Carey Nieuwhof « Orange Parents

Author Archive : Carey Nieuwhof

Five Tensions Task-Oriented Parents Face

Monday, December 3rd, 2012

I remember taking a personality profile for work shortly after I started into my first full-time job.

It told me what I already suspected: When it comes to working on a task or spending time with people, I’ll almost always choose the task. I actually do value relationships, but I default toward task.

That’s not a bad thing. Work gets done. Life stays on track. And organizations and causes advance when people focus on tasks.

What I didn’t realize at the time was how much my bias toward tasks over people would impact my family life. Sure, all you relationship people could see that coming a mile away, but us task people kind of miss that stuff.

It was a bit of a surprise to me that what can get you ahead at work can easily help you fall behind at home.

While being a task-oriented person has it’s advantages, it really impacts the kind of spouse you will be and the kind of parent you will be.

It gets particularly challenging if, like me, you have a wife and kids who (thankfully) see the deep value in relationship.

I’ve gotten better at managing this tension over the years. But it only happened because I realized the limits of what task-orientation brought to my world at home.

So, what do task people struggle with at home? It may be different for each of us, but here are five tension points I’ve struggled with as a dad and husband:

I saw people as interruptions rather than priorities. That’s difficult to say out loud, but it’s true. I think it’s just a default wiring task people have to overcome. It gets particularly bad when those relationships are your wife and kids.

I tended to see my family as projects rather than people. Trust me, that was never my goal. But it was a by-product of my style. I know that I was tempted to want my kids to achieve—to have top grades, keep their rooms clean, never get into trouble. All of those are decent goals, but task people can miss the nuances in relationships and end up treating their kids (and spouses) as projects, not people. This, by the way, is the gateway into conditional love and conditional acceptance. You don’t want to go there.

I misunderstood days off. Days off were just opportunities to do new projects right? Apparently not. If I went with my default, I would have missed some of the richest times I could spend with my family.

I thought everyone spoke my love language. If you want to make me smile, give me words of affirmation and acts of service. So, I just thought the rest of the world ran off of the same fuel. Try marrying someone whose love language is quality time. And having a couple of kids who value that too. I had to learn that all the words of affirmation and acts of service I sent their way would never mean the same thing as unstructured, quality time.

I found it hard to focus. My mind races. So, when I let my default style go unchecked, I found it almost impossible to be “in the moment.” I was always thinking about what had to get done next, a big project I was working on, or what had to get fixed.

In the next post, I’ll share some steps I took to help combat the tension a task orientation creates.

But in the meantime, which of these points resonate with you? What other areas do you struggle with?

And for those of you who are relationship people, what bothers you most about those of us with a task orientation?

When Should You Give Your Kids Their Own Phone?

Thursday, November 8th, 2012

I have two sons. One’s in college and the other is still in high school, but it feels like I raised them in the olden days. You know, the 2000s.

One day, they get to tell their kids that when they were young, they had to actually go to a store to rent a movie and play it on something called a DVD player. (I’m sure their kids will say, “Really, dad?”) They’ll get to talk about their awesome CD collection. (“Your what collection, Dad?”) My oldest son is just old enough to also remember the horrendous pinging sound of dial up. Oh the stories he can tell. . .

Ten-year-olds today live in a significantly different world than ten-year-olds even a few years ago.

Today, when you get a phone you don’t just get something to dial if you’re going to be late for dinner or you’re in danger. You get everything with it—Facebook, movies, a full web browser, and any app you can think of. And you have it with you anytime, anywhere. Wifi is everywhere, and whether it’s an iPod touch, a phone, a tablet, a laptop or any kind of mobile device, our kids have access to anything, anytime.

It can be difficult for parents to address when their kids should get their first phone (or whatever device it is that will allow them access to the online world with the swipe of a finger).

Even though my sons are 16 and 20, I never had to answer that question quite the same way many of you do. But I’ve thought about it a lot.

Here’s how I think I might answer the question, “Dad, when can I get my own phone?”

What I think I’d say today is this: “When you’re ready.”

Here’s why. I’m not sure there’s a magic line that kids cross when they reach a certain birthday or grade in school that really qualifies them to be ready to handle everything that comes at them when a browser or app opens up.

