Faith mom, are you exhausted from trying every parenting strategy and still dealing with emotional meltdowns, constant conflict, or a defiant child? Maybe you're searching for ADHD parenting help, ODD parenting strategies, or DMDD parenting support and wondering why nothing seems to create lasting change.
If you're parenting middle schoolers, , you know these years can bring unique challenges. While diagnoses can provide helpful information, they should never become your child's identity. In Christian parenting, we believe every child has God-given purpose, value, and potential. Their struggles are real, but their identity is found in Christ, not in a label.
And today, we'll explore biblical parenting advice that goes deeper than behavior management, focusing on healing, connection, and lasting transformation. We'll also discuss practical ways to navigate emotional meltdowns, help a defiant child, and strengthen family discipleship in everyday life. Our guest is Bonnie Leota, transformational speaker, Amazon number one bestseller, co-founder of Creating Champions For Life, and a trusted faith mom mentor.
Bonnie and her husband Thomas have helped more than 300 families facing challenges related to ADHD, ODD, and DMDD. Through their work, they teach parents how healing, connection, and purpose create lasting transformation in the home. Bonnie, welcome to the Faith Mom Mentor. We are so grateful to have you here and excited to learn more about your Christian- parenting approach Well, thank you, Anne.
It's my pleasure to be here. Um, it's the most m- rewarding work, breathing life into families and watching these children that society has virtually given up on, uh, turn their lives around just through principles Yes. And Bonnie, what led you into the success with Principles from success in business to helping families through creating this Champions For Life?
Yeah. Well, God has a funny way of, uh, taking your life down certain paths that you never expected. But I'll just say I was one of those kids that would've been labeled ODD and ADHD. I was a problem child. Um, I went to my best friend's dad's funeral last year, and the mom goes, "You were bad," just to give you an idea.
So when I was 21 years old, I never graduated high school. I was a teenage rebel. Uh, but I was introduced to a book called Think and Grow Rich, and I learned that there was a magic formula for success, and I learned that all of the greats that created the world that we live in today, Edison, Ford, Einstein, none of them had a formal education.
And so I was like, "That's me. I could do that." And then I got halfway through the book, and I thought, if I knew this formula when I was, say, 12, I never would've done all the silly things I did as a teenager. And I went running to my dad's house, and I said, "I don't know how, but I'm gonna find a way to empower kids by the age of 12."
And he said, "Oh, that's, that's nice, dear." So I spent the next 18 years in personal development. I went from really rags to riches. I thought that my job as a parent was to give my kids a good life, so I worked really hard to do that, and ended up with four kids being diagnosed with these labels that I never knew what to do with.
I'd never really heard of before. Um, the only answer was medication, therapy, or to put them in a behavioral class. And right around then, my dream that I had since 1994 was dying really quickly, and I just literally got on my knees. I prayed to God, "Show me the way." Uh, you know, God couldn't have given me sick kids.
We're all created in the image of our creator. And a few months later, I ended up on a cruise ship in the Bahamas where I met Thomas, and when I saw him with my kids through another magical series of events a few months later, what he was doing with them is everything I learned as a leader in personal development and business.
And I thought, you can parent with goals? Why didn't ever, anyone ever teach me that before? And I watched my whole house transform, and I prayed about it again. I, I was a $20,000 a month income earner. I had 17,000 people in my downline. I worked really hard to get there, but I prayed, "What do I do?" And I heard, "Give everything you've got to creating Champions For Life," and that was 14 years ago now.
So yeah, that's what- What a story. I know. It's amazing. It's, it's really amazing when I go a little deeper, but I don't wanna take up the whole half hour. Yeah. Well, we do want to get into it, 'cause parents are looking for that parental support. It sounds like, , your prayer was answered. So How can moms see beyond the diagnosis as you have done?
I think first and foremost, we have to understand what the rod of discipline actually means. Uh, in the fourth century, St. Augustine wrote a doctrine where he introduced original sin after watching a toddler have a meltdown, and said, "Well, that's proof that we're all born defiant and need to be disciplined into compliance."
