Shaunti Feldhahn's Blog, page 40

5 Easy Ways a Dad Can Connect With His Teen Daughter’s Heart

**This article is part of our August and September 2018 Guest Blog series. During a particular intense ‘sandwich generation’ season (launching my daughter to college and my son to high school, helping my parents move to Atlanta, and tackling a major research deadline), I am taking this opportunity to introduce my readers to the insight of some key partners. Enjoy!**

The relationship between father and daughter can be a beautiful thing. But it can also be a bit fragile. Once she hits adolescence, a dad faces the harsh reality that his daughter is no longer “daddy’s little girl.”

While she used to crawl up on his lap and hang on his every word, she now seems distant. While she used to think his jokes were hilarious, now they are an embarrassment.

During the teen years, a girl still needs her dad…perhaps more than ever. But the old man has to work extra hard and to stay involved in her life. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Ask about her music.

Most teenagers have an almost emotional bond with the music they love. When you take a sincere interest in her music, you are taking a sincere interest in her. When she is enjoying a song, get her to share one of her ear buds with you and ask about it.

2. Take her shopping.

This one comes with a price, but it is well worth it. Ask what she needs for her closet and give her a budget. Promise to buy her something, but with the caveat that you have to go along. As you shop, look for opportunities to affirm how she looks.

3. Speak her love language.

Author Gary Chapman suggests that people speak and hear love in one of five languages: quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service, gift-giving, or physical touch. Figure out what your daughter’s love language is and speak it regularly.

4. Give her a ride.

Shoulder-to-shoulder time in the car is perhaps the best time to talk and connect. You don’t have to look at each other, but you still have a captive audience. Encourage her to put down her phone and then let her drive the conversation. Ask questions if you must, but then be sure to….

5. Shut up and listen.

Too many father/daughter conversations move quickly into a lecture from dad…and then the dad wonders why his daughter won’t talk to him. Perhaps the greatest gift you can give your teen daughter is a listening ear. Learn to listen without judgment or advice. If you don’t know how to respond to something heavy, just say, “I’m so glad you shared that with me. It means a lot that you trust me with it.”

—

At I.N.F.O. for Families, we have been committed to helping “Imperfect & Normal Families” like yours for more than a decade. Like you, we are parents who want to give our kids tools that will help them navigate our rapidly changing world.

“Meet Me in the Middle (10 Conversations that Fathers and Daughters Need to Have)” is a brand new book we wrote to tee up critical conversations between teenage girls and their fathers. It is a solution for all the dads out there who want to keep pouring life and love and God’s perspective into their daughters, even during a season when their relationship can be a bit awkward.

Republished with permission.

Looking for encouragement for your life and relationships? Learn about the little things that make a big difference in every relationship, from marriages to parenting. Subscribe to updates from Shaunti here!

Shaunti Feldhahn loves sharing eye-opening information that helps people thrive in life and relationships. She herself started out with a Harvard graduate degree and Wall Street credentials but no clue about life. After an unexpected shift into relationship research for average people like her, she now is a popular speaker and author of best-selling books about men, women and relationships. (Including For Women Only, For Men Only, and the groundbreaking The Good News About Marriage).

Her latest book, Find Rest: A Women’s Devotional for Lasting Peace in Busy Life, focuses on a journey to rest even with life’s constant demands.

Visit www.shaunti.com for more.

this article was first published at Patheos.

The post 5 Easy Ways a Dad Can Connect With His Teen Daughter’s Heart appeared first on Shaunti Feldhahn.

Why your man checks out and shuts down

Recently I wrote “This is what inadequacy feels like to your man” to pull back the curtain on some deep male emotions – and help women see that seemingly “minor” things can trigger painful feelings in our men.

But the next step of understanding is just as important. So let me ask you a question:

Have you ever seen your husband or boyfriend suddenly shut down in the middle of an emotional discussion, right when you most wish he would engage?  

Has he ever said, ‘Fine, you do it,’ and walked away – leaving you to handle the kids/that decision/that chore on your own?

Or have you ever seen him check out emotionally and even physically for days or months at a time, leaving you bereft, anxious and worried? (And eventually withdrawn, angry, and even bitter yourself?)

There could be many different reasons for those reactions, but let’s look at the most likely one – and what to do about it.

He is feeling inadequate – which is far more painful than we recognize

You can see a better description of this perplexing reality in the previous article, but here’s a quick review. Men’s insecurity is different from ours. We women are more likely to wonder, “Am I worthy of being loved for who I am on the inside?” while men are more likely to wonder, “Am I any good at what I do on the outside?” And both feelings are far more easily triggered, and far more painful, than the opposite sex realizes.

Ladies, think of it this way. Imagine that you are having an emotional argument over breakfast with your man. He angrily says he needs to get to work, and drives away. If you’re like most women in our surveys, you have a painful feeling roiling in your gut much of the day, right? Well, that’s sort of what your man feels like when his inadequacy insecurity has been triggered; when he starts questioning whether he’s any good at what he tried to do with the kids / whether he’s capable of making that decision / whether you think he did the chore wrong.

And therefore…

The most painful choice is to keep trying and keep feeling inadequate – so he shuts down instead

If inadequacy is a man’s most painful feeling, he will eventually shy away from trying to do whatever makes him feel inadequate.   

So if he feels like he often “gets it wrong” when he tries to do things with the kids (for example, because he hears dissatisfied comments from you, teachers, or the kids themselves), he is eventually going to stop doing things with the kids. If he feels like he can’t win in presenting his case for a given decision, he’s going to stop presenting his point and let you have your way.  If he feels like every time he cleans the living room you come along behind him and re-do it “better,” he’s going to step back from that chore. Why? Not just because he’s annoyed (although he probably is), but because he feels like he is continuously trying and continuously failing, and it is just too painful to try again.

