Latest / Equipped for Impact / Raising Kids Who Take Ownership- Teaching Responsibility and Resilience

Transcript

Raising Kids Who Take Ownership- Teaching Responsibility and Resilience · Equipped for Impact

0:07
Nate: Welcome to Equipped for Impact, the podcast designed to assist Christian parents, leaders and educators to raise up the next generation to stand firm in their faith and influence the world.
0:18
Nate: For Christ, we're your hosts.
0:20
Nate: I'm Nate and I'm Lewis, so let's get started.
0:24
Nate: We are coming down to the end of May, which means summer is coming.
0:30
Nate: Hopefully you are looking forward to summertime coming up in your household and just the change of pace that that brings.
0:38
Nate: And today we're going to be tackling a topic that is desperately needed in today's culture, and I think summertime is a great time to start working on this.
0:48
Nate: And it's the two kind of ideas we talked about it last episode of responsibility and resilience.
0:55
Nate: These things kind of go hand in hand.
0:58
Nate: And when we're out of school and we're home and we're spending more time with our kids, Like that's a great time to really start working on on these two ideas.
1:06
Nate: So, um, Lewis, I would guess I would say, like what are we looking at when we start talking about today's culture and students who take responsibility?
1:15
Nate: Like what does that look like in today's landscape?
1:17
Luis: You know it's interesting that this is this is actually a great follow-up to our conversation in the last episode that we talked about gen alpha right, and so Gen Alpha elementary, middle school age kids, gen Z high school age kids, and so what we're seeing is that we are raising kids in a culture that excuses blame, avoids discomfort and idolizes self-esteem over character, and so the result of that is a fragile generation.
1:46
Luis: Yeah, there was a study done by Barna in 2000, I guess in 2022, that found that 77% of Gen Z struggles with anxiety, and I know that different studies have shown different numbers, but the idea is that the data overwhelmingly shows that the younger generations are struggling with anxiety.
2:06
Luis: They're feeling overwhelmed, uh, and they're scared of failure, and when we see god's word, we see that that runs against what the word of god teaches, and so god's word calls us to something greater yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's interesting because, uh, we've mentioned this book before.
2:24
Nate: But the anxious generation have you picked it up yet?
2:26
Luis: I haven't, but it's on my list to read this summer summer summer reading list.
2:30
Luis: There you go.
2:31
Nate: Add it to that.
2:31
Nate: So so that's interesting, cause we've mentioned that, if you've not listened to the episodes about the navigating a digital world, there's a two-parter we did a while back, so that that, um, we've been at this podcast a long enough that I can say we did that episode a while back.
2:46
Luis: This is episode 14, 14, 14.
2:48
Nate: Um, not super long, but in the podcasting world you know we're, we're getting a little long in the tooth, we are.
2:54
Luis: And we are.
2:55
Luis: Our audience is growing.
2:56
Luis: I mean we have we actually have a national audience.
3:00
Luis: There is a guy that I mentor in Washington and he listens to it weekly with his wife and his teenage daughter, ooh.
3:10
Nate: so shout out to them.
3:11
Nate: Y'all out there in Washington State and wherever you happen to be I know we've got a big audience in Charlotte, north Carolina.
3:17
Luis: We do yeah.
3:18
Nate: We don't know who you are, those of you in Charlotte, north Carolina.
3:21
Nate: So shoot us an email at podcastwaynechristianorg.
3:23
Nate: We would love to hear from you.
3:25
Nate: But back on track.
3:26
Nate: Back on track.
3:27
Nate: So the Anxious Generation.
3:29
Nate: So we've talked about that book before and recommended it because a lot of that, with the rise of anxiety in this next generation, is linked to like there's a sharp uptick in 2010, which is when, like, smartphones became ubiquitous, really, um, and so the students who went through puberty, kind of, after um, smartphones became ubiquitous, you know, after 2010,.
3:53
Nate: Like you see a sharp uptick in in anxiety.
3:56
Nate: But actually, jonathan Haidt in that book, he also links it to the fact that they are taking less responsibility and less risks, I would say.
4:06
Nate: And so it's really not just like a simple solution of it's this one, it's all the phones.
