Practical Advice for Parenting Powerful Kids (Part 1 of 2)

The trail was the biggest, I think, feeling at that moment and just, you know, this belief that that could be going on in my home and in my marriage.

When Jenny discovered her husband's emotional affair, she was devastated. Thankfully, she found resources at our website to heal her marriage. I think focus on the family has been almost like a conduit to kind of pull together two lives that's been broken. It pulls them together through brokenness, through hurt and heartache.

I'm Jim Daley. Working together, we can rescue more hurting marriages like Jenny's and give families hope. Please join our marriage restoration team by calling 800-the-letter-A-and-the-word-family or donate at focusonthefamily.com slash hope, and your gift will be doubled. All I'm trying to do is teach parents to have a game plan because kids by their nature are hedonistic little suckers.

They do not come in this world with concern for other people, but that's our job is to train them up, not train them down, and most of us train kids down, train them up in such a way that they feel encouraged and loved no matter what. That's Dr. Kevin Lehman, and this is Focus on the Family. He'll offer some great advice on how to encourage your child rather than put them down.

Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daley, and I'm John Fuller. John, most of us are blessed with one or more powerful children in our families. I'm sure having six kids, you must have had one. You know, we did have a mix, and we had a couple that were very strong. It was amazing. The whole family would come to a screeching halt because this child had this need, and it wasn't being met, or they had to have this argument at this time. It's really interesting.

It is. Well, we had two, and we had one strong willed and one not as strong willed, and it was certainly the same way. You know, Trent was the strong willed guy, and it had to go his way or the highway. And I'm not sure they're always even cognizant that I'm the person. Oh, no.

Absolutely not. I mean, I invited him to so many things to do with Focus when he was a teenager, and it was so funny because he said, Dad, I really don't want to go. I got to study or something. He ended up going fishing or something, and now he's going, I was so disconnected.

I was so dumb as a teenager not to go with you. But it's okay. God has given each of our children unique personalities, and the strength that comes with that strong willed child is something we need in this world for sure. But sometimes it's hard to understand that child, especially when the two of you as a parent and a child are butting heads.

It's vital to learn how to parent that child well, so they will use that strength to serve God and others when they're adults. Yeah, and as we heard in that clip at the beginning of the show, you have to be ready. You have to have a game plan, and that's what we have for you today through Dr. Kevin Lehman. He's an internationally known family psychologist, a New York Times bestselling author, and he is a really popular public speaker and media personality. Of the more than 50 books he's written, we're going to have one here that's really at the core of today's broadcast. It's called Parenting Your Powerful Child, bringing an end to everyday battles.

And we'll have details in the show notes. Let's jump into that conversation, Jim, as you welcomed Dr. Lehman. Well, Dr. Kevin Lehman, welcome back to Focus on the Family. And you're not talking just about strong willed children here. You're talking about something far broader in the powerful child.

What is it? Absolutely. And thank you, Jim, and thank you, John, for having me once again. You know, I think we've given the strong willed child a bad rap. Let's start with that. I think you want your kids to be strong willed. You want your kid to stand up in this world that says, hey, do everything we do and be cool like us. You want that son, you want that daughter to be a daughter, a son of conviction, to know right from wrong, you know, to do the right thing. But the powerful child has an agenda. The powerful child wants to win, control, dominate. If you're a mommy today and you're raising a son, let me be clear on this. If you have a powerful child, he's going to be a lousy husband because he's going to be a controller.

I've never heard a woman say, Dr. Lehman, I just love the way my husband controls me. So the stakes are high. And here's the kicker. We as parents teach the kids how to be powerful. If you have a powerful child, I got news for you. There's a powerful parent somewhere nearby. We say about 99% of the children are powerful.

Along with that, you may have heard some of the giggles in the background. We have about 25 women here to guide our discussion. We're going to ask you all some questions. So let me say to you, welcome to the studios and focus on the family.

