Grace for My Home | Christian Women, Growing in Faith, Spirit-Led, Hearing from God, Sowing Truth

Developing a Growth Mindset

• Audrey McCracken | Mom Encourager • Season 3 • Episode 88

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Developing a Growth Mindset

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Audrey:

Hello friends, welcome back to Grace From my Home. I am so glad to join you again here and I'm so thankful that you have come back yet another week to spend this time with me, hopefully to be encouraged and blessed. My husband is out of town, my husband is at a conference for high school principals and I am here with one son who is sick. He's not feeling well. I took him to the doctor yesterday. He's got some kind of a virus. Then I have two others who are out working today.

Audrey:

My youngest son, caleb, is working at our coffee shop. He enjoys doing that, so he's working there today. And Luke, my middle son. He is working this summer on a farm. We have friends, neighbors, who live close by, who own a farm and he has asked them this summer if he could work with them because he wants to learn those things. My father was a farmer but he passed away about three years ago and he was not able to teach my sons those things that they really wanted to learn from. Papa was not able to teach my sons those things that they really wanted to learn from Papa, so this has given him an opportunity to learn some things about working on a farm and working outdoors. I asked him Luke, don't you want to work somewhere inside? I mean, we had some days last week that the heat index was like 108. So it's extremely hot here this summer. And I asked him wouldn't you rather work in a restaurant or an office or the hardware store or something like that? And he said no, mama, I want to work outside. So he is doing that and they're taking good care of him and he's learning a lot, and I am going back and forth between the shop and home and the church and just trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing.

Audrey:

That's an important question. There's lots of things you can do, but, lord, what should I be doing? So today I have the privilege of being home and being able to talk to you. I do want to let you know, for you guys who like YouTube, I've started downloading my podcast on YouTube. I'm not doing video right now, I'm just doing the audio, but it is. You can find me on YouTube if that's easier for you. Also, I mentioned last week and I wanted to mention again this week.

Audrey:

If you're blessed by my podcast, if these episodes have been a blessing to you, ministered to you, encouraged you, I'd like you to consider supporting Grace for my Home. I have a link in the show notes to buy me a coffee, and if you go there you can leave a one-time donation or you can set up a monthly donation, and what that does is it helps me with the financial side of putting together a podcast. If you do enjoy my podcast, if it is a source of encouragement for you, I would ask you to consider giving. Today I want to share with you something that has been on my mind and I thought I want to share this with my listeners. I think this will help.

Audrey:

You know, we are in a lot of ways in our society today. We're very connected, but we're also very isolated at the same time, because a lot of our connections are through social media, through the internet, and, though I'm very grateful for that, I've been able to connect with people that I otherwise would never have been able to even meet, and I'm very grateful for social media and for the ability to talk to people all the way around the world. It also, at times can, when it replaces real relationships, it can feel. It can feel very cold and isolating when all of your, if all of your, communication is through social media and it also can give us a false view of reality, and you know exactly what I'm talking about, because nobody goes and posts their worst day on Instagram. I shouldn't say nobody. Very rarely do we go and post our worst day on Facebook or Instagram. You know, we take photos of our best day and when everything is cleaned up, or at least the corner that is cleaned up, that's what we post, that's what we allow other people to see, and so it can give the false appearance that we've got everything together and everything in our life is perfect, when it's not. But that's all the other people see. So there's an assumption there that, well, she's got everything together and I don't. So therefore, you know there's something wrong with me, and that's just human nature is to compare ourselves with other people to see where we fall, where we in the spectrum right, and especially when I was homeschooling, I remember people I would I mentioned this last week on the podcast I would go on the internet to look for encouragement, to find other homeschool moms, to find other stay-at-home moms, to see what they're doing, to kind of figure this thing out, because I was very new to being a mom and extremely new to being a stay-at-home mom and at that time I hadn't even started being a homeschool mom.

Audrey:

So I was trying to find other people who could show me the way, or I could at least glean from them wisdom. And I remember seeing perfect photos and perfect days and I thought, well, I will never measure up to that. And you know my best days. I appreciated good days, but I remember mostly the hard days, the bad days. You know, when I did start homeschooling, you know, when I did start homeschooling, we had, it seems like weeks where every day we had meltdowns in one area or another, and one of my sons really had a hard time if all of his work was not perfect. He wants everything to be perfect and he's been like that from a very young age.

Audrey:

And I remember when I was trying to teach him handwriting and you know, you have had a workbook with the model that he is supposed to draw on his sheet of paper. And if it, if his drawing of that letter deviated even the slightest bit from the model in that workbook, there were tears, and there were always tears. It would take him an hour at least to finish a sentence because it had to be perfect. And if it wasn't perfect, it was just so hard. Perfect, it was just so hard. And I remember, just after a while I wouldn't even pull out the handwriting workbook because I knew that after that everything's downhill. There's no more school after that. Either you pull it out at the end of the day or you don't pull it out at all, and so I would dread handwriting.

