Loving on Purpose: Parenting and So Much More #1 — http://thegodjourney.com/wordpress/2009/06/19/loving-on-purpose-parenting-and-so-much-more-1/

It's now time to think outside the box of what we've always known. I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down to Claire's the sovereign lord. I think that's a profound turning point in somebody's relationship with God. And our hope in starting this was that this would become an ever-expanding conversation. Just two real guys talking about life, that's a nice tagline. I'm Wayne Jacobson. And I'm Brad Cummings. And welcome to another edition of The God Journey. Alright you manoray swimmin' fool, you're back. We don't have time for that. No we don't. Can we do the 522 burn? Brad and I have hardly seen each other in the last month. You've been in New York and Nashville and you've been in Hawaii and Oklahoma. Those are two different places, pal. And we'd love to catch up on all that, but we're not going to because we have some special guests today with us in the podcasting studio. The parenting experts. Don't you love those expectations? No. About a month or so ago, we talked about Danny Silk's book, Loving Our Kids On Purpose and we said we're going to try and get him to come down here. He happens to be in LA so they decided to spend a little piece of their vacation. Come on. How special are you? This is the pre-Nascar day. Oh my gosh. That's nice. He's doing his pre-Nascar day with us. NASCAR. He's NASCAR tomorrow? That's true. Tell us about that. We didn't know you could do this in LA. Eight laps at the California Speedway. With your hair on fire? In Indy. In IndyCar. In the helmet. It's a regular NASCAR. Oh, a NASCAR. Not Indy. It's a NASCAR and you're driving on the track by yourself? Stop car. Actually, I chased the lap car around for five laps and then the green flag comes and me and everybody else who signed up gets to race for eight laps. So they're doing the five laps with you. Yes. Can we get two more in there? It's Brad and I. Come on. You know what? Dude, I see how you drive. I'm not doing that. You just keep you in the back. I don't understand what you mean by that. Dude. No way. Oh yeah. You get the full suit and everything? Everything. Fire suit? Fire suit? Fire suit? Fire suit? Fire suit? Fire suit? Fire suit? Fire suit? Fire suit? Fire suit? Fire suit? Fire suit? Fire suit? Fire suit? Fire suit? Fire suit? Your kid's lifting for a go cut wreck? Yeah, we did. A couple weeks ago, we had the cousins down and we all went to this little go-cut thing and I was doing awesome and then I went hit one of the corners little too tight and spun out. Nice. Six other cars crashed. They were all upset and I was like, Oh, you hit me? I was just sitting here. I was just doing德anya for me! Well, that other voice you hear on the background is not Brad Pre-Puberty. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. You're welcome. come to join us as well. Hi, Sherry. Hi. You guys are at the end of a vacation here. We are. 25 years we've been married. Oh, I thought it was a 25-year vacation. We're thinking about going back to work. You're sending him out on a race car drive. Every 25 years we've put in a couple weeks at the office and then head back out. That is too tight. Congratulations on 25 years. Thank you. You've written the book on gracing kids and loving and discipline and all that. Do you feel like experts? Is Brad poking Lee? Does anybody feel like an expert in this area? Oh gosh. What is an expert anyway? We're just telling our story, I think, mainly. A lot of this comes from years of teaching something called Love and Logic, which is from Jim Faye and Foster Klein back in Colorado. A lot of you have asked me if this was related to that. I'm not familiar with this other thing. Tell us a little bit about it. Very much is in that I've been teaching this parenting model as a social worker in social services for going on 20 years. But the adaptation of moving it from strictly a public school, public education, mental health model of teaching parenting is really the integration of how Daddy God parents us and how he isn't yelling and screaming and counting and swinging at us. Jumping over the couch. I'm not sure everyone's got that one squared away. I've heard some arguments against that. Have you? What a shock. Doesn't God carry a big stick with a nail in it? That's what I heard. That's what I heard. The woodshed and all that stuff. Yeah. Spare the rod, spoil the child. You must beat them into submission. All of that. Drive folly far from the heart of your child. You can beat them and shall not kill them. All that stuff. I get that. It's in there. It really is. But the approach of building a loving heart-to-heart connection is really what our Daddy's doing with us. We won't follow him if our heart is not connected to him. We might obey his rules, but we also obey the rules of the IRS. And it doesn't mean we have a deep meaningful relationship with them. It simply means we don't want to be punished. I'm just protecting it. It's self-preservation. It's a relationship of self-preservation. Whereas being married to this lady for 25 years, I am changing the choices that I make to protect our connection. And I have all these freedoms and all these options, but I know that some of them will injure our relationship. So I make different decisions in freedom, not out of if you're a punishment. That's great. Now, the love and logic thing you're referring to. Does that have a faith-based component to it? Is that a secular? It's a secular. Doesn't this tick you off that the seemingly secular groups seem to get more in touch with the reality that God wants to teach the world before the religious crowds do? It's, yeah. And I think it's largely due to secular-based folks are not afraid of changing. And religious people are so afraid of changing. The only ones that are doing a better job of