Planting the Seeds of Success in Your Kids (Part 1 of 2)

Parenting is tough and moms like Julie need encouragement when they feel overwhelmed. And the first thing I did was turn on the Focus on the Family podcast about parenting.

That is my go-to because there's always a topic that is relating to what I'm going through at the moment. I'm Jim Daly. This season, help us give families hope. And when you give today, your donation will be doubled.

Donate at focusonthefamily.com slash joy. We'll say things like, all right, but then there's no more candy for life. And you've already told the kid, we're not going to have that treat.

And then they misbehave. So the question has to be asked, who's teaching who here? That's Dr. Kevin Lehman. And he's our guest today on Focus on the Family, offering advice to help you raise successful, responsible kids who hopefully will love God. Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly.

And I'm John Fuller. John, I think parenting is the most important job any of us can have. And we want our kids to grow up with good character, make us proud, hopefully follow the Lord is the number one thing. Dr. Kevin Lehman, I think he will do an outstanding job encouraging us as parents on how to get there. And so often we have great hearts and great intentions, but we tend to mess it up.

You know, this thing doesn't necessarily come with a manual. Jean and I have talked about our boys now being 21 and 19. Wouldn't it be nice to have a do over? You know, all the mistakes we made. And we want to help couples who have these young children not say that at the end of the road that we want to do over. Well, Dr. Lehman and his wife have five grown children. He knows experientially and professionally what it means to endure the challenges of parenting and to work hard and see what happens. Well, I mean, that's really ultimately what we're doing, right? I love that.

We put all the effort in and then they leave and we hope. And Dr. Lehman is a Christian psychologist. He's got over 60 books. We're going to be talking about one of them today.

He's also the founder of the Lehman Academy of Excellence, a group of charter schools. The book we're going to be discussing today is called Eight Secrets to Raising Successful Kids, Nurturing Character Respect and a Winning Attitude. And of course, we have that here at the ministry.

Just stop by the episode notes for the link. In addition to that, John, we have a little audience with us. So say hello, everybody. They're going to ask some questions that they're going to think about. Of Kevin, I hope, not me. Yeah, of Kevin, definitely. I think Kevin's already figured out he's here for us to answer all our questions about our parenting woes. But Kevin, welcome back to Focus. Hey, it's great to be here. For our visitors here and for the listeners at our broadcast, when I come here, I'm home. These are my people. Always feel that way.

Always look forward to being here. But, Jim, you said something interesting, and that is, as Christian parents, you want your kid to grow to love the Lord. I'm here to tell you, if you look at the stats, you bring kids up in the Christian home and you do all those things you're doing right, well, unfortunately, the stats sort of put us in a little different direction.

Yeah, that's true. Because so many kids don't keep the faith. They wander. And I think that takes us really to that question. It's such a desire for us that we start that parenting journey with high expectations for our kids.

And it kind of translates into how they reflect upon us, right, how their behavior and our embarrassment, all those things. So that's probably the first loaded question I wanted to ask you is, how often are we parenting for ourselves versus parenting for the kids? Well, for many, they vicariously live their lives through their kids. When you think about your kids, and I'll give you a little insight here, I get the title of my books. In fact, a lot of authors will call me and say, Kevin, I need help with the title of a book, can you help me?

It's just something that I like to do. But the word successful is there for a reason, because young families today are driven with the word success. Well, what's success? When they think about success, they think about professions. I'm telling you, as a former dean of students at the University of Arizona, the freshmen would come in, and my first job was the head dorm rat in a large dorm.

Everybody was pre-med, everybody was pre-law. Well, do you think they ended up that way? Well, where do those aspirations come from? And so what I'm saying is parents project sometimes their unfulfilled dreams and wishes on their kids. But when we think about success, we think about all these other things that, quite frankly, don't matter.

Right. And in that context, though, how do we rewire our brains as parents to either redefine success or to make sure character is hopefully top of the line? Well, functionally, I think what happens is a parent figures out this isn't working. My kid's got a mouth. He's not respectful. They talk back.

They're not nice to each other. You have situations where you talk to your husband or wife and say, we've got to do something about it. We've got to move out or we've got to bring somebody in here.

Kind of something on eBay? Well, yeah. There's four of them and two of us, and you figure you better win their cooperation. I mean, speaking of those dorm days, when I was a young buck starting off at the University of Arizona, my first job was the head resident. One of the deans came over. He said, Kevin, I have one piece of advice for you. I said, what's that?

