Lessons About Parenting

And welcome to Family Life Today. Thanks for joining us. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine.

You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. You guys remember Casey Kasem, right? Yes. Casey Kasem in the Top 40. I always wanted to be Casey Kasem. You would be really good at that.

You could have been Casey Kasem. I would love to count down the hits, you know, the Top 40 and share the little insights into each song. Come on, just give us your radio voice. Here's Casey Kasem and we're counting down the hits on American Top 40.

I always wanted to do something like that. Well, this is my week. So this week we're counting down the Top 28, not the Top 40, the Top 28.

We're counting down the 28 things I've learned from Family Life Today over 28 years from the guests we've had, from the conversations that have gone on. We're wrapping things up here this week. This is the last week that I'll be on Family Life Today. As a co-host with you guys, you guys will take it from here. You are irreplaceable, so we will not try to replace you, but we will honor your legacy. I know you will. I mean, there's a confidence that what has been begun here, you guys are just going to carry it in the same direction.

And so that's what we're all excited about. But we thought here in this last week, let's just kind of run through some of the things that have been highlights, some of the things that have marked my life, my marriage, my family as I've been. I've listened to every Family Life Today program, which there aren't many people who can say that because I was here.

I listened to all of them. And we've already talked about the marriage ideas that have marked us, and I thought we ought to focus in now on parenting. So here are the top truths about parenting from the last 28 years for me. And the first one came in a conversation we had with our mutual friend, Tim Kimmel, who had just written his book, Grace-Based Parenting. One of my favorite parenting books.

It's a great book. And Tim was talking about the fact that most of us as parents, you guys talk about this in your book, No Perfect Parents. You talk about the fact that a lot of parents are focused on the wrong priorities as they raise their kids.

Here's how Tim talked about it. It is real easy to fall into the success trap when it comes to raising our kids, that we are a Western people. We're running our, everything around us through Western filters. And as Americans in a capitalistic society, we have a bad habit of measuring success by things that can be quantified in ways that are beneficial to us. Like financial? Financial. Education? Education. You're saying those are the harbors that parents are headed towards today?

Yeah, I can make this real simple. When you pin down a typical Christian parent, and I've pinned a lot of them down, talked with thousands of them over the years, and you just have these real heart to hearts. Okay, now you're spending 18, 20 years, a ton of sweat labor, a bunch of money, putting some serious miles on your body, losing a lot of sleep, crying a lot of tears. That's a lot of effort. What do you hope happens as a result of all your efforts? Now, they might say something nice like, well, I hope they have a heart for God. And that's nice. And I'm sure they mean that.

But what you go by is not what they're saying at that moment, but what they're doing on a day-to-day basis as far as emphasizing the values of that child in their future. And so when you really actually play that one out, you hear something like this, well, I hope they get a good job. Now we've got the word good in front of job.

How would I know it's a good job? And usually that's defined by one that pays well. Why do they need all this money? Well, life's expensive, and I want them to have opportunities and live in a good, safe neighborhood. And by the way, that's why I think education is so sovereign now in parent's mind. I think that the most important thing you do is get your kid a good education because that is the pipeline to a good job.

I remember that day. I remember walking out of the studio that day and thinking, I'm doing that as a parent. I'm focused on how are my kids' grades? I want them to be happy.

I want them to do well in relationships. These are not unimportant things. But I thought, how much time and effort am I spending on their spiritual development, which is really what's going to matter more than any of the rest of this stuff? Yeah, I mean, who's talking about that? You know, that's why it's such a great truth from Tim. It's like you forget.

You just fall into the culture and you don't even realize. Real quick, we put in our parenting book, one of our mistakes was failure to build a college fund. And, you know, you read that and you think, oh, you didn't put aside money. No, it's not about money.

It's about spiritual college fund. It's like, what am I doing to prepare my kids to enter into a world with a spiritual foundation that's solid? That's our job. And I don't know about you guys, but my parents raised me with all those same things, the worldly standards in mind. And so we just do what our parents did.

The first time I heard this, too, it stopped me in my tracks. And I realized the same thing, Bob, we're doing this all wrong and we need to shift our mindset. We want our kids to thrive. We want them to have friends. We want them to do well in school.

Again, those aren't unimportant things, but that's what was driving me as a parent rather than saying, let's make sure that they're going to thrive spiritually, that they have that spiritual college fund ready when it's time for them to launch. And that brings to mind another message we featured on Family Life today. I had a colleague here at Family Life who brought me a cassette tape and he said, you need to listen to this guy, which tells you how long ago that was years ago. And so I was on a drive up into north central Arkansas, a couple hour drive, and I took that cassette along and I popped it in.