holding on to the past are the Muslims. Then the Christians. They're the only ones doing a better job. Well, even the whole women's thing. I mean, really, the liberation of women, which I think Jesus was big on in the Gospels, gets lost for 1,900 years of religious life. No one's talking about how we release women to be, all God's wanted them to be, until the feminists start screaming, don't we have the right to be as selfish as you men have been for the last 6,000 years? Right. And how do you deny him that? Yeah, yeah. It's embarrassing. It is embarrassing. Most of the health each, one man, one vote, the whole democracy and the lack of nobility and all that, that didn't come from the church. That stuff came from the world. And then we're going, gosh, that's more gospel than we're living. That's sad. Well, I think, you know, truth is truth. Two plus two is four, whether you're Christian or not. And I think at times we have a religious mindset that if truth comes from outside of my sphere, then we hold a suspect. Yeah. So how do you come to accept it? I've been watching Danny teach parenting classes for years now. And every time he gets up to speak to a group of Christians, you almost have to stand up in front and, and answer the question, what about spanking? You have to answer that question first because the, the religious Christians, they are afraid you're going to take away their ability, their only tool to control. And as soon as you, it's just, but what, but I've seen him teach for years in the secular world and they never asked that question, but the Christians are so afraid that they have to change and do something different. It's on my list. We get that's the number one question. Well, you know, the, the idea of spanking is it is, it is a biblical practice. It is, it's not, and our approach is not to extract that option, but it's to re, redetermine its use and its goal. And so I've heard it taught as spanking is a last resort. Spanking is, you know, we'll get to this thing to try to control our child. And it is never that the goal of our parenting is to teach our child to control themselves, not learn to be controlled. I'm not, I'm not ever wanting my child to learn to yield their self control and their freedom because of a, you know, because of a, you know, a false paradigm. And that is that good parents control their children. God doesn't want control on me. Jesus died to make me free, not for me to be controlled. And I want my child to learn that life is not their life in God, their life on this earth is not about learning to yield their self control to the right pastor or to the right theology. Their life is to learn to think, to problem solve and to manage themselves in unlimited freedoms. And so when I introduced spanking, spanking is not so that you will succumb to my will. Spanking is, is to let you know that if you don't control yourself, there are painful consequences that will steer you from the outside. And spanking is always introduced with a choice. It's never okay, you lied, you get spanked, you stole something, you get spanked. It's not like you broke the 10 commandments and now here comes the curses. It's always, it's always you have a choice. I am here to help you. I'm the helper. I'm the helper. I'm in your life to help you. This is a, you know, a synonymous relationship of you and the Holy Spirit later on in your life. Would you like to calm down and control yourself or would you like my help? That is not how most people speak whatsoever. Right. And you, when you worked at Focus on the Family, how long, no, that was nobody else. Most everybody else. I could read Stronghold Child though. They do it as a form of punishment. Right. I, I'm more of a intense person, personality than Danny. So when he, when we started changing our parenting style, our daughter was about six, our oldest was about six. And I thought, how am I going to do this? Cause this is my only tool. And I, and it was never, you know, it was always presented, um, to be controlled. And it's, you should spank in this setting where, you know, don't be angry. So my spankings turned into, you know, her jumping in a circle as I followed her around, you know, with this wooden spoon and it had wooden spoon in my car and the diaper bag and everywhere, my friend's house. I'm stuck in my ear. Yes, everywhere. And so. Well, what I enjoyed most about the book and you're hinting at, I think now when you're talking about the culture in which you spank. And be honest, I didn't get one question about this. All the questions that I got, I got about 12 pages of questions. We have friends with younger children. But even, even with older children, it's still all about disciplining and getting the right choices. And though, which are important to understand, but what touched me most about your book when I read it is, and is this culture of honor that's created. So the discipline is not the child still bending to my will. You create the environment in which kids have respect and give respect in the home that makes the other choices then work. Talk a little bit about creating that culture of honor in the home. Interesting point. My second book, Culture of Honor is at the publisher right now. And you can pre-order that one. On Amazon for too long. Yeah, you can. It is, it very much is about the culture, Wayne. It's very much about teaching our children to be powerful. See, because powerless people don't need a powerful gospel. Powerless people need a reason to blame their life on a devil, blame their life on a God who's distant or separated, not involved. Powerless people need excuses. Powerful people need freedom and choices and they demand it. So I'm going to teach my child to be powerful by the way that I treat them, but it's going to come from the belief that I can't control them. I don't control you, it's never my goal to control you, therefore it is my goal to