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By dougl1kj | Podcast , Thrive
Steve and Aki discuss some of the amazing successes they have seen when people embrace the possibility that they can THRIVE in life.
By dougl1kj | Counseling , Counseling and Therapy , Podcast , Thrive
In this episode Steve and Aki discuss how the THRIVE philosophy makes a difference in the counseling relationship and helps people go from broken to not only surviving but to thriving in their lives.
Are you looking to see if counseling is right for you?
Click here for a FREE exploratory meeting to see if counseling is right for you – click here: https://consult.thegracewellnesscenter.com
By Stephen A. Luther | Blog , My Kids Program
This show discusses an amazing Christian healing ministry called Splankna and how listeners can either seek their own healing through this ministry or become a practitioner and help others. Splankna is a Christian Mind Body protocol that can be used by counselors, pastors, wellness practitioners or lay helpers alike.
By dougl1kj | My Kids Program , Podcast
In this show we discuss the My Kids program for parents who are struggling with foster, adoptive or biological kids who are hurt and insecure. We examine the My Kids Program DANCE Model and how it can help you and your family thrive.
By Stephen A. Luther | Blog , My Kids Program
“God does not protect us from the things he will perfect us through!”
That’s a quote from a Family Life Marriage curriculum we use at our counseling centers.
It’s also a concept deeply embedded in our My Kids Therapeutic Parenting program (www.MyKidsCommunity.com)
I LOVE this concept…until I’m IN those times of hardship which God is using to refine and perfect me!
Isn’t that so easy to do…we raise our hands in praise, shout amen when the pastor preaches but then… “oh, wait, me? I’m going to have to struggle? I have to go through those things? Wait I thought that was just a nice concept we hear the preacher say and we agree with before we go home to our comfortable lives!”
Nope, God is showing me that He WILL allow us to struggle because it makes us better.
Think about it for a second…do you protect your children from all discomfort? I hope not…if you do, that is really bad parenting. Have you ever met a child raised this way? They’ve actually shown through psychological and neurological tests that over-protective and permissive parenting has the same effect as abusive parenting.
Yep, you read that right! So, we often want God to protect us from all struggles even though if we did this ourselves as parents, we would severely damage our children.
So, if you are struggling in your parenting or in other areas of life…God is calling you to RADICAL DEPENDENCE!
Not lukewarm or fair-weather dependence…I’m talking about RADICAL DEPENDENCE where you are willing to give up everything and depend on Him alone!
That’s the kind of dependence we need when our kids bring chaos into our home. Judging from the Facebook groups I belong to for parents of attachment disordered children, even the Christian ones, people do not want to have to be dependent on God in this way while raising their children.
That breaks my heart…we so often want comfort or to feel validated in our complaining more than we want to hit our knees and call out to God.
Think about that, God spoke, and 100 billion galaxies came into existence! This God calls you His child and loves you. This God wants you to depend on Him and not on whether we have the peace in our home we want or the money in our bank account we think we need. He is bigger than anything else we can depend on! Call out to Him today and cling to Him as He guides you to peace and contentment in your home.
Our Christ-Centered therapeutic parenting program is designed to come along side you as you depend on Him.
We have a free eBook for you.
Check it out!
PS: If you are in need of learning how to have RADICAL DEPENDENCE on God in other areas of life we can help you there too…visit www.TheGraceWellnessCenter.com for Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling and Coaching.
You are Called To THRIVE!
By Stephen Luther
Executive Director of Grace Wellness Center
Licensed Professional Counselor and Therapeutic Parent Coach
My Kid’s Therapeutic Parenting on Facebook:
By Stephen A. Luther | My Kids Program
I gave someone a copy of my DANCE Model book…Hey have you gotten that? It free for download at www.mykidscommunity.com
But anyways…after a week or so I saw this person and they said, “hey this DANCE thing works.”
I wasn’t sure if I should be offended…I mean did she think I would write a book on something that didn’t work?
I don’t know but anyways, I just said “yeah tell me what’s been going on.” She went on to tell me that she has been using it with both her adopted kids and her biological kids and things are SO much better in the home.
AWESOMENESS!
Love hearing things like this.
By the way, did I ask if you had gotten your copy of the DANCE Model eBook yet?
I guess I should ask if you’ve read it…if not…why not? What do you have to lose, after all I wouldn’t write about something that doesn’t work, right?
PS: Hey when you read the book, can you do me a couple favors? Can you email me and let me know how it’s working for you? And second, can you tell someone else where they can get their free copy? Thanks, I really appreciate it!
You are Called To THRIVE!
By Stephen Luther
Executive Director of Grace Wellness Center
Licensed Professional Counselor and Therapeutic Parent Coach
My Kid’s Therapeutic Parenting on Facebook:
By Stephen A. Luther | Blog , My Kids Program
A moment of fear overtook me…I had to get this right. My wife had handed me her laptop and asked me to hook up the new wireless printer. I opened the computer and it prompted me for a pin so of course this should be easy, right? I just ask my wife, she tells me, and we are all good.
No, not that easy! She looks at me with a sly smile and instead of giving me the pin she says “its our first date!” Oh man, I’m screwed!
So, a date comes to me that I think might be right but am not confident at all…of course I am doing my best to look confident. I slowly type in the digits and hold my breath…
Wallah…it worked! Disaster averted! Now it was my turn to give the sly look as if to say, “you thought you had me…not even close!”
