Which Parenting Style are You? Sissy Goff

Episode Transcript

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Which Parenting Style are You?

Guest:Sissy Goff

From the series:Conquering the Anxiety Monster (Day 2 of 3)

Air date:April 30, 2024

Sissy: I say to parents a lot of times, “I want you to let the bottom twenty percent go.” It came from a conversation with an anxious mom who was spinning with her mind and her words. At the end, I literally chased her out of my office saying, “Let the bottom twenty percent go!” because I thought, “You’ve just got to let go of something.”

You cannot keep stressing and focusing with your kids, making a huge issue out of everything, because it’s impacting your relationships.

Shelby: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Shelby Abbott, and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com.

Ann: This is FamilyLife—

Dave: —Today!

Dave: We have a guest back in the studio today that our daughter-in-law said, “I would listen to her every single day.”

Sissy: Aww.

Ann: She said that and—

Dave: —she’s not saying that about us, trust me. [Laughter]

Ann: —and she picked up Sissy Goff’s new book called The Worry-Free Parent. Sissy, welcome back to FamilyLife Today.

Sissy: Thank you. I’m so delighted to be with you all.

Dave: Sissy, is there anybody out there that doesn’t worry?

Sissy: No, I don’t think so, in this day and time. I read in the research a definition of anxiety that said, “Anxiety is a response to cumulative stress over time.”

Dave and Ann: Ooh.

Sissy: And isn’t that our world? That is what we are living in.

Ann: We talked yesterday—and if you didn’t listen yesterday, please go back and listen to that episode—as we closed the segment. You had mentioned a favorite bedtime ritual—

Sissy: —yes.

Ann: —for people with anxiety. Before we get into the day, give us this little tip.

Sissy: It’s what I tell kids to do all the time, but I think it works for grownups. I do it myself, too. It’s called the “Three Doors Technique” or the “Three Doors Game” if you are talking to kids. You picture three doors, literally in your mind. It’s three places you love and feel safe. When we’re anxious and spinning out, anything sensory related is helpful.

Which is why—side note—I love the game “5-4-3-2-1” with kids, where we say, “Tell me five things you see, four things you hear, three things you feel (tactile), two things you smell, one thing you taste.” Because when we’re thinking in the sensory realm, we have to be present to the moment. When we’re anxious, we are in the past or the future. We are not in the present moment.

So, with three doors, what we do is, say you picked a grandparent’s house: you would walk in the front door, think about—picture everything you see around you all the way around you to the left. What does it look like? What do you hear? What do you smell? And then you make your way slowly through the whole house doing the same thing.

Most kids say to me, “I never make it to the third door. I fall asleep before I ever get there.” Because it’s a place we feel safe, so our body relaxes. Again, when we are thinking about, “Okay, what did my grandmother’s house smell like when I first walked in?” you are focused on that. Not, “Am I going to fail the quiz?” or, “Is my child going to have anyone to sit with at the lunch table tomorrow?”

Dave: You write in your book—and we all know: “We are living in a very anxious time.”

Sissy: Yes.

Dave: I’m not saying our parents didn’t worry. I know they did; but, man, the world is swirling in such a way. And one of the things you write about is how anxiety affects us as parents. Talk to us about that.

Sissy: I’m going to talk about five ways it impacts us, and then I’m going to talk about five types of parents that I see most in our office.

Dave: Alright.

Sissy: The first is, “Anxiety distracts us.” Because, like we’ve been talking about, we’re not in the present, we’re in the past or the future. And kids long for us to be in the present. They want us to be there with them. Again, It can even be that we are trying to problem solve or think of something helpful, but still, we’re not with them in the moment.

Ann: So, you’re saying, let’s say, a husband or wife comes home from work, but they’re not present, because they are still back at the job.

Sissy: Yes.

Ann: Could that be a sign of anxiety?

