Transcript: Successful Parenting within a Godly Marriage Part 3

Video Transcript: Successful Parenting within a Godly Marriage Part 03

Welcome to the third class on successful parenting within godly marriage. This is going to be talking more about the nuts and bolts of parenting. And I'm going to be using a lot a lot of the love and logic principles. The main book that I have used comes from Jim Fay, which is love and logic magic for early childhood. He is a huge proponent, and actually the founder of love and logic. But I really still speak a lot in terms of a book called loving our kids on purpose is more, making a heart connection with your children by Danny silk. And this is a love of a lot of the love and logic material as well, but with a Christian perspective. 

Rule number one for parents with love and logic principles act without frustration or anger. Stop using scraps or repeated warnings, settle limits once make statements you can enforce, give kids a healthy sense of control. 

Rule number two for parents always provide a strong dose of empathy before delivering a consequence. Replace punishment with logical consequences. When possible, show your child how to solve his or her own problems. You know, you don't have to be a perfect parent to raise a great kid. Three different responsibilities that must be embraced as a parent order to establish a punishment free love build respectful environment in your homes, is going to be discussed now. And then I'm going to add a fourth very helpful Foundation. 

The first responsibility as a parent is to take care of and manage you. Manage you as the parents. In order to take care of you, we need to learn how to set up healthy boundaries with our children, we need to put a fence around our yard, complete with a gate. In order to take care of good of ourselves, we need to learn how to set up this gate I'm going to give an example is about gardening. Because boundaries communicate value for what is the limit of those boundaries. Let's say that there was a family and they had just moved into a new community or a new neighborhood. And there were a number of yards that showed garden were going to be given and were able to be grown in their yard. But there were also a couple of yards that had like a fence around and it made it kind of like an eyesore. But then there were other yards that looked like the gardens were just free flowing. You know when spring would come and the family that moved in and they started to look around and see the gardens and realize that the fence that was around, kept the deer out. And all of a sudden there was wonderful green growth and lots of vegetables and lots of flowers. But the gardens that did not have the fence around, all of a sudden, there was a lot of of the vegetation was ate and it was no longer even growing. 

Now the fence created the bounderies, but it actually encouraged some wonderful growth. Given another example, if you have several junk cars out in the field is called an eyesore. If you put a fence around those cars, then you have a wrecking yard. And if you put a building around those cars, you have a garage with each increase the limits you increase the value of what is inside. When you raise the level of what you require. Before you will allow access you increase the value of what you have. Now, you know passive parents have no fence around their gardens because their passive relational style says your needs manner mind don't. Often these parents struggle to get a respectful response from their children because they've done a good job communicating to their kids that they do not respect themselves. There are also Christian parents who are more aggressive and he searches that is the children sad to keep a safe distance from them. And is that healthy and no, that's like having an electric fence around their garden, get too close and you will get zapped. Their aggressive style says my needs matter, yours don't. Another way to set healthy boundaries is telling those around you. What you will be doing is sort of trying to get others to do something for you. As parents It is easy to get in a routine of barking out commands. Pick it up. Come here. Stop being so noisy. Be nice to your brother. Our homes are filled with the illusionary practice of controlling each other. Practice being powerful by controlling something you do control namely yourself as the parents say things like I will listen to you when your voice is as soft as mine. Take your time putting the responsibility back on the child or I will manage your fight with your brother just like a referee only I charge $10 each for each fight I referee, ready, go. Child is managing this. When we make these statements we have the ability to enforce what we say is important to us. And it does not require other people to give us control over them. We simply do control what we can control.

Another way to look at it is disconnecting the big red button. As your children get a little older and a little smarter, they're not fun to be with episodes are going to become more sophisticated. In short, they're going to learn to talk back to you. And when they're not being fun, that target can look like defiance and arguments and disrespect. And that's the big red button on the chest of most Christians, parents disrespect. Dealing with this at a very early age can provide a life saving base for future parenting with difference in opinion. Now, when your kid is throwing a fit or giving birth to a cow, that's an analogy, right there in front of you, it is absolutely the worst time to have a reasonable conversation with your child. You see when your child is out of control is the worst time because the child is not looking for solutions. The child is looking for a victim. I want to talk about ways to intervene in those moments. I call them one liners. Here's the child all upset. And these could be possible one liners, the child was saying that's not stupid. It's not fair. The parent says I know. You know it's not fair. The child first probably so this is the neatest thing you ever made me do. The parent says that could be, why are you acting like such a freak? I don't know. Now, you're telling your child, I am the cloud and cannot be moved. you're communicating that yes, you love that child. And you can even be okay with their struggle but I'm going to manage me while you struggle with you. Notice how you're saying very calm as a parent, you are giving one liners and a phase research. It has been incredible. What happens when those one liners are given. 