He said, there's 360 of them and there's one of you. Learn to win their cooperation. And so with kids, what I'm saying is we give them way too many things, folks.

Kids don't need things. That's so true. You've got to take it back a step and try to figure out, you know, Steve Covey said, start with the end in mind. Right. But in that context then, so as Christian parents particularly, we want our children to have godly character. We want to see them tell the truth. We want them to treat others the way they would want to be treated, all those great foundations. And we think of that in later terms as well as younger terms.

I know when they're going through the terrible twos, you're not going to expect them to love thy neighbor, but you want to get them there. So one of the things you mentioned in your book is have the long game in mind, even if in the short run they're not behaving the way you would hope they would behave. But how do you have the patience as a parent to be able to say, okay, little Johnny, I know you don't want to do this right now. We want our kids to be truthful. We want our kids to have honesty. We want our kids to do all those virtues and values. They're great.

We all want it. Here's my question for you parents. Are you that person you want your son or daughter to be?

That's the question. We think about kids and behavior. I've written lots of books on how to curb kids' behavior, and they're pretty good books. But it really gets back to who you are as a parent because the concept of modeling is absolutely profound.

And so these kids every day are taking spiritual notes on how you live your life, emotional notes, psychological notes that goes down the way. You're it. I can't get you off the hook, parent.

You're it. And as parents, if you're not on the same page, there's another huge problem. The kids feel that divisiveness, and they're going to try like a fish out of water to give you a run for your money. So if you're rule conscious, and so many Christians are rule conscious, they live by the rules. I was just up in Indiana speaking this past weekend, and one of the church buses, I loved it. I made a comment about it publicly.

I said, I love your church bus. And it said, it's not about the rules. My friend Josh McDowell said it years ago, and I've used it so many times, I always try to give him credit.

But I stole it from him, to tell you the truth. But rules, rules without relationship lead to rebellion. And so most of us have grown up in authoritarian homes, and we sort of revert back to what we were brought up with. In fact, when we're under fire, the things we tell ourselves we'll never say to our kid, we not only say them, but we say them with the same tone and flexion. And we talk about those strategies.

I want to get into that, the mistakes that parents make. But let's start on the high side, the eight things that you point out in your book, the eight strategies that you've developed for raising successful kids. Let's touch on those real quick.

Can you list them for us? Well, we can start with the end in mind. Right, that's good. We kind of covered that one.

Okay. Expect the best. You get the best. One of the things we know about our schools, we have high expectations for our scholars. When you have high expectations, guess what? This is what your parents need to understand. Your kids actually want to please you. So what is it in your daily minutia of life where you're giving kids an opportunity to please you? You do far too many things for them. You snowplow the roads of life for them.

How about this one? Give and you shall receive. Are you a giver? If you want a kid who thinks about somebody other than themselves, do they see that giving nature in you?

Role model, we touched on that. But live the disciplined life. We think of discipline, most parents are thinking about, oh, the fearful time out.

Give me a break. Discipline is really about how you live your life. Do you live a disciplined life, parent?

Again, those little eyes are watching. So discipline don't punish. Punishment is easy.

You just react and, you know, you want it to be a teachable moment. It's more of a lifestyle. Permitting that disciplined life. I don't care if you are 14, I'm going to tie your shoe. And away from the authoritarian, you're going to do what I tell you to do as long as you live under this roof. You understand me?

Those are the two extremes. But if you look at the teachings of Christ, he was always an authority. And that's why I tell mommies, you don't take any guff from your son ever. Dads realize you put an indelible imprint on those daughters' lives. So be careful with that quick tongue.

That little rudder, as the Bible talks about, could get you in real trouble. So if you're the critical-eyed parent, you're too critical of your son or daughter, let's pick on the firstborn. Usually they're reliable, conscientious list makers and all that.

Your firstborn will not be that way at all. They'll be a procrastinator. They'll drag their feet.

To put it bluntly, they'll be slobs. Well, why don't they measure up? Because every time they try to measure up and they bring home a 98 on a 100-word spelling test, only you can say, you missed two?

What's wrong with a plus 98? So again, just being positive, looking for the positive, goes a long way on hearing kids. That's good.

Let's get one more. Ashley, I think you have a question. Hi, I'm Ashley. I have a 14-year-old middle child girl, and she is overly apologetic. However, my son, 15 years old, built like a linebacker, he, when it comes to apologizing for things that, you know, you should apologize for, he's very prideful and digs his heels in.

