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Encouraging Your Kids’ Goals When Your Family is Feeling Stuck
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These five ways of shifting the momentum in your home can help your family to stop feeling stuck and bring your kids’ goals back into focus.
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Todd looked out the back window of the house. He had expected to hear his eight-year-old son, Brandon, bouncing his soccer ball off the cement retaining wall. However, the yard was silent. Instead of practicing, Brandon was sitting next to the soccer ball and picking at blades of grass. Since making the local soccer team and someday playing professionally was one of his kid’s goals, Todd was concerned with the lack of interest. When he walked out into the yard to ask what was wrong, Brandon looked up and said, “Dad, I’m just feeling stuck.”
Todd and his wife, Molly, had always been intentional about setting goals and working toward them. They had always tried to encourage their kids to do the same. But for the last eighteen months, the whole family had been feeling stuck. It wasn’t just Brandon. As he walked back into the house, Todd wondered what his family could do to get unstuck.
Everything in the universe (including your family) is moving in some way and has momentum. For instance, think of the momentum a rock gains as it tumbles down the side of a hill. Living things also have momentum, which propels them in certain directions and outcomes. Ask yourself this question: Is your family’s momentum positive or negative?
Positive momentum builds relational stability and health, while negative momentum moves toward dysfunction and dissatisfaction. And just as momentum in the physical universe can be difficult to alter, a family’s negative momentum can be tough to change, especially when working against unhealthy patterns and habits. Negative momentum can have an impact on your kids’ goals and desire to attain them.
5 Ways to Encourage Your Kids’ Goals When Your Family is Feeling Stuck
Think of your situation. Are you overwhelmed and exhausted? Have you surrendered on some important boundaries for your children? Have certain circumstances intensified momentum in the wrong direction?
Consider these five ideas for changing momentum in your home back to a positive momentum:
Look in the mirror. Jesus said, “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3). It’s easy to blame others and circumstances for our difficulties, but we can change this by redirecting our own thoughts and actions and by looking at our behaviors first.
If you’re married, love your spouse. The relationship between a husband and wife is foundational to the home. When that relationship is going well, it is more likely that parents will have the mental and emotional energy to love and guide their children.
Smile. Even if things aren’t going well, smiling can help loosen up your mind toward possibilities rather than getting stuck on limitations. Experiment with the ripple effect of a genuine smile on your family.
Make time to talk. Conversation that is loving, warm, and understanding can create positive momentum regardless of your circumstances. Use life-giving words that bring truth, encouragement and, when needed, loving correction.
Carve out time together. Play board games, exercise together, take walks, or cook as a family. The key is doing things together.
Parenting is filled with new days. You get a sunrise and a sunset every day. The time goes quickly and you get the incredible opportunity of having a deep foundational influence on your children’s lives. By taking the time to shift the momentum from negative to positive, you can find that your family is no longer feeling stuck and that your kids’ goals are coming back into focus.
Dr. Daniel Huerta is Vice President of Parenting and Youth for Focus on the Family, overseeing the ministry’s initiatives that equip moms and dads with biblical principles and counsel for raising healthy, resilient children rooted in a thriving faith.
He is a psychologist, a licensed clinical social worker, and the author of 7 Traits of Effective Parenting. For many years, he has provided families with practical, biblically-based and research-based parenting advice on topics including media discernment, discipline, communication, mental health issues, conflict resolution, and healthy sexuality in the home. He is passionate about coming alongside parents as they raise contributors, instead of consumers, in a culture desperately in need of God’s kingdom.
Dr. Huerta has been interviewed by various media outlets including Fox News, Fatherly, Christianity Today, WORLD Magazine, and CBN, and he is a frequent guest on Christian radio stations across the nation. He’s also written for publications, including The Washington Post, on various topics related to marriage and parenting. He participated in the development of Focus on the Family’s Launch Into the Teen Years, a resource to help parents prepare their kids for adolescence, and he speaks regularly at retreats, conventions, and online events.
Dr. Huerta has maintained a private practice in Colorado Springs, Colorado since 2003 and has served families through Focus on the Family since 2004. He and his wife, Heather, have been married since 1997 and love being parents to their three teen children, Alex, Lexi, and Maci.
