This episode explores the intricate themes surrounding the family challenges of transitioning and relocating, particularly those involved in mission work. With host Aaron Santmyire guiding the conversation, the episode features esteemed guest Lauren Wells, founder and CEO of TCK Training. The discussion unfolds with a reflective narrative on Wells' previous interactions with the Santmyire family, establishing a backdrop for the discussion on the emotional complexities that accompany relocations. The episode articulates the nuanced perspectives on how transitions impact children, emphasizing the necessity for intentionality in familial support structures. Wells shares the dichotomy often observed in third culture kids (TCKs), where the advantages of their unique upbringing are frequently counterbalanced by significant emotional and psychological struggles. This episode serves as a compelling exploration of how families can cultivate resilience and achieve a healthy integration into new environments through informed strategies and community engagement.

Takeaways:

• This podcast episode emphasizes the importance of emotional support for families transitioning to new cultural environments.
• Lauren Wells discusses the protective factors that can enhance the well-being of globally mobile families during transitions.
• The episode highlights the need for intentionality in helping children acclimate to new schools and communities.
• Listeners are encouraged to recognize the emotional zones their children experience during transitions and to respond appropriately.
• Parents are reminded to hold space for difficult emotions and facilitate open conversations about the challenges of relocation.
• The discussion underscores that the responsibility of spiritual discipleship should not be neglected during times of transition.

Hey there and welcome back to the Clarity Podcast.

This podcast is all about providing clarity insight, encouragement for life and mission.

And my name is Aaron Sanemier and I get to be your host.

Today we have the phenomenal opportunity to have with us back on the podcast, Lauren Wells.

So Lauren was on the podcast and somebody who's back in the day when we talked about Grief Tower and she helped our family with a family debrief.

And when I wrote my book A Caring Family, I talked about the impact that she had on our family through that process, specifically me as a father and really value Lauren and the resources and her attention to research and details.

So I was in Atlanta in November, she was speaking there and got to sit into one of her sessions.

And honestly it's a session that has rattled in my heart.

And since then, just thinking about what she shared about transitions and the emotions of transition, when we transition and relocate our family, what that looks like for the kids.

And it made me think of Erlika Ermvik and my interview with her about we put our kids in a local school and then we go to a safe place to learn language and how can we help our kids transition well and Lauren's and those which she serves with, they provide great resources that will help parents do that and do that in an intentional, special way.

And you'll hear me say I was in a with a leader the other day and you know, the reasons we see people come off the field, the mission field, are not necessarily theological, not necessarily missiological, but a lot of times what it is is families and kids that are not doing well and so how can we help them so that they can establish parents can be establishing the church at the same time investing in their family and so so appreciative of Lauren and the resources that she puts in our hands.

Do want to ask you to continue to subscribe to the podcast and what podcasts I subscribe to are the ones I listen to and continue to send in your since we're back to you, that's where we get some sit down with Dick Foe and get to learn from you.

Well, there's no time better than now to get started.

So here we go.

Greetings and welcome back to the Clarity Podcast.

Excited to have a friend of the podcast, Lauren Wells.

Lauren, welcome back to the podcast.

Thank you.

It's so good to be here.

Lauren.

We have you've invested in our family and invested in many other families and got to hear you speak again in Atlanta.

And as I shared before we hit record, it was A presentation that rattled in my heart and ever since then.

And so it had great impact on me.

So, for those who were not in Atlanta, those who had not listened to the previous episodes, your podcast, or not heard about your work, will you share a little bit about yourself before I start asking you some questions?

Yeah.

The quick, brief version is I'm the founder and CEO of TCK Training, which is an organization that serves families living abroad.

And then the organization schools, entities that serve and send them.

And I got into that because I grew up as a mk, a missionary kid in Tanzania, and saw the good and the heart of that, both in, in my life, but also in realizing that some families were really well supported and some families were not.

And most of the time, organizations or the schools or the people didn't know how to support these families well.

And so that led to a career in the field of prevention and the field of child development, which led to implementing a lot of those principles that we'll talk about today, I'm sure, into the field of TCK care and globally mobile family care.

Lauren is a phenomenal presenter.

She does a phenomenal job speaking and sharing.

She's a great.

She's a phenomenal writer, too.

