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We gotta do it ourselves. I can't wait on my husband, Stephen. Stephen, you do it first, and then I will do it. He's a great husband, great dad. And he does take the lead in a lot of things, but there are moments instead of blaming him, I need to look at Shannon.
Shannon, what do I need to do in this area?
So I've got a DIY. Then as Dr. Chapman, you're saying there, we've got a DIY together. And I like something else we need to, I think, reiterate there is these are affordable repairs. That's Dr.
Shannon Warden describing why you may need a renovation project for your marriage and your family. This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and today we're returning to a conversation we started last time with Dr. Gary Chapman and Dr. Warden. I'm John Fuller, and thanks for joining us.
John, I'm the last guy you want to talk to about remodeling. I'm so pathetic at this stuff.
So I just, you know, not long ago learned what DIY is. Do it yourself. I literally had to ask a guy.
Well, it's okay, what does that mean? And she said, that means do it yourself. That's how pathetic I am. But, you know, there's so many great TV shows on now about remodeling and how to do it well. And they just keep us there.
We want to see how it all finishes. It doesn't say much about our lives, does it? But Gary Chapman and Shannon Warden have come up with a wonderful concept. They describe some of the challenges that families are facing with selfishness, apathy, resentment. And I'll never forget how they compared resentment to having termites in your home.
There's an analogy from last time. If you didn't listen, get the download. Go to the website. On your smartphone, you can download the app and listen at your pleasure.
So do it because it was good content. The way we combat or fix those problems with godly tools is what they're talking about. Character traits that Dr. Chapman and Dr. Warden have identified.
12 things, things that include kindness, love, and forgiveness, very similar to the fruit of the Spirit, right? And I thought they were great reminders for all families about how to focus on what's most important.
So if you missed it, get the download. And we'll have details about the book our guests have written, The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Building a Family That Lasts: 12 Tools for Improving Your Home Life on our website. Gary and Shannon, welcome back to Focus. Good to be here. Thank you.
Good to have you. And yeah, things went well last night. I practiced this, and Troy responded with boldness. Sure. He's become my architect.
Nice. What do you mean, Troy? Hey, Shannon, let me start. With you. Explain why trust is such a key development tool for our children.
What message are we sending to our kids when we don't let them make their own decisions? Uh, you know, I've got Presley, Carson and Avery at home and God has been so good to in so many ways. Say, Shannon, pay attention to what I'm doing in their personalities. I'm developing their character. This is not all about you having to gut through parenting.
Parents, y'all, everybody understands that because it's hard. Parenting is not always glorious work.
So God's gracious. He says, Shannon, look, pay attention to what I'm doing to these kids. I've got plans for each one of them. I already anticipate in some ways without trying to project onto them what they might be, but I already anticipate in each one of their lives what it is maybe God is doing for their future and for the kingdom.
So I have to partner with the Lord. I see Carson, for example. Who's very driven? He has ideas about things. He's strong-minded.
I don't want to punish him for the way the Lord has made him. I want to say, Carson, God has made you this way. This part is great. This part we're going to have to tweak because I got to prepare you for a wife. It's good.
It recognizes the strengths and weaknesses, which every human being has. Just calls your attention to something different than the obvious, I've got to punish this, I've got to discipline this. God's doing way more than that. Is it needed? Yeah, but there's way more happening.
Well, you know, in that context, too, that's where shaming can do such damage, right? I mean, we tend to react with the shaming, we can, as parents, with a shaming mentality. Very destructive, isn't it? Yeah, I talked to a 13-year-old who said, I can't ever please my father. You know, everything I do, it's never good enough.
And so I think in this chapter, you know, we're dealing with the whole thing of balancing control, the parental control over children, and then teaching children that we do trust them. And one of the ways that we do that is to give them options between things. Even little children, you know, you can bring your bicycle in before dinner or you can bring it in after dinner.
Okay, but that's your responsibility. If you don't bring it in, you lose the privilege next day.
Okay, so they make a choice and we trust them, whichever, but we know either choice is going to be fine with us. Same thing's true with television. Here's three programs, 30-minute programs. You can choose one of them.
So we're letting them know we're trusting them, but we've already got parameters there. When they're little, we control everything. Yeah. We can't control anything.
So we've got to help them get to where they believe in themselves. Yeah, and I'll tell you, I think it's more difficult now in the parenting zone when it comes to technology and gaming and all those things. We hear from a lot of parents, and we experience it ourselves. I mean, that's one of the things that trade-off needs to be dutifully managed by the parent. Any tips in that area of home building when you're looking at?
You know, not being overly controlling, giving them that responsibility, but when you got to pull back, how do you go about doing that? Yeah. Well, I think there are guidelines that we need to have. Depending on the child's age, obviously, in the early years, let's talk about teenagers. Yeah, teenagers, okay, yeah, because that's really where we run into that.
That's really what we're talking about here. Yeah, and I think even with teenagers, we have to say, you know, all your lifetime, we've given you freedom to use technology when we thought it was appropriate for you, and we still do that. And we trust you. And you and I both know that there are people that do things that are not good on technology. And so we want you to use technology, make the most of technology.
And so here are some positive ways, you know, and here's some things that we don't want you to do. And obviously, if they're just going into the teenage years, We're gonna have to sometimes say. You know, you broke the rule. Right. And you know what that means?
You lose it for a week. Yeah. Okay, well, they learn that with every decision there's consequences. And so we are the parents. We do have the responsibility to set guidelines for our teenage children because they're teenagers.
You know, the brain's not fully developed till we're 25. Right. So we can't just. Throw them to the wind, or they'll make mistakes, and by 25 their lives will be ruined. That's true.
So, yeah, but it's that balance between control and trust. Jim, I wanted to share too about Avery. Such a conscientious kid. He will say to me, Mama, I saw something in my Googling or searching on the internet. I saw something, and I just wanted to tell you because it bothered me and what he probably would have seen, and you know, certain images that he shouldn't have seen, not necessarily the most explicit.
And so I say to him, Avery, the reason that he, by the way, can come to me is because I've said or to Stephen, we've said, you can tell us anything, and we're going to filter that through scriptural truth. And we're going to validate and just reaffirm you for what you're trying to do to be pure and to make good choices, but bring it to us. And that's one of the things that's been really helpful with us in Avery. Let me bring up distractions. It kind of is in that busyness and time management space, I think.
But distractions are a growing problem in families today. And I'm sure screens are a big part of that. I see it. We try to, you know, put the we do put the phones away at the dinner table. We don't allow them there.
And so we can have family discussion and laugh together and all those good things. But those are real true distractions. How can we manage that area of our lives better? Mm. Dr.
Chapman, big question. It is, you know, there's nobody busier than this man right here, Dr. Gary Chapman, and he knows something about busyness. I'm trying to practice some of the things I've heard you teach over time: to do, as Jim's saying, put these things away and prioritize. And that's something we talk a lot about in the DIY book.
What are your priorities? Is it growing with your family? Is it growing a family? Then it's going to require us to make some decisions. And I think, especially for myself, career decisions and time management decisions.
So, Dr. Chapman, help me. Yeah, I do think it's a matter of priority. It's the blueprint. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I think most of us who are married and have children would say our priority is our family. I mean, we put them, you know, it's a priority, but. When you look at our lifestyle, That doesn't always look like that because we're making choices, and dad's doing what he wants to do, and mom's doing what she wants to do. And one of the saddest things I encountered recently was at a funeral. and the father had died, and the twenty six year old after the funeral, his son, said to me, I never knew my father.
He worked all week long, and on Saturday played golf, And I never spent any time with him. And I thought, man, I mean, I cried, I walked away with tears in my eyes. Yeah. Because, you know, and I think as a family, periodically, we need to assess this, you know. Are we living like our relationship in the family is more important than a lot of this other stuff that we're involved in.
And it's good stuff, you know, and the kids can be involved in this sport and that sport and this piano and that musical thing. And all these things are good. And I'm not saying we shouldn't do those things. But there has to be time in which we're relating to each other. And it can be done in some of those contexts, you know.
But when we're sitting around the house and everybody's on their phone and nobody's sharing anything with each other, We drift apart. Yeah. Yeah, and we don't have the input that we need to have for each other's life. It's an irony. We're connected digitally, but we're not connected.
Humanly. And that's the problem. Shannon, you had that situation with your dad, right? He passed away not long ago, and you had some second thoughts about that. Oh, my goodness.
My dad, I probably was. Thirty eight years old, the first time I heard my dad say he loved me. And he's a that's a good man. That was a great, hardworking man who loved me in service all those years. He had not come from a family that was emotionally expressive.
And so it took me maturing and again DIYing here to a degree to enter into conversation with my dad. such that I could say to him, Daddy, I love you And he could say back, I love you. And that just, you know, that does. It changes your life. And so, parents who are raising kids right now, parents who've raised your kids, I love to talk to that parent too who did miss out, you know, who feels like they've missed out, you've not missed out.
If you're still here, you've not missed out.