What he forgot was the other side, the Genesis chapter one side, where we were created in the image of God. And so, yeah, we all have negative and we have positive in us. But when we talk about the rod of discipline, shepherds used to use the rod to guide their sheep in the direction that they should go, and it was all done proactively with love and patience and guidance.
What happened after St. Augut- Augustine's doctrine was we started to see a behavior we didn't like, and we started to come in and correct it. We started to punish it. Now, 100 years ago, they would use a switch to beat the children.
They would lock them in closets to punish their children. And so you had compliant children back then, but a whole generation of adults that are a lot of fear-based mentality going on. And then in 1946, Dr. Spock wrote a book called Baby and Child Care, and he said, "All children need is attention, and so we should lavish them with attention.
And when they do something wrong, let's do something else negative other than beating them." So we use timeouts and takeaways and bribing and threatening. And when none of those things work to get compliance, we yell at them. And so this has been going on now for over 85 years, doctors writing parenting books based on theories.
But when we go back to scripture and we go, we operate with the idea we're made in God's image. The rod of discipline is meant to be proactive versus reactive. The Bible also tells us that we should train our children up in the way they should go, not the way we want them to go, right? And so you start putting all these little puzzle pieces together.
And when Tom came into my life, any time my children would ask for something, he would validate what they were asking for. "I'm 11 years old. I want a belly button ring." "Ooh, tell me more about that," versus, "Over my dead body." And not that I'm saying to go out and get your kid a belly button ring at the age of 11, but be excited about the desire.
Because doesn't God give us desires of our hearts? And over 600 times in scripture, He s- tells us to ask, pray for that, what we want. Mark chapter 11:24 says, "Ask for what you want, believing you've already received it, and it shall be yours." And yet we're taught through parenting books as parents that the first word a child should learn is the word No.
We're taught to redirect. So instead of offering negative consequences, what we do is we encourage our children to earn their own privileges. We call it a goal. People without vision perish, and our children are no different. When they have to just comply and follow the rules and follow your boundaries, and there's no way that they can make life happen on their own, they're going to feel suppressed, and they're going to feel anxious.
And that anxiety is gonna come out in meltdowns and actions that we, again, punish and try to manage and control. So it sounds like a never-ending cycle. It is. Let me ask you, are kids who are made in the image of God, what gifts or strengths do you often see beneath the difficult behaviors, emotional meltdowns, all their defiance?
What, what are you really seeing under the surface? When we guide them proactively- We don't see the meltdowns or the defiance or the dysregulation, you see? The parenting tools that we have been taught are all very reactive, so we actually cause their meltdowns, and then now we're being taught to just be more patient and kind through the meltdown, to be our children's regulator.
Well, that's, that's an impossibility, so no wonder so many families are living in chaos and stress, you know? So when you tell a child no, okay, let's go back to 18-month-old baby heading for the stairs. We tell them, "No. No, no, no, no, no, no." We redirect, "Come over here." We put a gate up. We wrap them in bubble wrap.
But what the baby is doing in that moment is they're saying, "Hey, Mom, I'm ready to move. I'm ready to crawl. I see you going up and down the stairs, and I wanna be like you and do what you do." And then when we go, "No, no, no, no, no. I can do it, but you can't. It's too dangerous. I need to protect you," and we move the baby over here, we're stopping their neural pathways from actually developing.
So we're slowing down their development and then wondering why they're not developing. The baby needs a mom or a dad who loves them enough to see that they're ready to learn about the stairs. We need to sit with them on the stairs and show them how to manage, how to get up, how to turn around, how to come down backwards.
And we actually have video footage of our granddaughter when she was about nine months old, and she's hanging onto the railing, and she's stepping down, uh, each step, and she's turning around, and she's going, "Grandma." Like, she didn't say grandma, but she's like, "Ah," and I, I'm like, "I see you," and that's all she wanted.
"Can you see me? Look at what I'm doing." And I think there's so much going on today in parenting where we're, we're not giving the, we're not giving them the opportunity to say, "Did you see me? Look what I did all by myself without you." The lack of training from the parent perspective for the child to teach them what they need to do in order to be safe and successful.
