Affirming Your Sons

Okay, I think one of the best things you do as a mom, I mean the best. Is this how we're starting today? This is how we're starting. I want to affirm you on something you do fabulous as a mom. Do you know what it is? This is amazing.

I don't even care to say that. This is Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson and I'm Dave Wilson and you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. As your husband, but our sons. And now our sons and our daughters-in-laws and our grandkids.

I love hearing that. I've never seen anybody like you. I mean, not just our kids.

The grocery store. There is no one that speaks words of life like you. But let's admit, it wasn't always like that. No, I was trying to keep this totally positive. I wasn't even going to talk about the first 38 years of our marriage. Now we're going to talk about that. But I mean, it's so important as a parent to be able to do that. And so we've got Matt and Lisa Jacobson with us today who've written a book about a hundred ways to affirm a hundred words that your son needs to hear and then a hundred words your daughter needs to hear. Let's talk about sons today.

But I mean, it's what I've watched my wife do for many, many years. But we are so glad to hear, you know, have you guys here to talk about what does that look like as a parent? So welcome to Family Life Today.

Great to be with you again. And yeah, we've shared a couple different days with you and love that your authors. I mean, you do it all. I mean, you've written books on a hundred ways to love your spouse, husband, wife, son, daughter.

And now we're talking about affirmation. And obviously, just to give a little bit of your background, you've got eight kids, so you know what you're talking about. In theory. Should we ask your kids? Yes, you can. Absolutely.

We should bring them in. Yeah. And your podcast is called what? Faithful Life. Faithful Life. Yes.

Yeah. And so you've got Faithful Life. You blog. You have Faithful Man. I mean, all these different things.

31women.com. You guys are really impacting so many families positively for Jesus, for the gospel, and you're helping us practically to know how to love each other, husband and wife, how to love our kids. And now we're talking about affirming our kids. And there's the first question.

What's the difference? Yeah. Is there a difference between loving our kids, loving our spouse, and affirming our kids or spouse? Well, the thing about affirming, it's what?

Words out of your mouth, right? And we establish the culture in our home largely by what we say and how we say it. You know, so somebody might automatically start thinking of the love languages, right?

Yeah. But the thing about affirmation is even if that's not your particular love language, kids need to hear positive words of affirmation of who they are validating, who they are as people, validating the victories that they win, and just validating their sense of personhood and who they are. And that's done, the cultures of our homes are established by words, by how we speak and what we say.

And so it's very, very important part of a positive home environment. Well, Matt and I were thinking about those voices in your head that go on, even back from your childhood. Do you have this kind of thing where you remember, I remember something my piano teacher said to me when I was in third grade. I remember what that girl said in junior high to me.

I'll never forget it. Positive and negative? Positive and negative. Are you thinking more negative? No, either way. Yeah. But they're just powerful voices in your head that last, here we are, you know, how many 40, 50 years later, they're still in my head.

You think, how do they get there? And then when you take that and you think of as a parent, I have this amazing opportunity to inform those voices in my child's head, that they would have voices that are true, that are kind, that are right, that are building up, that are speaking a word of hope into their head and into their heart. And it's an amazing, and as a parent, sometimes you're not conscious of that. You're not thinking. You're just trying to get through the day.

You're just trying to get things done without realizing, wait a minute, I can say words that will impact your heart and life for the rest of your life. That's so good. What a wonderful gift to have. And I think we just underestimate the power. I mean, Proverbs 18, 21, I'm sure you're familiar, is life and death is in the, there's the word power of our tongue. And those who understand this eat its fruit. You know, it's like, if we understand this as a parent, the power of our words for good, life, for discouragement or tearing down death, they are literally in our tongue.

And we can, like you said, Matt, we can create an aroma. Like what is the Jacobson home? What is the Wilson home? Is it a life-giving home with our words affirming or is it the opposite? And as we look at and we talk about affirming our sons and daughters today, we're specifically looking at our sons today. Is it different with sons and daughters, the way we affirm with our words? I think there's some crossover, some things that obviously apply to both sons and daughters, but there's some that I think maybe a young woman needs to hear that a young man doesn't need to hear.

So I do think it can be different. And do you feel like, okay, I'm supposed to affirm my sons. What if I don't really like what I'm seeing?

Do I lie? People ask me all this all the time in marriage. I'm saying affirm your husband.

