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Family Friday Newsletter - 3 min read by: Finley Robinson

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A Single Sentence from a Season Ahead

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Stages of Influence

The Power-Decade of Parenting is such a unique season. It's the bridge between childhood & young adulthood.

It's a powerful time, a season of fun, and full of opportunity.

The 18 years you have at home with each of your children, breaks down nicely into three different stages:

• Stage One (0-6) | The Connection Stage
• Stage Two (7-12) | The Coaching Stage
• Stage Three (13-18) | The Consulting Stage

While each stage has its own unique purpose and outcomes, a big shift happens in Stage 3. Your direct influence plummets.

The teenage years are famous for peer influence.

In Stages 1 and 2, you have your hands on the steering wheel and control of their lives in a much bigger way. By the time Stage 3 rolls around, it is their friends who will be the loudest voice in their lives.

The work you put in "coaching" during the 7-12 years shifts to more of a "consulting" role, allowing them to make more of their own choices as a teenager.

To many moms & dads, this is terrifying and they move into protective or control mode. Instead, I viewed this change as an opportunity

One way to have a bigger role in Stage 3 is to be "that house," the one where the teenagers come over and hang out, which I wrote about right here.

The other approach is to make sure Stage 2 and 3 are full of coaching your kids about friendship.

I cannot tell you how many 10 pm conversations I had, over a bowl of cereal, with my teenage kids about their friends. Those deeper conversations started years earlier though, on the way home from school about the importance of good friends.

Yes & No Friends

Friendships are one of life's greatest gifts. I think Ben Rector framed it perfectly when he wrote the song, Old Friends.

But teaching your kids about friendship is an important part of your season of parenting. It was (and continues to be) a central talking point in our home.

First, it was how to BE a good friend.
Later, it became how to CHOOSE good friends.

When it came time to talk about the kinds of friends we wanted our kids to surround themselves with, we tried to keep it simple.

Yes, we talked about friendship on a deeper level, but so much of that came down to each individual child. Their interests, class at school, introvert vs extrovert tendencies, and personality were all factors.

Big picture though, we talked about the two different kinds of good friends to have.

There are YES friends.
There are NO friends.

Both are needed, valuable, and super important in order to navigate the teenage and young adult years.

😍 What makes a good YES friend?

1. They will tell you yes because they believe in you, even when you don't believe in yourself.
2. They give you the confidence to push through your fears or discomfort.
3. They have your back and show up, rain or shine because they are the kind of friend who is always ready with a yes for you.
4. They look past the messes you've made and see the best parts of you.

😳 What makes a good NO friend?

1. They will tell you not to do something because they care about you enough to protect you from yourself or others.
2. They tell you the truth, not just what you want to hear.
3. They possess a deep enough moral center and will be the voice of conviction or reason at the appropriate time.
4. They know the messes you're capable of making and show up at the right time and place to help.

I know that so many of those concepts are beyond the mind of a 7-year old, but the idea of a YES or NO friend is really simple.

One is more protective while the other is more promoting.

Both are needed.
Both are valuable.
Both are important.

Not only will your kids have yes/no friends in their lives, but they will also BE yes/no friends to their peers too.

The other secret we discovered was that the same child could be a YES friend to one person and a NO friend to a different person. That's the beauty of relationships.

So much of the power-decade season is about preparing your kids for when they will be launched out of your home.

The prayer & work surrounding our kids' friends has been one of the deepest and longest-lasting efforts we've had. It is still an ongoing prayer to this day.

Finley

PS. If this or any of the emails from the past few weeks have made a positive impact on your power-decade parenting season, will you share your unique link below with another parent in a similar season please? Thanks!
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