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Gretchen Roe: 00:00:04.793
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is Gretchen Roe for The Demme Learning Show, and I am very, very privileged to welcome Tom and Julie Meekins today to join me. We have a rich and lengthy relationship of a number of years. I hesitate to count how many because I like to think of myself as still a spring chicken. But we homeschooled alongside each other for a number of years and we had the pleasure of watching each other’s children grow and mature. And I have enjoyed watching Tom and Julie mature in their ministry as they minister to families with special needs. Today we’re going to talk in some depth about that, and I’m really excited to have the opportunity to introduce Tom and Julie.

Tom Meekins: 00:00:53.016
Thank you.

Julie Meekins: 00:00:54.390
It is such an honor to be here. We want to start out with that.

Tom Meekins: 00:00:57.511
Yes. Well, I’m the Tom and she’s the Julie, and we have four children. And part of our story was nine years of infertility, and so that may come up. But we waited for our children and the Lord provided the first one and then the second one, then the third one, and then the fourth one pretty quickly, so.

Julie Meekins: 00:01:22.938
We like to say that God has a sense of humor because we asked for children and he certainly gave us children. And we had four kids in six years and then we were like, “Okay. We’re good now. We’re good.”

Gretchen Roe: 00:01:36.695
And I had 6 children in 18 years because we kept forgetting what it was like to have someone in diapers, so very different experiences. But I would like you all to tell our audience a little bit about Champions4parents and how your ministry came to be and then we’ll get into the real meat of our conversation.

Julie Meekins: 00:02:01.584
That sounds wonderful. So we had the blessing of finding out that there was a method of helping our Amy when she was born. And you’ll hear a little bit more about her, but she was born with significant special needs. And we had the privilege of finding out that there were ways that we could help her in her development. So we spent all of her years– she’s 28 now. We spent all of her years really focused on doing that for her and then bringing in the other children as well to kind of hone in on some things for them. And so then we started out as a business and we thought we were a business and then we found out that we’re not a business–

Tom Meekins: 00:02:42.062
We’re a ministry.

Julie Meekins: 00:02:42.798
–because we kept giving everything away because there were families like ours who really needed what we had and they couldn’t afford to pay for it. And so after a while, we realized we need to be able to be in a position where we can give this stuff out for free, so that’s how it all started out. But it has morphed into something almost completely different with that background, and that pours into what we’re doing now. We are now a– we’re officially missionaries to parents and with REF– isn’t that right, REF? I should know that better than I do, but REF Ministries. And it is wonderful because we have supporters, and so we can do Zoom coaching calls for parents and we can just support parents with helping them combine and have peer support, help them to meet up. That’s probably one of the biggest things that we do to build community, to give them opportunities to build community. So we do that online and we do that in person and we do that at conferences. And so we’ve spoken at a number of conferences. The other part of the ministry is that we realized that our families, the families that we love and serve, the special needs, learning disabilities, and whatever else gives those kinds of challenges that we have as parents did not get the kind of support that they needed in churches. And it wasn’t that people didn’t care. It was that they didn’t know what to do and they weren’t aware. So now our job is first and foremost to parents. And then we know that we’re serving parents and we’re serving families if they have churches that embrace them and bring them into their congregations and bring them into the support that they have for all people and help them understand. I know you don’t feel equipped, but you are equipped and you can love these families, and let us help you along the way. So that is another arm of what Champions4Parents does now.

Tom Meekins: 00:04:53.373
Right. There’s a lot of churches that many of our parents just don’t feel comfortable going into, or they may be going to a church situation and then not feel welcome to continue. So we like to go into the churches and speak to them like Julie was saying. And so that’s a big part of our ministry also.

Gretchen Roe: 00:05:18.814
I think it also is you all bring in a unique perspective in the fact that you are a couple together. And when you are the parents of a special needs child, the relationship that a dad has with their child and a mom has with their child are two wildly different points of view. So you all can see it from both perspectives. And that’s rare in the world today to have families that can see that. You’ve also walked this walk. So would you guys give us a little bit of background on how you learned intimately the needs of a special needs family?

Julie Meekins: 00:06:00.878
Okay.

Tom Meekins: 00:06:01.344
Okay.

Julie Meekins: 00:06:02.284
I like to give him a chance to talk every now and then.

Tom Meekins: 00:06:05.810
Well, I always say Julie has 1000 words to my 1. So I’ll wind her up and let her go.

Julie Meekins: 00:06:13.867
Okay. So we had talked about our infertility. So Amy is our fourth of our four children, and she was born with something called CHARGE syndrome. CHARGE syndrome came with a prognosis of blind and deaf. Back then they said mentally retarded. Probably wouldn’t walk, talk, or eat by mouth. And we’re looking at each other like, “Okay, then what will she do? Because there isn’t a whole lot left, right?” And so we were kind of blindsided. We had no idea until she was born that there was going to be an issue. She was born a month early, and we knew there would be some prematurity things, but that’s not really what the problem was for her. So she needed help in every single step of her development. She did nothing on her own like our other children did naturally. And so that kind of threw us into, “Oh, wow, this is a different kind of world.” So we were the family that saw some friends disappear and that we saw some who, birds of a feather flock together. So we really got close to people who had the same struggles, not necessarily with CHARGE syndrome, but just the struggles of being in a world that didn’t necessarily know what to do with our kids, right? And we didn’t know what to do with their kids either. So that started the process of being in disability world and figuring out how do we help Amy develop along with the rest of our children because they were two, four, and six years old at the time that Amy was born, our other children. And then two years later, we realized that our son was starting to really show some signs of some difficulties. And that, long story short, morphed into severe allergies, both environmental and food allergies And we had to go down a road that boosted his immune system back up again. The result of all of that– and I don’t know where his dyslexia exactly came from, but we know that the immune system drives the body and the brain. And so we don’t know where it came from, but Josh ended up with dyslexia and dysgraphia. And so then we were like, I remember saying, “Okay, Lord, you know, we were good with Amy and her special needs. We’re trusting you and we’re good with that. But this this is a lot. So we’re going to need a little extra help here with this one.” And they’re totally different kinds of special needs. And the coolest thing about it is that we then have a wider spectrum of how to love other families because we’ve got very severe special needs and then we’ve got learning disabilities. And Amy doesn’t have learning disabilities. She’s got other issues, but she doesn’t have learning disabilities. So those two, if you put them together, you’ve got kind of a good mix for understanding disabilities and families. So that’s kind of how it all came to be.

