Leading with Love

Sometimes the fears, anxiety, and/or phobias our kids have just don't make sense to us. This can lead to saying the wrong things, only exacerbating the situation. We love our kids and want to help them, but how? We see the challenges, anxiety, and attention issues in our kid’s life and want to help so much, but the behavior that often accompanies these issues is so hard to handle.

Anxiety at its core is fear, often driven by unconscious thoughts and feelings deep within our kids, which is why they are so hard to address. Common factors that contribute to anxiety include fight-or-flight regulation issues and/or negative core beliefs that cause deep internal self-doubt. Parents can be the answer to their kid's anxiety and attention issues but it requires a different set of tools and approaches. If your kid suffers from Anxiety, ADD, or ADHD, it is important to realize that the symptoms of these things are virtually identical to those of fight or flight nervous system regulation issues. If regulation issues are at the root of these issues, there are ways for your kid to recover and heal that do not rely upon medication and the short and long-term side effects these medications carry.

If you would like to understand how to best address this issue, take our Child Concern Index (CCI) (Link to CCI). Upon completion, you'll receive a detailed CCI report unique to your situation with recommendations on next steps given your situation's seriousness. Then explore our Leading With Love Coaching Cohort because 75% of parents who participate are able to enjoy their kids again and see their kids behavior turn around without the need of a counselor.

If you feel your situation is particularly urgent, schedule a call here.

As parents, we are not equipped to help a child struggling with depression. Despite all our love, care, and concern, parents with depressed kids often tell us that everything they try to do seems to discourage or frustrate their kids and make things worse. If this is where you find yourself, you’re not alone, and it’s not your fault. Unless you have personally struggled with and overcome depression, it’s unrealistic to expect you to understand how to help your kid. The tools to do so are often the exact opposite of our natural instincts. A recent CDC study found that 2 out of 3 adolescent girls and 2 out of 5 boys struggled with deep sadness/depression.

We are intimately familiar with depression, having faced it and overcome it in ourselves and our children. We understand how depression creates significant challenges for parents. The root cause of depression, beyond the serotonin imbalance in the brain, is being deeply unhappy or angry with oneself. While your child may seem to resist everything you bring to them, it often does not mean they are dismissing you or their responsibilities. Often it means they are down on themselves for falling short. Can you see your kids' frustration, unhappiness, or anger with themselves?

To understand how to best address this issue, take our Child Concern Index (CCI). Upon completion, you'll receive a detailed CCI report unique to your situation with recommendations on next steps given your situation's seriousness. Then explore our Leading With Love Coaching Cohort because 75% of parents who participate are able to enjoy their kids again and see their kids behavior turn around without the need of a counselor.

If you feel your situation is particularly urgent, schedule a call here.

It’s a terrible feeling to be disrespected by a child you love! You lay down your life for them everyday, and are met with eye rolls, back talk, the silent treatment, or worse. It’s natural to wonder if there is any hope when we are at odds with our kids and what we’re doing doesn’t seem to work. If they are like this at age 7, 9, or 11, what will they be like when they are 13?

There is hope given the answers we discovered during our research. Our research found that disrespect typically stems from roots that are often below our kid’s consciousness. How can that be? Psychology has proven that only 5% of thoughts and emotions are conscious. Thus the common roots underneath their disrespectful behavior are often not truly understood by our kids. What are the common roots according to our research?

• Unresolved issues in the the relationship that they have never brought up and have stuffed.
• This generation of kids' need for community, connection, and fairness.
• Negative core beliefs that make them sensitive / reactive to the way we interact with them.
• A misunderstanding of the nature of respect itself that has permeated the whole family.

The answer lies in what we found by integrating our research with 3,000 kids with psychological studies and the leadership style of Jesus, which was radically different from that of the world. This led to the development of a new way to approach and lead our kids that results in kids wanting to involve you in their lives.

If you’d like to learn how to target the roots underneath your kids’ behavior consider our Leading With Love Coaching Cohort and then schedule a call with myself, Jeff Schadt, or another coach to get your questions about your situation answered. On the call we’ll help you better understand why targeting the roots is vital with today’s kids.

If you feel your situation is particularly urgent, schedule a call here.

When our kids react with anger or tears, it hurts. We care and love them more than they know but they don’t seem to believe us anymore. Outbursts destroy happy homes as we isolate ourselves to avoid the pain conflict brings. If you are dealing with outright anger, angry or despondent tears and are losing hope, don’t give up.

Our research found that these outcomes stem from three sources not often discussed in parenting circles.

• Unresolved issues and hurt
• Negative core beliefs
• Fight-or-flight responses

The good news is these issues that cause our kids to react and break down are entirely fixable. According to studies, only 5% of our kid's thoughts and emotions are conscious. It is likely your kid's outbursts are being driven by the 95% of thoughts and emotions that are unconscious, leading to frustration with themselves, because they can not figure out what’s going on either.

