Do your children know your story? Today, Jeff encourages parents to be vulnerable with their children and share their struggles, humiliations, and fears of their childhood. Vulnerability builds bridges of trust and gives children the freedom to also share their experience with their parents, knowing that they are loved in their brokenness.
Snippet of the Show
Vulnerability builds bridges of trust and gives children the freedom to also share their experience with their parents, knowing that they are loved in their brokenness.
Shownotes
Tell Your Children Your Story
- Learn to listen to your kids. Don’t always offer solutions, learn to just listen to them so they feel seen and heard.
- As parents, don’t be afraid to share the humiliations, struggles, difficulties, and fears of your childhood or adolescence with your children. Your vulnerability can build a powerful bridge of trust between you and your child.
- Share how God made sense of your life and built you up, filled you up, and healed you. Share how God has been part of your story and you learned your purpose and meaning.
“For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.” –Genesis 18:19
Don’t be afraid to share with your child:
- I was bullied
- I was beat up
- I was embarrassed
- I felt shame
- I felt depressed
- I was lonely
- I wasn’t accepted
- I was left out of events
- I struggled with acne
- I wet my bed
- I couldn’t buy the cool things
I have felt these things as an adult :
- God made sense of my life
- He accepted me
- He took my shame
- He showed me that I was more than the way I looked
- He gave me purpose
- He never left me
- He lifted my spirits when I was down
Shema
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”-Deut 6:4-9
Resources
- Email us at thejeffcavinsshow@ascensionpress.com
- Text “jeffcavins” to 33-777 to subscribe and get added to Jeff’s shownotes email list
- Visit Jeff’s website at www.jeffcavins.com
- Listen to the Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
- Pilgrimages with Jeff
- A Biblical Walk Through the Mass Bookby Dr. Edward Sri
- Ascension is pleased to offer our new and improved online bible study programs and sacramental preparation programs digitally to help you minister with flexibility. Go to ascensionpress.com to view all our offerings!
Meet Your Host: Jeff Cavins
Jeff Cavins is passionate about helping people understand Scripture and become disciples of Jesus Christ. Though he was born Catholic, Jeff went to Bible school and served as a protestant minister for twelve years before reverting to the Catholic Faith. Jeff then received his MA in Theology from Franciscan University of Steubenville. Since then, he has become a leading Catholic evangelist and author.
Jeff created The Bible Timeline learning system, which revolutionized Catholic Bible Study for millions of Catholics. Since its introduction, Jeff has developed The Great Adventure series of Bible studies to help people better understand Sacred Scripture and its meaning for their lives.
I agree that it is good to share things that happened to you, but I think you have to be very careful about sharing bad decisions you have made. I’ve known parents who told their kids about having taken drugs and the kids received that information as “well, my mom did drugs and she turned out okay.” There’s a danger they would take it as a normal thing.