Because the child has to be able to look at what they're doing. How about the second responsible as a parent is the second and fourth healthy limits with your children by giving them choices and consequences. When we give our children choices, we validate them by recognizing they need power, and their relationships with us. If we act like we have all the power, and they have none, when they're little, it sets us up for a pretty rough transition when they're older. And it's time actually to share that power. In our children's adolescence, we can mistakenly figure these power struggles are about respect, and their value for us as parents more than about our kids needing self control. In our panic to preserve our status in the relationship we end up getting so crazy that we blurred out do you want to live or die? Do you ever want to see the light of day again? You want me to give you something to cry for or wait till your father comes home and on, and on? Let's have some different examples. very specifically, the child says, but why? The parent could say why do you think? The child says I hate you or you hate me. The parent can say I'm sorry, you feel that way. The child says, dad left me. You say I know. Not fair. You say I'll listen to you when your voice sounds like mine. And about anything that your child can say. I love you too much to argue, is a one liner, that could be sad in almost any circumstance. Ephesians 6:1-4. For Children obey your parents in the Lord for this as right Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on Earth. You know, not getting angry when a parent can model I love you too much to argue that is absolutely steps to allow that child to honor you as father and mother. But you'll notice a part of the last part of this word fathers do not exasperate your children and said bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. Either option that the parent has laid out for the child is somebody that the parent would be happy for the child to choose. If the parent offers a child a choice between what we want them to do and what we don't want them to do. And we set them up to choose poorly just to feel powerful. Let's give an example. Do you want to do what I say? Or do you want me to spank you. Not a good choice. Because one of those days. One of those is that make you happy. And any kid that is trying to win a power struggle will choose the second option would just go ahead and spank me go ahead and make my day. So let's try again. Do you want to clean your room or pay me to do it for you? Now that's an empowering set of choices because you can be happy with either outcome. The second guideline for offering good choices is that you have to make sure that your child understands the choices being offered. When you tell them to clean their room for example, you need to know that the picture of the completed job in your mind matches the one and there's. You might be saying things like, when you think about the bed is that messy or neet? Do you think the pillow should still be laying on the floor?

The child might say this is gonna take me a year, but probably so but what do you think about the floor? Do you think this is picked up and vacuumed? And the child says, vacuum that's not fair. I know. You know, it's not fair, the child says, well, probably so And how about the garbage can full or empty? You want to empty? The child says? And how about the clothes bag full of dirty clothes? Or full of clean clothes? Or what do you want me to do with the clean clothes, put them away? Probably so any questions? That's more of a discussion about the specifics of what's going to happen in the room with some one liners. That very much can lead to a final guideline for offering choices. This is the first point where most parents don't know what to do, the parent has given their child a choice for either outcome is great. And the parent has made sure that the child understands the task at hand. But the thing is, when the parent offers a kid, a choice between A or B, any kid with a brain is going to say C. How do you get them to stick with either A or B, this is where you need to have a plan, a plan to enforce your choices with consequences. So often choices, and having a consequence, how about this? So your kid says about the room, I can hire someone to do it. And you say, well, great, how much. And the kid just says 50 bucks, I'll find somebody to clean my room. That's how much I would charge. And you say, well, probably so. I'm just kidding mom, I'm not going to pay 50 bucks. 

