Your children are emotionally and spiritually sensitive. I don’t mean like they’ve worked to develop this sensitivity, they came with it. I witnessed it for over 20 years. They feel what’s really going on in environments. They know when people are or aren’t safe. We all came this way. But over time, with a lack of others around them losing their own sensitivity, this gift often dulls. It callouses. It goes dormant. It probably happened to most of us. Now we are trying to remember what we knew long ago. We are trying to become sensitive again to the environment we created and exist in. So we can live and not just exist anymore. But here’s what we really need to become aware of. Our kids…they feel us. They feel our true condition. They feel our marriage. We may not, but they do. We may not because we’ve become slaves to our subconscious habits that drive about 90-95% of everything we do. Our tone, our facial expressions, our body language. Here’s a fun fact: we communicate far more from our body language, facial expressions, and tone than we ever will from our words. People remember how you make them feel, even if they forgot what you said. Back to our kids… They feel us. They feel our environment and atmosphere far more than we may realize. We are teaching them every moment what “normal” is, and often it’s not truly “normal”. Not for believers. Normal for believers feels more like heaven than earth or hell. Over the last 2 years of working to help families become emotionally whole, I’ve realized someone very profound and enlightening. I’ve been trying to help parents create a healthy home for their kids and have discovered that it starts inside each parent, then it’s their marriage, then it’s family. I had the cart before the horse. Because the kids feel the marriage. They feel each parent. They are either safe or not all by what they feel at home. Starting with us. So I’m changing the entire course on emotionally whole families. I’ve been researching, studying, and practicing more and more what I’ve discovered.

I want to hear from my kids at dinner time. The problem is dinner usually seems to turn to chaos. I have 5 kids and the first four are all within five years of each other. It's constant interrupting, or just making noise for fun, competing to be heard, or not even realizing someone else is talking, getting angry about being interrupted. Then I have a 3 year old who is the strong willed child. I wish I had a seat he couldn't get out of because he's constantly all over the place. I am disciplining him but it's not changing things yet. It all feels so overwhelming. When my husband is home, his yelling is what calms everyone down. He's currently overseas and I'd love to find a way myself to have peace at dinner without having to yell. Any tips for helping them get used to taking turns, sitting still, using inside voices?

Women and men are very different in their hormones... I think it's important to see how this also plays into our emotions... Let's talk about it more!

What do you guys do about your kids whining and complaining? I feel like there should be a consequence. But I'm not sure what would be appropriate.

@Natasha Greer and I had a chat today on Instagram about disappointment…with God, in marriage, and helping our kids through it. Want to watch the entire video? It’s here: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DL2hkgKuDNR/?igsh=MXM0cWV4dWRrbnlwOA==