natasha Helfer [00:08:16] Let's release me, reel it back in.

Margi Dehlin [00:08:20] Anyway, the power of an apology, especially as parents to our children, it is, you know, we want to embody again, this idea that we are all journeying, we're all imperfect, and what it looks like to make a mistake and take responsibility for it and learn from it. And so I love that you brought that up.

John Dehlin [00:08:44] And just as a capstone little story that gets kind of heavy really quick. And it just is a reflection of things we've already talked about. I'm able to talk about this because our daughter Maya has talked about this publicly.

John Dehlin [00:08:56] So I'm just gonna just lay this down. For me, this real moment of truth came one night when Maya attended a party and. Had an experience that led to a Sexual assault. And she's talked about this publicly. And I'm just gonna say there's a lot we could talk about there. But the thing I'm gonna say is I learned from that experience that if I, you know, I don't know that I could have fully prevented that. Sexual assaults happen, you know, in all sorts of scenarios with, with parents doing right and wrong things. What I know for sure is that Maya didn't feel comfortable when she got into a tough situation, reaching out, and that left her in a vulnerable spot.

John Dehlin [00:09:49] And so I took away from that experience renewed resolve to love and make my kids feel safe first. So that regardless of what situation that they got in, especially if they're in an unsafe or an unhealthy situation, what I wanted them to feel is safe. Telling or calling us to help us make them safe again, that's a really serious, heavy thing that I just kind of dropped there. But if it helps you remember the importance and the stakes, the stakes can be really high. What you want is your kids feeling safe with you. You want your kids feeling comfortable telling you everything, and you want your kids feeling like no matter what situation they're in, they can either tell you or call you to get support.

John Dehlin [00:10:44] And there's real risks if you don't have that. So we've talked a lot about the downsides of the control model. Really quickly, Sean Escobar. Shout out to Sean. We just interviewed Sean and his wonderful wife, Crystal Escobar.

Margi Dehlin [00:10:59] Amazing.

John Dehlin [00:11:00] Wanna be balanced. Sean's been featured recently in the New York Times about his confrontation of a child of an adult who sexually abused him as a child. Sean writes, my relationship with my 13 year old daughter is at a critical tipping point. I have to be conscious of what I do and don't do. My relationship with her is the most precious consideration at this time. Sean, thanks for your vulnerability and your awareness. And this conscious parenting doesn't come natural to people raised Mormon and who have been parenting as Mormons for a long time. So, Sean, that's why we're all in this together, to kind of help each other. Sean goes on to write, how do these kids grow up so fast? I didn't see this coming. I thought I had a few more years to lie back. Nope. Time for me to grow.

Margi Dehlin [00:11:46] Oh, I love that. I love that, Sean.

John Dehlin [00:11:48] And that's what Shefali Sabri says. Margi's already said it. Children are our best teachers by far. I mean, I'd say spouses are really good teachers, but in addition to spouses, children are phenomenal teachers in all the ways we need to grow, in all the ways that we have good skills. Super important. Lisa writes, acceptance and understanding by listening can build a trust and safe place. Absolutely.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:15] We're going to talk more about that in a minute.

What Is the Connection Model?

John Dehlin [00:12:17] Okay. So, Margi, what is a connection? How do we develop it? And then, Natasha, I'll bring you in.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:12:27] How do we know if we have it? What is it? What is this elusive thing called connection?

John Dehlin [00:12:32] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:33] So, you know, connection starts with a connection with ourselves in any given moment. And so. But it's also a genuine desire to connect with our child's experience. And I find that it's easier to talk about this in practical terms, to take a situation where you might normally use control and replace it with connection. And that because I'm so practical, and our podcast is also practical, you. You know, we could. We could do that. If you feel like that would be helpful.

John Dehlin [00:13:08] Let me start.

Natasha Helfer [00:13:09] You.

John Dehlin [00:13:09] You put something out there, just so essential, and I don't want to jump by it. You said it starts. Connection to our children begins with connection to ourselves. That's something that you would hear a guru say or a coach.

Margi Dehlin [00:13:24] What does it mean to connect with yourself?

John Dehlin [00:13:27] And why is that important?

Natasha Helfer [00:13:28] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:13:28] So for a parent to be connected

Margi Dehlin [00:13:30] with their kid, if we fail to connect with ourselves in a moment, then we are more apt to act unconsciously, to react to a situation. Right. And to have our children hold something that they shouldn't hold, meaning a wound or a reaction or a state of being that truly in their world, they are not prepared to hold. It's not even in their sphere.

Natasha Helfer [00:13:59] So.

Margi Dehlin [00:13:59] So that's why we connect with ourselves, to be able to take responsibility for our own emotions, which is what we're wanting our children to learn to do. So that embodiment is there. So let's take a situation where maybe you're wanting your child to participate in cleaning up the table.

Natasha Helfer [00:14:17] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:18] And your child is rolling their eyes. Maybe let's say a son, he's rolling his eyes at you. Or a controlling thing would be like, you know what? You can do this. I've done things all day. You know you can.

John Dehlin [00:14:32] Don't you look at me that way.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:34] You know, don't scowl your eyes. It's disrespectful.

John Dehlin [00:14:37] Don't show me disrespect.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:38] Pick your version. Pick your version of what words are said.

John Dehlin [00:14:41] Oh, is it hard for you to set the table or is it hard for you to clean the table? I cleaned the table when I was

John Dehlin [00:14:46] A boy, you know?

Margi Dehlin [00:14:47] You know, or if you don't. If you don't clean the table, I'm gonna take away your phone. Give me your phone. Or, you know, all of those are kind of control. A connection model would be like, oh, I know.

Natasha Helfer [00:14:58] Are they frozen again?

Margi Dehlin [00:15:02] Are we.

Natasha Helfer [00:15:04] You were for a minute.

John Dehlin [00:15:05] Oh, no.

Natasha Helfer [00:15:06] I was gonna have to throw another party.

John Dehlin [00:15:08] No,

Natasha Helfer [00:15:12] I was worried.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:13] Are we back?

Natasha Helfer [00:15:13] Yes, yes, I hear you.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:15] Okay. So anyway, to go with the connection model, really quick, what it involves.

John Dehlin [00:15:21] Can I. Can I add something to that?

Natasha Helfer [00:15:22] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:15:23] So when you talk about connection to self, this is true not just in parenting, but also in relationships. We come to parenting wounded. We come to marriages wounded. Whether it was a controlling parent or a abusive, verbally abusive parent or an emotionally abusive parent or negative emotional codependencies.

John Dehlin [00:15:51] Right.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:52] We also call us a template. We have been shown the way. We have had experiences that have shown us a map, if you will, that if we aren't conscious, then oftentimes we unconsciously will act upon what we've experienced.

John Dehlin [00:16:09] Right, right. And so the reason why self control, self understanding is so important, self awareness for parenting is if you can get to understand your triggers, your traumas, your unhealthy coping mechanisms, your unhealthy codependent patterns. The extent to which you do that work to understand the mess that you're bringing to the parenting, the easier it is for you to recognize that and then to not introduce all that mess to your child and pass it on.

Margi Dehlin [00:16:48] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:16:49] That's why you have to do that work.

Margi Dehlin [00:16:51] Yes. An obedience model oftentimes is a way for us to have the feeling that what we say matters, that what we want and need matters, and that we are heard. Right. So being aware of that in the model of what we're really looking for, that allows us to connect with the idea of, you know, how do we. How would we react in a similar situation? Our children are no different than we are in their emotional experience of things, in how they value their own autonomy and have a desire for wanting to create their own lives. And so to bring it back to that situation, connection involves a lot of questions.

Margi Dehlin [00:17:36] It would be like, oh, I'm noticing, you know, know. Are you feeling, like, a little bit of pushback right now? Can you tell me about that? What are you feeling right now? Maybe your child would then say, I have a headache. I've got a bad headache. I've had a hard day. I've had a. It humanizes them. It differentiates them from you. And from there, you can choose to connect with them. I'm sorry you have a headache. I'm sorry you've had a hard day. And then from there, you are not in this fight control position anymore. And you can decide what you want to do with that.

Margi Dehlin [00:18:09] Right? You can decide at that point. And we can talk about this with enlightened boundaries, how you want to respond. But what you're not is unconscious. What you are not is just reacting in that moment. Obey me. Yeah, we'll clean up the table. Yeah. Well, where your child is not real to you in that situation.

John Dehlin [00:18:29] Yeah. Reactive anger and vehement speaking, speaking out of anger, punishing out of anger. All of that is toxic to connection. And so if you can't manage your triggers, be aware of your triggers, manage your own stuff. You're just gonna bring a bunch of mess to your relationship and kill the intimacy.

Managing Power Struggles and Staying Connected

Margi Dehlin [00:18:49] So the first, the two things to really be aware of when you find yourself in situations where you're noticing anger come up or there's a power struggle, is to first connect with yourself. What am I experiencing? What am I feeling? Right? And to check that and then get curious about your child. And you can. One easy thing to do to connect is to just observe. I noticed this. Do you want to tell me about that? I'm noticing that, you know, I feel like a little bit of impatience from you. What are you feeling right now? What's going on right now? And this is something that is a normal response for things that you would term as like rudeness or, you know, you know, our children get to differentiate and have moods and have feelings, you know, and have.

Margi Dehlin [00:19:37] And so it's a way to connect with what's going on. What's going on. And then the gift is they connect with themselves. They are self aware in that moment. Maybe they didn't even know they were being rude, but it gives them this information in a safe place. Hey, I'm noticing this. This is coming up. You seem a little short. You want to tell me about it? Do you need space? Do you need. You know,

John Dehlin [00:20:01] I love it. Natasha, we need to give you a chance to jump in here. What do you think about what we're saying so far?

Natasha Helfer [00:20:06] I think it's really good. I have a lot of different thoughts. And then of course, when you give me the minute, I'm like, wait, what was I thinking? I think, you know, one of the ways that I try to tune people

Natasha Helfer [00:20:22] into this is the use of our bodies.

Natasha Helfer [00:20:25] A lot of times our bodies are

Natasha Helfer [00:20:27] great clue givers and it's hard to

Natasha Helfer [00:20:31] Stay in tune with our bodies when

Natasha Helfer [00:20:33] we've been taught to be so intellectual about things and we stay kind of in our cerebral space.

Natasha Helfer [00:20:38] So what is your gut telling you?

Natasha Helfer [00:20:40] What is your heart rate telling you? What is your neck and your shoulders telling you? What is your facial expression telling you?

Natasha Helfer [00:20:49] And so as you clue into your

Natasha Helfer [00:20:51] own kind of body that is letting you know, I'm stressed or I'm anxious or I'm upset or I'm frustrated, you

Natasha Helfer [00:20:59] can also not just ask questions to

Natasha Helfer [00:21:02] your kids, but role model that by expressing your own stuff.

Natasha Helfer [00:21:07] Like right now, as I'm sensing some pushback from you, I'm noticing, I'm getting frustrated. I'm noticing that because I can feel

Natasha Helfer [00:21:15] this tension in my, in my shoulders, you know.

Natasha Helfer [00:21:18] And so as I ask you about

Natasha Helfer [00:21:20] it, I can also role model how to talk about it from my own

Natasha Helfer [00:21:23] perspective and hopefully build empathy from them as well. Because maybe you also have a headache, but you've been doing lots of things all day long and you know, is

Natasha Helfer [00:21:32] it okay just because we have a

Natasha Helfer [00:21:34] headache to not, you know, fulfill our

Natasha Helfer [00:21:36] responsibilities or things like that?

Natasha Helfer [00:21:38] And this is also where it can

Natasha Helfer [00:21:39] come back to the family values exercise, where you have values around work, around home chores. What does it mean to be part of a family system? What does it mean to live with other people? What types of responsibilities should we share and how do we make sure that it's fair and egalitarian? How do we, again, kids, especially preteens and teens, really like research based reasons, not, well, God told us so reasons.

Natasha Helfer [00:22:06] So I mean, you can share that,

Natasha Helfer [00:22:07] you know, some of the biggest reasons for divorce and separation and even roommate struggles, our unfairness of egalitarianism and chores. Right.

Natasha Helfer [00:22:18] And so if mom's always the one

Natasha Helfer [00:22:20] picking everything up, or dad is, or a certain kid is better at that than all the other kids, how does that fit into our family values? So that you're having those discussions prior to the conflict, but then in the moment of conflict you can bring up, like, remember when we talked about this?

Natasha Helfer [00:22:35] How does that fit into this situation

Natasha Helfer [00:22:37] where you have a headache or you've had a long day?

Natasha Helfer [00:22:41] Do you think that it would be

Natasha Helfer [00:22:42] okay to swap, you know, your chores with your brother, but then you take on their chores, you know, next, the

Natasha Helfer [00:22:48] next day, or like, what are some

Natasha Helfer [00:22:49] solutions that you can help them come up with that aren't just, well, like, this is what you have to do.

Margi Dehlin [00:22:54] Yeah, that is, that's a big part of this. It is a huge part of it. And it does kind of fall back then to which is the idea of the family culture. Creating a family culture and kind of this paradigm that everyone sort of participates in.

Margi Dehlin [00:23:11] Yeah. A number of comments are coming in around younger children, so I thought I would just say something really quickly. Lindy writes, yes, I have a 5 and 3 year old. Not the easiest to have a logical, rewarding conversation with pint sized ones. And that's true, I think with younger kids. I'm just gonna kind of focus right there. And Christy writes, how do you deal with this when they're very small? I know my 3 year old needs some structure and rules in her life, but she's not quite old enough to understand why she needs structure and why there are rules. Yes. So and this is going to kind of fall into the enlightened boundaries.

Margi Dehlin [00:23:52] So conscious parenting is, one of the myths around it is that there's no structure, that it's like child led, that, you know, and that is just simply not true. How that's negotiated and how boundaries are held and created and communicated, it can be quite different than the control paradigm. But it is not that there is no structure. So the one thing that I just wanted to bring out with young children is, you know, and John Gottman has a book about this that you can look up on.

Margi Dehlin [00:24:23] It's something around emotions, teaching your children, you know, the value of emotions. And really when children are small, all your main idea is this connection with what they're feeling. So again, it can look, it can be questions, it can be noticing, it can be actually providing space, it can be understanding their natures to know, you know, maybe they get overwhelmed at the grocery store and how to kind of meet their personalities there. This is all conscious parenting that you're connecting with the child. They are. But it's as simple as I notice, are you feeling angry? I notice that. Are you feeling upset? What are you upset about?

Margi Dehlin [00:25:03] And really in this way, having a very egalitarian, accepting approach of all emotions. Because what tends to happen in parenting is we tend to approve of the positive ones and want to time out or isolate or minimize the. The more the emotions we perceive as more negative. Anger, tantruming and what you want to do.

Margi Dehlin [00:25:30] I feel like the whole kind of oh focus for young children is an awareness of emotions. And so Natasha's body kind of connection to body is very much that way. Being able to name the emotion and then having them eventually grow into identifying emotions they're having and being able to work through those emotions by saying, do you need space? What can I do? Do you need a hug? Do you need. And not like kind of rushing in to necessarily punish because your child is sad at the grocery store or if that makes sense. So that's just one thing I wanted to bring out, is just sort of this idea of familiarizing your children's, your children with their emotional terrain and not unknowingly biasing that our children have positive, that pos emotions are good and that there are negative emotions that we, they're not, you know, welcome.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:29] We try to really minimize or I, you know, kind of put you away in your own space when you have those. If that makes sense.

Natasha Helfer [00:26:36] Yeah, don't ask the kid to do something that you have no control over. Right. Like stop crying. Like they may not have control over that.

Natasha Helfer [00:26:45] And you definitely don't have control over. You know, don't ask your kid to do something that you have no idea what the result is going to be. So if you notice the crying or the tantrum, you can create spaces for that. You know, you can try to say, well, that's okay, it's okay for you to be angry, let's go do that in this particular space. Or, you know, ignore it for a

Natasha Helfer [00:27:07] while or, you know, there's lots of

Natasha Helfer [00:27:08] different tactics, but to just flat out try to dictate, stop this particular, or don't feel that way or stop doing this. It's just not something that is necessarily in their control and definitely not in your control. So you're gonna, you're gonna start a control battle that you're gonna lose. So why put yourself in that position?

Margi Dehlin [00:27:28] And really, connection can really help here. If your child is repeatedly having issues at the grocery store, you know, looking at things like timing or their personality, do they need a list? Do they need to play more of a part, you know, during that. Do you know, do you want, make sure they're well fed? I mean, you know, just kind of really considering your child as a human being, as a person, that's worth considering as opposed to kind of fall in line with my structure. And if you have a problem with that, I'm going to have a problem with you.

John Dehlin [00:28:01] Yeah, I'll just give my quick amen to everything Natasha Marghev said. My quick answer to Lindy and to others who asked about little kids.

John Dehlin [00:28:13] Rochelle and Christy. A couple things.

John Dehlin [00:28:17] Number one, self compassion. Like we started out, I really love the thing Natasha said, if you do mediocre job at parenting, you're a success.

John Dehlin [00:28:26] Remember that.

John Dehlin [00:28:27] Except to some level, you are going to mess up and screw up your kids. You are going to lose your temper, you are going to be impatient.

John Dehlin [00:28:34] So a lot of that just self acceptance with little ones and big ones.

John Dehlin [00:28:39] But I also want to say, remember

John Dehlin [00:28:42] that it's very easy to minimize the importance of what our kid is thinking

John Dehlin [00:28:51] and what they have to say. That we tend to think that as parents we know what's right and what's best and we tend to think we

John Dehlin [00:28:59] know what our kids should do, but our kids.

John Dehlin [00:29:03] And so it's easy to run roughshod over what they think and feel and want inside.

John Dehlin [00:29:10] And what I want to just plant

John Dehlin [00:29:13] a seed in you, for those of you who aren't tuned into this, is that oftentimes, even at three or four

John Dehlin [00:29:20] or five years old, your kids understand

John Dehlin [00:29:24] themselves a lot better than you think. Your kids have thoughts and feelings deeper

John Dehlin [00:29:30] than you would think. And they often know things about themselves.

John Dehlin [00:29:35] They know more about themselves or about others than you think. And so Lindy and others, if all you do is just get in the habit of just taking a little bit more time to, like Margi said, ask those questions, ask them what they're thinking, ask them what they're feeling, number one,

John Dehlin [00:29:52] you'll learn more about them and, and

John Dehlin [00:29:54] number two, you'll teach them to be more reflective, to look more internally, to be more thoughtful, to become more emotionally intelligent. And all I'm saying is you may not always have time to do it. It may not always work out successfully, but just the practice of trying to remember, to check in with them, to ask them what they think, what they feel, to give them the practice of expressing it.

John Dehlin [00:30:18] I'm just saying that even if it

John Dehlin [00:30:20] doesn't have the outcome you want, any particular situation, just the discipline of practicing, nurturing with them, their own intellectual and

John Dehlin [00:30:30] emotional awareness, I believe will pay dividends and it will in the end help you guys work out a better system.

John Dehlin [00:30:43] With Winston, I'm learning this, that Winston, Winston is 15. Winston's 15. And so I'm not. I'm kind of changing the subject, but maybe not really Winston, he is really his own person. He really has his own set of values. He is motivated when he's doing something aligned with his own values. But if you try and force him to do something that isn't aligned with his values, either he's going to do it half heartedly or, or he's going to grumble or he's going to defy you or disconnect from me, or he's going to disconnect and not want to

John Dehlin [00:31:19] be around you, I'll give You a perfect example.

John Dehlin [00:31:22] So we were out with a family

John Dehlin [00:31:25] member at dinner, and it didn't seem

John Dehlin [00:31:28] like Winston was having a great time. And so we talked to him later about that, and we're just like, hey, you should always. You should always be engaged with everyone that you're with all the time. And Winston's response was, I didn't really

John Dehlin [00:31:46] want to be there. And this particular.

Margi Dehlin [00:31:49] And that relationship isn't.

John Dehlin [00:31:51] This particular family member hasn't always resonated with me.

John Dehlin [00:31:55] And so I just.

John Dehlin [00:31:57] I believe in showing what I'm feeling. I don't believe in showing that you're happy and engaged when inside you don't feel that way. And.

John Dehlin [00:32:05] And that was.

John Dehlin [00:32:06] You know, we could have just punished him for being disconnected at dinner or

John Dehlin [00:32:11] got mad at him or made him feel bad or lectured him, and we probably did a little bit of that.

John Dehlin [00:32:15] But once we asked him what he was thinking and feeling, and he was able to express, number one, that idea

John Dehlin [00:32:22] that I don't like to show, you

John Dehlin [00:32:24] know, behave in ways that aren't consistent with what I'm feeling, that was actually a really wise insight. He was trying to. In his mind, he was practicing authenticity where his behavior matched his thoughts and feelings. He also was able to express his concerns about that family member, which we

John Dehlin [00:32:42] wanted to validate and were legitimate.

John Dehlin [00:32:45] But then finally, we talked to him about his values, and we talked to him about the value of kindness. And it turned out that he did have a value of kindness, even if he also had the value of authenticity.

John Dehlin [00:33:00] And we said, okay, maybe you don't

John Dehlin [00:33:02] love being around this particular family member all the time. Maybe it's not fun for you,

John Dehlin [00:33:08] but

John Dehlin [00:33:09] the way you behave can be perceived as unkind to other people. And it was really. Once we just took the time to talk to him about it, connect with him about his values, and then we found a value that matched the behavior that we felt might be optimal for him. He was able to pivot and say, oh, my gosh, I do have the value of always behaving kindly. I didn't think about the fact that I wasn't behaving in a kind way. Next time we have dinner with this family member, I'm going to behave more

John Dehlin [00:33:43] engaged, because I never want to act unkind.

