Dr. Jessica Peck: We would like to take a moment to thank our sponsor, preborn. When a mother meets her baby on ultrasound and hears their heartbeat, it's a divine connection. And the majority of the time she will choose life. But they can't do it without our help. Preborn needs us, the pro life community, to come alongside them. One ultrasound is just $28. To donate, dial pound 250 and say the keyword BABY or visit preborn.com/AFR hello.
: And welcome to the Dr. Nurse Mama show, prescribing Hope for healthy Families here on American Family Radio. Here's your host, professor, pediatric nurse practitioner, and mom of four, Dr. Jessica Peck.
Dr. Jessica Peck: Well, hey there, friends, and welcome to my favorite time of day, getting to spend time with you, prescribing Hope for Healthy families and friends. It is fry. Yay. It is fry Friday. It is Friday. I am so happy that it's Friday and we are halfway through February. I do not know how, but this month just seems like it is absolutely flying by. I. We are just. I'm, holding on for dear life. I hope there are some of you out there who feel like, no, it seemed a little slower to me. That is great. I could use all of those vibes, for sure. But we have arrived on a Friday where I talk about this week's healthy habit and answer questions from listeners, mainly about homefront headlines, the headlines that I've been following that really you need to know about, and more importantly, how you need to respond to them and your family. But before we get to that, let's dive into this week's healthy habit.
We started with the healthy habits of spiritual discipline, those things that are fundamental
We are here on a Friday, and I want to talk about this week and this journey as we've been talking through this, through this month, starting in January. We started with the healthy habits of spiritual discipline, those things that are just fundamental to your family's health. And I know everybody feels like maybe can we skip to the good part where we learn that communication hack or, you know, that secret, that tip, that trick that's just going to be the magic thing to fix your family. But I'm telling you, friends, that God's wisdom in his Word is sufficient for us. And there is nothing that is going to replace those basic disciplines of, number one, prayer, number two, reading and memorizing scripture, number three, getting plugged into a church for using Christian music as part of your discipleship journey. We have talked about having a daily devotional, and that is really important. So this morning we are. This morning. This morning we're talking about mornings this afternoon. So that's a way to trip me up. But this afternoon, we're talking about morning routine. That is the next habit that we're going to focus in as we move into some of these rhythms and to set your family up for success. That, daily devotional is one of those crossover. It's a spiritual discipline, but it's also a daily rhythm that will help your family.
This week, I invite you to take an inventory of your mornings
So let's talk about mornings, because before we talk about fixing our mornings, because probably you can say everything that's going wrong with them, maybe we need to understand them. How did we get here? How did the culture get here? How did my individual family get here? Because you start off the year with such great intentions, and it usually goes downhill pretty quickly. And so I just want you to take a little inventory. I invite you to do this. I've done this in my own life. This week, I invite you to take an inventory of your mornings. Now, we're going to walk through some of the different emotional awareness, relational awareness, and your physical awareness. And just think about how you're present in your morning. So let's talk about emotions first, how you feel about mornings. Now, I will tell you right away. I am not a morning person. My husband is the morning person in this house. He wakes up, you know, the birds are singing, the sun is shining. I want my coffee. I'm that kind of morning person. But when you wake up, do. How do you feel? How do you feel when you wake up, when your eyes open? Do you feel grounded, ready to begin the day? Or do you feel panic, like you're already behind? What emotion is is showing up most often in your mornings? Is it anxiety? Is it urgency? Is it irritation? Is it numbness? Is it peace? Is it joy? Because if it is, you need to share that with your neighbor and think about how emotionally available you are the first 30 minutes of your day. First 30 minutes. When you wake up to the other members of your household, how emotionally available are you to them? That leads us to our relational awareness. Who gets the best of you in the morning? Who gets your very best that you have, and who gets what's left or what is not there yet? Is your first interaction of the day connection? Or is it automatic correction? Especially if you have kids and you're already telling everybody what they're doing wrong, what's on your nerves, what they need to do better? And I want you to think, do the people you love experience you as calm and present and ready to face the day, even if you aren't a morning person? Because that's completely okay? Are you just tense and reactive and everybody thinks avoid this person at all costs.
How quickly do you go from waking up to consuming information off your phone?