Tom Meekins: 00:09:12.748
Right. And the perspective that that we like to talk about is that we have the the overt special needs and the covert special needs. Where Amy, you look at her and you know she has special needs. With Josh, it was a lot different. There was a lot of expectations that were placed on him that he couldn’t fulfill. And he’s come a long way [crosstalk] and he’s a whole other story.

Julie Meekins: 00:09:35.323
He’s rocking right now. Yeah.

Gretchen Roe: 00:09:37.652
Now I should say, as an aside, having known you all for a number of years, I have an advantage over our audience in the fact that you all were told a lot of things by a lot of professionals that you just chose not to receive. And that’s always been a very admirable quality of the two of you is you have always been able to see the cup is half full and been able to keep moving forward as far as, “Well, all right, that’s a challenge. How are we going to surmount it instead of seeing that as a defining characteristic?” And when we talked last week, one of the things that you said is all parents have frustrations, but your frustrations were visible to a lot of people in the community. So tell me a little bit how that pulled the two of you together. Because in a lot of families. That’s not what happens.

Julie Meekins: 00:10:33.380
Well, I will have to say that my husband is probably the most supportive person I’ve ever met and he has always been all for me from day one. So when I started to express some things that were concerning for me and a direction that I wanted to go in, he was 100% in support of that, especially with Amy. And then with Josh, it was a little– we did have some moments of, “Is that the right route? Is that the way we want to go?” And I think a father and a son might be a little different than a father and a daughter and how that dynamic works. And so I think his– and because Josh’s disabilities were hidden. That’s what we call it in the culture today, hidden disabilities, right, and so you can’t see them. You have expectations. You expect this child to tow the line and he can’t for whatever reason. So yeah.

Gretchen Roe: 00:11:27.800
So let’s talk a little bit about those hidden disabilities. Because you when you mentioned this when we talked together to plan, I thought it was so fascinating what you said about often parents judge other family’s children for the disabilities that they can’t see. So how do you all in your ministry encourage parents that it’s okay anyway.

Julie Meekins: 00:11:57.075
Yeah, yeah. And the hidden disabilities are actually harder in terms of being in society than the overt disabilities just because they’re obvious. The hidden disabilities are ones where the children have, and it’s not just society that puts those expectations. Parents are struggling with that as well because they’re like, “Well, why can’t that person, my child do this particular thing? Are they lazy, are they being difficult, is it a behavior issue? And so that makes it complicated because you’re trying to unpack, “Where is the root of this struggle that I’m seeing in my child”? And often they’re all mixed up together. So every child has their tendencies, shall we say, and whether they’re typically developing or not, every child has their tendencies and some of them are very positive and some of them you need a little boost, right? So we had to determine that underneath, and I think other families do too, other parents do too, underneath that disability. You have to find out what’s under there. And so really it becomes not about the disability, but about the child. And it should always be child first. It should always be about who is this person that I have been commissioned. What a great honor. I have been commissioned to bring through life and into adulthood. So who is this person, what are their gifts, what are their interests? What are they? What do they care about? And move that whatever is going on with them along, keeping those things in mind constantly. So for example, our Rebecca, our second born, loved crafts, and I am sure that we should have probably gotten stock at Michael’s because I know that we probably paid a couple of salaries through the years at Michael’s because we knew that was a gift that she had and that she needed to hone in that gift. And so our other children had different gifts. And she’s a typically developing child. So just go first for the child and know your child.

Gretchen Roe: 00:14:08.865
And I think one of the things that you said, Tom, I think you said this, that it’s important to make sure that your child is not the disability, but your child is a whole person and not to lead with the disability.

Tom Meekins: 00:14:23.546
Right. Yeah, Josh and all of our children are our children. So that’s that’s where we start. And then if any of our children have a need, as a parent, we want to help them out, challenge them, teach them, correct them. And the spiritual end is extremely important where we need to lead them to know Jesus. And so that was our goal also in attending church and teaching them from scripture. So yeah, that and a lot of things that go on behind the scenes other families don’t know about. And we need to make sure that we’re being faithful in our responsibility to raise our children.

Gretchen Roe: 00:15:16.216
So to follow that up, Tom always said that we didn’t need a curriculum for character development. He said because we have the fruit of the spirit. And so we were in a car one time driving somewhere and there was havoc in the back seat. We have four kids. There is sibling rivalry no matter what’s going on with them. And they were not happy campers and neither were we because they were not doing well back there.

Tom Meekins: 00:15:40.450
Yeah. So I stopped and I said, “Okay, let’s let’s let’s think about this. Is there any love going on in this car? No. Is there any joy? Oh, definitely not. Love, joy, peace. Oh, no peace.” We all agreed there was no patience, no kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control and so we thought, “Wow, if one of the fruit of the Spirit is not happening, then the rest of the fruit of the Spirit is is not happening.” So if we teach those qualities, was that in Galatians 5? It’s a perfect curriculum if you can teach those. But it’s it’s the fruit of the Holy Spirit that resides in us when we believe in Christ.