4:12
Nate: You know be like an old person blaming technology these days but it's also the lack of risky play, and you mentioned scripture, you know talking about that.
4:21
Nate: It actually doesn't teach us to avoid hardship, it teaches us to persevere through it all.
4:29
Nate: The book of James I think two ideas came to mind there.
4:32
Nate: The book of James says to consider it all joy when you face various trials, or if you're reading King James, diverse temptations, and it's because it's through that testing, through that hardship, that your faith is refined and it produces endurance, and then it's through that that your faith becomes perfect and complete, lacking nothing right.
4:58
Nate: And so hardships God allows into our lives so that we can grow, so that we can get better as individuals, as Christians.
5:07
Nate: And if we're avoiding that at all costs, we're missing out on the benefits.
5:12
Nate: My other thought was Caleb.
5:14
Nate: You think of Caleb and you know he and Joshua wanted to go into the land and they're like, yeah, we're going to do it.
5:21
Nate: And everybody else said no, we're not going to face those giants.
5:24
Nate: And so they had the 40 years of wandering.
5:26
Nate: And then when they actually did go in, 40 years later and conquer the land, it was Caleb, as an old man, who was like God, give me strength to go up and fight these giants and take the land.
5:36
Nate: And so he trusted God and was going to go out and conquer the land in God's power.
5:41
Nate: So just thinking of those two kind of Old Testament, new Testament examples there about you know resilience, and really you know not backing down but taking responsibility for what God's put in front of you.
5:53
Luis: And what, nate, what you've just described?
5:55
Luis: There is that responsibility and resilience.
5:56
Luis: They're not cultural traits, but they are spiritual disciplines, right, and they are central to discipleship.
6:03
Luis: It's what we read in Genesis 2.15, right Adam's responsibility.
6:06
Luis: Before the fall, god called work good, right, leadership was good, stewardship was good.
6:13
Luis: It was all built into God's design.
6:16
Luis: Work it and keep the garden.
6:17
Luis: Yes, work the garden, keep the garden, have dominion, right, and so all of those things are good and we see that all throughout scripture, like, just think about joseph in egypt, right, god.
6:28
Luis: Talk about a tough life.
6:29
Luis: Yeah, I mean, god allowed him to be hated by his brothers right they sold him into slavery.
6:35
Luis: Then he has a situation where things appear to be going good, and then he ends up in prison falsely accused yeah, falsely accused.
6:42
Luis: And then he's in prison and he's like, hey, I've got a way out.
6:56
Luis: And then it's like, oh, I forgot about you, mm-hmm, falsely accused, how he suffered, how God used him, paul, in prison, in the New Testament, I mean, resilience is forged through adversity, right, it's not forged through ease.
7:11
Nate: Yeah, we've talked about the.
7:12
Nate: It's like going into the weight room, right, and you got to put in the reps, and you don't get stronger by looking at the weights or watching somebody else lift, right, you got to get in there and do it yourself.
7:23
Luis: Believe it or not, I used to work out like regularly, yeah, and I've actually considered like getting back into the gym.
7:28
Luis: But you know what stops me from getting back into the gym?
7:31
Luis: Bonfire, uh, well, yes okay also um.
7:35
Luis: Like the pain, right like ah, like no pain, no gain, like I don't want to hurt, right because, because when you work out, there's never a time that you work out that you're like, oh man, like I feel so good right now.
7:46
Luis: Yeah, there's no pain, like your muscles hurt and they're supposed to hurt.
7:51
Luis: Yeah, because that means that your muscles are growing, are strengthening, and so for those of you that work out and listen, like you know, like when you have a really good workout, you feel good internally, but like your body aches Right, and so I felt the pain, but I also saw the gains.
8:10
Nate: Saw the gains.
8:11
Nate: Yeah, one of my favorite authors, john Acuff.
8:13
Nate: He talks about a soundtrack, like a repetitive thought he tells himself and he says you know, I'll feel better after, or I'll feel great after, and so it's that idea of you got to get through the first like 10 minutes of that run.
