Summary:

• Behavior is a function of a child’s ability to self-regulate within a given environment

• Psychology calls the relationship between a child’s temperament and the environment the goodness of fit

• Parents play an important role in moderating the environment and helping children modify skills to succeed within the environment

We were moving at a snail’s pace, and my frustration was mounting. “Let’s gooooooo…” I shouted up the stairs for the third time.

Yes. I broke 3 of my own parenting principles with that one move. But they had been the ones so insistent on this new family Bible Study format, and my patience was wearing thin.

“Get your Bibles. Get your journals. Come on.”

As we settled in, I impatiently doled out assigned passages. The Mover wailed. “But Mom, that’s not fair! It was my turn to lead tonight!” Too late. In fact, I was planning to cut study time 10 minutes short. Then came the exaggerated complaints of the Connector: “We can’t cut off 10 minutes. We have to do the full time, or I won’t get sleepy, and then I can’t sleep, and then I’ll be up all night.” Next came the Analyzer’s resentment for being rushed: “Bible study was ruined before it started because I didn’t get to finish the outline I was preparing.” The Keeper just shrugged: “I’ll read whatever.” So I gave her a passage, to which she complained it was too short.

Suffice it to say, we didn’t bring our best to Bible study that night.

This pattern kept showing up at dinner, at the grocery store, and during game night. It was tempting to see it as four behaviors needed fixing.

But one essential element is missing from this equation: something the psychology literature calls goodness of fit.

Think of it like trying to force four different kids to wear the same size and style of shoe, no matter their age (perhaps even one of Mom’s high-heeled shoes). They stumble and fall. Something starts to rub. A blister forms, and with it comes a limp.

Behavior is the limp. The foot is their temperament. The shoe is the environment that was created around them. Walking well requires a shoe adjustment and practice.

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When Behavior Starts to Limp

We don’t buy a random pair of shoes and expect the child to walk in them. We size them, try them on, tie the laces, adjust the socks, and let them practice walking in them (especially with a complicated shoe like cleats, ice skates, or high heels!)

These limp-along behaviors often look like the weakness signals we covered in this article two weeks ago.

• Put a Connector in an environment that requires prolonged independence, quiet, or little interaction, and you may see the attention-seeking turn up.

• Put a Mover in an environment where every decision has already been made for them, and you may see more arguing, controlling, or bossiness.

• Put an Analyzer into a rushed, unpredictable environment where the plan keeps changing, and you may see rigidity, perfectionism, or shutdown.

• Put a Keeper into an environment filled with conflict, pressure, or rapid transitions, and you may see avoidance, procrastination, or stubbornness.

The behavior still needs to be addressed, but not by changing the foot (temperament); instead, change the shoe (environment) or the skills to adapt (self-regulation).

Goodness of fit is about whether the demands, expectations, and responses of the environment match the child's capacities and characteristics

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Sometimes You Adjust the Shoe

Here's where goodness of fit gets personal: we are part of our child's environment.

The shoe is us. We are the shoe.

The rubbing is between a child's temperament and school, church, sports, and often us! Our temperament demands, expectations and responses bumping up against theirs!

A fast-moving, decisive Mover parent may experience an Analyzer child's need for time as dawdling. So the parent pushes harder, making the Analyzer feel rushed.

A harmony-seeking Keeper parent may experience a Mover child's directness as disrespect. The parent tries to quiet the intensity; the Mover pushes harder to feel heard; and suddenly both are responding less to the original problem and more to each other.

No temperament is right or wrong. The shoe is simply rubbing, and we need to make some adjustments.

Psychiatrists and researchers Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess laid the foundation for understanding how the bidirectional interaction between parent and child affected one another’s behavior and the child’s development.

A good fit supports academically strong, emotionally intelligent, and socially capable child development, whereas a poor fit is linked to depression, anxiety, behavior challenges, aggression, defiance, addiction, and academic challenges.

Temperament-informed/strengths-based parenting helps parents understand the fit and adjust the environment to help children develop the skills needed for lifelong success.

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Sometimes You Teach Them to Walk In It

Sometimes the environment can't or shouldn’t be adapted to the child, That's when we help them learn to walk in the shoes they have. Maybe we add thicker socks for a while. Maybe we loosen the laces. Maybe we hold their hand while they find their balance. But eventually, they have to do some of the walking.

After we’ve made environmental adjustments to our parenting style or household warmth, structure and authomoy, we focus our attention on helping them build skills.

With the Holy Spirit as our guide in all wisdom, knowledge and understanding, we can begin to notice areas of poor fit, name what needs to change, and nurture that growth.

That’s scaffolding. We lend them regulation while they’re developing their own.

The goal isn't to create a world that always fits their temperament. It's to provide enough fit and support while they're young that they can develop the skills to navigate environments that won't.

If you’re asking, “But are we babying them?” the answer is no. Psychology literature says so, and Scripture even gives an example of God doing the same for His people.

When God Fixed the Fit to Protect From Failure

In Exodus 13:17, right before the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, we’re told that God did not lead the people through the Philistine country, even though it was the shorter route. God said, “If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.” So God changed the route.

He didn’t say, “Well, they’ll eventually have to face hard battles in Canaan anyway, so they might as well toughen up now.” He adjusted the environment to meet their present needs, then set aside time in the wilderness to teach the skills they’d need to reach their destination.

That’s God changing an environment to fit people’s present needs, while still holding them accountable for developing those skillful behaviors.

Practical Parenting for Today

Notice the Rub. Adjust the Shoe. Practice Walking.

· Notice It ·

Where does the same behavior keep appearing? The Connector may get louder or more attention-seeking when connection is scarce. The Mover may become controlling when there is no room for appropriate choice. The Analyzer may become rigid or shut down when things feel rushed or unpredictable. The Keeper may withdraw or become quietly stubborn when the environment feels pressured or conflict-heavy.

Don't stop at What is my child doing? Ask: Where is the shoe rubbing?

· Name It ·

Name the mismatch. What is this environment asking of my child that is rubbing against their natural temperament right now?

Then ask what could change for now to make success more possible. Give the Connector appropriate moments for connection before asking for independence. Give the Mover bounded choices and meaningful responsibility. Give the Analyzer preparation, predictability, and enough processing time to get started. Give the Keeper a little space, a lower-pressure invitation, and time to formulate what they want to say.

We're not removing the expectation. We're adjusting how the child gets there.

· Nurture It ·

Don't remove the support all at once. Gradually ask your child to carry more of what you've been carrying for them.

If you've been preparing your Analyzer ten minutes before every transition, teach them to check the schedule and prepare themselves. If you've been offering your Mover choices, begin practicing what to do when there isn't a choice. If you've been helping your Connector settle into independent work, teach them how to recognize when it's time to quiet their social energy. If you've been speaking for your Keeper, start giving them the words, and then let them do the speaking.

First we do it for them. Then we do it with them. Eventually, they learn to do it for themselves.

Adjust the shoe. Practice the walk. They gradually need less adjustment. That's the goal.

Changing the Environment and Building the Skills

Here’s what I eventually realized about my role in my children's temperament-based behavior on nights like that Bible study: if I insisted on my Mover tendencies setting the stage for the environment, I could expect outbursts from three of my four kiddos. The fourth? Oh, we’d butt heads from now till Kingdom come over who got to be the Mover.

So now, I take a new approach. I adjust my parenting to open the environment where all temperaments can thrive. Where everyone has a chance to demonstrate their strengths. And I pay attention when weakness signals show up because those are the skill gaps. So I use golden words to help build those skills in developmentally healthy ways.

You can too! Just remember. I am the shoe. The shoe is me. What environment and skill set do they need?

Helpful Tools

1. If you’d like a useful guide to help you understand your child’s temperament, you can access it here: Use the Temperament Assessment Tool

2. We are weeks away from the launch of our 365 Day Golden Words Inspiration Calendar. Subscribers will receive launch details & 50% off, coming soon!

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3. And don’t miss the upcoming Wired This Way game, which is also available 50% off to subscribers.

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References:

McClowry, S. G., Rodriguez, E. T., & Koslowitz, R. (2008). Temperament-Based Intervention: Re-examining Goodness of Fit. *European journal of developmental science*, *2*(1-2), 120–135.

Ganiban, J. M., Liu, C., Zappaterra, L., An, S., Natsuaki, M. N., Neiderhiser, J. M., Reiss, D., Shaw, D. S., & Leve, L. D. (2021). Gene × Environment Interactions in the Development of Preschool Effortful Control, and Its Implications for Childhood Externalizing Behavior. *Behavior genetics*, *51*(5), 448–462. <https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-021-10073-9>

Baer, J., Schreck, M., Althoff, R. R., Rettew, D. C., Harder, V. S., Ayer, L., Albaugh, M. D., Crehan, E. T., Kuny-Slock, A. V., & Hudziak, J. J. (2015). Child Temperament, Maternal Parenting Behavior, and Child Social Functioning. *Journal of child and family studies*, *24*(4), 1152–1162. <https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-014-9924-5>

Cipriano, E. A., & Stifter, C. A. (2010). Predicting preschool effortful control from toddler temperament and parenting behavior. *Journal of applied developmental psychology*, *31*(3), 221–230. <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2010.02.004>

To, How do I stop the behavior AND help her build what she needs instead?

Your child hits you. You set the boundary: “We don’t hit.” They tell you they know, and then the next time they’re angry, they do it again.

So what’s happening?

In this episode, we’re looking beneath hitting and aggressive behavior at two developing skills: emotion regulation and inhibitory control.

We’ll unpack why knowing “hitting is wrong” doesn’t necessarily mean a young child’s brain can access that knowledge in the heat of anger—and why understanding that difference doesn’t mean excusing the behavior.

You’ll learn how to:

• Stop unsafe behavior while still acknowledging the emotion

• Separate “You’re allowed to feel this” from “You’re not allowed to do this”

• Look for the moment the child’s skills actually break down

• Use Notice It · Name It · Nurture It to respond

• Practice what to do with anger once everyone is calm

The goal isn’t a child who never gets angry. It’s a child who gradually learns: I can feel angry without hurting someone.

Send Me These Every Week!

Chapters

00:00 Why stopping hitting isn’t the whole job

00:15 Welcome to Little Moments, Lasting Impressions

00:35 “My five-year-old hits me when she’s angry”

01:45 The difference between stopping and teaching

02:12 Why kids hit even when they know better

03:50 “Use your words” requires more skill than we realize

06:30 Feelings vs. behavior

08:48 Notice It · Name It · Nurture It

13:23 The do-over: what to say when your child hits

09:40 The question to ask instead of “Why don’t they know better?”

Summary:

• Two weeks ago, we talked about strengths.

• Last week, we talked about not mistaking weakness signals as identity markers.

• This week, we are learning how to speak to the strength under the signal, not with empty phrases of positivity, but with purposeful praise that nurtures God’s natural design.

They say passion and purpose are two of life’s greatest motivators. While purpose inspired me to memorize my first bible verse, it morphed into a passion of mine.

I was eleven, and my new best friend at school, who happened to ride the same bus as me, had this habit of speaking so negatively about herself: “I’m going to get sick. I just know it. I can feel it. Then I’ll get behind. Then my grades will slip. Then I’ll be stressed.”

Like clockwork, she’d be ill within 48 hours, sometimes less.

I decided to memorize Proverbs 18:21, hoping it would help her overcome her negative talk.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And those who love it will eat its fruit. — Proverbs 18:21 NASB

“Words have power: life and death,” I’d say. It took a few weeks, but I noticed she started to catch her words before speaking illness over herself.

One afternoon, she said, “I just know I’m going to get si—” she caught herself. And then finished, “…sooo much sleep tonight.”

The next morning was one I’ll never forget. The bus stopped at her house, and she hopped on. But that wasn’t even the amazing part. As she climbed the bus steps, the driver said, “Good morning; there’s that sunshine smile!” and my friend simply beamed, ear to ear, glowing like the sun itself.

In that moment, I saw more than avoiding words of negativity, illness, and death; I saw the other side of Proverbs 18:21. The beauty of speaking life into someone’s spirit.

I hope you can recall one from your own childhood. A well-timed comment from a coach, teacher, mentor, or parent. One that does more than simply tell us “Good job.” It’s the words that sink down into our soul and call out the best in us.

It’s why I call them Golden Words.

Golden Words

There are words we spend our entire childhood waiting to hear. We may not even realize it until someone utters them and basically changes our outlook. Not just on life, but on ourselves. Suddenly, we feel a thousand feet tall, as if we could conquer a mountain, withstand the impossible storm, and outlast any challenge.

There are the basics like: I love you. I’m proud of you. You matter. You belong here. Tell me about yourself. But golden words are more specific. More personal.

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The same words don’t necessarily carry the same weight for every child. Just as temperament affects how we interpret situations and interact with others, it also affects which words sound like Golden Words to us.

• For The Connector, it may sound like: You’re so fun to be with. You light up the room. You’re a great friend.

• For The Mover, it often sounds like: You did a great job. Thanks for taking the lead. What a great plan.

• For The Analyzer, they are uplifted by words like: You notice things the rest of us often miss. You really thought that through. Thanks for thinking through all the details.

• For The Keeper, it sounds like: Thank you for caring about everyone’s perspective. The group really benefits from your steady presence. You have a way of bringing people hope.

Temperament researchers call this goodness of fit. It’s the degree to which a child’s natural temperament fits with the expectations and responses of the people around them. Children thrive when parental figures help them learn to adapt within the world around them so they can thrive within it.

Speaking to a child’s Golden Words is like giving them permission to be who they are and find the key to where that fits within the world around them.

The Science Behind Words

The words we say to a child help them make meaning of themselves and the world around them. But there’s more to it than just positive words. Truly life-giving words are personal, purposeful, and speak to our passions.

· Notice It ·

To truly speak to a child’s strengths, we must first learn to see them. It begins with noticing what a child naturally does well, even when the strengths may be hidden beneath immature behavior. It’s like finding a diamond in the rough, or winnowing the wheat from the chaff (Matthew 3:12). Research shows that children whose parents speak to their strengths actually use those strengths more and tend to have greater emotional health, social skills, and general well-being.

· Name It ·

Once we see it, we want to put words to it. In an fMRI study, positive parental feedback to adolescents activated brain regions linked to improved mood and social cognition. Other research has shown that praise linked to a child’s specific effort on a task, effort, strategy, or perseverance (called process praise) is not only associated with greater desire for challenge but, in later years, shows gains in math and reading comprehension. Our words inspire passion and purpose!