That's an uncanny combination.

Sometimes people are really good as a writer and not so good in public, but I got to hear her share and she's engaging and yeah, just really, really enjoyed it.

Got to meet her husband and her kiddos, so that was an added joy.

So.

So, Lauren, a few questions for you.

I have for you today.

When you talk about preventative care for mobile families, what does that mean to you?

Yeah, so when we talk about preventive care, what we're thinking about is what do the outcomes look like for adulthood?

So we're thinking 10 steps down the road, as they grew up in this population of globally mobile people, what does that do to impact their health and wellness in relationships and physical health and mental health and all those different areas of health as adults?

And then what are the things that we can put into place that really enhance those factors so that they can be healthy whole adults?

And sometimes what we see and what I heard a lot in my first bit of working in TCK care was an emphasis on the benefits of growing up and as a third culture kid.

And we talk about all of the really great attributes of TCK's and all these things which are very accurate and very, very true.

But then what I was seeing and what a lot of people were experiencing and reporting was that their mental health was really struggling Their physical health was struggling.

They didn't feel a sense of belonging in relationships.

They had a hard time forming communities and holding down careers.

And so it was kind of this dichotomy of, all right, we're supposed to have all of these great benefits, but also a large majority of us are really struggling in adulthood.

How can families start their kids off in a really healthy way so that those benefits are part of their adult life and they can really thrive with the life that they have grown up with instead of that being something that maybe doesn't yield as healthy of outcomes as we would hope?

Yeah, for sure.

And I will not speak any of that because I'm not a TCK or an mk.

I'm a father and a husband of one, so I will not speak into it.

But the reality of it is I really appreciate that you put the tools in our hands to be able to do this and you give us the resources.

Ultimately, it's up to the parents to enact it.

But as you shared earlier on the podcast, people, organizations and families are not.

Parents are not nefarious.

They're not saying, hey, I just want to mess my kid's life up.

And that's not what I did, you know, but at the same time, I didn't do it as intentional as I could have.

But I didn't have the resources that you have today either.

So I'm not giving myself an excuse, but it is a reality.

I didn't have that.

And so I am excited for the resources you put in our hands and the conversations that you help us have.

And as I've shared freely and publicly, you know, you've really helped me as a parent and then also helped our family.

So I'm grateful and thankful for that.

So you've done some extensive research in for TCKs and MKS, and I'm a scientist by heart, and so I love that.

It's not.

I'm good on hypothesis, I'm good on theories and conjecture, but I really love when we have data to support it.

So you've done the hard work of doing that, published that data, it's on your website and really value that.

Were there any things that you found in that, in the research you did that would help encourage missionarian organizations maybe to do things a little differently when it comes to transitions?

Yeah.

So we have a research department at TCK training, and we do very thorough and intend to do very high quality research.

So when we say we do research, it's not just asking some people some questions.

It's Large scale surveys, heavy, heavy analysis.

And then one thing that we're really big on is comparing with other populations.

And so a lot of our research, we ask the exact same questions to TCKs.

Adult TCK is those who grew up and are now adults answering about their upbringing that other types of surveys ask to general populations.

And so that allows us to compare apples to apples, which I think is a really, really important part.

One of the things that we have found on the both hard side and the really exciting, hopeful side is that TCK's do have, which we hypothesized, harder experiences in their upbringing.

They have higher exposure to trauma, they have higher exposure to abuse, and all different kinds of things that we would look at and go, okay, these, these adversities are real and make sense that they would impact these kids.

And on the positive side, we've done research on what the protective factors are that make a difference for adulthood, even if those adverse factors are, are there?

Yeah.

So when they have adverse experiences growing up, but they also have protective factors present, they're actually better off and more resilient than the ones who had fewer adversities, but also fewer protective factors.

So that should be really, really encouraging because for parents, for organizations, there are things we can actually do and the data shows that those things actually make a measurable difference.

And I'm sure we'll talk about of those.

But they're not big, hard, complex things.

They're just things that globally mobile families have to be more strategic and intentional about because they're not quite as natural as they are if you grow up in a more monocultural, not high mobility environment.

Yeah.

So before my, my squirrel brain moves me onto a different, chasing a different nut.