In the mornings, physically, how does your body feel when you wake up? Do you feel tired, rushed? Do you feel that old person grown when you get out of bed? Like, I am not ready to get up? Are your shoulders tight? Your jaw is clenched, your thoughts are racing? And how quickly here is a real tell here. How quickly do you go from waking up to consuming information off your phone? What is the time gap there before you reach for your phone and start to scroll through your social media, your newsfeed, your emails and you haven't done anything to ground your soul? There's been no prayer, there's been no scripture reading. It's just instant consumption. And I am guilty of that. I want you to know that is something that I really been working on being intentional about. But this really sets the tone for our day and that is a simple, just little awareness that we can put a little buffer in there. I'll tell you how, don't worry, I'll tell you how.
How often are our mornings setting us up for success in the day?
Before we're finished, let's think about your spiritual awareness. Our spiritual awareness. What is the voice that is shaping your mindset first thing in the morning? Is it God's truth or is it the demands of your everyday life? What is that first thing that you start thinking about spiritually? Are you beginning your day with prayer or with worship? Or just are you straight on to productivity, just thinking, what do I need to do? It's important to recognize patterns in our life. How often are your mornings setting you up for success in the day? Or how are we letting our morning sabotage us and just completely derail us? Are the mornings forming love in us? Are they forming a spiritually, emotionally, relationally, physically setting us up for success? Or is it just basically a survival exercise where we're just training to learn how to survive? What do you what does that morning look like? Because the truth is our mornings are not neutral. They are either going to help set us up for success or they're going to trip us up for failure. There is no middle ground there. There is no. My mornings are just okay. You're either working towards success in the day, relationally, spiritually, physically, or you're tripping up towards failure. And so think about if your mornings could talk. Imagine you have a five year old in your house who's maybe six, sitting in Sunday school and the Sunday school teacher asks how did your morning go? And you know that unguarded honesty that they have and they tell everything you know about how so and so yelled at so and so and all of those kinds of things. Let's be that gut level honest. What are your mornings like? And the, the encouragement in all of this is that we can change it. It is completely within our power to change. Now you may be feeling overwhelmed. Let's talk a little bit how we got am a history buff and I think it's important and encouraging to look at this because when we look at most of human history, our mornings have been shaped by natural rhythms, not alarms or sometime we have to be somewhere. People woke when the sun came up because they had to go take care of the animals, right, and make breakfast for people who were waking up. And time was really experienced more than it was measured. And mourning wasn't something to survive. It was just, just a new start to the day. When this changed was with the Industrial revolution. That's when time became our taskmaster. That's when people started wearing watches, where we started having school and work. And people had to be in the workplace, they weren't working the land as much. We had factory whistles and clocks everywhere and all of those things. And morning shifted from something that was relational to something that was transactional. So instead of how are we beginning the day, Good morning, what do we have to do today? Society really says, okay, how fast can you get moving? Because time is money, my friend. And if you're losing time, then you're losing money, you're losing productivity. And we started to feel this sense of urgency when we first wake up in the morning. You've probably heard, or maybe you even think about the concept of a slow morning. It's like a treat. Now if you have a slow morning where you don't have to get up and get around, you can just take it slow, take your time. You can. You don't have to be anywhere at any specific time. Most of the time that is a luxury for us. Or maybe if you are retired, or in another situation where you have that, we're all looking at you and all thinking, oh, that looks so nice. Although the grass is always greener on the other sides of the fence, isn't it?