Gretchen Roe: 00:16:26.094
And see here would be the vast difference between the Meakins family and the Roe family because I would have pulled over and sat on the side of the road and said, “When you guys get it together, then I’ll drive again.”

Tom Meekins: 00:16:37.419
We’ve done that before.

Julie Meekins: 00:16:40.449
Because you can’t keep driving when all that craziness is going on.

Gretchen Roe: 00:16:44.511
And so Julie, I want to fast forward a little bit because only my children get older. You quoted Amy’s age and I’m just– my heart kind of skipped a beat because Amy was always that precocious, adorable little kid. And now she’s an adult woman with a ministry of her own. And what I want you to talk about is the fact that you didn’t receive the diagnosis she was given, and how that has been able to bless others in her life.

Julie Meekins: 00:17:18.419
Well, it’s interesting because we looked in Amy’s eyes. And they say that the eyes are the windows into the soul. We really saw that there was a whole lot more going on because you have a connection with your child and because those those eyes just told a story that was well beyond that prognosis. And so we’re like, “Why not shoot for the moon?” Because what what we could get is better than what we’re hearing about right now. And here’s the other thing that’s really cool about Amy’s story. She has three older siblings and they’re very close in age. So the girl had motivation to move forward in life because she needed to keep up with those older siblings. And so that was a God design. I believe that you can’t manufacture that. It’s like she had it right there and available to her every step of the way. But every little thing that she did, there was great celebration. Because the prognosis was so bleak, there was so much celebration with every little step that she moved forward. And not just with us, but with her siblings as well, because they also worked hard on this neurodevelopmental plan that needed a lot of physical involvement with her.

Julie Meekins: 00:18:42.489
And they did it too. We taught them how. They were two, four and six years old, and they just learned to do what they were able to do with her and for her. And in the process, they also probably enhanced some things in their own brains as they were doing it with her. It was good. It was a good plan.

Tom Meekins: 00:18:59.806
Right. She didn’t have upper body strength. And so each of the children would hold her on their stomach face to face. She loved faces. She still does love faces, doesn’t she?

Julie Meekins: 00:19:11.744
She does. Yes.

Tom Meekins: 00:19:13.299
And so we got her used to being on her stomach. She didn’t crawl. She did nothing. And so each of our children would take a different limb and get that patterning going and trying to teach her how to crawl. So yeah, it was a family endeavor to get everybody involved.

Julie Meekins: 00:19:30.755
Our homeschool looked very different than most people’s.

Tom Meekins: 00:19:33.181
Yeah.

Gretchen Roe: 00:19:35.002
But now she’s gone on to take college courses and you all are doing the Virginia Christmas [crosstalk].

Julie Meekins: 00:19:41.292
[crosstalk].

Tom Meekins: 00:19:42.463
Yeah. The Christmas play.

Gretchen Roe: 00:19:43.361
I couldn’t come up with the right word.

Tom Meekins: 00:19:46.082
Church Christmas play, yes.

Gretchen Roe: 00:19:49.697
Absolutely. And so I think that gives you all a unique perspective when a parent says, “Gee, I’m really struggling with my child being accepted in my church community, being accepted” in my home-school community. It gives you all the ability to give some practical advice to parents, because you’ve walked this for 28 years now. So can we talk a little bit about when you all are asked to come into a community and talk about children with different needs. Special needs to me evokes something that’s less and I don’t want– I don’t think it’s less. I think it’s different. So I would prefer different needs, whether they’re hidden or, as Tom said earlier, overt. Where do you start? How do you begin that conversation? How do you encourage a parent who has that child to begin that conversation with their community or their congregation?

Julie Meekins: 00:20:57.550
So I think that what we want everyone to know is the ability of our child versus the disability of our child. So we want to express, yeah, we have these struggles and that’s what you see, or what you see the ramifications of if if it’s a hidden disability, but this is– and in fact some ministry people will say– and we’ve taught this too, will say– when a new family comes to church, they’ll say, or ask the question, “Tell me what your favorite things are about your child,” instead of beginning the conversation with, “Well, what kind of work do we need to do to make it work for your kid?” And that sounds pretty crass, but that’s what they’re thinking. And they’re like, “Okay. What do we have to do? What do we have to put in place?” They will ask that question. They’ll begin the relationship. It always begins and ends with relationship. So when someone is feeling inadequate to include someone with disabilities with other– what did you call them? Other, or different–

Gretchen Roe: 00:21:59.580
Different needs.

Julie Meekins: 00:22:00.401
That’s the word. Different needs. Okay. I lost my train of thought. Ask me another question. [laughter] I knew where it was going, but I lost that when I got caught up in the words but–

Gretchen Roe: 00:22:13.034
No. But it’s so use– and I loved what you’d said. In fact, I just wrote it down, that when a family comes in you would say, “Tell me about– tell me what you love about your child.” Because a lot of times that’s something– parents are so busy trying to support their children they don’t have time to quantify what they love.

Julie Meekins: 00:22:33.793
Yeah. Yeah. So for a parent to communicate– I really prefer others being advocates for the parents because not everybody hears parents, unfortunately. But when a parent has to do the communicating– we’ve had positive and negative situations, experiences, the two of us, with our children. When you’re constantly asking the youth people to make an accommodation, the youth leaders, to make an accommodation for a child like our Amy who has a hearing loss, and it’s– in our eyes, it’s a very simple accommodation because we’ve got all the other stuff too, and that’s way more complicated than a hearing loss. But for them, it’s a big deal, for these youth leaders as we’re talking, because they’ve got a plan of action and hoopla is involved because– in most youth groups. And so when it’s time to– it’s time to play a game, for example. And there’s all this extra energy that goes into hyping it up and making it fun and and all of that. With a child with a hearing loss, they’re missing instructions because there’s so much noise and there’s so much going on that they can’t hear the instructions. So our encouragement, our request was, could you just give Amy the instructions first?