8:27
Nate: I'm not really a weight room guy, but you know, 10 minutes into that run and you'll feel great, you'll feel better.
8:37
Nate: And then afterwards it's like, ah, I did it Right and we do that like with anything.
8:40
Nate: Yeah, I don't want to do this math homework.
8:41
Nate: But you know what, once it's done, it's like look, I did the thing.
8:44
Nate: Like I did that, I'll feel better after.
8:47
Nate: So let's kind of define responsibility, okay, cause I know a lot of times we think of responsibility just of you know, you're going to do your chores, you're going to do your homework, you're going to do you know whatever.
8:59
Nate: But one of the things that I've seen is that we can link this idea of responsibility from a biblical standpoint to stewardship.
9:08
Nate: It's the idea that you know we're living as if god is the owner and we are the managers.
9:16
Nate: You know there's there's the different parables that jesus told, all about the, the good steward or the poor stewards.
9:22
Nate: You know the wicked steward, the different stories you can pull out, but but essentially the.
9:26
Nate: The moral of those stories is you know it's god, everything we have is God's, and so how are we using the resources we have time, energy, talents you fill in the blank there.
9:38
Nate: How are we going to steward that from a responsible standpoint?
9:43
Nate: And I think that kind of changes the perspective when you think about the way you're using whatever resources you have.
9:51
Luis: And let me paraphrase something that John Piper once said the idea here is that, parents, your job is not to make your children like you, it's to make them like Christ.
10:03
Luis: Right, and so what that means is that we model responsibility not just as a life skill, right, like we're not teaching responsibility because it's a life skill you're going to need.
10:14
Luis: Yes, I mean you are going to need it, but we're doing it because it's what God requires of us.
10:20
Luis: It's a spiritual calling.
10:22
Luis: And so there's three practical principles that we're gonna cultivate regarding responsibility in our kids, and we're gonna walk through this together, and the first one is is really just to start early with with clear expectations and accountability.
10:39
Luis: I like to say that unspoken expectations are never met Right, and so we need to assign real, meaningful responsibility and then let them own the result.
10:53
Luis: It's not about perfection, but it's about progress, right?
10:55
Luis: Like I was reading something interesting that it's uncommon for kids to have chores.
11:00
Luis: Now you know back for some of our older parents that are listening to this like you remember a time when you had chores, right?
11:09
Luis: I think it was like a study that was done by Braun Research that said that most adults today 82% of adults today report having regular chores growing up so it was common right.
11:22
Luis: Take out the trash, feed the dog clean the kitchen, but now less than 50% of parents say that their kids have chores, and so that number has dropped drastically.
11:31
Luis: Right?
11:31
Luis: So what I'm hearing is parents, you're working too hard, yeah, I mean.
11:34
Luis: I mean if, if you know kids, kids have to have something to do.
11:38
Luis: Yeah, yeah, and so that's number one right, start early, with clear expectations and accountability.
11:43
Nate: Yeah, I think that's that's really great, because having those clear expectations, and then it's like you've got to suffer the consequences if it, if it doesn't get done, right, which is that's our second point.
11:54
Nate: Right, which is teaching cause and effect, like, um, you know that that's.
11:59
Nate: I don't know how many times I've had conversations with with either my own kids or other kids, and just that idea of you know, uh, something happens, and it was like, well, it was an accident, or I didn't mean for that to happen, and it's like, ok, well, but but if you did that thing right, then of course there's other things going to happen.
12:18
Nate: Right, it's cause and effect.
12:19
Nate: We shouldn't shield them from the weight of their decisions.
12:23
Nate: I think a couple episodes maybe was last episode I talked about ordering the giant banana split- yeah.
12:30
Nate: Yeah, here's another ice cream story.
12:32
Nate: Um, uh, the giant banana split.
12:33
Nate: Yeah, yeah, um, here's another ice cream story.
12:35
Nate: So when I worked summer camps, um through high school, um, they would have the staff as an extra thing.
12:38
Nate: You could volunteer to work the the ice cream nights, and so we had waffle sundaes.
12:42
Nate: If y'all have never had a waffle sundae, have you had one?
12:44
Nate: Louis, uh I don't think so.