I remember driving at night and listening to this and going, this is so good. It was a message, the first message I'd ever heard from Vody Bockham, who later became a guest and has been with us at a number of events. But Vody was talking about the fact that according to Ephesians six, where it talks about fathers don't exasperate your children, children obey your parents. He was making the point that discipleship is our number one priority as parents. It's similar to the point Tim Kimmel's making, but he was just driving at home that biblically we're the ones at the end of the day that God is going to come and say, how did you disciple your kids? And if we say, well, I subbed that out to the youth group or I subbed that out to the Christian school, he will say, but I put you in charge of that.

Here's how Vody talked about that in that message that we wound up featuring on Family Life today. How about a plain, black and white, straightforward word, verse four. And fathers, and fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

It doesn't get clearer than that, folks. The context of this passage says the home is central in the evangelism and discipleship of the next generation. The fact that he points to the fifth commandment screams that the home is central in the evangelism and discipleship of the next generation.

And then, in case we didn't get those two hints, he says it in black and white. Fathers, disciple your children. Fathers, if we believe this, then why is it that we've done everything in our power not to allow that to happen? And I hear you.

We go back to this whole thing. I understand that, but they're just not equipped. They just don't know. Here's what's interesting. If the people in your church are not tithing, you don't start a ministry to tithe for them, do you?

No. You simply teach them and expect them to do what the Bible says is their job. If it works for tithing, why don't we think it'll work for the discipleship of the next generation? That'll preach, don't you think? Oh, boy. I get riled up just listening to him. He's such a good preacher. Well, and it's such a great reminder for me as I'm listening to that to go, this is my job. I can subcontract some parts of this job, but I'm the general contractor. And when I stand before the Lord and he says, OK, tell me about your kids and what you did with your kids, I can't say, well, I subbed that out, Lord.

He's going to say, but that was on you. And that message was, again, a part of that wake up call for me. I have a responsibility here before God to bring my kids up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And it's so critical because the research, even, you know, decades later from Vody talking about that, say that a lot of teenagers and college kids are going to walk away. They grew up in a church. They were in the youth group. They were subcontract out for the spiritual development in their lives and they walk away. But the ones that don't walk away come home from church to a family that's doing what Vody said. And that helps it stick.

It's that critical. I remember talking to one of our boys, I think in their early teen years, and we were talking about the disciples and I said, hey, can you name the 12 disciples? And he goes, I think. You guys, this was one of the most embarrassing moments. He was putting Moses, Joseph as some of the disciples. And I walked out of the room, I said, Dave, we are doing a very poor job. I paid my kids five dollars to memorize the Lord's Prayer. I paid them five dollars to memorize the Apostles Creed. I mean, things that I looked at and said, my kids need to know this stuff.

It needs to be planted. I would pay them money to read a book and write a book report on it. This was their spiritual development and I was responsible for that. So you're saying bribery is OK? Absolutely.

The laborer is worthy of his hire. That's what I was doing. There's another principle. We don't have a clip for this one, but Ted Tripp, who wrote the book Shepherding a Child's Heart, kind of the big idea of that book was something that, again, was a wake up call for me. Ted Tripp says most parents are focused on behavior modification when it comes to your kids. You want your kids to stop doing these things and start doing these other things and just act right.

If they will just act right. And he said, we've got to be more concerned about their heart than we are about their behavior. Because behavior will eventually flow out of the heart and kids can put on the fake behavior that's going to skate through for them. Especially church kids.

That's right. If you're not addressing heart motivation and heart attitude, you're going to wind up with little hypocrites who act one way, but when they're in private, it's a completely different thing. And I think a lot of times the reason we want their behavior to be the right behavior is for our own esteem.

We're more worried about how we look to our friends and peers and our church members than we do the child. And it's not about that. We had a conversation with one of our sons not too long ago, and now he's in his late 20s, but he said, you know, Mom and Dad, I wish that you guys would have instead saying, what are you doing and where have you been? And I wish you would have said, how's your heart?

I'm like, I didn't even think to ask you how your heart was. It's exactly what your principle is, Bob. Well, and I remember talking to another guest who she was talking about disciplining a four year old and you're trying to correct behavior.

And again, there's nothing wrong with correcting behavior. But she would pull back in the middle of this and say, I want you to stop and think, why did you do that? And were you thinking that this would be pleasing to the Lord?