Sissy: Absolutely! If he’s rehearsing what happened in the board meeting when he felt it didn’t go the way he wanted it to, or he didn’t give the right presentation, that’s exactly what’s causing it.

Dave: So how do you stop that?

Sissy: That’s where we go back to breath prayer if we can. Grounding—which is the “5-4-3-2-1” or there are a lot of different ways we can do that. And then, try to flip the thoughts. “Stop, drop, and flip” like we talked about in the last episode. But we’ve got to really fight it. If we aren’t proactively doing something different, that worry is just going to take over, until eventually, we are distracted because we have to be. The alarm goes off, and we have to get up out of bed or whatever it is.

I think my parents were distracted by any plethora of things, but they didn’t have the phone—

Dave: —right—

Ann: —yes—

Sissy: —that they were checking as they were bathing me or putting me to bed or any of those things. I think it’s—you know with grandkids—with my little nephews that I’m with a lot, I have to think, “Put the phone down. Flip it over.”

Dave: Yes.

Sissy: I get so mad at myself sometimes. I’ll be sitting there playing with whatever, watching or looking, and I remember thinking one time when I was with my oldest nephew, thinking, “I wonder if—when Henry is watching a show, has asked his mom and dad and I to watch a show with him, and we are on our phones, if—he thinks, ‘I can’t wait until I am old enough when I can hold a phone and watch tv and the same time.’” It breaks my heart that I do that. I just want to put the darn thing away.

Ann: It’s become so normal for kids as they are watching their show, their parents are scrolling.

Sissy: Yes, yes.

Ann: I’m guilty of that as a grandparent, too. They’re watching.

Sissy: It’s a new thing that kids—we are totally off track—but kids are saying to us in our offices, “I feel like I have to compete with technology for my parents’ attention.”

Dave: Yes.

Ann: Okay; let’s go back to number one.

Sissy: It’s making us anxious; it’s making them anxious, too.

Yes, number one, “Anxiety distracts us,” which is exactly what we are talking about: we’re not present to the moment. “Anxiety also makes us attach future meaning to present problems.”

Ann: This is number two.

Sissy: So, because he is struggling in math, he will never be able to do high school math; he’ll never get to college; he’ll never have a job where he can provide for his family, because he can’t do third grade math.

Ann: This is so me; this is so convicting right now, [thinking about] when our kids were young.

Sissy: I had a mom who came in one time, and she said, “I really am—I’ve gotten really concerned about my daughter,” and I said, “Tell me what’s going on.” She said, “We were on a trip recently, and we were staying at a hotel room, and she had some trash and went to throw it away. She missed the trash can, and she left it on the floor.”

And she sat there in this pregnant pause, and I said, “And?” And she said, “How will she ever be a functional human being when she doesn’t throw the trash away?” [Laughter] Wow! The leap—the leaps we take. We all do it.

Ann: We have a son when was diagnosed with ADHD—that was our conversation when we went to bed. “How is he going to get through school? Will he ever go to college? Will he ever get married?”

Sissy: Yes!

Ann: Why do we do that?

Sissy: And, what a great picture. He’s probably doing great right now.

Ann: He is—

Dave: He’s doing great.

Ann: —phenomenal; phenomenal!

Sissy: Yes, and he has had to work harder for things than other kids might have.

Dave and Ann: Yes.

Sissy: So, he’s probably more resilient and has a better work ethic.

Dave: We do this big time with the idol of sports. You know, with your third grader, or [if] your seven- or eight-year-old can’t make a free throw or a lay-up: “They’ll never be able to play sports at any level the rest of their life.” They’re seven years old!

Sissy: Right.

Dave: They could be in the NFL someday, but we do it. We think, if they can’t—I was told this by a coach when my youngest was playing different sports. They wanted him to play soccer and I said, “How many games do you play?” “Eighty.” I said, “We can’t do it. Don’t have time.”

“He’ll never play college sports in his life if he doesn’t join my third-grade soccer team.”

Sissy: Wow.