Yes. I, I- Yes, that will be life-changing. I love how you're talking about the parents' responsibility. How can parents help children when, when we're talking about, you know, the parent guiding the children in the way they should go, identity in Christ is so important. So how can parents help children understand their identity in Christ in a proactive way instead of identifying with all the ADHD labels, all the other diagnosis labels?
that's a loaded question. But there are eight intelligences when it comes to a human being. Only three of them are recognized in school. So if you're good at, you know, reading, math, and science, you're gonna be golden. But if you're super talented at singing or art, sometimes you're gonna get lost in the shuffle and think something's wrong with you.
Uh, when we parent the way that God parents us, then the children can actually know God. When we're parenting with all of this negative consequences, and I belong to some Facebook groups filled with Christian moms, and the advice is always the same. "Take their phone away. You know, what's the negative consequence?
They need some sort of punishment." But God isn't a punishing God. We might know him as a punishing God because of how the Bible was portrayed to us, but I'm writing a book right now called Parent in Love. It's a biblical case for raising children the way God actually intended. And every time I go through a ne- a, a chapter, and I'm taking scripture and I'm putting it with our principles, I cry every single time.
'Cause number one, we need to know our role as a parent. What is our role as a parent? Can we describe our role as a parent? When we're a dentist, we can say, "Oh yeah, we fix cavities and fix teeth." But as a parent, the first time I was asked, "Oh, um, to make them happy?" Oh, no, that's not it. Um, to buy them things?
Oh no, that's not it. To protect them? Wait, that's not my role as a parent, is it? I couldn't describe my role as a parent. And Tom said very clearly, we have one job to do, and that is to prepare our children for the world. When we do it the way God parents us, free will. He went to Solomon and he said, "Hey, if you follow my ways, I'm gonna bless your kingdom.
And if you don't, I'm gonna tear it down. People will walk by and wonder how God could be so cruel." He pre-framed. Everything was proactive, not reactive, right? 'Cause right now the baby is being called to the stairs, and the fifth time we say no, well, then what do we do? We punish them. We put them in a timeout.
And so this, this just kind of goes on forever. So what I wanna say is children learn through monkey see, monkey do. Even though we're all taught to get on their eye level and explain to them why the rules are in place or why what they did was wrong, they don't understand that. The same experts who are telling us that advice will tell us that children don't have the ability to even think abstract till at least the age of 13.
And that's if we've been role-playing and guiding and teaching and their mind has developed critical thinking, then they can begin to think abstract. But who can read a textbook teaching them how to drive a, a semi-truck, read a textbook, get in the semi and drive it on the Autobahn? You can't do that. You need practice, and training, and role play, and a coach who will guide you in the direction you should go.
So when we parent God's way, and we allow them free will, and we let them be who they are, and we stop talking to them so much, and we start listening, what are they asking for? What is their vision? What are they doing right now? Oh, my six-year-old's playing with a lighter. Okay, so they've got a fascination with fire.
Aren't we better off showing them and trusting them, showing them how to light a candle with that lighter, and letting them light that candle? Because I tell you, if you did that, they would never play with the lighter. They would use it to light the candle. They'd put the lighter back. But when we say no, and we redirect, and we punish, that's when you have a child take a lighter behind your back and light, and burn the house down, because they don't know any better.
They, they are missing life skills, and we need to start focusing more on what life skills does my child need versus what diagnosis they have. Absolutely. And before we move on, Faith Mom, 📍 if something Bonnie has shared is encouraging you today, would you take a second to like this video? It helps other Faith Moms of middle schoolers know this is a trusted place to find Biblical support, encouragement, and practical parenting help.
And speaking of that, regarding strategy, you were just talking about that, um, Bonnie. What does healing before strategy mean? That was in some of your literature. Yeah. If a child is seven or eight, 10 years old, and they've never worked towards a goal before, they've only ever been redirected, timed out, and punished, then they're gonna have a seed growing inside of them that is the opposite of the fruit of the spirit.