· Nurture It ·

Knowing the strength and speaking to it are one thing, but just as Scripture reminds us that hearing the Word is one thing, doing it is another, so too with our children. They need opportunity to use those strengths. When parents encourage opportunities for children to exercise their strengths, it improves a child’s well-being. So give the budding leader something meaningful to lead; invite the problem-solver into a real problem; let the Connector bring people together; and give the Keeper opportunities to create harmony while practicing a strong voice.

We don’t just tell children who they can become. We give them opportunities to practice becoming it.

Following Christ’s Example in Parenting

Jesus gives us a beautiful example of calling out seeds of greatness in people, long before others might see evidence. The first time Jesus met Simon (see John 1:42), He started calling him Cephas (Aramaic)/Peter (Greek), both of which translate to rock.

While Peter demonstrated some bold qualities of a becoming leader, he wasn’t particularly rock-like at the beginning. Throughout the Gospel, we see evidence of his impulsivity, speaking before thinking, overestimating himself, panicking in the face of fear, sinking in the waves, rebuking Jesus, drawing his sword, and eventually denying Jesus. Yet Jesus called him rock because he could see his strength and who he would become.

Even on the morning of breakfast on the beach in John 21, after Peter had denied Jesus three times, Jesus didn’t take it all back. Jesus said, “Simon, son of John.” (Think of this like a parent calling a child by his full first, middle, and last name! Simon Peter knew he’d messed up, and a lesson was coming.) But it was more beautiful than that. Each time that Simon Peter confessed his love for Jesus, Jesus gave him a task:

• Tend My lambs.

• Shepherd My sheep.

• Tend My sheep.

Even though Simon Peter messed up, Jesus still encouraged his passion, higher purpose, his calling, and his apostolic ministry.

When our children mess up, we may need to use their full given name at birth, but it doesn’t change who they are, what their strengths are, and what they’re called to be.

Our words can help set them back on track toward their God-given purpose and passion.

Childhood’s Most Valued Moments

Looking back, I vividly remember moments when a teacher, mentor, or friend spoke life to me that ended up being Golden words: *You're a great leader. You're so organized. You can handle this.* Those weren't random compliments to me. They spoke directly to things I valued most: action, accomplishment, responsibility, capability.

Someone else could have said, “Everyone loves having you around!” and I would have appreciated it, but tell me, “I trust you to handle this”? That landed, and I’ve carried those with me to this day.

I’ve created a free set of guides for you to use with the kiddos in your life.

• Looking for a handy list of Golden Words you can use with each temperament?

Free Golden Words Guide

377KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

• Want help identifying a particular child’s temperament? Use the Temperament Assessment Tool

  

• Need to know what makes a certain temperament tick? Check out the videos

  • The Mover Video:

    The Analyzer Video:

    The Connector Video:

    The Keeper Video:

Other Free Articles

References:

• Waters, L., Loton, D. J., Grace, D., Jacques-Hamilton, R., & Zyphur, M. J. (2019). Observing Change Over Time in Strength-Based Parenting and Subjective Wellbeing for Pre-teens and Teens. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 2273.

• van Houtum, L. A. E. M., Will, G. J., Wever, M. C. M., Janssen, L. H. C., van Schie, C. C., Tollenaar, M. S., & Elzinga, B. M. (2022). Adolescents' affective and neural responses to parental praise and criticism. Developmental cognitive neuroscience, 54, 101099.

• Gunderson, E. A., Sorhagen, N. S., Gripshover, S. J., Dweck, C. S., Goldin-Meadow, S., & Levine, S. C. (2018). Parent praise to toddlers predicts fourth grade academic achievement via children's incremental mindsets. Developmental psychology, 54(3), 397–409.

• Jach, H. K., Sun, J., Loton, D., Chin, T.-C., & Waters, L. E. (2018). Strengths and subjective wellbeing in adolescence: Strength-based parenting and the moderating effect of mindset. Journal of Happiness Studies, 19, 567–586.

In this episode of Little Moments, Lasting Impressions, Dr. Bethany Heyne looks at what happens between hearing an instruction and actually following through.

You’ll learn how developing executive-function skills, including working memory, task initiation, attention shifting, and transitions, can make a child look like they aren’t listening, even when they know exactly what they’re supposed to do.

Using Notice It · Name It · Nurture It, you’ll learn how to identify where the process is breaking down and help your child build the skill they need instead of simply repeating yourself.

Because there’s a big difference between asking: “Why doesn’t my child listen?”

and: “Where between hearing me and doing it is their brain getting stuck?”

You say: “Put your shoes on.”

Nothing. You say it again. Still nothing.

By the tenth time, you’re standing at the door yelling: “SHOES. NOW.”

And you’re wondering: Why doesn’t my child just listen?

But your child may have heard you the first time.

Between hearing an instruction and following through, a child’s brain may need to stop what it’s doing, shift attention, hold the instruction in working memory, initiate the new task, remember what comes next, and stay focused long enough to finish it.

In this episode, we’re looking at the executive-function skills underneath that frustrating gap between: “I know what I’m supposed to do” and “I’m doing it.”

You’ll learn how to stop simply repeating the instruction and start watching for where the process breaks down.

1. Did they hear you?

2. Did they remember?

3. Could they shift away from what they were doing?

4. Did they know where to start?

5. Did they start and then get distracted?

Because once you know where they’re getting stuck, you have something much more useful than: “My child doesn’t listen.” You have a skill you can nurture.

Give Me the Tools!

Chapters

00:00 Why repeating yourself may not be a listening problem
00:15 Welcome to Little Moments, Lasting Impressions
00:35 “I have to ask him ten times”
02:15 He probably heard you the first time
03:00 What happens between hearing and doing
04:20 Working memory and task initiation
06:15 Why knowing what to do isn’t the same as doing it
07:30 Notice It · Name It · Nurture It
09:00 What to do instead of repeating yourself
10:15 The do-over: shoes before baseball
11:30 Find where the process breaks down

Tired of guessing what’s going on behind your child’s behavior? Drop your Little Moment in the comments. Maybe it’s the directions they ignore, the meltdown you can’t explain, the homework battle, sibling fight, or moment that left you thinking, What was I supposed to do with that? Your question could become a future episode.

Leave a comment

One minute, you’re wondering why your child keeps doing the thing you’ve asked them seventeen times not to do.

Why does this child fall apart every time plans change? Why can she remember every lyric to a song but not the three things you just asked her to do? Why does one child need you close when they’re upset while another wants you to please, for the love, stop talking to them?

And then there are the bigger questions that don’t fit neatly into a parenting book:

• What happens to children when there’s conflict in the home?

• What if a marriage ends?

• What about single parenthood or blended families?

• What happens when addiction, abuse, chronic illness or grief enter the home?

• And what about the ordinary seasons when life doesn’t look anything like we hoped it would?

The advice comes quickly, and it’s often conflicting, depending on the worldview.

It forced me to ask a different question:

Where is this advice actually coming from?

I wanted better answers. Not another list of parenting rules, but an understanding of what was actually happening in our children, what psychology could teach us about it, and where biblical wisdom fit.

Because when we understand what’s happening underneath the behavior, it changes more than how we respond to our children.

It can change how we parent, and what God reveals in us along the way.

Help Me Parent with Purpose

That search became personal for me.

Sometimes it was ordinary child behavior that left me scratching my head. But then life threw our family some curveballs that were much bigger than ordinary parenting moments. And suddenly, the advice got complicated.

At one point, I heard versions of: Leave this marriage, and you’ll ruin your child’s childhood.

And later: Stay in this marriage, and you’ll ruin your child’s adulthood.

I remember thinking: Which one is the actual truth?

Sure, I wanted to know what the literature in child psychology and development had to say about children experiencing marital conflict? Divorce? Single parenthood? Blended families? Addiction? Abuse? Chronic illness? Stress?

I also wanted to know what actually helps children thrive when life doesn’t follow the script we had imagined for them.

But as a Christian, there was another question I couldn’t separate from the rest:

Where was God in all of this?

So I started looking. Reading. Studying. Researching. Asking deeper questions.

And the Lord began inviting me into some pretty remarkable places; places I’m now passionate about sharing with other families.

That’s the heart behind Heart Shapers · Legacy Makers.

And it begins with one question.

What’s happening behind the behavior?

Before we decide what to do about a behavior, it helps to understand what’s producing it. Because development holds a lot of answers about emotions, temperament, executive function, relationships, environment, physical needs, and the skills a child needs to develop. But also, the limitations in front of them when they just aren’t there yet (queue music of the Israelites wandering in the desert)

Sometimes the behavior we’re correcting makes considerably more sense when we understand the child producing it.

So here, we don’t begin with: How do I make this stop?

We begin with: What am I actually seeing?

That’s Behind the Behavior.

What do I do with what I’m seeing?

Understanding behavior doesn’t mean excusing everything our children do. We still have to parent. Set boundaries. Teach skills. Correct unhealthy habits. Encourage perspective taking. Prepare them for adulthood. Help them learn how to live alongside other human beings. But I didn’t want to build those decisions entirely on whatever parenting philosophy happens to be popular at the moment.

I wanted to understand what psychology and child development can teach us, and then bring that understanding alongside biblical wisdom.

• How does God graciously respond to us as His children?

• How did Jesus respond to the actual people standing in front of Him: their fear, grief, impulsivity, anger, pride, confusion, doubt, and failure?

• What might the Spirit of Truth be helping us see?

That’s Parenting With Purpose.

It’s also where you’ll see my signature framework: Notice It · Name It · Nurture It.

• Notice what’s happening.

• Name what may be underneath it.

• Then nurture the skill, relationship, character, or growth that needs to come next.

And then there’s another child’s story in the room.

Ours.

Every parent was once a child. We learned what love felt like. We learned what happened when people disagreed. How emotions were handled. What happened when we failed. Whether achievement earned attention. Whether boundaries were respected. Whether apologies happened. How people found their way back to one another after someone got hurt.

Some of what we learned was beautiful. That’s part of our legacy, too.

It’s the Sunday dinners we want our children to remember. The parent who always showed up. The faith handed down to us. The silly traditions, the security, the sacrifices we didn’t fully appreciate until we became parents ourselves. Those are things worth carrying forward.

And then there may be other things we begin to notice in ourselves. Perfectionism. Anger. Anxiety. Performance pressure. Difficulty with boundaries. Approval seeking. Conflict avoidance. Not because everyone had a terrible childhood.

Because everyone had a childhood. And childhood is messy. It’s never perfect.

We all entered adulthood having been shaped by something. And now we’re raising children from everything we’ve experienced, learned, believed, and become. That’s Generational Legacy Work.

It’s the space where we can notice what we want to carry forward, what we might want to do differently, and where God may still be growing, healing, refining, and redeeming us.

That’s what you’ll find here.

I’ve come to believe parenting has this strange way of doing three things at once.

• It invites us to understand the child in front of us. That’s Behind the Behavior.

• It challenges us to parent that child with wisdom and purpose. That’s Parenting With Purpose.

• It draws us back to the Father, who is still shaping us while we shape them. That’s Generational Legacy Work.

You don’t have to start at the beginning. Start with the question you’re asking today.

1. Why is my child doing this?

2. What am I supposed to do about it?

3. Why is this particular part of parenting so hard for me?

We’ll look underneath the behavior. We’ll ask what psychology and development can teach us. We’ll bring it back to biblical wisdom. And we’ll leave room for the possibility that while we’re busy raising our children, God may be doing something in us, too.

Because we’re shaping hearts. We’re building legacies. We’re raising them while He’s still redeeming our stories.

Summary:

• The behavior frustrating you the most may actually be a weakness signal.

• Every temperament has predictable weaknesses when its core values get bumped.

• Parents can learn to notice the signal, name the need, and nurture back toward strengths.

I sat on a park bench, enjoying the breeze while my son played nearby, as a weary mother next to me did her best to answer her young child’s questions.

If I had to guess, it was round seventeen “whys.” Why did they have to leave? Why now? Why couldn’t they stay a little longer? Why couldn’t they do whatever came next another day?

You could tell Mom was trying. She didn’t want to snap. She was answering calmly. But she was also running out of answers (and patience).

What she needed was a lifeline. A boundary that could honor her child’s natural desire to understand without allowing seventeen rounds of why to derail the entire afternoon.

And then, almost on cue, her older daughter bounded over. “I figured out how to get my own library card! Now you don’t have to worry about how many books I check out or whether they’re late because they’ll all be under my name.”

Mom sighed. Her daughter’s ingenious solution meant she’d missed the point of the discipline.

I smiled to myself, wanting desperately to give this mother a helpful lifeline:

• One child desperately wanted to understand the boundary. The Analyzer.

• The other had simply found a way around it. The Mover.

Welcome to temperament! Once you see it, it changes the way you parent.

When Their Wiring Bumps Into Your Boundary

Last week, we talked about the strengths hidden inside our children’s temperaments. But temperament has another side. Every temperament has predictable ways of responding when something important to them feels threatened, blocked, rushed, controlled, or overwhelmed.

And those responses aren’t always pretty.

• The Connector may turn on the charm, exaggerate how much energy they must burn off unless you want them to be bouncing at bedtime, or try to make the whole thing funny enough that perhaps you’ll forget you said it was time to leave.

• The Mover, who values action and accomplishment, may challenge the boundary, find the loophole, or let you know (with a certain tone) exactly what they think about your decision and why they have a better idea.

• The Analyzer, who values order, accuracy, and understanding, may ask question after question after question, growing more and more distressed with each vague answer we offer, and

• The Keeper may not argue at all. Give them three instructions at once: 1) gather your things, 2) put the trucks away, 3) dump the sand out of your shoes, and suddenly they seem to move at approximately the speed of refrigerated honey. Or they stop moving altogether.

This is where we often become incredibly frustrated as parents (or at least I do). We default to common questions: Why can’t you just listen? Why does everything have to become an argument? Why do I have to ask you five times? Why can’t you just go with the flow?

While those questions are valid, it rarely gets us where we need to go. In fact, the child often digs in, and the signal becomes a full-on battle of wits and manipulation.

So there’s another question worth asking: What if the behavior that’s driving me crazy is also giving me actionable information?

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Weakness Can Be a Signal

We’ve all experienced this. There are circumstances, and sometimes people, that seem to bring out the worst in us.

We stare in the mirror, loathing our response, wondering, Who was that version of me? Where did he/she come from, and how do I stop him/her from showing up inside of me again?

That “worst version” of you often shows up when something you deeply value has been bumped up against (or steamrolled!)

• If you value connection, feeling ignored can make you work awfully hard to regain someone’s attention, affection, or approval.

• If you value efficiency, being slowed down can make you impatient, bossy, and demanding.

• If you value accuracy, being rushed into a decision without enough information can make you anxious or rigid.

• If you value peace, being pushed into conflict can make you want to disappear into the couch cushions until the whole thing blows over.