So you go ahead and share one or two of those because I'll move on and then I'll get emails asking why I didn't ask the question now.

So what are, what are some things that we be thinking about?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the two categories for protective factors are in the home and in the community, and they are equally important.

So in the home, it's basically feeling safe and supported.

So feeling like their parents show up to talk about the hard things that they can share hard things as a family and, and the good things they can celebrate together, they can mourn losses together, and they also feel safe and protected.

They feel like in my home, I don't have to be on high alert, I don't have to be on guard all the time.

I can, I can let down here because this is a safe place and Then in the community, we have the community factors, like having peer relationships is one that has consistently shown to be extremely important.

Peer relationships, other adults who are taking an interest in our kids and loving on them.

Those could be coaches, teachers, parents of other.

Other kids in the community.

And then just community traditions and belongings.

So just feeling like, I have a place in this group, I have a place in this community.

And so it's both those in the community and in the home factors.

And when we relocate, we're really focused on the in the home ones first.

But it's important that we recognize that in the community ones are equally as important to foster and try to put into place.

And then we also know that our families are often really stressed out, especially through transitions and all of the hard things that happen when we're living abroad and the visas aren't coming through, or we can't speak the language right away or whatever.

And so that can influence those in the home ones where everyone feels really stressed out and chaotic.

Yeah, for sure.

And I think finding the speed of those was, as a parent, was very hard for me.

So what it was, you're trying to rush it or you're going too slow when it comes to community.

Right.

And so I think that that's.

I got more questions on you about that.

So.

So when it comes to a healthy relocation, if you had to paint a beautiful picture of what a healthy relocation would look like for the family, Santa Meyer, moving from some country to Madagascar or wherever, what would a healthy relocation look like?

Well, it would start with doing a lot of learning about where you're headed and what your community supports are likely going to be when you get there.

And that's something that we do a lot of training in organizations about, even to the point of screening and saying, all right, if you have a family with children of such and such an age and you're planning to send them to this location, you need to be aware of, and there needs to be community supports there that that family will have access to.

And if they don't have access to any community, there's no peer options for their kids in that location.

That location probably isn't suitable for a family with children.

So it starts really on the front end of, all right, what's there?

What's in place?

Are you going to be a part of a team?

Are there schools?

Are there people you can reach out and talk to and say, hey, what are the ways to get involved?

How can we connect with other people in this community?

And on the front end?

Kind of try to set that up to the best of your ability.

Knowing things change when you get there.

And then in the home, both on the front end and when you arrive.

It's a lot of just talking through, man, this is hard.

It was really, really hard to say goodbye this time to these people, or it makes sense that this would feel exciting and really scary at the same time.

We're in this together as a family.

As far as that safety piece goes, we teach parents to be really intentional about.

All right, if their kids are seeming worried about safety in the home because it's a new place, a new culture, a new everything, communicate well.

That's why we have these locks on the doors.

That's why there's bars on the windows or whatever the measures are in that location.

And then getting involved in community intentionally, but also safely.

So I love that you brought up the speed.

And I remember talking about this with you in Atlanta and thinking, this is just a great piece of this and a great part of the conversation where sometimes we get so focused on, oh, my goodness, they have to make friends, they have to build community, that we're not as careful as parents as we should be about who they're building community with or how fast we're integrating and maybe not observing for a while first.

And so we want to balance that.

Like, yes, let's get involved in community.

Let's find ways so that we're not isolated and living in our own little family island.

And it's really important to observe what the different communities are looking like and what the cultures of the people who we might want to connect with are in their.

Their schools and kind of getting a feel for?

All right, who are the people here who seem like the people who we should be connected with and involved with and then giving our kids permission to warm up to those people.

We're not going to throw them out because they need peers.

We're going to find ways to ease them into that.

Recognizing that that's a process, and it's a process that's important that we also can't just neglect and say, well, you don't need friends.

You have your brother.

Right?

Like, it's that combination.

It is.

It is the combination.

I think the things is I was sitting in that conference room and you were presenting this.

I think the things that resonated in my mind were, you know, one, probably I tried to speed things up too quick is apparent, But I think the reality of it is, you don't know when we.

And so learning from.

So don't be like, Aaron, that's what.

I guess what I'm trying to say is you don't know.

