Palmer here!!
My neighbors are all much older than I am, and when we moved in they added us to their group chat where they plan all kinds of get-togethers. Most of their kids are older than my wife and me, but many of these neighbors have become our friends. This past Wednesday, I was out in the front yard getting some sunlight between calls when my neighbor, we’ll call him Charles, wandered over and, within five minutes, we had dove headfirst into a conversation about why people see and respond to the world the way they do.
We tossed around examples of how our brains are wired to grab onto whatever feels fiery and charged instead of naturally scanning for the good. Once upon a time, that reflex kept us alive. Great when lions and tigers were a legit concern. Less great when it turns a Tuesday into a crisis because your kid rolled their eyes.
That ancient alarm system still has its place, but if we let it run the show, it makes living fully alive way harder. If you pull out the rare moments where it truly helps, you’ll see this reflex show up with our kids, neighbors, spouses, and anyone who doesn’t think like you.
As Charles and I talked, I remembered a client whose parents painted him as a defiant troublemaker with zero regard for himself or anyone else. When they first reached out for a discovery call, they rattled off an exhaustive list of his “problems.” Within a few weeks of meeting their 16-year-old, it was obvious they were so locked on what might “destroy” his life that they were missing every chance to help him build the life he could actually thrive in.
At one point I said to him, “I’m really impressed by your awareness.” He shot back, “Did my parents say I’m a bad kid or a failure?” That stopped me. I hadn’t implied that at all. He went on to share how his parents get tunnel vision on the parts they disagree with, and how it makes him feel like they do not even know who he is.
Here’s the hard truth. These parents love their son – and some of the behaviors they worry about could actually set him back. While their intentions are to protect him, the fear lens they are using may be accidentally steering him right into the future they are trying to avoid.
The disconnect that happens when parents see their kid through a threat-first lens is brutal. If you only scan for what is wrong, of course life starts to look bleak. Honestly, it is the same pattern I hear when people talk politics…it feels like so many people are super charged on their views. We get so sure the “other side” is dangerous that we stop seeing the human across from us.
Invitation for the week: turn down the alarm and test a new lens.
- Pick one “alarm” behavior in your kid. Write down the fear story your brain tells about it. Then write two concrete signs of strength they showed this week, even tiny ones. Then praise them out loud or with a note to them sharing the two strengths.
- Swap judgment for curiosity. “Help me understand what that was like for you/what your thinking was?” lands very differently than “Why would you do that?
- Do a 30-second good scan at dinner. One specific thing you appreciated about them today.
Your brain will still do brain things. Some alarms are louder than others. But I have watched loving parents’ fearful lenses crush a child’s sense of worth faster than that child’s actual mistakes ever could. You have more power than you think to shift the story you are telling about your kid which they will likely end up saying about themselves.
Try your best to do those three things for seven days; it shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes per day.
Cheering you on!,
Kerry and Palmer 🙂
P.S. In the last email, my mom mentioned the divorce class we created, “Safeguarding the Mental Health of Tweens and Teens During Divorce”, and I hope do what I can to ensure that every family whose been through a divorce and has kids has at least one parent in their home that has watched it. It’s goes through SO MANY pieces of a divorce: the impact, the solutions, stories from parents, kids, and professionals, and the top things parents should be doing and avoiding to help protect their kids. I urge parents to do themselves and their kids the favor of watching and learning so that you can avoid so much of the pain and heartbreak my family experienced because of divorce. If we didn’t think it was crucial for kids well being to make this class, we wouldn’t have spent the last almost 2 years making it. Here is link https://careforthekid.com/
