We all want our kids to stand strong in their faith—even when the world feels confusing, challenging, or downright hostile. But raising children who truly own their beliefs isn’t about controlling every behavior or hitting the “perfect parenting” mark. It’s about creating space for them to wrestle with faith, ask questions, and see God’s truth in everyday life.
In this episode of Upside-Down Parenting, we’re joined by Alicia Bennett from Mobilizer Mom, who knows firsthand the struggle of feeling overwhelmed and stuck in the cycle of parenting frustration. Through a personal transformation in Christ, Alicia rediscovered the joy of motherhood and the power of discipling her children in everyday moments.
She now equips parents to embrace their God-given identity, create Christ-centered homes, and raise the next generation of “Daniels and Esthers”—kids who stand firm in their faith and boldly impact the world.
Tune in as we explore how to guide your child’s faith without controlling it, challenge them in new ways, and trust God to lead their hearts. This episode is packed with practical strategies for raising resilient, faith-driven kids in today’s culture.
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Episode 34: Summary & Transcript
Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
Episode Summary
In this episode, hosts Matt and Janel interview Alicia from Mobilizer Mom about raising children with a strong, personal faith. Alicia shares her personal journey from being an overwhelmed and frustrated mother to finding joy and purpose in discipling her children by grounding her own identity in Christ. She explains her ministry’s focus on raising “Daniels and Esthers”—children who can stand firm in their beliefs in a challenging culture. Key topics included the importance of a parent’s own spiritual health, the difference between shaping a child’s heart versus managing their behavior, and the practical value of establishing small, consistent habits to create a Christ-centered home.
Episode Transcript
Janel Greig (00:00):
We all want our kids to stand strong in their faith, even when the world around them is confusing, challenging, or downright hostile. But raising kids who truly own their beliefs isn’t always controlling behavior or perfect parenting moments. It’s about creating space for them to wrestle with faith, ask questions, and see God’s truth in everyday life.
Today, we’re joined by Alicia from Mobilizer Mom. Alicia knows firsthand what it’s like to feel overwhelmed and stuck in the cycle of parenting frustration. Through a personal transformation in Christ, she rediscovered the joy of motherhood and the power of discipling her children in everyday moments. Now she equips moms to embrace their God-given identity, create Christ-centered homes, and raise the next generation of Daniels and Esthers, kids who stand firm in their faith and boldly impact the world.
In this episode today, Matt and I are thrilled to have Alicia with us and we’re going to explore how parents can guide faith without controlling it, challenge their kids in new ways, and trust God to lead their hearts. Welcome to the show, Alicia, and hi Matt.
Dr. Matt Jones (01:07):
Hello, Janel. It’s good to see you. Good to see you both. And when I heard she shifted from frustration to thriving, I was like, okay, I’m really interested, especially that I just found out she has four boys.That’s pretty impressive. That’s pretty impressive. It’s great to have you, Alicia.
Alicia Bennett (01:25):
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Janel Greig (01:27):
Alicia, on that note, Matt alluded to your great four boys, but before we jump into the questions that we have for you today, can you give us a window into your world, your family life, and how God has led you to this specific ministry of equipping parents to raise kids with a flourishing faith?
Alicia Bennett (01:44):
Yeah. Yeah, I would love to. Okay. So yes, I have four boys, ages 7 to 16. So we are in the throes of parenting, parenting some teens, still in parenting, some younger elementary school kids and all in between. But yeah, I guess to share a little bit about my transformation, the story that began to change my motherhood.
I think I have to back up just a cinch before I explain that because I didn’t grow up in a home that went to church or on a regular basis. We were a little more than Christmas/Easter Christians, but faith was not something that we talked about every day. It was, I never saw my parents reading their Bible. We didn’t do family discipleship devotions. It was not a part of our family culture growing up.
And that was fine, but when I became a believer in college, I knew I wanted something more. I wanted something deeper. And so when my husband and I got married, we just knew that we wanted to be intentional with the time that we had with our kids.
(02:47):
But in the midst of having three under five, I was a very, very overwhelmed mom. I was exhausted. I was emotionally drained. And looking back at that season of motherhood, I was trying to do motherhood in my own strength. Yes, we were doing family devotions and we were praying before dinner. We were going to church every Sunday. We were doing all the right things, but I was also snapping at my kids. I was also constantly irritated at them.
And really, when I look back, I go, I had this belief that they were keeping me from something else, from something better. I hate to say that, but I think a lot of moms can relate to that feeling of, why do I have to be stuck in this season? And so it showed up in the way in my tone of voice and the way I disciplined my kids and just the struggles that we were having in our home.
