Messages Parents Send - Part 2

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Friday, May 12th. When it comes to our children, what we say and what we don't say can have far-reaching effects.

Get help recognizing and correcting the potentially damaging attitudes you might be delivering to your kids. Here's part two of Messages Parents Send. All of us are communicators and we're communicating messages sometimes very overtly. We say, I love you, or we may say, I don't like you. Or sometimes it can be a very subtle kind of communication. And you know that you can look with someone else and look in their eyes and never blink and send a message, I love you. Or you can send a simple facial expression of approval or disapproval. Or with your gestures you can talk about, without even saying a word, something about how intense you're feeling.

And the way you carry yourself, either humped over or standing straight. There are all different kinds of ways we communicate, sometimes in pure silence. We're all communicators. And there's one group of communicators that I want to talk about primarily, though all of us are and all of us are sending messages.

And sometimes they're good, sometimes they're not so good. And the problem is that oftentimes we don't realize what we communicate. Because you see, it's not what we think, it's what we communicate to people that impacts their lives. And I want us to think about these messages that we send as parents.

So what I would like to do to make this very practical is this. I want to illustrate some of those circumstances that all of us as parents deal with in our life. And what I want to do is give you the illustration. Then I want to show you how we respond sometimes. Then what does the child hear?

And then how should we do it? So let's begin with something very simple, and that is, for example, father comes home and he says, guess what? When the lady gave me the change today, she gave me $7.52 more than was coming to me. So I'm $7.52 to the good. And besides that, when she checks out this evening, she's going to have to shell out the money because she gave me too much.

Ho, ho, ho. The father brags about how much money he earned by stealing. The communication to the child is this. My father's dishonest. My father doesn't care that that woman's going to have to shell out $7.52 out of her salary to pay for what he did. Now, what should he have said?

He should have come home and said, guess what happened today? I paid for this and they gave me $7.52 too much. And then I thought about, this doesn't belong to me. It would be stealing me to take from somebody what doesn't belong to me. And besides that, $7.52 is not worth sleeping with a guilty conscience today and tomorrow and next week. And every time I go in that store, every time I see that person, it's going to be on my mind. Son, sweetheart, don't ever steal, don't lie, don't cheat. Because you know what? It'll mess up your conscience.

And you want to be able to sleep good every night. You think those kids won't remember that? Yes, they will.

They will remember. And you either communicate what is good or you communicate what is destructive. Now, for example, here's a father who's always making comments about women. And he makes comments about how they dress. If they dress seductively, he may make some comment about that. Or he may make a comment about their appearance.

They're too thin or too fat or they're too this or too that. And so the daughter's sitting there while the father's just voicing his careless and indifferent opinion about women. What's his daughter thinking? Maybe she's about twelve or thirteen or maybe she's ten or eleven.

What she's hearing is this. My father doesn't like certain kind of women. Or my father is attracted to certain kind of women. And one thing for certain, if my father's going to keep liking me, I better not gain one pound. Or if I'm going to have my father's attention, I need to dress a little bit more to get some attention. What's the consequence?

The consequence is this. Whether she has her father's attention or not, she's going to get a man's attention. And she's going to begin, unconsciously, to begin to dress a little bit more seductively to get some guy's attention.

Because you know what? If this is what our father likes, must be what men like. And if that's what men like, that's what I'm going to do. And besides that, I know what my father likes. And I certainly want to be pleasing to my father.

And so therefore, this is what I'm going to do. Now she may not sit down and reason that out. But in her subconscious mind, she's going to begin to respond to what she thinks pleases her father. And what she heard her father say. Now what should that father say? Well, first of all, the father should be careful what he says about women, period.

And if he's looking the wrong way, should keep him to himself and talk to God about it. And certainly not comment about how a person looks or how they don't look in such a way to be critical. Because the truth is, every woman and every man is different. God created us all different. So you don't make comments that are very, shall we say critical, or demeaning in some way. That causes a son or daughter to think less than a person simply because of the way they're shaped or the way they look. That has nothing to do with character. We're all different.

They're godly people in all shapes and sizes. But what you communicate, that child is going to accept as law in their life because the last thing they want is their parents' disfavor. Then of course, for example, here is the son or the daughter and let's say the dad's working on the lawnmower. Now nobody likes to work on lawnmowers, I understand that. And so the son comes along and says, Dad, I want to help you fix that. Now look, just leave this alone.