Well, maybe. And all of a sudden, as they're as upset as they are, you end up coming into the room and you start cleaning, and making sure that things are put away and things are all taken care of. And the child at that point, is quite upset, I didn't ask you to come into my room, I didn't tell you to clean my room, I'd said I was going to find somebody. And I'll pay him to do what? In a little while, though. It's all done. You remember what the child has said it was their choice, they were going to individually working with a teenager now to make sure that they were going to find somebody to pay for that. And then you leave the room and you say, you know what, I think we need to discuss how the payment is going to be for the room. I'll take Visa, MasterCard, American Express cash, or hard labor. And actually, I even will take some money in selling the Xbox. I didn't say I would do that. I cleaned the room. Now there's payments. Now the hard part about this parents is that there has to be follow through. You can not fix your child at this point. Often choices and enforcing consequences guides our children progressively toward taking ownership for their lives. There are two types of parental intervention we want to avoid in order to do this successfully. The first type of intervention is swooping in, and such as the situation fixing the problem. And that's the helicopter. And the second is presenting the consequence, as presenting a consequent mixed with anger and punishment. And that is not good either. swooping in to fix your child's problem effectively prevents him or her from taking ownership. This is an example of family where the parents were saying we've got a big problem at home. Our kids are trying to kill each other. They hurt each other all the time, and we're constantly pulling them apart. They need to understand their responsibility.

Is anger going to help that? Because notice, even with the example I just gave earlier, the parent wasn't angry when they started to talk about now how is this going to be repaid? And actually, that mother eventually did sell the Xbox. And that was never an issue again, coupled the room being cleaned. But look at this mother. This is anger having a megaphone, and I literally This is probably not going to happen. But this was an example of what happens when there's anger. How about parenting with anger and punishment when someone gets angry about your mistake his or her anger diverts your focus from dealing with the poor choice you made or the problem you're having with that person to your need to defend yourself in attacks weakens and destroys connection between two people. Anger will destroy connection between you and your child. Anger is your enemy, even passive aggressive anger. Often the Christian's kind of anger. passive aggressive anger is expressed in cutting sarcasm or criticism, rejection or withholding love. Instead, you want to be able to offer sadness when your child makes a mistake. Remember, consequences are some of the best teachers and sadness and empathy help to keep the focus on the real problem. Anger violates and sabotage is the very goals that you most desire for your children when they fail. Not only that they can learn from their mistakes but also that they can lean into their relationship with their parents as a source of wisdom and comfort. As I go through the learning process, I was thinking about an example, if, if you were driving a car, and you got pulled over, and the next thing that happened is that policeman just yanked you out of the car. And he said, You were going this many miles over and right now get out of this car and put your hands up on the hood. I don't know if you would be thinking, I know, I wouldn't be thinking about the mileage and how fast I was going, I would be thinking about the anger of that policeman. But when the policeman approaches the car, and he says, Ma'am, I need your license. 

There's your proof of insurance, I need you to know that you are going this many miles over. I mean, you're saying in conversation, he's showing you He probably could even show you by the whatever they measure it with that you were going over, or I was going over. That's a whole different ballgame. Because the anger does not stop the process. I then take responsibility, realizing that I actually was going over the speed limit. And it's the same way for our kids. So we want to be able to offer sadness when the child makes a mistake. And remember, because they will learn more about their relationship and that learning process, anger violates and sabotages the very goals that you most desire for your children when they fail. Not only that they learn from their mistakes, but also that they can lean like I said, into their relationship. Sadness and empathy are what the Holy Spirit shows us when we fail. The Holy Spirit does not punish us, he comforts us. He shows us that he is sad for us and invites us to come of our own freewill to benefit from his great wisdom and power for fixing problems. The Holy Spirit's response to our failure actually helps us to trust him more. And when we respond to our children, like the Holy Spirit responds to us, our children will trust us more, because they learned that they can fail in front of us. Now, how about some consequences with anger? This is, I'm going to give you some examples that are not going to be helpful in terms of your children. Stop spitting that food, quit it. That's it. I'm sick and tired of this, you'll just have to go to bed hungry? For crying out loud. If you would just take care of your choice. They would not break. No, I won't buy you another. What do you think? Do you think money grows on tree? No, I'm not taking you off for pizza. So what do you expect after the way you behaved last time? There's a shame one. I hope this teaches you a lesson. Quit that whining. How many times do I have to tell you stop it and go to your room right now. Just look at that little girl about being annoyed. And really, it's not going to be communicating that this actually is a child. That could be a real gift from God. And we got to remember that in being a child and being a gift from God, that they are designed to be a blessing. Our children will not sense that if that annoyed with them and showing that much anger. This would be consequences with empathy. How sad dinner's over. Bummer. I feel so sad when I break my things to this is when the child broke their toy. This is so sad. We can have pizza sometime when I don't have to worry about tantrums at the restaurant, and then leave the restaurant. So sad looks like a little bedroom time when there's going to be that timeout.