John Dehlin [00:33:46] I always want to act kind.

John Dehlin [00:33:48] And that may seem weird or kind

John Dehlin [00:33:51] of goofy or I don't know if it's New Agey, I don't know what that may seem to you, but all I can say is it was a fundamentally different conversation with a fundamentally different Outcome when we moved from sit up straight and act engaged at dinner. Because that's the way you should act and that's the way we expect you to act. When we were able to frame it within his value system, his whole demeanor changed and it became something he was excited about versus something he would have

John Dehlin [00:34:21] left the conversation resentful about and resisted.

Margi Dehlin [00:34:25] So really what I feel like that story illustrates is what happens when you shift from external, which is. And really what it was was saying we experienced you this way. Is that the way you know you want to be experienced? And his response was, that's what I was feeling.

Natasha Helfer [00:34:42] Right.

Margi Dehlin [00:34:44] So but what we did then was pivot to say what's important to you. And that shifted it from external, our judgment and what we were hoping for

John Dehlin [00:34:54] to him, what we were expecting of him.

Margi Dehlin [00:34:56] Yeah. To him being able to connect with, well, here are my values. And in that situation here. And so then we were able.

John Dehlin [00:35:03] He realized he wasn't living up to his own values.

Margi Dehlin [00:35:05] That's right. So shifting it to an internal kind

John Dehlin [00:35:08] of connection made a difference.

Margi Dehlin [00:35:10] Yes, made a difference. Natasha, do you have something you want to add?

Natasha Helfer [00:35:14] I would just ask, going back to the little kiddos, just two little thoughts or strategies. One is to just offer a choice that can be helpful. So like, well, would you like to

Natasha Helfer [00:35:26] continue to cry out on the couch

Natasha Helfer [00:35:29] or would you like to continue to

Natasha Helfer [00:35:31] cry in your room?

Natasha Helfer [00:35:34] Choices that, that make them feel like they have some say but they're choices

Natasha Helfer [00:35:38] that you're okay with. So like you want spinach or green beans tonight? Because you know we'd like to have a vegetable.

Natasha Helfer [00:35:45] And then the other thing is just

Natasha Helfer [00:35:47] always ask them for their thoughts. So this is where you start. Critical thought and solution focus ideas.

Natasha Helfer [00:35:54] So do you have an idea about

Natasha Helfer [00:35:56] how we can fix this can be

Natasha Helfer [00:35:59] a very simple way.

Natasha Helfer [00:36:00] Or do you have a thought on

Natasha Helfer [00:36:01] how this can get better? Because then you know you'll kind of again like John was saying, you kind of get a sense of what their

Natasha Helfer [00:36:10] ideas or thoughts might be.

Natasha Helfer [00:36:12] And even if they're not super realistic,

Natasha Helfer [00:36:13] then at least you have some, some place to start from.

Margi Dehlin [00:36:16] It's so true. And an example of that would be like even with a five year old or a four year old, let's say you're, you have to go to the store and they're having a meltdown about going to the store. Kids sometimes don't want to go to the store. They want to stay in their PJs or they want to even just the process of saying so here's the deal. I get you don't want to go to the store, you know, and you want PJ time. You know, I'm in this position where I have to go right now, but what's something that. And you want PJ movie time.

Margi Dehlin [00:36:52] So how about we go to the store? It's just like bringing them into their own world. And then when we get home, you can have PJ movie time or allowing them to kind of show up in their own lives. So it's this balance of structure and bedtimes and meal times. And yes, that's completely appropriate for those kind of, you know, early childhood, middle childhood years. And so you want this structure that's a balance of, you know, as a parent, things you do have, things you need to get done sometimes. Right. But also weighing their needs in there, too, and their voices so that they feel heard as well.

Margi Dehlin [00:37:33] And then just make sure that that structure in the end is really honoring to them. A bedtime is honoring. Right. We can talk about health and we can talk about, you know, and so being able to recognize, you know, why those things exist and being able to accept, explain them in a nurturing way to your child.

John Dehlin [00:37:54] I love it. All right. Rochelle says she's loving this conversation. Sean Escobar is saying, you guys are so human, and I love it. I love humans. Thanks, Sean. Krista writes, my takeaway is, quote, I'm experiencing you in this way. This is what she would say to her child. I'm experiencing you in this way. Is that how you meant for me to experience you right now?

Margi Dehlin [00:38:21] Love it.

John Dehlin [00:38:23] That's a really great restatement, Krista. Thank you. She also writes, how do you want to be experienced? Those are all really good.

Natasha Helfer [00:38:31] Yes.

Connecting With Children of Different Needs and Ages

John Dehlin [00:38:32] So when we've talked about connection, so far, we've talked about being connected with yourself, having a desire to connect with your children, asking lots of questions, really listening to the answers, honoring them, helping them connect with their own values. We've talked about giving options. All those things are some examples of connection.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:55] Two questions that are really easy. I find people like, kind of easy. Go to scripts is not only, you know, here's what I'm noticing. I'm noticing, you know, that you're so that phrase or also, you know, you seem sad. What are you feeling right now? What's going on inside you right now? And you'll find a three year old, a four year old, a five year old can get there. They really can. Young children can really go there. So that's. Those are some examples of, you Know how to get to kind of connection I'm experiencing or I'm observing this in you, you know, do you want to tell me something about. Do you want to tell me more about what's going on with you as well as, you know, I'm noticing you're upset or, you know, can you tell me how you're feeling right now?

Natasha Helfer [00:39:42] There's some great feeling charts that are kind of fun to hang up in

Natasha Helfer [00:39:46] a kid's room or just even have

Natasha Helfer [00:39:48] on your phone as something that you

Natasha Helfer [00:39:50] can show a kid, like, which emoji

Natasha Helfer [00:39:52] per se before you.

Margi Dehlin [00:39:54] There are like so many. There are some that have so many.

Natasha Helfer [00:39:57] You want to kind of also, like, complicate feelings.

Natasha Helfer [00:40:01] It's not just sad, angry, happy. Right.

Natasha Helfer [00:40:03] Like, there's like a myriad, you know, confused, scared, disgusted, you know, like neutral calm, you know, like, how do you

Natasha Helfer [00:40:15] give them a wider variety or wider vocabulary around feelings? Again, because we're somewhat not fluent in this in general ourselves. Right. So variety of emojis. There was emoji charts before emojis.

Margi Dehlin [00:40:31] Right, Right.

John Dehlin [00:40:32] Lindy writes, this stuff is gold. Thank you so much. It's so hard to have only one way of parenting because of your upbringing. I always knew there was another way. I just didn't know how to do it. Us too, Lindy. We're just learning. We're just kind of figuring this out too, and we're all learning together and we're glad you're along the ride. Trent makes a really important point. He says it might be important to distinguish that these techniques may not always be ideal effect applicable to children with special needs or with an SMI diagnosis. Some parents carry incredible guilt because children with extreme needs are not always typical. Natasha, what is smi? I'm sorry, I don't know what that is.

Natasha Helfer [00:41:17] I am looking that up as we speak.

John Dehlin [00:41:20] So Trent kills what SMI means.

Natasha Helfer [00:41:22] I'm so bad at. Like, I can barely just remember things like ptsd.

Natasha Helfer [00:41:26] So I'm sure it's something reasonable for us to know.

John Dehlin [00:41:29] And I'm going to just add Trent, that's absolutely true, and I'm going to even add it. We told our son Winston that we would be talking about parenting this morning. And Winston said, I have one request. And we're like, oh, really? What's that? He said, tell them two things. Number one, that there's not just one way to parent, that there are lots of ways to parent effectively. And the second is, please tell them that every child is different, that you may need to exercise different approaches with different Kids.

Margi Dehlin [00:42:02] That's right.

Natasha Helfer [00:42:03] Very wise. And SMI stands for serious mental illness. So yes, if you have a kid with an ADD diagnosis, if you've got

Natasha Helfer [00:42:12] a kid with oppositional defiant disorder, if you've got a kid with bipolar traits, if you've got a kid with clinical

Natasha Helfer [00:42:19] depression even, these are all very, very challenging things. I have several, I'm not going to

Natasha Helfer [00:42:26] share who or what, but I have several kids with official diagnoses that we have had to get professional treatment for.

Natasha Helfer [00:42:34] And it is very hard to shift your parenting style. And it's something that I recommend that

Natasha Helfer [00:42:42] you talk about openly in your family

Natasha Helfer [00:42:44] systems because otherwise on the kids who

Natasha Helfer [00:42:46] are not diagnosed or diagnosable oftentimes feel like maybe they're getting special treatment. The other siblings or why do you parent them differently or why are there, you know, what they might consider the rules being different.

Natasha Helfer [00:42:58] So we talk about not everybody is

Natasha Helfer [00:43:00] the same, not everybody's going to have the same issues or complications. And we are going to parent you as best as we can from kind of an IEP perspective. Right. An individual education plan that they do at school. Well, we have an ipp, an individual

Natasha Helfer [00:43:15] parenting plan for each kid. And so, yeah, it may not always

Natasha Helfer [00:43:19] be the same, but we're doing the best we can to meet you where you're at, where your brain functions, where your emotions lie, where your capacities are, and you may not all be able to do the same thing. I also make a lot of metaphors about sports since my kids are kind of into sports. Like, you may have one kid who's doing a lot more effort than another kid, and yet he doesn't jump correct quite as far as the other kid does. So effort and results are not always correlated and helping them understand that. And that's why we parent you differently.

Margi Dehlin [00:43:50] Love it.

Natasha Helfer [00:43:51] Yeah. It's important to have these conversations out in the open.

John Dehlin [00:43:54] Kristen, were you going to say something?

Margi Dehlin [00:43:56] Yeah. This idea of differentiation amidst parenting, and I'm so glad that comment came through. And I would also say the techniques from child to child clearly will look differently. And conscious parenting, I would argue has a place with what you're doing because I think especially if you have, you know, a special needs child or child that falls outside, you know, sort of, you know, a box of that, then you really, it is important that you're aware of your feelings, aware of yourself, because you know, you could be wearing, you know, you could be blazing your own trail with this child per se. And so you know that that sort of turn to self awareness is you Know very, very important.

Margi Dehlin [00:44:42] And also that truly seeing your child, their brain, how their brain works, how they process information, those, those things are still essential in your desire to connect with your child and in your desire to, you know, choose your reactions as opposed to reaction.

John Dehlin [00:45:05] Kristen asks a really important question that goes along the lines of the special needs point that Trent made and I have to go answer the door. But here's Kristen's question I'm going to throw to you guys and then I'll come back.

John Dehlin [00:45:20] Kristen asks, what do you do if

John Dehlin [00:45:22] you have a kid that doesn't like to talk about their feelings? How do you emotionally connect with a kid that doesn't like to talk about their feelings? So you guys go, I'll be right back.

Margi Dehlin [00:45:33] Do you want to take this first, Natasha

Natasha Helfer [00:45:37] or I forget that I put myself on mute because I start talking and then I'm like, oh, you can't hear me? Yeah, I think that not all children

Natasha Helfer [00:45:48] are going to want to meet you where you are excited to go. Right.

Natasha Helfer [00:45:53] And so you have kids and I

Natasha Helfer [00:45:55] have these personality differences in my own kids. Some kids that are very expressive, some kids that would love to talk for hours, other kids that, you know, you get kind of the grunts, I call it the Chewbacca movement in my house. Right. Like,

Natasha Helfer [00:46:12] And that's okay, you know, it's

Natasha Helfer [00:46:13] okay to kind of allow them those

Natasha Helfer [00:46:17] kinds of general proclivities per se while at the same time I still make consistent effort.

Natasha Helfer [00:46:24] I make consistent effort and every now and then with my more introverted or quieter kids, I do get a look into their perspective, you know, maybe on a car ride or something exciting that's happened to them or.

Natasha Helfer [00:46:38] But it's not going to happen as

Natasha Helfer [00:46:40] often as maybe with my more extroverted or connective type of kids. So we are kind of wired differently in some of these ways.

Natasha Helfer [00:46:48] And at the same time I always

Natasha Helfer [00:46:50] just share things like I hope that you can talk to me about this. I hope that you can be open. I want you to be able to be expressive.

Natasha Helfer [00:46:58] I also notice is this a trend

Natasha Helfer [00:47:00] that is with me or in general? So for instance, we have a kiddo

Natasha Helfer [00:47:04] who's very social, not so open with me and dad. Okay, well, so I'm less concerned, right? Less concerned he's able to be expressive

Natasha Helfer [00:47:14] with people of his choosing for whatever reason. Dad and I with a 16 year old boy is not necessarily the place he wants to go deep and you know, deep and dirty.

Natasha Helfer [00:47:23] So that's okay. Now if he was isolated in every

Natasha Helfer [00:47:27] aspect of his Life, my concern would maybe be higher and I would want to, you know, make sure that we're not missing something.

Natasha Helfer [00:47:35] Again, if you've got kids on certain

Natasha Helfer [00:47:38] spectrums, they may or may not be as interested in, you know, deep dives into emotional connection, the way we typically think of that term.

Natasha Helfer [00:47:50] Find out how they feel connected.

Natasha Helfer [00:47:51] Sometimes feeling connected to some kids is just playing video games side by side or going on a walk or doing some type of physical activity, like playing basketball out in the basketball hoop, you know, or. Or things like, you don't have to get deep in your emotions to feel connection from your kid or for your kid to feel connection from you.

Margi Dehlin [00:48:11] I love that. And that has been true for us with our children as well. We have children that really love to, like, process verbally. Could do that for, you know, you know, longer amounts of time. And that's intimacy to them is sharing that inner world, that inner experience with you. And we have other, other kids that are very much like, not so much that if you're with me and we do something together, it's that being together and shared experience, that's, you know, something. So I love, really appreciate you bringing that up as well.

John Dehlin [00:48:49] Yeah. With me, a couple things, like timing really matters. So there are some of our kids that hate the mornings and they're grumpy in the mornings. And so we would always, like, we make a breakfast in the morning.

Margi Dehlin [00:49:04] So we're like, we're like, hi, good morning.

John Dehlin [00:49:07] Yeah, like, how are you feeling? And some of them are, I'm with your kids. Others are like, don't say a word, shut up. You know, leave us alone in the morning.

Margi Dehlin [00:49:18] Just try and get out the door.

John Dehlin [00:49:19] Yeah, and same thing. Some kids when they get home from school, want to talk all about their day, and then others don't. The last thing they want to do when they get home from school is to have to be asked, how was your day today? But then I noticed, like with one of our kids, he gets really chatty at night and he turns on at 9:30 or 10. And if I'm busy or tired or disconnected, I won't pick up on that and I'll miss it. And so some of these kids, and this is for Kristen, some of these kids that are quiet or disconnected, some of that's about timing. Not always, but sometimes. And also just reflect this idea of doing that. You said, Natasha, with one of my kids, I was just wondering, how am I ever going to connect with this kid?

Natasha Helfer [00:50:10] And.

John Dehlin [00:50:11] And then I just. We started snowboarding and it cost Money. We had to buy boots.

John Dehlin [00:50:15] We bought snowboards.

John Dehlin [00:50:17] But I found that on the drives to and from snowboarding and on the lifts, sometimes if I was like, let's have a conversation now. Okay, we're driving. It's time for us to talk. What do you want to talk about? That would ruin it, right? But if I would just be with them enough in some sort of activity that was meaningful, they would. After they were having fun, after they were feeling space, after they were feeling connected, they would let a couple things slip. And so part of its timing, part of it's creating activities where the communication can happen. And part of that just has to do with them feeling safe and them liking you. If they. This is something that, again, I'm not naturally fun. I'm not like, naturally kids ride on my back and let's play hide and go seek and ride me like a horsey on the ground kind of.

Natasha Helfer [00:51:16] Dad, that's very specific.

John Dehlin [00:51:17] I can be that, but it doesn't come naturally to me. And so I tended more to be the dad of, like, are you doing your homework? How are your grades? How are you feeling today? Did you do your chores? Oh, your hair looks different. You know, and then noticing the problems, and I just noticed that the more I was, like, controlling, critical, serious business dad. There was just a general lack of good feelings between me and my kids. Whereas the more I would just watch the Simpsons with them or go snowboarding

John Dehlin [00:51:50] or take them to.

John Dehlin [00:51:52] Take them to breakfast or take them to lunch or go on a walk, whatever their language was. If I would allow it to be. Allow our relationship to have fun and connection and happiness and joy and time together, then in some instances, they would open up. Now, Kristin, again, there are some kids with personality differences or even developmental differences where none of the things I'm about to say are going to be helpful. I'm just saying, in my case, we had one or two kids who didn't like to talk, who didn't like to connect, and these things ended up being helpful for us.

Margi Dehlin [00:52:30] Yes. And another thing I would just add to that is, watch how quickly control creeps up, right. In this. That we can become controlling around conscious parenting principles. Right? So all of a sudden we're really. We're getting upset or feeling fear if our child doesn't connect with their emotions or isn't expressing or. Or isn't. And the whole kind of point here is this idea of invitations. We can provide invitations for our kids to connect, and they may. Or they may not take them, but I do like this Idea of, particularly with younger kids. If you have younger children and what you're saying is my children don't.

Margi Dehlin [00:53:13] I have a child that doesn't really want to talk about feelings or connect with feelings, connect with where they are, connect with whatever. If they're coloring or if they're take some moments to just kind of connect with wherever they are and watch that sort of control piece that can show up in our. In sort of this way of expectations. Right? Because we are. We kind of have our operating systems this way in our brain. And it is. They are astute and they are sly and they can appear. Even as we try to consciously parent and try to create this new paradigm of connection instead of control, we can get very controlling about our connection.

Natasha Helfer [00:53:59] How not Mormon of us.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:02] Wherever you go, there you are.

Natasha Helfer [00:54:04] That's right.

Screen Time, Emotional Needs, and Book Recommendations

Natasha Helfer [00:54:05] One thing that I wanted to revisit, there was a question earlier when we

Natasha Helfer [00:54:09] were talking about the values kind of exercise. Is this something that you should kind of revisit?

Natasha Helfer [00:54:14] And I would say absolutely, yes. And these are good reasons to revisit.

Natasha Helfer [00:54:18] I like documents feeling fluid, you know,

Natasha Helfer [00:54:20] like, even if you do the Etsy

Natasha Helfer [00:54:22] thing and spend a bunch of money on a family proclamation, redo it every few years, you know, that's fine.

Natasha Helfer [00:54:29] But as you come up with issues like this, and even somebody I think

Natasha Helfer [00:54:32] mentioned something recently about, you know, a kid who likes to play a lot of video gaming and maybe doesn't have. Have a lot of balance in their lives, how do you first have conversations around values? What do we want healthy lifestyles to look like? And how do we make room for entertainment like video games and Netflix and

Natasha Helfer [00:54:48] going to the movies and things instead of, oh, is the bad screen time?

Natasha Helfer [00:54:52] I think our kids are sick and tired of hearing how screen time is so bad for them. So how do we incorporate screen time into our lives in ways that are

Natasha Helfer [00:55:01] balanced with physical activity and schooling and relationships and. And how to, you know, screen time

Natasha Helfer [00:55:09] has become more relational. I mean, my kids, I mean, I

Natasha Helfer [00:55:11] realize now that my house is no

Natasha Helfer [00:55:13] longer a private space.

Natasha Helfer [00:55:14] Like, the kids in the other houses

Natasha Helfer [00:55:17] can hear me yelling like, who's done their chores or not because they're playing some Xbox game, right?

Natasha Helfer [00:55:22] And so I'm like, oh, you know, so they are being relational in ways

Natasha Helfer [00:55:28] with their screening oftentimes.

Natasha Helfer [00:55:30] But how do we balance, you know, screen time connection with in person connection

Natasha Helfer [00:55:34] and what's the difference? And having conversations that you can back up by again, research or ideas from other people instead of just this is the way it should be can be really helpful to then when you are bringing something up, like, hey, I've noticed

Natasha Helfer [00:55:49] that you spent a lot of time today on this game and it looks

Natasha Helfer [00:55:52] like you really had a good time.

Natasha Helfer [00:55:53] Tell me about it. And then also, does that fall into this balance thing that we all talked about?

Natasha Helfer [00:55:59] How are you feeling about that? Do you feel like you're in balance or not?

Natasha Helfer [00:56:04] Oftentimes with one of my kids, they'll

Natasha Helfer [00:56:06] immediately get defensive and say, of course I'm in balance.

Natasha Helfer [00:56:09] And then a week later, they'll come

Natasha Helfer [00:56:11] back and say something like, you know what?

Natasha Helfer [00:56:13] I think you're right.

Natasha Helfer [00:56:14] I think I need to rethink this or whatever. So, again, you're not going to get rewarded all the time immediately using these tactics. Sometimes it takes a minute, a week, a month, a year before some of these things start sifting and influencing your kids in ways that you can see some. Some seeds coming out of the ground that you're happy about.

Margi Dehlin [00:56:34] That's so beautiful. I'm so glad you said that.

John Dehlin [00:56:37] We're getting some great comments from listeners. Penny writes, I invite my kids to weed with me or walk with me or work in the kitchen with me, and amazingly, they sometimes decide to participate, even though they usually don't. I've learned not to be demanding. Inviting can create a surprise. Totally true.

Margi Dehlin [00:56:54] And control can be simple, sniffed out. Like, if there's just a little bit of expectation or control in there, it can be sniffed out in a second.