teach you to control yourself. Okay, that's not what we got in church at all. I mean at all. I thought it was our job. I thought if we did a good job as parents, we're the ones with the controlled children. Totally. They're the ones that are not acting up in the midst of all the religious meetings and it's like, you know, there's always that look from the entire crowd about the one kid that squawks and everyone looks with, control your child. So what you're talking about, I mean, it's like a different language. Right. If the goal is to raise your child to never cause any problems, then Joseph and Mary failed miserably as a parent. Good boy. Because their boy was he, Jesus, he's a handful. He's a handful that boy. I always tell everyone that my master plan in parenting is to get my kids to fall in love with me. Because if they are in love with me, then I can direct them. I have access to their heart. I don't have to use external controls. I can work from within them and we can get somewhere. No matter what's going on in your life, if you're in love with me and I'm in love with you, we're going to be okay. But you deal with a lot of parents. I know some of the studies and you mentioned in the book, some of the work you do in public school arena. What about the parent who's already lost their child's respect? They've had an escalating war of control. And now the child is old enough to realize, you really can't control me like you think you can. How does a family get back to creating this environment again if they've lost it? Yeah, in most families that is called adolescence, that phase, where the child now believes they're powerful enough to resist your efforts to control them. Now the toddlers were trying to teach us this. They were trying to show us, you don't control me. Look at this. You don't control me. Most of them control their parents. And then it goes kind of goes submersed into some latent place and kids believe that they can be controlled for a while. And then here I come. I'm an adolescent again. The the broken, you know, the disconnect that happens when so much disrespect is heaped on a controlling relationship. I mean, think about how much you like being controlled. Think about how much spouses love being controlled by each other, you know, or that you love being controlled at work. Yeah, nobody likes being controlled, but somehow we give ourselves permission to control our children, to remove their freedoms. And that level of dishonor and disrespect sewn into the relationship over time is it's going to meet with an equal or greater amount of disrespect and dishonor back. So the the reaction of now trying to control the child when you have a disconnect is the biggest mistake parents can make. It's really to take what Sherry just said and that is, okay, I repent. I clean up my mess a by starting with, I made a big mess. I've been trying to control you is not my job to control you. It's your job to control you. I have hurt our relationship. Nothing greaves me deeper than to have injured your heart and our relationship. So we're talking about reconnecting heart to heart. That's the priority of a parent with a disconnected condition in their relationship with their child. The effort to influence or or affect your child's decisions while you're disconnected is is futile. It's it's ridiculous. It's just like a couple, husband and wife who are disconnected who try to work out a problem. They're just going to make it worse because they're not they're not behaving in such a way to protect something. They're behaving or protect the relationship. They're behaving in such a way as to protect themselves. And when you get disconnected from your child, you're doing the same thing. You're just you're trying to protect yourself and what you want and your child's trying to protect themselves and what they want. So once we get this back, Gary Chapman wrote a great book called Love Languages, five love languages. There is a primary thing that I would teach parents. Understand your child's love language. If you don't understand, then you really don't understand how they feel loved by you because they don't feel loved by you the way you feel loved. They feel loved the way they feel loved. So you're going to have to figure out how to pour into this connection, strengthen it, build it, chase away the fear before you're going to have that place of influence and favor again where they are behaving to protect the relationship as much as you are. You know, the whole concept of helping kids learn that it's their job to control themselves. I got to say that the bulk of people I run into, even as adults, they still haven't bought into that. Most of their difficulties, they are blaming some external factor that leaves them in that powerless place. It's interesting language. I think most people abdicate that responsibility that says, I do still have choices in spite of however terrible you may be behaving, someone else. Most people react to that as opposed to believe that they do have the ability to make choices there. And we're trained to justify ourselves in that because we've watched our parents do it. Our parents rage, our parents sulk, our parents withdraw, whatever it is, and then they blame the child for how they're acting. They do it with each other. They yell and scream at the person that cut them off in traffic and they justify why they've done that. And so, we're literally, we're conveying to our children that the world around us is greater than he who's in us. Wow. Yeah. Situations at work, their children at school, they get in all these situations where they're the victim of whatever's going on. They don't have any way to change it. They just are powerless. And the betrayal stories you hear among believers, forget the children or anything, just in terms of community sharing life, sharing partnership with someone in ministry. How often people do