Were you trying to do something here that would be pleasing to the Lord? She just kept reinforcing in those corrective moments, not just stop this, do this, not just put on this behavior. But why were you doing that? Why were you hitting your sister? And every mom is like, who has time for that? And there are triage moments where you can't have that.

But most of us just function in that triage moment all the time, rather than when can we have those heart to heart talks when we're putting them to bed tonight? And you say, I want you to think back to when you were hitting your sister today. What was going on?

Why were you so mad at her? What was in your heart? Do you think Jesus was pleased with what you were doing? Do you want to please Jesus with your life? Those kinds of conversations are helping get to the heart attitude, right?

There's another principle. This came from an early interview we did with Josh McDowell. In fact, I think it was the first time I met Josh. Dennis had known Josh for years because Josh is a part of crew. Dennis is a part of crew. Actually, Dennis had heard Josh speak when Dennis was in college.

So did I. And Josh's message was revolutionary in Dennis's life. Well, he'd written a book on parenting and we sat down with him. And he said two things in the interview on parenting that I've quoted dozens of times over the years. And we're going to hear him say both of those right now.

Here we are with Josh McDowell years ago. Well, I am convinced that rules without relationships lead to rebellion. And one of the best ways to give rules to our kids is when there's a foundation of love.

They know they're accepted, appreciated, they're lovable, affection, and available to them. I make a statement that I learned about 12 years ago is that I used to make the statement when people ask me about my family. And I said, look, my family comes before my ministry. And about 12 years ago, I realized that is one of the most ungodly statements I could ever make. And if I truly believe that statement, I was headed for trouble and I would lose my family. And when I got older, I wouldn't have my children coming to marry my wife. And God humbled me. And about 12 years ago, I realized my family, I must never let my family come before my ministry. Because the moment I do, then I should leave the ministry. My family does not come before my ministry. My family is my first ministry.

Two big ideas there. Rules without relationship will lead to rebellion. And I could see that in my kids. And I was always just aware I've got to make sure I'm focused on the relationship and not just focused on the rules. And then secondly, my number one ministry is to my family. And I can't let my job, I can't let anything get in front of that in the priority structure.

That is so good. Those are two of our main principles, too. And we've probably quoted several times. And the rules without relationship, I remember hearing him say that at Ball State University in 1977, thinking, wow, that's a great point. And then now as a dad, you're like, especially with teenagers, you know, so many parents are afraid of the teen years because they're going to rebel. And it's like, well, that could happen, but it's all about relationship, relationship, relationship with your teen.

You got to pursue them and build that. Dennis used to say all the time, you've got to make sure that the bridge of the relationship with your kids is intact. You can carry a truckload of truth across that bridge. But if the bridge is out, everything goes down. If that relationship is not intact, everything goes south. You keep that relationship intact and you can carry all kinds of things across that bridge.

So that's just a great principle. It really, I mean, I'll just throw this in, it's the reason I coached high school football. Everybody thinks, oh, you just love football so much you want to be around it. No, I wanted to be on the field with my boys. You know, it was just another way to be in relationship, driving over to practice, coming home. It wasn't about football, it was about I want to be a part of their lives and this is one way to do it.

Yeah. One of the big parenting ideas I heard over the years, and again, I don't remember exactly who said this or where it came from, but apparently at the University of Minnesota there was a study done that the conclusion was all children are asking their parents two questions. And the two questions are do you love me and can I do whatever I want? And they said how you as a parent answer those questions determines what kind of parent you are.

So if you say to your kids, yeah, I love you and, yeah, you can probably get away with more than you should. That was me. I'm the permissive parent. Okay? So I was letting them get by with stuff.

That's Dave too. Mary Ann was more the authoritarian parent. She was saying, no, you cannot get away with whatever you want and sometimes you're not going to be sure that I love you. So I would lean too far in the relationship direction.

She would lean too far in the rules direction. There are some parents who say, yeah, you can do whatever you want and, no, I don't love you. And those kids go join gangs. Yeah. Mom and dad have checked out. As parents, we need to be saying, yes, I love you desperately and, no, you can't do whatever you want. And when we can have both of those working well in our parenting, that's the sweet spot for us. And that's really, as you say, that's a picture of God's love.

Yeah. He loves us and says this is why I don't let you do whatever you want. I remember an interview we did with Michael and Haley DeMarco maybe a decade ago. Michael said something in this interview that stopped me in my tracks. He said that most of us as parents are teaching our children how to be sin avoiders and sin concealers. He said we're teaching them don't do this and if I find out you did it, you're going to be in real trouble.