Dave: That’s what he told me. I hung up [the phone] thinking, “He’s probably right. Should we do it?” We didn’t do it, and he played college sports. It was just the worry, the anxiety—whether it’s sports or academics or anything; you’re right. We project it.

Ann: Okay, parents. That’s a good question. These are good questions to ask yourself. Are you—say it again; how did you say it?

Sissy: Attaching future meaning to present problems.

Ann: Oh, boy. I think a lot of us are guilty of that one.

Sissy: It’s easy to be. We all do it.

Dave: Instead of doing that, we should just do what? “This is a present problem.”

Sissy: Be in the moment.

Dave: Yes.

Sissy: And we could go back to the truth of “suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character, and character, hope.” [Romans 5:3-5] In the parenting class we are teaching on this, I ask parent, “I want you to think about what caused you to grow the most when you were growing up? What did you learn from? What are you most proud of? Because probably the answer to every one of those questions involved hard things”—

Ann: —yes.

Sissy: —”that you went through, and that your parents didn’t rescue you from.”

Dave: Yes, I’ve always—I’ve said this so many times—I’m going to write a parenting book called The Five Gifts-or Ten Gifts-Every Parent Should Give Their Children. And the first one is adversity.

Sissy: Hmmm. Yes.

Dave: It’s all these gifts you never think of, because we think, “We want to make it easier and better.” But, no, the best character comes from the hardest times. Again, you don’t force your kid to go through something difficult, but when they do, you don’t bail them.

Sissy: Right.

Dave: You walk beside them, but you let them grow through it. It’s hard to do as a parent.

Sissy: It’s hard to do.

Ann: We just hate to see them in pain.

Sissy: Of course.

Ann: But you’re right, we grow the most, sometimes, when we are in adversity and hard things. And we cling to Jesus more than ever when we are in those spots.

Sissy: Amen. Exactly! Our faith grows so much.

Ann: Okay; that’s two.

Sissy: Three would be “anxiety makes us angry,” which we’ve talked about already. We’re wanting good things for them, and we feel like they’re not happening. I think it gets bigger and bigger and bigger inside of us, and we end up getting angry when it’s the last thing we would ever want to do.

I always want parents to hear that because you’re angry doesn’t mean you’re a bad parent. In fact, I think it means the opposite. I think it means you’re anxious and are not stopping to process it and so, it is showing up that way.

Dave: When you are able to identify: “My anxiety, my worry is having me react in a way I shouldn’t be, whether I’m yelling or getting angry”—that’s a revelation in itself. To be able to connect those dots. What do you do? Do you stop? Do you pause? Take a breath?

Sissy: I think you pause. You try to, with your spouse or with your family, have a code word that you can say, that helps you, as you’re moving towards getting more angry. And then, I think you can do two things: if you are just angry in the moment, you could think about, “Who do I want to be in this moment? What do I want my kids to hear from me?”

Ann: That’s so good.

Sissy: I feel like, a lot of times, the anger right now is at ourselves.

Ann: Me, too.

Sissy: I think the way we talk to ourselves spills over onto the people that are closest to us.

Ann: How do you think parents can generally talk to themselves, when it’s in a negative way? What do they say to themselves?

Sissy: “I’m going to go back to all the things I’ve botched today.” Or “because he/she is struggling with this, it must be my fault. I’m the one who started this.”

I would say, this is a very over-generalization, so hang in there with me: I read years ago that when something goes wrong in a boy’s world, he blames someone else, and when something goes wrong in a girl’s world, she blames herself. I don’t think that’s always true. I think there are definitely men who blame themselves—

Dave: —right, right.

Sissy: —but I think moms, right now, are angrier at themselves than I’ve ever seen. And I think that’s part of the anger with kids that’s coming up—

Ann: —I do, too.

Sissy: —It’s this, “I’m a failure as a parent, not getting it right; and I’m going to try harder.” It’s like—do y’all snow ski?

Dave and Ann: Yes.