12:46
Luis: I've had a waffle cone.
12:47
Luis: No, no, it's like literally.
12:48
Nate: I know you don't like breakfast for dinner, but you take a waffle like an actual, from a waffle, iron hot, and you put the ice cream on top of it.
12:55
Luis: Kind of like a brownie.
12:56
Nate: Okay, you know, like you would do a brownie sundae, but you do waffle sundaes and you put all the toppings and different things.
13:01
Nate: So at this camp you could go through and you could get like a quarter of the waffle with ice cream or whatnot, or you could get a whole waffle, like all four quarters, uh, quarters of that giant waffle with all the ice cream.
13:12
Nate: So 14 year old Nate is going through, I'd work, and so then you got a free waffle Sunday, which is the whole reason I would work.
13:19
Nate: It is to get the free food.
13:20
Nate: So I would go through the line and get the full waffle with like five scoops of ice cream, chocolate, caramel, all the things, and then, like the supervisor every week, every week of the summer, would be like Nate, that's not a good idea, but I'd do it anyway.
13:35
Nate: Um, and then I'd feel sick afterwards and I I didn't learn that lesson quite soon enough, but I was a 14 year old boy, so that was a thing, and so they let you, they let me do it.
13:47
Nate: But the thing is, is there's like they weren't no-transcript the end of the world, right, that they forgot their homework at home, or they didn't bring their cleats for practice, or you know, fill in the blank, whatever it is Right.
14:36
Nate: And it's not that big of a deal.
14:37
Nate: You're just going to practice in your tennis shoes instead of your cleats, no big deal, right?
14:41
Nate: We understand that as adults.
14:42
Nate: Right, the kids think it's the end of the world.
14:45
Nate: But once they do that two or three times, they'll start remembering hey, if I don't bring my cleats right, then I'm going to have to practice in my tennis shoes.
14:54
Nate: Right.
14:54
Nate: But if we're always bailing them out, you know we're not letting those consequences sink in and they realize there's, you know, ramifications of the choices they make, and so it's interesting to watch that play out.
15:08
Nate: But that's going to teach them responsibility is to kind of let the consequences do the heavy lifting right and then shepherd the students you know your children through that.
15:17
Luis: And you know what's really cool about that is, yesterday my daughter wore high heels to her awards day my youngest daughter and before we left the house, like any good parent, I said, hey, make sure you have a pair of shoes, because she brought a change of clothes to change out afterwards because she wore a dress high heels.
15:31
Luis: Make sure you have a pair of shoes, because she brought a change of clothes to change out afterwards because she wore a dress, high heels.
15:32
Luis: I said do you have?
15:33
Luis: I think.
15:34
Luis: I said make sure you get your shoes so you can change out of your heels.
15:39
Luis: Typical preteen, right?
15:41
Luis: Okay, I got it.
15:43
Luis: Well, guess what happened?
15:44
Luis: She didn't have shoes, she forgot her shoes, oh man.
15:47
Luis: So she had to wear high heels the rest of the day.
15:51
Luis: Now she changed everything out.
15:54
Luis: I mean, she had on, but she wore heels.
15:55
Luis: And last night, when we were at home and she's complaining about her feet hurting, guess what I said?
16:01
Luis: I told you so.
16:03
Luis: I told you so I was like, I was like next time you won't forget your that's exactly right and so we also need to celebrate character, not just outcomes right and so when our kids show faithfulness, when they show diligence, when they show follow through, celebrate those as wins right, not just the outcome, and let them see that we are celebrating the process of what they've just gone through, what they've just experienced.
16:34
Luis: And I think what they'll begin to understand is it's not always about the outcome.
16:38
Luis: Sometimes it's just about growing in my character, growing in my responsibility.
16:43
Nate: Oh, that's so good because you can't control the outcomes.
16:46
Nate: I can control my input.
16:48
Nate: I can control the process, right.
16:51
Nate: I maybe can't control whether another team is better than me, right, but I can control that.
16:58
Nate: I put forth the effort and I did my best, and so, yes, celebrating that is huge and just kind of in general.