And that seed is, "It's not okay to be me. Why- what's wrong with me? I'm always in trouble. I'm not smart like, like they are." And so when the parents first come to us, we have a four-week healing phase where we take our foot off the gas. And what I mean by that is, if you have a train going down the tracks at 150 miles an hour to negative land, chaos, meltdowns, whatnot, there's nothing you can do to stop that train instantaneously.
Even if you put the biggest boulder possible on the track, what would happen to the train? Right? We, we would, we would derail it. It would cause an accident. So the first thing we teach is stop doing all the things that exasperate the children. Telling them no, taking things, their favorite thing away without ever teaching them the life skill.
We stop bribing. We stop dictating. We stop overcompensating. Stop giving them everything 'cause they're cute, because, gosh, God created a universe. He says, "I, I promise to feed the birds every day," but he doesn't ever come down from heaven and put worms in all the nests because they're cute. I promise to feed the birds, but you have to get out of the nest and go hunt for those worms.
Why? Because it is getting out of the nest and doing something for something that follows the law of sowing and reaping. Uh, you do something, you make this happen, the law of cause and effect. Right now, children are seeing you as the reaper, right? They're seeing you as their effect. They don't have any idea that they can do it on their own.
So just that awareness in itself should be sh- uh, should be a shift. So we take the foot off the gas. We t- we stop putting coal on the fire. We stop doing all these things, and we start to get to know our children. We play detective like a good m- murder mystery, right? We write down everything they ask for.
We write down everything that they currently get for free that they never earned. We, we write down everything that we do that causes the meltdown. So when your child's having a meltdown, what happened three minutes just before that? What did they ask for? What did they see that I, that I missed, right? Uh, we need to give them the words.
So we're gonna play detective. Write down all the parent goals, all the child goals, and then around week four or five, we begin to put a plan together that takes the parents' desires and the child's desires, and we put a master plan together so that we create a win-win.
Parents begin to walk side by side with their children versus in constant opposition. Does this work for middle schoolers? Yes. Uh, middle schoolers, two-year-olds. We've had a 29-year-old living in a group home, and mom was like, "She's totally dependent. I don't know what will ever happen to her if I pass away or when I pass away.
I need to teach her life skills." So she came through our 90-day parenting challenge and changed their life. We've had 15-year-olds medicated for 10 years, in and out of jail, come through our program, change their life, where the mom's like, "My kid doesn't have DMDD and ODD and ADHD. He's a normal kid who needed life skills and needed direction."
And now, once they get seen by you, we begin to plant this light seed, which is, "I believe in you. I know you can do it." And we start to encourage our children to, uh, follow through with the plan, to break through obstacles. That's the only way for them to ever know God. It's the only way for them to ever build self-confidence, because you cannot talk a child into knowing God, and you can't talk a child into liking themselves.
It's a byproduct of how they are raised. And right now, I mean, the Bible warns us of wolves in sheep's clothing. And, uh, it's happening on a big scale. I mean, we're, we're spending $247 billion a year treating children from the outside in. We're treating the, the fruit of negativity from the outside in by popping pills and sending our kids away to treatment centers when the answer is inside of you right here, right now.
We already know the answers. We've been led astray. What does healthy order look like in a Christian home? Like, how, how would this look in a Christian home? Well, we have a Christian home. The Bible tells us every day we can wake up in the morning and choose which, who we're gonna serve.
Are we gonna serve negative or positive? Are we gonna serve God or the devil? And when we wake up every day and we parent, I, I just gotta take us back to the love chapter, and the secret of how to parent in a loving Christian home is all in there. Love is patient, love is kind.
It's not self-seeking, it's not irritable. It does not anger easily. But how many of us Christians can honestly say, when I walk in to the living room and my child has written all over my white couch with a black marker, how many of us are approaching this with love and kindness and patience and guidance, and not being angry?
And I betcha most of us can say, "Um, mm." Okay? 'Cause that's just a child just saying, "Hey, you didn't show me where to color with a black marker. I saw it as a canvas, and I wrote on the couch, and I'm not being defiant. I just don't know any better. Didn't you see the pretty art I just made?" Yeah. . What should a parent do first? Understand that the question you just asked me is, "Hey, I've jumped out of the airplane without my parachute. What do I do?" All right?