Are you putting your kids in unsafe situations because you really don't know what to look for.

So you're taking.

I'm taking my American lens and going to whatever country, we'll say Madagascar, Burkina Faso, wherever places we serve.

And you're thinking, you're.

You're reading these people that you're interacting with through the lens of an American thinking you understand them and the culture and the background.

And so you're entering your kids into situations and with that sense of, you think, you know, you really don't know.

And you can ask like colleagues and people, but they all have different life experiences and they all have different tolerance levels and they have different risk tolerance that maybe you don't as a parent.

And so I think that we should respect that for parents.

Sorry, I'm not.

I'm not going on my soapbox, but I will get back.

But I think that's what hit me was like, you know, sometimes we're pushing our kids so quickly to get them assimilated.

And I think as a parent, sometimes you want them.

Them to get assimilated.

So you can get assimilated or you got to go pay.

You got one of them to get into school so you can go do the things that you need to do or you think that you need to do and you feel this pressure.

And so I think that's.

You showed a chart kind of like the emotions of transition.

And once again, it was just like a light bulb went off in my mind, like, man, I wish somebody would have showed me this chart like 20 years ago.

So I would have thought about, you know, where I was at emotionally, where my kids were at emotionally, so I could have made decisions based on understanding.

So can you do your best to kind of describe that chart that you showed with emotions and where we're at?

And then I got some more questions for you about that chart.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, because we can't give people a picture who are listening, I'm going to do my best to describe it.

So we talk about emotions on this chart as red zone, yellow zone, and green zone.

So in the red zone is when we're on hyper alert.

Our brains are flooded with adrenaline and cortisol.

It's when everything is new.

Everything kind of feels overwhelming and we have those.

Those bigger emotions or it flips to the other side where we just are.

We call it dead possum mode.

We're just so apathetic because the big emotions are too overwhelming, and we're just trying to survive.

And so we just shove it all down and survive.

Either way, big emotions or dead possum, we're not in a healthy place.

So that's the red zone.

The yellow zone is when we see the light, it's starting to get a little bit better.

We are starting to see, especially with our kids, we're starting to see them engage more.

We're starting to notice that they talk about things they might want to get involved in or people who they are starting to be friends with.

It's that in between, like, all right, I think we're getting a little bit better season.

And then the green zone is when all of those protective factors.

Factors are in place is what that really looks like.

And that directly translates to how our kids are doing.

When we have families whose kids are not doing well, the first thing we look at is what protective factors are missing.

And I've never had a situation where a kid wasn't doing well and there wasn't something missing.

It's always that there's something going on that they're not getting, that their needs aren't getting met in that way.

So when we're talking about a transition timeline, what we notice and expect is that in the first three months of a transition, being in a new place.

And for kids, that could even be a school transition, too.

So we're most often talking about relocations to different places.

But even a school transition has pretty much the same timeline.

So the first three months, we expect them to be more or less in the red zone.

Okay.

Now they may not be, and we may have kids who jump in and get involved really quick and seem like they're often doing great.

And that's fantastic.

Right.

This is a generalization.

Sure.

And when we have families who call us because after a month, their kids are still not wanting to go to school, and they're.

They're struggling, they're having a hard time.

We'll give them also say, and you're still in that three month.

I know three months feels like a long time, but we're still in that normal range.

And then we want to see that after three months, we're starting to get into that yellow territory of like, all right, it's starting to feel a little bit better.

And then we get slowly, slowly from yellow to green.

What we want to see is that by the time a family's been in their location for a year, they're more green yellow than red yellow.

If that Makes sense.

Yeah.

Sometimes we hear, and I, I heard this a lot when I was first starting in tck care, things like, oh, well, it's just transition stress.

And then we ask, well, when did you relocate?

And it was two years ago or it was a year and a half ago.

And those are the situations where we as thinking preventively, we want to avoid by communicating.

Yes, transitions are hard and here's what's expected.

Hard.

And then beyond that, we want to put things into place because there are things that will actually make a difference for getting us to the yellow and green zone, both as parents and our kids.

And if we're not there by a year, if we're still deep in the red zone by a year, that's a long time to have operated in that hyper vigilant mode and we need to care for that well and figure out what shifts we're going to make.