Digital technology has invaded the first five minutes of your day
But another historical consideration is the rise of the nuclear family. Because in earlier generations you had families who were living together, so there were multiple generations who shared those morning responsibilities. Somebody who helped cook and clean up and take care of the kids and, and those roles were just more, were bigger. Now with modern families, they're often fewer adults. Maybe it's a single parent household. Maybe it's a household where the parent has to go to work really early in the morning or the parents are working on different shifts. One does morning, one does nights. We have fewer homes with grandparents in them. And we're trying to juggle more. We're juggling more work, more school, more childcare, more commuting. And we carry those expectations still that once we had more people to help us with, but now it didn't. We just, we didn't lower the expectation of the morning. We just lowered the amount of support we had while increasing the expectation. And we feel that pressure. So that, that definitely has invaded modern life. But nothing has changed our mornings like the digital age and the invasion of the first five minutes of your day. And that's why you see apps like First5 that are so popular because, that's the whole, point of it is spend the first five minutes of your day grounding yourself spiritually in God's word. Because now mornings start with news from everywhere we want to see. What did we miss last night? What happened while we were sleeping? Sleeping? What is already in my inbox for my work day today? What is my work going to look like today? What is happening on social media? I already feel the pull to scroll. And then when we pick up our phone, even first thing in the morning, we have alerts, we have texts, we have notifications, and just start to feel emotional weight that frankly just doesn't belong in that moment. It doesn't belong in our bedroom because most of us, this is cheap. True. Most of us keep our phone on the nightstand table because you know, it went there about two in the morning when you got tired of watching reels and you put it down and then you pick it up first thing in the morning. And your bedroom is supposed to be your most sacred space of rest. And when we pull all of that pressure in there through the phone, it really makes a big difference. So you see where this is going. There's so many little shifts that we can do, but we just have to be intentional about it because as it is right now, before your feet even hit the floor, literally before your feet hit the floor, if you've picked up your phone and you've started to scroll through all of those things, your nervous system is already processing and it's saying, okay, crisis, conflict, urgent, other people's priorities to do list. I mean, you're starting to feel that before your feet even hit the floor, floor. And we are asking our, our minds and our hearts to sprint, to start running from the first moment we Open our eyes before your feet have even started to walk towards the bathroom. That is just not the way that God designed us to live. And this is part of a byproduct of living in the hustle culture, where we put productivity before people. And that's more important because it teaches. The culture teaches us you're behind even before you begin. You can't let anybody else get ahead of you. You gotta work hard, you gotta hustle that. If you wanna rest, you've gotta earn that rest. And if you're slow, you're weak. And if you're. If you're present, well, that's not really that important because we have AI that can be present for you now. And morning routines have become basically just a project for how do we make our day better? And those good habits, they're just practicing pressure. It's checklists, it's content, it's goals. And we're seeing the backlash of that. And interestingly, culture is even beginning to notice the cost. So culture is doing what culture does, and it's trying to monetize this, right? Sell us, solutions for the morning. But culture is even calling out, hey, we're burned out. There's tension in families, there's anxiety in kids. We are emotionally exhausted before noon. Everybody's trying to figure out a way, how can I not go to work today? And, but here's the grace in all of this. You're not failing at morning. You're not failing as a family. You're not failing as a person. Mornings have just been redesigned around you without any regard for the way that God designed you to be, your very human nervous system or your soul. And we're engineering mornings for output and not for love. So let's reframe it. You're not weak. You're not lazy. You are just living inside a system that is setting you up to fail. So we have got to circumvent the system. That's why even five minutes of intentional grounding can feel absolutely life changing. It's not a. It's just a small countercultural act of rebellion. Do you want to join me in that? Just a small countercultural act of rebellion in the morning. And we'll talk when we come back about how we can habit stack and how you can do all of the habits that we've talked about in the first five minutes of your day. Yes, I am being serious. The first five minutes. Just a small reframe. A small shift in direction could mean all the difference for your family. I'll see you on the other side of this break.
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Celebration by Forrest Frank: You, you, you, you. You know what to do. It's time to put your phone down and raise your attitude. The God who made the birds seas sun and the moon isn't somewhere far away he is standing in the room. So let it scream, let it shout Let him know what you're, about. Keep it moving and grooving don't leave a single doubt that today is the day that the Lord has created why would I sit around just waiting? Let's have a celebration Time to clap our hands and stomp our feet let's have a celebration.
Dr. Jessica Peck: Welcome back, friends. This is celebration by Forrest Frank. Listen. Isn't that so fun? Oh my goodness, what a fun song. And, this is the fun part of hearing that. So song. This is our new giveaway song. We're going to be playing this song this year every time we have a giveaway on the show. So let's take that first caller at 888-589-8840. That's 888-589-8840. And be listening, for the rest of the year because every time we have a giveaway, we're going to celebrate that giveaway with celebration by Forrest Frank. And we are celebrating that with the this book today that I'm holding up the love language that matters most By Gary Chapman. And Les and Leslie Parrott had Gary Chapman on the show last week for the second time talking about this book. And many of you may be familiar with the love languages, but this book helps you really put those into action. We talked about a lot of fun things like dialect and just knowing exactly the right tone and delivery and really honing in on those love languages. So we're going to give that away to the first person who calls today and as that early celebration of love for Valentine's Day. And we're so grateful to all of you who are callers. So listen in. Like I said, for the rest of the year, whenever we have a giveaway, we will celebrate that with for strength. Whether he knows it or not. We have looped him in to our afternoon routine, but we are talking today about morning routines. Every Friday we've been covering a healthy habit. And listen, these will transform your life if you, you take small steps forward in this direction.