Appropriate consequences system misbehavior focus on poor choices not bad children addressed the present not the past. These appropriate consequences are wrapped in a loving blanket of empathy. They are not accompanied by lectures, reminders or guilt trips. And they can be enforced consistency with consistency and teach your child wisdom. Look at that, with some of those appropriate consequences and loving interventions. There's a daddy and a happy little girl. Now the third responsibility as a parent is to lead your child at a high value for for their connection with you by helping them understand how their choices affect your relationship, particularly when it comes to helping them clean up their messes. It was freedom that Christ set us free. And it was for that freedom for you were called to freedom brother and only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one another. Now, if you're going to train children to handle freedom, let's look at this as a priority of relationship that we need to do our best to help our kids make a strong connection between these two messages. I love you very much and what are you going to do when we tie choices, questions and limits to the messages of love. Our kids learn that those are essential aspects of learning to manage their and have a relationship for which we have a very high value. They learn that managing their freedom is what cultivates and protects a respectful loving connection with us, our desires parents And be that their value for that connection because the thing that directs them and the choices they make. Ultimately, the way that God intends for them to be governed is by their value for their connection with God. 

Making room for people to choose as what builds a culture of honor. If a parent establishes a way of relating with their child in which they don't have a choice, then the child will learn that the only needs that matter are their parents. This leads them to develop a self concept where they either fight back to get their needs met, and as the rebels or they believe their needs don't matter. And that's a child with very poor self concept. Learning to distinguish assertiveness from disrespect is one important part of cultivating a healthy environment of honor. As you sow respect into your encounters with your children. By making room for them to assert themselves, you will reap respect. I remember a teenage girl that I was working with, and she was living with her biological father and stepmother. And she had a job and earns money and ended up buying some very nice gifts for her boyfriend. There was some nice cologne there was a nice watch. And her father and stepmother, they told her that she had no business spending that kind of money and her boyfriend. And they actually confiscated the presence. And the father didn't think that she knew his daughter, but he started to wear the watch himselves. The daughter tried to assert herself and talk to them about this was her money. And actually she was doing some of the other aspects of money too. She was saving some she was tithing some. But this was money that she had saved, that was her portion. But they wouldn't even have any time to listen to her. And I did not allow that to be an expression. That became a huge issue with multiple discussions for respect, because that was one time that that happened. But there were other instances to and it became a counseling issue.

Now, the fourth foundational principle for every child to feel love, we must learn to speak their unique love language. Now this is something that I've kind of added, because every child has a special way of perceiving love. There are basically five ways for children. And I wanted to incorporate this in the parenting talk because being able to reach to your child in the way and the specific identification of love language, will definitely bring an amazing connection that could take place between your child and us a parent, because indeed our people speak and understand emotional love. And these five love languages are physical touch, words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, and acts of service. Here's a little pumpkin and you know what, his physical touch is his love language and look at that happy mommy and that happy little boy. Physical touches the easiest love language to use unconditionally. Because parents need no special occasion or excuse for making physical or physical contact, they have almost constant opportunity to transfer love to the heart of a child with touch. The language of touch is not confined to hugging and kissing, but includes any kind of physical contact, even when they are busy parents can often gently touch a child on the back arm or shoulder. I remember my mother used to always have a little bit of a routine. When I would be going to bed at night she would just do a light tickle on my arm. And now I have made that be part of a tradition with my children and grandchildren and assist a comfort touch and it helps them to go to sleep. About when you think about your child coming in wanting to have you kiss their booboo. Now that's a physical touch. Those would be examples of very much proactive, and healthy ways of physical touch. 