what you just said. When I begin to protect my rights, instead of protect the relationship with its parent, child, spouse to spouse, brother to brother, sister to sister in the body of Christ, once you stop caring about the relationship, there's nothing else to be salvaged. Yeah. Well, it's all about survival at that point. It really is. Yeah. That becomes very, very hurtful. Let's, let's then talk about, because I think to me, I'd be excited to read the next book. We'll have to get you back down here because I think that creating the culture of honor. If parents don't get this, everything else is just discipline issues. And you look for an answer. And this is what I was kind of joking at the beginning about being an expert. No one's really an expert. And I like the fact that your book was not, this situation happens, do this. This happens, do this. It was, here's a framework for you and the Holy Spirit to go on adventure to figure out how I love this child, create this culture of honor, and then provide the kind of choices that help them become a healthy person. Absolutely. And so it wasn't, oh, here's the 10 things to do to raise your kids perfectly. And I actually love that because I really hate books give you 10 steps to nowhere. And they're always, if there's 10 steps to something, it is to nowhere. This will not work. And those are written by people who don't have children. Or they do. And the children have long since left relationships. These should have worked. I think one of the things that I really appreciated is when you sort of delineated between discipline and punishment and how in the whole context of discipline, you were talking about that inside decision making that you're trying to empower, where kids, they know it's their responsibility. Their problems are their problems. And you're not trying to add, because I think so many people have that confused. And I think they have that sense of who God is very confused. Because I think most people do have an angry God. And they do think of punishment. Discipline and punishment could be synonymous in most religious mindsets. Absolutely. Because they're not separate. Talk more a little about that. The primary difference between discipline and punishment really is anger or more directly the attempt to control. So if we take discipline, we find the word disciple in there. And to disciple someone really is for me to take the very best part of me and draw it to the surface in you. And so if I'm really great at Bible study and the Greek and Hebrew and line upon line reasoning, and that's really what I do well, then I'm going to reach into your life. And I'm going to pull that to the surface in you as because that's my discipline that I bring to your life. If I am involved in intercession and prophesying over the city and fasting and just, that is what I do well. I'm going to reach into your life and I'm going to pull that to the surface. You're going to find in you this passion to cry out and to intercede. You're helping other people become learners. I can only pull to the surface in you what I do well. And that's a disciple. Punishment is you're doing something that I don't like. And I want it to stop. What do I have to do? What do I have to do to get it to stop or to get it to start? Well, something from the outside. So I'm not pulling something from the inside. I'm introducing some pressure from the outside. Yeah. And it's all fear and intimidation. Yes. Totally. And those are powerful tools. And I think that the sad reality is the reflex of most parents is it works. It does work. So I'm bigger. I'm going to pull rank. And if I suggest anger, I don't think we recognize how that cripples people's little kids growing up. They see that's the means. And we've set up God that way. It's not just raising kids. We believe that's what God uses with us. Absolutely. That one line in the shack about, you know, sin is its own worst punishment. That just freaked the whole wing of the church out going, what do you mean? Gosh, because we really look at sin is those people are getting to have fun. So God needs to really knock them good to make this not worth it. Because I don't get to do it. Yes. And I'm jealous and angry about it. So I need a God to punish. Totally. Instead of Jesus living it so differently, calling out of us what God implanted in us. And it's just parents haven't figured out, I don't think, how to parent any differently than they perceive God parenting them. It's the justifier. It's the great justifier. God is just like the way I'm parenting. Boy. And I did that with my kids. I mean, one of the things I regret most about my kids is with when they would do something they knew was wrong and I would discipline them, I would withdraw my affection from them, my favor for a season. I mean, still love them, tell them that, but when you get down the floor and play with them, I remained emotionally distant until I was convinced they'd had enough of that to learn their lesson. And I've come back to both of them saying, boy, that was really stupid. Yeah, I'm so, they were 14 and 16 when I had that conversation. We still say that to Brittany. So that is so profound because I don't think most people see God as an ever present help in my time of need when I've totally messed up. I think they, we only think we can approach the king when somehow I'm nice, clean and shiny and I've just gotten my A. And it's like, I think if we don't learn to shift gears, you're not going to get a generation of people to see God differently. It's still that sense of, huh? I mean, just dog whistle frequency. They don't get it. And I think until we start loving them and allowing them to say, Hey, I'm here to help you work through your mass. I think most of us take their mistakes personally. And so therefore we take it out on them because I'm disappointed in them. Totally. I'm so glad. We're so glad that Peter was