Winning Your Child’s Heart: Intentional Mothering

The Question Of Winning Your Child’s Heart

Occasionally, I read or hear something that hits hard. I remember when my kids were teenagers; I was listening to the radio, and I heard this regarding winning your child’s heart.

“Whoever owns their heart has authority over their life. You don’t automatically get or have authority because you’re their parent. Many other people or things could own their heart. What position do you hold?”

Mothering Moments That Hit Hard

“What position do I hold?”

This was a question I asked myself often as I was raising my children.

The Urgency of Time

Children grow up so quickly!

Other mom friends ahead on this journey tell us, “Don’t blink! They grow up so fast!”

And it’s not like we don’t believe them. But life moves along, each day like the one before. Until BAM! Some bone-jolting milestone occurs and you experientially understand your friends weren’t kidding!

Suddenly there’s an urgency. There’s so many things you still hope to do! Attitudes you hoped to cultivate. Life skills you wanted to teach. Traditions you wanted to start. Habits you wanted to encourage. Bonds to build that survive all of life’s many challenges.

Life with Teenagers: A Rollercoaster Ride

Life with teenagers hurtling towards young adulthood is a wild ride.

Most of the time, it’s a rollercoaster of excitement, disorientation, encouragement, discouragement, hope, or despair.

One day you feel victorious- all your hard work is paying off! You are accomplishing these goals, hopes, and dreams you hold.

The next day you want to weep or pull your hair out! Did you successfully teach them anything!?

Allowing consequences to be the teacher in my children’s lives was one of the toughest parts of motherhood, even though I know it’s a most effective teaching method.

I felt I often failed at this.

The Importance of Life Lessons

It was so much easier to set a rule. Issue a decree or give a command.

Something I had control over.

Even though I still had to come up with consequences for not following my “orders”.

And I wasn’t good at doing that either.

I know experientially, life lessons are the best teachers. Our choices carry consequences that shape our character and teach us valuable life lessons. If our goal is to hold a position of prominence and authority in our child’s heart, how we mother becomes significantly important.

Encouraging Emotional Intelligence and Resilience

Encouraging our children to make age-appropriate decisions and choices and learn from the consequences fosters emotional intelligence and resilience.

Moreover, it creates an environment that promotes emotional connection with us by reducing conflicts and power struggles.

I confess, though, sometimes I didn’t really like what they learned from their lessons.

Having control over what they learned made me feel I had a better chance of achieving my desired outcome.

The Struggle of Letting Go

It was important to me they were learning something I wanted them to learn. Or to know. Or believe.

But I also wanted to protect them.

I wanted to cushion their falls and dilute their disappointments.

I never wanted them to hurt, even knowing that hurting isn’t all bad and disappointments often turn into the building blocks of lifelong blessings.

Sometimes I just had mothering myopia.

I didn’t want to look down the road.

I just wanted them to be okay right then.

And for most of us, “okay” means embracing and prioritizing our core values.

The Goal of Intentional Mothering

We’re not alone in this.

Ultimately, this is the principal goal of intentional mothering.

To impart our beliefs and values to our children.

And that’s a healthy thing.

So, when I heard, “Whoever owns their heart has authority over their life. You don’t automatically get or have authority because you’re their parent. Many other people or things could own their heart.

It was a reminder of how crucial it is to mother with intention.

This was what I wanted to achieve as a mother. I wanted to mother in a way that won their heart. I wanted to be in the position of being able to speak into their life, their heart, their world and be received.

The Communication Blackout

To me, the older teen years resemble that time of re-entry when a space shuttle goes through what’s called a communication blackout. That agonizingly suspenseful time where NASA really doesn’t know what’s happening with their shuttle.

Likewise, in the later teen years, you have a limited idea of what’s happening in your child’s heart and mind. Compared to the early years, you have less control over the inputs happening in their life.

Building Trust and Authority

The information you get can sometimes feel alarming.

You wonder; do I own their heart? Have I been successful? Will I BE successful in bringing them to the hopes and dreams I had as I cradled them under my heart and in my arms?

If we want to be an authoritative voice in their life, yelling our way through situations, commanding them, bullying them, coercing them, manipulating them will not put us in that position.

Healthy modeling to them, partnering with them, encouraging, listening, empathizing, letting life be their teacher is the surer path to travel.

Preparing Them for Life

By taking that path, we can let go of being the police, the disciplinarian, the powerful, all-knowing disciplinarian parent.

While better preparing them for life by teaching them how to ask good questions, making suggestions, validating their decisions and investigating options they have or other avenues they could take in age-appropriate ways.

Letting life do the teaching.

This is a struggle for some parents, myself included. For Christian parents, it can feel like an abdication of what they believe about their parental role.

Guiding With Love And Support

I’m not advocating for the parent in the backseat, the child in the driver’s seat kind of family dynamic.

In an environment that is loving, kind, and supportive, our children will learn by practicing decision-making skills using their own assessments, judgments, and beliefs. This builds their resiliency and emotional intelligence.

They’ll make mistakes and fail, which creates an opportunity for healthy interaction and emotional connection as we empathize with them, comfort and encourage them.

They’ll make excellent decisions that will reward them and excellent decisions that won’t pan out. And they will grow.

Cheering Their Efforts

And as we cheer their efforts and successes; encourage and comfort them when they fail, celebrate with them when they succeed; our children learn we can be counted on. We are someone in whom they can safely share their heart, without censure or judgement. A person worthy of their heart and worth giving authority to in their life.

Supporting Your Child Through Questioning and Growth

When one of our children was sixteen or seventeen, they told me they didn’t believe in Jesus and also didn’t think there was a God.

Being a believer myself, this could have deeply distressed me.

In fact, a few years before that, this revelation would have kept me awake at night. I would have called everyone I could think of, begging for prayers for my child’s salvation.