(03:42):
It all came from this foundational underlying belief that this isn’t worth my time, I guess. And so I got to a point, my second son was really just a really challenging kid as a toddler. I think the baby was easy and the oldest was going into school, so he was just kind of stuck right there in the middle. And we would spiral together.
I have this story explaining how it was like we were on a rollercoaster and we couldn’t get off of it. He would get in trouble for something and then he would yell at me and I would yell back and we just spiraled. And at the end of those moments, I’d be like, “This is not what I pictured motherhood being like. This is not the person I want to be. This is not the mom I want to be. This is not how I want to show up.”
(04:36):
But I couldn’t stop myself because now I know I was stuck in some really gross lies about what motherhood was about, about my kids, about my identity and my worth. And so I cried out to the Lord and he, in that season, slowly started peeling back the lies that I had come to accept as true about myself, my worth, my identity, my kid’s identity, my value as a mom.
And so as he slowly started peeling that stuff back and I started learning a lot more of who I am in Christ, my identity and my worth, just digging some really deep roots as I studied that, it started shifting the atmosphere of my home.
(05:22):
I mean, I look back and I’m just in awe of what God did because that little three-year-old that I would just fight with constantly, he and I are super close now because I went through the work, I was then able to teach him how to dig his roots deep. I was able to show him how to regulate his own emotions when I learned how to do it myself because I was finding my worth, my identity in Christ.
(05:48):
Really, my ministry comes out of the birth of that transformation, of the change of the atmosphere in my home that I saw in those years to now is just night and day. And I feel so much more relaxed as a mom, peaceful conversations happen easily.
I’m not triggered. I think moms can relate to that word. I don’t feel as easily triggered by things that, because circumstances and life happen because my feet are on that rock, that solid ground that they just weren’t. I didn’t realize they weren’t, but my emotions were cluing me into where I was actually finding my worth back then.
So that’s really where the ministry kind of birthed out of. My passion is to help parents raise Daniels and Esthers, but I really think that starts with finding our own identity in Christ and owning that, believing that, and then applying it in our parenting.
Dr. Matt Jones (06:47):
Oh, I really appreciate that. And I appreciate your vulnerability. And we do want to focus on the raising and the Daniels and Esthers. And I was just wondering if you’d be willing to share a couple of those lies that you kind of struggled with and by the grace of God, by the Holy Spirit convicting you what’s true, overcame. Do you just mind sharing those with a couple of our parents who are in the midst and throws from those younger ages with us today?
Alicia Bennett (07:12):
Yeah. I mean, I think, well, I know Psychology 101 tells us that we all deal with one of, not just one, but there’s really three basic lies that every person deals with. Mine, particularly when dealing with my worth. So believing that I was worthless and less, I got all the laundry done and put all the dishes away and the kids were well behaved, believing that my worth only came from if I accomplished my to- do list. And of course, little kids are always keeping you from accomplishing your to- do list. So I think that’s where the major rub for me was.
But then I know the other two lies. So the first, the one that I really struggled with was, I am worthless. The other one says, I am unlovable. I know that I struggled with that at another season of my life. And then, I am helpless, which I think I struggled with a little bit when I had those young kids that were keeping me from accomplishing all my life goals, feeling like that victim mentality, stuck in that victim mentality of, “I can’t do anything. I’m helpless.” So those are kind of the three, I would say all of the lies funnel down into one of those three.
Dr. Matt Jones (08:29):
Got it. I appreciate you sharing that. And you mentioned wanting to raise Daniels and Esthers. So for our listeners who are not familiar either with this idea or even those two characters, what do you mean by that?
Alicia Bennett (08:42):
Yeah, I just got really fascinated to look at the parents of the big name Bible characters. And God brought to mind for me, I’m a mom of boys, so Daniel was a natural one for me to dig into. And so I spent a long time studying Daniel, studying Esther.
I feel like culturally right now we’re in kind of a Babylon moment where the culture is not Christian. It is, let’s just call a spade a spade. It is not Christian. In fact, it’s moving more and more towards being anti or against the morals and values of Christianity.
And so I think if Daniel, and gosh, researchers, Bible scholars think that he was a mid to late teenager, 17 possibly when he was taken over to Babylon. And yet he was so firm in his faith from day one, from what we know in Daniel one, surrounded by wealth, surrounded by temptation, surrounded yes, by a couple of friends, which is important.
(09:49):
That’s very important. But as far as we know, not his parents, not his family life, just a couple of friends, which I mean, let’s be honest, we know that teenagers are more influenced by their friends at that age anyways, but what did he have? The question that I began to ask was, what foundations were laid before he ever got to Babylon? And we don’t fully know that, but we can make some assumptions based on the things he said and the way he interacted with the nobility in Babylon.