one of the disciples. I mean, Peter was a total mess. You know, he just kind of overshadowed everybody else's mistakes, right? And so he's the, he's the, I'll never deny you. I'll never turn away from you. I'd rather die than have that happen. And then cockadoodle do, right? And then three days, three days past, not a season of restoration, not a season of stepping down from, from being a disciple. You know, it's three days. Jesus had some other things to do for three days. And as soon as he gets back, he goes and finds Peter. And he says, Peter, do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? And in three, do you love me? He reconciles a relationship and boom, we're, here's the keys, baby. You're the rock. Go get them. You know, it's, it's right there. There is no season of punishment. Okay. You've just totally messed up most every church discipline thing on the planet. Thank you. Yeah. And thank you. We like that. That would be most, most the problem is, you know, when we, when we withhold our affection from our child who has failed is because we are offended at their sin. And we think that God is offended at our sin. And we think that he didn't see it coming. It caught him off, off guard. He's so, he doesn't know what to do to the divine holy water. People are going to think of me now that my children have acted like this. You know, and, and we think that God is sideways over our mistakes. And he's so not offended at our sin. Well, and that just drives religious people nuts. I say that about every weekend somewhere on the planet and you're going, yes, he is. That's why Jesus died. He had to beat all his offense on the son. Let's take this down to the top of the level. We got a lot of questions about, you know, what do we do with little kids? Here's one I thought was probably as bad as it gets. We've been blessed with a beautiful and sparky red headed two year old daughter. She's a riot to be with every day is an adventure. But when she gets upset for any reason, she'll begin hitting anything or anyone around her. We've tried fun or room. It doesn't seem to be working for us. We aren't sure what to do in these situations. She's very smart for age. She's actually learning to speak some Spanish. My husband is making a think it over seat for her. Our questions are, what may be some other ways to approach this hitting behavior? And when can the think it over chair come into play? We know she understands a lot, but don't want to confuse her if we keep changing up our parenting approaches. Is there a point when we have to put our foot down when it comes to hitting? Are we supposed to just tell her it's not fun and give her the option to decide? Since we begin using more loving ways of parenting, she's definitely become more independent. She chooses her own clothes to wear, loves to help where she can. But where do we draw the line for a two year old? So she learns to have self control in her life. I love this question. I get it a lot. The the idea that there's this point where we tolerate, tolerate, tolerate, tolerate, tolerate and then we put our foot down. It just doesn't work like that. This child is not fun to be with. And the moment they're not fun to be with, they get a choice. The moment I put my foot down right there. Hey, baby, that's no fun. Hurtin' people's no fun. You can sit over here until you're ready to be fun. Let me know. Now, she gets put in that chair. Now, she's two, right? She's two. She's not 12. She's two. She's figuring some stuff out here. You know, we don't give her a spelling test and the first time she misses the spelling test. Okay, no more spelling test spelling test don't work for this child. This child misspelled the first. Come on, there's a process of learning here, right? There it really is. Keep her in the game. She's no fun. She's, she's in her room just she comes out. When she comes out, she says, I'm fun. I go, okay, honey, did you clean up your mess yet with the person that you hit? Here's a piece that she has to learn and that is the piece of repentance. I can't reconcile a relationship without it. And parents love to allow their children to fail, to break a relationship, punish them and then reintroduce them to the relationship like nothing happened. And that's like I let the dog poop on the carpet, hitting the dog with the paper, throwing the dog outside and leaving the poop on the carpet. Like who would do that? There has to be repentance and the toddler learns to clean up the mess they've made with the people they've hurt. Wow. And I began to, I began to say, oh honey, you ready to be fun? Okay. How do you think Susie's feeling after you hit her? Think she's really happy or you think she's really sad? Sad. I think you're right. What are you going to do? Say sorry. Okay, let's try that. And now I begin to train her in repentance and clean up her relational messes from the time she's a little tiny. Not when she's 14 and you know, screams some obscenity at her mother. She's two years old. She's learning to repent and reconcile relationships because this is where trust is established or broken. And that is what these parents are afraid of. That's what every parents are afraid of. What do I do when I can't trust my child? And you're wanting that to be genuine. It's not the old thing we drag the toddler with. I'm sorry. Say you're sorry. I'll beat you again if you say you're sorry. It's not that. It's really bringing there. And yes, this, I think what this takes more time in the initial phases to help kids get this. But the time you save when they're six, seven, eight, 12, 15 is huge. It just requires involvement, you know, yelling, knock it off. I'm going to come in there and hurt people. It seems to work. It's interesting that the part of the question is they mentioned their two year old learned some Spanish. And part of this parenting technique is really learning another language. You're