So what I want you to understand is there's a reason why the kid is refusing to do his homework. What is in it for him to do his homework? Because you said so. God doesn't work that way. Again, go back to Solomon. Be like, "Oh, I would love for you to have video game time. Let me show you exactly how you can make this happen for yourself.
You get to school on time, you attend all your classes, you hand in all of your homework, and ta-da, you open up video game time. Would you like to have 10 minutes, 30 minutes, or 60 minutes of your video game time?" Well, what are they gonna say? "Well, I want 60 minutes." Excellent. You get all of your check marks checked, you get 60 minutes.
You get two of them checked, you get 10 minutes. I love you either way. Now the child is going to be, it's gonna have a desire, they're gonna have a goal, they're gonna have something to work towards versus something to avoid. You know? We're trying to avoid negative consequence, and the middle schooler is just going, "Ha, you've never seen me a day in my life," and again, they have these dark seeds inside of them.
"Nothing I do is good enough for you." And that, yeah, a lot of people feel that way, or a lot of kids feel that way, but if we want to correct that, when should correction happen? Should it happen in the moment or should it happen later? When should parents try to correct behavior or try to sit down with those, um, goal-setting opportunities?
This is why we play detective for a whole month before we do anything, because what are the ingredients to the master plan? If you come into a situation and your child's coming home and, you know, throwing his backpack on the floor and refusing to do homework, is there a plan in place?
Proactively. If there's no plan in place, then we go, "My middle school just came home, threw his backpack, refused to do homework." Okay, so I'm gonna play the learn card here, and I'm gonna say, "I didn't have a proactive plan in place, so moving forward, little Timmy, this is going to be our proactive plan, and I'm gonna release any type of control that I have over your life and your outcome, and I'm gonna hand the responsibility completely over to you."
At this point, we should have a list of what are all the privileges your child currently has access to for free that they never earned? Now they need to earn them. It's, it's, children earning their privileges is exactly like a butterfly breaking out of the cocoon. Now, if we come along and we cut that cocoon open, the butterfly flops out and crawls crippled on the earth forever, never having a chance to fly.
This is what we're doing with our children. We're cutting them out of the cocoon. We're telling them who to be and what to do and what to wear and when to do it, and wondering why when they get to be about 13, 14, they're going, "No, I won't do that," because they want to show off their greatness on their own.
They're not gonna come home and sit and be a robot and do their homework 'cause you said so. But when you give them a goal, now they're motivated to do it on their own, and you love them either way, now they're going to do it and go, "Did you see what I did? Did you see all my A's, mama?" Yeah. And I've watched this transformation happen.
So I watched it with all four of my children over about a six-month period, and I said, "God, what do I, what do I do?" And I heard, "Give everything you've got to creating champions for life." And since then, we've walked through 300 families. I've seen hundreds and hundreds of children transform right before our eyes, and I'm talking three to six weeks, things that they have been medicating for a decade.
Because, uh, take a new approach, you change the cause, you're going to change the effect. It's a law, and it's God's law. He made it. It is. It is. And as a Faith Mom mentor, we care about that, about God's rules, the gospel, more than just behavior management. So how does the gospel shape your view of behavior transformation?
Well, we just start seeing every single child like they are the genius that God created. Every child is a reflection of God, not a behavior to be managed. And right now the whole world is lost on behavior management. So when we flip that script and we look at our 14-year-old like, "Wow, you're, you're a reflection of God in a physical body, and I never gave you a proactive plan before.
I've always just said, 'Yes, you can have that,' or, 'No, you can't.' I've made your decisions for you. And you know what? I'm really sorry, and I'm gonna take a step back, and I'm going to shut off the home welfare system, which means I'm gonna empower you to create," 'cause we are creators, and so are our children.
"So I'm gonna allow you to create the life that you choose for you, and "you can make anything your little heart desires show up when you follow this plan. And, you know, if you're not willing to follow the plan, then you're gonna get the bad."