They're like, there's nothing to affirm. Well, so the thing is that makes you a normal parent, okay, because every parent has had a circumstance or a moment or a season in their parenting where they go, you know what, I am not going with this. And you feel like you need to correct or instruct or change something drastically. But the fact of the matter is, is you can find the win.

So it may be that your child is kind of deviating from the course you feel is best, but that doesn't mean that you can't find something to affirm that son for. And it can be the smallest thing. You just look for those things. I mean, did he pick up his dinner plate and take it to the kitchen?

All right, maybe you were sitting at the dining room table and he did that. Now that might sound like a silly example, but if you get yourself into the habit of affirming him for the simplest things that he's doing, you'll find that you'll see all kinds of wins along the way. And what happens when we get validated for something?

What happens? All of a sudden we gain that sense of self-awareness, because that's what you're building into your son, a way of thinking about himself, right? And so you find that win. If it could be the slightest thing, he could show a kindness to his sister.

He could do a simple thing for, maybe he carried something out to the car without being asked. Whatever it is, find the smallest win and start focusing in on those and maybe leave those bigger themes off for just the moment. And sometimes those things can just overshadow everything. So you can get yourself into a place where you literally can't think to look for those moments. But I'm just saying, tell yourself before game day, right? You're the coach, right? So you play how you practice, right? So you've got to get it into your head how you're going to play.

And what we're really saying here is there is something somewhere in the day, in the week, that you can point out as a win. So you're looking, it's like you're putting on these glasses, looking for the good, because it's really easy, especially with teenagers, to only see the negative. And I was just at a sporting goods store and I'm just browsing and I see this woman and this teenager and the mom says to the son, hey, do you like these gloves? And it was like the saddest thing. He goes, Mom, shut up and get out of my life. And then he walks away. I'm looking at I wanted to go hug the mom.

She turned around and walked immediately away. I could tell she was so pained by the experience and embarrassed and felt such shame. And so I'm thinking like I'm thinking about what you just said, Matt, like, OK, we're looking for the good. And there is like there is something good. And so I think some parents are dealing with that shame. They feel like they've already failed. How would you encourage some of these parents that are just in the midst of that? I think we as parents, we can think that I've blown it or I wish I would have done better.

I wish I would have lots of wish I would have. And the enemy wants us to believe and this is how it is and this is how it's always going to be. Yes. But it is not true. We serve a God who is a redeemer and he can redeem those situations. And sometimes we have to start really small and start the process of of the new way we want it to be. And this is an example of one of my daughters, not a son, but we had this situation where we just had almost no relationship. We felt so far apart and we both were grieved by it. She was a teenager. And I had to come to her and say, I am sorry, I meant to do well, but I just did not do well by you. And I want to do it differently.

It was a slow process. And this is the daughter I've mentioned to you before that now we get together every week to talk all the time. She's praying for this conversation here we have today.

And she's very open about it as well, that God redeemed our relationship. And it took me initiating it and it took humility and just saying, I want to do better and let's slowly work on this. You know, we just shared is such a powerful example for parents to understand you initiated the apology and you didn't say I affirmed her, but you did because you said this is on me. I haven't done a good job.

Can we start over? I mean, it's a beautiful way to say I didn't really say words of affirmation, but that made her feel firm because you weren't saying this is all you were saying this is me too. Words of affirmation also things like I want a relationship with you. I want to understand you.

I want to be close to you. Those are powerful words that a child often doesn't even know they want to hear, but they do. They really do want to hear that.

Yeah. And you said earlier, I know that when anybody is affirmed and just think of your own life. It's like a magnet. You run to those people.

You run. We are I've said this many times to men, you know, especially when women are there. It's like, you know, a lot of us men don't want you women to know this, but we're really little boys who are very insecure and are just saying, does anybody see me? Does anybody believe in me?

Does anybody think I'm good? And so we may be 30 or 40 or 60 years old, but deep down, we're just trying to get somebody to affirm us. And when our wife does or mom or dad does, oh, my goodness, you talk about motivation. It changes us for the better. You think critique's going to do that, but it rarely works. It's the opposite, isn't it?

It's so true. And our sons and frankly us in terms of that little boy inside you're just talking about, not going to get any help from the world. Not going to get any help from the devil.

Not going to get any help from the flesh. The devil is the liar, the deceiver, the destroyer. And the thing about the enemy is he's been twisting God's word. God's word has always been under attack.