So. Say it. I love you. Write it, text it in your digital age, text it to that 30-year-old or that 35-year-old or that 50-year-old or however it is. But it's not too late if you're still here.
And so, Dr. Chaman, you were talking about something there that made me think too: we can connect through activity, and that's something our family is trying to do. Stephen is our son's basketball coach, Avery's the assistant coach, Christley's cheerleading right there in front of us, and I'm just filling in however I can. Just that's actually one of those moments where I get to sit and just watch. But it's us together on a Saturday at the church playing upward basketball and upward cheer, and we're doing it together.
You know, Gary, let me ask that question because we've mentioned it here about that inability for a dad to say, I love you. Yeah, why is that? I mean. I think most of the time it's what Shannon referred to, and that is the father never heard those words from his father. The only time he ever said those words is when he was in love with his wife.
And probably after the in love wore off, he probably doesn't say it to his wife either. He just assumes she knows I love her. I'm working. I'm doing it. You would think, like, so often, a child of an alcoholic never has a drink because of the pendulum effect.
And so, a man who comes from that kind of home, you think, would understand the hole it created in them and they would go the other way. Yeah. But it doesn't always happen now. It doesn't always happen.
Sometimes it happens, but not always.
Well, and my dad actually came from a home where the dad was alcoholic and he, you know, abandoned them. And it was just, you know, it was a hard story. And what my dad's commitment to himself and to his future family as a young man and then as an older man was, I will never drink. And in that way, he was loving me by, and our brothers, my mom, by never drinking because he didn't want to go down that same path. But it's almost, I would imagine this, unless he expressed that, it's almost like you got to figure that out.
Yes. I mean, it's a puzzle. It is. And they don't really come forward and say, this is why I do this. Yeah.
Well, my dad, my dad was saved in his 30s. Yeah. And it was part of the Lord filling that hole. Yeah. And it's just the way we.
We don't learn to communicate. Which brings me to this great concept you have about the concern box. This is another one I'm going to implement tonight at the house. I love this. When I come home and say these things, of course, Gary, this has happened a couple times with the programs we've taped.
So Gene will say, Who'd you talk to today?
So when I come home tonight and say, Hey, we're going to set up this concern box, tell us what it is.
Well, what it is, is we've got boxes and things like this where we'll say, Listen, I want to know what's going on.
So, if nothing else, write it down. You know, put it in this box. And this can be our concern box, our prayer box. You know, just it's a fun and creative way.
So, for the parents who are thinking, I would like to DIY, this is a great little way, just a little way. You're just doing something different, a new work in your family's life. Here's our little box, and you can put a prayer request in there, and we're going to get them out at supper or breakfast or whenever. We're going to pray about it. It's a concern.
Maybe the kid knows I don't want to say this maybe in front of the whole family, but I feel safer writing it. It's just fun, it's a creative way to open up different conversations. No, that is good. One of the things we've done recently is do conversation starters around dinner.
So, we all wrote three down, put them in a Ziploc baggie, and we bring one out a night out of the baggie.
So, last night it was the one I wrote, which is funny. It was What is the Origin of Virtue? Troy's like, What? Nice. But it ended up being a good discussion.
You know, what's the character of God and where does the goodness come from? What a great conversation today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. We're talking with Dr. Gary Chapman and Dr. Shannon Warden.
They've teamed up to write a wonderful book called The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Building a Family That Lasts. Get a copy when you call 800, the letter A in the word family, or stop by the show notes. We'll have the link there for you to learn more. I think my favorite part of your book, The DIY Guide to Building a Family That Lasts, is the chapter on fun. Because I like this part.
I mean, the best memories we have in our family is when we're. You know, laughing so hard, milk is coming out our nose. You know, that situation where you take that drink and somebody says something, and boom, it's all out. And we just love that. And there's so many experiences that we have like that.
But I mean, I could do that every day if it were possible. But talk about the importance of fun. And not everybody, you know, it's interesting, not everybody's wired in that way. And Dr. Chapman, particularly, I'd like to hear from you about that.
And I don't want to pick on the engineering accountant. I love you guys and you girls that do that job. But that engineering left brain kind of thing, sometimes it trips a person up that they don't have a lot of fun. But families need fun. Yeah, and it can be in different ways because some things uh one person would consider to be fun and relaxing and the other person wouldn't, okay?
Well, that's all right, we can stretch each other, you know. Uh maybe, for example, husband and wife, he likes to walk and she doesn't like to walk.
Well, he can walk slower and they can take short walks, you know, and then he can say, okay, what would you like to do? And maybe it's something he's not interested in, but he can give. And so we can go to where the other person is in terms of what makes them relax and what makes them feel good. But I think with children, again, children are also different. But the parent has to decide we're going to have some family times.