We gotta give them the good, the bad, and the ugly, and let them choose, and love them anyway. And we've got a couple more questions, Bonnie. But Faith Mom, 📍 if Bonnie's insights are helping you on your parenting journey, take a moment to subscribe to the Faith Mom Mentor. It lets us know , you'd like more faith-based parenting content like this to encourage and equip you in your parenting journey.
Now, Bonnie, what would you say to the mom who feels defeated and believes she has tried everything? I would say, Mom, you're also a reflection of God, created absolutely perfect. The thing with being a human being is it's so easy to just be taught wrong. So I wanna say it's not your fault at all. There's nobody to blame here.
I believe everybody's done the best they could with what they have known, and there's always time. So even though my dream was to find a way to empower kids by the age of 12, it's, it's, it's never too late. There's always an opportunity to breathe life into your child, and you can, you can repair your relationship with your child.
You can guide them from straight Cs to straight As. Whatever it is, the vision that God gave you in your soul for what your family should look like, I say go for it, just starting right here, right now. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today, right now, is a gift. It's why it's called the present, so take advantage of it.
I love that. What encouragement would you give specifically to moms parenting middle schoolers, especially those searching for that defiant child help or support through emotional mount downs? Yeah. I would just say believe in your child. Like, just take a step back, and just know that in Corinthians, um, chapter 14, verse 33, it very clearly said, "God is not a God of disorder and confusion, but a God of peace."
So any time you hear the term disorder, let that go. Like, the labels might bring some sort of order to us adults, because now we have a name for it, but we, we're still left with all the pain. So write down what are the symptoms that your child is experiencing while they melt down, while they don't pick up, they don't listen, okay?
So then what are the life skills that your child needs to learn? Okay, emotional regulation. We call that self-control. Oh, responsibility. They need to learn that. Well, responsibility, self-discipline, focus, work ethic, integrity, negotiation. All of these things go along with how to make the bed and where to put your shoes.
So we know that our role is to prepare our little geniuses for life. They need all of these skills, so don't, don't keep diagnosing them and try to fix that. Get to the root, the root, and every moment you can say, "I believe in you. I love you just the way you are. I'm listening to everything that you're sharing, and I'm even gonna write it down so that I can think about it, play the learn card, and help you with a master plan.
That's my job, and I didn't know that before, because I was trained to correct your behavior in the moment. That stops here, and what starts here is me empowering you with life skills." And, and being seen. What I hear from what you've said, when you do that, the child feels seen and heard. Yeah. And so for moms who want more Biblical parenting advice, , your faith-based parenting support, help with these, um, ADHD parenting help, all the diagnosis help or resources- Mm-hmm
from you, the Creating Champions For Life, where can they connect with you? Right now, if you're a faith-based, you're looking for Biblical parenting, go to parentinlove.com and get on the wait list for my book. You're gonna get chapter three as an immediate gift. You're gonna get on my email list, and I think that's a great starting place.
I'm also gonna give you an opportunity to schedule a time to speak with me once you're on my list, that's very generous. Thank you. Yeah. Bonnie, thank you for sharing your wisdom and encouragement with us today. Your message does remind us that Christian parenting is not about controlling behavior.
It's about, what I've heard today is that it's about healing and connection and discipleship and helping children discover who they are, who God has created them to be. And Faith Mom, whether you're parenting middle schoolers or just searching for parenting help or strategies, please reach out to Bonnie and get all, get on her list, get all her details, all of her information.
Through these faith-based parenting, Biblical parenting advice, the healing strategies, God can bring behavioral transformation in ways that punishment alone never could. So parenting without punishment does not mean parenting without leadership. It means leading with wisdom, truth, grace, and purpose. As Bonnie teaches through the Creating Champions For Life, every child has God-given value and potential.
Family discipleship begins when we see our children through God's eyes and help them understand who they are in Christ. So be sure to check out the description for Bonnie's resources and ways to connect with her. And Faith Mom, if you're walking through emotional meltdowns, difficult behaviors, or searching for defiant child help, don't lose heart.
God is with you. You are not alone. There is hope, there is healing, and there is a path forward. So until next time, keep pursuing God because He has provided a way for you to live for His glory.