I still remember one man I talked to who, privately, told me he felt like this a lot. And my guess was that his wife simply had no idea. At the time, he was still smarting from offering to take his kids to their well-check-up at the doctor, because his wife had a big meeting. He understood his wife’s desire to give him detailed instructions (“make sure you ask this and this and this…”). But then she wanted him to write out exactly what he was going to ask. (Uh, yeah, ladies, treating your husband like a boy who needs supervision is never a good thing!)

Then during the exam the female pediatrician implied annoyance that he was there instead of his wife, assuming he wouldn’t know the answers she needed. (“Do you have any idea if Johnny recovered from his ear infection okay?” This dad was thinking, “Uh, yeah, I live in the house too, you know.” What he actually said, politely, was, “Yes, thank you. He was better two days after we started antibiotics.”) And then after the check-up, his wife asked many questions and was annoyed that he couldn’t give her minute details on certain elements of the visit. (“Yes, they got their shots, and I got the immunization form. No, I don’t know when the next immunizations are due.”)

This man told me, “No way am I doing that again. My way of handling things clearly isn’t good enough, so she’s welcome to do it. I’m out.”   

Of course, we as women usually don’t intend to send the signal that “you’re not good enough,” and we certainly don’t want them to shut down! So what do we do instead?

Ensure your man knows you believe in him.

Just like you long to be reassured when your man drives angrily away after an argument (“I’m sorry for driving away without saying goodbye, honey.”), your man longs to be reassured that you believe in him.  

In other words, he needs to know and see in the daily things of life, that you’re on his side. That you won’t second-guess him all the time.  That you’ll appreciate him when he folds the clothes and puts them away, even if he didn’t fold them the way you do. That you may have differences of opinion about certain tactics with the kids, but that doesn’t shake your appreciation for him or your trust in him as a husband and father. He needs to know, in short, that you see any disconnects or mistakes as momentary blips on the radar, not as giant signposts of his inability or inadequacy.

After reading that blog on how terribly inadequate I felt when a brand-new talk on a new topic didn’t go well, Jeff had a great insight on this. “I think it might help if women realized that that inadequate feeling often keeps us from trying things. It would be as if you just stopped doing speaking events on the new research because the discomfort you felt that day was so great. Yet you know that you can only get better by speaking and testing out the material. You have to keep trying. And we need to keep trying too–even when it is really uncomfortable. We don’t want to check out either, you know. This is where it is so important for a man to know his wife is in his corner, believing in him, even when he doesn’t believe in himself.”

After all, the men tell me, a wife knows her husband better than anyone else in the world. So it is your signals that matter most.  

Even when we have differences, most of us do believe in our man. Let’s make sure they know it.

Looking for encouragement for your life and relationships? Learn about the little things that make a big difference in every relationship, from marriages to parenting. Subscribe to updates from Shaunti here!

Shaunti Feldhahn loves sharing eye-opening information that helps people thrive in life and relationships. She herself started out with a Harvard graduate degree and Wall Street credentials but no clue about life. After an unexpected shift into relationship research for average people like her, she now is a popular speaker and author of best-selling books about men, women and relationships. (Including For Women Only, For Men Only, and the groundbreaking The Good News About Marriage).

Her latest book, Find Rest: A Women’s Devotional for Lasting Peace in Busy Life, focuses on a journey to rest even with life’s constant demands.

Visit www.shaunti.com for more.

This article was first published at Patheos.

The post Why your man checks out and shuts down appeared first on Shaunti Feldhahn.

Two Professional Tips for Flex-Time Working Moms

In today’s world, flex time is a valuable benefit for many working moms. But while a flex-time schedule might work really well for you and your family, it might also result in frustration for your male co-workers when they can’t reach you during traditional office hours. If you’re a flex-time working mom, you might have a legitimate concern that—even though you’re getting all your work done—your co-workers aren’t viewing you as an equal colleague because they don’t always see you in the office.

As a working mom myself, I get how difficult it can be to balance the demands of your job and the needs of your family.

But it’s important to be aware of how that might be viewed. In my research for The Male Factor, I saw a perception held by nearly all men (and, often, executive-level women). The men may logically know that an offsite colleague is working lots of hours, but it doesn’t feel the same for one reason: they don’t see that person as sharing the same pain. The men I interviewed often mentioned a sports analogy: in the heat of the summer, football teammates would bond during sweltering two-a-day practices, getting in shape to win their games. Never would one teammate say “Coach, I don’t have to practice with the others, because I can get in shape on my own time over here in my air-conditioned gym.” He might technically be correct, but his teammates would not look at him the same because—you guessed it—he didn’t share the same pain.

So what does this mean for you?

#1: Put yourself in your colleagues’ shoes.

First, acknowledge to yourself that by not being available during the regular hours, you may not actually be sharing the same pain as your colleagues… and if you were in their shoes, you might be frustrated too. So without compromising your flex priorities, look for ways to improve the relationship. Since you’re already ensuring that you get your work done, you might want to next look for ways to demonstrate to your “team” that you are sharing their pain, you’re just spreading it out over different hours. You know that committee no one wants to lead? Lead it if you can. Offer to be the one to make the phone call to the awkward client. If you work after the kids are in bed, don’t hesitate to send the email with the midnight time stamp—and don’t mention your late hours the next day.