How can I help them find that balance? Well, first of all, let me just make a statement. You could beat your 15-year-old with a stick, and he's not going to succumb to your desire for him to apologize. But one thing you can do is you can say to him flat out, I am very unhappy. Turn your back and walk away.

And turning your back and walking away is essential, because I want you to see what happens. It's rare when you tell a 15-year-old, I'm very disappointed in what just went down here, you give him a few minutes, he's going to come back. And he's going to essentially say, I'm sorry about what I said.

It might be hard for him to get it out. But telling kids that you're unhappy, keep in mind that kids actually want to please us as adults. There's a 14-year-old who, when she grows up and they have a family reunion, and it rains, she's going to be apologizing for everybody because she picked the date. I wrote a book about those people called The Women Who Can't Say No.

I think that's the name of it. But so many people are pleasers by their nature, and they please everybody. And sometimes you have to have a talk with that kid. Honey, there's times in life when you're not going to please everybody. Everybody isn't going to like you. There's a great conversation apparent to a child. My granddaughter came to me one day and told me she had 18 likes. Isn't that great, Grampy?

I said, tell you the truth, I don't think it's great at all. Do you want to go through life and be liked by everybody? Well, here I'm telling you, honey, you're going to be very unhappy. I mean, people meet my wife, people love my wife.

I give you zip codes, people don't like me. But it gets back to, do you have a port of call? Do you know where you're going as a parent, as a family? And so these kids, sometimes I'd have a conversation with that little pleaser and say, honey, you know, I love you because you've got a soft heart and you're quick to apologize.

But, you know, sometimes I get the feeling you're apologizing just to sort of avoid a conversation. And I want to make sure you're a strong young woman because we live in a society where the peer group says to your daughter, smoke this, drink this, snort this, do this, watch that. What's in your family repertoire that's going to help your kids say no to a world that says yes?

So I think I would take those a little deeper, take a deep dive on some of that stuff. That's good. That's really good. Thank you, Ashley. Kevin, this has been terrific, and I think parents are getting the idea, and grandparents too, about what we're talking about here. Great book, Eight Secrets to Raising Successful Kids. I'd like one secret, that'd be great, but eight is a bargain. And I hope folks will be able to contact us and get a copy. When you make a gift of any amount, we'll send it as our way of saying thank you. But wait, there's more, Jim, because we're bundling the book with an audio download of this broadcast. Our number is 800, the letter A in the word family. Or just stop by the website.

The link is in the episode notes. Kevin, I can't wait till tomorrow. Thanks for being with us. Me too. I'm glad to be here. Can't wait for tomorrow. Well, on behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for this episode of Focus on the Family.

I'm John Fuller, inviting you back next time as we continue the conversation with Dr. Lehman, and once again, help you and your family thrive in Christ. It's the easy route out, and that isn't discipline. That's not a disciplined lifestyle, okay? Then the others who want to take them on, you're going to get in a power struggle. I'm here to tell you, you're going to lose. They have much more to lose than you. So if your kid's making a fool of himself in public, yeah, people are looking at your kid and saying, oh, that kid's something else. But let me tell you what they're really thinking.

They're thinking, what is wrong with that parent? But sometimes with kids, they throw a little something out there just to see if we're going to react or respond. And one of the tips in this book is learn to respond rather than react. If your doc says you're reacting to the medication, that's not good.

If he said you responded, that's good. That'll help you keep that in mind. And so sometimes you might just say to a kid, oh, wow, I've never thought of it that way.

Yeah. This is Focus on the Family with Jim Dilly. I'm John Fuller, and Dr. Kevin Lehman is our guest. Great stuff, kind of parenting 101, if you will, taken from his book Eight Secrets to Raising Successful Kids. Look for your copy online.

We've got the link in the episode notes. Kevin, let's go back to something you specifically mentioned in the book, and that's three methods to deflect these arguments. So let's just say I have a friend, and every night at the dinner table, there's this clash, mom up against first born. And the others around the table are just going, wow, what's this going to be tonight? Speak to that scenario and talk through a different tactic that mom or dad may want to approach rather than that head-on confrontation. Well, this is one of those areas that I think is sort of fun because it applies to husbands and wives as well in marriage. But one of the things we know about children is they really dislike questions. And parents love to ask questions, particularly you moms. And asking a mom not to ask a question is, quite frankly, like asking a fire not to burn. And I've been in seminars where people have stood up and say, excuse me, Dr. Lehman, I've heard you focus on the family for years. I respect you and your work. I've read some of your books, but I must respectfully disagree.

