How to Build Moral Courage in Your Kids (Part 2 of 2)

We want to pray for our children that they would discover and feel that sense of God's pleasure, right, when they are operating in God's will for their lives.

That we want them to feel that sense of God's pleasure. That's Jill Garner encouraging us with some very practical ways that we can raise children with strong hearts. Welcome back to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly and Jill is back with us again today. We're looking forward to hearing more from her about how to equip our children to be morally courageous in this world.

Your host is Focus President and author, Jim Daly, and I'm John Fuller. John, last time Jill began describing what it means to be a strong heart. You're going to hear that over and over again. I think it's a good thing. Just think about that with our kids, especially in the culture we're in now. Our children, as kids coming from a Christian family, they need strength. They need courage and I think they're going to need a lot more of it than maybe what our generation had to deliver, right?

It's getting harder and harder. So it's a good thing and Jill's going to describe in greater detail what that means. Last time we covered the definition of strong heart and that's a young person with moral courage, grounded in truth, and fortified with self-respect. I thought the content was terrific.

If you missed it, go back and listen and you get that from the app or the website, wherever you can listen. And today we're going to continue that discussion. She's developed a manners of the heart curriculum that champions humility, respect, resiliency, etc. All the right attitudes that we want our kids to have. Sometimes those can be difficult to deploy as a parent with our kids. We talked about that last time and how do we teach humility, you know? Think about it.

It's kind of like how do you define water? Sometimes that can be hard. She makes it much easier.

Yeah, and if you begin with the end in mind, as Stephen Covey talked about, you're thinking right now about how do I develop these traits? Jill has so many great insights and she's written wonderfully about this topic in a book called Strong Heart, Cultivating Humility, Respect, and Resiliency in Your Child. And you can learn more about Jill and all that she's doing in this terrific resource at our website.

The link is in the show notes. Jill, welcome back to Focus on the Family. Thank you.

Glad to be back. And the folksy part of it, you grew up in Louisiana, right? Well, I grew up in Mississippi, actually, and then I moved to Louisiana about 35 years ago. That's amazing.

What a great part of the country. Of course, the Robertsons are good friends, the Duck Dynasty folks, and they have turned being from Louisiana into quite an industry. Yes, they have.

Yes, they have. Between that and New Orleans, you know? But I tell everybody, skip all that and come to Baton Rouge.

There we go. That's good advice. Come to Baton Rouge.

See us in Baton Rouge. I mentioned that curriculum called Manners of the Heart. You know, sometimes today with all the strain, especially in public schools, who are pumping a lot of not-so-healthy stuff into our kids.

We talked about that last time, this idea of self-esteem versus self-respect. But what is that curriculum and how does it help create a strong heart? Well, Manners of the Heart, I wrote the first curriculum, oh, more than 20 years ago now.

And it has really evolved into really heart education, which is really what we call it, the education of the heart. How many elementary schools are using that? Oh, goodness. We've been in hundreds of elementary schools. That's great. Across the country.

We're in Mexico City. We also have a school in Kampala, Uganda, which is really a precious school. It's about the fourth, fifth year, I think going into the fifth year with that school, which is really a sweet, sweet place to be.

That's good. It's so good. Last time I briefly mentioned your love of Braveheart, I started by saying we share that same fanfare, I guess, for that movie. And I set out, actually, as a dad, I mean, when my two boys were at the right age, the age appropriateness for watching Braveheart, we sat and watched it and we talked about what it meant to be a man in that kind of context. It was a great tool. I think they would say today it was one of their best and favorite movies as well, even today, now that they're in their 20s, because it had so many great elements.

In that context, what do you think families can learn from Braveheart? Of course, we went on to the Patriot, just about every Mel Gibson movie. All right. All of them. All of them. Almost all of them. Yeah, almost all of them.

Almost all of them. But yeah, Braveheart, what I love so much. I was teaching a Bible study at the time when Braveheart came out, a lady study, and a couple of ladies got very upset with me because one lady, her husband had taken her to the movie to see it when it came out and she left. She said, oh, this is too bloody. It's gory.

And, you know, it's too much, too much. And I said, no, you missed the point. You missed the whole point of the movie. It was very real, very realistic. I mean, that is how the battles were fought. But I said, but you missed the deeper, deeper point of Braveheart to me, which was that he knew he was so grounded in truth.