So we're really going to be tested here, Kevin. Well, you know, women are the heartbeat of the family. There's no two ways about it. And you know, in so many cases, in most cases and families, the kids are much more familiar with mama. So they know how to punch up mommy's buttons. They know how to pull her chain, get her going. And it's amazing how a husband can say something once and a mom finds herself saying it several times.

Well, that's a good place to start. Why is that happening? Well, because again, I think we've trained kids how to be powerful. And by 18 months, now, this is pretty young. By 18 months, a kid has full understanding of great power that they have over the parent.

That's hard to believe, though, 18 months. Let's take a picture of a little guy, 17 months of age, dad's trying to get him into a high chair to have his dinner. Now, this is a kid who has no intention of going in that high chair. And if there was a sport in the Olympics called arching your back, this kid could win a living Olympic gold, because a 17-month-old kid does not want to go in that chair, can contort their body in such a way they look like a pretzel, okay?

And there's dad battling trying to get this kid in, and mommy just trying to be good moms. Honey, Roger, just give them to me. I'll take them, honey. And she takes little Fletcher and puts little Fletcher on her lap and proceeds to feed little Fletcher spoon by spoon. Now, everybody in the room, be little Fletcher for just a second. Would you rather sit on mommy's warm lap and be spoon-fed or sit in a cheap plastic chair they bought at Walmart? So in other words, we have reinforced the kid fussing the same way we do in the mall when a kid throws a temper tantrum because he wants a candy treat, and we say, no, we're not going to get a candy treat, and that's it. That's final, okay?

There's a big stir. People are watching, okay, and you feel pressure as a parent, all right, all right. But then there's no more candy for life. You understand me, no more candy for life. So not only do we cave into the kid, but we say stupid things to them. Oh, man, you're hitting me right between the eyes. The high chair or the candy?

All of it. But it is true. Now, why is parenting any different today than it was many years ago? Are we busier today? So we're giving in?

Are we just weaker? Well, I think there's parents tonight who were lying awake, looking at the crack in the ceiling, feeling like General Custer on his last day on this earth. If you've ever played whack-a-mole in an amusement park, being a young parent today with multiple children is like playing whack-a-mole.

Whack, whack, whack, whack, and as soon as you whack one, the other one pops up. So it's tremendously different because the culture we live in has such great influence over our kids. Take something as innocent as playing soccer, and you find out that your little son, little Beaufort has just been selected for citywide soccer, and this means now that the next ten weekends of your life are going to be traveling to another city over the weekend, okay? So all focus is on soccer, and where's the room for Almighty God in that kid's life?

Where's the room for anything that's worthy on that Sunday in terms of attending church? And so I say culture dominates an awful lot of what we have to face as parents, plus the cell phones, the Instagram, everything. It's just changed so rapidly. Now, you've talked about children being those manipulators. Let's apply that spiritual component to it.

Why? Why are we all sinners that give birth to sinners, and why are these little rascals so good at 18 months they can manipulate us the way you described? Well, the first born, let's start with that, is the lab rat of the family. You know, we're new at being parents, and we're surrounded by women here in the focus on the family studio. And if you've given birth, that's not a piece of cake to begin with. But that 19 and a half inches laid across your lap, and the lactation nurse was supposed to visit you.

You never saw the woman. Your insurance company throws you out the door within about 48 hours, and all of a sudden you're awestruck that you have this tremendous responsibility with this little child whose little lip was quivering, and you instantly fell in love with this little girl or this little guy, and you go home and you're trying to be the best mom you can possibly be. And this is where it starts, because I think a lot of parents who have very powerful children have just erred in trying to do way too much for their children, trying to make sure they're happy, happy, happy at every turn. In my book Have a New Kid by Friday, the best line in that book is an unhappy child is a healthy child, and there's times your son or daughter has to be miserable, quite frankly, and unhappy.