Okay so why am I telling you this? Because something important was going on in my brain. I went from secure to insecure in a millisecond of time…and then back to secure just as quickly.
This process happens over and over again and this shift between secure and insecure is monitored by a small almond shaped structure in our brain called the amygdala…the amygdala is kind of like the guard of our brain. It tells us if we are okay or not.
Then my frontal lobe…the frontal lobe is kind of like the control center of the brain…attempts to regulate, manage and resolve these signals from the guard. If the control center doesn’t have an answer, it lets the guard signal the survival part of our brain to take over until security is restored.
Okay so for those of us who are fairly secure and have a lot of coping strategies this process isn’t a big deal and helps us live in an adaptive way in our world.
But what about our hurting kids who have a guard that is very sensitive because it was trained to fear and believe that disaster is always lurking? These same kids also typically lack the coping strategies and resources in their control center to manage these fears.
Hurting kids go into survival mode very easily and it is difficult to get them back to secure…but when they do function in security life is good, right?
Have you ever asked yourself “why can my child function well sometimes but most of the time they don’t?” This is why…when they are secure they make good choices but when they are insecure and in survival mode they make poor choices. This is true for all of us…It’s just that most of us don’t live in survival mode and when we go there, we come back quickly.
Wouldn’t you like to know how to help your kids function in secure mode more often?
The My Kids Community uses a brain based model for Therapeutic Parenting to help you DANCE (Have you gotten your free DANCE eBook? www.mykidscommunity.com ) with where you child is functioning in their brain. We show you how to be in sync with your child and move smoothly into the hurt, insecure places of their brain and invite them to come out and function in a more secure manner.
Do you want this for your family? If so, join us in the community where we will help you master these skills so you can guide your family out of the chaos and THRIVE!
PS: After my moment of gloating about easily remembering our first date my wife and I had a good laugh about how I was really just a good guesser!
You are Called To THRIVE!
By Stephen Luther
Executive Director of Grace Wellness Center
Licensed Professional Counselor and Therapeutic Parent Coach
My Kid’s Therapeutic Parenting on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/MyKidsTherapeuticParenting/
By Stephen A. Luther | My Kids Program
Here’s how things work in my house…we like our sleep. So, I get my kids up at 6:25AM and they are on the bus by 6:45AM. 20 minutes to get ready, eat breakfast, do a small chore and out the door. We’re super efficient! No getting up at 5AM and cooking bacon…which as a vegan I think is one of the worst things you can eat besides like drinking a cup of bleach.
But anyways, you get it…there’s no time to spare.
So, one morning this past week I woke up and looked at my clock and it was 7:05…Oh crap, the kids missed but bus, I’m going to have to drive them, my wife is going to kill me…
I go to my daughters’ room and open the door…no one there. I go to my sons’ room…again, no one there. I rush downstairs and can’t find anyone. I open the refrigerator….all the lunches are gone. I look at the hooks where they hang their back packs and they’re gone.
My wife is sound asleep, my kids are gone. So either someone kid napped them…making sure to take their lunches for when they get hungry and their backpacks so they can keep learning while being held captive…or…
My kids managed this on their own, did the right thing, and are on their way to school.
Figuring the second of these two options is more likely I was settling down with a cup of coffee…when my wife came down the stairs. She goes into the kitchen and yells in…”hey why didn’t you make sure the kids emptied the dishwasher this morning.”
So I’m sitting there with this, “I’m in trouble” look on my face as I explain, ”I’m not really sure what happened this morning.”
I explained what happened and that the best I could figure, one of the kids woke up, got the rest of the kids up and made sure they all got out the door to the bus on time. As it turns out my kids ages, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 12 did just that. They helped each other out and made it to the bus without Dad!
My kids did the right thing!
This was awesome…my wife wasn’t surprised, she knows our kids and figured that would be what they would do so she just said…”well you need to empty the dish washer then.” Okay gladly!
So why am I telling you this? Because it hasn’t always been that way. We had more than our fair share of chaos and doing the wrong thing with our 13 kids, many of whom came through the foster care system. And don’t get me wrong, they aren’t perfect now either…but generally this is how things go. They do the right thing!
Okay so why am I telling you this? Because 12 years ago, my family was really struggling, and this type of thing didn’t happen. I was studying for my second master’s degree in counseling and found no answers…I later figured out that most therapists don’t have the training and tools to work with foster and adoptive kids with attachment issues.
Don’t get me wrong…it’s not their fault…they’ve never been taught.
That was my experience in school…nothing I was learning helped me with my foster kids. That’s why I put together the My Kids Community.
It is my passion to help families with foster and adoptive kids THRIVE! It is my God given calling and I literally sit here and get excited about the families who are being helped by this community and who don’t have to struggle for a decade trying to figure this all out like I did.
Hey thanks for reading and if you’re doing really well and don’t need this, that’s awesome, please pass this information on to someone who could benefit.
For the rest of you who don’t have this therapeutic parenting thing down…check it out and see if you are as excited as I am about this!
PS: Please no emails about how much you love bacon…and for those of you who just need to know…yes I get enough protein as a vegan!
You are Called To THRIVE!
By Stephen Luther
Executive Director of Grace Wellness Center
Licensed Professional Counselor and Therapeutic Parent Coach
My Kid’s Therapeutic Parenting on Facebook:
