No-Fail Parenting

Okay, I'll never forget the day when we get a call at our church about a high school boy who was on a retreat and throws a smoke bomb, right? Wasn't it a smoke bomb? Yes, it was a smoke bomb. Into the girls' cabin at the camp where the retreat was.

Yes. And our church was pretty new, maybe five years old, but big. One church, I'm one of the pastors, and you find out that it went bad because the girls came running out traumatized because they were scared. There was all the smoke. It was like in the middle of the night. I think the mom that was in that cabin with the girls was even more traumatized.

Oh, that's right. Because she's the mom that threatened the lawsuit on our church. And then we're like, well, who did this? Can we find out what boy or girl did this? And we find out it was our son. Welcome to 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. And this is Family Life Today. The boys thought it was hilarious and the girls, not so much.

Yeah. But I tell you, we had to sit with lawyers and work through like, there could be a lawsuit at our church, and it's based on the pastor's son. So that wasn't a good thing. And you know, as parents, obviously, you're trying to raise responsible men and women of character. And even as a pastor, you're like, you're hoping your kids will be somewhat of a model.

So that wasn't a great model for the church. And it's really interesting, too, as parents, you never realize how much we care about what other people think about us based on the behavior of our children. I never knew I had that in me until we had kids. That's in a lot of parents.

And I think it might even be in the parent that's sitting across the table in our studio today. Crystal Payne, welcome to Family Life Today. I am so excited to be here. I think you've been on here before. Do you remember?

Yes, I have. I think this is my third time to be here. So it's an honor to be back. We're glad you're here. And obviously, our story, you can relate to a little bit. We're going to get into that a little bit. But you've written, I think, a fabulous parenting book. And I say that because it's called Love-Centered Parenting.

And I got to be honest, I picked it up in Mexico. We were there a few weeks ago on a little getaway. In our marriage book, we say it's good for couples to get away. And I'm just telling our listeners, we didn't just write it, we actually do it.

So we're down there. And honestly, I picked it up like, okay, I got to do a little research because you're coming in. I'm not going to read much of this. Right?

I'm laying on the lounge. I'm like, honey, this is really well written. I mean, I had not read some of your stuff from MoneySavingMom.com. Right? I should know more about that. Do you know more about that? I mean, I went there today. You're not a mom, though. So it's okay. You're exempt.

You're exempt. You also are host of the Crystal Pain Show podcast. You're a New York Times bestseller, author of Say Goodbye to Survival Mode, and also the author of Money Making Mom. And I got to know about this Money Making Mom thing. What is that? Yeah. He kept asking me, what do you think this is?

I'm like, honey, you should check it out. No, I was thinking for her. I want a Money Saving Mom. So no, really, how did that start? So my husband and I got married almost 18 and a half years. And we set this audacious goal that he was going to go through law school and we were going to stay out of debt. We didn't really know how it was going to happen, but we just felt like we wanted to set this big goal.

So right away, the rubber meets the road. We're in this little basement apartment living on a legit beans and rice budget and trying to make it work. And we just started researching everything that we could about maximizing the mileage of our money. And I then also wanted to figure out how to be a stay-at-home mom.

And so not only am I learning how to feed our family on $30 a week, but I'm also figuring out ways that I can share this online. And then it turned into a full-time business with moneysavingmom.com, which we started in 2007. And so it's just interesting how God uses things where you think it's just going to be this little stepping stone of, we're going to just get through law school and stay out of debt. And that turned into now what my husband and I are doing full-time. Oh, so he did not end up becoming an attorney or did he? Well, he did. And he graduated from law school, worked as an attorney, started his own law firm.

And then in 2014, he decided to shut down his law firm and come home because the business was doing so well. And we were like, you know what? We could do this together and have a lot more flexibility. Good for you. That's awesome.

That's really neat. And the thing that also struck me about your book was your subtitle because it says the No Fail Guide to Launching Your Kids. And that's a big promise to your readers. Like, okay, here's something that's really going to work. And I think that peaks all of our interest.

Yeah. For some people, there was a lot of pushback on that. They're like, there's no way that you can guarantee that. And then also there was pushback on the fact that our oldest is only 16 and a half. So we haven't technically launched any child. But what I talk about in the book is that you can't fail if you're faithful. I think so often we look at failure and success based upon how our kids turn out.

That's a great point. But it's ultimately about how we walk with them. And so it's really shifting our perspective as parents to focus more on what does it look like to walk with them and love them well in the day to day and spend a whole lot less time stressing about their behaviors and their choices because ultimately we can't control those. And then the launching your kids part, it doesn't just start when they turn 18. One thing that I really encourage and stress in the book is about it starts when they're young.

And how do we raise our children to be adults, not dependent kids? It's really good. Well, you have how many? Four? We have four biological kids and then we also foster parents.

So we have another little boy that we're fostering. So you've got a full house. Your oldest is 16. Yes. And your youngest is one.

Yes. So you're in the midst of everything. You've got toddlers and teenagers. The other day I went and got the mail and there was a college application and there was a little toddler book. And I'm like, this is my life. It is your life. And you're running this business, which is pretty remarkable. And you also, you know, I found out early in the book, you got a phone call.

Yes. Tell us, tell us that story and share as you tell it, like, what was your family like during these days when this phone call came in? So it's interesting because you were talking about me writing a parenting book and I don't really see this as a parenting book because it is my story and my journey of parenting. But I didn't write this book from a space of, I've got it all figured out, y'all.

So just come follow along with me and I'll tell you what to do to have great kids. And I never would have seen myself as writing a book that had parenting in the title. In fact, 10 years ago, if people would ask me on the internet, cause I was on the internet back then cause I'm kind of a grandma blogger cause I've been online for so long. You were online before anyone's online. Before social media. I started a site before social media.

Yes. But anyway, so they would come and ask me, you know, about how this parenting, this or that. And I would just always respond and say, I don't know, ask me in 20 years from now, maybe I'll have something to offer you. But I didn't know that four years ago we were just really in a hit rock bottom in our parenting. And it started actually not with a phone call. It started with dropping our kids off at the little school that they were going to is this little private Christian school and the principal met my husband at the door at drop-off and he said, I need to meet with you and your wife and your child after school. And we just knew it was something with that kind of a pit in your stomach.

It was just this yuck feeling that we just carried around all day. Like what, what's going on? What happened?

You gotta wait all day. Yes. And we were just, you know, what, what did we miss? And so we walk into the principal's office and he tells us about something that had gone down at school the day before and we were just shocked and our child actually denied it that the child actually did something.

Yes. They, they denied that they had done this thing that the principal was telling us about. And after multiple discussions in that office, they finally said, yeah, I did. And the principal said, you know, this has broken the school's code of conduct. Swift action needs to be taken and here are the steps that need to, you know, we need to start putting in play in order to handle this. And as parents to just be blindsided by something and to realize, you know, you thought we thought, oh, there's little, you know, growing up, there's little things that happen. But to have it be, whoa, this is not just a little thing. Something is really wrong. But you are saying that there are a few things, but you had no idea the extent that it was playing out in school.

Yeah. We, we knew that there had been some issues and we'd met with some parents and the teacher, but we had no idea it was, it could escalate to this level so quickly. And so it caught us way off guard, but then I think it also caught our child off guard as well because then this spiraled them out. They just, as it all kind of came out because then as we were meeting with different parents and we found lots of other things that had gone down throughout the year and we realized this is really serious. Our child then just their anxiety went through the roof and it just felt like they were completely out of control.

Tell me as from a mom with a mom's heart, what were you feeling coming out of the principal's office, watching your child spiral? So many things. On the one hand, I think there was this frustration with our child. Like, how could you do this?

Like, you know better than this. But on the other hand, what is wrong? Like what's going on that could cause you to be in the state and then why are you acting out like this?

Just lashing out and vitriolic. And then it turned into saying, you know, suicidal types of things. And it was just shocking as parents. And then to have other parents come to us and say, well, this happened throughout the year. And then I remember one mom looking at me and saying, I don't know what's happening at your home, but there's something seriously wrong.

Because there's no way that this could be going on and there not be some real significant issues. And so there was also shame. I felt like these are parents that I have gone to all these events with and done all this school field trips and all of a sudden my child is the bully. My child is the one who's that kid.