Julie Meekins: 00:23:54.610
But that kind of messed with the plan of surprise. Although Amy has got the kind of personality that wasn’t going to go telling everybody what the plan was. But if somebody could have come alongside her and just helped her know a little bit ahead of time what was going to happen next, she would have been ready. Otherwise, and this is what happened often, she’s standing in the middle of the floor and everybody’s running around to do the thing that they’re supposed to be doing for this game. And she hasn’t a clue. And so she was coming out of those scenarios and tears every single week and other activities as well, some homeschool activities as well. So a parent does need to learn to advocate. So I would say when you’re– when you have to be the advocator, first of all, give the people that you’re talking to the benefit of the doubt. They just don’t know because they don’t live your life, right? And they might be a little resistant because they got a plan. They have an agenda and a way that they do things. So factor that in and then be a team player, not, “I impose my desire on you,” because you’re– it’s kind of like you want to make friends first because they’re not going to hear you otherwise if you don’t make friends first. So that’s one one piece of advice I would say. And then if it doesn’t work over and over and over again, you have to separate. You have to take yourself somewhere else. You have to take your family somewhere else. And that is okay. And feel okay about it. If this particular homeschool co-op isn’t working for our family because they can’t accommodate this, go somewhere else. Make up your own, whatever it is that you need to do. And that’s what we’ve done all through the years.

Gretchen Roe: 00:25:39.988
Sure. I think it makes a difference. Tom, one of the things that we talked about this past week was when you’re the dad it’s a different relationship and dads with sons, dads with daughters but dads who are trying to support a mom who’s got a very full plate. How do you encourage fathers to take a look at that plate and understand that they can’t solve everything, but how can they come alongside and be a help me?

Tom Meekins: 00:26:20.062
Right. Yeah. As a dad maybe it’s just because I’m a male, I want to fix things. And so if something’s not working I want to step in there and fix it. But part of the sensitivity is to see, “Well, how is Julie dealing with the situation? How is she?” And she was very capable of doing so many things that in many cases all I had to do was encourage her and say that she’s doing a good job and be ready to help out and catch things as they–

Julie Meekins: 00:26:53.388
Catch the plates and–

Tom Meekins: 00:26:54.626
Catch the plates as they were falling. Yeah. And so I found myself in many times being a supportive role and saying, “You’re doing great. Just keep going. The kids are doing well.” Now, when I came home from– well, I came home from work. And so I was the one away the whole whole day. And so it almost was nice to be going to work because I didn’t have to be there with all the situation going on but to be ready when I stepped into the house in the evening that if she wanted me to take over, I took over. There were times where she and the kids were on the couch looking out the window waiting for–

Julie Meekins: 00:27:38.308
Desperate for dad.

Tom Meekins: 00:27:38.623
–daddy to come home. [laughter] And this happens even with families when the children are typical, too. But the father’s role is to love their wife as Christ loves the church. And we’ll never be perfect at it. And so that’s the goal. And I just want her– what do they say

Julie Meekins: 00:28:02.208
Mama ain’t happy?

Tom Meekins: 00:28:03.091
Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

Gretchen Roe: 00:28:06.886
Yes. I remember well when my husband would come home and I would say, how was your day? And he would say, fine. And I’m like, “No, dude, I need subordinated sentences.” I’ve been with little people all day long with two and three word sentences. I want colorful language. And that was hard for him because it was a whole paradigm shift. And we had children in our family with, as Julie describes, hidden disabilities, kids with dyslexia and dysgraphia. And that was hard because they should have related to the world the way other kids relate to the world. And I think that creates an environment where sometimes there’s inadvertent friction when parents don’t know how to– they don’t they don’t want to diss their child, but they want people to give their child maybe an extra measure of grace. So what kind of advice do you all provide in those situations to parents when they’re looking for that measure of grace? And it seems hard to convey.

Tom Meekins: 00:29:16.325
Grace, we talk about grace a lot in in that– and part of that is that we’re not alone and there’s things that we can get support with with other other parents and talking to them, being in a support group, which we try to encourage parents to be part of which we have a support group, a national support group, Facebook group. If anybody wants to be part of that, we can let you know how to do that.

Julie Meekins: 00:29:46.283
Peer support is essential. You need community because here’s the thing, you don’t have perspective until you see somebody else struggling more than you do. And you really do understand it doesn’t change anything. I mean, you still have the same struggle, but here’s somebody else who’s got even more on their plate and they are trying to make it through as well. And situations may be different. We often say in disability world, my child doesn’t have that same syndrome, but they have the same sensory issues. My child doesn’t have that same syndrome, but they have the same behavioral struggle and social skill struggle. So you can come together in community apart from what the diagnosis or even the prognosis is. You can come together because, okay, this is the struggle. What are we going to do about this particular struggle? So when we go in to speak to community groups, we don’t talk autism language. We don’t talk charge syndrome language, which is what our Amy has. We talk, okay, what, what do you see? What is the struggle that you see? And we also encourage community groups not to diagnose because we are famous in our society for saying, “Oh, that child definitely has autism.” Well, maybe they don’t. And it doesn’t even matter whether you think they do or not. What is your role in their life for the period of time that you have them? So are you in a co-op and you are the teacher or you’re the helper? Then all you need to know is what does that particular child need to be successful in that program? What in a church setting? What does that child need to be successful in that environment? And what does that child need so that everybody can be successful in that environment? Especially if it’s a child,, who’s raging with trauma issues? So what can you do to– so you always have to come back to what is the goal? What is the goal in this community? If the goal is perfection and absolute excellence, then in somebody’s opinion, then you have to decide, is that what I want? Is that the environment I want my child in? Because they’re going to come up short, even though they are perfect in God’s eyes and they are. They have so many things to bring to the table. We’re going to be concentrating on things they don’t have to bring to the table. And that’s not the environment you want to raise your children in.

