CHAPTER ONE

LOOKING IN ON GROWING UP

Taking a tour inside your kid’s head and heart

If your experience is anything like ours, we imagine you’ve found parenting to be a dizzying combination of joy, frustration, amazement, confusion, delight, and anxiety....sometimes all within a single hour. It’s both exciting and sobering to watch as those little fat babies who coo and smile delightedly at us transform into long-legged teenagers who shake their heads over our complete lack of coolness.

It feels like one day we’re pushing them on the swings and the next we’re pushing them into college. And that seeming nanosecond of time between the two is, obviously, the most formative period of our children’s lives. As we help our kids navigate these foundational years, most of us realize we need a little guidance ourselves.

As we embarked on several research projects to help people understand those closest to them, the two of us realized that unraveling the mystery of what’s going on inside our sons and daughters was one of the most important things we could ever do. So after a year of intensive research, focus groups, and surveys of kids and teens across the country, we revealed our findings in the book For Parents Only.

Understanding Our Kids

There’s an ancient Hebrew proverb that says, “Happy the generation where the great listen to the small, for it follows that in such a generation the small will listen to the great.” It is for this reason we’re relaying to you what our children are privately thinking and feeling, even though we certainly do not endorse all of it. But we believe listening to these heart cries is a critical step in building the relationship that will allow your kids to listen to you and your guidance for years to come.

The chart below offers a summary of the six key insights we uncovered about the inner lives of kids....the things they say too many parents “just don’t get.” The left column outlines what we often assume about our kids based on their behavior when they hit the ’tween and teen years, while the right column reveals the surprises about what’s really going inside their minds and hearts.

As we travel and speak to various groups about these and other findings, we frequently hear, “How can I apply these findings to my life, with my kids?”

This discussion guide will help you do just that. It’s designed to be used in two different ways: (1) as a catalyst for group discussion and life application with other parents, and (2) as a helpful road map for initiating some eye-opening conversations with your child.

Each chapter in this guide corresponds to a chapter subject in the main book:

• Chapter 2: Freedom
• Chapter 3: Identity
• Chapter 4: Taking Charge
• Chapter 5: Security
• Chapter 6: Listening
• Chapter 7: Attitudes
• Chapter 8: How Your Kid Really Feels About You

For consistency and ease of use, each chapter follows the same format, opening with tools for group discussion and personal reflection, then highlighting practical ways to test and apply your insights in your daily interaction with your child.

Each chapter has basically the same layout. Among other features you’ll find:

• a Recap of key insights from the book
• Key Questions for discussion and/or personal reflection
• Life Story case studies with follow-up questions for practice in getting inside your kid’s head (in other words, learning the skill of reading their minds).
• a Kid Perspective and a Parent Response....a new quote that reflects what a real-life teen is thinking about the topic at hand, and an opportunity for you to respond to that input
• Weekly Challenges....action items to help you practice your new insights during the week And also…
• Bringing It Home....stand-alone sections to help you connect with your child on each topic and hear what he or she has to say.

Because every discussion group has its own character and goals, and each individual parent has different primary concerns, this guide is designed to be flexible. You can use it over any number of weeks, mixing and matching the different elements in whatever way best suits your needs. For example, your group may opt to cover only a single subject over one or two sessions, trying to hit as many of the different features as time allows. Alternatively, you may want to combine chapters and only tackle the Key Questions in each. Your group may even want to skip most of the Key Questions and focus your time on the case studies and Weekly Challenges. We encourage you to pick and choose the combination that works best for you.

Though our findings primarily focus on the teen and preteen years, you can also adapt the questions for younger kids, to lay a solid foundation of understanding before adolescence arrives. (For example, you might rephrase a question such as “How can you address this problem this week?” to ask “What can you do that might prevent this problem down the road?”) As parents ourselves, we know that it’s not always easy to really hear what the kids are saying. But as we interacted with all these amazing young people during our research, we gathered some terrific nuggets of wisdom about how to apply their insights to our parenting. We hope that you, too, will find fresh insight from this eye-opening journey inside your kid’s head and heart.

Best to you in your journey,
Shaunti & Lisa

P.S. If your group has an introductory week, here’s your first Weekly Challenge question:

Weekly Challenge: This week, look at the chart on p. XX and identify which revelation you already have best incorporated into your parenting approach....and which is the most likely to require changes in your life.