It's under attack today in a thousand different ways, but it was under attack from the very beginning in the Garden of Eden. The basic first thing Satan said was, did God really say that? And so he's there, this voice of destruction, discouragement, this voice to tear down. And we have it as adults. And so sometimes we get in a place where we feel like, well, I can't speak anything into my son's life because, you know, who am I and what am I and where am I?

The Bible talks about washing with the water of the word. We need that. We need the voice of God's truth. Who we are in him, not the voice of our past, not the voice of that little boy, but to listen and believe what God has said about us.

Who we are in Christ and saturate ourselves with, that's who we are. And we're not able to speak positively into the lives of our sons if we first don't listen to the truth of who God says we are. So we've got to embrace that so we can speak from a position of strength and not a position of defeat and discouragement and despair ourselves.

And the enemy is going to oppose this process straight up. It's so important for us to recognize our role in speaking the truth for today and the future. What you were just touching on, babe, a minute ago when you were saying that we need to inform those voices now. So when they're older, they're hearing the voice of that little boy.

And it's a positive voice and it's an encouraging voice and it's an affirming voice. And for people listening who feel like, well, how do I start? Where do I go?

What is a thing I can do to begin? Think about the day that you just had. Is there one single solitary thing that your son did that you thought, you know, that was a good thing? And you just speak that and you focus on that. And this has a way, it's like light coming through the crack in a door. And each word is just like opening that door a little farther and farther, a little more light coming in.

And it isn't going to happen in a moment, especially if you have a relationship where this just hasn't been part of the dynamic of your home. But if you look for those moments, then you're going to find that those moments of affirmation are going to take precedence over that overarching negative spirit that you had based on this thing that you're trying to correct. If we spend so much time in building our sons up with affirmation, we're going to find out there's going to be a lot less of the other.

I've just listened to this great testimony from a young man who had gone through a time of rebellion in his teen years and now he's in his 20s. And he was just saying, as he was talking about his experience, he said, even when I was on this path that I knew wasn't right and it wasn't even what I wanted, I don't know how I got there. He said, I kept hearing my mom's voice because she would always say, you are a prince, you are a son of the king and God is going to do great things for you in his kingdom. He said, and those words haunted me in a good sense because he just said, it gave me my identity. And I thought, wait a minute, why am I doing this?

Because I'm a prince, you know? And I thought, what a good mom to have just filled her son's mind. And so even if you don't see it, even at the time, maybe acting out, you're thinking, wait a minute, just have faith that the Lord will use those words. I just want you to tell the story about Haakon. Haakon is our son, he's 15. And just, it wasn't that long ago, he was having a really down day and he was really discouraged and you came to him and spoke to him. Yeah, I actually, it's one of those times where as a parent, you feel like, because he wasn't talking to me, he was sitting on the stairs, he wouldn't answer me and just thinking, oh great, here we go.

Here's teenage years and really worried about him. And so then we just hung out together for a while. I didn't really say anything. I just thought, you know what? I said, do you know that your dad and I believe that God has big plans for you?

And do you realize that? I just started naming some of the qualities that he has. And he goes, mom, I just don't feel like anything like that at all. He goes, I just feel like basically he was a loser because of some things that happened with some of his friends. Some things that had gotten said and, you know, teenage years are brutal.

Brutal. And so it was such a great conversation. And by the time we were done, in fact, you know, I said, well, you're this and you're that.

And he goes, go on. It's funny, Lisa, you say that because I remember saying to our sons when they were in middle school, high school, and I remember saying, do you know how proud I am of you? Like, look at you. And sometimes they'd say, no, I don't. And I was shocked. Like, I say it all the time, not realizing they need to hear it all the time.

That's just it. Parents can live with this incredible affirmation and generosity of spirit toward their kids in their heads. But it's so important to kids. Our kids aren't mind readers. It's so important for us to take the step of saying it, speaking it. And again, I think we talked in times past, maybe other shows where a lot of times we'll say it to a third party. We need to speak it to them.

Even if we feel it overwhelmingly inside, they don't have that feeling and they need to hear those words from us. Now, I feel like Matt is a natural affirmer. He's just always been very good about speaking into our kids' lives right from the get go. For me, I don't know if it's my personality or my upbringing, but it was very awkward for me. I'm much better at it now. Practice makes perfect. So when I first started like saying these things to my kids, I felt like it was a pretender. I believe God's hand is upon you. And I'm just like, this is so weird for me to say this because I just didn't grow up talking like this.