Audrey:

But he also struggled the same way with math. You know, with math there's a definite answer. It's either yes or no. And if he did not get the right answer it was a meltdown. And with math I didn't feel like I could put that away for weeks at a time. You know, if I'm going to teach my kids anything, I've got to teach them how to read and I've got to teach them math. And so every day there was a struggle, because I knew if he doesn't get the right answer, this is not going to be, this is not going to go well and it would be just meltdowns.

Audrey:

And there were days I just dreaded waking up, and not just because of his meltdowns, but that on top of all of the other responsibilities, after a while you just start to feel like a failure. And see, anytime you told him this answer is wrong. For some reason he took that very personal. It felt like a personal judgment against him, you know, like he was a failure and I would try to be comforting. I'd be like, oh no, honey, it's fine, you're doing great, you're learning. That meant nothing to him, black and white. It was wrong, I'm bad, that was it. And so I struggled.

Audrey:

You know, I struggled in that area for a long time and I remember one day I was cleaning up and had a podcast on that I liked to listen to while I cleaned up and it was a guy who talked about homeschooling and he was very encouraging to me. I enjoyed listening to his podcast, this particular episode. They were having a question and answer episode and a mother had written in and said my son hates math. What should I do? And so immediately I perked up, my ears perked up. I'm like, oh, I got to hear his answer on this and he said to the mother who wrote in your son doesn't hate math, who wrote in your son doesn't hate math, your son hates not knowing math. And I had to disagree. I had to say I was with her. I'm like, no, you don't know, my son hates math and therefore I hate teaching math, but as he went on and he explained what he meant by that, it got my wheels moving.

Audrey:

It made me start thinking about it in a different way. And what he was saying was you don't know what you don't know, and when you know, especially, you're dealing with a child who does not have a lot of self-control he's still learning self-control and so when he comes up against something that he doesn't understand or doesn't know, there is a bad feeling, there's a feeling of you know, I don't know how to do this and other people know how to do this and what's wrong with me, and it's almost a fearful thing. And so he was saying nobody hates math. They hate not knowing math, because once you know it you don't hate it anymore. Right, you know it's.

Audrey:

It goes in stages. You know when you know how to add, and then somebody throws division on you. It's like you know, I just want to go back to addition, where I'm comfortable. But then, once you learn division, you know, and you got division and you got arithmetic. And then somebody introduces algebra. It's like why would I need that? I know all of this other arithmetic back here, and so every stage is a different step and before you go to the next step, you have to deal with those feelings of inadequacy. You know I don't know how to do that, those feelings of inadequacy. You know I don't know how to do that.

Audrey:

And I'm not going to say that that concept changed math for us, but it helped. It helped me to see it differently and it helped me to have more grace. My grace level with him when it come to math went way up because I understood this is intimidating. You know, he wants to be perfect, he wants everything to be just right and math represents an area where he doesn't know the answer. So he feels like you know, I'm stupid, I'm dumb, and he would say those things and it would just break my heart because I would. You know, I would try to counter with no honey, you're very smart, you're not dumb. That never helped. I would try to counter with no honey, you're very smart, you're not dumb. That never helped. That just seemed to make it worse. So just hearing that that he doesn't hate math, he hates not knowing math, that helped me with my grace level. It helped me with my patience.

Audrey:

And before then I was looking for the fun math. I was looking for a fun math curriculum, something to make it fun. Well, math is hard. Yes, some curriculums are better than others, but no curriculum is going to be easy when you're learning things that you don't know, and so it helped me. Just hearing that message helped me to stop looking for the perfect math curriculum. It helped me to realize that's not the problem, and so just that little bit of wisdom, at a minimum, it gave me hope that this isn't going to last forever and that this is normal and that we're going to get through math, and we did. And I'm proud to say today he is great at math. He does not hate math. Next year he's going to take calculus as a junior in public high school and I can't say he loves it, but he does great with it.

Audrey:

But dealing with that with my son helped me, because the Lord started using that to show me areas in my life where there were things that were like walls to me, and when I got up to the edge of that wall, I would back up. Now, for instance, I felt like other people knew how to be a mom, but somehow I missed out on the class or something. I often got in situations where I didn't know what was the proper or the right thing. I didn't know how to handle it, and it seemed like other moms just kind of knew and I was just fumbling like I don't know. I don't know what to do.

Audrey:

Sometimes I felt like my husband was a better mom than me, because he was more loving, he was more what's the word? He was more compassionate, he had more grace, and I didn't know what to do. And so when I got in that situation, not only did I not know what to do, but I would get frustrated because I felt like I should know what to do, and I would feel embarrassed because I felt like other people were watching me. And so the Lord started showing me Audrey, you're frustrated because you don't know what to do and you feel like you should. It's like Luke with the math. And so I started having more grace for myself.