It's not just going to be routine, routine, routine every day. We're going to have family time and we're going to build it in. And maybe one night it's going to be we're going to play games together. One night we're going to go shoot basketball together. One night we're going to do this.
And it may not be every night. But if we don't plan it, it may not happen. And we wake up 10 years down the road and realize we don't look back on any family times we had. We were just all busy doing our own thing. You, in fact, urge families to create a fun chart.
Now, being more spontaneous, that kind of dampens my fun, but I don't know. How do you do it? Do a fun chart.
Okay, kids, it's nine o'clock. Let's have some fun.
Well, right, there's the chart, or I loved your example there of the bag or whatever. You said y'all putting slips of paper in. Same thing with fun. What are some fun things you want to do? And you just pull out of that bag or that box.
So it can be a chart. Mostly, don't get held up on the specific delivery of that goal. It's just do it, do it, do something. If you want different results, do something different. And this is a fun way.
Ask your kids, by the way, how can we have more fun? What? Right. I said it. How can we have more fun?
And get their ideas. Let them help you too. It always involves ice cream with the kids. It's just about ice cream. Hey, you both describe yourselves as workaholic, so let's speak to that segment of the audience.
And you say you both married fun-loving people, which is interesting. I don't know if that kind of opposite thing attracts, I would tend to think you're looking for that in that other person. But you both said you married spouses that love to have fun.
So how does that workaholic have to Discipline themselves to not be thinking of the list constantly.
Well, you got the right word. Discipline. Yeah. It is discipline. And I remember when our kids were still at home, of course, our kids are grown now, but when our kids were still at home, of course, I was a pastor and I had all the things that go with that.
Every pastor knows all of that. You know, it's a 24-hour job. I would arrange in my schedule, if I knew I had something that I had to do at church that night. I would arrange to be home at three o'clock in the afternoon when the kids came home, and I'd have time with them, homework or whatever, before dinner, and then I'd go back to the church. But I spent that time with them.
But that's discipline. Because there's always something you could be doing during that time, you know. Oh, yeah. And we have to say no to some things in order to say yes to the family. But I say to pastors who sometimes say to me, well, I just, I can't do it.
I'm just so busy. Look, you choose your schedule more than a lot of people do. Many people are tied into eight to five, you know. You're not tied into that. You can take a break.
And so I think if we understand. How important it is that we have time with our family, then we choose to make time. And yes, for those who are workaholic, it's harder for you than it is for other people. But we can do what we believe to be important. Yeah, that's so good.
I think one of the most powerful stories that I've known about is a man who worked as a youth pastor, and he was busy. And I would speak directly to those working in Christian ministry because we can justify spending a lot of time doing ministry because we're doing good things. And you have to discipline yourself to pull back so your family gets some of that good time with you. But this youth pastor, he said he had just come off like a junior high retreat over the weekend. He got back Sunday afternoon late and he had to take a quick shower and get back to the church for another youth event Sunday night.
And he hugged his four-year-old daughter and he said, Honey, I've got to go talk to people about Jesus tonight. And the four-year-old said, that's good, Daddy. When are you going to talk to me about Jesus? Hmm. Wow.
He quit his youth pastor job, got a job in the automobile industry in Detroit there.
So he would have an eight to five job, so he was home every night. Isn't that interesting? I mean, he caught it. She kind of laid a David stone right between his eyes, right? And, you know, good for him as a dad, he understood what that meant.
What she was really saying was, I need more of you, dad. And he got it.
So that was good. But that's what you're driving at. Make sure your priorities are right. You urge families to work on prevention and maintenance. Of course, again, this is all in this metaphor of the home improvement project.
And you say that rather than wait for that crisis to erupt.
Now, for me, I'm all about that. I want to change the water heater well before it leaks out, right? But some people don't do that. But why is it important to not wait for the catastrophe, but to do the maintenance ahead of time? I asked our builder, I said, talk to me about maintenance.
Why is it so important to maintain the home? And, you know, give me a tip as a builder, a real builder, you know, so a literal home builder. Give me a tip as a home life builder. And he said, well, he said, people, we have to guard the outside of our homes because the damage, the threat is going to come from outside.
So you make sure things like your insulation is good and you make sure if there are holes or cracks that they're filled. If there's a tear or damage in the roof, you make sure that it's repaired and it patched. But you got to protect from the outside in.