#2: Keep your priorities in mind—and be thankful.

But second, and most important, never lose sight of the great gift you have: you’ve found a work schedule that meets your primary priority of being able to balance work with family. Be thankful for the opportunity to do your best and be your best both personally and professionally. And be fierce about protecting the work/life balance that allows you to prioritize your family. Don’t apologize for that. If you handle it well, your flex-time schedule and professionalism could lay the groundwork for other women to be afforded the same benefit—and it might even give some of the family-oriented men in your office a precedent so they can do the same.

Looking for encouragement for your life and relationships? Learn about the little things that make a big difference in every relationship, from marriages to parenting. Subscribe to updates from Shaunti here!

Shaunti Feldhahn loves sharing eye-opening information that helps people thrive in life and relationships. She herself started out with a Harvard graduate degree and Wall Street credentials but no clue about life. After an unexpected shift into relationship research for average people like her, she now is a popular speaker and author of best-selling books about men, women and relationships. (Including For Women Only, For Men Only, and the groundbreaking The Good News About Marriage).

Her latest book, Find Rest: A Women’s Devotional for Lasting Peace in Busy Life, focuses on a journey to rest even with life’s constant demands.

Visit www.shaunti.com for more.

The post Two Professional Tips for Flex-Time Working Moms appeared first on Shaunti Feldhahn.

Set Aside the “Date Night” Pressure

This article is part of our August and September 2018 Guest Blog series. During a particular intense “sandwich generation” season (launching my daughter to college and my son to high school, helping my parents move to Atlanta, and tackling a major research deadline), I am taking this opportunity to introduce my readers to the insight of some key partners. Enjoy!

A few years ago, when I was researching what made the happiest marriages so happy, one piece of advice I heard over and over again was to have a weekly date night out – to reconnect with your spouse by getting a babysitter, putting the world on hold for a while, and going out for dinner.  The thing was: I didn’t hear it all that often from the happiest couples themselves. I heard it from pastors and counselors and other leaders. And these leaders certainly do have a lot of experience with what makes great marriages.  

But what I heard from the happiest couples themselves – and what we concluded in the study – is that it is spending time together that matters. And a formal date night out is just ONE way to do that. “Hanging out” in all sorts of forms is what makes all the difference. Using additional data from Brad Wilcox at the University of Virginia, we found that married couples who spent some sort of time talking, sharing an activity, or hanging out once a week were five times more likely to be “very happy” in their marriages than those who didn’t.

This is reassuring not only to many couples who simply can’t arrange or afford to get out, but also to my worried kids: “Mom, how come you and dad don’t have Date Nights? We learned in Psychology that you need to do that to avoid divorce!”

Thankfully, I was able to explain to my worried teenager that Date Nights out are certainly great when Jeff and I can snatch those rare times to do so.  But since we travel and speak a lot away from our kids, we want to be with them when we’re home, not out on a date!

“But –” my daughter started to protest.

“Honey, look at these numbers.” I pulled up page 147 of The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Marriages and showed her a graph. “Your dad and I can’t get out on Date Nights very often because we want to be home with you when we can. But we do a lot of things together and that is what matters most.  See? You know how we even sit and have coffee together a lot of mornings before the day starts?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that can be just as important as a Date Night—at least in some ways. As long as you use it to reconnect.”

And that caveat is super important. You do have to make ways to connect with your spouse. So I was grateful to see a great take on this from my friend Debra Fileta, the author of Choosing Marriage. I’m passing it on in the hope that it will help you be more purposeful about your “hanging out” – in whatever form that takes!

“You need to go on a weekly date night outside of the house every single week to keep your marriage strong….”

I remember the first time I ever heard that phrase. My husband and I were married with an infant and a toddler at the time, born only 20 short months apart, trying to survive the madness of parenting young children.

I was staying at home with the kids 6 out of the 7 days a week and also working desperately to complete my very first book, and John was halfway through his extremely busy medical residency. Needless to say, we were short on cash, short on energy, and short on time.

As much as I wanted to have “one date night out a week”, to be completely honest with you, it was nearly impossible. Trying to find a babysitter we trusted, find time in his crazy schedule, and then fork out the minimum $100 dollars to cover dinner and a sitter just seemed way out of our “weekly” budget. Heck, I was trying to simply stay under $100/week for groceries, much less a date night.

So when I heard those words coming from a trusted leader at the time, my heart kinda sank. We’re doomed, I thought to myself.

Over the next few years, I’ve actually heard that phrase many-a-time in sermons, books (not mine!), and even in one-on-one conversations. On one hand, I absolutely agree that couples need focused time carved out in their week for one another. But on the other hand, the traditional thought of a “date night out” can really amount to a lot of pressure. Especially when you’re in the stage of having young children.

If you want my personal opinion, the idea that you HAVE to go out every single week in order to keep your marriage strong is actually a harmful idea. The expectation for fancy date nights out, fine dining and dancing, or whatever it is you put on your list, is not only impossible (and unwise) for some people’s budgets, but doesn’t always work out in the daily grind of life (finding a sitter, collaborating schedules, etc).

And trying to meet unrealistic expectations can leave one or both partners feeling disappointed, bitter, and discouraged in their marriage.

Date Night In – Not Out

Now back to the idea of carving out time for one another – that, I highly recommend.  I just don’t believe it always has to be a “ weekly date night out”. In Choosing Marriage, I talk about the importance of weekly couch time – 20 minutes of time deliberately set aside each and every week to connect and communicate. For a healthy marriage, you absolutely have to learn to prioritize one another no matter what stage of life you find yourself in…but that might not always look the way others expect it to.