17:07
Nate: I know we've already mentioned some stats, but there was a 2017 study published in Child Development that compares the personal responsibility of today's 18-year-olds, and it says that the responsibility that they are taking is comparable to what 15-year-olds were taking several decades ago.
17:27
Nate: So an example one thing they brought up is that in the 80s, almost 80% of 18-year-olds had worked for pay.
17:37
Nate: Maybe they didn't have a full-time job, but go out and mow grass and get paid for mowing grass working for pay somehow.
17:44
Nate: And while that number, today, or 2017, when the study came 55% of 18-year-olds had worked for pay.
17:53
Nate: Wow, right.
17:53
Nate: And so they haven't recognized the cause and effect.
17:57
Nate: Right, if I work, I get money, and that's a really simple lesson that's really baked into the Protestant work ethic, right?
18:08
Nate: If you don't work, you don't eat, and students aren't learning that.
18:13
Nate: That the natural way of go out and get a job, you know?
18:17
Luis: I wonder what those numbers look like.
18:18
Luis: Now right so like that was 2017 17, so you're talking about eight years later.
18:22
Luis: I'm sure those numbers are even less.
18:24
Luis: Yeah, and it's interesting because I found another study that was done by sarah clark of the university of michigan and it was done two years later, so this was done in 2019.
18:34
Luis: Okay.
18:34
Luis: So still pre-COVID, so still pre-COVID, right.
18:36
Luis: And so what she did is she interviewed parents of children that were getting ready to go off to college.
18:43
Luis: You're talking about 17, 18-year-olds, and here's what she found Just 8% of these parents were confident that their teen could make an appointment with a doc uh, with a doctor on their own, so they weren't able to call the doctor to to make an appointment.
18:57
Luis: Only 25% of them thought that their teen would be able to take the correct dose of over the counter medication.
19:05
Luis: So you're talking about just Tylenol, ibuprofen, that could be, dangerous that could be.
19:09
Luis: Um 46% of them thought that their child was responsible enough to save money for the future, and this is one that I found pretty humorous.
19:18
Luis: Only 50% of them believe that their teen would be able to handle a minor injury with first aid.
19:23
Nate: And you're talking about.
19:24
Luis: These are parents that are getting ready to launch out their kids to college, and less than 10% of them think that they can call the doctor on their own.
19:33
Luis: A quarter of them are saying that their kid could even take the right amount of medicine, and that's just a byproduct of the culture right that we're seeing and we're talking about.
19:44
Luis: I mean, this was seven, six years ago, and I would say that post-COVID, I mean, that number is probably even less.
19:52
Luis: You know, we joked about it last time, nate.
19:53
Luis: But the idea of having your kids order their own food I wonder how many parents heard that and were like, oh, I don't do that.
20:01
Luis: My kid's 15 and I still order chicken tenders for them from the menu.
20:06
Luis: Look, parents, if you're listening have your kids order their own food.
20:13
Luis: And it's because we don't want our kids to grow up entitled or emotionally fragile with this idea that a parent or somebody is always going to rescue them.
20:22
Luis: We want them to grow up just like we've described here like Timothy, like Daniel.
20:27
Luis: We want them to be faithful, we want them to be trustworthy.
20:30
Luis: We want them to be strong in Christ.
20:33
Luis: Want them to be trustworthy.
20:37
Luis: We want them to be strong in Christ.
20:38
Luis: And so what the data shows here is that we are not doing a good job in raising students.
20:41
Luis: And so if responsibility is about stewardship, if it's about resilience, if it's about endurance, then let me say this clearly resilience is not self-help grit, right.
20:55
Luis: What we're talking about here is Christ-centered perseverance.
20:58
Nate: Yeah, yeah, that's great.
21:00
Nate: And it comes back to that right, the stewardship that you talked about.
21:03
Nate: Right, if we're going to steward our time and our resources and our energy, we're not going to just let it go and just take the easy route.
21:12
Nate: Right, we're going to do what is best to endure and follow Christ.
21:18
Nate: So I guess, like we've talked about this, obviously we shouldn't just jump to.
21:22
Nate: You know, my kid doesn't know how much Tylenol to take.
