In episode 12 of The Family Thrive Podcast, Ryel Kestano, CEO and cofounder of ART International, walks us through some unconventional relationship advice for developing better relationships with our teens.

These ideas come from the practice of Authentic Relating, which is a set of communication ideas and skills that help people develop deeper, freer, and more supportive relationships.

1) Accept and welcome all your feelings, all your issues, all your problems

"The degree to which you are able to fully accept all aspects and parts of your own self, that acceptance will be modeled and conveyed and transmitted down to your kids. If there's anything you're pushing away and not accepting or uncomfortable with, or you're disintegrated from any aspects of yourself . . . If you haven't done or aren't doing the work of self-acceptance, I almost guarantee that it's going to trickle down to your kids and they're going to internalize that within themselves."

A core principle in Authentic Relating is accepting and welcoming what ever feelings are coming up in a relationship. Ryel suggests that doing this work internally and coming to accept and welcome all the stuff we've hidden and don't want to look at, will help our teens feel more accepted and welcomed.

2) Reveal your experience to your kids

"The degree to which you yourself as a parent are able to be vulnerable, like actually, really vulnerable is the degree to which you can really connect with your kids.

What are your fears? You know, what are your dreams? What are your struggles? Allow your emotions to be expressed. . .  I allow myself to be emotional, whether it's sad or upset or angry, and reveal that as my experience. And that creates a sense of safety, a sense of family culture in which all of you is welcome.

Where is it that you can actually, really reveal your authentic experience as a model for your children, watching you, seeing you, and recognizing, 'Oh, like I can be my authentic whole free self here as well,” and it doesn't jeopardize my relationships."

This can be a scary one for parents as we fear that we'll lose authority, respect, or legitimacy in the eyes of our kids if we reveal what we're really feeling. Ryel argues that the opposite happens: by showing up with our authentic selves, we send a message to our kids that they can show up with their authentic selves as well.

3)  Become aware of your unconscious stories around parenting and family life

"It would come up in conversation: what is it like to parent four kids? And I would often describe parenting as [a burden] and a series of nonstop interruptions for like 18 years, which is a pretty shitty way of describing my experience of parenting.

My oldest daughter was really struggling . . . It really gave me pause and it had me look into: What am I doing? How am I contributing to an environment that this kind of behavior is manifested? And I got to see that I was inside of this story that was disempowering, disconnecting and the opposite of an experience of intimacy.

And so I basically had to restructure and reconfigure my priorities and focus on life and really shifted a lot of attention and desire to create more bandwidth for my relationship with my kids."

What unconscious stories do you have around parenting and family life? In unguarded moments, what words, feelings, and stories come out? Instead of feeling guilt and shame, Ryel suggests, feeling gratitude for this new understanding of the unconscious stories you have.

You can now pause and ask: how do I want to show up for my kids? What kind of parent do I want to be? What is the new story around parenting I wish to write?

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