For my husband and I, that time of prioritizing has looked different in different stages of our marriage. Sometimes, it definitely does mean a fancy date night out. I’m with every other romantic on earth in saying I enjoy that special time when we can get out of the house and have a night, or even a weekend, all to ourselves (and we have one just around the corner that I am so pumped about!!).

But the real truth is, most weeks, our “weekly date night” means being deliberate about using our time to invest in each other once the kids have gone to bed.

It means sitting on the couch folding laundry together and talking about our day.

It means playing a game of cards or a round of trivia.

It means holding hands by the fire (or the “pretend fire” flickering on the TV screen thanks to the Netflix mood setters- see photo below if you think I’m kidding).

It means making time to be sexually intimate.

It means having couch time, laying face to face and just chatting.

It means spending time reading God’s word together or just taking the time to pray with one another.

It means holding hands across the dining room table and having a late night snack.

It means no cell phones, no laptops, and no distractions. Just some time to focus on one another.

I don’t know about you but if you’re anything like us I just want to encourage you…

A good marriage isn’t about chasing special moments, it’s about making ordinary moments special (Tweet it!).

It’s about taking the time you have, and using it to make your marriage stronger. It’s about being deliberate to connect and communicate. Sometimes that might require a date night out…but most nights, all it requires is an open heart and a little effort. So to all the couples out there in a busy season, in a difficult season, or in a broke season….Here’s to many more #DateNightsIn.

This blog was first published here. Reproduced with permission.

Debra Fileta is a Professional Counselor, national speaker, relationship expert, and author of True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life, and Choosing Marriage: Why It Has To Start With We > Me where she writes candidly about love, sex, dating, relationships, and marriage. You may also recognize her voice from her 200+ articles at Relevant Magazine, Crosswalk.com, and all over the web! She’s the creator of this True Love Dates Blog, reaching millions of people with the message that healthy people make healthy relationships!  Connect with her on Facebook or Twitter or book a session with her today!

This was first posted at Patheos.

The post Set Aside the “Date Night” Pressure appeared first on Shaunti Feldhahn.

Maintain Your Schedule Sanity While Supporting Your Teen’s Success

It’s back-to-school season, and with the new school year kids will have the chance to get involved in a wide variety of extra-curricular activities. Sometimes it’s like pulling teeth to get kids to try (and commit to) new activities…but many teens have an over-abundance of enthusiasm for diving into a full schedule of teams, clubs, lessons, and other opportunities.

I recently heard from a woman whose 8th grade son was getting involved in extra-curricular activities for the first time, finding out what he likes and making friends in a way he hadn’t before. Which was all great, but every new dodgeball clinic, basketball team, and robotics program he signed up for was one more place his mom had to drive him! His dad is away on business a lot, and they don’t live near others who could carpool, so she’s the only chauffeur available. After trying it for one semester, she told him that they needed some sanity and to pick just two activities to do the next semester—and he flipped. She explained that not only is it hard on her, but being up late every night, doing homework in the car, and eating only fast food isn’t healthy for him. But he’s unusually upset. According to his mom, you’d think she was restricting him to solitary confinement. She’s wondering what to do.

As the parent of two active kids myself, I feel her pain! And if you find yourself caught up in an unmanageable schedule of extra-curricular activities for your kids, I feel yours too! Before you decide to “accidentally” lose your car keys or lock your teenager in their room before you lose your mind, let’s talk about what’s happening inside theirs. You know that at this age, your teen is embarking on an exciting new life season—but what you may not know is how scared they are of losing it. In my research, I was struck by how much teens and pre-teens are exhilarated and enlivened by this profound new feeling of freedom that they’re experiencing: it rapidly becomes one of the most important and most motivating things in their life.

Extra-curricular activities give teens the opportunity to try—and succeed at—new things.

For the first time, your teen is learning what they’re interested in and good at without the ever-present hand and guidance of good ol’ mom and dad. They’re connecting with people and making new friendships of their choosing—maybe kids you’ve hardly even met. Maybe they’re being offered the chance to try new things that they’ve never done before. And finding out that they’re good at them! In many ways, your teen is probably feeling like a real person instead of just a child who doesn’t really know who they are. Now put yourself in their shoes and try to imagine how scary it would be to feel as if you were going to lose a lot of that.

Teens don’t want to lose the good feelings they get from succeeding at new things.

If you try to limit commitments by having your teen choose several (out of their many) activities, they’re not hearing a statement of sanity for the family, of compromise for you, or of setting good boundaries so their grades don’t suffer. They’re hearing things like: “You’re going to lose this amazing feeling of fitting in and people admiring you.” “You’re going to lose the feeling that you’ve finally gotten, of being good at something.” “You’re going to lose the intoxicating sensation that you can make your own choices and be your own person.”

You can see how upsetting that would be, right? Now, don’t get me wrong: it is very reasonable to have your teen limit their activities. You’re doing your job as a parent to notice that the current situation might not be working and taking steps to address that. But the key is to understand what is underneath your teen’s reaction—because to them, their worry is reasonable, too.

Find ways to help your teen experience success within a reasonable schedule.

So as you consider making some changes, try to learn specifically what your teen’s worries are and do whatever you feasibly can to address them. Ask questions about what they like most about each activity, and pull out the feelings behind the fears. Let them know that you totally understand and want to prioritize the things that are most important to them.