Why? Because they disobeyed you. They talk back to you. So part of the problem, Jim, is that we start off practicing on these little lab rats. We have high expectations. The kids knew it being a kid. You knew it being a parent, and that's a perfect storm for a lot of excitement down the road. And in your book, Parenting Your Powerful Child, you describe it this way, which I think is funny, one of the personality types, aggressive, temperamental, curveball manipulator.

That's pretty good. Yeah. And some of these manipulators, the curveball guy in particular, is the one that, here's a kid that's pretty obedient, seems to just sort of go with the flow, and all of a sudden they hit age 10, age 11, age 12, the hormone group, the pubescent, and all of a sudden the grades drop off the shelf. The kid has an instant attitude, and you say, where did this kid come from?

That's why I call him the curveball. But then you've got the eggshell, the sensitive one, oh, Dr. Lehman, Melanie, as a very sensitive daughter, very sensitive girl. When I hear that, I reach for my wallet. I'm protecting my wallet, because I don't trust this kid. And when you talk to somebody and you hear that this kid is sensitive, be careful, because you have a powerful little buzzard on your hands, a kid who can use the sensitivity and the tears to work you. Well, you're talking about real manipulation, though.

How does a parent, and at what age do you engage to show that child that manipulating me that way is not going to work? Let me ask you a question first. How do you feel in gene cries? Oh, tender. What can I do for you? Yeah.

What do I need to do to fix it? I don't think that women can use tears to bring men to their knees and ends. Well, ladies, what do you think? Yeah. Yeah. And so we all had to pony up and understand that, you know, manipulation is very, very possible, especially for youngest children in the family. Your oldest children tend to be more rule-oriented and more precise and perfectionistic. It's us babies, you know, who could sell dead rats for a living if we had to. And they earn a living looking up because your youngest child looks up and sees the middle child or sees the next child in line, and they go out of their way to be different. And kids many times will throw out a bone, so to speak, to see if we'll bite. And when we do, okay, game is on.

We are going to clash. And here's the other thing. The kid that's most like you, mom, the kid that's most like you, dad, is the one you're probably going to clash with, is the similarities. And that's where birth order fits in this paradigm, that we tend to, mommies tend to hit it off better with sons, daddies with daughters. There's key relationship in families.

So again, it's the opposites that attract psychologically. So keep in mind that kids will bait you and they'll sucker you. And so one of the things that I like to teach parents is that when a kid says something really stupid and ridiculous, which is every day, you can take a look at that kid and say, wow, interesting, interesting.

Don't go there. Don't try to over control. Now again, we have authoritarian parents, which most of us in this room grew up with. All right, listen up. You are going to do what I tell you to do as long as you live under this roof. Do you understand me? Hey, don't make me come over there. Hey, you want something to cry about? I'll give you something to cry about.

Now, you know, the laughter behind says, hey, I can identify with that. And see, this is what people need to understand. That isn't godly. That doesn't reflect God's teaching, but neither does the permissive, you know.

Give us an example of that. What does that sound like? The permissive? Oh, permissive is on Brittany, sweetheart. It's 8 p.m. Have you chosen to go to bed yet or how about, would you turn that music down?

I'm trying to finish your science project. So we have parents and here's the kicker. If you bring up your kid in an authoritarian manner, they're going to rebel. They're going to be powerful, rebellious kids. If you're permissive with them, and here's the kicker, they're going to rebel if they're permissive. So the only way that really reflects God's teaching is to move toward the authoritative parent style. Authoritative, not authoritarian. So you're in healthy authority over your kid. You don't let your son or your daughter run over you at any time, mom.

Okay? You're in rubbish, healthy authority. And I think that's what St. Paul was trying to tell us in Ephesians 6. We says, children obey your parents, it's the right thing to do because God has placed them in what? In authority over you. So are we talking about being man, be, pam, be? No.

Either is God's word because it says every knee shall what? Shall bow. That's the goal. Well, we're right in the middle of a very interesting conversation with Dr. Kevin Lehman on today's Focus on the Family with Jim Daley. I'm John Fuller.