Maybe “when you’re ready” isn’t a bad idea in other areas too. For example, is every 16-year-old “ready” to drive a car? Don’t tell your kids this, but I think there are probably some 14-year-olds who are ready and responsible enough to drive. And there are some 44-year-olds we should bench. Whatever the legal drinking age is in your area, I know some 16-year-olds who would never touch the stuff and some grandparents who should be cut off.

So how do you know when they’re ready? Well, that’s up to you as a parent. I think to a large extent it’s tied to the development of their character, something we talked about in this post.

There are a few final things that intrigue me about the “when you’re ready” angle on technology:

It responds to the development of each child individually. Because it’s not a question of math or birthdays, it allows you to gauge your response individually to each child. Because some kids are mature for their age and well, others aren’t, it gives you options as a parent.

It fosters a dialogue. “When you’re ready” prompts the question, “Well, when will I be ready?” which can be a gateway into all kinds of great conversations about character, responsibility and honest dialogue about what they will learn and discover.

It creates an incentive. Suddenly a phone isn’t an entitlement, it’s something that’s tied to a child’s progress and their demonstration that they are ready to handle the responsibility that comes with it.

This is all just a suggestion of course, but then with technology moving as quickly as it is, we’re all kind of in a laboratory anyway, aren’t we?

So, in that spirit, what do you think about the “when you’re ready” approach? What other things are working (or not working) in your home when it comes to your kids and access to technology?

Technology and Kids: Facing your Fears

Monday, November 5th, 2012

Millions of smart phones, tablet computers and other portable devices are being sold every month (sometimes even in a single weekend), and more and more are making their way into the hands of our sons and daughters.

A lot of this is catching us parents off guard as we try to figure out what to do with it. On the one hand, there’s the innocence and education value of some pretty amazing apps. And then there’s the fear in every parent’s heart that happens when their eight-year-old starts asking for a smart phone.

For some of us, there’s a temptation to go drastic and disconnect the Wi-Fi, banish phones and Facebook, and decide our children simply won’t have access to any of it. While you could possibly ban technology in your home, you wouldn’t be able to ban it at school, or from your kids’ friends. They can access it anywhere!

So, what do you do?

Well, limits are a great thing. And there should be limits and rules on almost anything our kids use, from cars to TV, to cell phones and internet. And the limits will vary depending on your beliefs, your family culture, and frankly, the personalities of your individual kids.

But you are probably discovering what your kids are discovering:

Externally imposed limits don’t carry the power of internally owned values.

Most of us resist externally imposed rules. That’s why you pushed against bedtime when you were a kid or finishing your plate because your dad insisted. There’s something inside all of us that pushes back against rules we didn’t make up.

So, what has power in our kids’ lives? The same thing that has power in your life as an adult. Internally owned values do. While laws are necessary, most of us are not swayed in our failure to murder by a law: We are motivated by our belief that it is wrong to kill someone. That’s the power of an internally owned value. It’s your character that determines how you live.

And that’s why, even in kids, it’s so important to develop character early. Because character corrects what technology reveals.

It’s easier than ever to venture into great things and questionable things online. Character keeps you moving toward what’s good and avoiding what’s bad.

So, how do you teach the character needed to handle technology in a responsible way?

1. Start the conversation early. Begin talking about life online before they need the conversation so that the dialogue is there when they need the conversation. Starting a dialogue young (even before your kids are online themselves) about what’s good and what’s bad is a way of normalizing the conversation about character.

2. Be honest about the good and the bad. Sometimes we’re so afraid of what could go wrong that we paint a very negative picture. Our kids will figure out pretty quickly that there is good and bad online. When we are honest with them, it makes the dialogue easier. Being overdramatic never helps honest dialogue.

3. Teach them that their choices have long-term implications. Help your kids to see the choices they make today impact the kind of person they’ll become tomorrow. If you can help your kids see what’s so easy to miss (that our choices today impact our life tomorrow), they’ll thank you for it later.

4. Connect the dots between what and why. Parents are legendary for telling kids what to do. I wish we would become legendary at explaining why. Your kids can’t often connect the dots about why their choices are so important. That’s where you can help so much. When you explain why pornography is bad, or why gossip or bullying is damaging, or why self-control is such a valuable skill to develop, you just helped your kids become far more motivated to do what’s best and avoid what’s not. When you understand why, you become motivated to do what.

