Thank you for downloading the Focus on the Family Parenting Podcast. You can find more helpful advice at

Focus on the Family.com slash parenting podcast.

Imagine the feeling you have to find out that your daughter is being cyberbullied or that your son has a vaping device.

How do you react? Maybe your blood pressure begins to rise and you start to flood your mind with anxieties and you're working up how you're going to demand an explanation from your child right away.

But what if there's a better way to respond

without reacting negatively and going overboard

and making a difficult situation even worse?

I'm John Fuller along with Danny Werther. He's the vice president of Parenting and Youth here at Focus on the Family and Danny.

It's never a good idea to begin a difficult conversation with our teen or really anybody when we're angry is it?

No it only escalates really you like I've said before the emotions are contagious

and what you'll lose is respect and influence as a parent.

If you enter with anger into conversation, especially with teens when you're telling them

to be self-controlled and then you lose your own self-control. This is a great opportunity when a teen

is caught in a certain place or something's happening, gather as much information, try to understand, show compassion, what is the true need

under the behavior? That's where you want to go first. And then regroup your emotions and take some time. There's no hurry to enter that

because there's going to have to be some conversations around what the truth is, but

then also some teaching along the way here and you want to be prepared for anything that may come at you and the more

angry you are the less flexible in your mind and the less reasoning you'll have and so the conversation will only go south.

I am really identifying with a lot of what you're saying right there.

Let's go ahead and move on to the importance of being proactive instead of reactive.

Jim Burns wants us to know more about that and he talked with

focused president Jim Daly and meet to discuss some of those difficult issues

...