That's what I saw from Braveheart, from William Wallace. He was so grounded in absolute truth. He absolutely knew what was right and what was wrong in the situation in which he found himself. And he was determined to walk it out, you know, to stand for truth. And that gave him the moral courage that he had to fulfill his destiny, right, to fulfill.

And by destiny, of course, I mean got his God-given purpose. Right. And that's to me, that's exactly what we're trying to do with Strong Heart. You know, in that context, though, absolute truth seems to be so elusive for the culture today. I mean, if you claim absolute truth, as we as Christians will, believing scripture is absolute truth, we get attacked. And people say that's your truth, but not my truth. How is the understanding of absolute truth, and as I define it, kind of understanding of the truth of God's word, how does that encourage a strong heart or bravery?

Right. Well, I believe it really it helps to kind of cultivate bravery in a child's heart. It kind of goes back to something I mentioned in our in our last interview that we want our children to know whose they are and why they're here. And and when we're cultivating wanting them to be brave, they have those two questions have to be answered. And they're going to be answered through absolute truth, through knowing God's word and knowing what God's word stands for.

Because you can throw out any issue in our culture today and what the world is saying is going to be the antithesis of what God's word says. But unless our children know scripture, they're not they're not going to know that. And how do we begin it like for very young children? I mean, I'm helping my youngest granddaughters memorize scripture now. And we started that when they were three or four years old, you know, which is the time to begin that and give them that love for the scripture. But even beyond memorizing scripture, they have to see it in us. And they have to see that we live by absolute truth, that we don't shade the truth, that we don't, you know, color it, that we don't fudge a little here and there.

You know, they have to see and understand what absolute truth is and see in us that we live and abide by God's word, even when it's hard. You know, so often we can try to teach our children what we want them to learn, but they are going to emulate what they see in us. Yeah, that's so true. Actions are bigger than words.

And that's that's a fact. You mentioned the book your childhood. You had a battle with being fearful. That's not uncommon, but you felt it was handicapping you as a child, the best way I could read it and describe it. But you kind of determined, OK, I'm going to help my kids not have those fears that I had. Very typical of us as parents when we have our childhood experiences. We want to compensate to make sure our kids don't have those things, whatever they might be.

Mine was probably scarcity being an orphan kid. So, man, you know, we went to Disneyland far too much. We I overindulged them as a parent. We were compensating. Yeah, I was I was doing that with my boys. You know, we just and Jean had to kind of grab me and say, OK, we're OK. Well, we don't have to overindulge them. But you did that with in the context of fear.

Describe that. And how did you help your kids not be fearful? That's a big one. Yeah, I was I was afraid of everything as a child. I was scared of my shadow. I was scared of the dark. I was scared of water. I was scared of heights.

I was scared of people. Wow. You had it going. I really I truly did.

I really, truly did. And it was and it really was a handicap for me, especially moving into middle school and in high school. It really it impeded me. You know, it kept me from having deeper relationships. And, you know, I would always say, oh, no, I can't do that.

I can't do that. And so I was determined, as you said, Jim, that my sons were not going to be because I was aware of it. And I had overcome it.

One way that I overcame that is in high school. One of my girlfriends who knew I was so afraid of things said, you know what? Rather than getting afraid when we're going to go do something and you won't go with us because you get scared and then you're going to get a tummy ache and you won't go. So think of that as anticipation. You know, think about, wow, OK, I'm feeling scared.

But you know what? It's not that I'm scared. It's that I'm anticipating what's to come. And as I began to think of it in those terms, it brought that fearfulness into excitement. No, that's good. I mean, some people like if you speak publicly, it's very common to have a bit of fear because you look out.

There's a thousand people you better deliver. Right. So, I mean, it's always there's some reasonable.

You should be a little bit afraid about that. That's fair. Let me pour into more of the content that you describe. GRIT as an acronym. You use that to help people understand the goal we're trying to hit.

And I'll just use the four and then you can go in and you can fill it in. But it's guts, resilience, integrity, tenacity. So let's go through that. What qualifies for having guts? For guts to me, guts to me is really nothing more and nothing less than the willingness to try. Right. It's having the guts.

Guts is it's saying I'm going to raise my hand. And we used to have a high school program that we did for quite some time with high school kids. And we just had to let something go to focus on our young learners, which is where we really focus now is on young learners. But in our high school program, I would start a day with maybe one hundred and twenty five kids in the room and a whole day of training. And I would say I need three volunteers and, you know, frozen.