Children experience these collisions too. The difference is that they don’t yet have decades of experience recognizing what is happening inside themselves. So it comes out super sideways.

Tone. Volume. Twenty questions. Requiring perfection. Charm. Exaggeration. Avoidance. Procrastination. Stubbornness.

These are the behaviors we tend to experience as weaknesses. But with kids, I prefer to think of them as signals. Seeing behavior as a signal helps us recognize it as a cry for help.

Signals tell us: Something about this moment is bumping against this child’s wiring, and they don’t yet know what to do with it.

That changes what I do next.

Because This Is How Our Father Sees Us

One night, after the altercation had passed, my tearful son was feeling pretty low about how he’d responded in the moment. I had only been trying to help move the situation along, but it bumped up against his need for order and perfection.

As I rubbed his back, I offered my own stories of really mucking up a situation with my tendency to get things done efficiently. And in that moment, the Holy Spirit dropped in my heart:

“You know what the most remarkable thing is? God, our Heavenly Father, sees us at our worst: our impatience and control tendencies; our anxiety and avoidance; our self-ambition and vain conceit; even our stubborn laziness. And He still calls us His own. Not just that, but throughout Scripture, God repeatedly calls people by name, reminds them who they are, anchors their worth in Him, equips them for what He has asked them to do, and calls forward strengths they sometimes cannot yet see in themselves. He doesn’t confuse our worst moment with our identity.”

That’s a beautiful model for how God parents us, and it’s comforting to remember that His model guides how we can parent our children.

Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” Isaiah 30:12 NIV

We get to offer them a small reflection of that same grace.

I see what’s happening. This isn’t who you are. Let me help you find your way back to who you’re becoming.

That’s very different from simply making a behavior stop.

Don’t Remove the Boundary. Change how you help them through it.

This is important because understanding temperament does not mean rearranging the entire family around a child’s preferences.

The Analyzer doesn’t get unlimited questions. The Mover doesn’t get to take over. The Connector doesn’t charm you into another thirty minutes at the park. And the Keeper doesn’t get to avoid every uncomfortable demand. Instead, we can make small pivots that help children practice moving through the very situations that are difficult for them.

• Give your Analyzer three really good whys: “You can ask me your three most important questions. Think carefully about which ones you want answered.” The boundary remains. But now their need for understanding has somewhere productive to go.

• Give your Mover something appropriate to own: “We’re still leaving the library with ten books. You can decide which ten make the cut.” They don’t control the boundary. But their decisiveness has somewhere productive to go.

• Give your Connector a little fun that moves everyone forward: “I bet you can’t get everything into the car before I finish this song.” We’re not letting charm hold the afternoon hostage. We’re redirecting that social energy toward the next thing.

• And give your Keeper one manageable step: “Don’t worry about all three things yet. First, let’s put the trucks away.” The expectation hasn’t disappeared. We’ve simply made the path toward it feel possible.

Suddenly, the strength that was getting lost underneath the behavior becomes the tool that helps them move forward.

Notice It. Name It. Nurture It.

This is where Notice It · Name It · Nurture It becomes incredibly useful in the day-to-day. It’s the pattern we just established in the examples above, and it’s the framework you can use in everyday moments of parenting.

· Notice It ·

Notice the signal. Not just what is my child doing? Ask: What happened right before this? Where did the collision happen?

Maybe your Analyzer was asked to move forward without enough information. Maybe your Mover encountered a boundary they couldn’t control. Maybe your Connector had to leave something fun. Maybe your Keeper suddenly faced several demands at once.

We’re looking for the pattern, not assigning a character flaw.

· Name It ·

Now help them put language around what’s happening. “I know you want more information before we decide.” (The Analyzer) “I can tell you really wanted some say in making this decision.” (The Mover) “I know you’re disappointed that the fun is over.” (The Connector) “That felt like a lot of instructions all at once.” (The Keeper)

Those are statements of truth that allow a child to feel seen and known. The boundary doesn’t move. They simply know now that you see them in life’s challenging moments, and you’re there to keep them safe, soothe them, and support them. Save, seen, soothed, supported. Those are the core elements of secure attachment, which make nurturing healthy behavior possible.

· Nurture It ·

This is where we call the strength forward. Give them something productive to do with the wiring that is currently working against them. Let the Analyzer use their problem-solving. Let the Mover use their decisiveness. Let the Connector use their social energy. Let the Keeper use their steadiness. It’s almost like throwing out a life preserver.

Their behavior sent up the flare: I’m struggling here.

And instead of meeting weakness with more weakness, we reach for the strength we know is already there. We help them get their feet underneath them. Then we give them a do-over so they can try again. That’s how new behavior is developed.

Eventually, They Learn to See the Signal Too

When our children are little, we do a lot of this work for them. Our role is to scaffold support, and it looks much more robust when they’re younger. We notice the pattern. We give it language. We help them find another response.

But we’re not supposed to do that forever. We slowly step back, removing scaffolding in places where they are showing capability, and we watch them grow.

• Eventually, we want the Analyzer to recognize: I’m asking the same question six different ways because uncertainty is making me uncomfortable.

• We want the Mover to recognize: I’m getting louder because I don’t like that I’m not in control.

• The Connector: I’m trying really hard to win everyone back because I don’t like where this interaction is going.

• The Keeper: I’m avoiding this because conflict feels uncomfortable.

That’s the long game. Self-awareness. Self-regulation. And social skills.

We aren’t raising children who behave appropriately simply because Dad or Mom is standing nearby. That’s coercion. We are raising children who begin to understand themselves well enough to recognize when their wiring is getting pulled into weakness, and know how to find their way back to strength.

The Words We Use Matter

Sitting on that playground bench, I wanted so badly to hand that mother a lifeline.

Not because she was doing anything wrong, but because I could see how tired she was, and I knew it didn’t have to be that way.

I kept thinking how much easier these moments become when we recognize the signal. You don’t need seventeen more answers. You don’t need to overpower the Mover. You don’t need to out-negotiate the Connector. You don’t need to drag the Keeper along. Sometimes you simply need the right words to speak to the child standing in front of you.

And that’s where we’re going next.

Next week, we’ll talk about the Golden Words for each temperament: the words that speak directly to what each child values and help call them from weakness back toward strength.

Because when you’re standing in the library, the grocery store, the playground, or your own kitchen, wondering why you and this child keep butting heads, there may be more happening underneath the behavior than you realize.

Notice the signal. Name what is happening. Nurture the strength that can help them through it.

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Because our children’s hardest moments don’t have to define them.

Sometimes they’re simply showing us where they still need help becoming who God created them to be.

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But what if the tantrum isn’t actually the problem?

In today’s Little Moment, we’re looking underneath the meltdown at what a child’s brain is actually learning when the answer stays no, and why helping them through disappointment is very different from rescuing them from it.

Notice It. Name It. Nurture It.

And if you’ve had a Little Moment of your own lately—the kind that left you thinking, What was I supposed to do with that?—leave it in the comments or message me. It may become a future episode.

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Every episode is based on real parenting moments submitted by listeners like you!

“Why can’t she just sit still and stop joking around?” Our mind goes to attention-seeking, high-energy, and unfocused.

“But she’s always telling her siblings what to do, and she never listens to my correction.” We think strong-willed, bossy, and too independent.

“His incessant ‘why’s’ are driving me crazy. I just need him to obey the first time, move it along, and quit giving me attitude.” We think too in-the-weeds, perfectionist, and sensitive.

“I never know what’s wrong with him. I just asked him to put the dishes away, let the dog out, and re-do the lopsided clothes hanging in his closet. Now he’s just dragging his feet.” We think stubborn, lazy, and conflict-avoidant.

But some of the very behaviors that exhaust us in childhood actually have potential to become tremendous strengths in adulthood. The child who constantly seeks attention may grow into someone especially skilled at bringing people together in tough moments. The child determined to do things their own way takes the initiative to lead confidently without fear of failure. The child who questions every detail becomes the careful thinker who avoids catastrophe by catching the key detail everyone else missed. And the child who digs their heels in actually becomes the steady, grounded leader who isn’t easily pushed around by shifting sands.

That’s why our goal cannot be to squash the behavior. We must help them mold it into healthy strengths. But how?

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Inborn Strengths Start Off Messy

An interesting finding in the psychology literature is that when parents intentionally recognize and encourage the strengths they see in their kids in early childhood, then as teens, they report greater life satisfaction and lower stress. But we can’t miss the important part. It wasn’t about having strengths. We all have strengths. It was about learning to use those strengths well.

Think about a new puppy. Whether you’ve had one yourself or watched a friend survive the puppy years, it gives a helpful frame of reference. Puppies are playful, energetic, and fun-loving. They want to jump on you, lick you, and constantly bark to get your attention. (It’s safe to say most puppies are Connectors). But there’s a time and place for those things, like the dog park or the backyard. Not at the dinner table or in the middle of the home improvement store. So you train them. You don’t extinguish their fun-loving nature; you just harness it.

You don’t want your Connector to stop being an energetic people person; you just don’t want them doing it at 11:37 pm.

You don’t want your Mover to stop leading the charge; you just want them to make sure they don’t steamroll everyone else in the process.

You don’t want your Analyzer to stop asking questions; you just want them to realize when they have enough information to move on to the next step.

You don’t want your Keeper to lose their desire for harmony; you just want them to learn that keeping the peace sometimes requires speaking up.

Every temperament has a core set of strengths. But until children develop the complementary skills to manage them, those strengths can easily go into overdrive.

Strengths in Overdrive

You’re driving through a mountain pass when you see the yellow sign indicating steep grades ahead. You have three options:

1. Let ‘er rip and fly down that mountainside at breakneck speed, hoping for the best

2. Ride the brakes, hoping you don’t smell them smoking by the time you reach the bottom, because then what good will they be at the next stoplight

3. Downshift into low gear, allowing the strength of the engine to control your speed without destroying your brakes.

Our goal isn’t to take away the power. It’s to teach our children how to use it without letting it run away with them.

With our kids, it looks like making excuses (Oh, that’s just the way he/she is), demanding better behavior (Quit being like that! You’re so bossy/talkative/annoying/stubborn. Can’t you just behave?) or slowing the moment down to help them consider another approach (Hey! I love that you’re so …How about you try to…?) Our goal isn’t to take away the power. It’s to teach our children how to use it without letting it run away with them.

For example:

• For the Connector: “I love your energy. Look around the room. Is this a high-energy moment or a low-energy moment?”

• For the Mover: “You’re a great leader. You’ve told me what you think should happen. Before you decide, tell me what your sister thinks should happen.”

• For the Analyzer: “Being inquisitive is a good skill, especially for important decisions. What information do you still need to decide what to bring with you, and what information would just be nice to have?”

• For the Keeper: “I know you want everyone to be okay. But I want to know what you think before we decide what everyone else wants.”

Every strength needs a complementary skill to keep it from becoming a liability.

What This Can Become

And this is why all that coaching is worth it.

The Connector who once interrupted every conversation can become the person who notices who’s standing alone and draws them in.

The Mover who once insisted everyone play the game their way can become the person willing to step forward when everyone else is afraid.

The Analyzer whose endless questions once slowed everyone down can become the person who notices what everyone else missed.

The Keeper who once seemed impossible to hurry can become the steady presence everyone looks for when life gets chaotic.

The very behavior exhausting you today may contain the raw material for something beautiful tomorrow. But raw material still needs shaping.

Parenting with Purpose

· Notice It ·

When a behavior gets under your skin this week, resist the urge to immediately label it. Instead, ask: What strength might be underneath this? Is the child interrupting because they naturally connect and communicate? Taking over because they’re decisive and quick to act? Asking twelve questions because they’re trying to solve the problem thoroughly? Digging in because they value steadiness and don’t shift easily?

Then look for the pattern. One behavior doesn’t reveal temperament, but repeated patterns across situations can help us recognize the strengths a child naturally reaches for.

· Name It ·

Start naming a child’s strengths in everyday conversation, especially when they are using the strength well. “You are so ___,” or “I appreciate how ___.” In moments when the strength starts to go into overdrive, name the strength along with the complementary skills that needs to be developed to manage that strength well.

• The Connector: “I see how much you love bringing energy and fun to the people around you. That’s one of your strengths. Now let’s work on noticing when other people need a little less energy from you.”

• The Mover: “I see how determined you are to make this happen. That’s one of your strengths. Now let’s work on bringing other people along with you.”

• The Analyzer: “I see how carefully you think things through. That’s one of your strengths. Now let’s work on knowing when you have enough information to move forward.”

• For the Keeper: “I see how much you care about keeping the peace. That’s one of your strengths. Now let’s work on sharing what you think, even when someone else might disagree.”

· Nurture It ·

Don’t wait for the strength to go into overdrive and then correct it. Give your child low-stakes opportunities to practice using it well. Identify one unique task or activity for each child this week, but make it something that naturally requires them to step up and use their strengths. If you need the table set for dinner, ask the Mover to get everyone on board and helping. If you need to carefully weigh a plan or schedule for the week, ask the Analyzer to weigh in. Leverage the Keeper to provide their opinion on a challenge in the week, because they bring good perspective. And if the family needs a good laugh or a moment of connection, invite the Connector to tell about the funniest moment at school that week or a fun story they recently heard.

Every child has strengths that naturally show up. At first, they can look pretty messy. Our job isn’t to squash the raw material because we don’t like its immature expression. It’s to recognize what’s underneath it, provide the guardrails it needs, and help that strength grow up.

What About Weaknesses?

Yes, there’s another side to all of this.

What happens when a child doesn’t know how to use these strengths well, or when something they deeply value feels out of reach?

Children are remarkably good at discovering what works in their relationships. They learn which behaviors get people to respond, back down, give in, pay attention, or leave them alone. It’s not that they’re sitting around plotting how to manipulate us. It’s simply that they have learned how to get their needs met in not-ideal ways.

The Connector may learn to influence through charm and flattery. The Mover through tone and volume. The Analyzer through mood and silence. The Keeper through procrastination and stubborn resistance.

Those can easily become the behaviors we call their “weaknesses.”

But next week, we’re going to look underneath them because understanding what a child is trying to accomplish through a behavior gives us a much better starting point for teaching them a healthier way to get there.

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Summary:

• Temperament value systems can help explain child behavior in new ways

• Each of the four temperaments holds a core value system: when met, strengths bloom; when violated, weaknesses take root

• Recognizing temperament starts with 2 coordinates. From there, their value systems make more sense.

Meltdowns. Shutdowns. Showdowns. Tantrums. You simply told your kids to put their toys away, and now you’ve got the Revolutionary War in the playroom.

Last week, we described how temperament holds an essential key to understanding behavior. But if you read that article and walked away thinking, “So you’re telling me I have to say the same thing, a different way to each kid; who has time for that?!” then hear me out.