Our kids are going to make mistakes. But it’s character that corrects what technology reveals, because internally owned values carry much more power than externally imposed limits (even though limits are important).

What are you learning about limits, character, technology and kids?

Why Your Kids Need Five Other Adults in Their Lives

Thursday, October 4th, 2012

I have something like 1,300 contacts in my phone. No doubt, 1,300 is a crazy number. You might have double that, or half that. It’s just the world we live in.

But even if you only had 100, you wouldn’t really know each of them well. Not deeply. Not personally. You couldn’t. Our relational span just isn’t that big.

But there’s also a “favorites list” on my phone, as there probably is one on yours. On that list are the people who are one touch-of-the-screen away from a call or a text. My favorites list is much shorter. In fact, there are less that twenty people on that list. If I were to get even more granular, there are really only about five that I call or text all the time. These are the handful of people closest to me.

These five know me inside out . . . my good points and not so good ones. My dreams and my struggles. My favorite and least favorite things. They’re the ones who are not only great friends, but great advisors.

I’m sure you’ve got those people too.

But do your kids?

When your kids need to talk, who do they talk to? I mean beyond their friends and beyond you as a parent? Friends are of limited help; sometimes the last thing a 16-year-old needs is advice from another 16-year-old. And sometimes the last person they want to talk to is a parent. I’m sure there are parents who say, “my kid will talk to me.” But let me ask you something, did you tell your parents everything? Exactly!.

So who do they go to? To whom can they turn?

I dream of a culture in which every child has five adults, other than their parents, they can talk to about the important stuff. Like school. And girls. And parents. And the future. And God. And faith. And their problems.

If you were fortunate when you were growing up, you might have had someone you could talk to other than your mom or dad about the big stuff and the little stuff. Maybe it was a coach who took an interest in you, a teacher, a neighbor, a grandparent, or an uncle who always seemed to have the time for you. If you had someone like that. you know what a difference those relationships can make.

That’s why I wanted my kids to have at least five other adults in their life guiding them and giving input.

Five people who know their hopes and dreams,

Five people who know their quirks and good points.

Five people they can talk to honestly about what’s really going on in their lives.

Five people who can offer wisdom when life gets confusing.

Five people who care about them and pray for them.

My question is simple: who are your kids’ five? Who will they text and who will they call when they don’t know what to do?

If you don’t know who those five are, you’re not alone. But you can change that. Soon.

I would encourage you to spend some time over the next month identifying people your kids can build a trusting relationship with.

My guess is between small group leaders, neighbors, family friends, uncles, aunts, grandparents, coaches and teachers, you will find a few who will be willing to spend a little one on one time with your child periodically.

Ask them if they’ll spend some time getting to know your child or teen, and even pray for them regularly. And then watch what happens.

If every child and teen ends up with five adults on their phone’s favorite list, we might indeed be raising a wider, more secure, more grounded, more Christ-centered, more joyful generation than we’ve seen in a long time.

And if you’re still not convinced, I have a simple question. Don’t you wish there had been five other adults in your life growing up that you had a great relationship with, trusted, and could talk to?

I do. Which is why years ago, I sat down with my sons and drafted theirs. It’s a different world out there. And it can be a better world.

A Father’s Reflections

Tuesday, September 4th, 2012

Photo courtesy of Chupp Photography

A few weeks ago, our family had one of its most amazing celebrations yet. My oldest son, Jordan, married the love of his life. They are so ready for this and the life that is ahead of them in Christ. We couldn’t be happier for them.

A wedding is a monumental moment in every parent’s journey. The week leading up to the wedding had to be one of the most emotional times of my life. For the many of you with young kids – I’m warning you: buy stock in some facial tissue companies. You’ll be glad you did.

Although I’m a novice at this your-son-is-getting-married-thing, I couldn’t help but reflect back on the last few decades as the wedding grew nearer. Here are some thoughts in no-particular order.

You have less time than you think. I could hardly believe this season had come. Seriously? Wasn’t he just in kindergarten last year? Whether your kids get married at 20, 25, or later is kind of irrelevant. Time flies. And no, you can’t get it back.