So let's take it now to relationships. What are you allowing on the outside to come in and possibly change you for the worst? And so, when we talk about maintenance, it's that one of that's probably one of the two key points that I like to make in particular: is from the outside in, what are you allowing into your home?
So, we go back to everything we've talked about: screens, and work, and attitudes, and expectations. And so, you're thinking about what's coming in, and how do you guard your home life? The second thing I like to talk to folks about is just the matter of. takes so little time to mess things up. Takes a long time to clean it up.
to build it up, but it takes such little time to mess it up or tear it down. And you've got to make choices around this. It's going to take some work. Yes, the other thing we're seeing in the book is that once you get some of these things moving in a positive direction, and there you see significant improvement in your family life. Don't just assume it's going to be that way forever.
Keep working. Yeah, keep working.
So you spoke her love language, you know, for three years, but then you got busy and forgot about it.
Okay. She's going to say pretty soon, but my tank is empty. You know, my love language is, or whatever, you know.
So we have to maintain the things. When we make progress, we want to continue to making progress and not be going back to it. And this is probably a good place to end the do-overs. Why is having the do-over important? I like it.
I say to our kids, you know, it's kind of like a timeout in professional sports. We're going to time this thing out and come here. And now, this is where you went wrong right there.
Now, let's try it again. And that is a literal do-over. See, now that works.
Okay. And that's the same for the sports enthusiast. I'm all over the place with my metaphors, John, Chappin. But, you know, for the sports enthusiasts there or for anybody who just understands, hey, to carry it back to homebuilding here, that is off.
Something's off about that. I think we're going to have to take that down. Fix it and get it right. I don't think I want to live with that. We're going to have to fix it.
So, same with the do-over. Those are some literal examples, and again, they're even with my kids, I will say, or with Stephen. Hey, I want to try that again. That is the art of the do-over. You know, it's powerful.
You think of Jesus with the woman. Who was caught in adultery? That was perhaps humanity's biggest do-over, right? He said, go and send no more. And he had every right to.
Go ahead and pass execution on her and let the crowd stone her. But he said, He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone. Right? There's a do-over. Such beautiful humility in that.
And that's from our Lord. Perfect Jesus Christ there. Perfect. Perfection, sinless. And he's modeling that for us.
He's doing it himself.
So we will do it ourselves. That's so true, man. Gary and Shannon, this has been so good. Once again, the great concept of the DIY for those of us, I'm putting myself in that category that only six years ago did I learn that meant do-it-yourself. DIY guide to building a family that lasts.
This is wonderful. The resource is terrific. Whether you're just starting out with your first child or have adult kids and want to strengthen those relationships, there are so many wonderful principles here for your marriage, too. Make a monthly pledge of any amount to focus on the family. And we'll say thank you by sending a copy of Gary and Shannon's book to you.
And here's what your donations are paying for. A man named Richard described how a move to California created a lot of stress for his family. Family, but he was able to lean on Focus on the family for advice and encouragement. And decades later, he's sending our resources to his grandchildren and even his great-grandchildren. Richard said, You will never know how much you helped us.
And my wife and I will celebrate our 52nd wedding anniversary soon. And I don't think we would have ever made that milestone without the lessons from Focus.
So thank you. Man, that's good. That is amazing. How wonderful. Yeah, it is.
And what an awesome privilege we have together, working together with God and our donors to strengthen marriages and equip parents all year long. That's why a monthly pledge can make a huge difference for families like Richards and so many more.
Now, if a monthly pledge is more than you can afford right now, a one-time gift is also helpful. Every bit helps. And thank you in advance for your generosity when you call 800, the letter A in the word family. or when you donate and get the book The DIY Guide to Building a Family That Lasts when you click the link in the show notes. Gary and Shannon, again, thank you so much for being with us.
This is great stuff. Thank you, Jim. Always good to be with you. Thank you. Now, do you guys mind if we go to my house and look at some leaky pipes?
Let's do it. That sounds like a great plan. And coming up tomorrow, how you and your spouse can experience a loving, godly relationship for a lifetime. I think a lot of couples don't realize how the Lord wants our marriages to flourish. God designed marriage to be a reflection of Christ and His love for His bride, the church.
And so He wants our marriages to be a beautiful, living reenactment of the greatest love story ever. Thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. If you're a pastor wanting to save and strengthen marriages in your congregation, we've got a great tool for you. Marriage 911 by Focus on the Family trains laypeople to mentor couples who may be on the verge of divorce or who want to strengthen what they already have.
The kit includes two leader guides, four workbooks, and all the training necessary to meet with and mentor men and women who need help. Visit marriage911.com. That's marriage, the numbers911.com.