You don’t need four different scripts for everything you say.

What we’re going after is a simple reframe that shifts communication in ways that avoid inadvertent conflict and aim to inspire, empower, and encourage.

At first, understanding temperament often happens in hindsight: Ohhh, that’s why they reacted that way. But those hindsight moments add up until you recognize the temperament need before the conflict happens and shift your phrasing preemptively. What once were firestorms never even spark.

It’s simply a matter of speaking the language of their core values, which starts with identifying their temperament.

Dialing In the Coordinates

My brother took his family camping last month in the small Colorado town where we vacationed as children. He found this awesome little spot on top of a mountain.

I decided to follow suit and take my son there over Labor Day; only, I didn’t know where “there” was. “On top of Bachelor Loop” narrowed it down to about 17 miles, and somewhere between 8,900 and 13,000 feet. So I messaged my brother: “Can you send me a pin of the coordinates?”

(Sorry, I just can’t share those coordinates. They’re too precious. But here’s a picture of sunset!)

Recognizing temperament works much the same. Rather than memorizing a long list of left turns, right turns, stoplights, and speed limits, let me just give you two simple coordinates to start with:

1. Does your child tend to process internally or externally?

2. Are they naturally more oriented toward tasks or people?

Those two coordinates give us four general orientations:

• External + People = The Connector

• External + Task = The Mover

• Internal + Task = The Analyzer

• Internal + People = The Keeper

Once you have your bearings, you can ask the important question:

What matters to this child?

That’s where temperament value systems come in.

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The Values That Drive Us

Each temperament tends to value certain things. Often, our child’s disproportionate reaction makes more sense when we recognize what is being misunderstood beneath it.

The Connector: External + People

Values: Connection & Fun

The Connector processes life outwardly and through people. They talk things out, seek interaction, and often find an experience more enjoyable simply because someone else is part of it.

Tell them you’re going to the park: “Who’s coming?”

Give them an assignment: “Can I work with a partner?”

Ask how school went and you get an entire story about Ava, Liam, and what Sophie did at lunch.

For the Connector, people aren’t beside the experience. People are the experience. That’s why exclusion, disapproval, or a relational rupture can feel much bigger to them than we expect.

Luke’s Gospel helps us appreciate this people-oriented lens. Again and again, Luke draws our attention toward people and their stories—particularly those who might otherwise be overlooked.

The Mover: External + Task

Values: Purpose & Control

The Mover also engages outwardly, but their attention tends toward action: What are we doing? Where are we going? What can I make happen?

They want to participate, accomplish, decide, and move things forward.

Give them an appropriate way to have some say, and the entire interaction can change. This is why two acceptable choices can completely change an interaction: “Do you want to shower before dinner or after?”

It isn’t manipulation. You’ve simply honored something they deeply value: agency.

It also explains why micromanagement can produce such a strong reaction. Underneath “Stop telling me what to do!” may be something closer to: Please let me experience myself as capable. What looks like bossiness or defiance may actually be a child fighting for something they deeply value: agency and purpose.

Mark’s fast-moving, action-oriented Gospel gives us a helpful lens for appreciating this orientation toward action and movement.

The Analyzer: Internal + Task

Values: Order & Perfection

The Analyzer turns inward to process and tends to focus on information, details, accuracy, and getting things right.

This is the child who asks why, and then asks why about your why. They may need more time, more information, or seventeen attempts at tying their shoe because it still doesn’t feel right.

So “Don’t worry about it. Just do it!” may actually increase their distress.

They aren’t necessarily trying to make things difficult. Understanding and order help them know how to move forward.

Matthew’s structured, detail-rich Gospel helps us appreciate a lens that looks for order, patterns, and how the pieces fit together.

The Keeper: Internal + People

Values: Peace & Respect

The Keeper also processes internally, but their attention tends toward people and relational harmony.

These are often the children whose needs are easiest to miss because they don’t always speak up, often for fear of “rocking the boat”. They may simply go along, keep the peace, and prefer that everyone stop making things so complicated.

Often, they’re quietly watching the relational temperature of the room: Are we okay? Is everyone getting along? Can we please not make this a big thing?

They may accommodate, go with the flow, or keep their opinions to themselves to preserve peace.

Until something unexpectedly changes: “Actually, we’re not going home after school. We’re going somewhere else.”

Suddenly, the child who always seemed to “not care” shuts down, withdraws, and seems purposefully stubborn. Because predictability mattered more than we realized.

John’s slower, reflective Gospel—with its recurring themes of abiding, remaining, peace, and enduring relationship—helps us appreciate this orientation toward constancy and harmony.

When Values Collide

Conflict often happens when one person’s expectations, needs, or values collide with another’s. You’re thinking, We need to leave. Put your shoes on. Your Mover hears, I have no say. Your Connector thinks, But I wasn’t finished talking to you. Your Analyzer panics: Wait. Where are we going? How long will we be there? Your Keeper laments, But I thought we were staying home.

We’ll talk more about colliding temperaments in the coming weeks, but for now, what’s important is recognizing that the boundary doesn’t change. What does is our understanding of how they are responding and our efforts to communicate in ways that honor their intrinsically wired value system.

When we understand what matters underneath the reaction, we can communicate the same expectation in a way our child is better able to receive.

Practical Parenting for Today

This week, pay special attention to the moments when your child’s reaction seems bigger than the situation.

· NOTICE IT ·

Look for patterns: What happened immediately before the reaction? Did someone make the decision for them? Did they feel excluded? Did something stop making sense? Did the plan unexpectedly change?

· NAME IT ·

Before naming the behavior, try naming the possible value underneath it: Agency. Connection. Understanding. Stability. You don’t have to be certain. You’re forming a hypothesis, not reading your child’s mind.

· NURTURE IT ·

Then ask: How can I honor the value without surrendering the boundary? “I know you wanted to help decide. How about you decide <fill in the blank>?” (insert two choices) “I know you wanted to be included. What if you <fill in the blank>?” (insert idea) “I’ll explain what I know, and then we’re going to move forward even though we don’t know everything.” “I know you weren’t expecting this change. I’ll tell you what is staying the same.”

Temperament-informed parenting isn’t about giving children whatever they want. It’s about understanding what matters to them so we can communicate in ways that help them make healthy behavioral choices.

And the more you practice, the less this happens in hindsight, and the more you adapt what you’re asking or saying to match their underlying needs.

Next week, we’re going to look at the other side of these values—because the very things your child cares about most often become the soil where some of their greatest strengths begin to grow.

Share Heart Shapers, Legacy Makers

Want the full framework? The book is available on Amazon: Notice It · Name It · Nurture It

You’ve just finished giving the class instructions on the assignment. You conclude with, “You can work with a partner or independently. Just make sure you finish before lunch.”

One student immediately turns to a friend and starts talking about what they’re going to do together.

Another has already decided how the project should be done and is explaining the plan to everyone at the table.

A third is still reading the directions because there is one part that seems unclear, and they want to make sure they understand exactly what the teacher expects before they begin.

The fourth quietly gets started, perfectly content with whatever option creates the least disruption.

Same teacher. Same classroom. Same assignment. Four very different responses.

We tend to notice these differences quickly as teachers. The child who seems to need an explanation for everything. The one who talks through every transition. The one who wants to be in charge. The one who rarely causes trouble but may disappear into the background.

Eventually, we start developing descriptions for them.

“She’s very social.”

“He’s strong-willed.”

“She’s a perfectionist.”

“He’s so easygoing.”

Those observations aren’t necessarily wrong. But they become much more useful when we understand what may be underneath them. That is where temperament comes in.

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Temperament is the “how” of behavior

Temperament refers to biologically influenced differences in the ways people tend to respond to their environment. Researchers have studied temperament through several different models, but across those models we see recurring differences in things like emotional intensity, activity level, sociability, adaptability, persistence, sensitivity, inhibition, and self-regulation.

In other words, children don’t simply differ in what they experience. They differ in how they tend to experience and respond to it.

Temperament is all about how we interpret and interact with the world around us.

Some children approach something unfamiliar almost immediately. Others stand back and observe. Some respond intensely when they’re frustrated. Others seem relatively unruffled. Some are highly sensitive to mistakes, details, or changes in expectations. Others barely notice. Some naturally seek interaction. Others need considerably less of it.

These patterns begin remarkably early in development, although the way they are expressed changes as children mature and their brains become increasingly capable of regulating those natural tendencies.

But temperament is not an excuse for behavior. A child who naturally has a strong drive for control still has to learn how to respect other people’s boundaries. A highly social child still has to learn when talking is appropriate. A child who dislikes conflict still needs to develop assertiveness. A child with high standards still has to learn how to tolerate mistakes.

Temperament gives us information about where the child may be starting from before people, events, and life experiences form their personality.

And when we know the starting point, we become much better at teaching the skills that need to develop next.

The classroom makes temperament visible

One of the reasons temperament becomes so interesting in schools is that classrooms constantly place children in situations that expose individual differences.

Think about what we’re asking children to do all day.

Wait. Transition. Work with people they didn’t choose. Follow someone else’s plan. Perform in front of others. Tolerate mistakes. Share materials. Accept feedback. Start something difficult. Stop something enjoyable. Navigate noise. Handle competition. Manage disappointment. Ask for help. Solve conflict.

Every one of those experiences interacts with temperament. That is why two children can encounter the exact same classroom expectation and experience it very differently.

When we understand temperament, we gain another question to ask when we’re trying to Notice It · Name It · Nurture It.

We can NOTICE what we’re seeing. We can NAME what might be driving it. Then we can NURTURE the skills the child needs without treating their basic temperament as something that needs correcting.

When it comes to temperament, you may already be familiar with the classical literature from Hippocrates and Galen, who named them Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholic and Phlegmatic.

For the Classroom Color Code, I use those familiar temperament patterns but give them teacher- and kid-friendly names: The Connector, The Mover, The Analyzer, and The Keeper.

These aren’t boxes we’re trying to squeeze children into. Most children will recognize parts of themselves in more than one, and personality is far more complex than four categories. Think of these instead as lenses that help us notice recurring patterns in what children value, what tends to motivate them, where their natural strengths emerge, and where those same strengths may become challenging when they are immature or stretched too far.

And perhaps most importantly, they help us understand why the words that motivate one student can completely miss another.

The Connector: “Experience this with me.”

You usually don’t have to look very hard to find the Connector.

They are often the children who experience school relationally. They notice who is sitting beside them, who laughed at the joke, who wants to be their partner and whether everyone else seems excited about what is happening.

Connection and fun matter enormously to them.

Needs and Desires

Underneath that orientation, you will often find a strong desire for approval, acceptance, affection and attention. That doesn’t mean every Connector is constantly demanding attention. It means relationships carry significant motivational weight for them.

Strengths

This can produce some wonderful classroom strengths.

Connectors often bring enthusiasm into a room. They can be expressive, encouraging, imaginative and socially courageous. They may be the child who welcomes the new student, volunteers enthusiastically, turns an ordinary assignment into something entertaining or gets an entire group excited about a project.

Weaknesses

But developing brains don’t always know how to manage strengths wisely yet.

The desire for connection can become talking when they should be listening. Spontaneity can become impulsivity. Enthusiasm can become distraction. Their ability to entertain others can become attention-seeking, and their attraction to whatever is interesting right now can make follow-through considerably harder.

If we only see the behavior, we may spend all day saying, “Stop talking. Pay attention. Quit distracting everyone.”

Understanding temperament allows us to recognize what the child is reaching toward while still teaching appropriate boundaries around how they reach for it.

Golden Words

Golden words are language that speaks toward something the child deeply values in such a way that inspires them and empowers them toward their strengths. Relational language often lands particularly well with a Connector:

• “Come do this with me.”

• “I love your enthusiasm.”

• “Tell me about it.”

• “You bring great energy to this group.”

We aren’t bribing them with attention. We’re learning how to communicate through a channel that already matters to them.

The Mover: “Let me handle this.”

The Mover often walks into a classroom looking for agency.

These are the students who want to know what we’re doing, where we’re going and, quite frequently, whether they can have some say in how we get there.

Power and control matter to them, although I want us to be careful with those words because adults tend to hear them negatively. A healthy sense of power means, I can affect what happens. A healthy sense of control means, My choices matter.

Needs & Desires

Movers are often driven by action, accomplishment, appreciation and accountability. They like movement toward a goal. They enjoy seeing something happen because they made it happen.

Strengths

This is why they can become extraordinary classroom leaders.

They may take initiative before anyone asks. They make decisions quickly. They organize the group, volunteer for responsibility, defend an idea and keep pushing toward the finish line when everyone else has lost interest.

Weaknesses

That same leadership strength can become bossiness.

Confidence can become argumentativeness. Independence can become resistance. Decisiveness can become impatience. Their desire to accomplish something can become such a strong focus on winning or being right that relationships get bulldozed along the way.

This is where temperament changes the way we interpret the interaction.

A Mover who responds to an instruction with, “But why can’t I do it this way?” isn’t necessarily communicating, I don’t respect you. They may be communicating, I want some ownership here. We still need the boundary. Sometimes the answer really is, “Because this is what we’re doing.”

Golden Words

Whenever appropriate, we can build legitimate agency into the boundary.

• “You can start with the first three problems or the last three.”

• “What’s your plan?”

• “I trust you to handle this.”

• “You’ve got a strong idea. Show me how you’re going to make it work.”

The goal isn’t to win a power struggle with a Mover. It’s to teach a child with a strong drive toward power how to use personal power responsibly.

The Analyzer: “Help me understand it.”

While the Mover may be ready to begin before you’ve finished explaining, the Analyzer may still have a question. And then another one. Because something doesn’t quite add up.

Needs & Desires

Analyzers tend to speak the language of order and perfection. Accuracy, answers, assurance and appreciation often matter deeply to them. They want to understand the expectations, and many care a great deal about doing things correctly.

Strengths

These are often wonderfully thoughtful students.

They notice details other children overlook. They plan. They analyze. They organize information. They may produce exceptionally careful work because “good enough” doesn’t feel particularly satisfying when they know they could make it better.

Weaknesses

But high standards in a developing child can become perfectionism.

Carefulness can turn into hesitation. Analysis becomes overthinking. A desire for accuracy becomes frustration when directions are ambiguous. A child may spend so much time worrying about whether something will be right that they struggle to begin at all.

Then we see an especially interesting classroom paradox. The child who appears unmotivated may actually care too much about the outcome. “Just do it!” is unlikely to solve that problem.

Golden Words

• Sometimes the Analyzer needs clarity. “Let me give you the details.”