I saw an example of a very sad way for physical touch. This past summer, my family and I were attending a parade and across the street I was watching it look like a group of some children and some adults it probably was a family and they were walking briskly to get to their, I think it was probably where their seats were going to be for the parade. The youngest child in that group ended up falling and I could tell, he scraped his knee and it was difficult for him he started to cry. All of a sudden, the male figure in the group I'm going to assume it was his father took a hold of his hair and wank him back up on his feet and now he was crying even harder. And all of a sudden, the father just walked away and kept on walking. His older brother I'm going to assume it was an older brother walked up next to him and took His hand and started to lead him with the rest of the family. I watched that little boy start to then wipe away his tears because his brother had taken his hand and now was helping him. Now the father was not doing physical touch in a way that was healthy at all. But his brother did. That was amazing to watch. I had all I could do to. They we're walking so fast, and then all of a sudden there was a bunch of people around because that's the type of situations at times I've even spoken into. What is hard about those types of situations is because as a bystander, my biggest concern is that the child will be punished, because I've heard of that in my counseling that an innocent bystander might say something to a parent with the way their words are being spoken to their child or if they've been using some physical discipline in front in the public. But what's going to happen to that child when they go into the private I just started to pray. Jesus, you know, that this is one of your beloved children, please protect them. How about words of affirmation? This is another love language, and communicating love words are very powerful. Words of affection and endearment, words of praise and encouragement. Words I give positive guidance all say I care about you. such words are like a gentle warm rain falling on the soul, they nurture the child's inner self sense of worth and security. Conversely, cutting words spoken out of short lived frustration, can hurt a child's self esteem and cause doubts about disabilities. The ancient Hebrew proverb did not overstate the reality, the tomgue has the power of life and death. 

Quality time is another love language quality time is focus attention, it means giving the child your undivided attention. Most infants receive plenty of quality time feeding and changing alone give the children hours of focused attention. However, as the child grows, the giving of quality time becomes more difficult because it requires real sacrifice on the part of the parents. This does not require that you go anywhere special, you can provide focus attention almost anywhere, and your most nurturing quality times will often be at home, or you are alone with your child. Also when I'm doing family counseling, but family counseling, when there is health and healing is great for marriages, too. I'll often ask the parents to set up some special times for each of their children. It actually can be somebody that the child could earn as a reward. It can be special breakfast with a dad or mom. It could be a walk around the block with dad and mom. It could be a bike ride, kids eat that up. And that is an example of quality time. How about gifts, that's another love language. The giving and receiving of gifts can be a powerful expression of love at the time they are given and often extended into later years. The most meaningful gifts become symbols of love, and those that truly convey love are part of love language. Yet for parents, to truly speak love language for gifts, the child must feel that his parents genuinely care, gift cannot replace, genuinely caring for the child. For this reason the other Love Languages must be given along with a gift. A gift cannot take the place alone. For a love language. The child's emotional love tank needs to be kept in order for the gift to express heartfelt love. How about acts of service, acts of service can become a model for your child service and responsibility. You may wonder how your children will develop their own independence and competence if you serve them. But as you express your love through acts of service to your children doing things that they may not yet be able to do for themselves. You're saying a model. This will help them escape their self centered focus and help others. That's our ultimate goal as parents. An example of this is I was working with a father and his son, and the father could tell that he didn't have the type of relationship that he had with his father. He was a very verbal father gave him lots of verbal affirmation. 

He would tell his son regularly that he loved him he would tell his son regularly that he was proud of him. However, the sons love language was acts of service. Now this son was quite an outdoors, young man. He liked to hunt he liked to fish he liked to walk in the woods. He wanted to go camping. And the father was more of a sport type father. He liked to watch some football, and baseball, and hockey. Now they each understood the others passions. But that wasn't what their natural hobbies or passions were. Now the father would ask questions of the son when he came back from hunting. Like did you get anything? How was the hunt? Did you see any deer? But the son would just say yeah, it was fine. But it was just a conversation. On one day, the father ended up seeing in one of the local retail stores that there were some tents on sale and some camping supplies. So we asked the son, if this would be helpful. Could they go and look at some of the camping supplies because his birthday was coming, the sun lit up, Because now the father actually was getting involved in something that the son enjoyed, and actually showing some acts of service because they went together. The father actually looked at the tent, they sat in a tent together, they tried out one of the camping stoves, it was amazing. And in our session, the son said, for the first time in a long time, he actually felt like his father loved him. And the father was completely baffled because he had been saying he loved the son regularly. But it wasn't the son's love language, it was the act of service. So the ability to determine your child's love language can be found. And I'm going to reference this book, it'll be in your work cited the Five Love Languages of children. And please know that there's going to be some word documents that you will now find and you can access them to have even more information about the actual love language for your child. So enjoy, as this is how I wanted to tidy up and kind of tuck in the class on being a wonderful parent, and raising wonderful children. And as God will continue to lead each one of you, I pray that your sense of family would grow and feel God's presence and your marriage would also grow and feel God's presence as the husband and wife that you are in as the parents that you are to your children.