Audrey:

You see, unlike my 10-year-old son, it's not appropriate for an adult to have a meltdown, but sometimes I would. I felt like I was having a meltdown because I was frustrated and I didn't know what the answer was. And so sometimes, when I didn't have a meltdown, I would just retreat Like, instead of, you know, trying to figure out the answer. I would just pretend there was no problem. You know there's no problem here, we'll just kind of gloss over it.

Audrey:

And the Lord encouraged me to change the way that I saw these areas where I felt stuck. I hope this is making sense. He wanted me to grow in knowledge and understanding and wisdom and not retreat, because, see, the only way to grow, the only way to learn, is to admit that you don't know something. And that takes humility. That's a hit against our pride to say I don't know, especially in areas where we feel like we should know or we feel like everybody else knows.

Audrey:

And I had to get to the point where I had to confess and admit Lord, I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to be the kind of mom that I want to be. Will you help me? And he says in James if any man lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives liberally, without finding fault, and it shall be given him. He says of the Holy Spirit in John, chapter 14, verse 26,. He says but the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the father will send in my name, he will teach you all things. So we have a helper, we have an answer, we have someone who will show us the way and teach us. But first we have to admit that we don't know, and that's the beginning of learning. The beginning of learning is getting to the point where we can come to the end of ourselves and say I need help.

Audrey:

What I believe the Lord was trying to teach me was to look at my life not as a race or competition, but as a journey. We are all on the path. We're on a journey and we're going to heaven. We're going towards Jesus. He is our goal, he's our aim, and we're on this path. And some of us started earlier, some of us started later. And the ones that are ahead of us they've got some wisdom along the way that they can give us and they can teach us about the path and the best way to stay on it and the things that are ahead of us.

Audrey:

And we can. If we have a teachable heart, if we are humble enough to receive correction and instruction, then we can learn from those who have gone before us. And then, in turn, once we've walked with Jesus for a while, once we've learned some things, we can teach those who are behind us, those who are coming behind us. It's not a race. We're all going to the same place. There's no competition. There shouldn't be any competition. It's not about beating the other one or being better than somebody else. It's about the destination, which is Jesus.

Audrey:

And that's what Titus 2 is all about. Titus 2, 3 through 5, that's what it means. We are helping each other out. The older ladies are helping the younger ones and then, in turn, one day the younger ones are going to be the older ones and they're going to pass down that knowledge, that wisdom. But in order to do that, we have to have a growth mindset where we don't just have it, we don't just understand everything. That it's part of the process is we're growing, we're learning, and in order to do that we have to be humble, we have to have humble hearts, because you cannot admit that you don't know something unless you are humble. And that's when you're teachable. And as we're humble and we're teachable and we're correctable, then we grow and we can learn and we gather the wisdom that we need and the wisdom that others behind us are going to need. But as long as we're trying to impress everybody, as long as we're trying to act like we've got it all together, then we miss the point, we miss the whole thing and we're frustrated and our children are frustrated, and it doesn't have to be that way.

Audrey:

You know, when I told you that story about my son, his issues with math, and when I saw that, when I saw, okay, he doesn't hate math, he hates that feeling of not knowing math, okay, that helped me to have mercy and grace with him. But it also helped me to have mercy and grace with myself, and I found that that's like a cycle when I can be kinder to myself, I'm also kinder to them. When I have more grace with myself, I have more grace for them, and vice versa. And so, you know, we're learning to God's teaching us wisdom. He's teaching us how to grow, how to learn. Well, where does all this wisdom come from? Well, I just read, I just mentioned the Holy Spirit. He is our teacher, he is our God, but he uses all kinds of ways to do that. You know, I was listening to a podcast just cleaning up something, and that hit me and I thought, oh, that's good, and the Lord used that podcast to teach me something. But there are so many opportunities the Lord gives us to learn.

Audrey:

You know, I never had a mentor. I always wanted one. I always craved that. I craved an older lady who had gone through things that I was going through, who could sit down with me and tell me this is what I would do if I were you, or just someone I could go to. When I felt like a failure, I would say you're not a failure, it's going to be okay. I never. I never had that. I never found that person. But for a long time books were that for me.

Audrey:

I remember when I found Sally Clarkson. She was refreshing to me because she was Christian but she was full of grace, and that her books on parenting spoke to my heart, because harshness did not settle well with me and when I tried some of the things in other parenting books, they did not work for me and I always felt like I was an antagonist to my child. Instead of a helper, instead of a teacher, I was a tormentor. You know, I just felt like this isn't going well here, because you know a lot of books, a lot of Christian based books, which I'm sure mean well. It seems like they set up very stringent guidelines and rules, and I don't work well in that kind of environment, and neither do my children. And so with Sally Clarkson, she showed me a new way of looking at raising children for Jesus, and so that helped me. She was a mentor to me.