Gretchen Roe: 00:32:11.616
Right. Yeah. And that makes a tremendous amount of sense. And as parents, we need to be advocates, but we also need to discern where our children are thriving. And we need to be willing to shift our paradigm of what we think is the perfect environment if we see that our children aren’t thriving. Julie, we had so many great questions. And you said something before we started this episode, which now I get to have you unpack. You said they’re all really kind of asking the same question. So what is that question?

Julie Meekins: 00:32:49.836
So one of the major ones is– okay. My child feels down on himself or herself because of their disability. Now part of that, it could be children are very smart and they can look around and they can see, “Okay. That child, my friend, can do this thing and I can’t.” And so they might focus on that thing. So it is our job as parents in any scenario where the child is feeling less than. So it really isn’t even about the disability, it’s about the mental health of that child. And so what you want to do is how can I create an environment for my child where he is or she is encouraged by major things and then you remediate those things that they need extra help with. So high interest is really critical. So we find out what our children are interested in, and we bring math into that. We bring English into that. We bring creative writing into that. We bring everything into that high interest because then you’re headed in the right positive direction, and they’re going to care about doing something involving that particular thing. I remember as a kid– and that was a long time ago. But as a kid even when we had to read certain stories out of our reader at school and then had to know how to answer questions. If I wasn’t interested in the story, I didn’t remember anything about it because it wasn’t interesting to me. But if you were to test me on– so if you were to test me on that story, I would not do well. But if you were to test me in a story where I was really all in and fascinated by the story, then I’d get every single answer right. So that’s what I’m talking about. You create an environment where the kids succeeds no matter what. So yeah, you have to remediate some things. You have to bring them up to par to the level where they’re supposed to be. So I want to say something about comparison. And this is true whether you’re raising typically developing children or anybody with a hidden disability or anybody with overt special needs. Throw the comparison out the window because every single person is unique in their own right. Now, I know that some homeschooling families like ours, we had four kids, you had six kids. We’re trying to divide our time up and try to figure out how on earth do we do that with all of these people? It’s a priority. It is a priority to find out who your child is. And that’s an ongoing thing because they might be interested in soccer when they’re five, but not so much when they’re eight. And maybe there’s something new that comes in by the time they’re eight, and they want to create things like birdhouses, I don’t know, whatever it is. But you take that thing, the gifts and talents that they have that are good and they feel good about themselves and doing. And you bring everything else into that environment and then you remediate and remediate and remediate. So I think what we know, what we’ve learned through the years is that we also– especially as homeschoolers, but all across the world in education, we’re looking for output. We’re looking for, “Does my child know dot, dot, dot, right?” And we live in a society where it is about what we know. So instead of that as we’re raising children, if we don’t input sufficiently, then they’re never going to get anything to output, right? So if we’re constantly testing without giving input, I say go heavy on just giving information in a very positive environment, like I just talked about, without expecting a test, without expecting– and there’re ways you can find out what your children know without this constant, “Give back, regurgitate what I’ve given to you.” You can just watch them play. You can watch them interact with each other and you can see whether they’ve got it or not, right, whether it’s a character development thing that you’re trying to bring in or whether it’s how to write an essay when you get older or whatever it is that you’re trying to help them grow into input, input, input.

Gretchen Roe: 00:36:59.695
I have a colleague who is a PhD reading specialist. And she says you always teach to a child’s strengths. You never teach to their weaknesses. And that’s really what you’re saying here. I want you all to speak a little bit because I remember back in the day of going over to the Meekans household and your kids learned to support each other, cheerlead each other, lift each other up. And that doesn’t always happen in families. So how can parents be intentional about creating that environment where there is not competition, but there’s cooperation?

Julie Meekins: 00:37:41.342
I would say modeling.

Tom Meekins: 00:37:42.180
Teach kindness.

Julie Meekins: 00:37:43.394
Tom was the model of kindness; he still is. And so I think that’s it. I think you model in your own relationship and in the way that you treat them, you model the kind of relationship-building skills that you want them to have.

Tom Meekins: 00:38:02.973
If they’re arguing and not getting along, you don’t say, “Get along,” or stop arguing.

Gretchen Roe: 00:38:09.408
Nicely, Christian children. [laughter]

Tom Meekins: 00:38:13.303
Look at the the cover of this magazine. Be like that. You don’t you don’t say that. But you say, “Be kind.” And then you say, “Well, what does it mean to be kind?” And then–

Julie Meekins: 00:38:23.249
You teach kindness.

Tom Meekins: 00:38:24.047
You teach kindness.

Julie Meekins: 00:38:25.522
And what does that look like? So in in specific incidences, you have a discussion with them about what is not happening that is is not kind, what is happening that is not kind. And you say, “Well, what would you do if–?” kind of create a role play. And maybe do it apart from the emotion of that moment because the emotion of that moment is they’re only going to bring in the negatives, right? So we all take a break, right? We take a break and then we come back and we have this little role-play thing. And it doesn’t have to be real sophisticated. It’s just, “Okay, so so-and-so has an opinion about something and you don’t like their opinion. Does that mean you can’t be their friend? No, it doesn’t mean that you can’t be their friend. You agree to disagree,” those kinds of concepts. But we tend to get the emotions in there. We all do as people, we get the emotions in there. And so we’re teaching those life skills, those social skills in the midst of all of the rest of life.