• Sometimes they need permission to tolerate imperfection. “This is a first draft. It isn’t supposed to be perfect yet.”

• And sometimes they need their carefulness recognized as a strength while simultaneously learning that a strength does not have to control them.

• “I can see how much thought you put into this. Now we’re going to practice deciding when it’s finished.”

We aren’t trying to make the Analyzer care less.

We’re helping them develop enough flexibility that their high standards can serve them rather than trap them.

The Keeper: “Can we keep things steady?”

Then there is the student teachers sometimes worry about least. The Keeper.

They aren’t usually campaigning to lead the group. They may not be telling elaborate stories during instruction or agonizing visibly over every detail.

They tend to value harmony and respect.

Needs & Desires

Agreement, appreciation, acceptance and accommodation can carry significant weight for them.

Strengths

Many Keepers are wonderfully steady people. They can be patient, loyal, dependable and cooperative. They often make excellent partners because they aren’t constantly fighting to get their own way.

Weaknesses

And that can make them very easy to overlook. Because compliance isn’t the same thing as confidence. A child who goes along with everyone else’s idea may genuinely be flexible. They may also be learning that keeping the peace is safer than expressing what they actually think.

A preference for harmony can become conflict avoidance. Patience can slide into passivity. Steadiness can become resistance to change. Their willingness to accommodate others can mean their own voice rarely enters the conversation.

The Keeper therefore may need something very different from the Mover.

Golden Words

Instead of containing their voice, we may need to invite it.

• “I’d like to hear what you think.”

• “You can disagree with someone and still be kind.”

• “You don’t have to rush.”

• “Thank you for being someone people can depend on.”

We want to preserve that beautiful steadiness while helping the child discover that harmony doesn’t require disappearing.

Strengths and weaknesses may be closer than we think

This may be my favorite part of understanding temperament.

We often talk about children’s strengths and weaknesses as though they are entirely separate lists. But watch what happens when we place them beside each other.

• The Connector’s sociability can become distraction.

• The Mover’s leadership can become control.

• The Analyzer’s conscientiousness can become perfectionism.

• The Keeper’s peacefulness can become avoidance.

Sometimes the behavior frustrating us is a strength that hasn’t learned its boundaries yet. So, instead of trying to remove the characteristic, we can begin teaching the child how to steward it.

• The Connector doesn’t need to become less relational. They need to learn when and how to connect.

• The Mover doesn’t need to become passive. They need to learn how to lead without controlling.

• The Analyzer doesn’t need to abandon high standards. They need to learn flexibility and tolerance for mistakes.

• The Keeper doesn’t need to become confrontational. They need to learn that healthy relationships can survive disagreement.

That’s developmental work. And classrooms give children thousands of opportunities to practice it.

Golden Words aren’t magic words

I use the term Golden Words because there are certain kinds of phrases that tend to resonate particularly strongly with each temperament.

But I don’t want teachers walking away thinking, Great. Bethany gave me the cheat codes. I’ll say these five phrases and everyone will behave.

If only.

Golden Words work because of what they communicate.

• To the Connector: I see you and enjoy your presence.

• To the Mover: I recognize your capability and agency.

• To the Analyzer: I respect your thoughtfulness and will give you enough information to feel equipped.

• To the Keeper: I value your steadiness, and your voice matters here too.

This is why the exact sentence matters less than learning the language. Once you understand what a child tends to value, you begin noticing opportunities to speak that language naturally. And that can change a relationship.

The goal isn’t to teach four different classrooms

Whenever I teach temperament, I want to make one thing especially clear: understanding individual differences does not mean creating 25 different sets of expectations.

Children still need boundaries. They still need accountability. They still need to learn how to function in environments that won’t always cater to their preferences. In fact, temperament gives us a better framework for doing exactly that.

We can hold the same classroom boundary while recognizing that different children may need different pathways toward meeting it.

• “It’s time to work independently” may disappoint the Connector.

• “You need to follow these directions” may frustrate the Mover.

• “Turn it in even though you aren’t completely satisfied with it” may stretch the Analyzer.

• “You need to tell your partner that you disagree” may be deeply uncomfortable for the Keeper.

Good teaching doesn’t eliminate those moments. It recognizes the developmental opportunity inside them.

Notice It. Name It. Nurture It.

This is ultimately why temperament belongs in our understanding of classroom behavior.

When a student’s behavior catches your attention, NOTICE IT before you immediately interpret it. What actually happened? What was being asked of this child? What changed? Who was involved?

Then NAME IT. What skill might still be developing? What does this child seem to be protecting, pursuing or needing? Could temperament be influencing how they are experiencing this situation?

And then NURTURE IT. Hold the boundary. Teach the skill. Offer the support. Use language that the child can hear.

Because the purpose of understanding temperament isn’t to say, Well, he’s a Mover. That’s just how he is.

It’s to say, Ah. Now I understand why this particular situation may be harder for him and what I can help him learn through it.

That is an entirely different way of seeing classroom behavior.

Over the course of a school year, you will watch these patterns appear hundreds of times: during group projects, transitions, correction, competition, difficult assignments, friendship problems and ordinary Tuesday mornings when everyone is supposed to be quietly finishing their math.

The more we understand the child standing in front of us, the less likely we are to mistake difference for defiance, hesitation for laziness, enthusiasm for disrespect or agreeableness for having no needs at all.

We begin to see the person underneath the behavior.

And once we see them more clearly, we become much better equipped to teach them what comes next.

If you want to see how this comes to life in the classroom, head over to www.YouTube.com/@TheKairosBridge for classroom case examples

If your campus or classroom wants to go deeper on this topic, head over to www.TheKairosBridge.com/teachers to schedule a call and map a custom workshop for your school!

Download your copy of The Classroom Color Code for free!

Summary:

• Children are born with different ways of interpreting and interacting with the world, so the same parenting lands very differently for each child

• Temperament is a starting point, not a label or destiny; it can help us understand behavior so we can parent with purpose

• Understanding your child’s natural wiring helps you respond to who they actually are, not who you expect them to be.

“Go get dressed. We need to leave in ten minutes.”

One kid immediately asks, “Why do we have to leave now?” Then negotiates whether ten minutes really means ten minutes.

Another is halfway upstairs before they’re side-tracked by their sister doing something fun. They stop to talk, forget why they went upstairs, and simply return seven minutes later wearing only one sock.

Another wants to know where you’re going, how long you’ll be there, what they should wear. And, oh by the way, yesterday you said y’all were leaving at 10:30, not 10.

The last kid just says, “Okay.” But doesn’t actually get moving.

Same parent. Same instruction. Same house. Four completely different responses.

And if you’ve ever noticed that the parenting strategy that works beautifully with one child seems to make another child dig in even harder, there is a really fun explanation!

Share Heart Shapers · Legacy Makers

Your child wasn’t born as a blank slate

Parents shape children enormously. Our relationships, expectations, modeling, discipline, culture, and experiences all matter. But children aren’t blank slates waiting for us to create their personalities. They actually arrive in this world with an encoded wiring called temperament.

Developmental psychologist Mary Rothbart describes temperament in terms of differences in how a child reacts and self-regulates to the world around them in terms of emotions, activity, and attention. The fascinating thing is that it arrives on the scene earlier than you might imagine: at birth! Before the world ever has a chance to influence the typical elements of personality, your child arrives with a temperament.

Read Rothbart’s “Temperament, Development, and Personality”

It comes down to this: children are wired with differences in how they tend to experience and respond to the world.

Some move quickly toward novelty. Others hang back. Some react intensely. Others barely show what they’re feeling. Some are highly active. Some are naturally more measured. Some persist. Some shift. Some need time before warming up.

And those differences affect the parenting relationship because your child isn’t simply responding to what you do. They’re responding to what you do through the way they experience the world.

That explains what we often observe in families with multiple siblings raised in the same home by the same parents, yet come out so different. It’s because equal parenting will not always produce equal responses.

Parenting is a custom job!

Four different ways of moving through the world

For this series, I’m going to give you four memorable patterns for thinking about temperament. For those familiar with the ancient works of Hippocrates and Galen, you’ll know them as choleric, sanguine, melancholic, and phlegmatic. But let’s call the The Mover, The Connector, The Analyzer, and The Keeper.

These aren’t boxes to put kids in, labels to slap on them, and certainly not excuses for unhealthy behavior.

But they are a key to understanding what each individual child needs to thrive. Think of them as four ways children may characteristically move through the world:

The Mover tends toward action, agency and influence.

The Connector tends toward people, relationship and shared experience.

The Analyzer tends toward understanding, accuracy and preparation.

The Keeper tends toward stability, harmony and consistency.

If you recognize these in yourself, it’s no surprise! What we see in childhood carries into adulthood. It’s our wiring!

You may even recognize tendencies from more than one of them that show up in your or your child’s behavior, and that’s no surprise because we have elements of each. But overall, we have a primary temperament that influences how we perceive and interact with the world.

Contemporary temperament science is actually much more dimensional than the old idea that every human being fits neatly into one of four types. But these four patterns give us useful language for beginning to notice something parents have observed for centuries:

Children don’t all notice the same things, value the same things, or respond to the same experiences in the same way.

And interestingly, Scripture gives us a beautiful illustration of that.

Four men. One Jesus. Four accounts.

Think about the four Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John tell us about the same man: Jesus. And yet, when you read them, they don’t read the same.

Mark moves. His Gospel is famously fast-paced. The Greek word often translated as "immediately" or "at once" appears repeatedly, propelling the narrative from one action to another.

Matthew analyzes. His Gospel is carefully structured, opening with genealogy, repeatedly connecting events to Old Testament prophecy and fulfillment, and organizing Jesus’ teaching into substantial discourse sections. He continually helps the reader understand how the pieces fit together.

Luke connects. His Gospel gives particular attention to people and human encounters with compassion, meals, women, children, the poor, outsiders and those on the margins. Again and again, Luke draws our attention to whom Jesus sees, welcomes and restores.

John keeps. His Gospel sounds different from all three. It’s slower, reflective and deeply contemplative, repeatedly returning to themes of abiding, remaining, knowing, believing and loving. Rather than rushing through events, John lingers over their meaning and the enduring relationship between Christ and His people.

I’m not suggesting we can administer a temperament assessment to four men who lived two thousand years ago. I’m suggesting something more beautiful:

Different people can encounter the same truth and notice different things about it.

One notices activities and events. Another notices relationships. Another notices details. Another notices harmony and continuity. And we benefit from all four Gospels.

What if we began looking at our children with that same appreciation for difference?

Who do you seem most like?

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Temperament is a starting point, not a destiny

This is where temperament teaching can go terribly wrong.

“He’s a Mover. Of course he’s bossy.”

“She’s a Connector. She just talks a lot.”

“He’s an Analyzer. That’s why he’s so rigid.”

“She’s a Keeper. She’s just not very motivated.”

No. Temperament should never become a way of stereotyping children. Instead, it gives us a set of better questions to ask on our quest to personalize our parenting:

• What if that Mover’s desire for control contains the raw material for leadership?

• What if that Connector’s constant talking contains the raw material for extraordinary relational intelligence?

• What if the Analyzer’s endless questions contain the raw material for discernment and wisdom?

• What if the Keeper’s reluctance to be rushed contains the raw material for steadiness and peace?

Now our parenting goal changes. We’re not trying to remove temperament. We’re helping our child learn to steward it.

And that’s where we begin this series.

Try this: Notice It · Name It · Nurture It

Get curious this week. You don’t have to know their temperament quite yet. We’ll get there. But first…

· Notice It ·

Watch for patterns. What does your child do when plans change? When they’re excited? When someone tells them no? When they enter a room full of unfamiliar people? When something becomes difficult?

Don’t evaluate it yet. Notice it.

· Name It ·

Instead of immediately naming the behavior as bossy, dramatic, stubborn, shy, lazy, perfectionistic, simply **name what you observe: They really want a say in what happens.” They come alive around people. They need more information before they’re comfortable moving. They seem to prefer keeping things steady. That is very different from assigning character.

· Nurture It ·

Ask one final question: What might be here that needs developing rather than eliminating? You don’t have to excuse challenging behavior to become curious about what sits underneath it. Because next week we’re going one layer deeper to understand what each temperament values, because those values are strengths, but can also become weaknesses, so let’s learn how to guide development by understanding their wiring.

Want the full framework? The book is available on Amazon: Notice It · Name It · Nurture It

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Your toddler lets out an ear-piercing cry from the next room as you rush in to find the five-year-old standing over her, shouting about stolen toys while justifying having shoved her. “What were you thinking?!”

You open the mudroom, expecting to find your eight-year-old cleaning the dog’s muddy paws, only to find three inches of standing water, an empty bottle of soap floating around, and the faucet still running. “What were you thinking?!”

You finish cooking dinner when your ten-year-old comes to tell you he needs help finishing a science fair project he just started 30 minutes ago, and it’s due tomorrow: “What were you thinking?!”

It’s baffling. Even infuriating. At best, we stand there demanding answers, and at worst we level a judgment: “You weren’t thinking. That’s the problem.”

The Shame of What’s Wrong With Me

“What were you thinking?” is the right sentiment. But asked this way, it usually leads to little more than a panicked deer-in-the-headlights look, a rush of shame, and zero path forward.

What we really mean is something closer to three separate questions: What were you thinking before you did that? Did it work out the way you hoped? Would you make the same choice again?

You’d be surprised how old a child is before they can reflect on all three at once.

And there’s another problem: when we only ask children to examine their thinking after something has gone wrong, reflection itself starts to feel threatening and shameful. Instead of learning to explore their thinking as a pathway to growth, they learn to associate it with getting in trouble.

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Thinking About Thinking

The term metacognition was described in the 1970’s by psychologist John Flavell as “thinking about our own thinking.” Essentially, the ability to ask questions like: What happened? Why did I do that? What could I try differently?

A decade later, psychologist Barry Zimmerman described more distinct phases of self-regulated learning, which teachers began using in the classroom to help children develop this skill of metacognition:

• Forethought phase: planning, goal-setting, and strategic thinking before you act

• Performance phase: self-monitoring and self-control while you’re doing the thing

• Self-reflection phase: self-evaluation after the fact, feeding back into the next cycle’s forethought

Put simply, this means a child can ask themselves questions before, during, and after a behavior.

• Before: How will this go? What do I need to plan for?

• During: How is this going? What do I need to adjust?

• After: How did that go? What would I do differently next time?

And metacognition isn’t just a “nice-to-have” higher-order thinking skill. It’s a learning accelerator. Across 355 studies, students who were taught the process of metacognition made, on average, the equivalent of eight additional months of academic progress over the course of a single year. Talk about a return on investment!

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The Everyday Challenge

As parents (and teachers), the temptation is to swoop in, correct the behavior, and move on: Stop hitting. Don’t talk back. Quit lolly-gagging.