I think it's very important, like when James comes home from school, I always guess on the question, how was your day at school, honey? Okay, well, let's go through that dog and pony show right now. How was your day today at school, honey?

Fine. What'd you do? Nothing. I mean, teenager, well, you've been out.

What'd you do? Nothing. So somehow we think that we're the questioners. They don't like questions. I mean, your husband hates questions. He's probably afraid he didn't tell you the truth.

He doesn't like your questions, and he hates the Y word. And so lots of times we put kids on an offensive, and all they do is they just bolt to their room and text all their buddies and literally shut you out of their life, and they live their life a life that you don't even know they're living. So learning to say things like, tell me more about that. Now, that's interesting, because it's a command in the English language. Tell me more about that. You would think that would put up defenses. It doesn't. That shows interest. So if your kid says something that's of interest, not a Y, okay, but, oh, wow, that sounds interesting. Tell me more about that. That's so true.

It is so true. Let's turn to the small audience in here. We're going to ask you guys to ask questions of Dr. Lehman with the remaining time we have. Lohan, I think you've got a question, correct? I'm Lohan. I'm a grandmother, as obviously Lohan's a mother, but our precious nine-year-old granddaughter. She is very compliant for the most part.

She's a firstborn, but every once in a while when she doesn't get her own way, she does this very, like, foot stomp and the little eye-rolly thing, and it just frustrates her mother to no end. And so I said, okay, Mom, I'm going to be there. Is that the question you want me to ask? So that's the question, what to do with this precious one. Well, one of the things that Jim asked earlier is, how do you deflect, you know, some of this stuff you get back from kids? Now, I figured a long time ago in my life, I was the youngest child, and I found out a long time ago I could make people laugh, and so I've always tried to teach people, hey, try to look at things humorously. So when the eye-roll comes, you know, which frustrates the living heck out of you, try this, oh, honey, that was so good. Oh, do that again, only do it in slow motion, would you? Oh, my goodness, that was good.

And usually that lightens up that kid. But, you know, at a later time, not right then and there, you follow up, and that might be as much as a day later, or it might be an hour later. But, honey, I want to go back to something that happened earlier. I mean, I saw the look on your face. You were really, you seemed like you were frustrated, and I'm all ears. You know, one of the tips in this book is learn to listen, and that's a difficult skill, especially for us as men. Men aren't great listeners by their nature. Women are much better at listening. But just saying, honey, if you want to talk, I'm all ears.

And, by the way, when those kids want to talk, they're going to talk. It might not be convenient for you. It might be at bedtime.

It might be 10 o'clock at night, 11 o'clock at night. But the good parent will take time to listen and get to the feeling level of what's going on, because sometimes those rolling of the eyes or the slamming of the doors are just the tip of the iceberg that something's going on at school, and somebody has been harassing her or picking on her or whatever. But that always opens the door. So sharing feelings, okay, opens things up. When you become judgmental, it shuts everything down, and it's real easy to be judgmental. And that's probably the point, that judgmental, it's very natural for a parent to have a judgmental attitude.

We've lived longer lives. We know what works typically and what doesn't work, and that frustration of the sassy child, the four- or five-year-old, other than using humor and trying to deflate that way, are there times a parent needs to do the time-out? Oh, yeah, action-oriented discipline is great. Depending upon where you live, when I give this advice, I think of the person that lives in an apartment building in Los Angeles. I always say, take the little ankle biter firmly, without a lot of words, put them outside, close your door and lock it, and let them stay out in the backyard. You say, you're kidding me. I'm not kidding you at all. It's action-oriented.

So any type of action-oriented things you can do with kids, the better. I've said for years, when kids throw temper tantrums, you step over them. You step over them because you have to understand that that behavior, that throwing the temper tantrum, was thrown for who?

For you. It's a psychological term. It's called purposive behavior. And so the kid who's smart-mouthed back and forth, he's a powerful kid. He's saying, I'm in authority over you. A guy named St. Paul said something completely different in Ephesians 6. He said, children, obey your parents. It's the right thing to do because God has placed them in what?

In authority over you. And a reminder, the God we love through Jesus Christ was not an authoritarian. He didn't straighten us up, doesn't grab us by the scruff of the neck, doesn't rub our nose in it. But his holy word says, every knee shall bow. So we're trying to get away from permissiveness, okay? I don't care if you are 14, I'm going to tie your shoe. And away from the authoritarian, you're going to do what I tell you to do as long as you live under this roof, you understand me?