No one would move. And I would say, OK, let me tell you something. I found in my years of working with high school kids that the kid who's willing to try is the one who's going to go a long way. Because it doesn't matter if you succeed or fail. What's more important is that you're willing to try. Sure.

And all of a sudden, of course, hands went up all over the room. That's guts. Right. The kid who's simply willing to try.

And that's what we have to tell our children to help the novella. Gus is not what's not as important if you win or you lose. Right.

If you succeed or you fail, what's most important is the willingness just to stand up and try, especially at a younger age. I'm thinking of flag football. What a great place for that to be demonstrated. You know, just take the ball and run. Right. Half the time they don't know which direction they're running. It's so funny.

Yeah. I remember baseball. I turned out to play baseball.

It was T-ball, five years old. And it was so funny just standing there watching these kids because the coach would hit a gentle ball out to right field. Everybody would run to the ball, including the catcher. So then he'd say, no, no, no, you stay here.

But all mine players would run to the ball. But they're out there trying. That's how they're going to learn. OK, resiliency. I think we have a theme developing. This is with your granddaughter who had a gym bar. I think the gym thing is big in the family here.

But what was that with building resilience? Yes, yes, yes, yes. So one of the girls wanted to get on the gym bars and the older daughter, the older granddaughter had mastered it, you know, had learned it.

And it was pretty good bit off the ground. The younger one said, oh, I'm going to do it. And my inclination was to say, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, be careful.

No way. Oh, I'm not so sure you're ready. And I realized, wait a minute, Jill, of course, which I have to tell myself all the time. You teach this stuff, Jill, you're supposed to you're supposed to know what to do. And I said, oops. And I had to swallow hard and went a little bit and let her go and let her do it without trying to stop her. Or even did just say, be careful, be careful.

I just needed to zip it because we have to let our kids try. Right. And sometimes we can stop that advancement in them and have to try. And they might might land on their backside.

Right. They might not make it. They might fall. But that's where they learn to get up and try again. That might be your next book, parenting book.

Zip it. A lot of parents need to do a lot of us need that one. These are good lessons from our guest today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, Jill Garner. She has written so extensively and from her heart about the importance of developing character and how that comes out in our child's lives. What that looks like. Get a copy of Jill's book, Strong Heart, Cultivating Humility, Respect and Resiliency in Your Child.

We have that book here at the ministry and you'll find the details in the show notes. And Jill, this this next letter is hard for me because it's almost as if it's on me to model integrity more than teach it. So address the I for integrity.

Absolutely. That is that is so, so, so true, John. I love the definition of integrity that really comes from my friend Henry Cloud. That integrity is the courage to meet the demands of reality, which I think is so hard, so hard for all of us, because, you know, in those difficult moments when it's sometimes in the moment, it seems easier to give in right in the moment. But we have to be willing to stand up in those tough moments and meet those demands of reality. Right.

That's the courage to meet those demands of reality. You know, we always say, you know, when I was growing up, the big thing was do as I say. Not as I do. Not as I do. Right. That was the big thing. And somehow that kind of worked, I think, in my generation. I don't believe that works in today's generation. We have to be authentic.

They sniff it out. All right. Grit, the T is for tenacity. I like tenacity, but your grandson, Jack, kind of holds the world's record for tenacity. What does he look like?

I so agree. Jack is the 10th grader and he has been into swimming for quite some time in competitive swimming. And he's very, very serious about it. And, you know, he he he tickles me when he says, no, no, Gigi, you didn't get that right. I now go to practice at five thirty in the morning, three days a week.

You know, all the sure I have it right. And what I love about Jack and watching him swim is his attitude toward it because it's so tenacious. When he comes up and he finishes and he touches the side of the pool and that head pops up, it immediately his eyes turn to the scoreboard.

But he is not looking, I assure you, he is not looking for his placement. He is looking at the time because what's most important to Jack is, did I take a few seconds off my time from the last time I swam this heat? So it's about him and his time rather than him and the competitors. Totally. It's kind of a lot of what we've talked about.

Right. He's looking for how I'm competing with myself. He really wants to see I think about Eric Little, you know, from Chariots of Fire, that when I run, I feel God's pleasure.

When Jack pops that head up, you know what he's looking for is how fast, how far can I go? I want to know what God created me to do. I want to discover that. And and that's just on the side note. That's one of those beautiful prayers that I often recommend to parents when it comes to all of these attributes and qualities, is that we want to pray for our children, that they would discover and feel that sense of God's pleasure. Right.