When our mornings are rushed, it elevates cortisol, which is the stress hormone in our body
So we've been talking about mornings and why are they just so difficult sometimes? But the morning is not neutral. Like I said before the break, it has an impact on your body because when our, mornings are rushed, it elevates cortisol, which is the stress hormone in our body. And cortisol does a lot of damaging things. In short burst, it's great, it's healthy. But chronic stress, chronic cortisol, it makes you tired, it makes you irritable, it makes you forgetful, you lose focus. Does any of that sound familiar? Does anyone struggle with those things in the morning? And ultimately it impacts your heart long term. It does impact your heart, puts you at greater risk for heart attack, for stroke, and for high blood pressure. And if we skip those habits in the morning, those spiritual disciplines, we are going to be increasingly at the m mercy of the reaction of our emotions throughout the day. Because mornings are prime time for conflict. Because tone can escalate really quickly. Let me tell you, if you can't find your shoes and it's time to head out the door, like, mama is not gonna be happy with that. And these things that are minor, inconvenience, conveniences, somehow they feel so personal. Like, how could you? What do you mean you forgot to make my lunch? What do you mean? You, you don't take care of your stuff, and then all of a sudden it's like you just don't even care about the stuff that I worked so hard to provide for. You see how fast that, excellent, that escalates. Children absorb all of that balled up tension. They take it to school, adults ball it up, take it to work. And spouses often experience their first interaction of the day as really griping at each other instead of encourage each other. But how you leave the house is where you're going to come back to the house. So setting the tone for your morning, you're going to enter back at night the same way that you left. And maybe you have something during the day that makes your day go a little bit better, maybe your family doesn't. And then you come in and you've had an attitude shift, but they haven't. They just remember how you left the them. That is really important. So what is happening to us when we are rushing around in the morning? Well, in our bodies, like I said, it spikes our cortisol. It shall. It makes our breathing more shallow, which is not good for us. It makes our muscle tension really automatic. So we're just walking around just like, so tense, like we're going to snap all the time. And your blood flow shifts away from your digestion. So, news flash, you've got heartburn. It actually impacts your immunity. So you are getting sick more often over this time. You can see this leads us to be chronically tired, where we have headaches and we're sick, and we're sick and tired, and we're literally sick and tired. And our minds, it is so hard because stress shuts down your prefrontal cortex. You know what that is? That's a part of your brain that helps you make wise decisions, that helps you. You be patient. So when we have stress, that's the first thing that it takes over. So we're working against our brains. We're pitting our bodies against our brains, and that makes us more reactive. And we're just quicker to interpret neutral moments as problems or even worse, as personal offenses. And when we start the day in urgency, it trains our brains to expect chaos. And when we don't have it, we don't know how to rest in that. We get uncomfortable. So we start to scroll down and numb that feeling out. For our emotions, it is just so destructive. And for our spirit, it also is destructive. We don't want to crowd out awareness of God's presence. And where we make prayer just feel like something else that we have to do instead of a refuge that we can run to, a stronghold to start our day. And scripture is just harder to absorb when our nervous system is. Is dysregulated. So if you're in the habit of the first five minutes of your day, you're Already scrolling through your emails, your notifications, your phones. And then you try to to absorb scripture. You try to pray your body is going to fight against you. And that a dysregulated body makes it really hard to have a regulated faith. And so how do we rewire our mornings? Well, we have to make sure our bodies are not waking up braced for battle. That is what we're going to do. So let me tell you about the power of a simple intentional morning. It is not about perfection. This is not about an hour long routine. It is about alignment, aligning your heart with the Lord before you align, with your agenda. And that is where habit stacking becomes really, really powerful. So here are some simple things to that you can do to have it stack the first five minutes of your day. Okay, are you ready for this? Because I'm going to give you a life hack that I know everybody wants the life hack, but here is one that really works. First thing you do, take your phone out of your bedroom. I know I started with something really you're thinking, no, I can't do that. I use it as my alarm. Nope, I have to have it closed because what if my kid calls? Those kinds of things. At least, at least put it across the room, put it to where you cannot reach it out of arm's length out of your bed. If that means you put it on the dresser, if that means you put it on the floor by the door. If you have to have your phone in your room for somebody to call, great, do that. But put it out of arm's length of where it's not the first thing that you grab. And if it is the first thing that you grab in the morning, right now when you wake up and it's not there, that's going to be an automatic cue you a loud reset that's going to be screaming to you, oh my gosh, what do I do? Like the first thing that you're going to want to do is get up and go grab your phone. So if you just move your phone at nighttime, put it where your arm can't reach it, then what you do is set your alarm. Whatever kind of alarm you have, it can even be on your phone. That's a way. Or it can be she, who shall not be named. So I don't set that off everywhere. Or it can be an old fashioned alarm clock. But if you can wake up to worship music, make that your wake up call. And if you want to take it that even a step further, you can cultivate a Worship list, especially for that day, for that season. If you know you're having a fight, ahead of you, put in worship songs about battle, about victory and battle. If you are having a time where you know you're having trouble having peace with, wake up with those messages of peace. So when you wake up, there's, you're waking up and you have worship music, playing worship music, that, that has scripture. That's habit stacking even more so you're automatically having that use a book, have your bible right by your bed and just read a few scriptures right before you even wake up.