And then Esther is kind of similar. We know that her parents died, but we don’t know exactly when. So was she influenced by her parents? Maybe it was simply Mordecai and his upbringing. I’m not entirely sure, but I just began asking some of these questions. I’ve also asked a question about David, and I love David’s story because there’s only one reference in the Psalms that David makes to his mom, and then a couple that we know from the historical books for his dad.
(10:48):
But there was something that Daniel said when he was interacting with Saul as Goliath was standing there. And he said, “Well, God has saved me from the lions before when I was guarding the sheep, so why wouldn’t he save me in front of Goliath today?”
And I think I have to assume that Daniel and Esther had similar experiences when they were younger that built that foundation that they knew. They knew that they knew that they knew that God was faithful and that he was for them and he was for their people and what God would do in those circumstances.
And like Daniel said, whether I perish or whether I perish or whether I live, God’s got this. He knows what he’s doing. And I just have to believe that they had experiences with God prior to what we have recorded in scripture. Yeah. So all that to say is Daniel and Esther in that season and that moment of time living in Babylon, I feel like it can correlate to our culture.
(11:50):
And we want to raise kids who could stand like Daniel could at 17, that Esther could as a young woman. We don’t exactly know her age, but a young woman. And what my challenge to parents is so often parents get stuck in the now, the current circumstance, the current challenges that they’re facing now.
And I try to pull them out and point them to, okay, 18, what kind of kiddo do you want to be launching into the world at 18? What values, what characteristics, what experiences do you want them to have had so that they could stand up and stand solid in their faith like Daniel, like Esther did when they don’t have mom and dad around, when they don’t maybe have friends, Esther didn’t have friends around. Daniel had a couple.
So yeah, the goal is not to just create rule followers or kids that are just doing it because mom and dad said so, but allowing them to begin to make that faith their own.
(12:55):
And to do that, we as mom and dad have to start releasing them and allowing them to encounter lions, to encounter lions while they’re still in our home and we can coach them through that so that they’re able to stand against Goliaths when they leave our house.
Dr. Matt Jones (13:10):
That’s great. And I really appreciate you pointing out the importance of equipping your kids to launch them into this world. So Janel, did you have a follow-up on that?
Janel Greig (13:21):
Yeah, absolutely. I think your focus too, Alicia, it’s that long, the long-view parenting, not just an event and the goal being shepherding the hearts of our kids, not getting right behavior.
So kind of on that note, we care so much about our kids having that right belief and knowing who the Lord is, and having their hearts on fire for God. But how do you know as a parent, what are some tips or look fors that you can give our parents? How do you know when you’re shaping your child’s heart versus just managing their immediate actions or responses?
Alicia Bennett (13:54):
Yeah. This kind of goes back to a little bit of my story because I think as a parent, your emotions and the way that you are reacting to your kids when they misbehave is the red flag that you can see whether or not you are caring about how they’re behaving in that moment or seeing the moment as a long-term discipleship opportunity.
I give the example of, I reacted. It was almost akin to a bee getting close, like, get out of there. When my kids were little and they would have these big emotions, it was like, “Get out of there. Get away from me, run that fight or flight kind of emotional response, that reaction that came out of me.”
Whereas now that I have my identity and my worth really deeply founded not in my kids’ behavior, but in who Christ says that I am, who God says that I am, which doesn’t change, now my response, notice I reacted versus now I feel like I can respond to the behavior with a bigger picture, with the bigger lens.
(15:06):
It’s not a fight and flight moment. It is a response that I can think about, okay, what is really going on here when they’re snapping at their brother? I mean, just this morning, two of my younger two kept snapping at each other all morning and I was like, okay, a lot of times they mimic us, they mirror our emotions.
And so I can look at myself and go, okay, no, actually this morning I wasn’t snapping. I was pretty calm. Okay, I don’t think it’s me, let’s be honest, first, self-reflective of, is there something I need to do and change here, in this moment?
But I pulled one of my kids aside and was like, “Are you okay this morning? What’s going on? Because you just seem to be snapping at everyone.” So now I can respond by asking questions to go deeper and asking questions is a great way also for your kids to learn how to be self-reflective for themselves and discover, “Yeah, I’m just really tired this morning,” he said.
(16:04):
It’s like, “Okay, well, you’re allowed to feel tired, but you’re not allowed to snap at your brother. It’s not his fault that you’re tired. We can get to bed extra early tonight if we need to.” And just that small conversation, five minutes later, he was no longer snapping and the other brother wasn’t snapping back at him because of course the seven-year-old is just reacting to the atmosphere of the home.
He doesn’t have the emotional maturity to do much more than just react. But yeah, digging in and finding out what is actually going on. But I think that takes having those deep roots ourselves so that we aren’t reacting. And so those emotions or that red flag to tell us what’s going on.