Sissy: I love to snow ski, and I’m not a great—I’m a very “easy blue” snow skier, and I don’t fall much. But if I fall once, I fall five times, because I get tighter and more mad at myself. I think, “Put your skis down the hill. You’re turning too wide!” I just start talking to myself that way.

Ann: You’re self-critiquing.

Sissy: Yes, and literally, my body is getting stiffer and tighter, and then I end up falling again. We do the same things emotionally to ourselves. We get angrier at ourselves and then angrier, and then the anger is going to spill out.

Dave: So, you go into the lodge and have a hot chocolate,—

Ann: —hot chocolate. [Laughter]

Dave: —take a breath, start over.

Sissy: Yes, take some deep breaths.

Dave: I’m sure you’re familiar with John Gottman—

Sissy: —yes, definitely.

Dave: —who writes about marriage. I remember hearing him say that they’d wire up these couples and let them have a conflict. He’d observe and make comments. One of his famous quotes is—you know, they were literally tracing their heart rates! He said they discovered that when a man’s heart rate goes above 95, the next thing out of his mouth is going to be really stupid. [Laughter]

I found that fascinating, when you’re in a conflict or whatever; but here’s one of the things I thought was so insightful: he said that bad things happen. When you’re escalating, it’s not going to go well.

Sissy: Right; because we’re in our amygdala.

Dave: Here’s what they do: they’re filming this; they’ve got the man and woman wired up. He said they would send in one of their guys and say, “Hey, we have technical problems. We have to take a break for a second, and then we’ll regroup.” And the couple says, “Okay.” They take off their stuff, and they literally take a break for ten minutes. It’s all made up. There are no technical problems.

Sissy: Wow.

Dave: They just wanted to show what happens when you settle down or take a breath. They put them back together, and it’s a whole different conversation with a five- or ten-minute break.

Sissy: That is fascinating.

Dave: That’s what you were saying: take a breath.

Sissy: Yes, take a breath.

Dave: Stop this cycle you’re on. For me, often it’s: “Take a breath and say, ‘What’s true? The Lord says’”—

Sissy: —there you go.

Dave: —”’Scripture says…’ Why am I worried? Wait a minute!” And I will spin until I stop and do that. It’s like the Word of God brings me back to center and says, “Okay. There are some things I need to do about this, but the worry that I’m feeling, that I’m carrying, that is making me yell or get anxious? The Lord’s got it.” That’s a big one.

Ann: Alright, we’ve hit three. What’s number four?

Sissy: “Anxiety makes us micromanage.”

Dave: Oh, boy.

Ann: This is so convicting. [Laughter]

Sissy: Me, too.

Ann: Not convicting; it’s like putting a light on things.

Sissy: Well, I hope— Back to, when do we finally do the work? I think it’s courage, but I don’t know if I ever said the second word: I think it’s courage and conviction that take us there.

So, “micromanage”—in the absence of being able to control the big things, we lock into the little things and try to control all of those. We don’t see detail. Everything has the same level of importance, and it’s huge. So, we end up micromanaging our kids. I think that makes them feel anxious themselves. It makes them feel incapable.

Ann: Yes.

Sissy: We’re stepping in and trying to fix all the things.

I say to parents a lot of times: “I want you to let the bottom twenty percent go.” It came from a conversation with an anxious mom who was putting the same level—I’m doing this, up and down, with my hands because that’s what she felt like in my office. I didn’t even get a word in in fifty minutes, because she was so anxious. She was just spinning with her mind and her words. At the end, I literally chased her out of my office saying, “Let the bottom twenty percent go! Let the bottom twenty percent go!” because I just thought, “You’ve got to let go of something.”

You cannot keep stressing, and focusing with your kids, making a huge issue out of everything, because it’s impacting your relationship.

Ann: So, the bottom twenty percent, yes. Things like, “They didn’t put the trash in the trash can.”

Sissy: There you go.

