SS #31: Being Impervious: Now it’s [Not] Personal (with Cindy Rollins!)

Welcome to SEASON FIVE of Scholé Sisters! Mystie and Brandy are kicking this season off right with the one and only Cindy Rollins. Today’s discussion centers on the idea of being impervious. We discuss not allowing “things” to get to us, absorbing emotion, self-control, menopause (gulp), and more! This is a conversation you don’t want to miss.

How to be impervious

Today’s Hosts and Guest

Cindy Rollins homeschooled her nine children for over 30 years years using Charlotte Mason’s timeless ideas. She is the author of Mere Motherhood: Morning Time, Nursery Rhymes, and My Journey Toward Sanctification, The Mere Motherhood Newsletters, Hallelujah: Cultivating Advent Traditions with Handel’s Messiah and Morning Time: A Liturgy of Love.

Cindy co-hosts The New Mason Jar Podcast with Dawn Duran.

Click here to find other episodes with Cindy!

Scholé Every Day: What We’re Reading

Christian Love, Hugh Benning

Mystie is trying to work her way through her Puritan Paperback collection.

Jacob’s Room Is Full of Books, Susan Hill

Cindy has enjoyed this Susan Hill’s titles.

The Sketchnote Handbook, Mike Rhode

Brandy is expanding her scholé into more contemplative practices.

Be impervious as a mother

“Be impervious” works as a steadying phrase in the middle of preteen angst. Imperviousness matters because growing people bring rough moments—not rough because people are bad, but rough because people are growing up and people are different. In a family full of boys, a mother can feel more emotional than the sons want. Sons do not want tears, handwringing, and worry. Tenderness might appear sometimes, but too much emotional reacting invites children to become impervious in return.

Imperviousness helps because it removes the emotion of the moment and sets it somewhere else so it does not trip up parenting responses. The heart of it sits here: not taking what children do personally.

A line gets drawn, and the job becomes holding that line without giving it away emotionally. Let children bash their heads against that line as long as needed. Some children do not give up easily. The best option in those moments is not engaging and simply standing: this is it, this is what is happening, and disliking it does not change it.

That stance especially helps with boys. Constant emotional processing—“let’s sit down and talk about how feelings feel”—does not always land well. Many boys do not want that mode as the default response.

Imperviousness when persistence and intensity run high

A persistent child can escalate emotion higher and higher. A mother cannot control a child’s emotional level, but a mother can keep her own level low. Keeping that level low protects the relationship. Getting this drilled in early keeps situations from escalating into personal battles later.

A child can be persistent in ordinary ways, too. Some people need to run around the yard five times. When a yard exists, sending children outside for five laps helps. Without a yard, jumping jacks and pushups still exist. Movement bleeds off pressure.

When logic is weaponized

Imperviousness becomes especially useful when a child arrives with logical reasons for doing something and those reasons throw a parent for a loop. Logic can become a maze: dissatisfaction with the conclusion, inability to out-logic the argument, inability to find a clean counter.

Imperviousness offers an exit: the argument does not need to be won. Logic does not need to be met with better logic. The stance becomes: those points might be “good” in a certain sense, but the argument does not control the outcome.

That does not mean children never get heard. As children grow older, children become more a part of the equation. Communication changes, especially when only one child remains at home at the tail end instead of a whole slew of little ones rushing through every open door.

Worry, prayer, and trusting providence

Imperviousness can mature into being less ruffled by mistakes. Worry does not disappear, but worry can lessen. Prayer can increase. Prayer becomes constant because the burden does not sit entirely on a parent’s skill, words, and vigilance. Mistakes still happen—mistakes that remain unseen in the moment. Trust rests in God’s plan, with a desire to participate faithfully in what God is doing.

With that trust, a child’s mistake stops feeling like a personal failure or proof of a ruined life. Earlier parenting can interpret a mistake as catastrophic—almost like discovering a child has “turned out” to be a sinner. Later parenting sees sin as real without treating each moment as the final verdict on everything.

Culture shifts fast, too. Behaviors and symbols change meaning across generations. Tattoos can serve as a vivid example: what shocked grandparents can become ordinary, and then become something else entirely for a later generation.

Life moves quickly enough that the past can feel more important to older children than to younger ones. Shocking public events mark generations differently, and the internet world pours bad news from everywhere so quickly that grief barely has time to settle before the next crisis arrives.

Where to pour emotions

A helpful picture comes from a grief framework using concentric circles. At the center sits the person most directly impacted. Outward rings hold those less directly impacted. The rule runs like this: emotions get poured outward, not inward. The person at the center should not carry other people’s emotional weight on top of personal grief.

Applied to parenting, a child upset about something already carries personal emotion about it. Adding parental emotion into that same space loads the child with two burdens: the child’s own emotion and the parent’s emotion. The better practice sends parental processing outward—to a spouse, friends, a mother, or other mature support—rather than into the child’s lap.