Having a spiritual reset in your morning can transform your whole day
And just if you do that for just five minutes, that's habit stacking where you're praying, you can pray even a one sentence prayer, even if you're reading one scripture, even if you're just listening to one song as you wake up, that is a powerful, powerful reset. And it's much better than waking up to the alarm. And besides, if you're one of those people that your alarm goes off if you have to get up at 7 and your alarm goes off at 6:37, 6:39, 6:41, 6:43 and your spouse is laying there saying, when are you going to get up? They'll love this shift. I promise you that they'll love that. That is a way that you can habit stack to totally reframe your morning. But think about how your morning works for you. You, you can do something as simple as getting writing a scripture verse on a note card and taping it to your bathroom mirror. I hope you are brushing your teeth every morning. And as you're brushing your teeth, you can just read that scripture and read it until you have it memorized and know you can put it by the coffee machine. If you stand by the coffee machine to make your coffee, read that scripture until you have it memorized. There's so many ways that we can habit stack our day. And the final thing that I would tell you to make your morning smoother is have a family mantra. Say the same thing when you leave the house each day. It's just a simple, simple word of blessing. It can be very unique to your family. Just end the morning, walk out the door as your kids are leaving the car to go to school, or if you're going to work or wherever you're going as you're leaving the morning, say the same thing to your family over and over and over again. That is really powerful and grounding you and connecting you. And when you leave, that's the last words that they, that you speak, that they hear you say. And when they come back that afternoon, that evening, that's what they're stepping back into. That is a powerful way to reset your morning. There's all kinds of other things that you can do to set yourself up for success. And we can talk about those, and we have been talking about those with other guests just laying your clothes out, laying out the breakfast dishes, all of those practical things. But I'm telling you that spiritual reset in your attitude will help you face any of those morning hassles that you see with a lot more encouragement. And if you're going through a time, maybe you're thinking, that's not me. I'm not stressed. I'm lonely. I just, I wake up and it's too quiet. This is a way to reset your heart, your mind, your attitude, and to invite God into your day. And so I encourage you to do that. Even if you're saying that, that mantra, that statement, that faith statement to yourself, like, we walking in love, we show grace, bring peace wherever you go, know that I love you no matter what. Whatever it is, it doesn't matter. It can be specific to your family. Just, you don't have to have a perfect morning to have a faithful one. Just five minutes can redirect your whole day. And so if your mornings are forming your heart shift, shaping your relationships, what are they currently teaching you and what do you want them to teach you instead? How do you want your mornings to be different? Tomorrow morning is not just the start of your day, it's this. It can be the start of your new life. How exciting is that? Because God's mercies are new every single morning and we need those because when we wake up in the morning, usually the first thing is headlines. That's start to come over the airwaves. We see headlines coming on our phones, on our televisions, everywhere. And so many of those headlines are so disturbing. And I talked last week about the Epstein headlines and how our kids are being immersed in that. So much of that is so disturbing, is so disheartening. It's just, it is. There just are no words for the deprivation that we, we are exposed to, that we see, that we happen. Our hearts break for people who are experiencing such tragedy and we have to have a more hopeful way.