Ann: Things that really don’t matter.

Sissy: Things that don’t matter.

Ann: But what about the parent who’s thinking, “But that does matter?”

Sissy: That’s where I say to parents in my office, “I want you to write down the top ten things that you are getting stirred up about, and maybe even having power struggles over them, with in order; write them in order.

Ann: With your kids.

Sissy: —with your kids. Stop talking about the bottom two. Just stop!

Ann: Hmm. Give us a few examples of what some of those power struggles may be.

Sissy: Well, I think it could be their room; the cleanliness of their room. If they’re an adolescent, stop talking about their room, because you have much bigger fish to fry.

If they are younger, obviously, I think dressing appropriately is important—and we’re in a hard stage for that right now; but letting go of their style choices can be the bottom two. If they are wearing a Spiderman t-shirt to school on a dress-up day, let the teacher deal with it.

Ann: One of our grandkids—I remember saying to my daughter-in-law, because this little granddaughter started wearing her pajamas all day.

Dave: Every day.

Ann: And whenever she would start feeling anxious, she’d want to put on her pajamas.

Sissy: Hmmm. So sweet!

Ann: She’d say, “I just need my pajamas!” She’d go upstairs and put on her pajamas. She started wanting to wear her pajamas all day.

Sissy: Of course.

Ann: I said to our daughter-in-law, “Someday you’re going to look back on this phase, and you’re going to be proud of yourself for just letting her wearing her pajamas all day.”

Sissy: Yes, that is a great example.

Ann: She’s at the grocery store, she’s at the park, in her pajamas—

Sissy: —it’s a pajama kind of day.

Ann: —and who cares? Right! Who cares? Sometimes, we would like to wear our pajamas.

Sissy: Yes, we do. That’s what sweats are. [Laughter]

Ann: Yes, exactly.

Ann: Alright, what’s our number five?

Sissy: The five is that “anxiety causes us to lose our warmth and our joy.”

Ann: Yes, it steals it.

Sissy: Yes, and I read in the research that anxiety in kids is often, not always—please hear me say “not always”—anxiety in kids is often linked to a lack of parental warmth.

Ann: Wow.

Sissy: I don’t believe that is because the parent is not warm as a person. I believe it’s because when we’ve spun out to that place where we’re not present, we can’t access our warmth. It’s so hard to connect with them! Again, kids are longing for that from us.

It’s interesting, as we are talking about all of this: one of the trends we are seeing with kids today is the lack of self-regulation. One of the best ways kids learn that, “to control my own emotions” is to be with a grown-up who is in control of theirs—

Ann: —hmmm.

Sissy: —and listening to me, and with me, in whatever I am feeling. Attunement is what that’s called.

Ann: Sissy, how, practically, can you do that? Say you’re trying to get out the door to get to school, and one of your kids is having an absolute meltdown because they don’t want to wear a pair of shoes, or they don’t want to wear a coat today.

Sissy: Yes.

Ann: You’re going to be late, and they are on the floor screaming, crying, hitting, hitting their sibling—how do you put that into action right then?

Sissy: A couple of different things—maybe you have a friend who can drive the sibling to school, or you have someone else take the older sibling who’s mad—

Ann: —or a spouse.

Sissy: —that they’re not going to be on time. Or a spouse, if your spouse is there, absolutely. And then, I think part of your bottom twenty percent that day is you let go of getting to school on time. And you sit down on the floor with them, and you say, “I know. It’s hard, sometimes, for me to get dressed, too. I want to do the same thing. Let’s take three deep breaths together right now.” And “what is something you’ve learned about God lately that helps?”

Ann: That’s so good.

Sissy: Or “Let’s say a Scripture together.” And then, it may mean you’re fifteen minutes later, but the school will be okay. Especially at the age your child would be to throw themselves on the floor. The school is going to be okay, and the tardy really doesn’t matter.

Ann: Yes.