But when we spend an extra 90 seconds asking questions, we aren’t just correcting behavior. We are building internal thought processes that will guide the behavior better next time.

We must realize, though, what a child is cognitively capable of at each age:

• A toddler (2-3 years) is becoming aware of their actions, but not their affect on others yet. They can simply name a basic internal state, with help (e.g., I’m mad. I want.)

• A pre-schooler (3-6 years) is learning the link between behavior/rewards/consequences and can explain what they are doing, but only after the emotional turmoil has passed.

• An older child (6-12 years) is learning to reflect on “What am I doing? Is this working?”, but needs help identifying strategies to overcome the challenge in the moment.

• Teens (13+ years) are learning to monitor their performance, outcomes, errors and needs for new strategies, and the adult’s role shifts to sounding-board rather than instruction

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Scripture, The Cave at Horeb & God’s Demonstration of Metacognition

1 Kings 19 offers a great example of metacognition, as God illustrates a pattern for us to use as parents to help kids examine their own thinking.

Elijah has run from Jezebel and, after recovering from physical exhaustion under a broom tree, the LORD turns to the deeper issue: the beliefs driving Elijah’s behavior.

“What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Our omniscient God isn’t on a fact-finding mission. He’s inviting Elijah to examine his own thinking. And pattern is fascinating:

• God asks.

• Elijah answers.

• God comes near in a still, small voice.

• God asks again.

• Elijah gives the same answer.

• God gives him a new direction.

As parents, are we this patient? When our child gives the same answer twice, do we maintain the still, small voice, or do we become the wind, earthquake, and fire with our tone, words, and punishment? Do we leave them in the cave/time-out until they “get it,” or help them move forward with truth and a new path?

Because notice that the question alone didn’t change Elijah’s thinking. Neither did God’s presence. Even hearing truth wasn’t the end of the process. God gave Elijah something to do with that truth.

That matters to us as parents because we must realize that being exposed to truth does not mean our children have automatically learned to think and behave through that truth. They need opportunities to practice it.

God used questions to reveal thinking, presence to make correction safe, truth to offer a new perspective, and action to create a new path forward. That’s metacognition for the sake of motivating behavior change.

Practical Parenting for Today

· Notice It ·

When your child seems careless, distracted, or blindsided by their own behavior, notice which part of the thinking process is missing: before-thinking, during-thinking, or after-thinking.

· Name It ·

Instead of “What were you thinking?!” delivered with all the force of the wind, earthquake, and fire, try: “Let’s talk about your thinking so we can figure out what worked and what we’d do differently next time.” This shifts reflection away from shame and toward learning.

· Nurture It ·

Help them identify what they thought before, during, and after the choice and then let them practice again. Role-play the situation, give them another opportunity, or model your own metacognition aloud:

“We’re going to the store before the park. I need the cooler so the food doesn’t melt, and I should grab the umbrella for shade.”

And when you forget something, model the reflection too: “I forgot the umbrella. Next time, I’m going to leave it in the car so I don’t forget it.”

Also practice this during positive moments when their thinking is sound, as this lowers the threat they might feel when this approach is only used in moments of trouble.

Want the full parent-child psychology framework? The book is available on Amazon: Notice It · Name It · Nurture It

Metacognition is a skill. It takes time to build, but it gives children something far more useful than knowing they made a bad choice: it teaches them how to think toward a better one.

Summary

• Encouraging mantras like “You can do hard things” aren’t as helpful as we’d think

• Belief is the jet fuel for achieving goals, but belief is built in moments of effort, not mantras

• Difficulties are where belief is built if we are sure to support them through it rather than rescue them from it

My son was ten years old, and he could not ride a bike.

We’d tried everything. Training wheels. Balance bikes. The guided handlebar while I ran for miles and miles behind him (win-win because I’m a runner!)

But nothing worked. It’s not that he couldn’t bike; it’s that he didn’t believe he could. And so he wouldn’t even try. And even when he did, once or twice, he crashed before his brain ever gave his legs a chance.

But summer was coming and so were his step-siblings, and they were avid bike riders. So the pressure was on if he didn’t want to be left behind.

One Saturday morning, we were determined. But every attempt ended in tears of frustration. It was the kind of defeat that settles into a kid’s shoulders, weighing them down with false beliefs about their deeper abilities.

I almost offered a flippant mantra, like we often do as parents… Believe in yourself. You can do hard things. Don’t give up.

But I knew better, and so I caught myself.

Why Encouragement Alone Isn’t Enough

Let’s talk about growth mindset, goal setting, and resilience (and if you want a full 30-day Bible Study and activity guide, grab it on Amazon)

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Growth Mindset

Most of us think growth mindset means telling a child, “You can do anything if you just believe.”

Maybe we download the list of encouraging phrases and hang up the posters in their room. But when life gets hard, they quit, and we wonder why.

It’s because mantras don’t build a growth mindset. In fact, they can often make us feel more defeated (more on that tomorrow.)

Dr. Carol Dweck is well known for her research on growth mindset and that research is clear: our brains aren’t stuck in a permanent state. Our brains are muscles and they grow in new ways every day…if we give them the opportunities to grow, that is.

That’s the part we skip. We want to offer a mantra to our kids, but are we offering them the opportunity to put it to the test? In real life? To get out there and do the hard thing (With support)?

That’s where belief is built. With practice. Trial and error. Small, provable moments of trial, error, and actual growth. Otherwise, belief stays theoretical and that’s a shaky belief foundation.

Goal Setting

Goal setting is how we turn a mantra into a plan. And effort put forth toward plans is how belief grows.

In the business world, we call it SMART goals: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound. It’s how you measure progress. Why?

Because progress is what matters, more than outcome. It’s progress towards a goal that builds belief.

So break down the task into micro-goals. Every step achieved is a confidence boost to keep going.

My son didn’t need to be told he could ride a bike. He needed to be encouraged to try balancing, and then see that he could master that. He needed to be told how to brake, and then accomplish that. He needed to be coached through pedaling and then achieve that.

Each small win told his brain, I did the hard thing. I can do the next one too.

Resilience

Then there’s resilience, and here’s where the science gets uncomfortable for parents. Every time we protect our child from hard moments, we steal an opportunity to build confidence, and growth suffers. Then we wonder why our children struggle with resilience.

Resilience literature tells us children who grow up resilient are far more likely to have had one adult who stood beside them through something difficult. Resilience, by definition, is the ability to recover, adapt, and grow stronger through life’s challenges.

That means an adult’s role is not to shield the child from the hard time. It is to be present through the hard time, coaching them through the steps that build belief and confidence as we cheer them on.

Kids don’t build resilience in the absence of struggle. They build it in the presence of someone who believes they’ll survive it and keeps showing up while they do.

God Has Always Worked One Step at a Time

Scripture has been saying this all along.

• We’re told we’re being transformed into the likeness of Christ, day by day, not overnight (2 Corinthians 3:18). That’s growth mindset in action before science ever gave it that name.

• We’re told not to despise small beginnings, that the smallest step matters before we can even see where it leads (Zechariah 4:10). That’s goal-setting before the business world coined the phrase.

• And when it comes to planning, we’re given a strange kind of comfort. We can plan our steps, write them down, work at them with our whole hearts, and still trust that the Lord is the one directing where they land (Proverbs 16:9). That takes the pressure off getting the plan perfect because every setback is a setup for God’s comeback. That’s resilience

So what does this look like in everyday parenting?

Practical Parenting for Today

· Notice It ·

Notice the moment your child stalls out before even trying. Maybe it’s a sigh or a muttered “I can’t”. Perhaps it’s eyes that won’t meet yours because they’re filled with defeat before they even start. In my kid’s activity book, the Self-Interview activity starts here on purpose, asking a child what feels challenging and who encourages them before we ever ask them to change anything. Noticing out loud, “It looks like this feels really hard right now,” tells your child you see the struggle before you try to fix it.

· Name It ·

Name what’s actually happening. It’s not laziness or a bad attitude, but a nervous system feeling defeated before it’s even had a chance to try. Give language to that. The Superpower Yet activity in my book has kids say the hard sentence once without the word “yet,” then say it again with “yet” tacked on the end, and feel the difference in their own mouths. “I can’t ride a bike” becomes “I can’t ride a bike yet.” Yet is where hope lives.

· Nurture It ·

Nurture it with one small, specific next step, never the whole mountain at once. The Small Steps to Big Dreams staircase in my book has a child write the big goal at the top and break it into three to five small, doable steps underneath, checking one off at a time. Nurture also means celebrating the step, not just the finish line: “You took a step” matters more, in the moment, than “You did it.”

Want the full framework for Notice It · Name It · Nurture It? The book is available on Amazon: Notice It · Name It · Nurture It

The Moment That Brought Us Both to Tears

We broke the steps down, one at a time. And in two-and-a-half days, my son was riding his bike.

As he made a calculated stop at the curb, he looked at me with tears of joy and slight disbelief as he said, “Oh my gosh, Mom! I never believed I’d learn to ride a bike.”

Then he hugged me and said, “Thank you so much for believing in me even when I couldn’t, and for teaching me how to believe in myself.”

My son isn’t thinking about his bike anymore. He’s thinking about the next hard thing, because now he has proof, real lived proof, that he can do hard things.

That’s what the executive function of goal-directed persistence looks like in a ten-year-old brain. It looks like tears turning into confidence over two and a half days, one small step at a time.

If you want a guided, thirty-day path to build this in your own child- growth mindset, goal setting, and resilience woven together with scripture and science- my book just won first place for children’s nonfiction from AWSA. You can find it on Amazon, and I’d be honored to walk this journey with your family too.

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Summary:

• Time management begins with time perception: the accurate internal sense of how long things actually take.

• Your child’s internal clock is still being calibrated to their environment, emotions, and experiences

• Practice in everyday moments builds accurate time awareness

“Five more minutes,” your son begs as he frantically tries to fit the last LEGO pieces together.

You grant it and go back to gathering lunches, backpacks, jackets, and shoes so you can head out the door.

You check back in ten minutes to find him still on the bedroom floor, no shoes on, and insisting that it hasn’t been five minutes.

Frustration rises as you tire of what seems like manipulation and lack of respect for everyone else’s time.

But maybe your child is wired the other way. Instead of underestimating time, they overestimate it.

I was playing Skip-Bo with my eleven-year-old stepdaughter a few weeks ago when she suddenly jumped up and dashed upstairs. “I have to go get ready for church!”

I called after her, “But we don’t leave for another hour!”

Silence.

Twenty-five minutes later, she came bounding downstairs, glanced at the giant wall clock, and froze. “What on earth? How am I so bad at time?”

Two children had opposite behavioral manifestations of the same underlying developmental need.

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The Brain Doesn’t Wear a Watch

When someone says time management, we often think of calendars, planners, and routines. But really, those are just tools.

The real skill of time management has more to do with time perception and how it layers in with the other executive function skills.

Time perception is our mind’s subjective experience of how fast time moves or how long an event lasts. Unfortunately, our brain doesn’t have an actual clock that ticks with regular rhythm, never speeding up or slowing down.

Your brain estimates time using information from your environment, your emotions, and your experiences. It’s why we say, “Time flies when you’re having fun” versus “A watched pot never boils.”

It’s why scrolling social media feels like ten minutes when in fact you spent two hours, or why 45 minutes of restless sleep feels like an eternity. Dopamine’s feed of the reward center of the brain can significantly affect the perception of time.

That’s why your child genuinely believes they only played their video game for “a few minutes,” while homework seemed to last forever.

They may not mean to be disobedient. It may simply be an uncalibrated internal clock.

Childhood Is Calibration

Childhood was our training ground. As adults, we’ve had thousands of opportunities to calibrate our internal clocks. We’ve spent decades learning what fifteen minutes feels like, or how long it takes to shower, drive to work, or unload groceries.

Children simply haven’t had those calibration opportunities…yet.

Time perception is built as they collect these experiences. But it needs a safe and encouraging environment in which to do it, without creating shame, the sense of constantly being rushed, or having an adult constantly swoop in to manage the clock for them.

Helping Your Child Calibrate Their Internal Clock

Calibration happens through everyday moments. Bedtime offers perfect opportunities for practice. Ask your child how long they think bath time might take, or how long it takes to find their pajamas, brush their teeth, or say prayers.

The goal isn’t to guess perfectly, but to gradually help them get closer to an accurate estimate of time.

Also consider the type of tools you use to help them visualize time. Digital timers are challenging for a brain that doesn’t have accurate time perception yet. Instead, use visual ones like sand timers, countdown timers with disappearing colored disks, or kitchen egg timers that show time ticking away.

Parenting with Purpose Today

· Notice It ·

Pay attention to your child’s pattern. Do they consistently think tasks take much less time than they actually do? Or do they begin preparing far earlier than necessary because everything feels like it will take forever? These patterns reveal how their internal clock is developing.

· Name It ·

Help them reflect on time, such as, “It looks like that took longer than you thought it would. Next time we can start sooner.” Naming the skill removes shame and turns the moment into an opportunity for learning instead of correction.

· Nurture It ·

Build in fun ways to estimate, observe, and compare time throughout the day. Trips to the grocery store, bedtime routines, car rides, and household chores are great opportunities to calibrate their internal clock.

Psalm 90:12 reminds us, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Stewarding our time wisely begins in childhood as we help them learn to perceive time. But like every executive function, the skill isn’t something they are born with, nor do they perfect it overnight. It’s developed through thousands of ordinary moments, one estimate at a time.

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Summary:

• Being organized isn’t a personality trait. It’s a cognitive skill developed with practice.

• Our level of organization is directly related to our ability to recognize and care for our future self

• Organization isn’t about creating new systems. It’s about a habit for maintaining them.

The color-coded family calendar, the perfectly packed beach/camping tote, the tidy little kit kept in the back of the car in the event of an emergency.

“Wow, you are so organized!”

I think we’ve all been on either the giving or receiving end of that compliment at least once in life, so you know what well-organized looks like.

Maybe you are that organized person, so you know that some areas of life are easier to organize than others. But why?

Perhaps you’re the one often looking at someone else’s level of organization, with a mix of relief and longing as you wonder, “Why can’t I get it together? They make it look so simple.”

Your Future Self

You’ve read all the books, saved all the business articles, purchased the latest productivity software, and maybe even pinned all the Pinterest boards. Things start off organized, but rarely stay that way.

The question morphs from “Why can’t I get organized?” to an identity-based misbelief: “I’m just not an organized person.”

The sentence feels like a fact, when in reality, it’s evidence of something stranger.

A falling-out with someone you haven’t met yet.