February is National Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month
And so that brings us to some Homefront headlines for this week. Things that I've been watching. I'm going to tell you what happened and why it matters for your family and how your family can respond. One thing that I have been following is Actually for the month of February, you may not be aware of this, but, but it is actually National Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month. Now we don't want to think about teens having, we don't. Well, if you have a teen, you don't want to think about them dating at all, pretty much most of the time. But we certainly don't want to think about them having violent relationships. But let me tell you, this is absolutely saturating the airwaves. This is something that they are experiencing, exposed to all of the time. And if you've been following any of the Epstein stories, Epstein High, the headlines that have been going around, a lot of that has to do with normalization of violence. That has to do with grooming vulnerable teenagers into situations where they feel like they have no other way out. They are, they feel trapped, they feel very, very frightened. And that absolutely can happen. And there are problems, predators out there who want to abuse teenagers. I'll give you that. That's about as far as that I'm going to go. I'd like to give you all a heads up when I'm talking about things that can be more difficult. But the fact is it is happening. And even when we look at very popular romance genres, of books, of movies, we're talking about normalizing violence. And when we talk about terror, teen exposure to pornography and explicit content, it normalizes violence. And so when teens experience abuse and violence in a dating context, they think, well, this can't be happening or this is normal. And maybe I just am not savvy or mature enough to be able to handle it or process it, but I also don't have any language to describe it. And they also think, well, how can this be? Because this is not some stranger off the street. This is a 15 year old kid in my homeroom class who kids can't abuse other kids, can they? And that can happen. And so this is so important in this age of social media for parents and grandparents and other invested adults to talk to kids about what it means to have healthy relationships. Those norms have all been disrupted by social media. It's very hard to figure out what is a healthy relationship. And you have vocabulary that kids use these days like situationship, which means, okay, yeah, we're friends, but only when it benefits me. I have no obligation to you, I have no commitment to you. I really have no care about your feelings. I only care about you in your life as much as you can serve me and make me feel good about myself. And teens will normalize this, but it is not normal. It devalues them. And it is not God's design for love. It is not God's design for relationships. And we need adults and kids lives who speak to them and say that's not okay for somebody to treat you like this. Here's what you look for for healthy relationships. When we come back, I'll tell you more about that. And I'm also going to talk to you about and online group called 764 that you need to be aware of for your kids. I'll be right back after this break.
: The AFR app is a powerful tool, but it does have limitations. You can't use it to change the oil in your vehicle or get rid of carpet stains. It won't walk the dog, won't pick up the dry cleaning or take the kids to practice. But while you're doing those things, you can listen to your favorite AFR content through the app on your phone, smart device or Roku. Just go to your app store or visit afr.net Listen to AFR wherever you go with the AFR app.
That's My King by CeCe Winans: Wonderful and beautiful, glorious and holy. My king, we declare the glory. Give him all the honor all together worthy. Who we talking about? That's my king. There's no one before you. M. Yes, we will adore you. All of this is for you.
Dr. Jessica Peck: Welcome back friends. That is that's My King by CeCe Winans And thank goodness for that because we live in a world that just seems like it gets a little more nutty by the day when we look at all of the headlines. But today I'm breaking those down for you, talking about some home front headlines and things that are happening out in the world and what your family, why it matters for your family and what you need to do about it. How we are going to respond to that. I've been talking about Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month, which is in February, and we do have Valentine's Day coming up tomorrow. Happy Valentine's Day to everyone. God loves you, by the way. But this is happening among teens and it's not something we think about happening among teens. You mostly think about it happening among adult relationships. But teen dating violence actually affects about one in three teenagers. That is one in three. Now this is because of a lot of different reasons, but one of the reasons that I see is the dehumanization of people and online media where just we treat people a much different way online than we do in person. And this is the environment where kids are growing up and what they're normalizing and so we can see, yes, physical abuse can happen, but we can all see also see online abuse or digital abuse happening. And it's all about control. And so there are essential points that teenagers should know. We should be talking about them, that dating violence is not only physical, it is emotional. It's verbal, it can be intimate, it can be digital abuse. All of those things count as dating violence. If they have a picture of you now, it used to be, well, if you have a picture of somebody which we can have a whole conversation about and you post it for somebody, that's a whole different conversation. But now, with the advent of nudifying technology and revenge pornography, which is happening where people can take a normal picture and just run it through an everyday app, remove the clothes of that person, and then post it for revenge. That is a form of teen dating violence. That is abuse. And we need to be talking to our kids about healthy relationships. Not just healthy relationships, romantic relationships, but healthy friendships. Because control and jealousy are not signs of love. They're not. And we need to point those out to kids. And so often we want to take control of the narrative, and we want to say, you can't go out with that person. That person's not good for you. But we need to teach and equip our kids how to recognize that on their own. And so how do they recognize. What are the signs of healthy relationships? What? Well, for one thing, healthy relationships do not rush emotional or physical boundaries. Healthy relationships