John Dehlin [00:57:03] Oftentimes it'll be like, hey, do you want to help me with the dishes? They're like, no. And then if you're like, oh, well, that's rude, blah, blah, blah, then you've lost it. But if you're like, okay, that's fine. And then you let them sit with having told you no, and then you have them watch you do the dishes alone, they'll change their mind and come, but it will have been their own choice, not some emotionally or verbally manipulative thing that you expressed.

Margi Dehlin [00:57:28] Yeah, and another thing that kind of comes up a number of times is this idea. Just be aware of times when, you know, it's a very natural thing to come up. But when we were talking about the morning paradigm, you know, our excitement at a new day and really, you know, overly peppy around children that may not be feeling particularly excited about going to school and all that that means for them. But, you know, just be aware of when you're asking your children to meet your needs.

Margi Dehlin [00:57:59] I think that's something that oftentimes we do. We Want that sense of approval and being needed and take care of me, take care of me so that I'm feeling good. So when they actually have emotions or their own feelings and that differentiation, you know, we can get, we can have feelings of rejection, we can have feelings of abandonment.

Margi Dehlin [00:58:20] And so to just kind of watch that, watch that we're asking we meet our needs and we have our own village of people to kind of work with us on that. But we're not having our children have to take care of our needs in that way.

John Dehlin [00:58:36] Shefali is really good about that. It's not your kid's job to meet your emotional needs. You go get your emotional needs met. Don't put that on your kids. That's beautiful. A couple other comments that are being made. Let's see. Penny writes, my sons with autism and depression turned on at night, and I am always available for them. It is so fun to interact with them and be silly with them sometimes. We have serious conversations, too. I love it. Karina writes, I have a child that is an introvert and feels more comfortable playing video games online with their peers from school. It's hard trying to find balance and getting that child out of the house to do something. One attack.

John Dehlin [00:59:17] One.

John Dehlin [00:59:18] One thing I've tried with Winston lately is playing video games. With Winston, it's not, you know, I grew up playing video games. I was probably addicted to video games growing up, but I. I stopped at some point, so it's not natural for me to play again. But then I realized that if I just sat and played with them for 30 minutes, he may talk about stuff or he may mention stuff, or more importantly, he just may feel more connected to me. So that if later I say, hey, let's do a chore, or will you help out with this or that, or speak nicer to your mother or me or whatever, he'll be more open because we have that emotional connection. So consider meeting your kids where they are.

Margi Dehlin [00:59:56] I love that. And I also love connecting. You know, maybe trying to gain a little more insight on what the video games, what their purpose is, or what he loves about them. So ask, you know, what do you love about this game? I noticed that you, you know, you love to play it. What is it that you love about, you know, video games in general? And what do you love about this video game? I've been surprised when I've done that, you know, with Winston. He has very like, there are deeper reasons. I'm oftentimes surprised what he's enjoying, whether it was connecting with kids when we moved from the old neighborhood that he missed or, you know, wanting a break for his brain or, you know, really getting, getting into a sub story or a subtext or, you know, it's, it's a great, it's a great thing to have that information as a parent.

Margi Dehlin [01:00:49] And it's even better that they realize, you know, how, how that video game is showing up for them in their lives and what its purpose is, what it's doing.

John Dehlin [01:00:59] Love it. Krista writes something super important. She writes, I'm going to be listening to this episode on repeat. I'm so excited to revisit all of this. Such a powerful conversation.

John Dehlin [01:01:11] Krista.

John Dehlin [01:01:11] I just want to reflect that if you looked at Arshefali Sabery books, it's like scripture should be or should have been. When we've read them five, ten times each, we mark them up, we go back to them. If we're fighting with a kid or in a struggle, we'll find a chapter that relates. Here's the part about teenagers, here's the part about boundaries, here's the part about, you know, Linda, you're asking about enforcing consequences.

John Dehlin [01:01:38] These books have chapters and sections on all these different topics and we'll revisit them because you don't just like, learn how to be a good parent. You work over years to develop parenting skills. And it takes repetition, it takes revisiting, it takes reminders, it takes practice, it takes discipline. So, yes, listen to this over and over. Read those books over and over again. And by the way, Holly's asking for book recommendations. We've posted a lot already in the feedback, but Holly, the ones we're recommending most, for starters are at least for me and Margi.

John Dehlin [01:02:18] The Awakened Family by Shefali Saberry. If you just Google Shefali S H E F A L I, you'll find these books. The Awakened Family. The second book is out of Control and the third book is Conscious Parenting. Those are three books by Shefali Saberry that we're highly recommending. Earlier, earlier, Natasha recommended Raising Emotionally Intelligent. What is it, Natasha?

Natasha Helfer [01:02:43] Raising Emotionally Intelligent Intelligent Children by John Gottman. Well, I think one of you mentioned

Natasha Helfer [01:02:47] it, but I. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:49] Raising an Emotionally Intelligent the Heart of Parenting by John Gottman and even the

Natasha Helfer [01:02:56] Concepts of Emotional Intelligence. I think I listed a book on that as well, just for us as parents to do, do our own work.

John Dehlin [01:03:04] And we have a lot more books that we're going to be recommending because we have just started. It is time to wrap up and we have only scratched the surface of all the things we want to share with you about parenting. And so we will be coming back next week with more on parenting.

John Dehlin [01:03:23] We've got a lot of really good things to come, but it is two o' clock and it's time for us to wrap up. So we want to thank everyone who's been enjoying, who's been partnering with us today, sharing their feelings, sharing their thoughts, sharing their experiences, asking questions, sharing their stories and perspectives. And a million people have shared their questions and comments and feedback and stories on Facebook and Reddit. We're going to do our best to incorporate all that into future episodes and also into the book that we're writing. So we're really excited about that. So we've come to another end of a Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis episode.

Margi Dehlin [01:04:08] We have indeed.

Natasha Helfer [01:04:10] Oh, wow. That tone changed, right?

Margi Dehlin [01:04:13] It was meant to be, like, kind of funny.

Natasha Helfer [01:04:14] It got very dramatic.

Margi Dehlin [01:04:17] We have reached the end. Yes,

Natasha Helfer [01:04:20] I'll do this part this time because I feel like John always does it. But if you find value in these

Natasha Helfer [01:04:25] types of podcasts, please consider financially supporting the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis.

Natasha Helfer [01:04:31] It's a standalone project.

Natasha Helfer [01:04:33] It's part of the Open Stories foundation, but it's a standalone project. And if we don't have financial support, then at some point or another, we're going to have to call it good and say, well, it was a good try.

Natasha Helfer [01:04:43] As John mentions, it doesn't just help you.

Natasha Helfer [01:04:47] It hopefully can be something that will be standing, you know, out here in the Internet forever.

Natasha Helfer [01:04:53] And so if people come across faith

Natasha Helfer [01:04:55] transitions, you know, a year from now, a few years from now, they'll be able to access all of these rich resources that we're trying to create here at Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis.

Natasha Helfer [01:05:04] So please consider a financial donation. We love doing this work, but I'm

Natasha Helfer [01:05:10] very comfortable saying I need to be paid for the work that I do. I'm not embarrassed about that or feel guilty about that. I think sometimes coming from our Mormon background, we expect a lot of things for free. We volunteer our times, and we do

Natasha Helfer [01:05:22] a lot of that.

Natasha Helfer [01:05:23] And I believe in that as part of my value system. But I also believe in my value system of being paid for the work that I do, which I've taken a lot of time, and I know John and Margi also have taken a lot of time to get our educational backgrounds, our processing and experience to be able to give you these types of resources the way that we're able to do.

Natasha Helfer [01:05:44] So if you can't do a financial

Natasha Helfer [01:05:46] contribution for some reason or another. The next best thing that you can do is offer us a positive review. If this is helpful to you, share the information on social media sites, participate by offering comments and questions like many of you already do. But for right now, this is not a financially sustainable project and we definitely want it to be because we feel like this is an area where so

Natasha Helfer [01:06:11] many people need help.

Natasha Helfer [01:06:12] We constantly get feedback that people like our stuff and that people want our stuff. So I want to just challenge about having you help pay for our stuff. So.

Natasha Helfer [01:06:22] And I do that with love and

Natasha Helfer [01:06:23] respect and I would love to support anything that you create a value too. So yes, future thoughts about that.

Natasha Helfer [01:06:30] Because I feel like, John, you're always

Natasha Helfer [01:06:32] asking for that and I want to be part of that process.

John Dehlin [01:06:35] Thank you. And so go to MormonFaithCrisis.com, click on the button there. Pick a monthly amount, $10 a month, 25 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month. And you will be helping yourself and you'll be helping other people. And the more monthly donors we have, the more we can kind of schedule these and do them regularly and make it worth everyone's while. So please become a monthly donor. It means the world to us and other people.

Margi Dehlin [01:07:02] And thank you for joining us. Thanks for sharing all of your insights and being part of this podcast. We love the collaboration.

John Dehlin [01:07:11] Absolutely. And so without any further ado, everyone, thanks for joining us. Please give us your comments. Email us@mormonfaithcrisismail.com Please share this on your walls, please give us positive reviews and please join us again soon for another episode. You guys are awesome and we love seeing you. Stay in touch.

Natasha Helfer [01:07:34] Sounds good. Take care, everybody.

John Dehlin [01:07:36] Thanks Natasha.

Part Three Begins: The Circumplex Model of Parenting

Part 3 of 4 · Ep. 1114

John Dehlin [00:00:31] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another

John Dehlin [00:00:33] episode of the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast. I'm one of your co hosts, John Dehlin. It's May 14, 2019. We are joined today, as always, by Margi Delin.

Margi Dehlin [00:00:47] Hello, everyone.

John Dehlin [00:00:48] Thanks for joining us, Margi, it's good to have you.

Margi Dehlin [00:00:51] Thank you for joining us. Us joining.

John Dehlin [00:00:52] You are wonderful.

Margi Dehlin [00:00:54] How are you?

John Dehlin [00:00:54] And brilliant.

Margi Dehlin [00:00:55] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:00:56] And good, good.

Margi Dehlin [00:00:58] I am good.

John Dehlin [00:00:59] And we are joined of course by our wonderful, fabulous, spectacular, marvelous, wise co host from Wichita. Why are you holding your nose?

Natasha Helfer [00:01:10] I always giggle a lot during these introductions.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:15] I don't know why.

John Dehlin [00:01:16] Does that mean you don't think they're sincere?

Natasha Helfer [00:01:19] No, I actually think they're very sincere and they're very lovely and probably needs to. It's probably some reflection on me needing

Natasha Helfer [00:01:27] to be able to accept compliments better.

Natasha Helfer [00:01:30] And I just, it's. It's a.

Natasha Helfer [00:01:32] It's kind of like a go to way that we do this.

Natasha Helfer [00:01:34] So it's lovely. John, you do a lovely job. Lovely job. Because you're wondering. There is no problem here.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:40] There is no problem.

Natasha Helfer [00:01:41] Brilliant and amazing and savvy and witty.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:47] Oh, I like savvy.

John Dehlin [00:01:49] How about tenacious? Can I be tenacious today?

Natasha Helfer [00:01:51] Tenacious.

John Dehlin [00:01:55] Well, it's good to have you. We are doing this episode or this series of episodes as a joint release with Mormon Stories Podcast. As many of you know, the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis has come under the Open Stories foundation board of

John Dehlin [00:02:12] directors and the nonprofit.

John Dehlin [00:02:15] And we're really excited about that. And so we're able to do more joint episodes with Mormon Stories podcasts and other podcasts like Mormon Mental Health Podcast, because oftentimes there are topics that are shared amongst our audiences.

John Dehlin [00:02:30] So we're thrilled about that.

John Dehlin [00:02:32] This is a continuation of several hours, a couple hours that we recorded last week. And we have so much to cover on parenting after a Mormon Faith Crisis that we're going to continue the discussion today. You're going to get three or four at least really good hours and this episode is going to spawn other sub episodes. There are so many topics that are so big, for example, like raising kids in a mixed faith marriage, that we just decided to punt those and cover them in a totally separate series.

John Dehlin [00:03:06] But welcome to you all.

John Dehlin [00:03:09] Really quickly, let us make sure and get to the most important beginning which is discussing our mission. Natasha, do you want to lay that out for us?

Natasha Helfer [00:03:19] Yes, our mission. Except I'm always so like involved in sharing all of these things on my things that then I totally forget where we're going. But our mission is the three P's. So help me because I'm doing a mind blank.

John Dehlin [00:03:36] Margi, you're doing the three P's today.

Natasha Helfer [00:03:38] Okay?

Natasha Helfer [00:03:39] I do know that there are three P's Woohoo. My brain is working at that level today.

Margi Dehlin [00:03:45] We've got positive, we've got personal and we have the practical.

John Dehlin [00:03:51] The three Ps and what are we

John Dehlin [00:03:52] trying to do with those things?

Margi Dehlin [00:03:54] We are providing hopefully some personal strategies and tips for navigating a Mormon faith crisis while also hoping to help those who are in relationships with those in a faith crisis understand and be able to support and yeah, so our intent

John Dehlin [00:04:13] is to be believer friendly and non believer friendly, church friendly and non church friendly to try and build bridges. That's our goal and our sub message is that this whole faith crisis thing feels sometimes at first like a crisis,

John Dehlin [00:04:27] but it can go like a caterpillar,

John Dehlin [00:04:32] from a chrysalis to a beautiful butterfly, from lemons to lemonade. If you are willing to engage the process and find the right tips and tricks and tools and guides along the way. And we want to help be some of your guides along with our wonderful listeners who are usually joining us, many of them live on Facebook and are

Natasha Helfer [00:04:55] so, so wise and are wise and

John Dehlin [00:04:56] give us good ideas and tips and tricks and suggestions and questions of their own. So really quickly. All of us do have coaching practices that are burgeoning, but we still like to advertise it just because we want to make sure if anybody's really in need now or in two years or five years they have somewhere to turn because sometimes it's hard to find resources and support. And we are firm believers. We are firm utilizers of therapy and coaching. At least Margi and I are. Natasha, do we even want to put you on the spotlight to find out?

Natasha Helfer [00:05:34] I do.

Natasha Helfer [00:05:35] I do get my own help too.

Natasha Helfer [00:05:37] All right, good practice then.

John Dehlin [00:05:39] We are not only utilizers of coaching and therapy, we are also providers of faith crisis coaching and in Natasha's case, actual clinical therapy, marriage and family therapy, sex therapy, etc. But Natasha, tell us really quickly about your practice for those who want to

John Dehlin [00:05:55] know what you do well, you can

Natasha Helfer [00:05:58] find out anything you want to know about my practice on natashaparker.org I'm a clinical licensed marriage and family therapist, have been for over 20 years. About almost 10 years ago now I went down the road of sex therapy

Natasha Helfer [00:06:12] certification and so definitely involved in that part of the field as well. I do online work and in office work. So regardless of where you're at geographically, I can probably either see you professionally or at least provide you with directions on where to go. And my online practice name is Symmetry Solutions, so that's me. You can find all of that on natashaparker.org Beautiful.

John Dehlin [00:06:40] Great.

John Dehlin [00:06:41] I have people tell me every week that Natasha saved their life and or their marriage. So she's good.

Natasha Helfer [00:06:47] Well, thank you. Goodness. That's a nice thing to say.

John Dehlin [00:06:51] I hear it all the time.

John Dehlin [00:06:52] I can't escape it, no matter how hard I try. But he's pursuing me today.

John Dehlin [00:06:56] Everywhere he goes, everywhere I go.

John Dehlin [00:07:00] Margi, tell us about your wonderful practice.

Margi Dehlin [00:07:03] Yes. So you know all things. Margi. I'll just direct you to beautyinthenow.org I have a coaching tab there, but you can also my blog, I tend to write about the things that I coach about, so that's a way also to kind of see what I do. And yeah, you can come visit me there.

John Dehlin [00:07:25] All right.

John Dehlin [00:07:27] And I do have a coaching practice@johndelin.com coaching. I specialize in faith crisis stuff and mixed faith marriages specifically.

John Dehlin [00:07:36] I love helping save and improve mixed faith marriages. It's kind of my favorite jam, but

John Dehlin [00:07:43] I'll also do individual stuff as needed. All right, so with that, it is time to move to the what's working section. And I mentioned this last week, but I'm going to list as my what's working a video game called League of Legends. And I already, again, have talked about this in previous sessions, but Margi and I sometimes were frustrated at, you know, at video game usage in this generation. But sometimes we're like, hey, Winston, we want to spend time with you, but

John Dehlin [00:08:20] you're on a video game.

John Dehlin [00:08:21] And I broke myself down and said, shoot, I used to love video games. Why don't I just play video games with my son and have that be a way we spend time together? Like, are video games any less virtuous than a board game? Like, in fact, they're in some ways more advanced and more sophisticated. And so I'm learning League of Legends, which is a really complicated game that I'm awful at. But I'm spending good time with my son and I'm already seeing good dividends from that. So that's my what's working.

Margi Dehlin [00:08:48] Yeah, it's really helped build connection, I feel like with Win. And I love that Winston's teaching you something. I think that's lovely.

John Dehlin [00:08:56] He's super engaged. Like, come on, dad, you can do better. You know, a nice role reversal. It's like, it's okay, dad. You know, even though you're awful.

John Dehlin [00:09:07] I believe in you, you know,

John Dehlin [00:09:11] so it's been good. What's working for you, Natasha?

Natasha Helfer [00:09:17] So two things I'm going to mention. One is just cherry tomatoes. It's that time of the year where I just love to pop cherry tomatoes and it's better than potato chips, so I love them. And so this is. I'm not sure if it's a what's working thing, but it's something that I guess worked for me this week because it was super nice, I think. You know, we oftentimes come at ourselves from a self deprecation lens.

Natasha Helfer [00:09:40] You know, it's hard to always.

Natasha Helfer [00:09:41] We're always overwhelmed or thinking about what

Natasha Helfer [00:09:43] we could be doing or should be doing. And you know, the shitting on ourselves is kind of a classic problem I think many of us can commiserate with.

Natasha Helfer [00:09:52] So for Mother's Day, my kids kind of went around the table and decided

Natasha Helfer [00:09:56] to tell me something nice about me,

Natasha Helfer [00:09:58] which since we're on the topic of parenting, I really try very hard to have good boundaries.

Natasha Helfer [00:10:03] Like, I don't.

Natasha Helfer [00:10:04] My job as a parent is one

Natasha Helfer [00:10:07] way, you know, I support and they

Natasha Helfer [00:10:09] want to give me accolades or be nice to me, that's fine.

Natasha Helfer [00:10:12] And there's a certain level of respect that obviously needs to be there, but I'm not looking. I try to be very mindful that I'm not looking for my own self esteem or my own, you know, processing through my kids that that's not their job to take care of me.

Natasha Helfer [00:10:25] So this was kind of, they, they did this on their own to come

Natasha Helfer [00:10:28] up with something that they liked about me.

Natasha Helfer [00:10:30] And three of them, you know, it's like, well, she's nice, she's kind of simple things, which were nice to hear.

Natasha Helfer [00:10:37] So that was good.

Natasha Helfer [00:10:38] But my daughter in particular, you know, who's now an adult herself, really kind of went off on just, you know, we need to understand

Natasha Helfer [00:10:48] how hard mom

Natasha Helfer [00:10:49] has worked to build her own business and how hard it is to be

Natasha Helfer [00:10:53] an entrepreneur and how difficult it is to manage all of us in that process.

Natasha Helfer [00:10:58] And, and she does all these different things and she's constantly worried.

Natasha Helfer [00:11:03] I can tell she's worried about things a lot, but she doesn't bring that

Natasha Helfer [00:11:06] to us, you know, and does, you know, like, she's fairly upbeat with us and our family.

Natasha Helfer [00:11:11] She just went off for like five or seven minutes, you know, talking about.

Natasha Helfer [00:11:15] And you know, all the kids and Andy were nodding their heads.

Natasha Helfer [00:11:20] So it was a really nice working

Natasha Helfer [00:11:22] for me moment because it helped me. First of all, get some positive regard from my child, which is always a nice perk to parenting when that happens. It doesn't always happen.

Natasha Helfer [00:11:33] Sometimes it never happens, but it's nice when it does. And secondly, it was nice to see,

Natasha Helfer [00:11:40] even though I think balancing mothering and

Natasha Helfer [00:11:44] career and all that stuff, and that's

Natasha Helfer [00:11:46] a whole other issue, you know, and faith transitions. But that's been a hard thing for me my whole life.

Natasha Helfer [00:11:51] It was nice to see my daughter

Natasha Helfer [00:11:53] in particular, kind of talk about that particular topic in the way that she did. So that's what's working for me.

John Dehlin [00:12:00] Beautiful.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:01] I love that.

John Dehlin [00:12:03] Do you grow your own cherry tomatoes

John Dehlin [00:12:04] or do you buy them at the store or both?

Natasha Helfer [00:12:06] No, I'm lame with the gardening.

Natasha Helfer [00:12:08] I tried back in my. More trying to do the checklist.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:13] That was a should for such a long time.

Natasha Helfer [00:12:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:12:17] We had to wish gardening well. We had to wish gardening well for other people.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:21] That's right. Now we support.

Natasha Helfer [00:12:23] And I have garden envy, like, anytime people are good at it or love. And I kind of love the idea of it. And then the.

Natasha Helfer [00:12:31] Dewey. Yeah, I'm lame.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:33] Me too.

John Dehlin [00:12:36] Yeah. What's working for you?