Audrey:

I listened to her podcast. I read as many of her books as I could get my hands on, and also there were other books. There were other people who I drew from, so books and then podcasts. There were other people who I drew from, so books and and then podcasts. There were other people I like to listen to their podcasts.

Audrey:

When it came to homeschooling, I had my favorites. I had people who were helpful for me and I could glean from. There were other people that I had friends who liked, but they just we didn't click. You know I would listen to their podcast or I'd read their books and and not not that it wasn't good, it's just they weren't my people. It didn't click for me.

Audrey:

But when you find your people, when you find your tribe, when you find your group, you can learn. It doesn't have to be a person, it can be a person that's written a book, it can be those kind of things. But I do encourage you to look for people too, because being a mama can be very isolating, especially if you are a stay-at-home mom or a homeschool mom. Being home all day with a bunch of children can be very draining. So even though I did not have a mentor, I did have friends, so that was. And my sister homeschools, so I had her and had her children, and I had other people that we would spend time with.

Audrey:

But as far as you know, learning you have to have a teacher, and so the Holy Spirit would use a lot of these things to help me learn. And I was a student. I was, I saw myself, I started to see myself as a student. And then, when you see yourself as a student and you develop a growth mindset and you decide to be teachable and you decide to admit there's so much I don't know, but I'm willing to learn, then you'll be amazed at the things that come your way. You'll be amazed at the things that come your way. It's like you have ears to hear. Then you know you have ears to hear, and so when you hear wisdom, you're attracted to it. It's like, oh, that's really good. And so the Lord. It's like the Lord puts the right people in your path and he also gives you discernment to know the people that are not your tribe, like I said. I mean, there were people who I listened to and I just thought I just don't want to be like that. I don't want to be harsh and I don't want to be legalistic. I want to treat my children the way I want to be treated. And so, you know, over the years I found myself growing in confidence. You know I don't listen to a lot of those same people anymore Not that I don't love them, but I'm in a different season.

Audrey:

But I encourage you to be a student of the Holy Spirit. Ask him to teach you. Keep your heart pliable, teachable. Humble yourself enough to ask, to admit that you don't know. Don't feel like you have to know all the answers. You know the Lord will grow you, he will strengthen you, he'll encourage you, he'll show you the way if you have a desire to go in the way, and you will see yourself grow. Now it's always slower than you want it to be. You know I want it now, always slower than you want it to be. You know I want it now. I want to. You know I want somebody to just give me the 10 principles and how to raise godly children and then I'll put those principles into place and then it'll be instant. That's, you know, in my mind, that's how I think it's going to be, but it never works that way, because I can have the 10 principles, but it's me that has to change before the principles can actually do their work in our home.

Audrey:

And we grow like trees. Trees grow slow, they go through seasons and each season they grow. But you don't walk out one day and say, oh, that tree has grown. You see it the next season and like, oh, they've come through a season and I see growth. And even then it's not always a lot of growth or a lot of visible change. Sometimes it's the roots. Sometimes we grow underground where people can't see us. It doesn't mean we're not growing. It doesn't mean God's not doing something. It's just not as obvious as we'd like it to be. But that's just part of the process. So we have to be patient with ourself and know that God's teaching me. I'm learning, I'm not the same person I was and I'm not the person I'm going to be. I'm still on that road.

Audrey:

And don't forget to give back. And don't forget that when you get down the road. Don't forget what it felt like when you were just starting out and you were insecure and you weren't sure that you were doing or saying the right things, and you just needed somebody to come up beside you and say good job, and don't forget to be that person for someone. And that's why I do this, because I know what it feels like to be home with a bunch of children who seem ungrateful because they're children, that are very immature because they're children, and just think, does this matter? And I just want to tell you it matters, it matters a great deal, and I want to be that voice for you saying good job, mama, you can do this. Let's keep on walking down this path together. And so I just encourage you in that this week to see yourself as growing, to develop a growth mindset and to give yourself mercy and grace so you can give that to your children, because they grow a lot better in that kind of atmosphere.

Audrey:

Father, I thank you for my friends. I thank you that you are working in us to will and do according to your good pleasure and that you never give up on us, and I pray right now for grace for them, that you would help them to have mercy with themselves and to forgive themselves even of the things that happened today and then move on. And, lord, I pray that you would put the right people in our path the right books, the right podcasts. God, give us wisdom when it would put the right people in our path, the right books, the right podcasts. God, give us wisdom when it's not the right person, lord, god and God, give us ears to hear when it is, and we just thank you for it, lord, and I pray that we would see a harvest of righteousness in the lives of our children. In Jesus' name, amen.