evolve over time. They take time, and they get invested in each other. They're invested in that friendship. You'll be invested in each other's families. You'll care about each other's families. I, remember one time, even in the context of friendship, when one of my daughters was in junior high and had a friend over, and the friend, that, you know, my daughters are sisters and they like to play together. And one of the friends kept saying, okay, when can we ditch your sister? Because this is just, like, not going to happen. And I remember them saying, that is not a sign of a healthy relationship. We are working. I love my family, and I expect my friends to love and respect my family, too. Just those simple truths are important to recognize that they're not going to rush. If you loved me, you would fill in the blank. No, that is not healthy. So we need to make sure we see what kind of media are our teens consuming? What are they watching that maybe you don't know about. Most of the popular teen shows that are the highest rated do portray violence as normative. And that is not normal. So this, this matters. Why this matters for families? Because, dating violence isn't just drama, although that's how it's portrayed to them on television, on media shows that it's just drama. Say no. That is a pattern of controlling behavior that is impacting you in a negative way, mentally, emotionally, and physically. And teens often do not recognize abuse when it starts out as subtle. And those can be controlling behaviors like putting them down all of the time, checking their phone, insisting on, I need the password to your phone. I should be able to go through everything in your phone. That is not normal in the context of a teen friendship. That's not normal in the context of a teen dating relationship. If they start isolating you from your friends, no, just let it be me. And you know, I just want to spend time with you by myself. No, let's not hang out with them. Let's not be with your family. Let's not hang out with our friends. Friends. When they start feeling pressure emotionally or physically, these behaviors can all be disguised as love or concern and be very manipulative. And those digital places matter where teens are relying on their phones and social media that the manipulation and threats online, they can be really scary. It's very normal for kids to share their location with each other, which can be a great thing. Thing. In the context of healthy relationship, college roommates sharing location, knowing where everybody is all the time. Fantastic. I love that. I appreciate that. I appreciate that context of safety. But in the context of, I need to know where you are and I'm checking to see where you are and then I'm texting you to say, why are you here? Why didn't you tell me you were going here? How long are you going to be there? Who are you talking to? Send me a picture from where you are. Those are all signs, signs of escalating concern. And without awareness, teens often stay in those unhealthy relationships and they start to internalize those first formative relationship experiences as well. This must be what's normal. This is what it's like to date somebody. This is what it's like to have a best friend. And that starts to shape the what they're looking for in a future relationship. And so you often meet people who say one of. One of patient told me my picker is broken. I just, I pick people who are abusive. That. That is. That's not true. That is not true. When you learn things as normal that are really not normal, it really impacts how you see the world, which is important. Because families need to respond and they should respond early. Talk early and often about what respectful relationships look like. Now this is a great thing if you are really invested in your kids, friends and you see healthy relationships point out and affirm good things. Because so often teens perceive us as lecturing all of the time and saying, well, you know, I don't really like that friend. I don't really like that person when they come around and then all of a sudden they're defensive and what is their reaction? Okay, well, I'm going to be a little more guarded. I'm going to hide back, hold back a little information. Because when I talk about this, I feel judged and I'm not sure what I want to do about that yet. So be open about it. But flip the narrative and say, hey, you know what I really like about this friendship you have? I really like how this friend supports you. I like how they show up. I like how they remember all of the little things and they're important. I really like who you are when you're with this friend. You're really laid back and you, you seem really happy and you don't seem m. Anxious or on guard. Say those things that you like about those healthy friendships. If you see healthy dating relationships, say, you know, I really like this respectful boundary. I like how this person is really spending time with this other person's parents. How this, maybe this is a new dating relationship and he's really investing in and making sure he earns the trust and respect of her parents. I like that kids listen for that and they will start to look for that even if they don't say to you, oh, thank you so much. I'm going to go write that in my journal right now and make sure that's a criterion for looking for a new relationship. They don't say that. They say, oh, mom, oh, okay, dad, okay. But they listen. That's so important. You've got to know the difference between trust and control. And trust is earned over a long period of time. Time. When you have a respectful relationship, they don't track your location 24 7. They don't enforce you sharing your password. They don't have to control those means of your life. And we need to recognize that there are some things online that are not okay. Constant texting, for example, texting you at 2 o' clock in the morning expecting you to respond, being mad at you because you didn't even. I don't care if you're grounded. I don't care if you turn took your, if Your parents took your phone away. If you loved me, you'd find a way to get in touch with me. Those are not healthy behaviors. And those pressures online are real forms of violence. We need to let teens know that it is okay to ask for help. Connect them with trusted adults. Tell them, hey, if you see, ever see anything concerning in a relationship you have or a relationship your friend has, I want you to know you can come and talk to me about it. When they come to you with those concerns, don't just dismiss them as drama and just say, oh, yeah, okay, that's just normal. You know, kids do that when they come to you and say, I'm a little worried about this relationship. I'm a little worried. This makes me feel a little weird. Maybe they don't have the words to describe it.