21:25
Nate: Well, here's the bottle, go ahead and try it.
21:26
Nate: Like that's not a consequence that you should just let your kid figure out on their own.
21:31
Nate: Like there's a safety issue there.
21:33
Nate: But what does this look like practically?
21:35
Nate: Like, as we're trying to jump in and maybe develop this this summer, right, we take it as a challenge and say we've got two months before school gets back in, spending more time with my kids, maybe traveling.
21:47
Nate: How can we practically help our kids develop this resilience and responsibility this summer?
21:55
Luis: Well, let me quote Neil Postman here and Neil Postman is a historian and I think this leads us into this conversation.
22:03
Luis: Right, children are the living messages that we are going to send into a time that we will not see.
22:09
Luis: Right.
22:11
Nate: We got some time travel stuff going on there.
22:12
Luis: Like we are raising kids, and the truth is, parents is parents.
22:15
Luis: I mean, I hate to be morbid, but like we may not be here, we may not see what their adult life is going to be like, and so we need to help them now.
22:26
Luis: Face hard things.
22:28
Luis: Don't rescue them.
22:30
Luis: Walk with them, teach them to pray, teach them to pray, teach them to press on, teach them to trust God when it hurts.
22:36
Luis: Life is going to be hard.
22:38
Luis: They're not always going to win, they're not always going to get what they wanted, and so let them face those hard things.
22:46
Nate: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
22:46
Nate: So that goes to like the forgetting your cleats, right?
22:49
Nate: It could also go to like the interpersonal relationships, right?
22:53
Nate: It's hard for us as parents to just let like jump in and solve it.
22:58
Nate: You know we want to do that and it's hard for us to watch them hurt and so letting them figure it out, you know, whether it's with their siblings, with the kids in the neighborhood, right, it's easy for us to come in and referee, yeah, but that's not going to help them long term.
23:14
Nate: They need to figure out with our coaching, how can they work this out.
23:19
Luis: Here's the second thing you can do Give them heroes who endured.
23:25
Luis: I'm a history buff and so I love studying historical figures, but you can talk to them about historical figures that have endured.
23:34
Luis: The first one that comes to mind is the missionary Adoniram Judson, and I would encourage you parents, if you're not familiar with Adoniram Judson, google him, look up his story.
23:43
Luis: I mean, his resilience is I mean, it's second to none.
23:48
Luis: Right, he spent years in prison as a missionary, years in prison as a missionary, but he never quit the mission.
23:54
Luis: Right?
23:54
Luis: He lost his children, he lost his wife, but he didn't give up and ultimately, god blessed his work.
24:03
Nate: Yeah, when we're talking about a summer reading list, right, missionary biographies.
24:07
Nate: I love that.
24:07
Nate: Like when I was a teacher, in the classroom I always assigned a missionary biography every year.
24:14
Nate: For that reason, right, there's a series and it's more like middle grades, upper elementary, middle school age kind of reading level, but it's the Heroes of the Faith series and they're all these different people.
24:24
Nate: I remember reading the Nate Saint Heroes of the Faith biography and you know just about him and flying and going to the Aki Indians and eventually being martyred for his faith and, um, just the impact that had on me and wanting to go to the mission field and be in ministry and and all of that.
24:44
Nate: So giving them those, those heroes, right Is is great.
24:48
Nate: So summer reading list, not just for you but also for your kids, uh, it'd be a great read.
24:53
Luis: And then here's the third one Anchor them in identity, right.
24:57
Luis: Resilience is going to flow out of them knowing who they are but also who they belong to right.
25:04
Luis: So, it's going to flow from knowing who you are and whose you are there you go, there you go, put that hashtag.
25:12
Nate: That's a good, that's a tweetable quote.
25:13
Luis: Louis, that is a tweetable quote.
25:15
Nate: But yeah, I mean that's true, we talked about that last week, right, they're constantly looking inward for their identity and trying to trying to just kind of make it up or or whatever, but it's, it's being handed to them, right?
25:26
Nate: You are, you know, a son or daughter of the king, and so that's why you steward the things you have is because you belong to the king yourself, right, and so having them have that anchor is really helpful.