Gretchen Roe: 00:39:21.806
And so in your ministry then, Tom, you mentioned that you have a Facebook group where families can support each other so that they don’t have to be in the same geographic region – I almost said geologic, wrong word – same geographic region. How do you help families connect with each other and build that community in a digital universe because frankly, here you guys are in Virginia, I’m in North Carolina, and we’re having this conversation today. COVID sort of normalized that for all of us. But how do you keep that community as vibrant

Tom Meekins: 00:40:05.167
some of the the people that we’ve met even through Covert has– have encouraged us. We do have a webpage: championsforparents.com. And the Facebook is Champions for Parents on Facebook and there’s– we try to post as much as we can. And then, through that, there is a group: Champions for Parents.

Julie Meekins: 00:40:30.725
We have a private group–

Tom Meekins: 00:40:32.285
Group private.

Julie Meekins: 00:40:32.643
–called Champions for Parents Community. And I think the big thing in there is to get them talking to each other. So when somebody says, “I’m really struggling with,” whatever it is, then other people will come in and say, “I had that. And this is what I did. And this was really helpful to me,: or just post a lot of encouraging stories. So what I will go– on the internet [laughter], sometimes I’ll go out and just look for stories that are positive in similar scenarios to what some of those people are going through, but we encourage– we really feel like we are the people that bring the people together.

Julie Meekins: 00:41:07.171
So what we really like to do is create a group and step out. So we create a group. We let them learn how to love each other. We do that in person as well as online. The other thing that we do– we figured out that people in community – let’s say churches – ministry workers and parents need to talk to each other and they often do not do that. So we created this thing called the Virtual Coffee Shop Chat.

Julie Meekins: 00:41:32.629
So we have that on Thursdays once a month. And we get people that have disabilities, adults that have disabilities who give us all kinds of wonderful insight. And then, we have ministry people and we have parents come on. And oftentimes, ministry people and parents are the same people because they just get involved in ministry, but not always. Some people come in just because they feel led to work with that people group, so– but those are rich conversations.

Julie Meekins: 00:42:00.068
We started out with always having a topic. And now, we realize we don’t even have to have a topic because everybody comes with their stuff. And so we just asked the question, “Okay. What are y’all thinking? What’s going on in your lives right now? What would you like a little bit of brainstorming about?” And we always have rich conversations and we’re talking– the whole universe is invited to this thing. We might get five people and and they are the most beneficial conversations. And that’s what we do.

Julie Meekins: 00:42:30.528
So another thing that we’re doing– this is really fun. There’s been a collaborative effort between two ministries, two organizations. One is a mental health organization, helps people with mental health diagnoses. And the other one is a disability ministry helping really move the movement forward of helping people with disabilities to get what they need in society.

Julie Meekins: 00:42:52.487
So what’s been cool is that they’ve married these two together. And we get the wonderful privilege this time around of being a coach, a facilitator of people, parents. This is for parents and caregivers so that that they come in and they’re all over from all over the country. We’ve never met them before. And they come in for an 8 to 10-week program and they– and it’s all free. And they come in and we have a curriculum that is story-based.

Julie Meekins: 00:43:20.379
So the story is a scenario that a lot of these families have dealt with in in one fashion or another. At least one of the characters in there is probably somebody they can relate to. And so we tell the story. And then, we have some questions and we ask those questions. And every single time we’ve– we did a pilot program over the summer. And every single time we get together, there is not a problem with getting conversation going because people are– they’re really grappling with how to do this well and they really need communities. So we have so many– because we need it, we have so many opportunities for community to happen. And it’s–

Gretchen Roe: 00:43:59.803
What you guys are really doing is you’re building the campfire and showing up with the chocolate bars and the marshmallows. And then–

Julie Meekins: 00:44:06.016
All the s’more stuff. Yeah.

Gretchen Roe: 00:44:07.379
–the community is creating the s’mores.

Tom Meekins: 00:44:10.367
We don’t make the s’mores for you. Yeah, you’re right.

Gretchen Roe: 00:44:12.324
Right. Right. Yeah. Well, that makes a tremendous amount of difference because I think often, particularly in our results-driven society, families feel more isolated than ever. So let me ask you guys a couple of these questions because one of the questions that a mom ask is the song of my heart. And I know that you all have talked to parents about this over and over and over again. We have a desire when our children struggle, we don’t want to fail them. So how do you support a mom who’s like, “Oh, jeez, I just don’t want to fail my child.”? Because that was the question behind the question with several of our registrants this week.

Tom Meekins: 00:45:06.479
Yeah, I think you talk to moms so well, so.

Julie Meekins: 00:45:10.342
Well, I think–

Tom Meekins: 00:45:11.919
And so you have so many good ideas.