You don't know anything in the world about lawnmowers. Just get lost, son. Or the daughter walks in the kitchen and mom's cooking and she's got a whole bunch of pots and pans out and she's just, and the daughter says, Mom, I want to help you. I want you to teach me how to cook. I don't have time to teach you how to cook. You'll learn to cook later in life, but just go do something else.

I'm busy now. Mom, what message did you send? I don't want you with me. I'm not interested in teaching you. You're too ignorant to learn.

You're too stupid to learn. You say, well, I want to, what, what, what, what, what do you mean? It's not what you meant. It's what you communicated. So how do you correct that? You say, son, hold this wrench.

Oh, sweetheart, come over here and let me show you how to do this. Stir this this way. You know what?

They may make the biggest mess in the world, but you know what you've done? You have said to your child, you belong. You are competent.

I love you. You're worth teaching. You're going to make a great wife one of these days. Son, you're going to make a great mechanic. Well, he may not know duly about being a mechanic, but you know what you've done?

You have included him. You've you've helped him to be a part of your life. It's what we communicate. Then, for example, here's the father who's issuing commands, always issuing commands. And he says, here's what I want you to do. I want you to do it right now. And so all of us have said, well, why?

It doesn't make any difference why. I said do it, therefore do it. Now, the father's communicated an edict. But what the child heard was, I don't deserve to know why.

I must not be worth much that I can't even, I'm not even counted worthy of at least an explanation. And so what gets communicated is frustration and anxiety. It creates eventually rebellion in the heart of that child. Want to do what's right, want to do their best, want to do all that they can. Then what about, for example, that parent who doesn't discipline the child and the child comes home at school, they can watch all the TV they want. They can get in the, in all the candy they want. They can eat when they want, when they want it, what they want.

Give them a credit card, give them money. The message is, I don't care what you do, just stay out of my way. Just don't bother me. And so the child reads, I don't count. I'm probably better off outside of this family. They don't love me because, you see, a child wants to be disciplined.

And so the child gets communicated this message. They don't care about my future. They don't care about what I learn or don't learn. They don't care about what happens to me. I know I'm doing the wrong thing. I know I shouldn't be doing that.

They don't even care enough to correct me. My father doesn't even care enough to discipline me, knowing that I'm doing the wrong thing. He just wants me out of his way. Just stay out of his way.

Don't take up his time. A horrible message. And then we wonder why they get in trouble. We wonder why they have the friends they have. We wonder why they go through the heartache and the pain. And we wonder why they get into the kind of trouble that brings such embarrassment upon the parents.

Why? Because you didn't care enough to say to them, I love you enough to discipline you. I love you enough that I want you to be what you ought to be. And I love you enough to take the time to help you understand what life's all about.

Then I think about what happens. Father doesn't listen. And the child wants to talk.

The father's doing something else. And so the son or the daughter says, you're not listening. You're not trying to listen right now.

What is he doing? Not really doing anything, just not listening. Or even if you're sitting at the table and you're all looking at each other, do you know what? A child knows just like that whether you're listening or not.

You can look him square in the eye and they can tell you. A child knows whether you're listening or not. And so what you're saying by the fact that you're not listening is this, what you have to say is not important.

My mind is on something else. What does that say? It says something about their self-worth, their self-esteem.

It says something about they don't even feel like they belong. If you can't listen, what's this all about? A parent wants you to listen very carefully.

If you don't look your children square in the eye and give them your mind and your heart and your emotion, when they're young, when they want to talk, you mark it down, I told you this. One of these days, your daughter's going to walk in and you know she's in trouble. You have a sneaking suspicion she's pregnant and she won't talk. Well, you need to talk to me.

And you know what she's going to say? Why should I talk to you? For the first seventeen years of my life, you didn't listen. Why do I think you care to listen now? When I was a kid, you didn't listen.

Now I'm in trouble and you want me to talk and you want to listen. Too late. Devastating communication. When they feel that we're not listening, because there'll be a time when we want to listen and there'll become a time when they don't care whether they talk or not.

It's too late. You sent them a message you didn't care. You sent them a message that what they had to say wasn't important. You sent a message that you were totally indifferent to what they were concerned about and their concerns were not your concerns.

Go work it out yourself. And so what happens? That's what they do. They go tell their friends. And their friends tell their friends. And they have confusion and frustration and anger and resentment and hostility and bitterness toward their parents.

Why? You were just too busy to listen. Remember, it's what we communicate to them. Not what we think, but what we communicate.

