How Do We Have Difficult Conversations With Our Children?

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Here's another, here's another question. Dr. Skinner, you mentioned children needing to feel safe with us to have conversations. How do you converse with them when what they're involved in is contrary to your beliefs and how you raise them? And then in quotation marks, LGBT, You know, I, we actually have a phenomenal course on parent guidance where, uh, Dr. Devon Mills and I talked about this specific topic and how to parent when our children come out, how, how to go through that experience as a parent, how to deal with our own emotions, how to communicate effectively with them, how to show them love, even if we don't agree with the lifestyle that they're choosing, doing so in a very loving way is essential. I love the way Devon said it. He said, the child who comes out is the same child before. You just have more information about them, but it's still the same child that was born into your home, the same child that you love, the same child. How do we show them that love and give them that love, even though we may not agree with some of the choices that they're making? So, uh, if, if anything there, Michelle, I would say that specific content on parent guidance is probably the best answer I could give you because Devon and I, as we go back, I'm asking him questions. He's so knowledgeable about that, and it's a course on parent guidance that is incredibly valuable. And, and I think the only thing I would, uh, add to that is we have to deal with our own emotions in situations like that. I mean, to this parent who asked the question, my heart goes out to you because you're grappling with, did I do something wrong? Um, why is my child choosing this lifestyle? What, what does it mean? What does it, how are, how are others in our society going to deal with this? Uh, did I, did I screw them up? Did I do something wrong? Did we, right? And so we can go into parental shame team or we can step back and really pause and look at this person who we've loved their entire life, and really pull back and look at how, what message do I want to send to them? And to me, that's really an important step to take.

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Dr. Kevin Skinner