Those are the two extremes. But if you look at the teachings of Christ, he was always in authority. And that's why I tell mommies, you don't take any guff from your son ever. Dads realize you put an indelible imprint on those daughters' lives. So be careful with that quick tongue.

That little rudder, as the Bible talks about, could get you in real trouble. So if you're the critical-eyed parent, you're too critical of your son or daughter, let's pick on the firstborn. Usually they're reliable, conscientious list makers and all that.

Your firstborn will not be that way at all. They'll be a procrastinator. They'll drag their feet.

To put it bluntly, they'll be slobs. Well, why don't they measure up? Because every time they try to measure up and they bring home a 98 on a 100-word spelling test, only you can say, you missed two?

What's wrong with a plus 98? So again, just being positive, looking for the positive, goes a long way on hearing kids. That's good.

Let's get one more. Ashley, I think you have a question. Hi, I'm Ashley.

Hello. I have a 14-year-old middle child girl, and she is overly apologetic. However, my son, 15 years old, built like a linebacker, he, when it comes to apologizing for things that, you know, you should apologize for, he's very prideful and digs his heels in.

How can I help them find that balance? Well, first of all, let me just make a statement. You could beat your 15-year-old with a stick, and he's not going to succumb to your desire for him to apologize. But one thing you can do is you can say to him flat out, I am very unhappy. Turn your back and walk away. And turning your back and walking away is essential, because I want you to see what happens. It's rare when you tell a 15-year-old, I'm very disappointed what just went down here, you give him a few minutes, he's going to come back, and he's going to essentially say, I'm sorry about what I said.

It might be hard for him to get it out. But telling kids that you're unhappy, keep in mind that kids actually want to please this as adults. Your 14-year-old, who's, when she grows up and they have a family reunion, and it rains, she's going to be apologizing for everybody because she picked the date. Okay, I wrote a book about those people called The Women Who Can't Say No.

I think that's the name of it. But so many people are pleasers by their nature, and they please everybody. And sometimes you have to have a talk with that kid. Honey, there's a life, times in life when you're not going to please everybody. Everybody isn't going to like you. There's a great conversation apparent to a child. My granddaughter came to me one day and told me she had 18 likes. Isn't that great, Grampy?

I said, tell you the truth, I don't think it's great at all. Do you want to go through life and be liked by everybody? Well, here I'm telling you, honey, you're going to be very unhappy. I mean, people meet my wife, people love my wife.

I give you zip codes, people don't like me. But it gets back to, do you have a port of call? Do you know where you're going as a parent, as a family? And so these kids, sometimes I'd have a conversation with that little pleaser and say, honey, you know, I love you because you've got a soft heart and you're quick to apologize.

But, you know, sometimes I get the feeling you're apologizing just to sort of avoid a conversation. And I want to make sure you're a strong young woman because we live in a society where the peer group says to your daughter, smoke this, drink this, snort this, do this, watch that. What's in your family repertoire that's going to help your kids say no to a world that says yes?

So I think I would take those a little deeper, take a deep dive on some of that stuff. That's good. That's really good. Thank you, Ashley. Kevin, this has been terrific, and I think parents are getting the idea, and grandparents too, about what we're talking about here.

Great book, Eight Secrets to Raising Successful Kids. I'd like one secret. That'd be great.

But eight is a bargain. And I hope folks will be able to contact us and get a copy. When you make a gift of any amount, we'll send it as our way of saying thank you. But wait, there's more, Jim, because we're bundling the book with an audio download of this broadcast. Our number is 800, the letter A in the word family. Or just stop by the website.

The link is in the episode notes. Kevin, I can't wait till tomorrow. Thanks for being with us. Me too. I'm glad to be here.

Can't wait for tomorrow. Well, on behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for this episode of Focus on the Family. I'm John Fuller, inviting you back next time as we continue the conversation with Dr. Leeman, and once again, help you and your family thrive in Christ. Christmas memories of baking and sharing stories with your family. That's depicted in the giclee from Focus on the Family titled Family Traditions. This story and paint by artist Morgan Weisling, a portrait of a lively family kitchen scene, will find a special place in your home and heart. Find out how to get a signed version of this special edition print at focusonthefamily.com slash family traditions. That's focusonthefamily.com slash family traditions.