When they are operating in God's will for their lives, that we want them to feel that sense of God's pleasure. You speak in the book about developing the practice of other centeredness. You came around, I think, a five year old. I think his name is Walt, if I remember correctly. And he gave you a great example. What was that like?

Oh, he did. My precious little neighbor. We live in a cul-de-sac and we're in a small neighborhood, but we're in our cul-de-sac.

We're especially very close to each other. And Walt had apparently been picking up, as five year olds do, the news and everything that the adults around him were talking about with the high gas prices and all the inflation. And he had really taken to his heart, had gone to his heart.

He was very concerned about it. And I opened my mailbox one day and there was a little Ziploc bag in there with a little note and it just said, Walt. And it had two dollars and two cents in coins in it. And I thought, oh, goodness, maybe Walt stuck it in the mailbox, you know, by mistake or something. So my husband went to return it to my neighbor to find out that, oh, no, no, no, no, that was a gift. And that Walt had taken his birthday money and had divided up his birthday money and had put it in each of the neighbors in the cul-de-sac because he wanted to help us with our high gas prices. Oh, my goodness.

And the cost of food. Yeah, as a five year old. As a five year old.

Boy, that's a future economist. I wonder where Walt is today. Jill, not all of us are going to have like a genius child like Walt who's going and putting money in other people's mailboxes to help them with their gas. But what are some practical things we can do with our children to help that other centeredness? Right.

So one of the things I did with with my boys is I was always trying to help them see the needs of others and how they might could meet those needs to give them that other centeredness perspective. For instance, we stopped at the dry cleaners during the summer and the air conditioner was out. And you can imagine dry cleaners is miserable anyway. And the air conditioners out and we're in south Louisiana.

It was miserable. And I said, boy, I wish there's something we could do for those ladies. And the boys said, oh, mom, we can do something. And so we went home and we loaded up some water bottles and got some snacks and stuff, put it on ice and took it back.

I stayed in the car. The boys were around 10. I stayed in the car and the boys took it in, you know, and gave them and made sure everybody got water bottles and I'll talk to him for a minute. And they were just of course, the boys came out and they were just as high and joyful as they could be, as those they had served.

Right. But that was that way of, you know, helping them always look if there is a need in front of them, how they can meet that need. It's beautiful how God has created in this that joy of giving the joy of giving to others. Isn't that amazing?

Oh, it's incredible. And there's there's so many ways that that we can cultivate that it's there. And, you know, we just need to cultivate and help our kids constantly look for how they can meet the needs of others. You speak to the fact that parents have the responsibility to train up their children in the way they should go.

That's a biblical reference to Proverbs 22 six. Sometimes that means you got to push them a little. And what is a mechanism of persuasive pressure that gets the right result? Yes, I love this concept of persuasive pressure.

You know, scripture tells us to use wise words right with gentleness and respect is what it tells us. To me, that's persuasive pressure. You know, a ruby, that's why there's a kind of a cut ruby type looking heart on the front cover of strong heart, because a ruby is even harder to mine than diamonds. You have to go much deeper.

It takes more heat, more pressure to actually mine it and get those rubies out and then turn them into the beautiful stones that we use today. And the same thing is true with persuasive pressure. We want to get underneath. We want to mine out right those beautiful qualities so our children can become those beautiful gemstones that God created them to be. And we do that with our kind words of gentleness and respect.

And of course, the wisdom that we use comes from scripture. You kind of twist in a good way the golden rule about wanting to be treated well, you know, treat others the way you want to be treated. But that ruby rule says what? Right. We call it the ruby rule is to respect others the way you want to be respected. Is that now does that work?

I believe it does work. You know, something that we teach children in our curriculum, in this whole idea of other centeredness and respect based education, is that you have a decision to make when you're faced with disrespect. You can return disrespect.

But what are you going to get? More disrespect, right? You're going to get even violence. I always say that not all disrespect ends in violence, but all violence began with some level of disrespect. So you have that choice to make or you can choose to be the greater person, the stronger person, and return disrespect with respect.

Now you can begin to break down a wall. Now, perhaps that can dissipate that disrespect because disrespect has nothing to do with it if you're not giving it back. Right. And now maybe you can get somewhere and have a civil conversation. You know, Jill, so often right here at the end, I'm thinking of the parents who are, you know, they might have the 13, 14, 15 year old.