Jim, you and I have children that fit the categories that Dr. Lehman has identified to... Speak for yourself, John. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. We're getting off air. We do. And I've appreciated the overview of some of the parenting styles because I've been guilty of, you know, finger and face saying, you got to do what I say.

We all have. There's something for every parent here and some ways to deal with pretty much every child because your premise, Dr. Lehman, is that every child is powerful. You may not see it on the surface, but they're all trying to manipulate. Every kid starts off an attention-getter. You have to understand that all kids want attention. The question is, does the child get attention positively or negatively? Once they get negative attention, then they'll escalate to be a powerful child. So the powerful child, again, says, I only count life when I win, control when I dominate.

The attention-getter says, I only count life when I'm noticed. So your own feelings, this is unique about this book. Your own feelings as a mom or a dad can tell you if you have a powerful child or not.

Do you feel annoyed by the behavior? If you do, you have an attention-getter. But if you feel like you'd like to take that little nose and rub it in it, so to speak, and you can't do that to me, do you know who I am? I am your mother.

I am your dad. You got a powerful child on your hands. That's the problem. Well, and you've talked about that. You've talked about the aggressive temperament.

You've talked about that sensitive eggshell temperament, that stubborn procrastinator manipulator. You're touching on that. But I think our boys are more in that category of...

Probably the tougher. Yeah. There's kids, Jim. You could beat them with a stick. Well, does this come down to, you know, it's, we asked you to clean your room at 9 o'clock and it's now 2 in the afternoon.

Did you get it done? Oh, yeah. I forgot. But here's what we do. Most of us ask kids questions. Now, if you want something controversial, Lehman says, and parenting your powerful child, don't ask your kids questions.

Now, again... Make statements. We're surrounded by women. I'm surprised we haven't been attacked to this moment because that's like asking a fire not to burn because women love to ask questions.

Dr. Lehman, I've heard you on Focus on the Family over the years, and I've read a few of your books, and I really appreciate your wisdom. But when you say, don't ask questions, I respectfully disagree with you because like when Melissa comes home from school, I always ask her, honey, how was your day? Oh, that's a good question. Okay.

Yeah. But what does the kid say? Fine. What'd you do in school today? Nothing. Teenager, where you been? How?

What'd you do? Nothing. You want to ask questions?

Go ahead. Here's the kicker. Tell me more about that. Tell me more about your kid. And a kid says something interesting, you say, well, honey, tell me more about that. Now, I think it's ironic because tell me more about that is a command in the English language. So the question thing needs to be tucked away.

And you'll be surprised if you just back off a little bit. Kids want to be affirmed by you. They want you to enjoy them, and they want you to be happy. So an obvious conclusion is sometimes you look at a kid and say, I am very unhappy with what just went down here.

Give them the look, turn your back and walk away. You're raking coals over the kids when you do that. Okay. Now, but I'm going to bring you back to the procrastinator.

So let's say that you don't ask your question, but you've asked them to get, you know, make sure you get your homework done. Okay. That's not a question.

Yeah. Let me give you two examples and then I'll add you something else. In rearing five kids, I never asked any of my kids, do you have homework? I never asked that question.

And they all did well. I asked them to want an $80,000 scholarship to school. Okay. Let's start with that.

Are you guaranteeing this? Well, I'm telling you, there's, we spend our time trying to micromanage kids. Kids need to know that they have homework to do, et cetera, but here's the kid who's nine years old, who's supposed to clean his room on Tuesday and Saturday.

It's not done. No reminders in this system, none. It's not done on Tuesday and nine year old has neglected to do what she's supposed to do and you as money manager of the home, you go and you hire seven year old to go in and clean nine year old's room. You pay for it without fanfare out of nine year old's allowance. So don't put it in their face. You just do it. Right.

Yeah. But when they find out they lost money to their sister or brother who they really don't care for that much to begin with, you've made some inroads. The 17 year old who's supposed to clean the garage, you were supposed to do it last spring and now the snow is about to fly. He's looking for the car keys at six o'clock that night. He, he was supposed to clean the garage.