For example: “I saw you grin when you made that great basket and everyone cheered. That’s a great feeling, isn’t it? If that is really important to you, let’s make sure one of your two activities is a team sport like that.” Or, “Are you really enjoying hanging out with Nate and Brad? Maybe if we cut dodgeball, you can invite them over after school some days.”

Even though you might feel that there’s no way around having to cut back on some things, show your teen that you “get” why they could be upset, and that you want to value what matters to them. Then you’ll not only have a better schedule, but a better understanding of the person your teen is becoming.

Looking for encouragement for your life and relationships? Learn about the little things that make a big difference in every relationship, from marriages to parenting. Subscribe to updates from Shaunti here!

Shaunti Feldhahn loves sharing eye-opening information that helps people thrive in life and relationships. She herself started out with a Harvard graduate degree and Wall Street credentials but no clue about life. After an unexpected shift into relationship research for average people like her, she now is a popular speaker and author of best-selling books about men, women and relationships. (Including For Women Only, For Men Only, and the groundbreaking The Good News About Marriage).

Her latest book, Find Rest: A Women’s Devotional for Lasting Peace in Busy Life, focuses on a journey to rest even with life’s constant demands.

Visit www.shaunti.com for more.

This article was first published at Patheos.

The post Maintain Your Schedule Sanity While Supporting Your Teen’s Success appeared first on Shaunti Feldhahn.

Do you need stress-free mornings?! Here’s the key.

With everything going on these days, what with juggling an intense season in my next research project, AND helping my mom and dad after his stroke, AND getting my daughter off to college , I realize I am in dire need of advice from others who have been there before me.

Especially in the mornings, since I am the furthest thing from a morning person, as my long-suffering husband can tell you. It’s hard enough for ME to get out of bed and organized, much less get my son up and off to school. (I’m trying very hard to not get a little weepy at the fact that that sentence was just about my son and no longer includes my daughter! )

I’ve noticed in my own life and in a lot of conversations and interviews with others, that starting off the day super rushed and stressed creates a sense of being off-kilter in other areas during the day. But somehow, if we can have a peaceful morning it sets us up well for the day ahead.

I need that in this crazy season of my life.  I’m guessing you might too.

Enter my friend Kathi Lipp, an author and speaker who is also one of the most organized people I know. And has also gone through a season much like the one I’m in right now. I LOVED her blog about a few simple ways to completely change the way we experience our mornings, to set us up well for the day ahead, so I asked her if I could share it.

(And if you have other tips, leave them in the comments!  We’d love to hear them!)

Confession time. I have never been a morning person, until recently.

I realized that if I want to get stuff done in life, I need to get up before the rest of the world. But it’s still not easy to get going.

I really believe having a morning routine is one of the most powerful ways to not just change your day, but change your life, because we give ourselves more permission to go deeper in the morning than we do at any other time.

As the morning goes on, we can come up with more and more excuses about why we are not doing what we need to do.

Having a morning routine means deciding in advance what you’re going to do, so you can spend your mental energy focusing on what’s really important for the day.

Here are five steps to creating a routine for happy mornings.

1. Make a list of everything you do in the mornings.

Go into detail, and leave nothing out, no matter how small. Here is an idea of some things you’ll want to include:

• Brushing teeth

• Showering

• Making breakfast

• Finding car keys

• Getting kids ready

• Quiet time

• Making coffee

• Putting on makeup

• Laundry

• Getting dressed

• Eating breakfast

• Packing your computer bag

• Making lunches

2. Evaluate your list.

The next morning, if you remember things that aren’t on the list, write them down. I want you to get an accurate reflection of what you can accomplish and see where the stress is in the morning.

Are you a morning person? Awesome! Load up your mornings, but load it up with the most important stuff.

Are you a night owl? Do everything you can to prep the night before so you can get the rest you need. I could do a whole other blog post on having an evening routine, but the bottom line is…PREP, PREP, PREP.

If it’s not working, brainstorm ways to make it work. Maybe you need a longer prep list the night before, or you might even need to plan earlier in the week. Making a big pot of oats to heat up in the microwave or putting together your outfits for the week can make your mornings go more smoothly. I’m a big fan of a prep and plan day to set you up for success for the rest of the week.

3. Time yourself to see how long things actually take.

We are time optimists. We think it takes 5 minutes to put on makeup, but it really takes fifteen. Time yourself so you know where you can save time, and where to schedule more. You’ll have a realistic idea about how long your morning routine takes and reduce your stress level getting out the door.

4. Print out your list so it’s easy to follow.

Put it up in the kitchen, your bathroom, the bedroom, or wherever you’ll see it. Practice, practice, practice.

When I did this, I learned more efficient ways to get my list done faster. Since I normally eat oatmeal for breakfast, I got to where I could unload the dishwasher in the 3 minutes and 33 seconds it takes to cook.

The first couple of weeks are discovery. After that, it’s execution.

5. Adjust as you go.

By sheer accident, I discovered that my oatmeal turns out just as good if I only cook it for 3 minutes, so I had to think of new strategies to unload the dishwasher 33 seconds faster.

Sometimes you’ll have to change your routine as circumstances change, like for a new job or school schedule. Keep adjusting your routine so that it continues to work for you.

First published here. Used with permission. 

Kathi Lipp is the author of 17 books including Overwhelmed, Clutter Free, The Get Yourself Organized Project, The Husband Project, Happy Habits for Every Couple, and I Need Some Help Here – Hope for When Your Kids Don’t Go According to Plan. She is the host of Clutter Free Academy the Podcast! with Kathi Lipp and speaks at conferences across the US. Kathi is published with Revell Publishers and Harvest House Publishers.