They're in those teen years and, you know, just hasn't been managed well. And that's OK. There's all the time for self-reflection and all that. But I would suggest I think you would support that. It's not too late to try to turn those things around, especially if they're mirroring that disrespect. You need to look at your own example.

Right. That's probably the best thing you could do first and make sure you're representing the core things you want your kids to live by, such as respect and humility. And if you're not seeing it in your children.

Now, I've got to give the disclaimer. The Lord gives each one of us free will, and that's why it's not a formula. You can do things that have predictive ability to love your children well, to teach them humility and respect. But guess what? Kids still get to choose. I know we don't like that, but there's a higher predictability that if you've demonstrated these things and live by them in terms of practice, your children should be able to catch those, embrace those. But the parent that has struggled for whatever reason.

What do I do now? Jill, I'm hearing you. I get it. But my 15 year old is so disrespectful to me. Yeah.

What do they do? Yeah, well, what a tough question, very tough question. I believe it would start with a very honest conversation where the parent needs to be very transparent to recognize to say to that 15 year old, you know, that I recognize that I haven't been the person, you know, I haven't been who I need it to be for you to be able to become, you know, who God intends for you to be. I've been even a hindrance, you know, rather than a help. That's humility and that's utter, utter humility, isn't it? It is utter humility. And then something I always believe it's almost like cold turkey that it's when you sit down and have that difficult conversation that you say from this day forward, we're going to do things differently, you know, from this day for I know what the past has been.

I know where we have been and look where it's gotten us today. And if you truly have a disrespectful 15 year old, then you've got a miserable kid. I mean, that goes hand in hand. If they're disrespectful, then they're miserable. And it also means their heart needs have not been met because whenever there's trouble on the outside, there's always a struggle on the inside in the heart. And we can go back and see what their soul questions. Children need satisfied at each stage of development, which we talk about. And we can go back and see what we missed, what we didn't give our kids that we needed to give them and start afresh, start anew. I mean, scripture tells us that, you know, every day has new grace and new ability. And I really believe sometimes I think we just have to go cold turkey when we need to make a serious course redirection.

Yeah. And it takes effort. It takes energy. It takes thought.

It takes the ability to actually live through your own humility, your own need for respect, et cetera. But it's the best thing. And it will be the most powerful thing you do for your children if you're in that spot. And the other thing I would caution parents who are in that spot is a 15 year old. Right.

You know, with the disrespectful 15 year old. Look at the long game here. Not, you know, they may be behaving that way. But, you know, I think it will be different at 30, hopefully sooner. But hang on to that relationship. Don't sacrifice the relationship and the influence that you have. And a lot of parents can testify that their relationship is far better now. But it took some time, maybe some years to get there and just don't give up on that relationship. That is good advice, I think. But, Jill, this has been terrific.

Strong heart, cultivating humility, respect and resiliency in your child. Great concept. And it's been so good to talk with you. Thanks for being with us. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

And I'm turning to you, the listeners. This is a book I think you want to get, especially if you have kids in the house. But if you're a grandparent and you want to drop a little pillow book on your adult children. You know, leave this one on their table or something. This might be good and it will be good. And it's the right things to concentrate on.

And I think the outcomes will be terrific. So get a hold of us as we normally do. If you can make a gift of any amount, that would be great. We'll send it to you as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry. If you make that donation monthly, that's how Jean and I support the ministry and John and Dina do that as well. It helps even out the budget for the year and allows us to do more ministry together. I'd love a phone call. Somebody had made a substantial gift to Focus.

They had never donated before. And I called to talk to them and they said, Well, Jim, here's what we expect. I expect you to run the ministry at Focus effectively and efficiently so my wife and I can do ministry through it.

That's beautiful. And that's the way to see it. You know, I'm here. The management team guarantees to the best of our ability. We'll run it effectively, efficiently, God-honoring, and you can do ministry through it.

And I think that's how God sees it. So do that. Join us today and you'll get a great resource for your parenting. Yeah, donate either a one-time gift or, if you can, a monthly pledge, as Jim noted, when you call 800 the letter A in the word family. We've got all the details about how you can make a contribution, make a difference, and receive Jill's book, Strong Heart.

All those details are in the show notes. Well, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back next time as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. Our biblically-based counseling will help you find the root of your problems and face challenges together. We'll talk with you, pray with you, and help you find out which program will work best. Call us at 1-866-875-2915.