Hal Hershfield’s research on the concept of “future self continuity” has found that when people picture themselves a year or more from now, brain scans show activity more like thinking about a stranger than about themselves.

People aren’t fully disconnected from the thought of their future selves, just more distant, the way one might feel about a coworker versus a best friend or family member.

These researchers have found that the more distant someone feels from their future self, the worse they treat that person. They save less. They procrastinate more. They leave the mess for later.

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The Burden We Place On Our Future Selves

I’ve seen this happen in my own life.

• In job roles I love and see a long-term future in, I carefully organize each file into a hierarchy of digital folders so I can find it easily. I color code my calendar to ensure I don’t drop any plates. The meticulous daily to-do list.

• Whereas in roles I was filling in for someone else, or didn’t see myself in the role for more than a year or so, I was less keen to keep things organized.

It never failed that I’d be in the role longer than planned, and within 18 months, I was kicking myself for not doing a better job of keeping up with files.

That’s the burden we place on our future selves. It’s not neutral. It’s something we are doing to someone: our future selves.

But our future self is still more difficult to register as a full person. So the pile of paperwork, the abandoned meal planning, the relinquishment of spending to things outside our budget all happen when we stop advocating today for the future of the person who shares our name.

A client once said to me: “I don’t set my future self up to succeed, and then act surprised when she fails.”

Who’s Paying for This Tomorrow?

Every time you leave something for tomorrow-you, the tomorrow-you struggles to keep up with both today and yesterday. Suddenly, you’re blaming today you for failing at something that was more than their fair share of the load.

Say, for example, your child lets you know that tomorrow’s soccer practice would be canceled, but it’s 7:30 pm, you’re exhausted, and you don’t feel like updating the calendar right now or writing yourself a sticky note to put on the door.

Tomorrow comes, it’s 3:55 pm, and you’re getting a call from the school asking if you plan to pick your kid up today.

“Oh my gosh, I forgot!” That’s today you, suffering at the hands of yesterday you.

The worst part is when the self-talk shifts from addressing the action, “I forgot”, to forming an identity, “I’m so forgetful.”

In reality, today you was juggling the fact you ran out of milk, your boss called an impromptu meeting, and your gas tank was on empty. Add to that yesterday’s tasks and today-you didn’t stand a chance.

We don’t know what tomorrow holds (James 4). That’s exactly why today-you keeps paying for yesterday-you’s disorganization. Waiting doesn’t make the issue disappear; it just passes the burden to whoever shows up next.

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A Different Kind of Fix

It’s when we hit the bottom of the disorganized pit that we start looking for systems. Some systems may serve us well, but others take time to build. And suddenly, when the new calendar apps we bought don’t work, we slip again, and we’re tempted to give up: “I’m just not an organized person.”

Here’s what’s actually going on. You may not need a new system, but rather, a better relationship with your future self.

We wouldn’t leave a mess for a friend to clean up without a word of warning. We wouldn’t hand a stranger our to-do list and then disappear. But that’s what we are doing to our future-self, over and over. It’s not that we don’t care about our future self, but because future-us doesn’t feel like a whole person yet.

Before Hershfield ever had the brain scans to show this, Scripture has been telling us to provide for who’s coming tomorrow. The ant stores in the summer for a winter it hasn’t seen yet (Proverbs 6:6-8). The sower plants, not knowing which seed will actually take (Ecclesiastes 11:6). Both of these are examples of caring for someone we can’t fully see yet, but we anticipate they are coming.

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Making Changes for Today

Here’s the change you can make starting today.

· Notice It ·

Catch the moment you’re about to leave something for later, and ask yourself, “Who’s going to deal with this?” And don’t deceive yourself, because the answer is most definitely future-you. Don’t heap that burden on him/her.

· Name It ·

What we’ve been labeling as “I’m just not an organized person” is simply a skill gap that can be closed when we start to see the future-us as a real person. When we name this gap, it stops the shame spiral before it starts, because there’s nothing wrong with our personality. It’s just a relationship that needs to be nurtured.

· Nurture It ·

Do one small thing tonight as a favor to your future self, and say who it’s for. Not just setting the coffee-maker or packing the diaper bag out of duty, but as a letter of gratitude and appreciation to your future 9-hour, 9-week, 9-month, and 9-year self.

Naming our future self is the practice. Strangers become family the way anyone does: we say their name, we do something for them, we picture them clearly enough to care. This is a small nightly way of doing that for someone who happens to share our name and our future.

Give yourself a few weeks in this new rhythm before shifting focus to another area. If you want a companion for building the habit itself, The Power of Habit is a good one to have alongside you.

So the next time someone talks about organization, we don’t have to hear it as a verdict on personality. We can hear it for what it actually is: proof that somewhere along the way, we stopped treating tomorrow-us like a stranger.

Summary:

• Being organized isn’t a personality trait. It’s a cognitive skill for childhood development

• Organization isn’t about being tidy. It’s about reducing chaos & mental load

• Some people get organized, others stay organized, and habit loops are the difference

You bought the fancy backpack with all the little pockets, the color-coded dividers, and the personalized labels. And then you spent all of Saturday organizing it for them.

But by Wednesday, the homework is crumpled in the bottom of the backpack, the permission slip has vanished, and somehow one of your kid’s library books is in the bathroom (true story!)

And you’re left wondering, “Why are they so disorganized?”

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Disorganization Isn’t A Personality Trait

Organization isn’t something you have or don’t. It’s a skill on a continuum, and it can be strengthened.

People with strong organization skills often appear more capable. The secret is that they’ve freed their brain from being overwhelmed by chaos so they can focus on more complex executive functions like planning, prioritization, impulse control, sustained attention, and task initiation.

You’ve experienced it yourself as you walk into either a tidy or tornadic office. Which one allows you to focus on the looming deadline? Imagine how our kids feel. And suddenly, they’re believing the lie “I’m just not a very organized person.”

Organization Lowers Brain Stress

A messy backpack, binder, or bedroom is a lot like “If you give a mouse a cookie…”

• If they sit down to do homework, they need a pencil.

• When they can’t find a pencil, they use a pen.

• But they make a mistake with the pen and need white out.

• Unable to find white out, they look for a new sheet of paper.

• Unable to find a clean sheet, they go in search of a new pack of paper.

• Before long, 20 minutes of homework time is gone, they’re exhausted, and they haven’t even made it past the first algebra problem.

The more time they spend locating items and deciding routines, the more decision fatigue erodes their mental energy, leaving less space to focus on the meaningful activities.

This weekend, I asked my 11-year-old, “What’s the hardest part about being organized?” (Full disclosure: he’s highly praised by his teachers for being so well organized, and even this was his answer…)

Without hesitation: “Staying organized. It starts off great, but you have to spend the extra time to keep it that way. Everything has to go back to its home without being left somewhere random. But that’s hard when I’m building a LEGO, and you call me down for dinner right away.”

He’s not alone. At times, we all struggle with one of two elements of organization.

Getting Organized and Staying That Way

Perhaps you’ve organized their room before, yet it’s messy again by Friday. It’s frustrating, but consider this:

1. Were they included in the get-organized process, meaning did they get to decide where things went and how it was arranged? Lack of ownership extinguishes motivation to stick with something.

2. Was a new habit loop created to help them stay organized? Without a new habit loop, the brain defaults to its previous practices. Help them build a new habit using the cue, routine, reward method (If you haven’t read The Power of Habit, it’s a great book.

Humanity has long struggled with getting and staying organized, at least without the help of someone to teach us the ropes.

The Greatest Organizer of All

God started us off in an organized system. Have you ever noticed the sequencing in Genesis 1? Every verse pairing between verses 4 & 5, verses 7 & 8, verses 9 & 10, says “God separated” and then “God called”. That’s organization and labeling on a loop.

Then God filled the earth with animals, birds, and sea creatures and invited Adam to be part of the naming process.

We do the same as parents when we provide supplies, colored folders, bins, and cubbies, then allow our kids to name what goes where.

What then when kids struggle to stay organized?

God frequently provided organization resets. Just look at Noah after the flood, the Israelites in the wilderness, and the tribes of Jacob. The list goes on.

We frequently fall into chaotic disarray, but God swoops in to provide fresh guidance and support. We can do the same when we coach our kids through building healthy habit loops.

Formation for Today

· Notice It ·

Where does your child struggle most: getting organized or staying organized?

· Name It ·

If they struggle to get organized, set aside time to work out a plan together, and let them be part of designing it. A helpful cue phrase is, “Every object needs to have a home. Where should that one belong?” Just tackle one object or one room at a time to avoid overwhelm.

If they struggle to stay organized, coach new routines like “Touch it once, not twice” (meaning, don’t set it down and have to come back later to put it away) or “Just 9-extra-seconds” (meaning, if they spend 9 extra seconds putting the item away now, it could save them 10 - 20 minutes of searching later)

These routines move the child from a shame-based label like “I’m messy” to “My brain needs a better system.” They also allow us to move from nagging to encouraging a healthy brain skill.

· Nurture It ·

Help kid recognize the rewards of the systems, especially when time is saved tomorrow morning or when it’s easier for them to find their toys before running down to the playground. When systems fail, simply reflect, “It’s a bummer we lost that time today. Next time, be sure to put the shoes where they belong so it can save you time”

Ultimately, the goal is for us to notice the overwhelmed brain before we see the messy room, to help our child understand the skill they’re developing, not the flaw they think they have, and to build simple systems together until organization becomes less about remembering and more about living in rhythms that bring peace.

Want the full framework? The book is available on Amazon: Notice It · Name It · Nurture It

Share Heart Shapers, Legacy Makers

You finally have a free Saturday, and you’ve been looking forward to it all week.

There are projects to finish. Laundry to fold. Errands to run. A book you’ve wanted to read. And maybe, if there’s time, a few extra moments of quiet time, coffee and Bible study before the day gets underway.

By dinner time, you’ve accomplished a lot, but you’re exhausted. The laundry is done, and the inbox is empty. The pantry is even organized. Oh, and you finally scheduled that doctor’s appointment.

But that important conversation. That prayer request. The page you hoped to write after spending quiet time with the Lord. Those tasks sit untouched.

You were incredibly productive. But were your priorities intentional?

The harder question isn’t “where did the day go” but “why did the day go that way?" Why is it so much easier to do the easy tasks while the meaningful sit by the wayside?

Before you let shame have a single chance to whisper in your ear, hear this: this is what naturally happens when the part of our mind responsible for prioritization runs out of room to weigh our task list against what matters most.

Psychologists who study decision fatigue have long shown that a depleted mind defaults to whatever's easiest, not whatever matters most.

That’s why the pantry got organized while the prayer sat unsaid.

Check out another great article on this similar topic:

Poiema Ergon

A Lesson from the Beach

For many years, I had a sailboat at Harbor Island in San Diego. I always enjoyed walking the shoreline early mornings before the marina “woke up…

Read more

3 months ago · 3 likes · 1 comment · Marv McCarthy

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More Than a Skill

We spend the parenting years teaching our kids how to plan and prioritize.

• Which step goes first?

• What matters most when three things shout at once?

  ---

But in adulthood, there’s a shift, and if we aren’t paying attention, something else starts to set our priorities before our mind ever sets off to work for the day.

Something is always setting the agenda. A deadline. A discomfort. A fear of letting someone down. None of these demands are inherently evil. But they run our calendars, and before long, they’ve become so loud and so familiar that we’ve stopped noticing that they’ve taken over.

The Voice We Learned to Trust

If growing up in your childhood home felt unpredictable, you may have subconsciously learned that there was very little within your control. So you found what control you could. Your room. Your hair. Your clothes. And you held on tightly.

It’s a smart move for a child with no other options.

The trouble is that this strategy, while adaptive in childhood, sticks around in adulthood in less-than-helpful ways. What was once a survival mechanism starts to sound like a personality trait: strong, capable, independent. But underneath, it’s often the same young voice that decided control was the only safe thing left to hold onto.

That voice can run a calendar just as easily as fear can. It rarely says no to anything, because saying yes has always felt safer than defending the boundary. And because it sounds so responsible, it’s one of the hardest internal voices to stop and re-evaluate.

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Seeking First

Jesus lived with more demands on His time than most of us will carry. Crowds pressed in. The sick needed healing. Yet He rarely seems rushed.

He also kept withdrawing to places of solitude to pray: before He chose His twelve closest friends, when He was tired, and before the hardest night of His life in Gethsemane.

Solitude wasn’t Jesus escaping the work. It was how His priorities stayed aligned with the Father’s.

In Mark 1, His disciples found Him after a night of prayer and told Him everyone is looking for Him. He didn’t rush back to the demands of the crowd. He suggested they go elsewhere.

He wasn’t running from priorities nor setting his own schedule. He was listening for direction.

That puts new weight on His words in Matthew 6: Seek first the kingdom of God. He’d just spent an entire passage on worry, about food, clothing, tomorrow.

A worried mind struggles to slow down long enough to let God set the plan.

But Jesus doesn’t hand us a planner or a checklist for getting everything done. He redirects our attention. Seek first. Not because God needs top billing on a to-do list, but because everything else finds its right place only after we’ve listened to the right voice.

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Change for Today

· Notice it ·

Pay attention to what keeps rearranging your day. Fear of letting someone down? The pull to be productive? An old habit of control running the show since before you had a calendar to fill? When your mind is tired, the loudest voice is usually setting the agenda, not the truest one.

· Name it ·

Get honest about what’s actually conducting your week, and name it. “This week, urgency has been setting my schedule, not what actually matters most.” Naming it calls dark into light, and loosens its grip, the same way it did when we were kids learning a deadline gone unnoticed wasn’t carelessness, just a skill still catching up.

· Nurture it ·

Before opening your inbox, sit with the One who already knows what today holds. Ask a simple question. Father, what matters most today? Then build the day around His answer, holding it loosely enough that He can redirect it.

Children borrow guidance on planning and prioritizing from their parents. As adults, we never really outgrow the need for a guiding voice. We just need to be discerning about whose we’re listening to. Because somewhere in that Saturday, in the folded laundry and the empty inbox, there was a quieter voice waiting to be heard.

References

Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Muraven, M., & Tice, D. M. (1998). Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(5), 1252–1265. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.74.5.1252

Danziger, S., Levav, J., & Avnaim-Pesso, L. (2011). Extraneous factors in judicial decisions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(17), 6889–6892. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1018033108

Vohs, K. D., Baumeister, R. F., Schmeichel, B. J., Twenge, J. M., Nelson, N. M., & Tice, D. M. (2008). Making choices impairs subsequent self-control: A limited-resource account of decision making, self-regulation, and active initiative. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(5), 883–898. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.94.5.883

It is Thursday night at 8:30 pm. They suddenly remember they need markers for school tomorrow. Fortunately, you have a new pack on hand. Crisis averted.