She and her husband Roger are the parents of four young adults in San Jose, CA. When she’s not dating her husband or hanging out with her puggle Jake, Kathi is speaking at retreats, conferences and women’s events across the US.

(first posted at Patheos)

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Can’t Buy Me Love – How to Handle it When Your Shopping Creates Conflict

Craig makes a good income, and Lindsay always sticks to their budget—but Lindsay feels like Craig is always nervous about her spending, and it makes her nuts. She doesn’t see him as a control freak in any other area except this. He checks their bank account every day to see how much Lindsay has spent on clothes, gifts for the kids, new household decorations, or whatever. Recently, she totally lost it when she found him poking through her shopping bags. Now she’s wondering what she should do. Sneak the shopping bags in when he’s not looking? Get a job so she can spend her own money without pressure from him? She doesn’t want to argue anymore.

My guess is that Lindsay’s shopping bags are like lead weights to her husband—and with every shopping trip he feels more and more pressure to keep up with her spending habits. Is that a fair feeling? Maybe not. Is it likely? Very.

Most counselors would probably tell Lindsay, and other wives (like you?) experiencing the same frustration, that better communication about financial expectations, budget and spending is needed—especially during higher-expense seasons like holidays or birthdays. And that’s valid advice. But before you can understand what to do next, it would be helpful for you to understand what might be underneath your husband’s spending sensitivity—because I don’t think it’s about control.

So if it’s not about control, what is it about?

Men feel an immense pressure to provide for their family.

Most men feel an immense pressure to provide: a pressure that would be there even if you spent hardly anything. In my surveys, the vast majority of men said the responsibility to provide for their family was constantly pressing on them; they were never free of it. Even when expenses were low, and even when a wife made enough money to support the family all by herself! But taking care of his wife and family is also a man’s way of saying “I love you”—and showing that he is worthy of you. And that comes with much more insecurity than you might ever think. Providing is one of the key areas where men experience the ongoing risk of failure. Most men are constantly, subconsciously, evaluating their current and future earnings prospects, and whether they can provide “enough” to support the family and make their wife and kids happy.

Husbands have a fear that they won’t be able to keep up with expenses.

Now, keep all that underground insecurity in mind… and add on a husband seeing “extra” spending (even if it is in the budget and isn’t really “extra”), and you can see why some men are unusually sensitive. Your husband might be one of them. If your man isn’t controlling in any other area, that tells me that this reaction likely isn’t about control but fear: a deep and visceral fear that he won’t be able to keep up. It may not necessarily be a logical feeling—after all, you have money in the bank! You’re sticking to a budget!—but it is very deep. And very common. So what do you do?

Express appreciation to your husband and respect his concerns.

By far the most important step is to talk to your husband about this in a way that he truly sees that you appreciate him and that you want to understand and respect his concerns in this area. Tell him, regularly, how thankful you are for all the work he does to provide. And then at some non-emotional time, inquire about this. Ask whether he feels pressure when he sees your shopping bags, or when he knows that you’re spending money on things he might view as non-essentials. If you two have worked out a budget that you’re sticking to, ask him what you both can do to help him feel better about it, yet without you feeling like he’s constantly checking up on you and signaling a lack of trust.

Communication will help you understand what is underneath your husband’s behavior.

If he doesn’t have an immediate answer to that question, that’s okay. Guys often need some time to process things. You might learn more over time, anyway—and be better able to convey that you’re serious about taking some of the pressure off. Maybe he’s in a particularly dicey time at work and would simply feel better if your household had a spending freeze for a while. Or maybe he really wants to provide for those things he sees as “extras” but doesn’t feel adequate to the task, and confesses that it really would help with certain expenses if you got a part-time or seasonal job.

You won’t know what the answer is until you sit down and talk about it. But it will make all the difference to talk about it with a compassion for the insecurity that you can’t see, that may be hiding underneath the drive-you-nuts behaviors that you can see!

Want to know more about navigating conversations about money and marriage? Check out my latest curriculum, “Men, Women, & Money.”

Looking for encouragement for your life and relationships? Learn about the little things that make a big difference in every relationship, from marriages to parenting. Subscribe to updates from Shaunti here!

Shaunti Feldhahn loves sharing eye-opening information that helps people thrive in life and relationships. She herself started out with a Harvard graduate degree and Wall Street credentials but no clue about life. After an unexpected shift into relationship research for average people like her, she now is a popular speaker and author of best-selling books about men, women and relationships. (Including For Women Only, For Men Only, and the groundbreaking The Good News About Marriage).

Her latest book, Find Rest: A Women’s Devotional for Lasting Peace in Busy Life, focuses on a journey to rest even with life’s constant demands.

Visit www.shaunti.com for more.

This article was first published at Patheos.

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The Best Way to Handle Conflict? Be Best Friends with Your Spouse

Matt and Jessie never used to fight, but there have been a lot of arguments, or almost-arguments, the last few months. Matt is on the verge of losing his job due to a restructuring at his company, and they have three kids under the age of five. So he’s tense and on edge all the time, and little irritations tend to blow up into arguments. Jessie can’t stand the kids being around that. And she hates conflict in general, so she often takes the kids and goes to the mall or the park just to avoid the tension. Matt thinks she’s running away from him and the issues they need to deal with, but from her perspective she’s just trying to keep the peace. She doesn’t really know what to say to him anymore, and she’s wondering how she can get him to stop picking fights so their relationship can get back to the way it used to be.