Let them grow up. There’s something inside most of us as parents that wants our kids to stay young forever. One of the tensions Jordan and I faced in his teen years was his desire to be treated like a young adult and my desire to delay whatever phase he was heading into. Sure, there’s a role for strong parental guidance. But what I realize now is that he was likely ready for more responsibility earlier than I was ready to give to him. He’s always been mature for his age, and my parenting style has finally caught up with him. I now see how critical his desire for independence was to his development. If I had it to do over again, I would have embraced the development of him as a young man more readily at every stage. I would have made it less about my fears and more about his development.

Character is Everything. There are so many competing demands on your time as a parent it’s hard to see what really matters. One of the tensions in a limited time/resource universe is developing skills versus developing character. While it’s important to do both, it’s clear me to which one matters most deeply: it’s character, hands down. Who you are ultimately impacts everything that you do. It determines the kind of person, Christ-follower, friend, neighbour, employee, boss and – ultimately – husband and even parent you will be. Do whatever you can to help shape the person your child is becoming. It matters far more than you think.

Relationship Matters. Your journey as a parent continues, its just changes. Your role as rule-maker is gone. All you’re left with is influence. And the amount of influence you have is proportional to the quality of relationship you’ve built. The reason? Simple: we listen most to those we love the most. If you work hard – especially in the teen years – to fight for the heart of your son or daughter, the reward is significant. You can emerge into the adult years as more than just parent and child – you can move into those years as friends as well as parents.

As his wedding day approached, I got to say these words to my son: “You’re ready for this son. I’m so proud of you. And I’m so glad this day has come. I consider it a privilege to have been able to help raise you. And I look forward to our relationship growing and developing over time. I will always be thankful I get to be your father.”

He was ready, and I think – finally – so was I. It was perfect timing, because we had (and have) a lot to celebrate together.

Don’t Do It For Your Kids

Monday, August 27th, 2012

We do so much for our kids:

work late to ensure we keep climbing the ladder

enroll our kids in lessons and activities so they have every opportunity

drive them all over town and beyond so they can keep an active social life

buy them things they don’t really need so they can have every ‘advantage’

But did you ever think that what you do with your kids is as important than what you do for your kids? It’s an important distinction. Because often the things we do for our kids takes us away from the time we would could have spent with our kids. While this tension exists in every home, the more affluent you are, the more you will struggle with this.

One of the things I treasured most as a kid was the time I spent with my grandparents. Until I was ten years old, we were neighbors with them, and I saw them almost every day. They were a like a second set of parents to me.

My grandparents were immigrants who worked hard to make it in a new country. Although by the time I came along, they had a house and a car, they didn’t have a lot of money. What they did have was time. We did so many things together. Though we sometimes went on field trips and a few outings, those weren’t necessarily my favorite moments. My favorites were those spent with them in the every day, ordinary course of life. Some of my fondest memories include:

helping my grandfather build things in his garage

eating my grandmother’s cooking, and helping my grandparents clean up the meal

sitting in the backyard in the shade on a hot summer’s day

helping them paint and clean up around the yard

seeing my grandparents read the Bible at meal times

What they did with me was so powerful. I didn’t care that they couldn’t do much for me. They couldn’t get me into the right school, help me with my homework, get me a good job or enroll me in sports. They just hung out. But in doing so, they made a lasting contribution to my life. Ironically, by doing so much with me, they did an immeasurable amount for me.

I know as a parent, I have been tempted to justify my hard work, long hours or constant enrolment of my kids in ‘programs’ as a justification that I’m doing something good for my kids. But in the end, one of the best investments I can make as a parent is what I do with my kids.

What are you doing with your kids these days? And to what extent does what you’re doing for your kids compete with the time you could spend being with your kids?

Out of the Box

Tuesday, August 7th, 2012

Have you ever noticed that we tend to put ourselves in a box? Think about it. It’s so easy to define ourselves by specific things or circumstances that show up in our lives. In my personal box, there’s my incredible wife, my two teenage sons, my house, my job as a pastor. In my spare time, I like to ride my bike. You get the idea. That’s pretty much me. In my box. All summed up.