Wow.

Wow.

And so one of, you know, many of the things I took my notes was it was another light bulb moment for me was, you know, we get to a country and we want our kids to acclimate and so we're trying to enter them in maybe into a national school or to a language or to culture.

And as parents, sometimes I think we can force that too quickly.

But then I think you shared, and maybe my notes are wrong.

Was, you know, then sometimes our kids can associate that red zone with that culture that, that you're trying to push down their throat is a strong analogy.

But you're, you're right, you're forcing it, you know, I mean, because you're, you're trying to get them to love it.

Did I take my notes?

Correct.

And if I did, could you, could you elaborate a little bit on that?

For sure.

We, again, generalization.

Right.

So this isn't going to be everyone, but we see that often with language learning.

Ok. Where if they are forced to start learning language right away and that's something that's being pushed really hard while they're in the red zone, which when our brains are in the red zone, we don't learn information very well.

There's too many other things going on.

And so we're pushing them to learn a language which is hard no matter what, while their brains are in the red zone and while they don't really have the outlets that they need for doing the things they enjoy and stress relief and.

Right.

Like those things that maybe in their passport, country or wherever they transitioned from, they knew what to do for fun and they had friends to run out and play with.

And that sort of thing that naturally gets their brain regulated after they've done something really hard at school that day.

If they don't have any of that and we're trying to push language learning on them and their brains are in the red zone, what we see is that one, they don't learn it very quickly or very, very well.

And if they associate this language and the people who speak it with this extreme discomfort and dysfunction, Right.

Like my brain is not working, then they sometimes put those things together and say, I don't want anything to do with this language.

And these people.

And that, unfortunately, is something that we.

And so we recommend that one, if a kid wants to learn language, let them learn language.

Right.

Like, that may be a green zone activity for them.

When my family moved to Tanzania, I was 13, so I was old enough to make some decisions and that sort of thing.

And I knew I wanted to learn the language, and so I jumped in.

And that was a fun thing for me, was going out and trying to speak it.

And so that wasn't a red zone activity for me.

Yeah.

But for my brother, it was.

That was something that was really, really off putting to him.

And so what we recommend is if the kid wants to learn language, go for it.

If they're.

They're pushing back, don't push the other way.

If they're pushing back, just say, okay, and they'll learn it when they need to.

I get asked a lot like, well, what if they're going to be going to a local school?

Well, if at all possible, get there a while before they have to start so that you've gotten a bit out of the red zone and you've started to put some good things into place.

Try not to arrive a week before school begins.

And that sort of thing, not just for language learning, but life in general.

Yeah.

But then don't force it.

Let them learn it as they recognize the need for it.

If they're showing up at local school and the teacher is talking in a different language, they're going to be recognizing the need for it right away without you saying, hey, you have to learn this.

We're going to study more when you get home.

We're also going to get a language tutor.

Right.

Like, let it go slowly.

And then after they are in the yellow zone, green zone, that's when it's.

It's more appropriate to say, all right, we're gonna.

We're gonna buckle down a little bit more and work harder on this.

Yeah.

You know, I, as I.

My kids say I shouldn't say it, but I say it anyway.

I gave them a lot of room for counseling material, you know, because we, we, we were taught, hey, you just put your kids in school, you know, I mean, and they didn't speak French, they didn't speak Malagasy.

But, you know, we put them in French and Malagasy school because we thought that's what you're supposed to do.

But at the same time, you know, then I, way back, I had Erlich Ernvik on, and she talked about the reality of it is, parents, we drop our kids off at a local school and then we go to a safe place to learn the language, right?

You know, as adults, we have coping mechanisms.

We have those abilities of.

We have agency, we have the ability to speak up.

We have, in general, physical presence that a child doesn't have.

And so we go to a safe place to learn language.

But we've put our kids in a local school and, and that could not be safe.

And they don't have the agency.

Maybe they don't have the voice to speak up.

They don't understand what's common.

And the reality of it is they're vulnerable.

You know, I mean, and you don't, as a parent, you don't think that.

But I think that's what, you know, when you shared in Atlanta, like I said, I think that's when it was disliked.

Light bulb after light bulb was going off in my mind.

And now as I, you know, I'm the director of member care, serving that currently for organization.