Are you like Jessie—wanting to head for the hills whenever times get tough and tensions run high? Would you prefer to escape the discomfort of conflict rather than dealing with it head-on? I hear you, I really do. But if avoiding conflict at any cost is your default, I think it’s possible that you’re mistaking conflict avoidance for peace. If, when voices are raised or things get tense, you run the other way (literally or figuratively)—that isn’t peace. It’s more like a one-sided effort to avoid the issues that need to be discussed, and it cuts your husband out of the process. Perhaps—like Matt—your husband needs to work on how he handles stress, but I would bet that he really wants to work through your conflicts together. And it can be damaging to your marriage if you don’t let that process happen.

So how should you cope with conflict with your spouse?

Your husband should be your best friend.

It will be very difficult to process any kind of conflict if you don’t maintain a healthy friendship between you and your husband. Your husband should be by far your closest friend—and that deep friendship should provide the basis for being able to address issues well—even when times are tough. Think about it: in any situation, good friends who know and care about each other deeply can usually hash things out when there is stress in their relationship. And it was clear in my research that it works the same way in marriage. But if you spend less time with your husband because the tension between you is troubling, you end up creating a situation where you and he are more acquaintances than best friends.

Spend time with your husband to strengthen your friendship.

To cope with conflict in a healthy way and keep your marriage in a good place, it’s important to do whatever is necessary to strengthen your friendship with this most important person in your life. And that means spending time together without the pressure of a big discussion, just catching up on what’s going on with each of you. Ask a friend to babysit and go out to a cheap dinner just for fun and to get some alone time. Take the kids for a walk around the neighborhood together. Sit on the couch and watch an old favorite movie once the kids are in bed. Spend time together building your relationship as best friends who can tell each other anything.

Open up to your husband so you can work things out together.

Be willing to trust your husband—your closest friend—with a confession of how much you hate conflict but how much you want to be willing to work things through instead. Trust him with a plea for what you need in order for that to happen. For example, you could explain how insecure his raised voice makes you feel, and ask if he can take a few deep breaths and speak more calmly instead. And show him that you mean it, by hanging in there the next time there’s tension in the air.

When your husband—like Matt—is going through a difficult time, you have the opportunity to help him through it (to be a stress reliever) with your support and presence. And be encouraged that he wants to work through the challenges with you. If you can navigate difficult periods together, with your friendship front and center, I believe you’ll find that you end up feeling much, much closer to your best friend.

Looking for encouragement for your life and relationships? Learn about the little things that make a big difference in every relationship, from marriages to parenting. Subscribe to updates from Shaunti here!

Shaunti Feldhahn loves sharing eye-opening information that helps people thrive in life and relationships. She herself started out with a Harvard graduate degree and Wall Street credentials but no clue about life. After an unexpected shift into relationship research for average people like her, she now is a popular speaker and author of best-selling books about men, women and relationships. (Including For Women Only, For Men Only, and the groundbreaking The Good News About Marriage).

Her latest book, Find Rest: A Women’s Devotional for Lasting Peace in Busy Life, focuses on a journey to rest even with life’s constant demands.

Visit www.shaunti.com for more.

This article was first published at Patheos.

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She’s going to college this week – and I’m trying to Let Go

It’s a big week. One of my closest friends and I stood next to each other during worship at church this Sunday, with tears rolling down our cheeks.  Our kids were born three weeks apart… and this is the week we are moving them to college.

I was fine until I realized move-in was less than one week away. Suddenly, I started realizing what that would actually mean. It wasn’t just that we wouldn’t see her running downstairs in her PJs every day, watch her come alive on the volleyball court, or have long lunches talking about all the little things going on in her life. It was that, very soon, we might not necessarily know about some of the big things going on in her life. She would be making new friends, walking a campus we didn’t intimately know, and diving into an area of study totally unfamiliar to us. (Sorry, kid, can’t help you with your Industrial Engineering homework…)

In a few days, we will be moving her into a room on campus…not really knowing if she will ever be moving back to a room in our house. We will hang things on walls, help her put her stuff in drawers, give her a huge hug, and drive away—leaving her to start a wonderful new season of independence, and us to start a season of watching and cheering her on from afar.

A friend once told me, “To have a child, is to have your heart go walking around outside your body for the rest of your life.”

Which is why Jeff and I and our friends found ourselves tearing up on Sunday. It’s a joyful sort of grief.

I know many other moms are feeling the same thing this month. So I wanted to share a blog I saw recently by my friend Jill Savage. Blessings all you dear moms.

*

FROM JILL SAVAGE:

Dear Momma who is letting go this month:

I know it’s hard. I know it feels like a part of you is walking out of the house.

It doesn’t matter if you have a little kid heading off to kindergarten or you have a big kid heading off to college, giving them wings to fly is hard.

I know you’re thinking of all the things you didn’t teach them, all the crafts you didn’t make, all the snacks you didn’t serve, all the times you weren’t patient, and all the moments you didn’t listen as well as you should have.

I know you’re feeling all those feels because every mom does in some way. She’s hardest on herself and when it’s time to let them fly, the “should-haves” seem to rise to the surface more than anything else.

Let me tell you sweet friend that you did well. You weren’t perfect, but you did your best. Our kids need an imperfect role model because they are imperfect themselves. God used your imperfections to perfect you and your kids.

As you let go this month, send them off with a wave and then take that arm just a little further back to give yourself a virtual pat on the back.

You’ve worked for this day. Your job has been to work yourself out of a job–whether that’s for a few hours a day as you have one heading to school or whether this is the launch into adulthood.

Remember, you are a mom, but you are also a woman knit together by God with passion and purpose. You may have lost touch with that along the way, but it doesn’t mean it’s not there. You just have to find it again.