teaching your child another way to talk. And so in a lot of parents, I think they're trying to protect their child because there sometimes when a child makes a mistake, it's a reflection on me somehow as a parent. We take that on like this is a reflection of me or my parenting. So when they go to have the child clean up the mess, they often protect the child from having to clean up that mess because they don't want the child to feel rejected or hurt by this other person or adult rather than walk them through all the way the finish line so that they learn the process. So the next time we have a language that we can talk instead of it being new every single time. You mentioned the whole issue of time. I see a lot of people getting caught up in the busyness of life and the truth is, is they're living on the edge of constant impatience. And so they're not really engaged in the lives of their kids, let alone the thought of enjoying them. They're trying to just busy their kids off doing something and they're just, you know, they kind of bark commands of I have to come in there. It's like, well, why aren't you in there? Because you brought the whole idea of dynamic of relationship. If a kid knows that you love him, their heart is pliable. I sort of feel like most of the acting out is largely out of a desperation saying, I would like your attention even if it's bad. Totally. And that's just, I mean, it's just sad, but I think unless we're willing to engage in the time that it takes to foster that, it's not a technique that's going to happen. Well, there it is. Well, remember last time we just, you know, it has to be modeled and it has to be nurtured. And parents have to be willing to clean up their own messes, which Dan, which, with their kids, which, which Danny mentioned, you know, when you're in a disconnect, you have to at some point say, okay, I've made a mistake. I remember when my, my, I used to say my emotion of choice was anger. I mean, anger was just it for me. I grew up in a yelling, screaming, I have six brothers, strong man rules at my house, you know. And so when I changed some of my techniques of pairing, I had to go to my daughter and say, you know, I know you can't, I knew she couldn't completely understand what I was about to do in my life, but I needed to do it for me. I needed to draw a line in the sand to start a new way of talking to her. And so I just went in and I said, I'm not going to do it like this anymore, honey. I'm so sorry. And I think parents often, they think they have to be right. And that brings them some kind of credibility. We're not right. We mess up all the time. And so being real with our kids and saying today, boy, mom, I don't know what she was thinking. I've had my kids say, mom, that is no fun. They've come home. I'll come home from work and I've had my, my teenage son say, mom, I don't know what happened at work today, but you brought it home and it's no fun. And having them have the ability to be able to say that to me is making them powerful. This is how you talk to another adult is you say, wow, stop. Because then when they go into other relationships in their life, they know how to talk to adults. They're not always having to be powerful means there's two powerful people in the relationship, not one less than always. It's two powerful people. So I think it would help. But parents would take a deep breath to realize God gives kids to rookies. Kids are marvelous. You can, you can make a mistake with children. And as you begin to change, I mean, we, we learned some of the stuff. Our kids were 14, 16. And there were lots of loving things we did when they were younger. We made some right things by mistake, but most of it was the power and intimidation. And as that began to change with our kids, kids are marvelously resilient. What kills kids is abuse and abandonment and those kinds of things. Parents and some of these questions, I'm going to read one in a minute, but some of them seem to underlie this. There's got to be a right thing I do in every situation that if I implement it, my child is not perfect. Take a deep breath from that. But that comes when that comes from the pulpit, not my pulpit. It comes from the pulpit in the church in that we are right. It is so absolutely paramount that we are right. And so we have 3000 churches in every city trying to be right because we can't agree. So we have to be right. And we, and when we are Christian parents, oh heaven forbid that we would ever be wrong in front of these people we're trying to teach to be right. Wow. And it's exhausting. It is so evil. She said, I'm very worn out with all the bickering and foolishness. Find myself being short-fused with my kids. I know that that contributes to the problems around here, but it seems there's never a time for me to break to recharge. I've read Danny's book is 180 degrees different than the way I've been raised and different than I now have been raising my children thus far. I want to do better. We have three kids, 10, 8, and 7, girl in the middle of the two boys. I'm a stay-at-home mom and we home school. I'm at a loss some days with situation with the bickering. That's my pencil. You stole my pencil. No, you took my math book. You hid it from me. How do you deal with things when you aren't sure who did what and there's a lot of blaming going on? The other major question I have is how to deal with the constant teasing from the 10-year-old. He doesn't care about how he hurts others, but only seems to delight in teasing in any way shape or form. There's two things there. One doing with who did what and blame, and the other, how do you get the teasing? Yeah, I think that the deeper issue here is that this mom has to learn how to take care of herself. And she's not. She is allowing her life to rule her, to where she has very little quality of life left over to handle situations about pencils and teasing. Mom