Margi Dehlin [00:12:39] So let's see. I feel like all the kind of normal things of what's working, like meditation is working, but I thought I would go in a different direction this week for what's working. So what is working this week for me is this conceptualizing little blocks of time, like 15 or 20 minutes, and doing a bit of organizing.

Margi Dehlin [00:13:04] So, like, oftentimes with organizing, I find, you know, you can have a big project like your kitchen or something, and basically that never happens, or it takes so long, because when do you have, you know, the two hours or four hours to really attack the entire kitchen?

Margi Dehlin [00:13:24] So what has been working is with 15 or 20 minutes, I can organize drawer in the kitchen. I can organize my sock drawer. I can organize our filing system or the. And I am moving around the house. I mean, things are getting done, and I literally will say 20 minutes. So it makes me super efficient. I pick the project carefully, and I'm feeling like I'm feeling progress, which is oftentimes something that can stop. You know, the process of organizing is just. You can feel very much like it's too big, and you. You just will never get to it. So it's been nice to break it down and to feel like I'm actually moving forward, and it's been really, really fulfilling. So organizing with 15 or 20 minutes and picking those projects really kind of carefully.

John Dehlin [00:14:19] Love it.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:20] All right.

John Dehlin [00:14:21] Well, thanks for sharing Your what is working listeners. We always love it when you guys share your what is working as well on the Facebook livestream. We don't have any today, so let's jump right into a continuation of our topic, Parenting after a faith crisis. We covered a lot of good stuff last week, and we've still got a lot to go. Some of the things we focused on last week included, you know, parental acceptance and understanding that there's no one way that every child is different,

John Dehlin [00:14:57] that, you

John Dehlin [00:15:00] know, we need to bring this idea of kids being whole versus kids being incomplete or broken. We talked about perfectionism, parenting without fear. We talked about modeling mediocrity, the importance of structure.

John Dehlin [00:15:18] And then we did a big old

John Dehlin [00:15:19] section on connection over control, which comes from the work of Shefali Saberry. We talked some about values and rituals and gratitude and spiritual practice. So go back and listen to those episodes. If you haven't, they're really worth listening to. And let's continue and start talking about other things. Natasha, one of the items that

John Dehlin [00:15:46] you

John Dehlin [00:15:47] touched on last week, but we want to have you talk about it again, is the circumplex model.

John Dehlin [00:15:54] We know that that's an important model

John Dehlin [00:15:55] for parenting and for marriage and family therapy that you've been trained on. So can you tell us a bit about that and how it helps with parenting?

Natasha Helfer [00:16:05] Sure. So just for anybody to know a little bit what I'm talking about, you

Natasha Helfer [00:16:10] can Google circumplex model and there's lots

Natasha Helfer [00:16:14] of images and charts that come up that help you kind of understand this. It's not horribly complex, and yet we spent an entire semester studying this and how it applies to different family systems.

Natasha Helfer [00:16:25] But what I like about the model is that it helps you understand kind

Natasha Helfer [00:16:31] of your particular system from two different dynamics. One is what's the level of flexibility

Natasha Helfer [00:16:39] and the system and what's the level

Natasha Helfer [00:16:42] of cohesion in the system. So flexibility would be, you know, like how much structure, how much, you know, rigidity is there in the system and cohesion is how much is the system organized on the connection in between people.

Natasha Helfer [00:17:00] So just to go over some of these really quickly, you've got, you know, on the.

Natasha Helfer [00:17:04] On the cohesion part, you've got disengaged.

Natasha Helfer [00:17:08] So not a lot of emphasis on

Natasha Helfer [00:17:10] family unity or togetherness, a lot of emphasis on individuality.

Natasha Helfer [00:17:16] On the other side of that, you've

Natasha Helfer [00:17:17] got enmeshed, which is a lot of emphasis on togetherness. In fact, if you don't kind of agree with the system, you can be seen as being disloyal or disrespectful.

Natasha Helfer [00:17:30] Not a lot of room for individual

Natasha Helfer [00:17:32] kind of person processing. So you can see how those are two extremes and where we probably want to be somewhere in the middle, right? To be in kind of healthier spaces. We want to have some level of cohesion with our family members and at the same time, allow for some level of individuality. On the flexibility scale, you've got chaotic, which is kind of like zero structure,

Natasha Helfer [00:17:55] lack of leadership, not necessarily anybody having

Natasha Helfer [00:18:00] too many roles in family, where you have, on the other end of that, rigid, where you have very strict discipline, very strict ideas about, especially behavioral modification, you know, that you have to behave a certain way to be accepted within the system. So again, we're looking at the middle ground being the more healthier spaces to be at, which are considered flexible, which means you lean a little bit more towards less structure or structured, which means you lean a little bit more towards structure. But they're all considered kind of healthier spheres. So what I like about this model is that it ends up giving you four different circles in the middle that are all considered healthy systems. And so, again, to our point that

Natasha Helfer [00:18:46] you don't have to come up with one way of doing things.

Natasha Helfer [00:18:49] You might have a family where there's

Natasha Helfer [00:18:51] a little bit more focus on following the rules or discipline or consequences.

Natasha Helfer [00:18:56] You might have another family that has less, you know, structure around those things, but still have enough structure to keep things kind of enough structure for the kids to feel, like, stable in their system, things like that. And all of those can fit into those healthy systems.

Natasha Helfer [00:19:13] Then you've got the.

Natasha Helfer [00:19:14] The middle circle, which is kind of like we're kind of starting to lean into some dysfunction. And then you've got kind of the outer circle, which is, you know, the

Natasha Helfer [00:19:23] worst cases of the.

Natasha Helfer [00:19:25] Those extremes coming together. So I really recommend for people to use this chart and kind of do a self assessment and do it on several counts. So one is, how do we feel

Natasha Helfer [00:19:39] that we're engaging right now with the

Natasha Helfer [00:19:41] kids, that we have our immediate family structure?

Natasha Helfer [00:19:44] Where would we put ourselves on that graph?

Natasha Helfer [00:19:46] I think it's also very interesting to

Natasha Helfer [00:19:48] consider what family system did I come from? So where would I put my family of origin on the graph? And it's also interesting to kind of look at it from a community perspective.

Natasha Helfer [00:19:59] So you can put your ward on the graph, right?

Natasha Helfer [00:20:02] So I've lived in lots of different

Natasha Helfer [00:20:04] wards and stakes because I was a military brat.

Natasha Helfer [00:20:06] And I've moved around a lot too, as an adult.

Natasha Helfer [00:20:09] And there's Differences in how these ward

Natasha Helfer [00:20:11] communities or state communities, or even geographically

Natasha Helfer [00:20:15] where you live, how the church shows

Natasha Helfer [00:20:17] up, you know, and on these systems. And you can even have a thought process about where the church at large would fall in this, in this graph.

Natasha Helfer [00:20:27] So anyway, that's, I think, a nice

Natasha Helfer [00:20:28] tool to be able to help you consider some of the strategies that we're talking about, consider some of the structures that you have in place or would like to have in place. How much is too much, how much

Natasha Helfer [00:20:40] is not enough, and you know, create

Natasha Helfer [00:20:45] hopefully systems and be part of systems that fall somewhere in that middle trajectory.

Natasha Helfer [00:20:50] So that's My Very Basic 101 Introduction

Natasha Helfer [00:20:53] to the circumplex model.

John Dehlin [00:20:55] Okay, so I'm finding a lot of different circumplex models on the Internet. But tell me if I'm hearing you right, if I try and summarize, there's, there's cohesion and you can have sort of like this disengaged family or let's just say an enmeshed family, right? In terms of how close everyone feels. And you want to strike a balance between being overly enmeshed and completely disengaged. Is that axis one, is that right?

Natasha Helfer [00:21:23] Yeah. Right.

John Dehlin [00:21:24] And then second is adaptability, which is sort of either being super, super rigid or really chaotic. And you can have like this highly structured home or this totally chaotic disorganized home. You don't want it over rigid or overly chaotic. You want to find a balance between those two. And then the nexus of those two things is sort of a balanced family in terms of its cohesion and its adaptability or flexibility. Is that right?

Natasha Helfer [00:22:07] Yes, that is correct.

Natasha Helfer [00:22:09] And you know, when you think about a lot of things that we complain about in post Mormon world is that we, a lot of times people feel like there was too, it was, the

Natasha Helfer [00:22:23] system was too rigid and it was too enmeshed.

Natasha Helfer [00:22:27] Meaning that there was where the type

Natasha Helfer [00:22:29] of system, Mormonism is the type of system that there was too much cost

Natasha Helfer [00:22:35] in order to be an individual self. Now there are people that complain about

Natasha Helfer [00:22:38] different kinds of systems, right.

Natasha Helfer [00:22:40] Where there's not enough emphasis on togetherness,

Natasha Helfer [00:22:43] where they felt too isolated, too alone, too left on their own devices, right.

Natasha Helfer [00:22:49] So Mormonism in general, I kind of

Natasha Helfer [00:22:51] like to tease in some ways, like

Natasha Helfer [00:22:53] an Italian grandmother, right.

Natasha Helfer [00:22:54] It's going to be highly offended if you disagree.

Natasha Helfer [00:22:57] It's going to not let you come to Sunday dinner if you're behaving in

Natasha Helfer [00:23:01] ways that grandma doesn't agree with.

Natasha Helfer [00:23:03] Right?

Natasha Helfer [00:23:03] So that's rigid and too cohesive. And meshed.

Natasha Helfer [00:23:08] Right.

Natasha Helfer [00:23:08] Instead of like, having.

Natasha Helfer [00:23:09] And this is where the whole concept

Natasha Helfer [00:23:11] of differentiation skills can be very useful in helping us. It requires differentiation skills to be in

Natasha Helfer [00:23:18] the middle of both of those systems.

Natasha Helfer [00:23:22] Because differentiation is that the whole idea

Natasha Helfer [00:23:24] of that word means that we are different yet connected.

Natasha Helfer [00:23:29] Different yet connected.

Natasha Helfer [00:23:30] Not individualized, not.

Natasha Helfer [00:23:31] Oh, I'm fine on my own.

Natasha Helfer [00:23:33] No, there's connection and difference that are

Natasha Helfer [00:23:36] able to tolerate one another.

Natasha Helfer [00:23:38] And so that's.

Natasha Helfer [00:23:39] Those are the skills that we develop to be able to stay in the

Natasha Helfer [00:23:43] middle of both of those graphs.

Natasha Helfer [00:23:46] Does that make sense?

Margi Dehlin [00:23:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:23:48] Love it. Thank you for sharing. Good stuff.

Natasha Helfer [00:23:51] Yeah, I think it's a great. It's a great model. I really love it.

Natasha Helfer [00:23:55] I love using it with families.

Natasha Helfer [00:23:56] I love figuring out where we fall and have people think about it from that perspective.

John Dehlin [00:24:02] If I think about our family and Marg, you can tell me if you think this is right or wrong. I think that we have tried to err. If we err on the side of talking about everything and high emotional connection. I think that's been a real priority for us. And I think mostly because of your leadership, Margi. We're much more structured than we are chaotic. And so if we have ever had to guard against anything, would it be fair to say that it's kind of the rigidly enmeshed? That's what we would need to guard against. Is that fair to say? I'm just trying to apply this assessment to our family.

Margi Dehlin [00:24:46] I would probably say in the earlier years more that when I look at Clara and Winston and kind of our sketch and kind of how we do things now with, you know, there are. To me, it feels like it's much more flexible. That structure is for, like, meals or. But, like, bedtimes are now or what their activities are, or, you know, driving when to skateboard after dinner with no moment's notice or. You know what I mean? I feel like I would definitely.

John Dehlin [00:25:17] You're saying we have a good balance now.

Margi Dehlin [00:25:18] I feel like we're in the balance realm now, but. But I do feel like probably starting out and particularly when we were in the church and for our two olders, we were probably more rigidly enmeshed.

John Dehlin [00:25:35] And also, I think with a therapist, with a psychologist and a coach

Natasha Helfer [00:25:43] and

John Dehlin [00:25:44] talking about feelings all the time, I feel like it was such an important thing for us to talk about feelings, that we've talked about them so much that I think we've had to realize that sometimes we may have overcorrected in terms of wanting to be There for our kids emotionally where maybe they've had an adulthood to learn a little bit of self emotional regulation that they didn't have to learn because we were always hyper there to talk to them about their feelings. Now again, I'm not. This isn't about being self critical. I'm just saying have at times we had to look at emotional enmeshment to see if we were allowing our kids the space to self soothe and find ways to manage their emotional regulation that didn't always involve us. Do you think that's.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:36] I definitely feel well. And that's coming from a place of wounding. So oftentimes where in your own childhood maybe there were things that you really would have valued but didn't have then you cannot overcompensate. Right. And when you're not conscious, then that's something that. And we probably over corrected a little bit there for some years, particularly when suffering starts entering the picture. So yeah, I think it's probably pretty fair to say.

John Dehlin [00:27:10] Natasha, where does your family lean? Off balance? If it ever leans off balance, I'm sure it doesn't because I mean, you know, you're a marriage and family.

Natasha Helfer [00:27:20] Right? Because I've got it all figured out.

Margi Dehlin [00:27:22] Well.

Natasha Helfer [00:27:23] And one thing I want to say even before I answer that question, that

Natasha Helfer [00:27:25] just listening to you, she's gonna, she's

John Dehlin [00:27:29] been looking at us, she's analyzing us. We're under eye, we're under Natasha's eye.

Margi Dehlin [00:27:36] I welcome it.

John Dehlin [00:27:37] Her all seeing eye.

Natasha Helfer [00:27:40] Now is this idea that. Yeah, I think different developmental stages also

Natasha Helfer [00:27:44] we do shift sometimes.

Natasha Helfer [00:27:46] You know, I think we might be

Natasha Helfer [00:27:47] leaning a little more structured when our

Natasha Helfer [00:27:49] kids are 5 and 6 years old, you know, versus when our kids are 16 or 17. And hopefully we can adapt to what

Natasha Helfer [00:27:58] the system needs, you know, at any given time. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be in one of these quadrants

Natasha Helfer [00:28:03] the entire time you're parenting or you might shift from a, let's say structured

Natasha Helfer [00:28:10] connected space to a flexible connected space just because of a faith transition, for example, those still fall within those four

Natasha Helfer [00:28:19] kind of healthy quadrants.

Natasha Helfer [00:28:20] Right. So by no means am I trying to imply that you should be in one space the whole time.

Natasha Helfer [00:28:26] As far as me, I mean, I think that we, I grew up in a home environment where I would say it was a bit enmeshed.

Natasha Helfer [00:28:33] You know, I think we leaned a little too much on emotional connection. And if you disagreed or had some

Natasha Helfer [00:28:39] type of experience that was outside of

Natasha Helfer [00:28:42] the family norm, that was difficult for my family to tolerate and I think

Natasha Helfer [00:28:47] in some ways, even though my husband

Natasha Helfer [00:28:50] comes from kind of a stoic cowboy family, I think that was the same for them.

Natasha Helfer [00:28:55] A lot of times we think of

Natasha Helfer [00:28:56] enmeshment as emotionally needy. And that's not what enmeshment is.

Natasha Helfer [00:29:01] Enmeshment is that we cannot tolerate other people being different than us.

Natasha Helfer [00:29:06] And so we kind of have tantrums and you know, fits and get very stern when people are different than us. So that can be a form of enmeshment.

Natasha Helfer [00:29:16] So I think that really quickly.

John Dehlin [00:29:19] Sorry, thanks for educating me a tiny bit. So when certainly there's a scenario where family members don't learn to kind of emotionally self regulate and they always depend on talking to their parents or other people to kind of cool down or, you know, I struggle with this myself. That's not enmeshment. And is that codependence? Like what is there another word for that? Is there some category that fits in

Natasha Helfer [00:29:44] or not you're talking about when you're relying on other people to soothe your own difficulties? Yeah, well, that's a whole nother topic. But I will say this. I think that sometimes we, we, especially

Natasha Helfer [00:30:02] in American culture, we tend to think

Natasha Helfer [00:30:05] we're codependent when in reality I think

Natasha Helfer [00:30:08] we do need relationships to self soothe. I think in some ways pop culture

Natasha Helfer [00:30:12] has kind of pathologized that and this word codependent. And not that there aren't issues with

Natasha Helfer [00:30:19] true codependency, clinical codependency,

Natasha Helfer [00:30:23] but if your idea, I think a lot of times the idea is that I need to be able to take care of myself, I need to be able to self

Natasha Helfer [00:30:30] soothe, I need to be able to cope.

Natasha Helfer [00:30:33] Kind of like we're an island. And then when I'm able to do

Natasha Helfer [00:30:36] that, then I can have a relationship in a healthy way.

Natasha Helfer [00:30:39] And I'm constantly telling people that's not how relationships work. And we, that's not how pack animals

Natasha Helfer [00:30:45] work, which is what we are. We grow up in relationship, we require relationship for well being and we do better when we have support system.

Natasha Helfer [00:30:55] Now where that can become a problem, where we do need some self soothing

Natasha Helfer [00:30:59] skills, is that Our support system isn't 247 available to us all the flipping time. Right. And so where you run into problems

Natasha Helfer [00:31:09] with this is when you have like

Natasha Helfer [00:31:11] parents who are way too neglectful, just aren't around at all. And so now the child, you know, these are like attachment issues, right, that you study in psychology where the child has to over depend on self and kind of kind of distrust the whole world because they were never able to rely on anybody.

Natasha Helfer [00:31:28] Or when you get kind of a

Natasha Helfer [00:31:30] helicopter parenting approach, right, where you have

Natasha Helfer [00:31:32] people that are just never allowing for

Natasha Helfer [00:31:34] the child to feel discomfort or have to problem solve or do some of that stuff and kind of glean resiliency on their own.

Natasha Helfer [00:31:43] But in general, we do need people

Natasha Helfer [00:31:47] around us to soothe ourselves. That's not a bad thing. And that can definitely fall in these connected and separated quadrants that we see in the circular model.

Natasha Helfer [00:31:59] But you know, I typically say, okay, so like 80, 80% of the time, 90% of the time, you know, if you use somebody else, okay, you can

Natasha Helfer [00:32:07] probably find somebody in your support system who's available to you 80 to 90% of the time, especially if you have a diverse system.

Natasha Helfer [00:32:13] Right.

Natasha Helfer [00:32:14] This is really a problem when you

Natasha Helfer [00:32:15] only depend on one person, one main, primary person. If you've got good friends, if you've got a supportive spouse, if you've got some supportive extended family. Now there's a variety of people that in a time when you need social support, you can count on somebody to show up. But if you're expecting all of that from a spouse, for example, then that's going to be a problem because nobody can be available to 24, 7. Right, right.

John Dehlin [00:32:42] Got it.

Natasha Helfer [00:32:43] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:32:43] Okay. Thank you for that. That's really good. All right, Circumplex model, everyone. Please check that out, Margi, and get

Margi Dehlin [00:32:50] back to what you were saying about your own family.

Natasha Helfer [00:32:54] Yeah, so I think that, you know, in general, probably most of the fights that Andy and I have had are because he leans structured and flexibility and I lean flexible.

Natasha Helfer [00:33:04] Right. And so he wants to have more accountability and more rules and more consequences all laid out. And I'm more like, eh, you know, do we really need to do all that?

Natasha Helfer [00:33:14] And so that's a lot of where

Natasha Helfer [00:33:16] our parenting maybe, you know, fighting or I don't know if fighting is really the word, but you know, conflicts come up in our different styles and I

Natasha Helfer [00:33:25] think in our general family, I think that we are somewhat in the. I don't know if we're in the I. We like. It's a little leaning more towards I. And I especially feel that now that

Natasha Helfer [00:33:39] my kids are teenagers.

Natasha Helfer [00:33:40] And I would like it to be

Natasha Helfer [00:33:42] more in the we.

Natasha Helfer [00:33:43] I like, I'd still like to feel

Natasha Helfer [00:33:45] a little bit more cohesive than I'm feeling with my kids, but they're resisting that. But I don't think that we're enmeshed. You know, I think that we've done that both Andy And I have done

Natasha Helfer [00:33:55] pretty good job of not bringing a

Natasha Helfer [00:33:57] lot of that enmeshment from our families of origin. And.

Natasha Helfer [00:34:00] And not to say that our families

Natasha Helfer [00:34:02] of origin were awful, because we both really have what we would consider good families, you know, that we came from.

Natasha Helfer [00:34:07] But I think there was just less

Natasha Helfer [00:34:09] tolerance for when you didn't adhere to the system, if that makes sense, than what we're trying to provide for our kids.

John Dehlin [00:34:17] Thank you. Thank you for sharing. All right, well, let's move to the concept of embodiment. Margi, this is something that Shefali Savery also talks about, is that right?

Enmeshment, Codependence, and Parenting Balance

Margi Dehlin [00:34:32] Yeah. So the idea behind embodiment is basically anytime you notice an issue coming up with your children, let's just say always being late, right? So they're never on time, or they're late to school, or they're. That one. One kind of thing to think about is to reflect first, first on your relationship, yourself with being late. And so that is almost always kind of the first step as you're looking at an ongoing issue. Not just something that you know, because we all are late, but like something that keeps coming up is to reflect. And this could be the same with like, phone use, that before you ever start expecting or communicating something to your child about changing a behavior, you go ahead and you reflect on your own sense of embodiment with the issue at hand.

