The Legacy Christian Academy Parent Teacher Fellowship hosted the second Eagle Mama Luncheon at Stonebriar Country Club this week. Eagle Mama is a quarterly event that is designed to bring together mothers of students at Legacy and their guests for fellowship and to share and grow in the experience of parenting. Many of our families have similar victories and challenges when it comes to raising up children in a Godly and respectable way. These luncheons help provide a new perspective and guidance tools to help mamas in their journey.
Dr. Lana Snear, South Campus Guidance Counselor (pictured right), has created a safe haven in her office for the students to share their challenges and triumphs; dim lighting, good music, and just an overall relaxing atmosphere. She has noticed a consistent trend with the students in that they have a heightened level of emotion and have not yet developed the emotional intelligence to understand and regulate their own emotions and to understand the emotions of those around them. When children don’t know how to process their emotions it promotes fear and panic. Emotions are like muscles and they need to be honed. In helping to train children to deal with their emotions, Dr. Snear outlined a three-step approach for parents to encourage and guide children to a better understanding of their feelings.
- Listen to them.
- Name it – when you give an emotion a name (fear, hurt, anger) it is not as intimidating and will help them figure out how to deal with it.
- Relate it to the Bible. Find a similar situation in the Bible and help them see how that situation reached a resolution. We should always follow the lead of God – empowering them will help take away the sense of hopelessness.
Our goal as parents is to be the emotional trainers of our children, and part of achieving that goal is to allow them to experience struggles. Struggles produce perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope.
Dr. Snear's message tied in beautifully to the keynote speaker, Jerica Olson, who continued with her message of encouragement and preparedness for the mamas. She posed an intriguing question: How do we define strength? We spend so much time fretting about our physical bodies being strong and fortifying ourselves nutritionally, but how are we strengthening ourselves spiritually? Jerica called on Nehemiah 8:10: For the joy of the Lord is your strength.
We must make a concerted effort to be more aware of what God has done for us by focusing on the two facets of joy: gratitude and hope. Our sense of hope and gratitude can often be buried under anger and bitterness. For many of us, finding our joy means that we will have to face the struggles that have robbed us of that joy. Jerica encouraged the attendees to recover their hope and joy by doing the necessary work. While the path to self-awareness is often challenging, the rewards you reap will make it all worthwhile.
We need to make a well-worn path into His presence by scheduling our awareness of God’s favor. This may mean that other things will get canceled or rescheduled, but in today’s culture, we cannot afford NOT to spend time in the Word of God. We need to learn how to create margin in our lives for rest and reflection and do things that cultivate joy. When we are filled with joy, others will benefit from our overflow. Remember that your gratitude and hope are rooted in Christ and nobody can touch that.
Legacy Christian Academy is Frisco's preeminent Pre-K through 12 Christian school committed to educating students in a college preparatory environment balanced in academics, athletics, and fine arts–all within the context of a biblical worldview. For more information on Legacy, visit our admissions page.