A few weeks later… same time. Same panic. Only this time, it’s a very specific purple, wide-ruled, composition notebook they need for math class.

Your frustration mounts. “Why are you just now telling me this?”

Fast forward a few years. They’re a bit older and carrying more responsibility. Except this time, it’s not as simple as a trip to the store. It’s the Literary Character, the Science Experiment, or the History Diorama they’re scrambling to finish.

It’s Not a Discipline Problem

It’s neurobiological. It’s developmentally normal. It’s what neuroscience calls the planning horizon: the stretch of time ahead the brain can realistically treat as “real enough” to act on.

But a child’s planning horizon is far shorter than most adults realize.

And it’s directly linked to the executive function skill of planning & prioritization, which don’t come online until the late teens or early twenties.

Your 8-year-old isn’t procrastinating. They literally can’t see 2 weeks ahead…without help.

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The Time Horizon

Imagine being out at sea, no land in sight. You’re lulling along, enjoying the calm fishing. As you finish fishing and head inland, you don’t prepare for docking way out at sea. You prepare when the shoreline is seen on the horizon.

Adults naturally see the shoreline before children do. We can’t move the shoreline closer. But we can lift our child high enough to see it sooner.

The same goes for time horizons.

• In early childhood (2 - 5 years old), it may only reach three or four hours ahead.

• Through the middle elementary years (6 - 9 years old) it stretches to somewhere around six to eight hours.

• By late childhood (9 - 12 years old), it can reach eight to twelve hours.

• It is not until adolescence (13+ years old) that a child’s planning horizon begins to cover two or three full days.

• For a child with ADHD or a significant executive function delay, cut that horizon by 30-40%.

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A school deadline two weeks out fails to register for an elementary child until the night before. That is, unless they have help.

Tools and tactics like planners, calendars, daily check-ins, and breaking a deadline into manageable 1-2 day chunks are all ways to do that. That’s planning.

But just because they can see the horizon and plan for arrival doesn’t automatically mean planning goes well.

The Efficiency of Prioritization

Imagine there were 7 steps in the child’s school project. They can’t do all 7 at once, so where do they start? What comes first versus last? What’s urgent versus what can wait?

As adults, we often do this on autopilot. Say we are planning a birthday party at the local skating rink. We know that on the way to the party, we need gas, balloons, cake… oh, and we promised to give the neighborhood kid a ride.

• Our mind plans how long all of this will take so we know what time to leave

• Then we order the stops by importance, urgency, and logical sequencing

The gas is most important, but it doesn’t make sense to leave the neighborhood, get gas, and then come back for the neighbor kid. So we grab him on the way. But we have to get the cake last, so it doesn’t melt. (Pro Tip: narrate your planning and prioritization so kids begin to visualize it!)

That’s prioritization—ordering tasks by importance, timing, and sequence. Children don’t naturally think this way yet.

So consider their school report and diorama. Their instinct is to buy supplies first because building feels productive. But do they even know what kind of elephants live in Africa? The ones with large ears or small ones? With tusks or without? It matters for the report and the verbal presentation. So we have to urge them to research first. The diorama building seems more fun, but done out of order, it wastes time, effort, and resources.

Our children struggle to do this because they are still building these skills.

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Is Planning Biblical?

A common misconception about planning is that it somehow competes with faith. We’re quick to cite Jesus, who said, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself” (Matthew 6:34). But notice He is not speaking against the wisdom of planning, merely the element of worry.

Worry is an attempt to control what belongs to God, whereas planning is faithfully stewarding what God has already placed in our hands today. Those are not opposites.

Scripture even praises the wisdom of diligence and foresight (Proverbs 21:5 | Proverbs 6:6-8), though it does caution against arrogance (James 4:15-16) or self-sufficiency in our planning.

Proverbs 16:9 pairs our plans with The LORD’s will: “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” (Proverbs 16:9).

Scripture doesn’t discourage planning. It discourages planning apart from God.

• Noah built the ark…with God’s design.

• Joseph stored grain…thanks to God’s dream.

• Nehemiah prayed before organizing workers to rebuild Jerusalem.

• Even Jesus told us to plan up front! (Luke 14:28-30)

Planning was never presented as a lack of trust. It was an expression of wise stewardship of the time and resources God gave people.

The same is true in parenting. God isn’t asking our children to predict the future or carry tomorrow’s burdens. He is inviting them to grow in wisdom by learning to prepare for the responsibilities He has already revealed.

As parents, we’re teaching our children to faithfully steward their time (Ephesians 5:15–16), making plans with open hands, knowing that while we make our plans, the Lord lovingly directs the outcomes.

What happens when planning becomes a mechanism of control & prioritization becomes self-sufficiency? Don’t miss tomorrow’s Adult Formation Article!

Parenting for Today

So how do we help our children develop planning and prioritization?

· Notice It ·

Before the next last-minute scramble, notice where the gap actually is. Did the deadline never enter their radar at all—a planning horizon problem? Or did they know it was coming but struggle to decide what to do first—a prioritization problem? Resist the urge to rescue the project. Every time we solve the problem for them, we delay the opportunity for their brain to practice the very skill it’s trying to build.

· Name It ·

Help your child see this as a developing skill, not a character flaw. You might say, “Your brain is still learning how to plan ahead. Let’s figure out the first step together.” Naming the skill removes shame, lowers anxiety, and helps children understand that planning and prioritization are abilities they can grow with practice.

· Nurture It ·

Begin with prayer, asking God for wisdom as you steward the time and responsibilities He’s given your family. Then bring the future closer. Break a two-week project into several one- or two-day checkpoints, and work backward together from the due date. Ask, “What has to happen first?” Then write the plan somewhere your child can see it. Over time, your borrowed planning becomes their own.

Remember: your child isn’t failing to plan. They’re still learning to see farther down the shoreline than they could yesterday. Until they can, God has given them something remarkable—you. Every planner you share, every calendar you fill out together, and every conversation about “what comes first?” gently stretches their planning horizon. One day, they’ll see what you now see on their own. Until then, keep lifting them onto your shoulders.

If you wrestle with shame gremlins, then you’ve probably already called yourself lazy, undisciplined, or "just not a self-starter."

Perhaps you’re more self-compassionate, so shame isn’t the issue, but guilt sure is. It builds up and weighs on you for days or even weeks, until you start avoiding the person altogether.

But the truth of what you’re struggling with is simpler and more forgivable than that. The same brain mechanism that stalls a child on the couch from starting their laundry is still running in you, just wearing adult clothes.

It's task initiation again, and understanding what's actually happening in that stalled-out procrastination isn’t about changing your self-talk. It’s about changing your approach to tasks altogether.

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A Little Bit of Physics to Go With This Week’s Psychology

An object at rest stays at rest. You already know this from yesterday’s parenting article (or from 5th-grade science class).

What's less obvious is that procrastination isn't a time management problem. Researchers who study it closely describe it as an emotion management problem.

We don't avoid tasks because we're bad at scheduling; we avoid them because the task is attached to a feeling we don't want to have: dread, inadequacy, boredom, or fear of doing it badly.

Avoidance buys a few minutes of relief, but the task, and the feeling, are both still there when you open the email again. So very little progress is made.

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Task Chunking Isn’t Just for Kids

I talk about task chunking in my kids’ Bible Study Workbook on Growth Mindset, Goal Setting & Resilience. But I’ve actually had several adults tell me how helpful the workbook has been for them, too, in their adult lives.

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Many of us were taught to set goals, so we outline a task list. But the task list quickly becomes overwhelming and we don’t know where to start.

It’s not about being lazy or incapable. It’s because the task is too big. Just like yesterday’s article outlined, “do your laundry” isn’t one task; it’s twelve. The same goes for “Write the proposal”, which is actually more like 17 tasks in one, and your brain, tired and already overloaded, can't process where to start, much less find the energy to start, so it finds Instagram instead.

The secret is to break the tasks down into steps that the brain can check off along the way. Those are called process goals, and they help when task initiation feels challenging.

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It’s Not Just About the Size of the Task, But Also the Amount

Here's the layer that's harder to admit: we are human, and our capacity only goes so far. Overcommitment steals the margin your brain needs to muster the start-up energy required to initiate a task.

When every day is full of yeses that we committed to without discernment, our nervous system is now out of the energy necessary to start a single task because we’ve juggled the 15 that were never meant to be ours.

Busyness for busyness's sake doesn't make us productive. It makes every single task harder to start, including the ones that matter most.

Paul wrote that we were "created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand" (Ephesians 2:10). Not every good work is ours to do. There were ones prepared specifically for you, for me, and for those around us. We can’t keep picking up tasks that aren’t ours, because it exhausts us mentally, and then we lack the energy to even do the ones that were meant to be ours.

Overcoming Procrastination Today

That’s why procrastination is rarely a character flaw to be punished, and more often a signal pointing to an emotional overwhelm you haven't named or a “yes” you never should have given.

• Notice it • Name the feeling attached to the stalled task before you touch the task itself. Dread? Fear of doing it imperfectly? Boredom? The feeling, not the task, is usually what you're actually avoiding. Address the feeling, and the task becomes less intimidating and easier to start.

• Name it • Ask what's really underneath the delay. Is the task genuinely unclear, so you don't know the first step? Or is your calendar so full of obligations you never prayerfully considered that you have nothing left to initiate with?

• Nurture it • Today, do three things.

First, shrink the task to a single visible first step, open the document and write one sentence, nothing more, and let momentum do the rest.

Second, look at this week's calendar and find one "yes" that was never truly yours to give. Practice saying no to it, or postponing it, so the tasks that are actually your calling have room to breathe.

Third, whichever emotion looms as a threat over that task, work on addressing it. Deflate the balloons of shame and guilt by simply taking the first step. Done is better than perfect. Create a mini-reward plan: “Once I finish the first 3 steps, or thirty minutes, I’ll take a fun-break.”

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Be Prayerful About It

Tonight, before you add one more thing to tomorrow, ask what God is actually inviting you to do, and be willing to let go of what He isn't. A full calendar isn't the same as a faithful one. Invigoration comes from doing the work that's genuinely yours, not from staying busy enough to feel productive.

You already have what you need to start the one task you've been avoiding. It's smaller than the feeling has made it look.

Next week: once you can finally start, what to do with everything competing for what comes next, planning and prioritization.

• Why task initiation is one of the hardest executive function skills for a developing brain, and why repetition quietly trains the very delay you’re frustrated by

• The three psychological needs (ownership, capability, connection) that determine whether a child starts a task willingly or waits to be asked a sixth time

• A simple handoff-and-consequence method you can try tonight using Notice It • Name It • Nurture It

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The Fifth Ask

You’ve said it five times. The laundry is still in the hamper. Your child is still on the couch, device in hand, and your voice has climbed an octave you didn’t know you had.

By the third request, you’re convinced your child is ignoring you on purpose. By the fifth, you’re wondering if you’re raising someone who simply doesn’t listen. But the real reason they are still sitting there is often smaller than defiance and much easier to address.

It’s Not Defiance. It’s a Stuck Skill.

It’s called task initiation, and it’s one of the hardest executive function skills for a developing brain to pull off. Once you understand what’s actually happening in that pause between your request and their movement, your instruction to “clean your room” gets them moving now, just eventually, and not maybe.

Three Reasons They’re Still Sitting On the Couch

First, there’s the issue of activation energy. Physics has a rule: an object at rest stays at rest. Your child, curled up reading or watching a show, is at rest. Pivoting into a new task takes real energy before they’ve even started the task itself.

Then there’s the challenge of the task itself. “Do your laundry” sounds like one task, when it’s actually a dozen steps hiding inside four words: gather, sort, start the machine, add detergent, transfer, fold, put away. An adult brain collapses all of that into one mental folder. A child’s brain can’t yet, so what he hears is a fog with no visible entry point. That fog has a name: cognitive overwhelm.

Then there’s what we do to them without meaning to. Every time we repeat a request, we’re not just expressing frustration. We’re training the brain. A child who’s learned nothing happens until the fifth repetition has learned, correctly, that the first four don’t count. We’ve conditioned the very delay we’re frustrated by.

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The Cost of “Doing It Right”

There’s a psychological piece too. Kids initiate tasks more readily when three needs are met:

• They feel some ownership over how it gets done

• They feel capable of doing it well, and

• They feel connected, either in significance to the person asking or to the significance of the task

However, when we hover and correct them, such as refolding the towel he just folded, or redoing the job “the right way”, we’re not improving the outcome. We’re quietly telling them they aren’t capable in the first place, and next time, he won’t bother trying. What looks like laziness is often just a child who has learned that his effort doesn’t count unless it matches ours exactly.

What the Ant Knows That Our Kids Don’t… Yet

And underneath all of it, there’s the piece a child rarely sees clearly: what actually happens if he doesn’t get to work.

Adults do tasks because we’ve learned, often the hard way, that skipping them costs something. A child who has never felt that connection has no internal reason to get moving.

Proverbs points to the ant: it stores up its provision “without commander, overseer, or ruler” (Proverbs 6:6-11). No one stands over it, repeating the request.

That’s the real developmental goal, a child who initiates because the capacity is his, not because Mom asked a sixth time.

Rescuing him from consequences only delays that growth.

A child who doesn’t know where to start isn’t defiant. He’s stuck at the starting line, waiting for someone to hand him the first step, and waiting to find out if this request ever really meant anything.

Notice It • Name It • Nurture It

• Notice it •

Watch two things tonight: how you hand off the task, eye contact, two or three simple steps, confirmation they understand, and whether they have ever actually felt a consequence for not starting.

• Name it •

If they stall after a clear handoff, name which cause is at play. Is the task still foggy? Has repetition taught them that the request isn’t real yet? Or have they simply never felt what happens when a task goes undone?

Or has he learned that his way of doing it always gets redone anyway, so why put in the effort the first time?

• Nurture it •

Teach the steps in stages, show them, do it with them, let them try with your feedback nearby, and let their version stand, folded their way, not yours, so their effort actually counts for something.

Say the task once, confirm understanding, and don’t repeat yourself. Then let a consequence follow:

• Natural: they waited too long, and now they simply don’t have clean clothes for tomorrow; or

• Logical: you do the laundry for them, and the cost comes out of their allowance.

Either way, they learn what adults already know: every task carries a consequence for skipping it, and that’s exactly why we do them.

Try It Tonight

Tonight, try it once: eye contact, one task, two clear steps, one ask, then a real consequence if it’s ignored. Watch what happens when he learns the first ask is the only one that matters, because it’s the only one that has weight behind it.

Task initiation is just the first domino. Next week: what happens after he starts, planning and prioritizing the steps that come next.