As parents, we have not been equipped to help our kids target the issues that underlie their bad behavior and struggles. If you're looking for answers that work, you’re in the right place. Please explore our Leading With Love Coaching Cohort that equips parents to target the issues underlying their kid's troubling outbursts. What you learn will change how you see your kids and give you the insights and ability to help your child.

To discover if the Leading With Love Coaching Cohort will work for your situation, take our Child Concern Index. Upon completion, you'll receive a detailed CCI report unique to your situation, with guidance on next steps.

If you feel your situation is particularly urgent, schedule a call here.

Perhaps nothing concerns us more than when our kids begin to lie and hide things from us. We ask questions of ourselves like:

• Am I doing something wrong?
• Why won't he or she be honest with me?
• Why aren't they learning from their mistake?
• What else are they hiding?

Sadly we found this is far more common than we expected. Our research found that 70 to 90% of kids ages 9 and up lead some form of hidden or dual life. They knew what to do and say to keep their parents happy but had figured out that if they could hide their real thoughts, actions, or mistakes from their parents, they avoided the fallout that occurred in the relationship with their parents.

Why was this so important that it caused them to lie? Our research found kids wanted to please and feel close to their parents like they did when they were younger. This desire was so strong it led many to hide things and lie. Why? Their need and dependence upon thier parents, along with an often hidden desire to please them, were much stronger than the parents in our research could believe, given the issues in their kid's life. They so wanted their parents to be happy with them that they felt compelled to hide things and lie to try to get close to their parents again.

This is just one of the reasons why changing how we approach kids and their shortcomings is vital if we want them to remain close and be open and honest with us. If you sense your kids are growing more distant and you're losing influence in their lives, or your kids are younger and you want to avoid these outcomes altogether, check out our Leading With Love Coaching Cohort.

If you feel your situation is particularly urgent, schedule a call here.

You love your kids and want to help them succeed. When they struggle with motivation and follow through, it's difficult to know what to do. The more we remind them and apply pressure the more they resist us and our involvement leading to frustration and concerning behavior.

You know your kid has the ability but they either won’t or aren’t able to put in the effort to accomplish what they are capable of. Pressure related to homework, studying, and grades often leads to avoidance, defensiveness, or conflict, which our research found demotivates our kids.

Our work with kids who have motivation issues found that their lack of effort often stemmed from three underlying sources that work together to damage their potential. When these things combine, it can lead to depression.

• The realities of the oppositional adolescent brain
• Negative core beliefs held deep within our child
• Depression

Changes that occur in adolescent brain activity result in an oppositional response pattern emerging in our kids that may seem disrespectful or rebellious, but are not deliberate or their fault. Understanding these changes and adjusting our tactics can make a world of difference and help them learn to adapt to the change they do not know occurred as well.

Negative core beliefs rob our kids of confidence, often leading to resignation and a tricky unconscious decision to not even try. By not trying they avoid feelings of not being good enough and failure because if “I don’t try it and fail, it doesn’t reflect upon me because I did not try!” The kids we work with are stunned to realize they have unconsciously made such a counterproductive decision.

Depression is hard to understand if you haven’t experienced it. Our natural response is to remind, nag, or pressure which we’ve found makes things worse. Because the root cause of depression is being unhappy with or angry at oneself, our reminders, nagging and pressure serve to make them more negative about themselves. This is the reason we need to target the unconscious roots underneath their annoying behaviors.

Addressing these issues requires looking beyond the frustrating lack of effort to the internal reasons our kids have given up and turn to other escapes to validate themselves, rather than getting the work done that will help them succeed. As parents, we have not been trained to target the roots of issues below our kid's behavior and struggles. We can help. Please explore our Leading With Love Coaching Cohort to better understand what is going on within your child and the ways we can help you be the answer to your kid's motivation issues.

To discover if the Leading With Love Coaching Cohort will work for your situation, take our Child Concern Index (CCI). Upon completion, you'll receive a detailed CCI report unique to your situation, with guidance on next steps.

If you feel your situation is particularly urgent, schedule a call here.

Nothing will destroy enjoying our families more than being stuck between kids who just can’t get along. It can cause a sense of dread every day because we are just waiting for something to go wrong:

• Endless bickering
• Negative comments that lead to reactions
• Getting physical with each other

There are tools we teach to address sibling conflict that will make a real difference, but they do not fix the underlying problem. The real problem stems from a breakdown of their relationship, trust, and the sense of belonging siblings should have.

Our research and work with thousands of families has helped us identify the common roots that lie underneath our kids' disdain for each other. Understanding what’s happening below the surface is essential to restoring the relationship, trust, and care between your kids. These include:

• Perceived favoritism
• Negative core beliefs
• Unresolved issues in the relationship
• Fight-or-flight regulation issues

To understand how to best address this issue, take our Child Concern Index (CCI). Upon completion, you'll receive a detailed CCI report unique to your situation with recommendations on next steps given your situation's seriousness. Then explore our Leading With Love Coaching Cohort because 75% of parents who participate are able to enjoy their kids again and see their kids' behavior turn around without the need of a counselor.

If you feel your situation is particularly urgent, schedule a call here.