But then as I started to see, even in my fumbling way, the kid just picking up like, really? You do? Now I can say it with power because I have seen, well, I know it's true and I don't have to be qualified to say it. I can say it because it's just true and because that's what God says about you. And then plus just seeing, frankly, the results of it, seeing it by our kids that are young adults now, thriving with those messages in their head and they can articulate it and say, you know what? It was really powerful. They remember.

I mean, that's the power of life and death. We've shared many times here and in our books. But probably the first 15 years, I'm hoping I'm getting this number right or around there, and critique me and tried to make me better as a husband by pointing out how I was not doing a good job. And I wasn't.

Well, and let me take because this is where I was going to go to Dave. Growing up, I didn't have much affirmation and my parents never told me they loved me. I knew it.

They showed it. But I feel like they didn't say it because they wanted us to perform to get those words of affirmation. And so when we got married, I realized I knew that it said in Psalm 139 that God loved me, that he had fearfully and wonderfully made me. But I was critiquing myself constantly in my head. I shouldn't have done this.

I should have done that. God's probably so displeased with me. So I'm continually trying to perform for God. And I'm also hard on everyone in our family. I'm critiquing Dave constantly because I want him to perform. I'm critiquing our kids constantly. And I had never had praise or affirmation, so I wasn't really good at getting it.

And I didn't know if God was. I'd read the word, but I was like, does he, though, if I'm not performing up to par? Yeah, and I think what ends up happening is whatever we're saying to ourselves, we will say to others. So if we're judging ourselves and critiquing ourselves, we're probably doing the same with others. And yet if we understand our identity in Christ and we are a son or daughter of the king, of all creation, and he believes in us and he thinks we're good and we walk in a room with confidence because it isn't me, it's the Holy Spirit of God just walked in.

So it's not an arrogance, but it's a confidence. I will start to see and speak that into others, especially our kids. I remember when we were in this season of our marriage and I just I didn't want to come home. I really didn't because I felt like out there I was getting affirmed at home. I was getting death words there. I was getting life words. And so I felt I did. I spent too much time at the office.

I spent time on ball fields where I could throw a ball and people go, wow. And I come home and be like, you don't do this right. And I remember I was with my buddies, all husbands.

I know their wives and other kids. And we were on a trip together and I just make this comment because we are struggling in our marriage about this. And I said, hey, let me ask you guys, do you guys feel like your wife loves you?

I think there were seven guys in the car. Every guy. Oh, yeah, she loves me.

And then I go, OK, let me ask you this. Do you feel like your wife likes you? Every guy. Nope.

100 percent. And then, of course, they're like, OK, Wilson, why are you asking this question? I'm like, well, I've been feeling the same thing. I know Ann loves me.

I don't think she really likes me. And they felt the same thing. And as we thought about it and we did the same thing to our wives, we gave words of death rather than life. I started the program saying my wife is the greatest affirming life giving person ever. She changed. It was unbelievable.

Again, not in a day, but over time. And I watched her go from what she just said with me and with our boys. And it brought I mean, it motivated me to be the man she said I was. I was that I wasn't yet.

But she was saying I was. I think she was lying at first, but, you know, it was like it motivated me to become that husband and that dad. And I watched it motivate our boys. Affirmation motivates. Discouragement and death words demotivate. And we think that's going to help our kids.

It's the opposite. Right. You speak affirmation. It brings life out of them. Yes.

Yeah, absolutely. Satan's the destroyer. He's all about discouraging and tearing down. He wants to take any of the gifts that God has given through the Holy Spirit to you as a parent and to your children as young believers. And he wants to destroy that he's against the work of God in the world. And God wants to take those gifts and he wants to bless others with them. And the way that you can encourage and bring out those strengths and gifts in your son is to speak those words of affirmation.

And it really is about who he is in Christ and how God sees him and how God identifies him. Well, what about this, though? What if you got to speak a hard truth? It's not very affirming.

