Two Minute Parent Tips

Today is my youngest son’s birthday. I am now a parent of a 14 year old and a 18 year old. I cannot believe how fast the time has flown by.

So many lessons I wish I knew as a young mom.

One in particular has to do with emotional literacy. Sadly, as a young mom, I was not self-aware. I did not know how to identify my emotions or manage them. It took a devastating divorce for me to begin to become self-aware and begin to dive deep into learning emotional literacy.

I started teaching these important lessons to my kids at the ages of 6 and 10. These skills became life changing for all three of us.

I immediately wanted to share these important parenting tools with others.

So you can imagine my excitement when my church asked me to record two parenting videos last year and I immediately knew, I wanted to share about emotional literacy! I even used a teleprompter for the first time!

My first parenting tip is called Name That Feeling and I introduce a tool that my kids’ counselor taught me years ago using paint cards from a hardware store. My boys and I share about this on the podcast episode we did together called Family and Feelings (Episode 26). I have also written numerous blog posts on this subject too: Name that Feeling and Helping our Kids Identify and Understand Their Emotions.

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My second parenting tip is called Rupture Repair, and I share the importance of a heart felt apology. Again, this is not something I did well in my younger years, I would always add a “Sorry But you did….” which would push the blame off of me and onto someone else. In this parenting tip, I model how to apologize without shifting the blame when we make a mistake and properly repair the rupture. I even share about this on my special one-year birthday podcast episode when my friend interviewed me (Episode 47).  I have also written a blog post on this too: Repair the Rupture

My home church, Saddleback Church, has a parenting website, and they offer these two-minute parenting tips! To listen to these tips, click here and scroll down until you see my videos. You can also search Name that Feeling and Rupture Repair to find my recordings.

I am passionate about emotional literacy and helping teach our kids how to identify their feelings and manage their hard emotions like disappointment and anger. Hope these videos help encourage you as parents!

Love, Jodi