Just that idea that, that how can we get the word out to parents when we're putting our kids in situations, we need to do the best we can to keep them safe and at least give them a good running chance to succeed.

And I think that's what when you shared was.

I thought, man, how could have I done that different?

And then, and honestly, it made me think about adults.

Like, if kids are, you know, those, the zones of emotions, the red, yellow, green, I would imagine, I'm taking your research and maybe it's not.

You can't extrapolate it out, but I would think probably for adults, it might be the same thing, that they are in a red, red zone and they're trying to learn language and they're not probably doing good at it either.

So anyway.

Does any of that make sense, Lauren?

Absolutely.

Well, and the difference with the, with adults, so we do see the same transition timeline.

However, adults have the agency to put their coping mechanisms into place and to put things for them to look Forward to and right.

Like, we have a lot more control over how we deal with those stressful seasons than kids do.

The other thing with local school.

So first and foremost, local school can be a good option.

This isn't a it's never a good idea statement.

And we know from our research that local school was the most likely to have adverse effects on kids, especially if it was a local school that was not in their language initially.

And that makes sense.

Right.

For the reasons that you just said.

It's a long day in a place that feels extremely dysregulating.

When we do have families put their kids in local school, what we advise is to keep an eye on how long they're in the red zone.

We still don't want them in the red zone for a year.

And so if they go to a local school and after six months, it's not getting better and they're still really not doing well.

And usually what they see is it gets worse, not better.

And so if they're going downhill, if it's not getting better, then we need to pivot.

And we'd say the same thing for an international school or a boarding school.

Right.

Like, if it's six months into the school year and they're getting worse, not better, then we need to make some sort of pivot.

That doesn't necessarily mean changing the school, but it does mean something has to shift.

The other thing is, if they're in a local school and they're overstimulated all day long, then after school and on weekends should be the time that they get to have those coping mechanisms in place and recharge and take a break.

And sometimes I work with families who say, oh, yeah, our kids go to school and then on the weekends we do culture learning.

So we go out and do all these things and we're trying to integrate into the culture.

And I'm thinking these kids have tried to integrate in the culture for six to eight hours a day for the last five days.

Like they need a break on a Saturday.

But it's different for the parent if the parent isn't living the same reality.

And so it's important to consider how we can balance that.

Like, yes, we're not going to just not put our kids in hard situations.

Adversity can be helpful and we have to keep an eye on how they're doing and give them space to recover.

Yeah.

And I think that's what you're given.

You're given parents and ultimately given TCKs, the tools that when they are put in adverse situations, they're prepared for it.

And there's one thing to say, you know, and you hear in the missions world, hey, kids are resilient.

You know, they'll figure it out.

Well, some do, some don't.

You know, I mean, and in the same time, we're.

We're responsible for it.

And so if we're putting our kids in situations without the tools, without the conversations, and I think that's the other thing that you empower parents to do, is to be able to have the conversations with their kids and to have those conversations in a healthy way, in an informed way, to ask questions that maybe the parents are not thinking about.

And if they're in the red zone, too, maybe they're just not thinking about having conversations.

You know, I mean, that's.

That's the reality.

I would think that they're just trying to survive, too.

And so it's not an excuse, but if they can recognize that, then maybe it gives them an opportunity to be a little more intentional.

So if there's parents, maybe some missions leaders listening into this, how can.

What are some emotional protective factors that they can help the parents that they serve and the families they serve put into place to assist the families during transitions?

Is that a fair question?

Yeah.

Emotional factors.

That was what you said specifically.

So the first thing is we as parents tend to try to get our kids to stop feeling difficult emotions because it's uncomfortable, and we don't want our kids to feel difficult emotions.

But what we tend to do because of that is we tend to shut them down.

And so we start saying, well, it's not that bad.

Or we defend like, this is a really great school option, or this is the best option.

Or we correct the facts like, well, you were at school for six hours, not eight hours.

Or we start shutting down, as if by giving really good logical reasoning, we will take away their difficult emotion.

But what that actually does is just make them not want to share it, because in their mind, they're thinking, you don't get it.

And so, first and foremost, helping parents learn to show up with the ability to hold space for the difficult emotions and say, yeah, I bet that was a really hard, long day.