Like you don't want to have your child around this child. And so it was just this whole mixed bag of emotions. But in all of that, even though there was the shame and the fear and the overwhelm and what do we do to help our child? There was also this sense of God is meeting me there.

And he loves me. And I just remember feeling his love and especially as it escalated. And then we ended up taking our child into the ER and having to, you know, the thing that you never picture as a parent is walking into the ER and saying my child's suicidal.

And just the weight of that. And that there's not this four step plan to fix this. And it just felt like everything that we were trying to do was just making matters worse. And, but yet, I remember sitting in the little hospital room with our child and feeling this overwhelm and yet God's love enveloping me and I just, I didn't have anywhere else to turn. It felt like everything was just kind of stripped from me, ripped out from underneath me.

But I had God. And I look back and I see how that was such a turning point for me where it was like, my reputation is shot. I can't parent for that anymore. I don't know what to do.

I'm at my wit's end. And it was that turning point of just looking to the Lord and relying upon Him and getting to then see Him be so faithful, even through the weeks and the months to come when it was hard and there was so much therapy and there was so much heart work that had to happen. And there were news from doctors and things that we didn't want to hear and a mental health diagnosis and all of this that was just overwhelming as a parent. And yet I see how God used each of these situations, each of these people that we met with, each of these books that He would bring into my life or people that He would bring into my life or things that He would just put into my head to think and ways that He would show me that areas that I needed to work on and how it just caused me to go back to square one as a parent and say, what I'm doing isn't working.

Something needs to change. And so Love Center Parenting is not your typical parenting book of here's your 10 step plan. It's about the heart work that happened to get me to that place of parenting from rest and freedom. It's so interesting as you say that because as a mom of three sons that are now grown, I remember when they were growing up and I would hear a tragic story of something that a child did or whether they're maybe they're abusing substances or they're suicidal. As a parent, what we do is we try to find out what did they do wrong so that I can have a 10 step plan that I will not follow so that my child follows that same path. But you're saying no, there's not a 10 step plan. And I think that's really important because it's easy for us out of our fear just to think I'm going to follow a formula. But you're saying there really isn't a formula.

But there's our Heavenly Father. And that's for me when everything else was stripped away, I relearned how to parent. But I first had to relearn how to be parented by my Heavenly Father because I realized that my whole perspective on how I was parenting was parenting from the place of caring about my reputation. I really cared about what other people thought. Did you know at that point that you were caring so much about it before this happened with your child? I didn't realize the heavy weight. I didn't realize how much I was putting on my kids.

Like decisions they would make, choices that they would make, what they would do. I was constantly thinking without even realizing what are other people thinking of me. Oh, me too. I mean, I think we all do that. I remember when- Did you do that? I felt like you never did. As Crystal's talking, I remember when the boys were really little.

I could take you to the restaurant that we were at. And I can see Cody, our youngest, I think in a high chair. All I remember is they were throwing food or doing something that little boys do. I sort of snapped. And I remember as they sort of looked at me, you probably don't even remember this. I had this thought, all I'm doing is because everybody's watching us. All I care about is how I look as a parent. They're really not doing anything wrong.

They're just being boys. And I thought, do I really care that much what strangers who I'll never probably ever meet or think. But what Crystal just said, I think every parent's got a little bit of that in there. But you didn't know it until then. I mean, I just want to hear, so you're in the ER and you're realizing your child is suicidal.

What happens? I mean, did you go to counseling? Did they go to counseling? Where'd you go from there? So one of the biggest catalysts in this journey was getting into therapy. And we actually struggled.

I talk about this in the book. We struggled to find the therapist just because it was a very significant situation for a child that was not 18. And so we would call and they would say, sorry, we don't handle that. And so that was really hard as a parent to feel so overwhelmed. But we were finally able to, the ER, they were able to connect us with some therapists and we were able to get in with a therapist. And I remember sitting on that couch in the first session, the therapist had my husband and I come in first and we were sitting across from her and saying to her, I don't care what, like anything, if there's anything that I can do, just let me know, please let me know if there's anything I can change, do, I just want to help my child and I'm at a loss. And a few weeks later, after some intensive therapy with our child, the therapist called me back in after dismissing her child and she said, I think you're trying so hard to fix your child.