Margi Dehlin [00:35:34] And so that is something that I particularly appreciate, number one, because I think reflection is always a good space to be in. I think it allows you to confront the issue or to talk about the issue in a way where you're connected, where you can actually share. You know, there have been times when we're talking about something that I also am struggling with, and I say I'm going to work on it too. And I say, you know what's difficult for me, and try to connect with what's difficult for them. And it allows for just a deeper connection, a deeper awareness around the issue at hand.

Margi Dehlin [00:36:14] It also allows you to have some sense of the environment you're creating. For example, if you're always rushed and you're always late, then that actually creates an environment where that's more apt to be what they. What your children experience. And they're more apt to kind of follow suit or to not have the skill set to kind of follow through on that. So that's the basic idea of embodiment is just a level of self reflection that you use that in turn.

Margi Dehlin [00:36:45] You know, you're working on healing yourself. One of the big things on about shefali saberry is that parenting is actually growing ourselves up. It is actually less child focused than traditional parenting modalities. And then also that it allows for us to connect more deeply with our children's experience and be less judgmental if we struggle with it too.

John Dehlin [00:37:14] I have a really hard time with embodiments sometimes. Sometimes, especially with social media, especially because my job is so related to social media. I'll be frustrated that the kids are too much on social media, and that might even be an inaccurate assessment. But I'll have those feelings, but then I'll want to be on my phone and I'll say, well, this is work. I need to be. I need to be doing work, you know, and works different than just, you know, mindlessly browsing Instagram, which of course is a really disrespectful way to characterize even what they're doing, because in many cases what they're doing is either socially normal or appropriate or even, maybe even healthy and who knows? But all I'm saying is sometimes I heard as a child, do as I say, not as I do. And I think that's rubbed off on me a little bit. I'm just being honest and you're grinning.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:09] No, I think it's very common and I do think we. It is sort of an operating system of sorts that we can come by now naturally, especially when we're unconscious. But you know, the other thing with that is it kind of checks your expectations, right? I mean, as an adult, if you're having a hard time regulating your own media use, you'll probably communicate that hopefully in a different way to your. At least that's the opportunity and that's what it's about. These are invitations for you to self reflect, for you to think about your values, then to kind of reach out to your child in connection as opposed to judgment and control and hypocrisy. Asking your child to embody something that you yourself have not figured out. And children sniff that out really, really quickly.

Natasha Helfer [00:39:00] I like all of that. I really like this idea of the

Natasha Helfer [00:39:06] fact that we are all still growing

Natasha Helfer [00:39:09] up, you know, that we're all growing up together. And I really find it interesting, especially in midlife. You know, the developmental tasks of adults in midlife juxtaposed with the developmental tasks of teenagers that we're usually raising at midlife kind of create some room for chaos, you know, because teenagers are kind

Natasha Helfer [00:39:32] of becoming more independent and we're in a sense refocusing a lot of our ideas and our thoughts and behaviors, even and so there's a lot of shifting that's happening, you know, when those two developmental stages kind of collide.

Natasha Helfer [00:39:48] And so this idea that we're all kind of growing up together and then

Natasha Helfer [00:39:52] the embodiment, meaning that we're not taking

Natasha Helfer [00:39:54] this stance of I am expert, I

Natasha Helfer [00:39:57] am expert at all things. I am teacher and mentor of all things. I direct all things.

Natasha Helfer [00:40:06] That it's more of this idea of

Natasha Helfer [00:40:07] I am with you on the journey. I am also working on these things.

Natasha Helfer [00:40:12] Even with simple things like organizing the

Natasha Helfer [00:40:14] home, you know, if you're going to

Natasha Helfer [00:40:15] be like yelling from the couch, like,

Natasha Helfer [00:40:17] everybody get everything cleaned up, or, you know, you're not very good at some of those things yourself, it's less effective of a model usually than being involved in the process, you know, and let's do this as a team or let's figure it out, or how are we role modeling those kinds of behavioral aspects.

Natasha Helfer [00:40:37] Right.

Natasha Helfer [00:40:37] That we all would like to see improve in our households, I'm guessing.

John Dehlin [00:40:41] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's super hard. I also think just it's not just with the social media for me, it's also emotion regulation, controlling my emotions, my anger, my sadness, my temper. I think that the extent to which I model healthy emotion regulation is just super healthy for the kids. And the extent to which I'm not modeling it myself, how can I expect them to have control of their emotions or manage their emotions better?

Margi Dehlin [00:41:14] Right.

Natasha Helfer [00:41:15] Yeah. I have a wonderful example of this.

Natasha Helfer [00:41:17] If we're gonna get vulnerable

Natasha Helfer [00:41:21] because I'm so good at emotionally regulating myself. We just had an incident in our home where a teenage child. I always try to say, I have a lot of teenage children, so hopefully

Natasha Helfer [00:41:33] this doesn't out anybody.

Natasha Helfer [00:41:34] But teenage child who happens to be bigger and larger than me, got very angry and came in the front door and just slammed it super hard and broke the frame on our door.

Natasha Helfer [00:41:50] I think that child was a little shocked by having to come to grips with their own strength, their own ability to cause damage.

Natasha Helfer [00:41:59] And, you know, and of course, my immediate response was like, oh, my gosh,

Natasha Helfer [00:42:03] like I'm raising an out of control child.

Natasha Helfer [00:42:06] I'm raising, you know, like this child that doesn't know how to emotionally regulate.

Natasha Helfer [00:42:10] And I go into a little panic mode.

Natasha Helfer [00:42:12] And then when I sit back and

Natasha Helfer [00:42:13] think about it, I have fairly successfully

Natasha Helfer [00:42:17] modeled that as an appropriate way to deal with anger. Now, I happen to be a woman, and I happen to not be as strong, you know, as maybe my husband is. But a lot of times my kids have seen me walk to my room, slam the door. And you know, that's kind of like mom's pissed and she's gonna, you know,

Natasha Helfer [00:42:38] be in her room for a while mumbling or whatever I do in the room.

Natasha Helfer [00:42:43] So that was a kind of a

Natasha Helfer [00:42:45] wake up call to like, you know, be able.

Natasha Helfer [00:42:47] And so when I, when I talked

Natasha Helfer [00:42:49] to my kiddo about this, you know, we did talk about the concerns of that. And as you're growing into a bigger human being, you know, you have to watch what you can physically do and how, you know, appropriate ways to anger. But in that conversation, I owned that. I owned that.

Natasha Helfer [00:43:04] I said, I think, you know, even

Natasha Helfer [00:43:06] though it's not an excuse, and just

Natasha Helfer [00:43:09] because your parents make mistakes doesn't mean

Natasha Helfer [00:43:11] that you now have full blown reason

Natasha Helfer [00:43:15] to make the same mistakes.

Natasha Helfer [00:43:16] I do recognize that I have modeled the behavior and I'm not proud of that. And I need to improve in this particular area of my life.

Natasha Helfer [00:43:27] And so, yeah, so it's just part

Natasha Helfer [00:43:29] of that kind of recognizing that we're all on this journey together.

Natasha Helfer [00:43:35] So I think that's.

Margi Dehlin [00:43:36] Yeah, it is.

John Dehlin [00:43:40] And thank you for sharing and disclosing. That's important.

Margi Dehlin [00:43:43] And that's where we all are. I mean, we are, you know, human beings learning and growing. And I think, you know, so much of the authoritative authoritarian model, you know, respect is kind of one of those key words I think that, you know, can come up around that model.

Margi Dehlin [00:44:03] And I think the irony is once as a parent that you begin to own your we model that too. I'm gonna own my stuff. This is what it looks like. And instead of really going to that place of a lot of shame or that's another thing we can model too, is just this idea of what we do when we make mistakes. Do we berate ourselves? Do we really get defeated? Do we, you know, what owning looks like, if you've hurt your child, what an apology looks like, and then how to move forward as a resilient being. And that's the thing about parenting, is what we're modeling all of that.

Margi Dehlin [00:44:45] And our kids get a sense for how I should treat myself as I'm learning and growing and making mistakes. And some of that can come from how we embody that ourselves.

Natasha Helfer [00:44:59] And I just, I don't know if I'm just having this thought out of nowhere, but, you know, we've talked about the circumplex model, we've talked about embodiment,

Natasha Helfer [00:45:06] we haven't really talked about post faith transition.

Natasha Helfer [00:45:09] But I hope that what people are gleaning from this is the reason why

Natasha Helfer [00:45:13] we're talking about these things is because,

Natasha Helfer [00:45:15] again, on the circumplex model, I think we've been mainly modeled enmeshed and rigid

Natasha Helfer [00:45:22] types of structures throughout typical upbringings in Mormonism. I'm not saying all upbringings, but typical or even that's how the church sometimes as an entity will treat even adult people, you know, and they're kind of quote, unquote, parenting of us as, you know, members.

Natasha Helfer [00:45:39] And then with this embodiment idea, again, it's not a typical way that I

Natasha Helfer [00:45:44] think in classic Mormon or religiously conservative cultures that there's a lot of room for this. It does tend to be more authoritarian. It tends to be more, you know, do like. Like John was saying, do what I say. You know, don't worry about what I'm doing. You do what I say because I'm the authority figure.

Natasha Helfer [00:46:02] So we're bringing up these concepts not

Natasha Helfer [00:46:03] just because we're talking about parenting in general, but because we think these concepts are not necessarily skill sets that we have in general gleaned in Mormon upbringings, if that makes sense.

Natasha Helfer [00:46:14] I just had to.

Margi Dehlin [00:46:15] That's right. And another layer, another layer is cultural. I mean, we come by it really honestly, culturally. Everyone knows what a good child looks like in public. Right. Or a naughty child or a disrespectful child. These things, we have many, many layers. And, you know, they're cultural. They're in our own families. They're in the church layer as well. So.

Natasha Helfer [00:46:39] Yeah, well, and especially here in the United States, I mean, Mormonism is not

Natasha Helfer [00:46:43] divorced from the puritanical roots of Christianity. And there's lots of parenting dynamics just from, you know, spare, don't spare the rod. You know, those kinds of ideas that we've been grappling with as a country for a long time in just parenting dynamics. And there's a lot of research, for example, coming out. Really, the American Pediatric association has really come out very strongly with some position statements against spanking, you know. Sure.

Natasha Helfer [00:47:13] So it's something where it affects us from an American culture, it affects us

Natasha Helfer [00:47:17] from a Mormon culture, and it affects. Affects us as a Christian culture.

Natasha Helfer [00:47:20] Right.

Natasha Helfer [00:47:21] So that's a lot of overlay.

Margi Dehlin [00:47:24] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:47:25] So we've got a lot of work to do.

Natasha Helfer [00:47:26] Yes, we do. We've got a lot of rewriting me. Stopping slamming doors.

John Dehlin [00:47:32] Stop slamming doors. Natasha.

Natasha Helfer [00:47:35] And I usually say a few nice

Natasha Helfer [00:47:37] words along what I'm just gonna say.

Natasha Helfer [00:47:42] I'm gonna work on that.

Natasha Helfer [00:47:43] You guys can hold me accountable.

Margi Dehlin [00:47:44] Thank you for sharing that.

Intentional vs. Programmatic Approaches to Spirituality

John Dehlin [00:47:48] Okay. Well, Natasha, you have a point about an intentional approach instead of a programmatic approach. Do you want to talk about that? Sure.

Natasha Helfer [00:48:01] So I think one of the things that we see, and I'm not the

Natasha Helfer [00:48:05] only one who's talked about this, you've talked about this quite a bit too,

Natasha Helfer [00:48:07] John, in our co presentations, is that the church offers a very good program per se. And I like to make the metaphor

Natasha Helfer [00:48:17] of like public school versus a homeschooling program.

Natasha Helfer [00:48:20] Right.

Natasha Helfer [00:48:20] So those of us who want to

Natasha Helfer [00:48:23] take advantage of the public school system, there's not a lot that you have to do other than pay your fees

Natasha Helfer [00:48:29] and, you know, send your kids off to school. The teachers that are there doing the curriculum, there's administrators in place, there's, you know, sports, there's all kinds of systems set up to help your kiddo.

Natasha Helfer [00:48:42] For those who maybe want to take a homeschooling approach, well, that takes a lot more time, a lot more energy,

Natasha Helfer [00:48:49] a lot more kind of intentionality. And I'm not saying anything pro or against homeschooling versus public school system, but

Natasha Helfer [00:48:57] I'm just saying the church kind of does something similar.

Natasha Helfer [00:49:00] You know, from prime, from nursery on, there's a program in place that if

Natasha Helfer [00:49:05] you plan your kid in, they're going to have community, they're going to have curriculum, they're going to have social environment, they're going to have activities, they're going to have kind of, and they're going to have expectations that go along with

Natasha Helfer [00:49:19] that of what comes next and you know, all the way up to mission

Natasha Helfer [00:49:22] and temple marriage and ongoing service in

Natasha Helfer [00:49:27] the church community as an adult. So it's ready made. It's all autopilot type stuff.

Natasha Helfer [00:49:33] So for those of us who are transitioning away or don't want that to

Natasha Helfer [00:49:37] have such an influence, even just nuanced Mormons or things of that nature, you

Natasha Helfer [00:49:42] really have to start intentionally either creating

Natasha Helfer [00:49:46] something completely different or finding other systems to plug your kids into if you're going to leave or if you're going to stay kind of in a nuanced approach, you have to really understand the curriculum, understand what's being said, you know,

Natasha Helfer [00:50:01] and create a lot of stuff on

Natasha Helfer [00:50:03] your own that addresses things that you're uncomfortable with or that you want to give a different perspective on.

Natasha Helfer [00:50:09] So I think that this is a helpful metaphor and just owning the work,

Natasha Helfer [00:50:15] you know, owning the work that if

Natasha Helfer [00:50:17] you want to create, if you don't

Natasha Helfer [00:50:20] like what the church has provided or

Natasha Helfer [00:50:22] you want to step away from what

Natasha Helfer [00:50:23] the church has provided, you either have to create something different or be okay with there not being a spiritual program necessarily. It doesn't mean that you have, you leave and you have to create something that's similar to what the church had.

Natasha Helfer [00:50:37] But you may want to create something

Natasha Helfer [00:50:38] in the, in the sense of service projects or volunteer work or community.

Natasha Helfer [00:50:44] You know, how are your kids going to get some of the things that

Natasha Helfer [00:50:46] they got in the Mormon Church, outside of the Mormon Church? So that's something that I think is worth talking about a little bit.

John Dehlin [00:50:55] So, you know what, probably half of all the comments we've received from our listeners are around this issue. So let's dive into this. And this may take a good 30 minutes of time, but I think it's worth it.

Natasha Helfer [00:51:10] Let's do it.

John Dehlin [00:51:11] So,

John Dehlin [00:51:14] yeah, so basically this reminds me of the workshops that we do in the retreats because, you know, we talk about all the holes that Mormonism fills. Mormonism fills spiritual, you know, spirituality hole. Your moral, it meets your moral needs. It meets your community needs. It resolves your concerns about death in the afterlife. It, you know, provides you with community.

John Dehlin [00:51:41] It has social and friends. It's a support for parenting and family. Like, there's so many needs that Mormonism provides. It's almost like a public school. You just literally drop your kids off and come back in six hours. And they may not have the best education in the world, but they've got, you know, at least a solid framework.

John Dehlin [00:52:03] And Richard Rohrer, we've mentioned him a lot, he talks about this, he talks about first half of life and second half of life that you need to have some structure that you're raised in to then allow you to have faith crisis in whatever structure that is, to then allow you to construct a life of whatever you want it to be. But if you don't have a certain socioeconomic level, a certain education, a certain moral structure, discipline, work ethic, and ego, as he calls it, you know, you don't have, you don't even, you aren't able to even have the luxury of getting to the phase of having a faith crisis so that then you can

John Dehlin [00:52:46] make life exactly what you want.

John Dehlin [00:52:48] Because if you're just stuck making ends meet, working minimum wage, working three jobs, just trying to survive, you're not going to have the luxury of a faith crisis to then build a life that's to your liking. You may not have the monetary or the social resources or the mental health or the physical health resources to even allow you to construct a life of your own choosing. And so one of the questions that people Asked, and I think this is super relevant for a faith crisis, is what if I'm no longer a believing Mormon, but I want to raise my kids in. And we'll take as the first option a Mormon church.

John Dehlin [00:53:34] Not because it's true, not because. Not because I like everything about it, but just because it provides a lot of those structural elements. And one wise listener wrote, it provides them something to rebel against. So what do you guys think about this idea of intentionally raising them Mormon, not because you believe in it, but because it provides so much. And once they're to the point of rebellion, hopefully they rebel in a, you know, in a more progressive, liberal, even secular direction. Margi, you look skeptical. Natasha, you're giggling.

John Dehlin [00:54:12] So I want to know, Margi, what's your skepticism about?

John Dehlin [00:54:15] And then, Natasha, what you're giggling about.

Natasha Helfer [00:54:18] Awesome.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:21] You know, it would help to kind of know the ages, maybe, that we're. We're talking about as kids kind of get older. I like the idea of children being part of. Part of that process for themselves. That it is a decision.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:39] Things become invitations, and they can kind of decide a little bit. Yes, the answer is absolutely. I feel like it is possible to have children grow up in the Mormon church and, you know, be able to independently think, be able to kind of think things through, be able to discern. And I think it starts with a lot of the things we've been talking about. So this is something that pairs well, whether you're still going to church or you're not at all. And so I go back to the full container approach, which means kids come with a desire to discern goodness, with a desire filled with kind of light and are.

Margi Dehlin [00:55:31] You know, as. As parents, we love to create opportunities where they get to feel that they're in touch with that. But so something really common that I talk about when it comes to going to church and differentiation, again, is this idea when they get home, when you're having an evening meal, that you start asking questions that allow for your children to connect with themselves. That if, as parents, you feel differently, you emulate differences with a real positive sense of regard and love for one another, that it allows for you to practice creating environments where your children are reflecting on things that they're hearing, not just to blindly accept, but to think over, to mull over and decide for themselves.

Margi Dehlin [00:56:26] And the way you begin by doing that, you begin to do that. It's just simple questions. And then, you know, creating environments where it is very clear that everyone is respected at the table for their opinions and that this this is an unconditional love paradigm where everyone is welcome and valued and there's this expectation that we likely will feel differently on, you know, different from topic to topic. So that's just one sort of.

Margi Dehlin [00:57:00] I love it being a perk. If Richard Rohr is saying, hey, here's a perk of growing up in a structure, it's that later on you get to have something to rebel against. But I don't find that as something that is essential for everyone. I feel like there are many wise, beautiful people who find wise, beautiful lives that are fulfilling to them without ever having a religious structure to begin with.

Margi Dehlin [00:57:28] So I just like looking at, oh, here's something that's a perk. If you happen to have grown up organized religion, here's something to think about. So those are some of my basic thoughts.

John Dehlin [00:57:39] So thank you. Natasha, before you answer, I'm going to read Krista's comment because it's really thoughtful. She says, after I left the church, the Mormon Church, I found a lot of comfort and validation reading Richard Rohr's Falling Upward. But it suggested something that left me questioning my decisions regarding my young family's relationship with religion. He basically suggested, or. Or maybe I just understood the kids need the structure and belief system that religion offers so that one day they have a system to kick against, to go through their own spiritual awakening. It got me thinking that without my upbringing in the church and all the cognitive dissonance I'd wrestled with my whole life, I might not have come to find my soul the way I have

John Dehlin [00:58:17] through leaving the church.

John Dehlin [00:58:19] Marty's laughing. Leaving the church. Let's see, I missed. What if they need something to rebel against, to come to their second journey? If we were feeling like our family would continue with that religion. But I'm wondering if there might be wisdom here I may have overlooked. So, Natasha, what is your response to Krista's question about raising kids Mormon as non believers? What do you think?

Natasha Helfer [00:58:47] Well, I really like. I think what's at the bottom of my. Margi's statement, which is there's no need. There's nothing saying that you have to

Natasha Helfer [00:58:58] have a certain type of structure.

Natasha Helfer [00:59:01] The concept that people are going to,

Natasha Helfer [00:59:03] at some point kick against whatever structure they are offered is somewhat developmentally correct.

Natasha Helfer [00:59:10] But again, these words that we kind

Natasha Helfer [00:59:12] of typically tend to think of as rebelling, you know, we think about rebelling being something, something super dramatic like, I don't know, going against every single rule that the system presents, or there's lots of ways to kick against a system Just by having critical thinking and thinking a little bit differently than something, it doesn't mean that you're going off and, you know, having huge behavioral issues or something along those lines.

Natasha Helfer [00:59:36] So I don't, I do think that kids, younger kids require structure, some level

Natasha Helfer [00:59:44] of structure, not rigid structure, hopefully flexible structure going back to the circumflex model.

Natasha Helfer [00:59:51] And as kids hopefully go through the

Natasha Helfer [00:59:54] developmental stages, we become a little bit more flexible as they grow into teenagerhood.

Natasha Helfer [00:59:59] But that doesn't mean that they require religious structure and it doesn't necessarily mean

Natasha Helfer [01:00:05] that they require belief structure, that those

Natasha Helfer [01:00:07] things can be shifting and changing because

Natasha Helfer [01:00:10] kids also require flexibility. Right.

Natasha Helfer [01:00:13] In other words, they have to be

Natasha Helfer [01:00:15] able to understand that life is flexible and that things change and things of that nature.

Natasha Helfer [01:00:20] So I think that raising your kids in a system that you don't believe

Natasha Helfer [01:00:25] in just because it offers structure is

Natasha Helfer [01:00:28] a little bit missing the point.