How do they interpret your not listening and not caring? Then I think about how many times I've heard this. My father's never hugged me. My father's never put his hand on me. The father may live in that home, live around those children, never hug them, never touch them, never say to that daughter, you dog, I love you to death. They will say to that son, man, you know what? You're going to be just like your dad. You're going to be a real man.

Never any of that. What do you think that communicates to a child? The father says, well, you know what? They know I love them.

And how many times have I heard this? Now, I know that my father loved me, but, and what I said to them, don't even tell, I know what's going to follow. I know they loved me. Listen, that's an adult 30, 40, 50 years of age, 60 years of age, still doing what? Rationalizing the lack of a feeling of love and tenderness that his father or her father never expressed.

And they're still rationalizing and still explaining it away and still trying to cope with it 40 years later. Because every child needs to be hugged in the right way. Every daughter needs to be hugged by her father. She needs to feel the warmth and the security of a godly father, of a godly man who touches her as a parent in a godly fashion. She needs to feel that. You know why?

Because that will give her an idea to be able to distinguish between what is real in a man and what is not real in a man when she starts choosing one. Now, once in a while, you may have a son who grows up and thinks he's about fifteen, he's too big to be hugged. You know what? You just grab him and remind him, when he gets too big to be hugged, he is in real trouble.

Because you know what? If you're too big and too smart to get hugged, you have a major problem. And that problem's going to transfer itself to other people in your life. And I think about how often what we do, and we don't even think about the time, the long-lasting effect of that. When my children would come in, no matter what I was doing, and I always stopped what I was doing, especially if I was studying, and they'd come in at nighttime when they were teenagers and it'd be eleven o'clock or something like that, and sometime a little later maybe I'd be studying. And when they walked into my study, I knew the thing to stop everything you're doing.

My mother taught me a great lesson. She taught me the right question to ask my children when they came in because here's what she would say to me. If I came in late, she'd come into my bedroom so late to bed and she'd say, Well, tell me what you want me to know. That's what she would say.

You know what? That kept me very honest and very pure. Because I knew that I was going to have to answer to my mother. And she wouldn't say, Did you do this or that? She said, Tell me what you want me to know.

And I knew that I wanted to tell her whatever she wanted to know. There's something about that that's so important. And I simply want to say to you as a parent, I don't know what you think is important in life, but nothing is so important to be willing to listen. If you will listen when they're very young, they'll talk to you when they've given you grandchildren.

If you'll hug them early in life, they'll be hugging you when you get a little older in life. Because you see, it's what we communicate that makes the difference. You're communicating to your children many messages.

And I want to ask you again, are you communicating? I accept you just the way you are. You belong to me. You're competent. I've got confidence in you.

I love you. You're secure in our relationship. And you're worth more than you'll ever be able to understand. Any child who grows up with that is going to grow up godly. And their life is going to make a difference. And parents, we can't leave it to pastors and teachers, aunts and uncles and grandparents. That's our responsibility. And if you will assume that responsibility wisely in those latter years of your life, you'll be blessed beyond all comprehension. Then I would ask you one last question. Are you in a position in your life as a parent to tell your child how to be saved?

Have you conveyed this communication to your children? Jesus Christ is the most important person in life. Jesus Christ is the only Savior. Jesus Christ is the one through whom our sins are forgiven. When he went to the cross, he laid down his life and paid for your sin in mind. And if you're willing to confess your sins like dad has and ask him to forgive you of your sins, he'll save you like he saved your dad or your mom. And the most important decision you'll ever make in life, son, sweetheart, is giving your life to Jesus Christ, putting your life in his hands, and trusting him to guide you all of your life. And I would simply ask you as a parent, are you in a position spiritually that you can lead your own son and daughter to know Jesus Christ as their personal Savior?

If not, that's the next most important decision you'll ever make in this life, and I trust you'll do it. And Father, how grateful we are when we think about how you love us. You've certainly made us by adopting us into your kingdom to feel that we belong, and accepting us through the blood of Jesus Christ. You've made us competent through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, and you have loved us sacrificially. And we feel very secure in our relationship with you, and we know that we are worthy when we look at the cross and see the price you paid. We are highly valued in your mind. And I pray the Holy Spirit will take this message, sink it deep in the heart of every single person who hears it, not only in relationship to their children, but to each other, and that we as adults communicate the right messages to those with whom we converse, with whom we relate. And we'll thank you for it in Jesus' name.

Amen. Thank you for listening to Part 2 of Messages Parents Send. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.