The problem is, when I think about my life this way, it’s easy to get preoccupied with the wrong thing. Did you notice it when I described my box? Were you paying attention to what I said? Yeah, it’s the word my.

It’s interesting how such a small word can make such a big difference in the way you feel about the world. As long as I keep thinking about this as “my” box, then it becomes very natural, for me to think about “me” a lot. It’s also logical for me to decide that the more stuff I get in my box, the happier I will be.

I’m sure you never do this, but I catch myself sometimes looking around for more stuff to add to my box. Sometimes, I actually want something that’s not in my box, simply because it’s not in my box. Instead of being grateful for what I have, I become frustrated because of what I don’t have. I have even been known to look in someone else’s box, and want something because they have it and I don’t.

Something radical happens when I look at my box, or my life, as not really mine. When I see my box as really God’s gift to me, it changes everything. When I see that all the stuff in here is somehow connected to God and the story He wants to tell with my life, it begins to change the way I see everything. When my world doesn’t revolve around me, my situation looks a lot different.

Trust me, whenever you remember to shift your focus from “me” to God, it will affect your level of contentment. Selfishness can ultimately lead your children to become sour, grumpy, unhappy and discontented. But when you teach them to see their life as a gift from God, it sets them up for a life of contentment and fulfillment.

That’s why this month in 252 Basics, we want to explain something to kids about contentment. One way you could define contentment is like this: Choosing to be happy with what you’ve got. In other words, you can choose to be happy because of what God has actually given you.

Contentment is a heart issue. The solution for being content is trusting God—in all circumstances, trusting in the One who is able to meet your needs each day.

Really, if we trust God, there’s not only no need to worry about tomorrow, but there’s no reason to be distracted by what others have, or what’s off limits, or what we we used to have. When we really trust God, we will be content with exactly what He has put in our box for today.

Do you struggle with contentment? How do you address the issue with your children?

Read more ideas on how to talk to your kids about the idea of contentment in the newsfeed.

How to Stay on the Same Page as Parents

Thursday, August 2nd, 2012

As we’ve seen earlier this week, it’s so easy to get off the same page as parents. You don’t have to try. It’s almost automatic.

And while it’s easy to do, it’s not great for our kids. It’s also not what you set out to when you became parents.

So how do you get on the same page as partners and stay on it? Here are a few suggestions:

Talk about it. Because you and your spouse probably have a naturally different approach to discipline, decisions and parenting, it’s a great idea to have a discussion about it when you are not “in the moment” trying to make a decision. Take a night, go out for dinner. While you might have better ideas, here are a few conversation starters to get you going:

What do we hope to see in our children as they grow up?

What will help us get there?

What is the natural approach each of us bring to parenting (strict v. relaxed, rules v. relationship)?

How can we leverage the strengths of each approach without realizing the weakness of each?

What “rules” will we set up for decision making when the other isn’t there?

Communicate Before Deciding. You can make some decisions without your spouse because the answer is clear and you know you’ll agree on it. But other times you just can’t. Tell your kids to wait. Then talk to your spouse. It’s easier than ever. Text. Call. Ask. And if you don’t get a reply, tell your kids to wait.

Disagree Privately. As much as you try to communicate with each other, you’ll each make calls in the moment the other disagrees with. Don’t call out your spouse in front of the kids. It’s hard to show restraint in the moment, but do it. Always agree publicly and disagree privately. It’s good for your kids and great for your marriage.

What are some practices that have helped you and your spouse stay on the same page?

A House Divided

Monday, July 30th, 2012

It used to frustrate me as a kid.

I would ask my parents if I could stay up later than my bedtime to hang out with my friends. If I didn’t get a “No,” I would usually get “I have to check with your dad.”

Having a devious kind of mind, I would go to my dad before my mom could get to him hoping to find a chink in the armor. As soon as I asked the question, my dad would respond with, “What did your mom say?”

It was always with some resignation in my voice that I’d say, “that I have to ask you . . .” my voice trailing off at the end.

Sometimes, I would flip between my parents as the “messenger” three or four times to try to get an answer and would only hear, “It depends on what your mom thinks/dad thinks.” By the end of it, I was so tired I either wanted to go to bed or couldn’t remember what I was asking about in the first place.