So avoid it and when you stumble, don't tell me or you'll get in trouble. He said instead we need to be teaching our kids how to be sin confessors and sin repenters. And I thought I've been teaching my kids how to be sin avoiders and sin concealers rather than modeling for them and showing them what confession and repentance looks like.

Here's how Michael said it in that interview. We're kind of crazy. We want our home and we want our relationship with our daughter to be one where we create a culture in our home where the whole culture of our home is centered around learning how to rebound from sin. And instead of having a relationship, a parent child relationship where it's about all about sin avoidance and sin concealment because we're afraid of the consequences, we want to be the first place that she comes when she messes up and we want to help her learn how to rebound from sin because we all have sinned. We all do sin.

We're all going to sin. And so where is it safer for your child to confess? Is it safer for your child to confess at school or at home in their living room or their first dorm room? Yeah, with a peer. Right. Or with mom and dad.

Right. And sin rebound, you're talking about learning how to confess, learning what repentance looks like, learning what forgiveness looks like, and learning what the deeds in keeping with repentance, what walking in grace looks like moving forward. Well, I just want to add that part of that, and I think it's part that a lot of us miss, is that we are very confessional ourselves. We're not just talking about our kids telling us, but we're actively saying, you know, I have to confess to you. I got angry at that instance, and I shouldn't have.

I should have treated you better in that situation. So we're continually trying to confess, but it's important for the parents. You're modeling sin rebounding in front of your daughter.

And that way, we're going to be better prepared, we hope and we pray, to cast her off into her big Independence Day, knowing that she does have a safety net to come back to, that she's not alone, that when she does mess up on her own, that there's nothing so shameful that she could do that she can't come back to us and talk. Isn't that good? Really good.

Wow. I just walked away from that going, again, I've been pressing my kids toward obedience without this modeling of what repentance looks like, and then helping create a culture where it's safe to do. I think Michael goes on to tell the story. Again, Michael and Haley DeMarco in that interview, Michael goes on to tell a story about his daughter coming to him and saying, Daddy, I messed up.

I put a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the VCR and just completely destroyed the VCR. He said, I took her out for ice cream after that. Because she confessed. Because she confessed. I wanted to celebrate her confession rather than flip out over the VCR. That's because he knew the VCRs would be obsolete in a couple of years.

But they're replaceable. Right, exactly. But reinforcing the idea that your child, you teach him there are consequences to your behavior, right?

Yeah. I remember Pat Morley, who wrote The Man in the Mirror, saying at a Detroit Lions Chapel service that I have him speak at, he was talking about a parenting principle. It reminded me of this. He said, you know, if you're screaming at your kid for scratching the coffee table. And he had done that.

His wife said something to the effect of, you don't want to ruin a $5 million kid over a $100 coffee table. That's right. And we do that. It's like, let's get our priorities right. Okay, here's the last parenting principle for today. And again, these have been so helpful for me.

I hope our listeners are finding these helpful today as well. Todd Friel was a guest on Family Life Today. And he was talking about having a perspective on discipline, a perspective on correction, where your goal in correction is for your child to love Jesus more at the end of being corrected than at the beginning. And I thought, what does that mean?

Well, listen to how he describes it. Your child sins because your child is never going to be naughty in the future, right? Your child is never naughty again. Your child is a sinner. That's different because if I just see a naughty child, I'm going to correct the behavior. But if I see a sinner, I'm on a rescue mission. And if your engagement with your child does not end with your child loving Jesus more than you've biffed it as a Christian parent. Now, let's apply that. And I suspect this scenario will resonate. You come home, you can smell the food that's cooking on the stove, your favorite meal. Your wife has everything under control.

The kids are going to line up. Father, we're so glad that you've finally made an appearance. We've been expectant and waiting all day for you. But instead, you walk in and you hear, shut up.

You're a moron. Knock it off. And it's complete chaos. And the first person then who greets you is your wife. And she doesn't look happy. She's got the look and she informs you that that son of yours has been disrespectful all day.

Now, I'm not remembering the gospel, that I'm the chief of sinners. I want this to stop because I want peace in my home. I want this to be the way that I imagine it to be because I'm tired and I work hard for a living and I pay for this roof over your head. So I asked my wife where that boy is. And I know the answer because we know he's upstairs in the bedroom because that's where he's been sent. And now I'm charging up the stairs and I'm maybe taking off my belt on the way. Stop.

Freeze frame. I want this interaction to result with my son loving Jesus more. Now walk up the stairs, and I think the scene is going to be different. And it could look like this, and this might sound fantastic to you. This is not a fantasy.