That totally makes sense.

I bet that is really disappointing.

Or it makes sense that that would have felt really, really hard.

And then moving from that into, let's think about what we can do to recharge.

Let's spend some time together as a family and work on both the.

We're going to hold space for the.

The difficult emotions Especially those that are incredibly legitimate given the kids situation and help them to, to find ways and learn ways of getting them their brain kind of back online and back into a good situation.

Yeah.

So that's a really, really important tool.

And then the other thing is giving parents permission that if their kids are really not doing well, it's okay to make changes.

And often what we find is we, we are the ones giving the family permission.

And they often thank us and are basically like, we didn't realize that this was important enough that we could shift something because of it, that this was that big of a deal.

And when we have kids who are not doing well for a length of time, being able to say, you know, it's okay to keep them if you want to keep them at that school, see if they can switch classes so they can be with their soccer teammates in the same class or drive a distance to get them involved in some after school activity or like, what can we shift so that we can influence their environment in a healthy way?

And it's, it is okay to make decisions based on that.

Yeah, I think it just ended you.

The decisions that need to be made.

In my current role, I don't hear many people that are coming off the mission field because of missiological difference or theological difference, but they do come off.

You know, Dr. Dobbins and I say it frequently, Dobson says, you know, parents are as happy as their unhappiest child.

And so I think for, for parents that want to be there, engaged in ministry and your kids are not doing well, it's very hard for you.

If you're a healthy parent, that's judgmental.

But if you're a healthy parent and you're engaging and you care for your kids.

Right.

And if they're not doing well, it's really hard for you.

Give your whole focus on language learning or, or establishing their church or what they're.

Because you empathize with what your kids are going through.

And so I think if we can empower parents to make those decisions and there is a tension point, right?

There's a tension point becoming kid centric so that the whole world revolves around that child.

And I wish I had an answer for that.

I'd be a rich person.

And probably on a lot of podcasts, I don't have the answer for it.

Maybe you do.

But how do we in a season season make.

Help our kids be as healthy as they can and then it builds a solid foundation that they can grow from.

But if that foundation is not there, then.

And it doesn't.

So is that fair?

You're the specialist, but would you agree with my thought or not?

Yeah, absolutely.

And what we see in this field is that it trends way more toward kids not getting legitimate needs met than it does towards families being kid centric.

And that becomes a part of the culture of missionary expat families.

And so that's more of what we come across.

And there's a difference between being overly kid focused and not meeting legitimate needs.

And one of the things that we, we find over and over in the missions community, and I think there's probably some, some theological challenges here that we, we see families saying, oh, I thought that these were the things we were supposed to sacrifice for the sake of ministry.

And when those things are things like our kids ever having peer relationships and are our kids living in a healthy home environment?

Right.

Like those sorts of things are not the things that should be sacrificed.

Those are, those are the legitimate needs that we shouldn't just grit and bear it through.

We should be working to put into place for our kids and, and making the, the decisions necessary to put those things in place for our kids.

Yeah, you know, I, I read the Poisonwood Bible like a long time ago when I was a young man.

And then my daughter Isabel, she read it through and so she's this like six, eight months ago.

And so she said, hey, you need to read this.

And I'm like, I read a long time ago.

And she's like, no, you need to read it again.

So it's been very valuable for me.

I read through it.

It's interesting to see where she's highlighted it.

But also in that book, which is, you know, theoretically, you know, it's a fictional story, but man, it could be real where a family doesn't have the things that you're mentioning there.

Right.

It's not a safe place.

It's not emotionally safe, it's not physically safe.

It's a lot of those things.

And so I think it was just a, it was interesting for me to read that story before I served in Africa for 20 plus years and then to read it after serving in Africa in 20 plus years.

And the bells that were going off in my head were totally different, you know, I mean, because you had, you're like, oh, I could see that in this person and me, I could see me doing this and you know, all the way down the line.

But as you talked about families having the things that, you know, your kids, you're sacrificing your kids for certain reasons and you Read that book and you see that was kind of the mentality that they went into, you know, that the girls would just have to figure it out.

And it ended up having to.

If you play that out, you look at the, where the daughters and decisions they made, once again fictional but could be real.