Natasha Helfer [01:00:30] You want to hopefully, you know, give your kids structure that does fall in line with your values and your belief systems and things of that, that nature. That's what most of us do.

Natasha Helfer [01:00:42] And Mormonism isn't the only place that

Natasha Helfer [01:00:44] you can find community structure. You know, I mean, Mormonism does that well, but so do other communities and so do other non religious communities. So it's more about finding something that fits your, your particular aspect as an

Natasha Helfer [01:01:01] adult and then of course, being flexible

Natasha Helfer [01:01:04] with that as kids maybe come into their own system that they want to be a part of.

Natasha Helfer [01:01:08] Now, when you're in a mixed faith relationship, which I know we're going to

Natasha Helfer [01:01:12] talk about later, or when you're in a nuanced space and you still want to engage in Mormonism, then I think, yes, you can glean from some of the benefits of Mormon structure and you

Natasha Helfer [01:01:25] want to be intentional in making sure that you're also offering them lots of

Natasha Helfer [01:01:30] other ideas that do mirror your beliefs and your values as the parent, that

Natasha Helfer [01:01:35] you don't just allow for this system

Natasha Helfer [01:01:38] to take over and to downplay your authority.

Natasha Helfer [01:01:43] And so in mixed faith parenting, that

Natasha Helfer [01:01:44] can be a little bit of a challenge on knowing how to do that. But we have good strategies that we'll talk about at a later date on that.

Raising Kids Without Religion: Tradeoffs and Strategies

Part 4 of 4 · Ep. 1115

John Dehlin [00:00:31] So both of you guys aren't loving the idea, it seems, of raising kids in a church as secular folkers, non believers. There's another question that was somewhat similar. This is from Lisa and Alan. Lisa writes, when we lost our belief in God, my nine year old daughter wants to attend a non denominational Christian church with her best friend. I am so torn. I don't want to influence her relationship with God. I want to teach her it's okay to learn about other faiths and to discover for herself what she wants to believe. I also don't want a preacher sucking her in. I don't want her indoctrinated at this tender age.

John Dehlin [00:01:12] How do you handle children who want to discover faith in God when after Mormonism and all the harm it caused leaves you feeling terrified to let them? And then one of our listeners, Emily, she wrote, mine are 6 and 2. Primary is too brainwashy for the lack of a better word. The primary hymns are so black and white. Follow the prophet. I hope they call me on a mission. I love to see the temple are already unnecessary plugs. For shame. What Margi is saying is what we have adopted. Loving, open discussions with respectful environments. My daughters are already thriving with this change. That's super helpful, Emily, but I just, I don't want to leave this too quickly because Natasha, if I can push back for a second and Margi too, you know, religion, some would argue that religion's what got us to the ball.

John Dehlin [00:02:01] In other words, religion's what got us here as a society to the advanced state that we're in now in 2019 and we should not be careless about jettisoning it. And I'll just add, Natasha, aren't there millions of people that raise their kids in a religious tradition and they don't really believe it? I'm thinking about Catholics that are cultural, Jews that are cultural, you know, and lots of religions and lots of Mormons, frankly, lots of Mormon wards have people who don't really believe in the truth claims, but they just really value the spiritual sustenance, the moral structure, the community, the friendships.

John Dehlin [00:02:42] You know, it seemed like neither of you guys wanted to even entertain that possibility. And I just want to understand. Seems like Natasha, only in a faith

Natasha Helfer [00:02:51] marriage scenario, I guess I was pushing back against like just participating in a structure because you feel like that structure has something to offer your kids and you're not finding any value in it. Now if you do find value in the community, if you find value in symbolic instead of literal meaning, you know, to some of the Mormon teachings If you find value in attending and listening to the music, and then by all means, then you're finding value in it. Right? And you will. And that's what I mean by nuance. If you're a nuanced Mormon or whatever, those words we want to use, where people still want to stay engaged as adult people, and therefore you want to raise your children in that, you can do that in a way that kind of introduces critical thinking, different ways of being.

Natasha Helfer [00:03:40] You know, this is how the Parker's Mormon. That's how the Smiths Mormon. And we do this anyway, right? I mean, I know people in my ward right now who do not take off their Sunday clothes on Sunday. Well, not all of us do that. Right. We Mormon different ways. And so you can share with your kids that this is how we tend to do it. This is how dad and I do it. Whatever. So I'm not. I guess the way that you had posited it to begin with is, is that I no longer believe, I no longer find value in the community myself, but yet I'm going to continue to engage only for the benefit of my children, who I think might benefit from some of the structure.

Natasha Helfer [00:04:20] Then I'm like, oh, that's pretty hard to stay involved in a community structure that you have not a lot of personal value for. But by all means, there are people that find a lot of value in cultural, symbolic relationships with their religions of origin.

Margi Dehlin [00:04:40] Yes, we interpreted it similarly. And I feel very much the same with you, Natasha. And, yes, like, I hold these things very loosely, but if you were gonna ask me, I do have something come up with where this feels a little empty container. It's. To me, it's sort of like, well, now we don't have anything. So now I feel afraid because Richard Rohr is saying, better to have something to rebel against than nothing. And I would just argue life, life experience, loving living is spirituality. There is plenty of meat there. No one is just nothing. No one has nothing. And that's where I feel like some of those fears come in and the depravity. And, you know, and the truth is, is there are a lot of. A lot of right ways, a lot of good ways to do things and to approach parenting and to approach spirituality and meaning and purpose.

Natasha Helfer [00:05:43] And I'd like to hear your thoughts, John, on this. But, you know, even with the commenter who was like, well, I'm afraid to, you know, allow my daughter to be indoctrinated or to go to a different church or to be, you know, even the brainwashing that happens in primary, and maybe this is why I giggle to begin with, is that I think that sometimes as parents we think we have a lot more control than we do. And we only tend to use the words indoctrination and things like that when it's other people's ideas that differ from ours. So if I am telling my children, hey, I believe in world peace and being loving, I don't see that as indoctrinating.

Natasha Helfer [00:06:22] Right. I only see it as indoctrinating if somebody is giving an idea that I don't like. I don't like. Exactly. Now, I'm not going to minimize that. There are obviously structures and different kids might relate to authority differently. And it is hard when we feel like either a mentor or school teacher or a church person tends to have more authority or their kids are respecting them more than they respect us. And I think that happens to all parents in all different kinds of scenarios, not just religious scenarios. Because remember again, part of the developmental process, especially in teenage land, is to kind of kick against what you know.

Natasha Helfer [00:07:01] And what better do you know than your own parents? So. But I guess I would just encourage people to be more comfortable with ambiguity, flexibility that you can trust, that you can share your thoughts with a daughter, for example, that's going with her friend to church and that, you know, she will hopefully have a good experience and be able to come back. And the more anxious you are or the more worried she realizes that it's not safe to talk about that which goes into this enmeshment category, then actually you're kind of creating more of what you hope won't be there. You're creating a higher risk that they'll lean in that direction because, you know, you're not safe to talk about those kinds of things or to have different experiences than what you're comfortable present, providing that's a real balancing act as parents that we all struggle with.

Natasha Helfer [00:07:54] At what point do I let my child do something that I'm not super gung ho about? At what point do I allow for flexibility on that kind of stuff and trust the process? That's really hard. And there's different ages where that becomes something people might think about differently.

Margi Dehlin [00:08:11] Yeah. How would you approach that, honey?

John Dehlin [00:08:14] Which part?

Margi Dehlin [00:08:15] The question that we talked about about the child that wanted to try out a non denominational Christian church, she was feeling like a fear that she would be indoctrinated.

John Dehlin [00:08:25] You know, I'm. This is me just being vulnerable. I think. I love, I am astounded by how amazing our Children are. So of course, probably lots of parents think their kids are amazing, but I look at our kids and I think they're amazing. Having said that, I'm trying to be self critical, realizing that, you know, realizing that there probably have been downsides or disadvantages to things that we've chosen. There probably have been positive and negative implications for what we've chosen. And I think partly I am, I am really influenced by how idyllic I remember my Mormon upbringing being so just all the dances, all the youth conferences, all the temple trips and dance festivals and, you know, caring youth leaders and the moral structure.

John Dehlin [00:09:25] And then just kind of how I fared with all that, going to college and doing well and then going on to a successful career. Of course there were problems, but I have a hard time letting go of the fact that I feel like I'm very happy with how I perceive Mormonism's influence being on my life. And then I think about how hard sometimes it was on our kids once, you know, once we left, especially in Utah, how they lost friends, how they lost community, how we did our best to supplement with spirituality, morality, and open, candid conversations in the home. But sometimes I felt like our kids and our family were isolated.

John Dehlin [00:10:11] Sometimes I felt like they struggled to find friends. Sometimes I felt like I wonder, did we, could we have taught them more about spirituality? And most importantly, could our kids have benefited from a tighter knit community of support of other adults that could mentor them, of other friends that would come just naturally by being part of the community?

John Dehlin [00:10:35] And I think it's a mixed bag. And again, it's easy for me to just want to wave the flag of post Mormonism or liberal Mormonism and say everybody follow. But I want to be responsible about that and not just recklessly say that, you know, leaving is the best for everyone. And I know no one here is saying that as well. I'm going to bring in a couple comments. Aaron writes.

John Dehlin [00:10:59] There are a couple good comments here. Aaron writes, let's see, sorry it took a while to accept and embrace the idea that my kids can turn out just fine without religion. Then she writes, so many options out there now to meet the needs for community outside of organized religion. And I hear that too, by clubs or, you know, you know, what are some of the. I'm curious to know what community options there are. I know that soccer can be a little community of sorts. You know, ultimate Frisbee is a big thing here.

John Dehlin [00:11:36] I'm curious to hear options that people find for community. I know that there's oasis Here in Salt Lake City, which is a secular community. I know that oftentimes these groups like WACA or COCA here on the Wasatch front or even some of these post Mormon communities can be community. But I think we should do a whole episode on binding community outside of Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:11:59] Sam writes John, a huge segment of the population in Europe has been living happily secular lives since the end of World War II. We can figure this out by looking at healthy secular cultures. And I would like to learn more about that.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:16] This is why I love reading about places like Denmark or Hygge, right Is because that is. It is something that is absolutely integrated into their culture and how the country is run, how they look at things. I'm fascinated.

John Dehlin [00:12:31] So tell our listeners what the Hygge concept is really quick. And then I want to push back a little bit.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:36] Well, the Hygge concept isn't connected necessarily to the this community. Hygge is a feeling of safety, an idea. It's part of, you know, how I would say they approach everyday living. It's a value Hygge. But what they do secularly in Denmark that I find is really, really inspiring is in lieu of like religious institutions that are large and bulky and oftentimes can be less personal, is they tend to naturally couples.

Margi Dehlin [00:13:17] The average is like three to four couples naturally get together and they show up for each other and have dinner parties or games or. And within those gatherings, the element of Hygge is something that is valued. And Hygge just means it's safe, it's personal. You don't really go into like politics if it's going to be divisive. It's just this. This. Well, it's very thoughtful and warm and comforting and connecting. And these are the communities that when someone gets sick or if things are happening, it's personal enough that they all know it, but the difference is they actually have this deeply connected relationship that rises up to meet the needs that way.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:09] And so that's a little bit of what I've read with regard to Denmark and the idea of community there. It's a smaller community. Think 8 to 10 to 12 people and kind of like what we're trying to create with our book club, honestly.

John Dehlin [00:14:24] Yeah. And I'll just say that there's a part of me that just wonders how successful that that might be. Like we share a book about Hygge with three other families and then we say, hey, hey, post Mormon friends in Salt Lake City. Let's Hygge together like the Danes and how long.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:46] I'm all, I'm down on it. I'm there.

John Dehlin [00:14:49] I'm a little bit skeptical, and that's my skeptical self. I'm a little bit skeptical about whether that'll actually work out and how scalable it is as well. So this is just me being reflective. Kristin writes, I was really scared post faith crisis that my children didn't have a church community or youth group. I searched diligently to replace the church with another church. Over time, though, our church shopping experience, through our church shopping experience, I realized we were fine with our religion.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:21] We did a little bit of that,

John Dehlin [00:15:22] too, and that's how we were. Kristen so I'm not even saying, I guess I'm arguing against myself a little bit, but I'm just, I'm also trying to be open because a lot of listeners are asking this question. Sam continues, and he writes, John one of the most fascinating things to consider about the relationship between secular and religious culture is that there's almost no focus on environmental sustainability in religious cultures. I studied sustainability from my doctoral research and learned that you almost have to be secular to be able to let go of the concept of heaven in order to be able to let go of the in order to focus on living on a sustainable earth.

Margi Dehlin [00:16:01] That is fascinating.

John Dehlin [00:16:03] Yeah. There's no question that many religious values can be deeply problematic and that many religious values neglect completely many important secular values. So that's all true. I hope I haven't taken us down a rat hole, but this is just

Natasha Helfer [00:16:18] something that well, I think what you're saying is that there is something to many of us, and I think that many of us even listening today could look back on our Mormon upbringing and find very dear memories about those kinds of community things, which is a lot of what you speak about. John I think we also want to make sure we include the stories where it wasn't so ideal.

Natasha Helfer [00:16:46] So if you're raising a gay child, that's not going to be the same experience as what you had growing up, right? John or even gender different, sometimes women have different ideas about growing up Mormon versus boys or boys who don't necessarily fit the kind of gender model of leadership and things like that that they don't necessarily find a lot of enjoyment in. So some of this is individual. I mean, some people really did thrive in the many ways that the Mormon structure offered them, and many people actually were harmed by that, too. So there's no even if you're both believing Mormons, if you're in a Mixed faith marriage.

Natasha Helfer [00:17:27] If you're post Mormon, if you're nuanced Mormon, that's still a reality, that your kids may or may not have a positive experience in any structured environment that you offer them. You know, the potential for bullying, the potential for group think, the potential for influence, indoctrination, if you want to call it that.

Natasha Helfer [00:17:49] And so at some level, I think that's good to be aware of that and to try to assess risk and benefit given your family situations. I also think that it's important to have some level of acceptance that no matter what you offer, there's going to be problems. There's going to be, like you said, you know, John's strengths and maybe challenges to whatever decisions you made, you know, as parents. And if we get caught in that what if trap and, you know, if you blame again, and this is why I giggle at us, why I tease out ourselves, is that we tend to be very black and white thinkers.

Natasha Helfer [00:18:26] We tend to want equational approaches so that when and if your child struggles, let's say, in college, you know, it's very easy to go back and go, oh, my gosh, that's because we didn't provide a structured environment and we left Mormonism. Right. Or, oh my gosh, it's because we didn't leave Mormonism and we stayed involved. Right. And so I'm just saying life is much more complex than any one explanation. Your kids will struggle and thrive. And as long as you've got somewhat of a pulse on really extreme aspects of that and avoiding extreme bullying behaviors or, you know, taking your kids out of places where. Where they're not gonna thrive, I think in general, it's not as big of a deal as we're probably making it out to be.

Margi Dehlin [00:19:09] Yes. And I think it's so interesting how quickly it can feel very like a desperate affair that the stakes are all of a sudden very, very high. And that's fear. There's a lot of fear in that. And one thing that I just would invite to the conversation is also this idea of how our stories inform how we parent. And that's a bias of sorts, like any other bias. And you're kind of getting to this, Natasha, and the extent to which we can see our children as separate entities with separate needs. And I don't know, I think that that is helpful because we do bring our own bias.

Margi Dehlin [00:19:54] And the truth is, our children in the church never had the experience John had, and they're wired differently, and they weren't seeking the same things and they weren't in the same place in their life, needing the same things. And so it can kind of get in our way. Oftentimes in parenting, what works better is to go to the child, to ask questions of the child, to allow even your child to lead, to not put your story, your fear, your experiences, your wounds onto your child for them to carry. They don't have your story, you know, they will have their own.

Natasha Helfer [00:20:31] And we need to be aware of the story that's told within Mormonism. I'm sure a lot of people here have had some type of an experience where it's like, well, my in laws or my parents are, you know, as they're watching us leave, are saying things like, you're gonna ruin the children. What about the children? You know, and the story within Mormonism is very much about, you know, you, you're responsible for teaching the gospel to the children and if you don't do that, you have failed. And now those that responsibility lies on you. So some of this angst comes from the self fulfilling kind of prophecies or the narrative that Mormonism offers us.

Natasha Helfer [00:21:11] So I want to help us all take a Valium, but also like, like at the same time recognize that I read. I know why this is very, this is a very tender subject. You know, this causes a lot of anxiety for good reasons because we love our kids, we want what's best for them.

Natasha Helfer [00:21:29] And when we're shifting in a way that affects us now, we realize it's also going to affect all these other people that are part of our system. And what does that mean?

Margi Dehlin [00:21:39] Yeah, one mantra that has really helped me, which I hold mantras loosely as well. But is this idea of an abundance model as opposed to a scarcity model where we have to fight for everything, it's always desperate, you know, we never have what we need. Our kids are never, you know, to abundance. It's like we have all we need, our children are naturally full. And this idea that life is wise, that there are many, many paths and there's wisdom in it all and you know, it's much more the meaning we create than trying to create this path that has just the right meaning.

John Dehlin [00:22:18] Emily writes, I could use Valium.

Natasha Helfer [00:22:24] I love my Valium. Comments. I was like, let's take a chill pill or a Valium.

Margi Dehlin [00:22:28] That's right.

Natasha Helfer [00:22:28] That's my mantra all the way around.

John Dehlin [00:22:31] Thanks for sharing.

Margi Dehlin [00:22:32] Breathe, breathe.

John Dehlin [00:22:34] Just to close this little discussion black hole that I took us down, I'm just going to say that I still wonder, as skeptical as people are, as much as I agree with you guys that we're whole as much as I agree with the principles we're all talking about.

John Dehlin [00:22:55] I wonder if there would be a way, you know, again, all the holes that develop when you leave a church. Spirituality, identity, community, you know, friends, existential concerns, health code. Just think of all the things that a religion provides that you have to renegotiate and potentially lose.

John Dehlin [00:23:22] What if there could be like a secular handbook that sort of tells you best practices on spirituality, Secular Buddhism or Eckhart Tolle or whatever? It tells you best practices on parenting. It tells you best practices on finding secular community. It tells you how to deal with the God question and plugs those existential holes.

John Dehlin [00:23:44] It helps you find friends. It helps you learn the best practices of healthy marriages. It gives you a sense of meaning and purpose and helps you find best practice practices for meaning and purpose. It gives you a list of books to read and and movies to watch and resources for living life after, you know, in a secular age. I just wonder if that package were available as an option for a newlywed couple or for a young couple that wants to get married, or for new parents, or for people who leave a religion where they could just sort of like instead of having to do all that work to piece it together, community approved resources that have been aggregated can be made available.

John Dehlin [00:24:34] I just wonder whether that would accelerate and simplify the process for many. And I'll end with this comment that Jimmy makes. Jimmy writes and I think this is astute and it's a concern I've had as well. Jimmy writes off of John's recent comment on wanting to be responsible with progressive Mormon community and the following I just started wondering if the ability to transition or spiritually evolve to progressive theologies or spiritual frameworks is related to class or I would say privilege, not just how much money we have. I wonder if class, meaning socioeconomic status or social status, has more to do with this ability to think deeply and choose which moral framework we have and pass on to our children.

John Dehlin [00:25:18] My own critique of the progressive Mormon community I I am a part of and the support I provide to struggling Mormons comes from the consideration of other Mormons who are in a space where they can't choose a low socioeconomic status single Mormon mom I know in my community with an abusive ex husband comes to mind. I am wondering how this consideration changes or likely builds the nuance of this important conversation.

John Dehlin [00:25:46] And a way that I would branch off of that is just to say, sure, Natasha, maybe you can piece together a wonderful post. Mormon Life. Sure, Margi, you can. What about families that aren't in the same intellectual, socioeconomic or financial situation of privilege to be able to piece something together? What about them? Could they use support? Because maybe they don't have time to listen to 50 hours of podcasts or read a bunch of books or go and find which books to read to then read them, or search out all these different communities.

John Dehlin [00:26:22] Is that an important component? And I guess I'm going to leave that theoretical because I think you guys already feel like you've answered. Is that true?

Natasha Helfer [00:26:32] Yeah. And it's something that I think we've discussed in the past, not necessarily on this parenting one, but in faith transitions in general, to not assume, and I think we've encourage people to not assume that the post Mormon route is the best route for everybody or that, you know, that again, what's working for us would automatically work for other people. That there are plenty of people, both within Mormonism, within other religious structures, and of course outside of religious structure, who are struggling to survive that have very complex issues.

Natasha Helfer [00:27:07] And the reality that I hear from many Mormon individuals in particular in situations just like Jimmy is, is describing here is that the Mormon Church is a lifesaver because it is structure, it is community, it is casserole bringing or financial kind of a safety net, you know, for some of these people. And so we want to be very careful as faith transitioners to not assume that, you know, oh, everybody in Mormonism is brainwashed and it hurts everybody. And again, these very black and white ways that I think sometimes those of us who are transitioning or post transitioning can make sweeping statements about an entire group of people.

Natasha Helfer [00:27:47] So we want to be very careful that just like we don't want to be generalized, that we're not generalizing people who stay within, and that I don't think we do a very good job of providing that outside of religious communities.

Natasha Helfer [00:28:00] Not always, but in general. In general. In general, that was a huge push in the Bush administration that I remember the government themselves saying, maybe we need to think about what faith communities are doing for the welfare of this nation and can we support those efforts instead of just having a government welfare system. Now, again, there are secular countries that I think do a much better job of welfare in general for their citizens and that aren't necessarily religiously focused at all, such as Denmark or some of these European countries. So none of these statements are black and white. I'm just saying they're all important things to be considering.