The national Teen Dating Violence hotline number is available
Make sure you stop everything that you're doing. Look them in the eyes and open that conversation. And they need, they need information. The national Teen Dating Violence hotline number is available. You can put that maybe in your teen's phone or your phone if there's nothing else. But really the best thing is for them to be connected to a trusted adult. And some kids just don't have a situation where they have that. And so that is a, that is an urgent crisis response that might be there.
Talk to your teens about healthy relationships this Valentine's Day
So I encourage you this Valentine's Day to talk about love, talk about norms. There are movies coming out that portray love in wildly different ways than God portrays love. It is all based on a feeling and it's all for social media. I mean, how many of you have seen videos where a couple will film their engagement five, six, seven times just to get that just right moment so that we can post it for social media. And we, we need to live in the moment with real people and real healthy boundaries. And kids do not know what that is. So I really encourage you to talk to your teens about healthy relationships. A great way to do that is through whatever media you're watching, whatever movies you're watching, whatever relationships are in their real life. Just think, what do you think about that relationship? How. What do you think about it? Just ask them. Teens love to be in the teaching position to, to be able to teach you something. They love that. But we have got to be aware because there are threats happening online. A lot of kids can meet online now and those relationships can move in person. But one thing I wanted to tell you about that I've been reading about and following about is something called the 7 6, 4 network. Now this has been covered in the news and you may have heard about it. If not, not. Let me catch you up. This is a decentralized online network. They're calling themselves 764. And they there, they can be here in the United States, they can be in other, countries. But this is a group that is loosely affiliated, that has one purpose, to target minors across everyday digital spaces. They are predators that are looking online. When we used to think on of people in person who would be driving around in the creepy van with the candy and the puppy, right. These people are still there. They're just online. And the FBI and the U.S. department of justice have publicly warned about this group, about these predator networks like 764. There are others. And they reach kids through private messages, through gaming chats, through content that disappears, and through group threads. Group threads. And there have been cases that have already been prosecuted. Some of those leaders have been arrested and charged with things like child exploitation, with violent coercion, with racketeering, with abuse. And it doesn't require a organization that has a headquarters. This is a networked ideology that is happening. It's not so much a formal organization as an informal, rapidly spread networked ideology. And federal agents have found that this network psychologically manipulates children. It draws them into things that they normalize much. We were like, we were talking about dating, violence, things like secrecy. It is so easy to coerce a child into secrecy and to make them think that's normal. Now listen, if you, if you remember, my primary work as a professor is in kids with kids who have experienced human trafficking. And that is the thing that they tell you all the time. Secrecy is always involved in this and it is very easily normalized. We see coercion, we see extortion happening. I've talked about extortion happening. good kids, good kids can make really poor choices and they can be extorted through blackmail online. And what we see by that happening is these networks go in, in and they don't look like the scary white van that is cruising around the parking lot saying for you to come and take some candy. They look like teens that are my age. And you feel flattered that they are there and they are coaching kids into despicable things that I will not go into on the radio here, but despicable things that they can monetize. This matters because we have an assumption of safety for our family, families at home. But when we have screens there, we need to be not fear based, but faith informed. We need to be realistic and make sure that we are talking again. This is the same thing talking about healthy relationships, whether that's online or whether that's in person. And so you need to give messages to your kids like, healthy relationships don't ever have secrets. There are no secrets. Unless it is a surprise party for a birthday, birthday or at some other celebration like that, there are no secrets. There are some things that can be sacred that are confidential, but there's a difference between confidential and secrecy. So anytime anyone is asking you for secrets, this is one of the biggest protections that you can give your kids, is to train your children to say, when somebody asks you, can you keep a secret? Say, no, I cannot. I can, cannot keep a secret. I'm telling you that right now. That will scare away a lot of predators and that will scare away a lot of people and situations where they will be in that is really important to do. And so stay involved with your kids digital life and be aware, but don't be scared and talk to them about the boundaries of healthy relationships. Listen, we want to congratulate John in Mississippi. John, thank you so much for listening. We'll be sending you a copy of Dr. Chapman's book. And hey, wherever you are this Friday and going into this weekend, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you and make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. I'll see you right back here on Monday.
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Jeff Chamblee: Opinions expressed in this broadcast may not necessarily reflect those of the American Family association or American Family Radio.