How it impacts their life into their adulthood and beyond.

And I think that's as parents you're making decisions at least in a compressed amount of time.

You're making decisions that could have great impact on your kids for the rest of their lives.

And so how do you do it?

How do you do it?

Well, it can be challenging.

So last question I have for you.

I have about six of them I didn't get to, but let me just ask one more question.

So caring for them spiritually during these transitions, anything else that first was emotionally how would they care for them spiritually during these transitions?

We can't forget that discipling our kids is so, so important and that's, that should be an in the home responsibility.

And it's sad to hear from the missionary kids who felt like they were never discipled but that was their parents ministry to the people around them.

So I think first and foremost just creating a culture of, of hey these are, these are things that we talk about as a family and a huge part of that is having that open handedness of we can ask hard questions and we can share the big hard things with each other and with God and we can look for stories in the Bible, we can look for scriptures in the Bible that talk about those things that we're dealing with and there's, there's space to ask questions and go man, why did, did that happen?

Or we're praying for peers and we're not finding them and they're not like it's not going how it was supposed to, right?

And, and then bringing in the, the spiritual lens of that of you know, there's, there is our responsibility as parents to look at things like protective factors and go okay, how can we best put the things in place for our kids to the best of our ability?

And there's the piece of okay Lord, this is something that is in, in many ways out of my control also.

And so help us, help us here.

I think that one of the most important things is to have those harder conversations with our kids about how we can trust that God is good and he's good to us and he's good at being God even when we have hard and good emotions at the same time and even when it seems like hard things are happening all over the place.

But that, that discipleship, just like we would do with kids anywhere.

But I think we have more opportunity to hold space for the big questions and emotions in our globally mobile life.

Yeah.

And I think as you said we would, you, you would hope that we're doing it in our home country.

The intentionality is there.

I just think when, you know, we got to Burkina Faso, you know, the, the we were, our mentor said just something to affect, you know, you'll function here about 80% on a good day.

You'll function here about 80% of what you function on and wherever you come from in the US And I thought that's not true.

There's no way, you know, I'm going to function at 100% wherever I'm at.

Well, that she, she was one.

I was wrong.

And so I think that some of that is when you're in a different context, a different culture, there's so much of your hard drive that's taken up just by surviving because things don't come natural to you, at least in the first.

I mean I was there for 20 some odd years and things that didn't come natural.

Right.

So there's a certain amount that's taken up there and then other things.

You're only one, you're a human.

And then you begin to let things fall off.

And this discipleship, intentional discipleship of your kids can be something that you can let not because you're mean or nefarious parent, but just because you're overwhelmed, you let things fall off.

And, and, and the intentionality that you point out that you know, it is a responsibility of the parent and to be happening in the home just to be intentional how we do it.

So Lauren, do you have a.

Is there a question I should have asked you on this topic that I didn't Any, any last thoughts?

And if not, then I'll just ask you to pray for us.

Oh, I think we, we, we pretty well rounded all of the important parts and summed it up well.

Sure.

And so if someone would get.

Wanted to get in contact with you, Lauren, how would they do that?

So tck.training.com is our website and that's the easiest way to find our resources and also our research on there.

You can email me directly at lauren.wells cktraining.com or infoctraining.com is another easy way to get a hold of any of our us.

Awesome.

Lauren, will you pray for us?

Absolutely.

God, thank you that you are a God who knows all the things that we need, all the things that our kids need, and the things that we were created to need in relationships and in safety and in feeling loved and cared for and supported by our.

Our parents and our people around us.

God, I just thank you that you are good and that you love each and every one of the people listening to this.

God, I pray that you would spark divine ideas and imagination and how maybe shifts could be made if shifts need to be made for the sake of the.

The kids.

And I pray that you would give wisdom and direction, especially when families are in situations where it feels like there's not a whole lot of options.

I thank you so much that you are bigger than the logistics that we can see and that ultimately you are the ones who.

You are the one who cares for the hearts of our kids.

And I pray that you would continue to lead and guide and direct each of us individually.

Me, me as well in this as we love our kids as well as we can and try to raise them in the ways that they should go and also in the ways that are going to be the most fruitful for.

For the rest of their lives.

We love you, Lord.

In your name.

Amen.

Amen.