John Dehlin [00:28:41] And I would say just as like Denmark Developed hygge in a secular wave post World War II. Now is America's secular wave, it seems. And if that's true, I don't think whatever secular cultures emerge, happen on their own. I think it's, it involves conscientious, privileged, if that makes sense. If that word makes sense. Secular people to form whatever cultures and communities will work here. No, because I don't think it just happens by chance. Okay, Natasha, you have a point about being a spiritual or existential leader in the home. A lot of people ask questions about that, about how do I provide family members spirituality outside of religion. Do you want to talk about that a bit? And then Margi, I think you might have a few things to say about spirituality after a faith crisis with children.

Being a Spiritual Leader at Home After Leaving the Church

Natasha Helfer [00:29:43] Yeah. And I'm going to start off with a comment we got from Emily Poliok who she says, let's see, I teach my daughters things that are facts. We own many, many earth science, physics and critical thinking books for their appropriate age. My husband and I teach on the morals of being human and leaving the earth and society. Better than how you found it. I know zero spirituality isn't for everyone, but it works for us. So some of this is how we define even the word spirituality. For me, I would, I would, you know, when she's saying that she is teaching about morals and leaving the earth in a better space, to me that's in the, in the umbrella of spirituality because I see any, you know, spirituality is kind of embodying those things that are kind of outside of our physical being and outside of our kind of ego realm.

Natasha Helfer [00:30:33] Right. So benefits of the community at large, the universe, things of that nature. Some people really don't like the word spiritual. So that's why I use existential or whatever word you want to use in there. But I think oftentimes the idea is that we get, we black and white, we allow for religion and spirituality to only mean certain things and facts and science only mean certain things. And I think we need to really be both, be a teacher of both, of all these different things to our children and to not allow religion to co opt words like morality, spirituality, ethereal, you know, all these words that can, that can speak to those moments of enlightenment or things that tons of people describe whether they're religious or not.

Natasha Helfer [00:31:26] Right. So connection to something bigger than yourself, whatever those those words mean and emotion is part of that and instinct and kind of, you know, gut sense for things, those are important things to be honing into your kids. And sometimes I think post transition we're very historical and scientifically driven and we forget that there's a lot of, I'm going to use the word spiritual components to life, relational components to life, emotional components to life that you can't necessarily measure that. You know, we do our best in the social sciences to come up with things that are scientifically, you know, in a scientific model, but even then it's largely an art. And so that you're making sure that you're, you're offering those things to your kids, not just facts.

John Dehlin [00:32:15] And what do you mean give us some examples of, of being a spiritual leader in the home. Natasha?

Natasha Helfer [00:32:21] Well, I think like, and I'll just, I'll also bring in another thing that I think is part of this is for example, family home evening is not owned by religion, right? And so what can we think about, like for example, the ritual of family home evening from a perspective, if it's a time to gather around, share some ideas, maybe share some good teachings, a TED Talk, for example, or even things like scriptures. Scriptures are not owned by religion. And by what I mean by scripture is like really well thought out, interesting literature that leads to personal ideas. You can take some of Brene Brown's work, for example, and I would say that's pretty close to scripture, but it's not measured, it's not science.

Natasha Helfer [00:33:14] It's more of just like here's a thought that helps us get out of our own, you know, our own physical standpoint. So it's something bigger than just historical scientific facts. And we as humans definitely have that type of outlook that we need something that feeds our quote, unquote souls, if you will, spirits, if you will. These are the language that we use. But those, that language has been co opted by religion. I'm just saying it doesn't have to be be. We can reclaim those words in ways that we are now teaching our children things like, you know, what is it like to feel, to have it, to be in a state of meditation?

Natasha Helfer [00:33:53] What is it like to feel your body respond to what you consider to be a truth for yourself? You know, what is it like to experience an emotion and how you then use that emotion to have relational, you know, experiences in your life. What is it like to glean knowledge, even scientific knowledge can have a physiological reaction. You can get goosebumps on your arms, you know, in the laboratory when you find a new cure to something. Right. I mean, that's a very spiritual moment. But are we using that kind of language instead of being very, no, matter of fact, kind of robotic about the ways that we present information to our children. So I would just invite people to not let religion take that from us.

John Dehlin [00:34:40] Okay, I like that concept. I like your idea of family home. Evening, Margi. What. What are some ways that we've tried to encourage a sense of spirituality in our home?

Margi Dehlin [00:34:58] So kind of thinking back so I can kind of have a full perspective. One thing that I view is valuable is this idea of introducing ideas into your home. And the way that I oftentimes sew for. Like when the children were middle childhood. So before they became teens, it was as easy as reading books together. I remember a couple books, Old Turtle and Old Turtle and the Broken Truth.

Margi Dehlin [00:35:28] But I would actually look for books to begin conversations, to start exploring with the kids what they thought about the book or what they liked about the book. And it really is about just exposing children to ideas. I remember we watched the documentary on Food Food Inc. And that had concert. Like it had ecological ideas, treatment of animals, or it had a health component. It or Girl Rising. At one point, we. So documentaries. Think about Mr. Rogers. What's the Mr. Rogers documentary talking about? Activism, the face of activism, what it can look like. What do you care about what you know, what is something that's important to you?

Margi Dehlin [00:36:18] It's this idea of creating exposure to ideas with emotion, with a story, where hopefully they get perspectives that are different from their own. And they slowly go internal and learn kind of what their thoughts are. And you create discussions that are safe and that are productive and exploratory.

Margi Dehlin [00:36:43] So those are a couple. Remember the Material World book? When the kids were kind of 8 to 10, 6 to 10, I had these books by Peter Menzel, where one was called Material World, one was called Women in the Material World.

Natasha Helfer [00:36:59] And.

Margi Dehlin [00:37:00] And what they did was they went around the world and they had people bring all of their valuables, all their belongings outside their homes. And you could see the difference in homes, the difference in belongings, what people had. And then they oftentimes would ask, what's your most valuable possession? And reading through Mali, like going to different places allowed, I feel like a perspective that they might not otherwise have. And so that's one way I think you can go about, you know, spirituality is creating conversations, creating sort of these opportunities to connect to ideas that they might otherwise not have. And that is something that I took seriously for many, many years. Was just gathering some things that I thought would be thought provoking.

John Dehlin [00:37:59] I think about some of the things I remember us doing. We were really nervous for a while that Sundays didn't feel as holy as other days. And it's just so easy to, like you said, Natasha, to limit what we perceive the term spirituality to mean to be him singing or talks, sermons given over a pulpit or choirs or testimonies. Right.

Natasha Helfer [00:38:28] Or even to deal with God or deity. It doesn't have to be that either.

John Dehlin [00:38:32] Yeah, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:33] Or you have to be sitting. Sitting in a chair listening.

John Dehlin [00:38:36] And so we. Yeah, yeah. And so we would do Super Soul Sunday, where each Sunday we would pull the kids together and watch a 30 minute interview of Oprah interviewing Brene Brown. Or Oprah interviewing Eckhart Tolle. Or Oprah interviewing, you know, who's the one things fall apart person.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:54] Oh, Pima Chodra.

John Dehlin [00:38:55] Pima Chodra, right. It had to be mystical or it had to be New Agey. I remember trying to introduce Eckhart Tolle to our kids and just how put off they were. Just zero interested in learning about Eckhart Tolle.

Margi Dehlin [00:39:09] But that was okay.

John Dehlin [00:39:10] Then we were like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we would. Then we would always do a hike and we would say, and people like this, they call it hike church or nature church. Right. And we would. What's so funny? You're laughing.

Margi Dehlin [00:39:21] Just if Winston recently was just like. It was like, they're coming into themselves, both Winston and Clara, where they were just like, I want you to know I never liked hiking. I don't like it. I don't want to do that on my side. It's like anti Sabbath to me to go on a hike.

Natasha Helfer [00:39:37] It's just funny.

John Dehlin [00:39:38] And we're just like, oh, but it's nature. There's the wind and there's the we can do. There's the rushing water and the sounds.

Natasha Helfer [00:39:47] See, this comes full circle. You offered something they could rebel against.

Margi Dehlin [00:39:52] That's right.

Natasha Helfer [00:39:53] They're rebelling against nature differences.

Margi Dehlin [00:39:55] We welcomed it. We were like, okay, noted.

Natasha Helfer [00:39:58] All right.

John Dehlin [00:39:59] It's less fun practically than it is philosophically. It sounds good philosophically. Unless the rebellion comes against us and then all of a sudden it feels a lot less good. But what I hear, you guys and the family evening idea is also something we tried to do.

John Dehlin [00:40:19] And sometimes, honestly, when you don't have guilt and fear and shame and a prophet and concerns about the afterlife and this culture of expectation where you have to report back. Am I doing sort of the PPI culture where it's like, yes, I'm having my family home evening. Yes, I'm having worthiness interviews with my children. Yes. You know, sometimes about accountability.

John Dehlin [00:40:44] You know, I do think non religious people can have to confront their own motivations and maybe their own laziness or just comfort of not really acting. And anyway, it's, it's definitely. I love what you guys are saying about being more creative about what spirituality means. I think art and creativity can be spiritual. I think that just connecting with good friends can be spiritual. Just having friends over for a barbecue.

Margi Dehlin [00:41:16] You did that too, Socrates Cafe.

John Dehlin [00:41:19] Yeah, yeah. Over the time we've occasionally had friends over and just had barbecues and just lovely conversations that ensue. Why isn't that spirituality? Why does it have to be in a church with music and a sermon to count the spirituality?

Margi Dehlin [00:41:35] And that's part of that process that you go through with transition is you actually renegotiate what spirituality or whatever term you want to, you know, kind of give it to connecting with yourself or connecting with something larger, what that's going to look like and feel like for you.

Keeping Meaningful Rituals and Building New Ones

John Dehlin [00:41:56] Natasha, another, another bullet that you mentioned is keeping the rituals that work. We talked about Family Home Evening as one ritual that works from our heritage. I'm curious if either of you have ideas of rituals that you've kept for Mormonism that work.

Natasha Helfer [00:42:17] Well, so much of what we know as far as healthy coping mechanisms in the mental health field, for example, kind of mirror spiritual practice. So even the whole concept of mindfulness, it's so pop culture these days. Right. Is similar to prayer practice or contemplative practice. We know that journaling can really be helpful from a mental health standpoint. Well, guess what tradition we were encouraged to do, you know, as Mormons or gratitude. We know that having gratitude and kind of thinking through things that you're thankful for can be really helpful for mental health. Right. And Mormonism kind of presented some of these opportunities. Now granted, the problem with how Mormonism presented those opportunities is that it was often co opted by shame and guilt if you didn't do them.

Natasha Helfer [00:43:04] Like somehow it was tied to deity being pleased with you or not. So it had a shame component to it, which is not healthy. But a lot of these things that we can kind of take with us and there is something again through mental health research showing that ritual, ritual. So it's something more than just, oh yeah, I'd like to kind of do this. But to really create a ritual, whether it's lighting a candle or creating a background or having a certain space or time or timing something or creating certain symbols can be very helpful in us integrating things that we want to for our own health and well being.

Natasha Helfer [00:43:43] So there's a lot of opportunity to Take I always talk about Carolyn's Pearson's poetry. You know, about. As you're going through the wilderness as a pioneer, oftentimes you had to reload the cart and you could only take what was really super precious to you. So we don't have to throw out the baby with the bath water. We can take some of these things that became. And for some of us that are transitioning, I hear this a lot, like, I miss scripture reading or I miss praying as a family. Well, why can't you create a ritual where you have a gratitude circle, right? And you hold hands and instead of folding your arms and, you know, having the classic Mormon prayer, you do a different type of prayer per se, or you have a journal time, or you create scriptures that are different than the standard works, right?

Natasha Helfer [00:44:34] So whether those are wonderful philosophers or ideas or rumi or whomever you know, that you create, you decide what your scripture is going to look like and you share that as a family. Or you do a yoga or breathing exercise instead of a traditional startup to a family home evening, for example.

Natasha Helfer [00:44:56] So reclaiming these things that never belong to Mormonism anyway. Mormonism had a certain structure or certain idea of how to do those things, keeping what really benefits us, teaching our kids those things, creating family ritual around some of these traditions that can be very useful. Even when kids complain about them, like even the nature walks, even when they complain against them, they can still be useful. They can still be things that they look fondly back on. You know, as far as some of those things that parents prioritize, one ritual

John Dehlin [00:45:31] that I think of is the Sunday being kind of a special day set apart from the others. We. I think in some ways we still do that. We try and limit our screen time on Sundays. We try and limit, you know, things that isolate and especially social media on Sunday. And we try and do a family movie or we try and have a dinner. Have dinner, we try. And if we can go on a hike, if anyone will go, sometimes Winston and I will snowboard, or Winston, Claire and I will snowboard on a Sunday. But we try and not just make another workday. Were you going to say anything about rituals that you've kept or that you like the idea of keeping?

Margi Dehlin [00:46:11] I was just gonna say how much I loved Natasha's idea around, you know, substituting in and just a couple substitutions we've done is I love the idea of pausing before a dinner meal. I like the idea of just taking a moment before we just dive into food and dive into conversation to just have a Moment of presence. And so one thing we did was we created a gratitude moment where we do go around the table and the kids share one thing they're grateful for, the scripture reading, you know, so we clearly don't scripture read anymore. But for many, many years, I instead would read with my kids before they went to bed.

Margi Dehlin [00:46:54] So where that might have, you know, once been a scripture time or prayer time, it was a we're gonna read Charlotte's Web, or we read the Miraculous Journey of Edward Trelane, or we. And so. And, you know, books that evoke a lot of meaning, books that, you know, I think also create, oh, emotional experience, journeying and, you know, conversations where we were. I was able to have really lovely conversations, I think, out of that. So those are a couple substitutions. Meditation for me every morning is definitely my way of trying to kind of create a bit of presence, a little bit of awareness with my own thoughts.

Margi Dehlin [00:47:40] And so anyway, and are putting. Having our Sundays feel a little bit different than other days. And, you know, our teens, we have teens now, allowing our teens to have a say in what that means for them is really important. And, you know, whereas when Stin was, you know, vocal about saying, I don't like to hike, that's not something I like to do, but I do really like to skateboard. And so we realized for him that we will oftentimes drive him for an hour or two to go to a skate park so that he gets that time of it centers him. It's a very flow experience for him, and that's something he wanted as part of his Sunday.

Margi Dehlin [00:48:24] So it's also integrating, particularly when your children, you know, get older, but even when they're younger, if your family wants to kind of also have your children play a part in deciding what they would like for Sundays to feel like or what some components they would love as part of the mix, that that can be a fun part of the process.

Teaching Critical Thinking and Setting Enlightened Boundaries

John Dehlin [00:48:48] Natasha, another point you had listed as something you like to talk about is the importance of teaching critical thinking skills and the differentiation skills that are required. I often think about the. Maybe the biggest transition made from the first half of life to the second is moving from an extrinsic source of authority, which as parents, we kind of naturally are to at least some degree moving to an intrinsic source of authority. And of course, as progressive post Mormons, we think of that as sort of moving from the church being our authority, or for the brethren or the church leaders being our authority, to being our own moral authority. And so I imagine there's a trick between being a parent, but also nurturing in your kids their own sense of intrinsic moral authority, their own critical thinking skills. What do you like to say about that?

Natasha Helfer [00:49:47] Yeah, I do think that in our Mormon upbringings we really weren't offered this. We were offered more of this is how it is. And we sure hope that you come to this conclusion because it's right.

John Dehlin [00:50:00] Yeah, true.

Natasha Helfer [00:50:02] Right. And this is how you do that. You know, you pray and you fast and you read scriptures. And if you don't come to this conclusion, then there's really no room for the system to be wrong. You're doing something wrong, you know, in that process. So that's kind of a process, problematic way to come to any conclusion that's already foretold for you.

Natasha Helfer [00:50:20] So even, even while we were still very much attending church or anytime we go anywhere that might have some level of authority, like a different church or even a different experience like funerals or things of that nature, I really started this tradition of just asking, tell me something that you really liked about this experience or that you had an aha moment or that you felt the spirit or whatever language you want to use, and then tell me something that you didn't find very pleasing or that you were confused by or that you actually didn't like or that you disagreed with.

Natasha Helfer [00:50:57] So it gave us all an opportunity just by those two questions, to first of all give permission for difference of thought just by doing that, so that I could say, well, I really like sister so and so's talk, you know, where she's talking about the volunteer work she did, you know, at the soup kitchen and that that was awesome. And I really didn't like, you know, brother, so and so's talk that focused so much on Satan. It felt very fear based and shamey and, you know, I just didn't get a good feeling when he was talking about those kinds of things. Well, now all of a sudden they're getting the clue that it's not just, oh, we're telling you what to think or believe, actually get to have a say in what I think or believe or how I interpreted those kinds of situations.

Natasha Helfer [00:51:41] And I was surprised sometimes at what my kids came up with, things I wouldn't have considered or things that I saw it sometimes as an opportunity for me to offer nuance. But I was also surprised at what my kids came up with that I wouldn't have considered problematic or that I would have not thought of as something that would have been helpful.

Natasha Helfer [00:52:00] So that was a good clue into my Kids, do we have enough differentiation skills go along with this? Because then again, can we tolerate what our kids come up with? Well, we hated going on the nature walk. We thought it was lame. When you're like, no, this is really healthy and this is really wonderful, and being on a walk is good for you, how can you tolerate that? They might have a different experience of that, but it also teaches them to be thinking about, do I have the permission to have my own thoughts?

Natasha Helfer [00:52:31] What is this like for me? I have a say. And then as they get older, I kind of talk about critical thinking skills even a little bit differently. Especially around. I think a really good time to do this is around advertising.

Natasha Helfer [00:52:45] So it's kind of like, who's behind this? Who's paying for it? What's the agenda? You know, what are they trying to sell you, if anything? Whether it's research or advertisements or messages or political parties, it's like, what information, what emotion are they trying to get us to feel? So those are kind of interesting. Not that we do that every single time there's an ad, but every now and then I try to have those kinds of conversations so they can again, be thinking that just because I'm feeling something or just because I'm brought into the moment doesn't necessarily mean that this is quote, unquote true or.

Natasha Helfer [00:53:27] And, you know, my husband and I have had plenty of opportunity to show them differentiation skills on this because, you know, we don't always agree on political or environmental or things of that nature. And so, you know, when we see something that I'm like, oh, yeah, pay attention to that. My husband, like, well, who's running this ad? You know? And I'm like, don't ask that question when it's an ad.

Margi Dehlin [00:53:51] I like, the message is so clearly true.

Natasha Helfer [00:53:55] It's so clearly true. My kids have had definitely plenty of opportunity to see the back and forth falling of people with different ideas.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:05] That's great stuff. Great stuff. I was gonna say what you just mentioned reminded me of a couple documentaries that as a family, they were really, really important to us. And that is misrepresentation. So that is. It takes on, you know, women in culture, how women are portrayed. And the second is the mask you live in, which is men.

John Dehlin [00:54:32] So men and emotions about toxic masculinity in US Culture.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:36] And both of those, watching them with our teen children was just very, very valuable. And I would say probably. What would you say? 14 and above, 15 and above, maybe so kind of old, mid, teenage kind of years. But those were two documentaries. That as you're talking about advertising. Sorry, that was in both documentaries. So.

Natasha Helfer [00:55:02] Yeah, cool.

John Dehlin [00:55:04] Yeah, those are valuable. I do think watching documentaries is a great way to develop critical thinking skills. Watching news with your kids, just using car rides to talk about things. Listening to podcasts together has been a phenomenal way.

John Dehlin [00:55:24] Some of our older kids have really gotten into podcasts and even younger kids or YouTube channels. There are a lot of good podcasts and YouTube channels out there that introduce really important topics that can get your kids thinking about different topics and can become really good fodder for developing critical thinking skills.

John Dehlin [00:55:45] And I think that's really important. So I'm glad you talk about that, Natasha. And I do think that's one of the things that one of the greatest opportunities when we talk about the gift of a faith crisis, helping our kids become more skeptical. Here's what's hard, though. What happens when. You know, one of the things I love about patriarchy is how efficient it is.

John Dehlin [00:56:13] What happens when your kids, you know, get this self empowerment of critical thought and they don't want to obey and do and they're everything you tell them and they want to question everything you want. That makes parenting more difficult if you control mindset.

Margi Dehlin [00:56:33] That's true.

John Dehlin [00:56:33] I'm just saying, like, do it because I said so is a lot more efficient. I'm being silly. Then let's talk about why you need to do this. Because we're helping you develop critical thinking skills.

Margi Dehlin [00:56:48] I really love the process. It is harrowing. And it is not all. I would not say it's without stress, but I have really, really appreciated the process of seeing my children evolve and voice themselves and get to know themselves and be courageous and speak out even when it's against me. Winston will say, you are speaking to me in a rude way and I am leaving until you can pull it together. I love that. I'm like, look at you.

Natasha Helfer [00:57:16] And then I'm like, stop.

Margi Dehlin [00:57:17] Look at that.

Natasha Helfer [00:57:18] Emotional. You are so connected, son.

Margi Dehlin [00:57:21] Hey, Seth,

Natasha Helfer [00:57:23] go to your room. You're being disrespectful. But I really appreciate being called out.

Margi Dehlin [00:57:29] I'm like, good call.

Natasha Helfer [00:57:30] True.

