Candace Cameron Bure is an actress, producer, New York Times bestselling author, beloved by millions worldwide from her role as D.J. Tanner on the iconic family sitcoms Full House and Fuller House and of course Hallmark Channel movies. (Christmas is coming and she has a new one coming out Nov. 25)

But, she’s also a mom of three children ages 16 to 20 and an outspoken Christian in the entertainment industry. She shares what it was like to grow up working in entertainment and the values her parents passed on to her. And about how she walks out her faith now as a busy working actress, a career she returned to after choosing to be a stay-at-home mom for 10 years.

We talk about her new children’s book “Candace Center Stage” and how it focuses on the values of hard work and courage, especially for our strong-willed children.

As she takes us into her world, she talks through how she stays calm and kind under pressure and lives for Jesus as she juggles the roles and the callings God has put on her life.

For day two of Don’t Mom Alone Live, Jim and Lynne Jackson are back to talk all about relationships and answer listener questions.

If you’ve ever felt like a bad parent because of your child’s disobedience or struggle to referee the sibling arguments and fights in your home, this episode is for you! The Jackson’s share their Peace process and how to be confident before God in how you are parenting.

It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. So we need to have confidence in our ability to be peaceful and not let this child’s behavior define me or tell me that I’m a bad parent. And have the long-term view that God can do anything in a child’s life as I persevere in encouraging and teaching and training.

They share great practicals for blended families and for how to navigate parenting when you and your spouse or co-parent aren’t on the same page. We also dive into teaching your children empathy and social cues as a way to foster great friendships.

In the end, our goal can be to equip our kids to be conduits of God’s grace to the world both through their relationships with others, but it starts with their relationship with us.

When I thought about that the kind of relationships in life that Jesus bought for our kids on the cross, not just with each other but whatever relationships they’d have. I just had this image of “trickle down grace” starting from the cross and just trickling down through us to our kids and then out to the world and our kids. We can grow to become profound dispensers of grace in life to others.

What we chat about:

• Getting feedback about our kids that makes you feel like a “bad parent”
• Keeping the long-view when you are training your children
• There is a dramatic increase in anxiety and depression in children, teens and young adults. It is five to eight times greater than it was 50 years ago.
• What to do when you and your spouse aren’t on the same page with parenting
• Ask penetrating questions when your spouse is struggling to parent in kindness.
• “What are you hoping our kids will learn right now?”
• Blended family dynamics and how to co-parent well
• You are building trust with your kids and when you are confident before God in how you are parenting, you can be at peace with how someone else is parenting
• Ask kids: What do you want to tell me about how you’re feeling and how your time went?
• Sibling rivalry and how conflict is an opportunity to teach our children how to reconcile
• The Peace Process the Jackson’s teach: Calm > Understand > Solve > Celebrate
• Celebrating that your kids reconciled is an important step to future success
• When your kids feel encouraged and successful when working through conflict, you can see the momentum begin to change
• Learning empathy as a family and equipping your kids to be more successful in friendship
• Quick connects with individually with your kids can be more effective than playing with them for longer periods. Find ways to show that you delight in who they are!
• Use mission trips and giving back to the community as your vacation/connection time as a family

Links Mentioned:

• Previous Episodes with Jim & Lynne — Ep 80 , Ep 81, Ep 98, Ep 200, Bonus Sibling Conflict
• SocialThinking.com
• “You are a Social Detective” book **
• How to Develop Empathy in Kids (Part 1)
• How to Develop Empathy in Kids (Part 2)

For the first part of our 2018 Don’t Mom Alone live event, Jim and Lynne Jackson, co-founders of Connected Families, joined me & my husband Bruce to answer listener questions about discipline and how to use their framework for biblically-based parenting.

We share lots of stories of how we have failed as parents and learned along the way.

But then I started to realize maybe my humility was my greatest currency for influence to help her learn the lessons and the values and the things that mattered most… Our kids need to know we’re not perfect. They need to know that we’ll come back to them and say, ‘Hey I blew it. I’m sorry. Would you forgive me?’ And get back to reconciliation in those relationships. — Jim Jackson.

So good!

Jim and Lynne talk us through the parenting framework they’ve developed and redefining how we view discipline with our kids. Ultimately, it comes down to connecting with their hearts and leading them to Jesus instead of trying to control their behavior.

We can help kids embrace the wisdom of the righteous. And that really prepares the way for the Lord to come in our family in a strong way. Because in today’s day and age with all the craziness that’s going on, these kids need a form of discipline that’s not just about punitive correction but that’s about a whole way of life that teaches our kids how to be followers of Jesus. — Lynne Jackson

And it’s not just vision for how we want to parent, the Jacksons also share some super practical tips and give us some ways to respond to our defiant, strong-willed or sensitive kids.

What we chat about:

• The basis for Jim and Lynn’s parenting framework
• How do you parent proactively instead of reactively when you feel like you’re just surviving minute
• What is our goal in parenting? Is it immediate obedience from our children or fostering their ability to make wise choices?
• Bringing God’s grace into our messy moments
• Why connecting with God is so essential to how we parent
• Go into a situation asking, “Lord, what is the opportunity here?”
• Helping our kids build wisdom instead of feeling the need to express our disappointment when they mess up
• Trusting that our kids really want to do better
• Separating behavior from identity in our kids
• Humility and apologizing well may be our greatest currency as a parent
• The idea of a parent do-over
• Tips for parents of younger kids and encouragement for parenting kids who bite or hit
• We tend to think of behavior as either all good or all bad
• When our goal is to control their behavior, it doesn’t build trust
• You don’t have to be mean to be strong as a parent
• Big, loud, and loving energy can make a big difference in the middle of conflict
• Luke 1:17- “And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
• Strong-willed kids and the importance of calling out their giftings and how God made them
• Sometimes it’s sensitive and intense children are labeled as strong-willed
• Psalm 73:21-24 “When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you. Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory.”