This can be reality. Now I can walk calmly into my son's room and sit him down on the bed and say, Honey, I want to tell you a story about when your dad was in fifth grade. Your grandmother was raising three boys by herself.

No help. One bedroom apartment. She slept on the couch. It was tough. You can imagine her nerves were pretty shot and it showed. And I determined in fifth grade that my mom was kind of being a nag.

That's what I thought. And so one day when she was talking to me, I said, Why don't you just shut up? That's what I said to your grandmother. I told your grandmother to shut up. And honey, I'm telling you that story because I understand that's how you were talking to your mom today, too. And I'm telling you that because I want you to know I get you.

I understand you. I've done it. And what you got now is two sinners sitting on a bed who need a savior.

So why don't we pray to that savior? And then when we're done, you go talk to your mom, huh? Whew. That's good. Isn't that good?

Yeah. I heard that story and I thought about the day that I found pornography on our home computer. And I could figure out which of my children had been looking at it. And I took that son out for lunch to see if he would confess. So what, you know, anything going on? You want to talk to dad about?

No, there was nothing there. And finally, I brought up what I knew and he was ashamed and he was caught. And I wished at that moment I had said, I've been right where you are. I've had those temptations. I know what you're going through. But instead I said, okay, you're off the computer for 60 days. You're going to have to memorize these Bible verses.

I mean, I went straight to the correction and I never said I struggle with this too. Jessica Thompson in the art of parenting video series says at our house, it's kind of on repeat to say, I'm a sinner just like you. I'm a sinner just like you so that we don't present this picture to our kids. We're the righteous ones.

You're the bad ones. We have to fix you, but we don't have to fix ourselves. Boy, that's that's a gospel centered approach to parenting. I hope parents who are hearing it today can be proactive and start pointing in that direction. And I would just add, because, wow, I have never heard that. Just this thought of when you're going in to have the conversation or discipline your child, stop, hit the pause button and go, OK, how do I want to do this?

Because often we just do it. And to pray, ask God for wisdom. Of course, you guys, as most of our listeners know, have just released a new book called No Perfect Parents. It's available here at Family Life Today. The Art of Parenting, which we talked about earlier, is also available. Information about resources we have on parenting. Go to our website, familylifetoday.com.

And for those of you who would like to have just a kind of a permanent record of some of these lessons we're talking about this week, some of the top things I've learned over 28 years on family life today, we're making these conversations and the original programs from which the lessons were taken, all of that's available on a flash drive that we're making available to anybody who makes a donation this month to help support the ongoing work of family life today. We had some friends of the ministry come to us earlier this month. They have agreed they will match every donation we receive this month dollar for dollar up to a total of $350,000. This is the last week of May. We want to take full advantage of that matching gift opportunity.

We're not there yet. We hope to be there by the end of the week. So if you can make a donation today, help us take advantage of the matching gift and you'll receive the flash drive with these programs and other programs on it. We'll also send you two books from Erin and Jamie Ivy. Both books have the same title and the same chapters, but one is for husbands, the other is for wives.

The book is called Compliment and it's about how we blend together in marriage. So we'll send you those books along with the flash drive. And then those of you who are regular family life today listeners and have heard us talking about the monthly legacy partner team that is really the key core team that makes family life available for so many of us every day. If you sign on this week as a new legacy partner, two things will happen. You'll get everything we just talked about. Your donations for the next 12 months are going to be matched dollar for dollar. So every donation you make for the next year will be matched dollar for dollar as long as there's money in that matching gift fund. And we'll send you a certificate so you and your spouse can attend an upcoming weekend to remember marriage getaway.

We're glad the getaways are back. We've got a full schedule of them scheduled for the fall. This certificate is transferable. If you want to pass it on to somebody else, you can do that. But if you're a longtime listener, if you've ever thought about becoming a monthly legacy partner, today's the day to do that. Go to familylifetoday.com, whether it's a one-time donation or signing on as a legacy partner. Join us and help extend the reach of this ministry to more people more often.

Again, you can donate at familylifetoday.com, or if it's easier, call 1-800-FL-TODAY. And pray for us that we'll receive enough funding this week to be able to take full advantage of the matching gift that is available to us here during the month of May. Now, tomorrow we're going to talk about some of the lessons I learned about how men and women are different.

I mean, I remember I always knew men and women were different, right? But there were some things I learned about those differences over the years that have been transformative in our marriage and in how we relate to one another. So we'll explore some of those principles tomorrow. Hope you can tune in for that. Want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, got some extra help from Bruce Goff this week, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We will see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.