Julie Meekins: 00:45:12.849
–as a mom, we feel like everything is up to us– everything is up to us, and especially homeschool moms, because not only are we raising our children, but we’re educating them as well. And it’s all on us, right? And now, there are some dads that are in that role. I know that. And I want to make room for them. But parents that are in the role of educator can really feel like, “I’m never going to give my kids enough.” And so we have to kind of change our mindset. And our mindset is this. What is the end goal? The end goal is that our children learn how to learn for themselves, okay, that they get excited about learning, not so much that we throw books at them and say, “Hey, you have to teach yourself.” I don’t mean that because I think there’s always room for teaching. But we do want them to be excited about learning and to learn things for themselves because they’re eager to learn them. And I think when our children grow, we feel responsible for every single aspect of their lives. What we are not taking into account is, number one, there is a God who loves them more than we do. And we can’t fathom that because we adore these kids, right, and we would give our very lives for them. But there is a God who loves them more and who’s got the bigger picture. We don’t have the bigger picture. We only got the crazy picture that’s right in front of us, right? So we have to rely on that. We have to surrender them to that God and our savior who really do care about the impact of life on these children and how they turn out. He cares about that. And so we are raising our children to be adults. So we’re giving them tools all along the way. And so here, again, it’s input, input, input. So you just give them as much information as you can without going crazy. You just provide what works for your family. And every family is different. So again, that comparison monster that comes in every now, throw him out the door and just do what you need to do for your family. So that’s really important. So you just have to surrender your children, and then you have to take a big breath and say, “I’m doing the best I can.” So we talked earlier about this neurodevelopmental program that we were doing with Amy and threw the other kids into the mix. And we realized partway through that there were some children who needed it more than the others. And so we just said, “Okay, we’re done with you. You’re done. We’re good.” Could we do it longer? Could we do it more? Could you benefit from it? Of course, you could. But there’s only so much capacity. And we’ve been doing this for years and this child needs it more. And then even that child, our most hurt brain-wise child, Amy, we got to the point where we also realized, you know what, there’s more to life than just doing this. And not that we didn’t bring other things in. I mean, they they did lots of other activities, sports and music and things like that. But there comes a time when you have to evaluate what’s more important right now in this season. Is it relationship? If it’s relationship, then we’re going to go out and we’re going to do all kinds of activities together. We’re going to go have coffee somewhere with our daughter or with our son. We’re just going to go out and have a meal. We’re going to go get an ice cream cone.

Julie Meekins: 00:48:46.559
We’re going to go to the park and walk around and play around with one-on-one with that child and see if that doesn’t boost them in their season. So I think that what we have to do in the end is realize it’s not all up to us. We don’t have that much power. We want to sometimes, I think, but we don’t have that much power. And so anybody that comes to me with that kind of guilt-ridden pack that they’re walking around with, I say to them, first of all, guilt is an emotion that has absolutely no benefit. It just doesn’t have any benefit, except for propelling you into maybe confessing something to your child that you need to apologize for. It really doesn’t. All it has is give you up– all it does is give you a ball and chain to go through life with. So throw that one out the window and just walk forward with relationship and say, “Oh, could I do better in this? Yes.” So you’re in a constant state of evaluation. Could I do better with this? I could do better with this. All right, let me implement that, and then– okay, so when Amy was born, we had to stop doing everything.

Julie Meekins: 00:49:52.496
Katie was the only one that was old enough for school. But we had to stop. She was born in April, our school year, right then. And I felt really guilty about that because I thought, “Oh my goodness, this child is going to get all of us and these other children are going to get none of us.” And we waited forever for them. And we want to give everybody everything. And then we had to stop and realize, no, we just take a breath and live in the moment as well as having sort of a plan to go forward. But it’s not all up to us. And I went through years of that and it actually took when one of our children had a little bit of a mental health crisis. Nothing super serious, but enough to get my attention to realize. And now we talk about it often because she is well beyond that year. And she says, “No, Mom, that was my journey to Christ. This had nothing to do with you.” And I was feeling all the guilt. And she’s like, “Yeah, nothing to do with you.” And so I’m like, “Sometimes I think we just take it on because we think we’re more powerful than we are. We think that we’re more responsible for the outcome.”

Julie Meekins: 00:50:59.547
Oh, that was the thing. That was the thing I wanted to bring up today. So are we investing in our children or are we investing in the outcome? Are we investing in something we have absolutely no control over? We only have control over what we input, Okay, what we give them, what we share with them, the experiences that we allow them to have, that we bring to them or that we take them to, right? We have responsibility for all of that. But we cannot be responsible because all of my children are adults now. I’m really understanding this. We’re not responsible for who they are right now as adults. We’re not responsible for that. So it takes–

Gretchen Roe: 00:51:39.379
There are parents though, Julie, who would argue with you, “Oh, yes, I can be responsible for all the outcomes for my children. And you and I both know that that’s a fallacy. But what would you say to that parent?

Tom Meekins: 00:51:57.170
Yeah, you can’t dwell on the outcome You have to give input. I remember as Amy grew, all she wanted to do is be an actress and have a book signing. And so we’d say, “Okay, well, how are you going to have a book signing if you don’t have a book?” “Oh, Okay.” So listen to their– listen to what they’re interested in. And you can only do your best. You can only do your best and give them the next step to– now, Amy was a good reader, an excellent reader, probably a better reader than I am. And and she loved to read books and she loved to write. And so out of that, over many years, again, it didn’t take like one year, two years, three years, four years, five years. She, in writing down her prayers and in a journal, that became a book. And so she has a book now that she can sign. And so and it takes time. We can’t predict how long it’s going to take for for a child to grow up and turn into an adult. And she says, “I’d like to stay a child the rest of my life.”

Julie Meekins: 00:53:15.220
Wouldn’t we all?

Tom Meekins: 00:53:17.936
So yeah, it’s you can’t kick yourself if things aren’t going the way you expect them to go. Yeah, which the verse, a man’s mind plans his way, but the Lord directs the steps. So we can plan. You have to plan. Plan everything out for your family, for your children, but knowing that the Lord is directing your steps in his timing.