Janel Greig (16:51):
I love that.
Dr. Matt Jones (16:52):
Oh, go ahead, Janel.
Janel Greig (16:53):
No, go ahead, Matt.
Dr. Matt Jones (16:54):
No, I was just going to say, there’s a huge difference between reacting and responding, and I think you did an excellent job drawing that out. And so do you see those types of qualities in Daniel and Esther as you studied them, or what other qualities have stood out to you in terms of why they’re such an important figure or character to look into growing up in today’s culture?
Alicia Bennett (17:19):
Oh yeah. Well, I mean, look at Daniel, the habits that we know that he had throughout his life, those habits more than likely started a long time before he ever got to Babylon. So I think parents so often just dismiss the small habits as not as important as the big thing, get to church on Sunday. And remembering that it’s the small habits that build and change culture. It’s those small habits.
So you want to shift. If you’re looking to really overhaul and shift the atmosphere of your home, you’ve got to look back at all the small habits that you are choosing and which ones do you want to change? Which ones can you? And the great thing about small habits is small habits are easier to shift than usually a big blaring one anyways.
(18:13):
So yeah, that. But I also think we know from just child development, brain development, that kids gain their worldview in really the first 10 to 12 years. So it’s kind of like wet cement. They’re just absorbing values. They’re absorbing qualities. They’re absorbing, and I hate to say it, but the truth is they’re mirroring what they see. They’re not really, what’s the word? They’re not just taking in what you say. They are way more receiving what you do as parents.
And that can be really heavy, but at the same point, recognizing that around that preteen, 10 to 12, 13 years age, they need to, and they will developmentally start shifting to deciding whether or not they’re going to make their faith their own. And so that is a great, I know that just in general parenting circles, we talk about, okay, we’re really in the heavy parenting years up until about 10, and then we need to start shifting into coaching.
(19:19):
And that fits with just brain development in kids and allowing our teens to begin to explore things themselves. Now, you’re still in the picture, you’re still coaching them, leading them, available to answer questions, and you have that kind of open door policy. And here’s a good example of how our family has tried to instill this.
Again, it’s back to that long-term picture, is we chose, when our kids were little, we were like, hey, we started doing family devotions together when my oldest was three, I think I had a six-month-old and a three-year-old, and we started then and we started messy. We didn’t know what we were doing.
Neither of us came from families that had done that on any regular basis. We just started messy, but we knew. We knew long-term, we wanted to have a space for kids to be able to ask questions, to have spiritual conversations where it was this expectation every night after dinner, this is what we do. And that has looked so different, so, so different throughout the years.
(20:24):
And then another practice we have is right before they go to bed, they get to ask us one question. Of course, for the seven-year-old, it’s like, “What are we doing tomorrow?” But it opens the door. Again, thinking long-term, I knew I wanted to have space for those teenagers to be able to ask questions, real questions. And I’d always heard that teenagers, they like to talk at night, so plan on staying up late and answering their questions.
So we wanted to, again, create space, the expectation of spiritual conversations, as well as space that questions are good. Teenagers need to ask questions. They need to wrestle with their faith, their own, to make their faith their own. And I have to believe that Daniel had done some of that before he ever got to Babylon, but then it was like, “You’re on, you’re on, figure it out.”
Dr. Matt Jones (21:13):
I’m curious if you have a recent question of the night that has stood out to you that said, “Oh, I’m going to have to get back to you or I’m really glad you asked that.” Has there been a recent one or one that you can remember in the last two or three years that really stands out to you?
Alicia Bennett (21:27):
I have to admit, my husband gets more of those questions because they get to pick whether or not mom or dad puts them to bed. And well, he’s an engineer. And so a lot of my engineer mind sons ask questions that I don’t know the answers to.
Dr. Matt Jones (21:43):
Okay. All right.
Alicia Bennett (21:46):
That’s been more of the questions that they ask. It’s like, oh, something so random. “How is glue made?”
Janel Greig (21:55):
Yeah.
Alicia Bennett (21:56):
I have no idea, buddy. We can look at that tomorrow though.
Dr. Matt Jones (22:00):
That’s great. That’s great.
Alicia Bennett (22:01):
Let’s YouTube it.
Dr. Matt Jones (22:04):
We want to thank you all so much for joining us for this episode of the Upside Down Parenting Podcast. You’ve been listening to the first part of our discussion with Alicia Bennett from mobilizermom.com.
In our next episode, we’re going to continue this conversation and dive into some very practical thoughts and ideas on how parents can actually live this out day to day, especially when it comes to shaping our kids’ hearts, not just their behavior. You won’t want to miss it. So be sure to subscribe and we’ll see you next time as we keep learning what it means to parent in the upside down way for the kingdom of God.