While that’s a bit frustrating for you when you’re eight years old, my parents had a great strategy going: stay united. They realized that kids can spot division a mile away and enjoy driving trucks through whatever division they find.

What I’ve learned as a parent is that it’s incredibly difficult work to stay on the same page as your spouse. Even though it’s difficult, being on the same page as parents is so incredibly important.

So how does division between spouses happen? While there are more than a few causes, here are three practices that can lead you and your spouse off the same page:

Different approaches to parenting between parents. Chances are one of you is “strict” and the other more permissive. Believe it or not, your kids can sense that, and they’ll use it to their advantage. Your different approaches to parenting get revealed over time and in specific situations. You might have started parenting thinking you had identical approaches. Only over time and testing do you realize you are worlds apart.

Snap decisions. Your kids always want an answer now. Ever notice they rarely ask when your spouse is in the room? Because they see their need as urgent, you think you need to respond in an instant. Only later when you connect with your spouse do you learn how upset they are at the decision you made.

A focus on the short term. Every time your child or teen makes a request, they are only thinking about the moment. As a parent, it’s tempting for you to answer in the moment. If you want to foster an inconsistent approach to parenting and escalate conflict between you and your spouse, only focus on the short-term implications of every request you get. While the division between you and your spouse might not be that wide to start out with, a great way to ensure a giant chasm erupts is to only focus on the short-term implications of every request that comes your way. After a few years of this, you will be increasingly dissatisfied with where your family is heading and be increasingly resentful of your spouse.

The next post will focus on how to get on the same page and stay there. But before we go there, what other practices have you noticed that get you and your spouse off the same parenting page?

Five Ways to Overcome Child-Centered Parenting

Thursday, July 12th, 2012

We’ve already seen that child-centered parenting maybe isn’t the best approach to parenting.

A child who grows up to believe she is the center of the universe will have a far more difficult life than a child who grows up to understand she has a place among many in the universe. In fact, here’s what I believe is the worst part about child-centered parenting: child-centered parenting produces self-centered children. None of us want that, but how do you avoid it?

We saw the pitfalls of child-centered parenting early on in our parenting journey.

When our first son was born, we had to make decisions about how to child-proof our home. Naturally, we put locks on doors and drawers and got toxic substances out of reach. We were students, so we didn’t have a lot of money to buy new things or replace damaged things. So we just decided that beyond health and safety child proofing, we weren’t going to child proof our home any further. We had vases that could get knocked over, pictures that could be broken, coffee tables that could be butchered. We didn’t want them broken and couldn’t afford to replace them, but we didn’t want to put them in storage for years either.

So instead of taking them out of our son’s reach, we just told him he couldn’t touch them. One of the very first words he learned was “no.” We set boundaries about what he could play with (toys) and what he couldn’t (our stuff). To our surprise, it worked.

That’s actually an important key to breaking the child-centered mindset that so pervades our culture. Sometimes you just need to let your kids know that the world is not all theirs for the taking; they need to learn to live in it with respect for their boundaries and respect for others.

So what are some other ideas for resisting the gravitational pull many of us feel toward making our children the center of our lives? Here are five strategies that have helped myself and many others:

1. Make God the center of your home and life. You and your children were created to worship something bigger than yourself or each other. When there is a natural refocusing of our wants and needs within the framework of a loving Heavenly Father, our lives realize function so much better.

2. Stop rescuing. Your child needs to feel the consequences of his actions. When you step in to solve every conflict (with siblings, friends or school), you rob him of the learning that comes from dealing with his own shortcomings and mistakes. You don’t want to let him get harmed, but you should be willing to let him get hurt.

3. Say no. Our kids are 20 and 16 now, and I don’t think they’ve ever broken a picture frame or piece of furniture in the house. A few bones…sure. But that was playing sports….

4. Set and enforce limits. Your children need to know that there are limits to what they can and should do. This is especially crucial at the toddler and teens years. Ironically, it’s within limits that we find the ultimate freedom.

5. Help them serve others. When your child serves others, she realizes that there are greater needs than hers in the world. Serving changes the heart to be less self-centered and more others-centered.

What have you found helpful in stopping the drift toward child-centered parenting in your home?