has to learn how to set limits. She has to learn how to tell dad what she needs. She needs to learn how to tell the kids what she needs, and then she needs to learn how to require respect for those needs. Now, until she learns how to do that with her children, they won't. They won't respect her needs. They will continue to push her to the outer limits until she explodes. That's when mom's needs matter, is when she explodes finally. That's when she means it. That's like, you know, counting. One, two, two and a half. When do I really mean it? Not till you get to three. Once you get to three, then we've been trained. That's when you mean it. We have three whole, at least a count of three. That could take longer than three seconds. As your deeper question is, why are we like that? Because I did, when I was reading through your book, I was like, that's a very novel idea because it's like, I do think we fall into this rut as if it's our job to help care for everyone else's happiness. And I found my own resistance inside going like, making demands. I was like, I can do that? I'm sure I do, but I'm not aware of going like, from an outset that I'm requiring them to learn what it is to respect another person. Brad, when we get mad finally, that's what we're doing. Wow. I'm requiring that you meet the needs I didn't tell you I had. We're just not doing it up front. I didn't tell you what they were. I'm just so powerless and so scared they're not going to get met. I'm going to try to control you into meeting the needs that I didn't tell you I had. As opposed to putting it out there and allowing them to understand the dynamics ahead of time. Relationship. Absolutely. So how do you deal with the teasing thing? I didn't want to sidetrack. Okay, so let's put the blaming first. She comes into a room, everybody's accusing everybody else of being the instigator. Right. Well, mom has to understand that she doesn't have to be Perry Mason. She doesn't have to gather evidence and prove something. She simply has to start saying, all right, whatever's going on in here is no fun. All right. So I don't I don't know what happened and she doesn't she really doesn't know but she knows she needs something else like no arguing and bickering. Nobody hurting each other, whatever it is. So that's what she begins to go after. She's just going to simply say, you, you can come over and sit right there until you are ready to play nice with these other people here. You, you can sit over there. Let me know when you guys are ready. That would be one way of just removing the hustle and bustle of what's going on. The other part might be she comes in and goes, okay, wow, you got a big old fight going on here. All right. I'll take 10 bucks from each one of you to referee this. Okay, ready, go. And especially the two that don't have the problem. I'm not paying you 10 bucks in there out of here. They leave the room. But she doesn't have to be a lawyer. She doesn't have to be a detective. You know, she doesn't have to solve their problem. They do. She just has to make sure she gives them one. You're big on that financial incentive, aren't you? You know, it, it's, it's sometimes it works. It does cut to the chase and a lot of issues is what I think is the tree. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't especially with little ones. They, you know, that's why they like their freedom. So that's why the chair is so powerful with little ones. But money, money does talk money and work. First ride to school is free. They take kids never ready for school and so you take the one that is ready and the one that didn't have to come back again. His ride costing. Oh boy. I think, well, I think that's where most people lose their, their will to actually function in this because it's like, I don't want to impose the consequences. And I think what, what happens with the disconnect is you start to, you know, in a backwards way teach kids that, well, you know, there won't be some. I don't mean what I say. Yeah. And it's like, and, and without allowing them to fail in a, in a smaller world, you're not preparing them for when the truth is, they're going to fail in a much more costlier world. If you don't address some of these issues now, that's where it's like it does take real courage to kind of implement some of the things you guys are suggesting. It's keeping the goal in mind really because if you, if you look down the road and you play this out, how is this, I'm training my child, whether I think I am or not, whether I think I'm uninvolved or not setting limits, I really am, I'm training them. So if you play it out in their life, then, then a parent is motivated because we really want the best for them. We really want them to be connected with other adults and we want them to make really great choices when they choose a spouse and a job and things that really matter and, and practicing when they're little is key. So we have to think long term, not this, the short term, immediate thing. Think down the road. Talk about when parents aren't on the same page in this kind of thing. One's more disciplinary and the other one's trying to live in grace or they're separated and they're different days in different homes with very different parenting styles. Any thoughts along those lines? Yeah, it's the same thing. And that is my spouse's parenting style does not determine mine. I love to blame my spouse for me not changing my parenting style. And so I need your cooperation to parent this way is a lie. It's not true. I have my own relationship with my child. Even if we're just awesome loving connected parents, I still have my relationship with my children and Sherry has her relationship with our children. We have our relationship as parents to the children, but we individually also have a unique interaction because we are different people, different temperaments, different quirks, different