And feeling safe and loved doesn’t mean that you play trucks with them every time. That they ask you. Feeling safe in love doesn’t mean that every time they go down the slide at the park and they say, look at me, mommy. You look up and you see them and you smile. Those things are nice. We would call those a bid for attention, okay? 

And it is good when a child makes a bid for an attention, bid for attention that you meet that bid. It’s the same thing in marriage, by the way. If one spouse makes a bid for attention, it’s good when the other person responds, but that. By itself is not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about kids feeling safe and loved on a deep attachment level. And that is much more around the safety needs of the kids and to some extent the big, big emotions of the kids.

And, so if you’ve got a child and they poop in their diaper and you are on your phone for three hours and that kid is crying because there’s poop in that kid’s diaper, that kid is gonna feel like, whoa, this person who is supposed to take care of me is not taking care of me and I feel really unsafe right now and I can’t get this person’s attention.

So as I’m explaining this to my client, I said, does that sound like you? And she laughed and she said, of course not. Of course not now. We have all had a baby with poop in their diaper, not crying, and they’re just crawling around being a happy baby with poop in their diaper and we didn’t know. 

And then you just smell it and you’re like, oh baby, you should have told me, and then we changed our diaper. I’m not talking about that either. Okay. That’s still really good parenting. 

But I really want you to imagine this scenario where you do not notice your kid has poop in their diaper for three hours and they’re crying and it’s so uncomfortable and you are doing whatever. You’re doing so much that you are not responding to that kid. I’m just gonna go out on a limb and say, that’s none of you. None of you. And it also isn’t. When kids are upset about everything that we show up, there are levels. There are levels. 

So I have these three boys and they have toy things, right? Like especially with the Legos. Lord, help me, you know, and there’ll be a special Lego. And of course nobody wants that special Lego until somebody wants that special Lego. And then all three of them at the same time want that special Lego. Nobody wanted it yesterday, but now they all want it. 

Particularly my 5-year-old, he’s in his I’m five and I cry with my big feelings heart stage. He might just start crying and I might be upstairs. I’ve had six kids and I know all of them pretty well, so I can usually tell when that cry means I really wanted that Lego and somebody took it or didn’t give it to me. That’s usually what it is for him, by the way, is he sees someone else enjoying something and he wants them to just drop it and give it to him. 

Just give it up. And he is also the youngest, so you know, we often do that when the youngest is one or two. We just say, oh, can you give that to the baby? That would be nice. He’s not a baby. And so we’ve been telling him like, you just can’t do that. You can’t expect everyone to drop what they’re doing.

So now if I’m upstairs and I hear that and I do not respond, I do not go downstairs to comfort him over this Lego thing. That does not create a lack of safety in this child. And one of the ways that I know is he brushes it off pretty quickly and then goes and does something else. So even in the time it would take me to go down there and comfort him, it would probably be resolved.

Whereas yesterday, my strong-willed child, he, I don’t know what happened. The girls were playing with water guns. These like cheap little water guns. The boys had broken theirs. Hashtag boy, mom. They break everything.

And the girls were playing, I don’t know, something about he felt left out. He felt left out. Then he did something. I think he threw rocks, not even at anyone, just threw ’em. But my justice, 9-year-old, bless her, who’s just like the police officer of the group, she was like, it’s not okay to throw rocks. I’m gonna tell dad and then. The little kid, like his mind, just like broke. He felt unloved and then unsafe.

Okay. He felt unloved because he was feeling left out by the girls. It’s still unclear to me whether they left him out or there just really weren’t any guns because the boys broke them. I really think it’s that latter situation, and he didn’t wanna get in trouble with my husband and I could tell he didn’t understand the level. Of trouble that he would get in for throwing the rocks.

Which by the way would’ve been nothing. He can throw rocks on our property as long as it’s not at anyone. But he didn’t know that. So in this moment, his heart was so big and he was so, he felt both unsafe and unloved. And I could hear him crying and I heard the difference of his cry. I was in my office, I was actually working. 

And I stopped working and I went out to go talk to him and to calm him down because I knew that he was having one of those like really big, unsafe unloved moments. And it’s my job then to co-regulate with him, to be calm and to let my calm body calm him down and say, I love you and you’re safe right now.

That’s a lot of what I say to him, by the way. ’cause there’s no talking to a kid that’s outta their mind. So I just say, I love you. And you’re safe right now. And I try to get him to a place where he can be calm. Like sometimes it’s a different environment, sometimes it’s a different position. I’ll try to get him to lie down.

He has this blanket that he really likes, so I give him a couple options. So if I had a kid like this and they were often feeling very unsafe and very unloved, I would work on that. But it’s not your run of the mill. Someone took my Lego or I’m just feeling a little something right now.

Another example would be, if you have a kid and they really flip their bike and get pretty hurt, we are dropping what we’re doing as moms and we are helping that kid. Like, whoa, are you okay? Show me your leg. Is it bleeding a lot? Do we need to bandage that up versus even. Last year when Blaze was learning to ride his bike, he had several tiny scuffles.

Tiny scuffles. When they’re just learning, they just kind of fall over. And he would do that by himself. He wanted to practice riding his bike even when my husband and I were not there. And he would practice and I would hear him topple over and cry a little bit and then get back on the bike.