Sissy: I definitely have gotten angry with my nephews before because they weren’t moving fast enough. One time, the oldest took my face in his hands—he calls me Ditty—and he said, “Ditty, it’s okay.”

Ann: Ohhh. [Laughter]

Sissy: You get so convicted so quickly!

Ann: I remember reading a book by Jean Lush once, and she said her child was wanting to tell her all about these things going on. And Jean, the author of the book (the mom), said, “I was so anxious because all these things were going on.” So, she was rushing her child through the story: “Okay, okay, okay.” And her daughter said, “Mom, I need you to lie down in your soul first.”

Sissy: Wow.

Ann: And she said it was so convicting, that she said, “I’m so sorry. Tell me everything.” And a teacher had made fun of her that day.

Sissy: Ohhhh.

Ann: She said, “I almost missed it because I was so distracted by everything else that was going on.”

Dave: That last one got me. They all did. I’ve done them all, but I know that I’m not a warm person; none of us are when we are carrying something. And usually that carrying is private; it’s secret. Nobody knows what it is. It’s sort of you alone.

Sissy: Yes.

Dave: And when you are able to share that with somebody, if you’re married with your spouse, maybe even as a parent, with your child, like you just said: “I’m anxious, too. I’m feeling this.” Something happens to your soul when you confess, when you share it out loud and then, maybe, the other or yourself goes vertical and thinks, “Okay, I need to take a breath.”

When you said earlier, “We’re going to be tardy today,” I know there are so many parents who think, “Never. That’s a never.”

Ann: Yes.

Sissy: Right.

Dave: And you are saying it’s not the most important thing in the world; but for some of us—I’m not wired that way, but there are some who would say: “No, that is too important. You don’t ever do a tardy. You don’t ever get a C.”

Sissy: Right.

Dave: “You always get A’s.” There’s part of you that has to think, “What really, really matters?” because you want to be known, and you want your children to feel love and warmth, not rigidity and coldness, that’s all tied to anxiety.

That’s great wisdom.

Shelby: We’ll hear more from Ann about what the fruit of the Spirit has to do with battling worry as we raise our kids here in just a moment.

As someone who has personally wrestled with anxiousness for nearly my entire life, I really resonated with Dave’s description of rigidity and coldness. Those are two elements that are often connected with anxiety. Doesn’t God want a life for us that is different than that? Doesn’t He want so much more for us? John 10:10 talks about Jesus giving us the abundant life, and rigidity and coldness are not connected to abundance. I loved that, and I loved this conversation today.

I’m Shelby Abbott, and you’ve been listening to Dave and Ann Wilson with Sissy Goff on FamilyLife Today.

Sissy Goff has written a book called The Worry-Free Parent: Living in Confidence So Your Kids Can, Too. I think that, in a world of anxiety that seems to infiltrate much of our hearts but our family’s hearts, as well, this is a really needed and helpful book to address the elements of worry and anxiety that seem so prevalent amongst many families; and, In particular, parents today.

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Alright, let’s hear more from Ann about the fruit of the Spirit and battling worry and anxiety as we raise our kids:

Ann: I think, too, as we talk about that last one, what came into my head was the fruit of the Spirit. Think about the first ones: love, joy, and peace.

Sissy: Wow.

Ann: I don’t know about all of you, but I have to have Jesus to bring that fruit of the Spirit into my life.

Dave: It comes from the vine.

Sissy: Yes!

Ann: It does come when I’m connected to Jesus, talking with Him throughout the day, giving Him my burdens, my cares, my worries. Then, He can carry it, so that I can experience love, joy, and peace. And our kids pick up on that.

Shelby: Now, coming up tomorrow, what are some practical tools and strategies to help parents manage anxiety and build a positive legacy with our children? Well, Sissy Goff is back again to help us understand those strategies and flesh them out for us. That’s coming up tomorrow. We hope you’ll join us.

On behalf of Dave and Ann Wilson, I’m Shelby Abbott. We will see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.

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