strengths, different weaknesses. My spouse's cooperation or lack thereof does not determine my embracing a particular parenting approach. And if we have a shared custody situation where we have parents living in different homes, the children are still going to have two governments. It's like, you know, just because I go to Mexico and say, Hey, I'm American. I didn't know that was a role here. You know, they don't say, Oh, okay, that's right. You're an American. Okay, you're an American. I forgot that. Okay, you get out of jail. Here, give us the drugs back. Give us the drugs back. Okay. Okay, don't do that again. No, no, no. Your children go to school where they rotate through governments, history, science, math, art, PE, every one of those arenas has its own government. That child adapts to meet the needs of that governor, just like they do in a shared custody situation. They're pretty adept at that. They're pretty. I mean, they figure that out to their advantage. They are pretty clear. I'm going to ask mom for this because I have a better shot at getting what I want. Here's the example. 20 homework math problems need to be done this weekend. Son's going to be at mom's house for the weekend. Dad has said you must come back with those 20 problems done because he gets home Sunday night almost at bedtime. He comes home. The problems aren't done. Mom said not a big deal. What would you do in that situation? I would make the problem, the child's problem, and not the father's problem. A son, you don't have to do your homework. Don't worry about it. There's consequences at school. So you'd let them just go with the problems undone. If that's an F in the class or F in the, that's a particular deal. What if the child doesn't care about grades? Well, that's one of the questions on here. Which is weird that could happen. A child could actually not care about school. Really? You found that happen? I heard that one time in India, I heard of that. Actually, it's very common that kids have a different value of education than do parents. It's simply going to come down to another boundary. It's going to come down to another limit where the parent says, I have to feel like a good parent. I cannot control your effort in school. I do control certain things at home though, like your access to freedom, permission, resources, and opportunities. Nintendo. All that stuff, everything. I control access to a bunch of things that you need my permission to have. So as soon as I feel like a genius for letting you have any of this stuff, you can. I need Cs or better to feel like a genius parent for knowing that you're wasting your time on these things when that priority's not taken care of. Take your time. Don't worry about it. You come and let me know when you want to put more effort into your schoolwork. And, you know, we have three different children. We have a sixth grade, I had a sixth grade daughter who ran into this boundary. We told her, okay, B minus or better. She's like, oh, she's going to die. I can't get a B minus. Oh, I said, all right, sweetie, if you did your best, what could you get? She goes, C plus. I'm thinking, awesome. Because I had to settle for a C, you know? So I got a C plus or better on a girl who just got two deficiency notices in school. And the next week, she comes back with a note from the teacher. Here's what her grades are. She got them all up to us. The lowest grade was a C minus. I'm thinking inside, I'm like, hey, that's good. That's pretty good and weak. Come on, girl. So I want to let her off the hook. I so do because, you know, I'm not mad anymore. You know, I'm not scared anymore. I'm like, oh, so I slid it across the table. I said, honey, what's that mean? She looks at it. She goes, I almost have my life back. Oh, that's good. That's excellent. So another week here, she comes. She brings it back. She got a C plus or better. I said, what's that mean? She goes, I get my life back today. I said, you got it, girl. You go. Well, she went the rest of the semester, and she's the first child in silk history to ever get on an honor roll of any type at all. Wow. Yeah, hundreds of generations back. Yeah. That dad that asked the question is, one of the things he could adjust is making guidelines or goals for the son outside of his own control. Like he doesn't control what goes on at mom's house. So he needs to adjust his choices with his son to where he is in charge. He does not know what mom's going to do, but he knows what he's going to do. So saying something like, as soon as you get home, if your work isn't done, then I'll see you up at five or whatever he needs to do, but he cannot make rules in mom's turf. He needs to make all his. That's part of the blaming, isn't it? That's not my fault. Well, he was hoping maybe. Maybe he was hoping or whatever about small adjustment. Don't expect your estranged spouse to do what you need to be done. Yeah. Hence we don't live in the same house anymore. Yeah. Because we can't seem to work out how to do things that it's the same problems here. You know, we're way, way, way, way past time here. We're not out of questions. We're gonna have to do more. Let's hold them over for another podcast. How's that? And all you parents with older kids, children, you'll have to wait another week. But we've been talking to Danny and Sherry silk. The name of the book is loving our kids on purpose. All kinds of links on our website to it and other places. Website where they can get some more. You only got some videos and other things that people can loving on purpose.com, loving on purpose.com. So we'll put that link in the podcast to feed as well. So you'll be able to have that anything you want to say before we sign off and start again in about 35 seconds. No, I got questions. We'll get to them. Keep the traveling with us on the God journey. You can be part of the conversation by visiting our website, thegodjourney.com.