Now give them wings and watch them fly. You’ve done well and there’s so much joy to be found in the next season!

Jill Savage is a wife, mom, nana, author, speaker, and mentor to mamas and marriages. She loves all things peanut butter, but Jesus even more than that! You can find Jill online at www.JillSavage.org.

This article was originally published here.

Looking for encouragement for your life and relationships? Learn about the little things that make a big difference in every relationship, from marriages to parenting. Subscribe to updates from Shaunti here!

Shaunti Feldhahn loves sharing eye-opening information that helps people thrive in life and relationships. She herself started out with a Harvard graduate degree and Wall Street credentials but no clue about life. After an unexpected shift into relationship research for average people like her, she now is a popular speaker and author of best-selling books about men, women and relationships. (Including For Women Only, For Men Only, and the groundbreaking The Good News About Marriage).

Her latest book, Find Rest: A Women’s Devotional for Lasting Peace in Busy Life, focuses on a journey to rest even with life’s constant demands.

Visit www.shaunti.com for more.

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What To Say To Your Teenage Son When He’s Struggling (Hint: it’s not “Man up!”)

Now that the new school year is upon us, I’m reminded of a woman who wrote in to ask for advice on dealing with her oldest son who was having a tough first year of high school. It involved him leaving old friends behind in middle school, trying to make new ones, figuring out what teams to try out for and navigating teachers and classes that were challenging and sometimes unfair. Thankfully, though, he was still talking to his parents about his struggles. But what she found frustrating is that all she heard was moaning and groaning. “Dramatic injustice” (her term) was all she heard out of the mouth of her teenage son. But then came the boom: he turned it around on his mom and said she wasn’t even listening to him! While she and her husband were offering helpful suggestions and ways for him to “man up,” all he heard was them refusing to listen to his feelings.

Oops, has it been that long since we were teenagers and said (or thought) the exact same thing about our parents? Ah, we all swore that it would never happen to us! If you don’t remember, let me remind you of the number one gripe of a teenager: “My parents don’t listen.” And nothing has changed in that way since we were kids. I’ve studied thousands of today’s teens, and they said the same thing.

Read on about what I discovered:

What Listening Really Means To Teens

The good news is that our kids actually want to talk to us. They want to share things with you just as much as you want to hear them. What they’re looking for from you, though, is a lot more empathy and a lot less instruction.

It turns out that, for our kids, listening means hearing and acknowledging what they are feeling about a problem, first and foremost, and long before you get to any solutions. When they say (oh-so-dramatically!) “You don’t listen to me,” what they mean is “You aren’t hearing what I feel!” They subconsciously assume that if you so quickly share a solution, you couldn’t have taken the time to understand their feelings yet.

Studies Revealed Surprising Similarities

If you’re familiar with some of my work, you’ll realize this is what my husband, Jeff, and I told men about their wives in For Men Only! Most women need to have their feelings heard before being interested in working on a solution, so I wasn’t surprised when teenage girls had the same need—but I was very surprised that teenage boys did! In fact, eight out of 10 kids we interviewed—both boys and girls—said that, before jumping in to fix a problem, they first needed their parents to hear, acknowledge and tend to the emotions behind the problem. And if that didn’t happen, angst grew—and emotion and drama accelerated.

We’re not sure exactly when boys grow into men who don’t care as much about having their feelings heard and who say (in nice deep voices), “Just tell me how to fix it.” But at least through age 17, they still need the same feelings-oriented response as girls.

Learn What Specifically Speaks To Boys

What I assured this woman was that since her son was in his first year of high school, she still had time to track down her teenage self and get reacquainted. And for all of us with teenage children, we should try to remember how much we appreciated our friends who would just listen without trying to fix anything.

And next, we should ask our husbands or male friends what sort of empathy is specifically helpful to a boy. It will be different from what helps a girl! (When a teenage girl is upset it is usually because of feeling rejected, being bullied by mean girls who signal “no one likes you,” and people talking about her behind her back—all the things that trigger a girl’s inner “does anyone love me” insecurity.) But boys are different. Boys—just like their dads—have a lot of secret insecurities about being inadequate, incapable, or failing at something they try to do in front of someone else. So if your son is angry or upset about a teacher being unfair, it is likely tied to feeling stupid or inadequate—and everybody seeing it. He needs you to let him talk about how stupid and embarrassed he felt, be indignant on his behalf, and reassure him that you are proud of him.

The research was clear that most teenagers did, in fact, want to share things with their parents. The key is that we need to acknowledge that they have feelings that they want heard and be a safe, listening ear. And before we know it, we will see them sharing a lot more—and a lot more often.

Looking for encouragement for your life and relationships? Learn about the little things that make a big difference in every relationship, from marriages to parenting. Subscribe to updates from Shaunti here!

Shaunti Feldhahn loves sharing eye-opening information that helps people thrive in life and relationships. She herself started out with a Harvard graduate degree and Wall Street credentials but no clue about life. After an unexpected shift into relationship research for average people like her, she now is a popular speaker and author of best-selling books about men, women and relationships. (Including For Women Only, For Men Only, and the groundbreaking The Good News About Marriage).

Her latest book, Find Rest: A Women’s Devotional for Lasting Peace in Busy Life, focuses on a journey to rest even with life’s constant demands.

Visit www.shaunti.com for more.

This article first appeared at Patheos.

The post What To Say To Your Teenage Son When He’s Struggling (Hint: it’s not “Man up!”) appeared first on Shaunti Feldhahn.