Homeschooling can intensify this pitfall. Children can become friends and companions simply because life is shared so closely. When a husband works long hours and adult counsel feels absent, the temptation grows to talk things through with other children—especially when confusion hits about one child’s behavior. That pours emotion into the wrong place, and regret follows. The closeness makes it feel natural, but it remains unhealthy.

Getting counsel without recruiting children as counselors

When adult support feels thin, the path still includes prayer for wisdom first. Then connection to the body of believers matters. Counsel can come from church relationships, trusted friends a little ahead in the game, or professional counselors when needed.

Books can help, too—books about teenagers, boundaries, and practical parenting. Advice from other people often stays incomplete because no outsider lives inside the home. Broad principles can be offered; exact implementation cannot be guaranteed.

A warning belongs here: sharing weaknesses with children differs from sharing weaknesses desperately. Desperation turns children into emotional supports. That dynamic harms them.

Emotional volatility can also spike in ways that do not get recognized in the moment. Menopause can reveal that problem sharply: emotional spillover happens without self-awareness, and the negative effects become obvious later. The caution remains: protect children from being required to carry parental emotion.

The opposite of imperviousness

Thinking dialectically helps. If imperviousness functions as a virtue, the opposite clarifies the stakes. The opposite looks like letting everything get through, taking everything personally, reacting to every wind of doctrine children bring.

When everything gets treated like the most important issue, nothing stays truly important. Homeschooling parents can become vulnerable here because listening to children becomes a habit, and serious conversation becomes normal. In that good habit, another danger appears: getting batted around by children, especially by a child skilled at controlling a parent through emotional reactions and verbal pressure.

When the situation really is serious

Imperviousness does not become less necessary when the situation is truly serious. In fact, serious situations narrow the healthy options. A teen announcing atheism lands differently than a messy room. When a child brings something heart-breaking, faith must lift above the fray. Christian confidence sees a higher calling and a higher Authority in control of the universe. Imperviousness does not mean imperial majesty. Someone else reigns.

Only the Holy Spirit changes a heart. That truth removes the illusion of control. A place exists for debate when a child listens and an opening appears. A mother can usually tell when a child listens or when an emotional reaction is the real goal.

Much speaking does not guarantee being heard. Sometimes the faithful response keeps the mouth shut, prays, and stays unruffled as an act of faith. That calm can stand as testimony of faith—more than falling apart emotionally.

Boundaries, rules, and the wisdom of selective lines

Imperviousness also shows up in ordinary boundary decisions. Before saying no, think. After saying no, do not change it—unless truly new information appears. Avoid making many rules, but enforce the rules that exist. When a child slams a door in anger, consider ignoring the slam rather than turning it into the main issue. Do not let an emotional reaction tempt a reversal.

Some boundaries do not need to be boundaries. Beds can illustrate this. A bed-making rule can serve as a habit-training tool for a season. Later, when habit-training is no longer the goal, continuing to nag creates a daily battle. Letting a habit go can allow a child to develop a value independently. Sometimes a child picks up the habit later without fanfare, simply because the value formed internally.

Self-pity can function as the defining feature of an unhappy life. Addressing it matters because putting happiness ahead of well-being harms children. That pattern also makes enjoyment difficult for everyone around them.

Pausing to think instead of reacting

Sometimes anger rises simply because the next step is unclear. With little children, responses can feel almost systematized. With older children, the consequences are not always obvious, and the pressure to decide on the spot makes emotions flare.

Giving permission to pause can help: sending a child to a room for five minutes while thinking and praying can prevent reactive decisions. Time and deep breaths matter. Waiting can let an issue dissolve on its own. A dramatic statement from a child can become a non-issue if it does not get immediate fuel.

Imperviousness is not imperiousness

Imperviousness can get confused with imperiousness: a hard insistence on personal control, a refusal to allow anything but one way. That is not the goal. A corrective line comes from Christian Love: love does not insist on its own way.

That line exposes ugly standoffs—two people staring each other down, each insisting on personal way. In that dynamic, a child can lose hope because the outcome feels predetermined.

A practical policy helps: say yes whenever possible. Creativity for fun games might feel limited, but saying yes can remain within reach. Families can also drift into being defined by what cannot be done rather than what can be done.

Focusing on identity and positive vision works better than building life on prohibitions. Knowing who to become forms vision. Knowing only what to avoid does not form vision.

Mistakes still deserve mention, because sharing mistakes can warn others off certain ditches. But avoiding one person’s mistakes does not equal vision, and plenty of other mistakes remain available.

Toddlers, adolescents, and the need for repetition

Toddlers need adults to absorb emotions. The adolescent stage can feel like toddlers again in that sense. A toddler throwing food on the floor does not trigger panic because it will happen again tomorrow.

The work becomes steady training, not instant fixing. With older children, the expectation can sneak in that one conversation should solve it. That expectation breeds discouragement.

Our children do not get “fixed” in one session. Even personal habits never change through knowledge alone. People require time, repetition, and growth.

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