25:43
Nate: And if you set yourself up I think you said this, I'm going to quote you to you, lewis, all right.
25:47
Nate: But if you set yourself up as the most important thing or person, or the king of the world and the world, yeah.
25:52
Nate: And then things don't go like you planned, like it's like your God just got you know trampled down, yeah, and so that leaves you with nothing and you really feel lost, right?
26:02
Nate: So having that anchor is so really important and I actually.
26:06
Luis: I heard that from George Barna at a conference on mental health a few years ago.
26:09
Luis: Okay, so giving him credit, and that just reminds me here just of a personal example.
26:14
Luis: So I've talked about my oldest daughter.
26:22
Luis: She plays soccer, and she has been playing soccer for a really long time and it's just something that she's really good at.
26:25
Luis: Well, over the last couple of years, she's moved to a new travel team, and so she's had to adjust to a more difficult travel team.
26:34
Luis: She's had to adjust to playing with players that are better than her, and so with that sometimes comes the pressure, sometimes it comes setbacks, discouragement, right, and so, as a dad, everything in me wants to step in and fix it right.
26:47
Luis: How do we make it easier?
26:50
Luis: But as we walk through this process with her, this, this is an opportunity for her to grow right.
27:00
Luis: She's she's not always going to be the best player on the team, um, so she's gonna have to practice, she's got to work hard.
27:03
Luis: Um, it's not my fire to extinguish, it's it's, it's her fire to walk through.
27:07
Luis: And so, instead of softening the blow of the challenges she's going to face, my role here is to walk beside her, encourage her, make sure she stays anchored in her identity in Christ and ultimately, when she's done with this journey in her life, she's going to come out stronger and, hopefully, more confident in herself but, more importantly, more confident in what God can do through her.
27:31
Nate: Yeah, that's great.
27:32
Nate: So, as we kind of come to the end, lewis, we're looking at the summer we're thinking about.
27:38
Nate: We wanna do these things.
27:39
Nate: We wanna help get our students kind of more responsible, more resilient.
27:45
Nate: What's the last thing you would tell our listeners before we wrap up this episode?
27:51
Luis: Parents.
27:51
Luis: Let's stop raising kids who crumble when things get hard.
27:55
Luis: Instead, how do we raise up the next Daniel?
27:59
Luis: How do we raise up the next Esther?
28:02
Luis: How do we raise up the next Timothy?
28:04
Luis: And so I wanna encourage you this week.
28:06
Luis: Have a conversation with your child about responsibility.
28:09
Luis: Ask them what they own and then walk through a struggle with them.
28:15
Luis: Don't erase it, don't make it easier.
28:18
Luis: Equip them to face it with faith.
28:21
Luis: And look, something as simple if your child isn't ordering their own food yet, when they go out to a restaurant, start there, make them order their own food.
28:28
Luis: Make them look at the server and say I want sweet tea to drink and then, when they come back for the meal, I want this for my meal.
28:37
Luis: Teach them and help them through that.
28:39
Luis: And remember right when we teach our kids responsibility and resilience, we're not just preparing them for college or careers, we're not preparing them for life.
28:46
Luis: We're preparing them to stand firm in their faith and impact the world for Christ.
28:51
Nate: That's awesome.
28:52
Nate: So that's just a great challenge for all of us as we kind of come together and we think about how can we make the most of this summer.
29:00
Nate: What's one thing we can work on right as we're discipling, and this is a great place to start.
29:05
Nate: So thank you all for joining us today.
29:08
Nate: If you have questions, comments, cries of outrage, go ahead and send us an email.
29:13
Nate: Podcast at WayneCrucianorg, and we'd love it if, whatever platform you're listening on, go ahead and subscribe so you don't miss our next episode, and give us a rating and review.
29:25
Nate: Let us know how we're doing.
29:27
Nate: We're still 14 episodes is still a pretty young podcast.
29:30
Nate: So go ahead and do that.
29:31
Nate: It helps other parents see this podcast as well and just share it with others who might find it helpful.
29:39
Nate: So thanks for joining us today and, until next time, keep leading the next generation to stand firm in their faith and influence their world for Christ.