Julie Meekins: 00:53:41.014
So what I would say to that parent in addition to everything Tom just said is that you’re missing something in the equation, and that is there is a whole lot of other things that input with this child. And so parents who are all about the outcome for their child may not give that child the freedom to do something different than what the parent is thinking is good for them. So for example, what if that child is meant to grow up and be a professional athlete? Maybe that’s not in your education plan for that child to be a professional athlete or maybe even an amateur athlete or maybe in theater and that’s what they want to enjoy. Sometimes we want to micromanage things so much that we don’t allow our children to become the people that they were intended to be. That God has a plan for her for them, him or her. And so let’s not take out of the equation that you’re not the only inputter. That every experience you give your child is molding them into their purpose for life, right? They’re why they were even created to begin with. And if we mess with that. We do mess with that. If we’ve got a plan for them and it is, you’re full speed ahead and you’re very, you know, narrow-minded in that and you’re beating yourself up because you don’t see that happening or not happening to the extent that you want it to, then there’s a little something wrong there because you’re missing the other pieces. It’s not just you. It’s it’s the dad. It’s the siblings. It’s the friends. It’s the the other teachers that may come into their life. It’s the coaches. It’s the music teachers. It’s the strangers that you meet in the grocery store. It’s everybody and all of that is– it brings into life. Now it’s easy for me to say that now because I’m not in the thick of it like a lot of these families are, right? Remember back when we were in the thick of it, we were struggling with those same things. So we’re not any smarter than anybody else. We just have some hindsight and hindsight is 2020. And what we’re seeing is that as soon as we started to release and understand, there’s there’s more to molding a child than just what I bring to them academically or what I bring to them in building character or in any other aspect of life, social skills, and life skills. There’s more. All of that comes together and we’re not the only inputters.

Gretchen Roe: 00:56:19.217
I like that, that we’re not the only inputters. I think that’s a great word because the truth is sometimes I think we think we have much more control than we actually do. I can’t believe our conversation is almost at the top of the hour. Tell our families here who have listened to us and might not go to view the show notes where I promise they’ll find this information what is the website that they would need to go to to find more information about champions for parents?

Tom Meekins: 00:56:50.970
It’s champions4parents.com and the for is the number four in the middle in our logo. It’s shaped as a four and a cross if you look at it carefully. So champions4parents.com and you can find us there.

Gretchen Roe: 00:57:04.391
Terrific.

Tom Meekins: 00:57:05.006
Get on the newsletter too. There is a place to sign up for that.

Julie Meekins: 00:57:08.362
Yes,

Gretchen Roe: 00:57:08.801
I enjoy your newsletter most thoroughly. So in in our closing moments here, I’m going to ask each of you, what are your closing thoughts for parents who will be listening to this webinar either today or down the road in the coming weeks. Tom, I’ll start with you.

Tom Meekins: 00:57:29.210
Summary, huh? Well, all along, I was just trying to figure out how to fit this in. But I I’ve been thinking a lot about the prodigal son and the father. And the father who split half of the– son came and said give me half of my or give me my–

Gretchen Roe: 00:57:51.110
Give me what’s mine.

Julie Meekins: 00:57:52.544
Inheritance.

Tom Meekins: 00:57:53.842
Inheritance. That’s the word. Inheritance. Give me what’s mine. And so he takes it off or takes it and goes out and pretty much squanders it. So, well, what’s the father’s attitude? And this is sometimes you have to let when your children grow up, if you’re not taking 100% ownership or if–

Julie Meekins: 00:58:14.601
Responsibility.

Tom Meekins: 00:58:15.332
Responsibility or whatever. He goes out and what is the father’s response? That’s the thing that I was focusing on. He had a relationship with his son where the son, and the scripture says, came to his senses. Where did he go? He went back to his father. And what was the father’s response? It’s not, “See, I told you so.” Or now if you hadn’t had done that, this wouldn’t have happened. Or no, the father’s response was love. I want you– he saw him at a distance and he came and I’m sure they just embraced and there was tears and also– so love, love your children. Relationship. Build the relationships with your children. Take them out on a date. Father-daughter dates. We did a lot of that. Father-son, camping trips. We did some of that. I guess we did more than I think that we did, which was beautiful. We went fishing and we have pictures. We hold up a little fish and we count number one, number two, this is number three. And so there’s some good memories there. But develop relationships so that when they do have difficulties, they think about coming to you, back to the father, back to the mother. And that’s been a blessing for us as we have let them go. And they do come back to us.
Gretchen Roe: 00:59:45.048

Wow.
Julie Meekins: 00:59:45.325 So I would agree with that 100%. But enjoy your children. We get so caught up in all the tasks and all of the responsibility. And our hearts are pure in the sense that we want the best, the absolute best for our children. But sometimes that translates into stress and you want to enjoy your children. And then I would say, like Tom said, relationship first, it is so important. And then, we’ve talked about this a little bit, building around those strengths, bringing in, remediating those things that need work, and always giving new opportunities for growing and learning. But as a parent, get support. And that can look like being in a peer group. Do not compare yourself with the moms and dads on steroids that are in every direction, everywhere, all the time, and their kids are like acing everything. At least that’s your perspective as you look in the window of their lives, and it probably is not accurate anyway. But come back to your own family and build a support around you that is helpful for you and not that drains you or makes you feel less than as the teacher of your children or as the parent to your child. Spend time with people who enhance you, who help you be the best that you are so that that can then translate into being the best parent that you can be for your child.

Gretchen Roe: 01:01:15.686
Absolutely. Wise words indeed. I knew this would be an hour full of blessing and Tom and Julie did not disappoint. I hope you all have found virtue and what we have discussed today. And if you know of a family who needs this kind of support, I would encourage you to share the link to this podcast or this webinar with them. This is Gretchen Roe for The Demme Learning Show. Thank you all so much for joining us. You can access the show notes or watch a recording at demmelearning.com/show or on our YouTube channel. And be sure to rate, review, and like us, especially wherever you may be hearing this, and most especially if you enjoyed it.

Gretchen Roe: 01:01:59.541
Thank you, everyone. Have a wonderful day.

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