He doesn't do a lick and now he's got a date. He's got plans. Dad, where's my keys? Honey, you're not going to find the keys or right here in my pocket. Oh, give them to him.

I'm late. Honey, you're supposed to clean the garage there. See, you didn't do a lick. He'll promise you anything at that point. He'll promise you he'll repair the roof, he'll, he'll paint the garage, he'll, he'll pull weeds for life.

Just give me the keys of that car. And that's what I call sticking your guns without shooting yourself in the foot. And that's how you establish authority that God didn't put us on this earth to be run over by you 17 year old. So don't be afraid to pull a rug out. Now the one issue there, so many parents, that's hard to do. Why is that hard to stick to your guns? What are we doing as parents to manipulate our environment?

Well, which one's the monkey and which one's the organ grinder? As I look at kids today, kids shorter than a yardstick are in full control of adults and they whine, whining doesn't continue unless it's paid off. Meladaptive behavior doesn't continue unless it's paid off. We remind and coax. Many listeners are, are the human alarm clocks for their kids to try to get them out the door in the morning. If you had Kevin Lehman with you for a day, I'll tell you what would happen that you wouldn't wake the kid up. You said Lehman, wait a minute, I don't wake him up. He'd be late for school. Oh, how soon you catch on. But yeah, he's not going to be happy, but you tell him, hey, I'm not playing this game any longer.

I'm done. How do you feel after you scream and yell at your kid all morning to get him out the door? So why not do some rug pulling, write a note to teacher or principal that says, Anthony has absolutely no reason to be late today to school.

He chose to sleep in, feel free to do whatever you do to kids who are illegally tardy, love mom, and put the tennis ball life on his side of the court. It seems awfully abrupt if we have, say, a teenager who's been procrastinating for their entire life. We've trained them to do this.

Should there be a re-entry? I have a friend whose child doesn't clean their room. And time and again, they're told, clean your room. So here's a 12-year-old who doesn't clean the room. Shouldn't we be gentle here?

Well, you could clean it form like it's never been cleaned before, just like the kid who refuses to brush his teeth at age four, I could brush his teeth like they'd never been brushed before. That might get his attention. So yeah, it is abrupt. And when you have a kid who's had 14 years of procrastination, please don't think that reading Parenting Your Powerful Child and listening to Kevin Lehman is going to instantly change this kid who's procrastinated for 14 years. What's going to happen is you're going to take the joy out of procrastinating in his life. And that's what you need to focus on. And those behaviors can turn, okay? I wrote all those books on Have a New Kid by Friday and Have a New Teenage, but I always told people they're scams because it doesn't take five days.

You can do it by Wednesday, two days. And most behaviors you can turn around. But when you have these kids who are just driven toward defeating themselves, and that's what these procrastinators do.

And a lot of them don't measure up because they feel if they measure up, you're always going to make them measure up, and there's the pressure. So these are your slobs. These are your kids who live in piles, and you adults, you know who I'm talking about, in your desk. You have piles all over your desk. Someone asks you to find something you know exactly which pile to look in with equal ease.

Well, why is that? Because you grew up with a critical-life parent, a parent who could spot a flaw at 50 paces. So do you want to be a flog-picking mom or dad?

No. You want to be an encourager, give that kid vitamin E, and stand with your kid. Kevin, this is great, great stuff. When you look at a parent that feels like you're giving up the right to be right, how do you calm yourself down in that moment? Because I know even in our household when we have some conflict with the boys over something, so often Jean, she will get to that point where, man, she's so frustrated.

You moms like that? You get to that point and you're just so frustrated. We cave. We give in. I think sometimes you say to a kid, you know you could be right because they'll throw stupid things out to you, okay, and a kid who, you know, you remind every day, the boss is going to be here in 19 minutes, you know, and you do that whole dog and pony show. You might walk in very glibly some morning and say, honey, I don't know if you want to, if you're a nurse or not, but it's 8.20, turn around, walk away. You call him for breakfast, and he comes out 20 minutes later, okay, and he says, these pancakes are cold.