Links Mentioned:

• Previous Episodes with Jim & Lynne — Ep 80 , Ep 81, Ep 98, Ep 200, Bonus Sibling Conflict
• Connected Families Blog Post — It’s Not Defiance, It’s Science 
• Connected Families Blog post- Danger, Obedience, and Teaching Kids Traffic Safety

Tricia Goyer is an author, speaker and homeschooling mom of ten. She also knows what it’s like to parent children with chronic anger. If you’ve ever felt alone in how to calm your “angry kid(s),” Tricia has a lot of wisdom to share from parenting both biological and adopted children.

In true Don’t Mom Alone fashion, Tricia and I answer several listener questions about how to respond in love and help kids of all ages process their anger and emotions. We talk about how much harder it is for the current generation of moms who have to factor in busier schedules, social media and more as a part of their children’s environments

My oldest is 29 and my youngest is 8. It is so much harder now. I feel like I’m on the second generation of kids. Now there is social media. There is more television. There are more video games. The access that they have to all these things brings so much anxiety and tension. Not only do they have to go to school, but then they would come home and see on social media that people were talking about them. It’s just so much more involved now even than it was when I had my first generation of kids.

But it’s not impossible! Tricia shares so many great practical tips and suggestions for how to help our kids (and ourselves) work through anger in a healthy way. But beyond all the tips, it all comes down to leaning into God and praying for the Holy Spirit to fill them that will make the biggest difference.

It’s really the Holy Spirit in them and the fruit of the Spirit is God in them that’s going to change them. I could try all these activities. You know, we could do calming bags or coping skills. I mean we do all the things too. But really it is God in them. And the more they lean on God and the more they depend on him that they’ll truly change.

What we chat about:

• Tricia’s family, career and unique calling as an adoptive parent
• Her new book, Calming Angry Kids
• Determining if your child is struggling with how to process anger in a healthy way
• Giving our kids time, attention and praise is a powerful antidote to anger
• Everyone gets mad, what we do with the anger makes the difference
• When they are in the middle of the emotions, it’s not the time to discipline them
• Kids learn to apologize when we model it for them
• Anger is often a secondary emotion from a deeper wounding like shame or feeling unloved or anxiety
• Family schedules are busier than ever before and it heightens anxiety in kids and parents
• Take time to process emotions with your kids and say “No” to more activities or events if they need a break
• Tricia shares both how we can process our own anger and how to help our angry kids
• The idea of an anger log to help track anger over time
• Calming bags and items you can include in them
• Give your kids time and space to calm down
• Specific tips for pre-teens and teens and helping them with anger and hormones

Links Mentioned:

• Calming Angry Kids: Help and Hope for Parents in the Whirlwind **
• Prayer Journals
  • Big Kids **
  • Little Kids **
• An Interview with Tricia Goyer {GCM Podcast Ep. 7}
• How to Discern God’s Will Stick With It :: Tricia Goyer [Ep 179]

**Amazon affiliate link. A small portion of your purchase will help produce this podcast.

We’ve all been there. Your kid throws a fit in public and you feel the sting of embarrassment and the subtle lie that you aren’t a good enough mom. You fear what others will say and feel like the entire day is ruined in this one encounter.

My guest Elyse Fitzpatrick has lived in this place of fear and presents another way to view your worth as a mother — resting in the righteousness of Jesus. She shares about the very common and subversive idols of motherhood to slip in when we try to control our children’s performance.

But see that’s absolutely soul destroying because you either end up in fear and despair or pride and despair. That’s where you always end up when you’re living for your own righteousness. So in the days that I can lay down and in bed at night and say, ‘Yeah nailed it,’ then I am in pride.

If you’ve struggled to feel “OK” in your own power or have found your personal joy tethered to your kids’ behavior, this episode is for you. Elyse gives us the simple reminder that we have the power through Jesus to topple the idols in our life.

I began to understand this is really idolatry and I’m driving my kids insane trying to prove that I’m really an OK person. That I’m OK when they’re good and I’m a complete train wreck and bad and a loser when they’re not. But, when Jesus becomes who he should be in our lives, then idols lose their power to entice us.

What we chat about:

• Elyse’s blended family structure and her son’s adoption
• The balance of the disciplinarian and the more fun parent
• Insecurity about our own faith and the lie of trying to control our kids
• The danger of looking for identity in the way our kids behave
• Looking for the places in our lives where we feel afraid, angry or worried as a barometer for where we aren’t believing God
• Identifying idols in our lives and what they can look like
• How our children make us look or feel in front of others can bring up anger in us
• Elyse’s relationship with her mother and the background of her perceived need for control
• When Jesus becomes who he should be in our lives, our idols lose their power
• Not letting our joy be tethered to our kids’ behavior, or even our behavior
• Our self-centered struggle to feel “OK” in our own power
• How living for our own self righteousness leads to a soul destroying cycle of pride and despair
• Resting in the righteousness of Christ and remembering we are forgiven

Links Mentioned:

• Front Porch with the Fitzes Podcast
• Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus by Elyse M. Fitzpatrick **
• The Expulsive Power of a New Affection by Thomas Chalmers**
• No Other Gods Bible Study Book by Kelly Minter**

**Amazon affiliate link. A small portion of your purchase will help produce this podcast.