Margi Dehlin [00:57:30] I'm gonna calm down. Yeah.

Natasha Helfer [00:57:31] I'll be back in a minute.

John Dehlin [00:57:38] Be aware that this causes you as a parent to have to slow down and connect with yourself. Yeah. And connect with yourself and connect with your kids. I agree with you, Margi. It has huge payoffs in the end because you want your kid guided by an internal moral compass that's well reasoned and that's intrinsic to them, but that Means you have to give them the freedom and the space to figure that out. And sometimes it's not going to be what you want. And sometimes your kids are going to go, I don't care if you want me to spend time with Grandma. I don't want to spend time with Grandma. And they don't want to.

Margi Dehlin [00:58:14] You know, I was thinking of some more dire situations than that, but that is true.

John Dehlin [00:58:20] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes I want to smoke weed.

Margi Dehlin [00:58:25] There's a lot out there.

John Dehlin [00:58:26] Sometimes I want to have sex.

Natasha Helfer [00:58:29] And this is where I think, too. Again, looking at the Circumplex model is helpful because in our family, and I'm not saying that this has to be the case, but in our family, I would be comfortable saying, I appreciate your thoughts about not wanting to spend time with Grandma. And yet this is kind of what we're doing today, you know, whether you want to do that or not. So I can tend to be a little bit more structural in my approach at times. Not all the time, but at times, because, you know, and I'll give reasoning and things like that. And we also, I remember, had a Incredibles moment, you know, the Incredibles family, where in the first movie, you know, the mom is flying the airplane and she's having to do a crash landing, and she's telling Violet, do this thing.

Natasha Helfer [00:59:12] And Violet's, like, having a philosophical conversation with herself, you know, about whether or not she should do this thing that needed to be done in the moment because it was an emergency. We had a situation like that where one of our kids had, like, an allergic reaction at a basketball game. And we very quickly, you know, we were dealing with hives and passing out, and we had, you know, so we were just trying to gather everybody and, come on, we've got to go. We've got to go now. And we had kind of a similar reaction, like Violet, but you said that we could do that. And, you know, we don't have time for your philosophical arguments about your needs right now.

Margi Dehlin [00:59:51] Yes.

Natasha Helfer [00:59:53] So that gave us an opportunity to say that at times, not a lot of the time, but when mom and dad are in kind of a mode of anxiety and panic, you have to just kind of obey in those moments. And because there's an emergency, you know, there's an emergency situation.

Natasha Helfer [01:00:10] So, again, this is not black or white. This is not all or nothing. It's not that kids always get their way or that parents always get their way, or that. It's more about. And I think what you're saying with the slowing down process is that if you're going to take some of these strategies to heart, it does take more time to be an intentional parent than to be a dictatorial parent.

Natasha Helfer [01:00:32] It does take more conversation to talk about reasons versus just do it because I said so. You know, so in general, I lean in that direction. And at the same time, I'm just making room that there are things that some parents may do differently than others. And it doesn't mean that you're outside of that primary circle of correct ways of having a system.

John Dehlin [01:00:58] Margi, you in your reading with Shefali Sabery, you know, a lot of our what we're talking about the parents way or the kids way, we're talking about, you know, critical thought. You know, one of the things that really is a powerful part of conscious parenting that is also really tricky is how do you do discipline rules with kids now that you don't have the words of a prophet and commandments in scripture necessarily, and the church imposing what some have perceived to be guilt and shame and fear to get your kids to follow rules and obey. How do you enforce enlightened boundaries and. Or rules and what's the role of punishment parenting without kind of a religious structure?

Margi Dehlin [01:01:56] Okay, well, that, it. There's a lot. There's a lot to this. But what I would, what I would say is, you know, it is a common, I feel like a misconception that with conscious parenting, it's just whatever the child, whatever the child feels, whatever the, you know, it's very just in the moment, and that just isn't the case. So if I had to kind of speak to some basic differences or how an enlightened boundary is different than a rule. Right. I would say it tends to be basic needs around a child. So the child is considered and it is thoughtfully, you get to an enlightened boundary very thoughtfully as a need arises.

Margi Dehlin [01:02:43] So that's one thing as far as. And that's in contrast to like, blanket rules that just a parent, you know, does because it's convenient or. So there's a difference between kind of unconscious rules and conscious. So that's the first thing. With an enlightened boundary, it's conscious. You're taking each child into account. So it may look different for each child, and then it kind of, it answers a basic need, sleep, health, or. And this is going to look very different for young kids than it will for, say, a teenager. The second thing I'd say.

John Dehlin [01:03:21] So you're saying rules aren't arbitrary, they're rooted in values.

Margi Dehlin [01:03:26] The other thing I'd say is children, particularly as they get older. So let's say middle childhood to teens are part of the conversation around enlightened boundaries. So they can speak their mind about it, they can share their feelings about it. They can. And from there you can connect around it. That doesn't mean that you're going to change the boundary. That means that the process of having a boundary feels different. They're part of it. They're part of the conversation. They feel heard and validated in the process. So that's. The next part, is that they play a part and there's a process difference to it.

Margi Dehlin [01:04:07] The third, I would say is how it's held. So a rule, you know, the way you kind of think about a rule as you broke the rule, sorry for you. Punishment. The way an enlightened boundary is held is as important as the boundary itself. And so what you ideally would not see is a lot of emotion around the boundary, not a lot of personalization and personal disrupt on behalf of the parent. It is a reminder, an actual reminder that there is a boundary here and that the expectation is that the. And that you hold it and you hold it in an energy that it's interesting.

Margi Dehlin [01:04:49] So I'm going to ask you to consider something. Have you ever said no to your child about something or communicated a boundary but not really meant it? And you get this pushback from them. It's like they can tell you're ambivalent. They can tell you're not fully invested. And so holding the boundary, you're 100% in energy invested. It's like we've got this boundary. Yeah. But we, you know, at this point, we actually have to have you get ready or.

Margi Dehlin [01:05:20] And I'll give you an example. Should I give an example of an enlightened boundary or how it's held? So let's just say a child is chronically late for school. Okay. So the child is old enough to get ready, old enough to kind of take accountability for getting ready for school, and is constantly late and misses the bus. Right. So you are constantly having to drive this child to school. So, you know, a punishment would be like arbitrary. Give me your phone. You don't. It's not tied to the behavior at all. Right. Punishment is very, it's like in the moment, knee jerk. What can I do to hurt you?

Margi Dehlin [01:06:04] Make this expensive for you so that you never do this thing again? Because it's very inconvenient to me. Right. But in kind of contrast, an enlightened boundary would be tied to the Behavior. You really, really are thoughtful. It's rarely you give the consequence or the enlightened in the moment. You usually are going to kind of think it through. You talk to the child about the problem, right? Here's what's happening. Here's why it's not working out. Mom and dad have work. We're beginning late. You know, we're late for work because we're driving you to school.

Margi Dehlin [01:06:39] So the next time that you are late, now that it's a. The next time you're late, we're going to ask you, you know, I'm just going to say if we had this problem in our family, which we are close enough for that child to walk to school, that child, it's walkable and it's safe enough that I would feel comfortable. So. And they're late, right? So it's this idea that the child takes responsibility for and oftentimes it's not as satisfying as a parent because what you would. A lot of those other aspects of being a parent come out, it's like, well, then they're great. They're gonna have not a very good grade because then they're gonna be tardy.

Margi Dehlin [01:07:21] And maybe I should excuse, but it's actually getting out of the way of all of that and allowing for the inconvenience of a walk to school. And so this is why it has to be. Your response is thoughtful. It's conscious. If your child doesn't care or would really enjoy a walk to school, it may not work. You may have to come up with, you know, something that's a little bit different or. But that's the idea is how it's held, how you create one. The process of it is the child. You try to actually have the child be involved.

Margi Dehlin [01:07:56] The child feels validated. And sometimes the child actually very much will affect the process of things or change a boundary or alter a boundary, I would say.

John Dehlin [01:08:09] Nice.

Margi Dehlin [01:08:09] So that's just an overview of the difference between enlightened boundaries and punishments or rules. Hopefully that's helpful.

John Dehlin [01:08:24] Love it. Natasha, you like to. You mentioned the beauty of being willing to say I don't know, and the importance of modeling the ability to deal with ambiguity as kids. Now, this is something that can make people feel really nervous, especially when we come from a tradition that's got all the answers. Why do you feel like the ability to say I don't know and modeling ambiguity and uncertainty can be a healthy thing?

Structure, Flexibility, and Sitting With Uncertainty

Natasha Helfer [01:08:53] Well, this goes back to kind of the balance between offering structure in your home and offering flexibility in your Home, you know, it shouldn't be all or nothing. It's just more about can we role model things that they're going to come across in life. And I think a lot of times Mormonism has definitely role modeled and other aspects of parenting have role modeled that we're always supposed to have an answer, that we're always supposed to be available, that we're always supposed to kind of be the safety net. And I think it is good to model, you know, things like, I don't know or I'll get back to you, right.

Natasha Helfer [01:09:28] I don't have to know everything as your parent because guess what, they're going to be a parent and they're not going to know everything. So you don't want to set up like false expectations. Right. Like, one of the things that I actually get most nervous about when people come in for marriage therapy is when they tell me things like, I never saw my parents fight. I'm like, you didn't?

Natasha Helfer [01:09:51] Not that I want to, you know, want you to have too much experience with that either like my parents fight, fought all the time, or there was domestic violence obviously, or anything like that. But you weren't able to see and have role model to you, discussions and conflict and resolution to that conflict. And that leaves you without a lot of skills for your own adult relationship. So in a lot of ways it's not that we're protecting children from childhood, we're teaching children how to be effective adults. When you think about life projection, our people, our children are going to spend much more time in adulthood than they ever will in childhood.

Natasha Helfer [01:10:30] You know, we have 18 years with our kids and they don't even remember consciously three or four of those years, you know, so that's 14 years out of hopefully an 80 to 90 year time frame where we get our kids in this state of childhood development. Right. So modeling what you hope they can do as adults. And a lot of times I hear this pushback like, well, but if you don't have answers or if you don't have like a super big structure, that it's going to lead to confusion or kids being confused or insecurities.

Natasha Helfer [01:11:04] And I think actually the research on helicopter parenting is kind of challenging that you know, that actually it's good for kids to not have everything for figured out to have kids have slight anxiety. We want them to practice slight anxieties before they face really big anxieties. And having your parents say something like, good question, I don't know, might actually be a good slight anxiety for your child to Experience in a fairly safe environment.

Natasha Helfer [01:11:35] So that I think is positing realistic expectations for the future and also encouraging them to have safety, some level of ambiguity in their current time frame of being a kiddo.

John Dehlin [01:11:49] But Natasha, what do you do if you do know everything?

Natasha Helfer [01:11:53] Then you go in for an assessment on narcissistic personality disorder. And see how effective that is for you.

Margi Dehlin [01:12:06] I really love that and I really, for some reason it brings up a little bit around, I think sometimes as parents we want to protect our children from experiences of loss or grief. So in my case when my dad died, I had this thought of trying to grieve away from my kids or where they would never see it to sort of protect them from. And then I had the realization of they will literally lose me someday and lose other. And I actually wanted them to have a memory of what that looked like that they could actually, you know, recall and see. Oh, I remember actually when my mom lost her dad and that it was hard for her and you know, even recall a bit of what that looked like.

Margi Dehlin [01:13:02] And so that reminds me a little bit of what you're saying of, you know, that I don't know or the messiness sometimes and the unknown things of even being able to say I don't know where he is. I wish I did. I wish I knew what, you know, and adding just sort of kind of, you know, age dependent, mind you, you know, that type of response. But you know, modeling some of those things too, particularly to our, you know, middle to older age children.

Natasha Helfer [01:13:32] It's the same with modeling. I'm sorry. You know, it's the same with modeling things like I was wrong. It's like all of these things, if you take a super authoritative approach, it doesn't allow for you to make mistakes. And we want to role model mistake making and repairing from mistakes so that our kids know how to do that when they're older.

Margi Dehlin [01:13:55] Yeah. And I think ironically, all that talk about respect and of the authoritative authoritarian model, I just, you know, the times that I have, you know, really talked with my children around my own humanness and mistakes I've made or things that I can connect with that might be hard about them living with me or experiencing me, you know, one of just the best moments is when they really connect to that and you feel the respect from that for your owning that. And even I loved on a Mother's Day card, you know, here's my 15 year old son and he listed a few things he really loved about me.

Margi Dehlin [01:14:43] And one of those things was, you know, on A level. I love how you're willing to see your own mistakes and to work on them and grow. I mean, that's. That's pretty awesome. That's a pretty. And not saying that I'm awesome. I'm saying I feel like our kids really value realness. They sense. And that's actually ironically where respect comes is when they sense you're being real with them. You're being honest about yourself and you're being willing to admit that you're growing too.

Natasha Helfer [01:15:14] Yeah. When you think about all the ways that we get ticked off at the church for not being forthcoming.

John Dehlin [01:15:20] Right.

Natasha Helfer [01:15:20] Or not being honest or not being able to admit when it makes mistakes, we lose respect. You know, when we don't see people being able to take responsibility to own their own weaknesses. You see this shift a little bit in some of the politicians.

Margi Dehlin [01:15:40] Right.

Natasha Helfer [01:15:40] Like it used to be that, you know, 30 years ago politicians would just, you know, again, never show a weakness or. And now they realize like, that's even more of if I've made a mistake and I don't own it and apologize or take some type of ownership, people are gonna. Then it's a real deal killer.

Margi Dehlin [01:16:02] Yeah.

Natasha Helfer [01:16:03] We're shifting in the cultural ideas of this. Whereas before saying I was wrong was considered a weakness or you might lose respect. We're actually finding the more you can be real and honest and show that you're self aware as to what you should take responsibility for, the more respect. And that's the, that's the culture your kids are in. They. I always call kids, you know, the hypocrisy police. They are very good at picking up on when you're not, you know, when you're kind of full of it.

Margi Dehlin [01:16:36] That's right.

Our Role as Parents: Closing Reflections

John Dehlin [01:16:39] As we kind of wrap up this session and this multi hour, at least four, maybe five hour session marathon on parenting, the last point that I wanted to bring up that really does come from Shefali Savery, but it also ties back into kind of how we began when we talked about how sometimes people internalize the Christianity model as being a model of brokenness or even addressing this idea that a parent's job is to fill a kid.

John Dehlin [01:17:11] And what we end up doing is projecting all of our insecurities and anxieties and over securities or accomplishments onto them. And I think we all have a sense as parents for how kids just don't want to be the soccer star if we were the soccer star. They don't want to be the ballerina, if mom was the ballerina, that that there's just something natural about a reaction in the opposite direction of any way a parent's wanting to push a kid. It kind of ties back to the question of what's our. What is our role as a parent? And shefali Sabery makes the argument that our job as a parent is to provide, you know, our kids with the structure and the support and the environment of safety for them to become exactly who they're supposed to be.

John Dehlin [01:18:00] They're not supposed to become mini Me's. They're not supposed to become the fulfillment of our desires. They're not supposed to be that come the fulfillment, the antidote to our insecurities, to all the things. You know, I didn't get my eagle, so you need to get your eagle. You know, I was. I had awful parents. So I'm in a helicopter you and be overprotective, over enmeshed parents. Our job as parents is to create a cultivated environment. You're smiling at me.

Margi Dehlin [01:18:30] Oh, no, I'm loving it.

John Dehlin [01:18:31] Is to cultivate an environment where our kids can become who they're meant to be inside. Now, is that too new agey and frilly or is that Margi's beaming? So why are you beaming?

Margi Dehlin [01:18:45] I love that.

John Dehlin [01:18:46] Is that true?

Margi Dehlin [01:18:48] I. I feel like it's. I don't like belief or saying things are true anymore. What I would say is that really resonates with me and that's definitely something that I'm choosing to focus on with our kids, knowing that we're human and everything is kind of fallible. But to me it's the best strategy. I know now it's worth my time and effort and consistency.

John Dehlin [01:19:16] Natasha, what do you think? Do you think that's. That's an okay guiding philosophy?

Natasha Helfer [01:19:22] I love the philosophy and I think I've shared in the past where for me, when I really started thinking about even the Mormon invitation of becoming a peer with God and realizing that here in evangelical Kansas, part of why a lot of people didn't think we were Christians, Christian. One of the reasons. There's many reasons, but one of the reasons is because we see ourselves as potential peers with God and becoming like God so that we're not in this continual authoritarian relationship with God. So this is the first time I started thinking about this years ago, you know, when I was much more of a believer and I really found some beauty in that conception that if I'm going to have a relationship with like the person parent, that Mormonism would offer this peer invitation instead of this ongoing, you know, stay in your place type of thing.

Natasha Helfer [01:20:18] And so my thoughts about parenting kind of evolved from actually this Mormon space into, you know, philosophers and educators and psychologists that also see that as a very viable way of parenting and that it has a lot of free fruits because again, I'm trying to remember that, yes, part of my job, especially when they're little, is keeping them safe, offering guiding principles, you know, being somewhat of a boundary setter and a limit setter. Eventually I want to spend, you know, 30 to 40 years with this kiddo in a peer relationship where maybe I will still be a mentor in some way, shape or form. And yet I want to learn from them.

Natasha Helfer [01:20:58] They have lots to teach me. I want to feel like we can have, you know, rich dialogue where I can model a lot of ability to self soothe so that I can really take in this other person, you know, that I've helped create. And yet that really is their own, their own entity. So I think there's a lot of beauty in all of those ideas.

Margi Dehlin [01:21:22] Love that.

Wrap-Up and How to Support the Podcast

John Dehlin [01:21:24] All right, well, this brings to close our marathon on parenting. I'm so grateful, Natasha, for your wisdom, Margi, your wisdom. Thankful to all our listeners who have tuned in. I do want to ask our listeners really quickly for a favor. We're just trying to figure out how to share whatever we have to offer on the gift of Mormon faith crisis. You know, as I'm thinking about five hours on parenting, I'm thinking, is this too much? Is this too heavy? Is this useful? Is this too vague? Is it too general? Is it too specific? Should we break these up into smaller chunks? Are we even picking the right topics? Do you guys care about this kind of stuff? Why are you laughing?

Natasha Helfer [01:22:06] There's a lot of anxiety around what we're doing.

John Dehlin [01:22:10] I just want to make sure what we're doing is useful. So we would love feedback from those of you who are regular listeners who are joining us for the first time, please email us@mormonfaithcrisis.com Please give us your feedback and let us know if you like this. If you don't, if you would like us to do other things, if there are topics you want us to cover, if there are other formats you would enjoy, we just want to know that what we're doing is helpful or if we should just go away. If you think that we should just end this podcast, stop it completely and go away. We want to know that, don't we? Do you want to wait? Do you want to spend your time doing this if it's not useful?

Margi Dehlin [01:22:49] I do not.

John Dehlin [01:22:50] Do you Natasha?

Natasha Helfer [01:22:52] No. Well, and one of the things, too, that is always a little bit, I guess, of a touchy subject is that at some level, we, you know, we only know if this is valuable, if there's some type of financial, you know, kind of.

Natasha Helfer [01:23:11] I want to say reward, I think, because I'm thinking of rewards and punishments. We're talking about. About the compensation. Right. And so we could, you know, take more of an approach of offering webinars for, you know, a cost or things of that nature. We've always kind of, throughout our relationship at least, we've always kind of geared more towards sharing the content we have and then, you know, hopefully get donations and at the same time, valuable products and resources have, you know, the value can be measured in some ways, shapes or forms by many. Not that it's all about that either, obviously, but it is some of it.

Natasha Helfer [01:23:52] And we have to be reimbursed for our time doing these things. So if you find value in this, that's one way that you can support us is by offering a donation or giving us other ideas of products you'd be willing to purchase or ways that we could conceptualize our information in ways that would. That you would be willing to be a consumer of. So I think that's just an important part of this discussion to make it viable, to make it sustainable for us to provide these kinds of services.

John Dehlin [01:24:22] So if your heart tugs at your strings, your finger strings, your keyboard strings, please consider going to MormonFaithCrisis.com and making a monthly donation, signing up for 10, 15, 20, 50, 100 bucks a month, whatever you can afford forward that will go directly towards keeping this podcast alive. And again, not just for yourself, but for others in the future who are in the panic of a faith crisis. Many of you have kind of worked through a lot of the hard stuff, but there's people over the next 5, 10, 20 years who are going to really be in the thick of it and will really want and need support.

John Dehlin [01:24:58] And if you can support this and help us put together a really solid library of content, it can be something that people all over the world benefit from. As we know more and more people are leaving orthodox Mormonism and need support in that process. So please support us if you can. And there are other ways to support us as well. Whether it's liking us on Facebook, whether it's giving us positive reviews on Facebook or on itunes, sharing this with other people, commenting, reaching out to us for coaching services, there are lots of ways you can support what we are doing. So please support us. Right.

Margi Dehlin [01:25:40] Well said.

John Dehlin [01:25:42] All right, well, that concludes today, and we want to thank everyone again for joining us. And we have lots of cool topics ahead on the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis. So please stay tuned, and we, we look forward to bringing you guys more cool episodes in the weeks, months, and years ahead.

Margi Dehlin [01:26:00] Thank you for joining us.

John Dehlin [01:26:01] Thanks, Margi.

Natasha Helfer [01:26:02] Take care, everybody. Have a good one.

John Dehlin [01:26:04] You're awesome.

Natasha Helfer [01:26:06] You're awesome, too, guys.

John Dehlin [01:26:07] All right, talk soon.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.