What would it look like to just walk with them instead? And at first I was kind of like, I'm trying to fix my child. Of course I'm trying to fix my child. That's like, I want them to be fixed. Like I want them to be better. And, but I realized that I started paying attention to when my kids would be arguing or they make a mistake or make a mess or do something that I would feel like I needed to come in and take care of the situation. Fix the situation.

And I was a fixer. That's my nature. I'm a problem solver, but I was trying to fix them and I was spending so much time correcting them and so little time connecting with them. That's big.

Say that again. I was spending so much time correcting them and so little time connecting with them. And so, so often, especially with our one child who was really struggling, they were crying out for connection and I was trying to fix it with correction. And so we were just constant odds. And so that really set me on this trajectory of where's this coming from?

Why am I trying so hard to fix? And as I dug into it, it was that recognition of because I care about what other people think, because my reputation is more important than my relationship with my kids. So, in your path to healing your child, the path led back to you. And I think that can be typical, but I also think that sometimes we don't always go there.

But I love that you are so humble and allowing God to take you there. Yeah. Even with the therapist, you're questioned, was it a woman? To her, a lot of parents are afraid to ask or don't want to ask, what do we need to know as parents that we need to change rather than, hey, how do we fix our kid? There's something wrong with our kid. We got to get them fixed. It's like that's humility to go, okay, there's probably something broken here.

And they did. I mean, she spoke those words to you and then you go on this crazy journey. I got to ask you this, how did this all affect your marriage? I feel like we really leaned in together through it. And I'm so grateful for that because I know that these kinds of situations can really pull you apart. But I think because we were far enough into our marriage and we'd had a lot of rocky seasons before then that we'd processed through, we had that kind of foundation to work from.

And so we both really wanted to walk together in this. And I think our eyes were both opened to how we were parenting from that place of our reputation. And our frustration with our kids, as is so often, it's either pride, fear, or selfishness. And it's about our reputation, pride. Or it's about we're scared of what's going to happen in the future, fear. Or it's that we just really want our life to kind of just be a lot easier and they're rocking the boat. And so it's that selfishness. And so when we both were digging down deeper into not, let's just not look at the surface, but let's dig into what's underneath the surface. Where is this coming from? And let's uproot those things.

Because if we don't, if we don't ever dig below the surface, we're never going to actually have freedom because we're just going to keep going back to the same dysfunctional responses. And how sweet of God to reveal all of that to you. I know that with our oldest son, we all have expectations of what our children will be like, or what they'll turn out to be like, or what they'll be good at. And I know that we had made a lot of assumptions that our oldest child would be like us. And I just thought he's going to be so outgoing.

And we have this great little boy who's incredibly quiet, super introverted. And I look back now and I think, he's one of my greatest gifts because he's so different than me. It has really shown me my own sin, my own insecurities, my fears, my need for approval.

And I'm so thankful to God that he revealed it to me early on so that I didn't continue to harm him or try to make him into my mold instead of God's beautiful mold. I think what is at the heart of real love-centered parenting is wanting God's purposes to be fulfilled in our kids. And as Anne Wilson was just saying, all of us as parents can fall into the trap of wanting our kids to perform a particular way because of how it makes us look or makes us feel. It's one of the ways we need to diagnose just how love-centered is our parenting. And a helpful way to diagnose that in each of us is to go through the book that Crystal Payne has written, which is called Love-Centered Parenting. This is a book we want to make available to you this week if you're able to help support the ongoing work and ministry of Family Life today. Our goal here at Family Life is to see every home become a godly home, to effectively develop godly marriages and families. And you help extend the reach of this ministry every time you make a donation. So if you're a regular listener and you've never made a donation or if it's been a while, today's a great day for you to go online or call us and donate to support the ministry of Family Life today. And when you do, we'd love to send you, again, a copy of Crystal Payne's book Love-Centered Parenting as a way of saying thank you for your partnership with us. You can donate online at familylifetoday.com or call to donate at 1-800-FL-TODAY. Again, the website is familylifetoday.com or call 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 are going to interact with Crystal Payne about what is at the heart of real love-centered parenting. And it begins with a proper understanding of how our Father, God, loves us. We'll hear that conversation tomorrow. Hope you can be with us for that. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapeen. We will see you back next time 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.