However, I did none of that. I wasn’t shocked or worried about this admission. I listened to their reasons. Shared with them some questions I’d wrestled with on my spiritual journey, and let them know that questions and doubts are normal parts of life.

I assured them nothing was wrong with them and suggested a few books that might help if they were looking for answers. Then, I left it alone.

Fostering Open Dialogue

Through the years, they continued to talk to me about their doubts, questions and discoveries.

This could not have happened if I had freaked out and spent my energies trying to convince them they were “wrong”. That Jesus and God are real and arguing with them about it. Doing what I could to convince them my way of believing was the “right” way to believe.

My child wouldn’t have been convinced by anything I said, anyway. If growing up immersed in those beliefs hadn’t brought them to faith, my insistence, persuasion or arguments most likely wouldn’t change their mind.

Maintaining Connection

But I definitely would have driven a wedge between us by doing that. There was no point in alienating my child solely because they’d reached a different conclusion than I had.

Life is a journey, not a destination. If we let it, it will lead us to deeper personal growth and greater maturity. It’s worth remembering this as we interact with our children.

I find this is a great comfort as I watch my children navigate through life.

The Privilege of Parenting

If we win our children’s hearts, we earn the privilege of walking life’s journey beside them. Being privy to and playing a part in their personal growth and deepening maturity.

What a privilege!

As we seek their hearts, building emotional intelligence and healthy resilience are key pieces to winning it.

Here are some suggestions for fostering emotional intelligence.

Modeling Emotional Awareness

Remember, as you live daily life, you are showing them how to identify and label emotions.

What they see, they do.

Model ways to express and manage emotions productively.

If you feel frustrated, explain why and deal with the situation calmly, if possible.

Example: you’ve repeatedly stated it’s time to get in the car. You’re running late and you’re understandably frustrated. Your actions or reactions being frustrated model to them how to handle situations like this themselves.

You WILL model things you don’t want them to emulate! And that’s a great opportunity to model a sincere apology while asking for another’s forgiveness. A skill that is invaluable when building healthy relationships.

Encouraging Open Communication

Create a safe space for your children to express their feelings without fear of judgment. Ask open-ended questions about their day and feelings, and actively listen to their responses.

Validate their emotions by acknowledging their feelings, even the ones you don’t understand or “like”.

How they feel is how they feel. Just like how you feel is how you feel, no matter how “illogical” it seems to you or anyone else.

Teach Empathy

Help your children understand and share the feelings of others.

Discuss different perspectives in various situations. Encourage them to consider how their actions affect others and to think about what others might be feeling.

As you create a safe space for them to express their feelings without fear of judgment, you are modeling empathy to them.

Practice Problem-Solving

When conflicts arise, as they surely will, helping them through the process of finding solutions models healthy problem solving. Encourage them to name the problem, consider potential solutions, and evaluate the outcomes.

This helps them develop critical thinking and emotional regulation skills.

Use Books and Stories

Using books or stories that explore emotions and relationships is a great way to cultivate emotional literacy. Discuss the characters’ feelings and actions. Ask how they would have handled the situation.

This will help them recognize and understand emotions in a broader context.

We had some favorites as our kids were growing up. You can find some of them here.

Suggestions for building healthy resilience

Promote a Growth Mindset

Encourage your children to view challenges and failures as opportunities to learn and grow.

If you struggle to see challenges and failures in those terms yourself, talk about that. Be age-appropriately honest with them.

Praise their efforts and perseverance rather than just their successes. Teach them that skills and abilities can be developed with practice and hard work.

Fostering Independence

As I talked about above, allow your children to take on age-appropriate responsibilities and make decisions on their own. This helps them build confidence in their abilities and learn from their experiences.

Support them, but let them navigate problems and find solutions independently.

Encourage Healthy Risk Taking

Create an environment where it is safe for your children to take risks and try new things. Discuss the potential outcomes of their choices and help them understand that making mistakes is a natural part of learning and growing.

Teaching Coping Skills

Equip your children with a variety of coping strategies for dealing with stress and adversity. This can include a wide range of things, from deep breathing and mindfulness practices to aggressive physical activity.

Personally, I recommend a punching bag hung from the ceiling with an excellent set of gloves. This became a go-to for one of mine even today.

Also, encouraging journaling is something I would definitely incorporate if I were starting over again on my mothering journey.

But encourage them to find what works best for them.

Preparing for Life’s Challenges

These strategies or similar ones will help our children develop emotional intelligence and resilience, which prepares them to handle life’s challenges with confidence and empathy.

As I reflect on my journey as a mother, I’m reminded that my goal was to win my children’s hearts. This required me to mother with intention, encouraging them to make their own decisions and learn from their experiences. It’s not about commanding or controlling them, but about fostering a deep emotional connection built on trust, empathy, and resilience.

The Privilege of Parenting

As we walk alongside our children, cheering their successes and comforting their failures, we earn the privilege of being a trusted voice in their lives.

I applaud and encourage you as you embrace this journey; understanding that it’s not only about immediate outcomes, but about their long-term growth and the winning of their hearts.

What a privilege it is to be part of the journey throughout the whole of our children’s lives!

Let’s Talk About This

I’d love to hear of a time when you felt you had successfully won your child’s heart. I’d also love to hear what traditions or habits you’ve implemented that built lasting bonds with your children.

You can leave them in the comments below or email me at Sarah@herheartathome.com.

This post’s family favorite recipe is a wonderful granola recipe. If you’ve never made granola, don’t let that intimidate you. This recipe by Alton Brown is straight forward. I use coconut oil instead of vegetable oil. Coconut oil can be refined (no coconut flavor) or unrefined (tastes like coconut). It’s a better choice health-wise than vegetable oil.

Until next time,
Sarah

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