Really? Mine were warm and tasty. Do you see what I'm saying? You can learn to talk to kids differently, and I think that's the encouraging thing, and again, for those of you who don't know, I graduated fourth and bottom of my class in high school.

I was going nowhere fast. I was throwing out a Cub Scout, so you can imagine what kind of kid I was. Throwing out a Cub Scout. That's bad, throwing out a fourth grade. I did a lot of things, but I had a mom who loved me anyway, and isn't that true of Almighty God?

Doesn't He love us anyway? And I think there's times you want to string your kids up, let's face it. They just, they're a little too much, and I said in a book that sold well over a million copies years ago, Making Children Mind Without Losing Yours, I said, we have seen the enemy, and they are small, and today they're unionized, and you better have a game plan, and all I'm trying to do is teach parents to have a game plan, because kids by their nature are hedonistic little suckers. They do not come in this world with concern for other people, but that's our job, is to train them up, not train them down, and most of us train kids down.

Train them up in such a way that they feel encouraged and loved no matter what. And we're going to pause right there for today's conversation with Dr. Kevin Lehman, and pick it up tomorrow on Focus on the Family. Dr. Lehman has such fantastic insight and advice for all parents to really integrate into our daily lives. Yes, he does, John, and it's so important to parent and discipline well, of course, but part of that includes encouraging your child in the right way. And I love how Dr. Lehman touched on that.

And let me turn to you, the listener. This is why Focus on the Family exists. We want to equip you and help you be the best parent you can be, so that you can have a strong, thriving family.

That's the goal. We have a number of resources to help you sharpen your parenting skills. For 45 years, we've been able to assemble a great list of resources, and one of those is our Seven Traits of Effective Parenting Assessment, which takes just a few minutes of your time, and you'll see where you're doing well and some action steps to take in areas that might need some improvement. We also have the wonderful book by Dr. Kevin Lehman that we talked about in today's program. It's called Parenting Your Powerful Child, Bringing an End to Everyday Battles.

So true. This book is great for any stage you are at in your parenting journey, and you can get that directly from Focus on the Family. And when you do, the proceeds go right back into ministry. As we approach this Thanksgiving and Christmas season, it's more important than ever to share the hope that Jesus Christ came to give all of us with overwhelming inflation, high costs for food and fuel, political turmoil, and continued health concerns. Families are struggling, but you can come alongside those facing challenges and give these families hope through your support of Focus on the Family. And you know, thousands of people reach out to Focus on the Family for help by phone, by mail, by email, couples heading for divorce, parents who are stressed, moms considering an abortion, and so many others need your help. Your support today will provide scripture-based resources and programs to save and strengthen families. If you can make a monthly pledge, that is so helpful. It allows us to plan and budget for the year ahead to help these families that are just like yours. When you make that pledge today and any amount helps, we'll send you a copy of Kevin Lehman's book, Parenting Your Powerful Child, as our way of saying thank you for supporting the ministry of Focus on the Family and giving families hope.

If you're unable to commit to a monthly amount, we get that one-time gift, we will send the book as well. So on behalf of the families, you'll be reaching through Focus on the Family in 2023. Let me say thank you. To take the seven traits of effective parenting assessment or to donate and get your copy of Parenting Your Powerful Child, call 800-A-F-200-232-6459 or visit the links in the show notes. On behalf of Jim Daley and the entire team here, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we continue the presentation with Dr. Kevin Lehman and once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.

Praying with the kids at bedtime in the comfort of your home. This warm setting is featured in the new special edition print from Focus on the Family, titled What Matters Most. It's a story and paint by artist Morgan Weisling, a jacquet depicting a faithful pioneer family and it can have a special place in your home to remind you of what's truly important. Get this special edition print at focusonthefamily.com slash specialprint. That's focusonthefamily.com slash specialprint.