So I did not leave the house and go outside to help him with some of those. Now if I’m already by them, I usually comfort them anyway. But I’m trying to explain the difference between these like really big attachment things that the kids need to feel safe and loved and the everyday just kids doing stuff. And I think moms, we feel guilty about being on our phones period. 

So then we just overcompensate. In our minds, we’re not even doing it. We just overcompensate in our minds and say, well, to be a good mom, I need to be there for everything. I need to be with them all day long. I need to respond to every bid for attention. Which you can’t, by the way. You just can’t.

Another skill that I teach my kids is we really talk about feeling disappointed. I tell them it’s okay to feel disappointed and I will say, oh, it looks like you’re feeling disappointed. Can you feel that right now? Yeah. I get disappointed sometimes. It’s okay to feel disappointed. It is a skill to feel disappointed and they often feel disappointed when they want something and their bid for attention isn’t met or the thing that they want, we’re not gonna do. Right. 

I mean, my 7-year-old asked me to go to Goodwill every day. He just wants to go to Goodwill. He’s like, can we go to Goodwill? And I’ll say, no. And he’ll look sad. And they’ll say, oh, I see that you’re a little disappointed about that. We’re actually going tomorrow. So he’ll be very excited about that. 

But part of helping them feel safe and loved is showing them what to do with these big feelings. So that. They can begin to process them on their own because you aren’t gonna be there all the time. Right. So the point of mothering, especially in the early years, is to give them the skills so that they can be independent emotionally on their own as they get bigger. 

And then it’s just a different version of this, by the way. Once they get bigger at 10, then they just have different feelings and different bids for attention, and different moments where they lack safety or feeling loved. But I really want you guys to start asking yourself, do you think your kids feel safe and loved? Most of the time, I’m gonna tell you yes.

Even when I was on bedrest and I physically could not be with them, I still think that they felt safe and loved most of the time. Was it a hundred percent of the time? No. I’m sure there were moments that I wasn’t there for them, but I just don’t walk around telling myself that I’m a terrible mom and that I’ve totally failed them and screwed them up.

I don’t tell myself I’m a perfect mom either. I don’t think I’ve nailed all of it, but here’s the most important part right now. I want all of you to imagine. Your brain. This is not a stretch for you. Your brain is telling you that you are a failure as a mom. You’ve really failed. You’ve really screwed up. I think most moms think that every day. 

How does that feel in your body? It’s going to feel heavy. It’s going to have a big sinking feeling. It might feel like pressure, and then my question is. When you feel like that, what do you do when you feel like that? That awful sinking feeling or the pressure, you’re either gonna shut down or you’re gonna overcompensate with weird chihuahua energy doing all these things to please the children.

Sometimes actually, when we feel like a failure as a mom, we yell at them. That would be an anger response. And logically that makes no sense. But from a fear standpoint, it totally makes sense ’cause it’s just a very common fear response.

So this is the thing that is so profound. Who wants you to think that you are a bad mom? And when you think you’re a bad mom, how do you show up? And I guarantee you that when you have that thought and that icky feeling, the way you show up is not as a good mom, not as the mom you want to be.

So you get stuck in this circle of yuckiness and listen. I don’t think every time we hear that it’s spiritual attacks, I think a lot of times it is. I think sometimes it’s just a habit. We’ve just been in the habit of telling ourselves. That we’re bad moms for so long that the brain just is like, Hey, this is a well-worn pathway and easy, let’s do this.

But what I do is when my brain starts to tell me that I’m really screwing things up and failing, I say out loud, stop. That’s not true. My kids feel safe and loved and I teach them about the Lord. That’s my bar, you guys. It’s just none of the other stuff that. Most moms are worrying about, I just go, do they feel safe and loved most of the time for those big moments, right?

And I explain the difference. It’s not that my brother took my Lego. It’s the I feel really unsafe or unloved right now, and I need someone to anchor me. Am I there for that? Am I making them feel safe and loved in our home?

By the way, that also does not include when the kids are like, I’m bored, or, I have to do chores. That is not, and you can tell the difference. Even if you didn’t know anything about psychology, you could be like, yeah, I know the difference between them being like annoyed at being bored or having to do chores versus, when your kids get older. Some of them will be like, no one likes me. I’m like, okay, let’s talk about that.

And what does that even mean? And I really like you. I think it’s hard to find examples because it’s so rare that we are putting these kids in the position of feeling really, really unsafe. Another example would be like if you were gone for eight hours and nobody fed them, that makes kids feel really unsafe, and I promise you’re feeding your kids.

So stop telling yourself that you’re doing a bad job. That thought is still gonna come up. I can’t stop that thought from coming up. Just don’t plant it and water it. Just say, stop. Get outta here. That’s not true. And then think of the things that you are proud of. Think of the things that you are proud of.

All right, my friends, I’ve been praying for you this summer and thinking about you and thinking about what we need to learn, how we can rest, how we can be playful, and most of all, just how we can enjoy motherhood more, make it less stressful with less pressure, and just enjoy these kids. I’m just on a mission to help all of us do that. 

All right. I’m praying for you. Please pray for me. Thank you so much for listening and have a blessed day.