No, no. And we can't sidestep those things as parents for sure. But when they mess up and you approach it in the right way, you've built this reservoir of affirmation over time. They will recognize that you are not condemning them, that you're not there to stand in judgment and condemnation over them. But you are with them in this challenging circumstance. And what you're saying, you're saying because you love them, they can believe that if these other things are in place. But if there's no affirmation in place, if there's no relationship building in place and all it is is correction, then that's going to come down as condemnation.

But when they know that you love them, they can hear a hard truth. Hmm. Yeah.

I think it's ready. It's that 90-10 too. You know, 90 percent of the words that come out of your mouth are encouraging, edifying, building up. Then that 10 percent of, Son, this has got to change. They can go, OK, you know, and they can take it to heart. And they know without a doubt that you're for them. Just that percentage, Lisa. If we would apply that percentage in our marriages, 90 percent positive, 10 percent hard truth.

We would have different homes, like speaking life, affirming one another, really seeing each other. And to say the things that you're saying, you've had to look. You've been watching, you've been noticing, you've been studying who they are as people. And isn't that what God does to us?

Yes. Well, and I know that there are a lot of parents listening and you're sitting there and you're thinking, I feel like the only thing I ever do is correct my kids. I feel like my whole life is just one string of correction after another.

And that can definitely be how it feels, but it doesn't have to be how it is. Because if you change just your mindset to recognize that my job is discipleship. My job is to train this child, to raise this child in the nurture and the admonition. So both things, nurture, affirmation, admonition, instruction of the Lord.

So I need to make sure that I'm not just the correction monitor in the hall. But I'm a parent whose job it is to take this little heart and to speak life and affirming truth into that heart. And so all of a sudden you recognize as a parent, my job isn't just to correct the children, but my job is to reach their heart and to build them up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. And the way to do that is to speak words of affirmation into their heart. And I would just end with this, parents, or just say what Matt and Lisa have already said, they're not going to get that outside your home. They may here and there, but generally other people are insecure, their friends are insecure, people at school, people in the community, they're going to tear them down to build themselves up because they're looking for affirmations from somewhere else. Your home needs to be the place when they step through that door, they feel, oh, I'm seen, I'm loved, I'm believed in, I'm trusted.

Man, that's a magnet. You want your home to be that place where they feel like I don't want to be anywhere else. Not to mean they don't leave and they don't go change the world, but they feel like this is a place when I walk in, I get filled up because somebody here sees me, mom and dad see me and they believe in me and they send me back out to the world, affirm, just like God sees us. And parents, I'll say the way to start that is when you get up in the morning before your feet even hit the ground, I would pray this prayer, God, I give you my life, I give you all that I am today, help me to see the greatness in the people around me, in my kids, if you're married, in your spouse, if you're a blended family with my stepkids so that you will speak life, Lord, give me your eyes, give me your ears and give me your tongue that I may be you walking on this earth today.

That's where it starts with the Father. If we want to bless and affirm and encourage our children, that needs to be an overflow of what God is pouring into us. We need to be, as Ann Wilson just said, vitally connected to God, walking with him so that what we say to our kids is out of the overflow of what God is pouring into our lives. I'm thinking that maybe as you were listening today, you thought of someone you know who could benefit from listening to the conversation that Dave and Ann Wilson had today with Matt and Lisa Jacobson. Point them to our podcast. Family Life Today is available wherever they get podcasts. And if you're listening as a podcast, leave us a review. It really helps to spread the word about Family Life Today when you review this program on your podcast platform. And then if you'd like tools to help you do a better job of affirming your son or your daughter, we want to make available to you this week the books that Matt and Lisa have written called A Hundred Words of Affirmation Your Son Needs to Hear, A Hundred Words of Affirmation Your Daughter Needs to Hear. We're sending these books out this week to those of you who can advance the work of family life through your donation.

We are listener supported. We're only able to do as much as you make possible through your support of this program. So help us reach more people more often by making a donation today. And when you do, you can request your copies of both of these books from Matt and Lisa. A Hundred Words of Affirmation Your Son Needs to Hear and A Hundred Words of Affirmation Your Daughter Needs to Hear.

You can make your donation online at FamilyLifeToday.com or you can call to donate 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word TODAY. Now tomorrow Dave and Ann Wilson will continue the conversation with Matt and Lisa Jacobson talking about why affirmation is so critical and why it's more than complimenting or flattering your children.

It goes deeper than that. We'll talk about that tomorrow. Hope you can join us. On behalf of our hosts Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you tomorrow for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.