Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 235 | Discipline Your Kids While There is Still Hope

Transcript

Ep. 235 | Discipline Your Kids While There is Still Hope · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  When your children are from the ages of like 12 to like 18, it's a great time to train your kids to really pursue the Lord with their heart.
• 0:11
  What's up, guys? Welcome to another 5-Minute Fatherhood. So we love to dig deep, at least every fifth episode, into a particular passage that really has a lot of relevance for fathers. And a great one, you guys, is Proverbs 19, 18. It says, Discipline your children while there is hope. Otherwise, you will ruin their lives.
• 0:32
  That's the New Living translation, and it says similar things in other translations. But what I wanted to talk about is why it says this phrase, while there is still hope. What does it mean when it says discipline your children while there is still hope?
• 0:50
  I think what it's talking about, you guys, is that there are phases of parenting, phases of fathering, and there are times in which you need to win the battle during that phase.
• 1:05
  And so when it says, while there is hope, when your child is 23 years old and just constantly giving into their impulses, that's not the best time to train them to live a disciplined life. It would have been better to have trained them when they were seven, right? And so what it means is that for each of us as fathers, we have to be aware of what are the ideal seasons for training our kids in certain areas.
• 1:31
  And I think that there are amazing ideal seasons when your children are like from the ages of like four to eight. Like that's a great time to train them when it comes to just obedience, for example, like learning to submit to authority, learning to understand that there's a wisdom beyond them.
• 1:50
  When your children are from the ages of like 12 to like 18, it's a great time to train your kids to really pursue the Lord with their heart, to really work on their character, to have deep conversations about why they're making decisions they're making and going through that repent and believe process and gospeling your kids. Those are just examples. But I really think Solomon is saying here,
• 2:11
  is that there are times where it's just a lot more hopeful to work on your kids then. And it's a real it's really frustrating and discouraging to realize that, oh, I think that season is up. And, you know, we didn't really get to that.
• 2:27
  And so a lot of times, because a lot of us are raising our kids for the first time, you know, we don't have the experience to know that some of these seasons of hope do expire. Sometimes we can just kind of let things slide. And then it feels like, oh, it's too late. It doesn't mean that you've ruined everything. It just means maybe for that area, you're not in the ideal time frame for having that conversation or for training them in that area. So-
• 2:54
  So it's really I think it's helpful to think about what are each of these seasons of fatherhood about and how can I make sure that I'm taking advantage of each of them for my kids and to make sure that I'm training them at a time when they are most likely to be receptive to that training. But, yeah, Jeff, what are your have you thought about this one?
• 3:13
  Yeah. One thing I would just harp on to end is that that word discipline means training, which is the word you were using. But just I think there's so many times we have so much baggage with that word. Yeah. You know, but let it let it be known that it's just like anything with a sport or getting better at anything like you're and just like this, you're honing
• 3:30
  when you discipline yourself in a sport, like Paul says, when I discipline my body, you're honing yourself towards a particular direction and trajectory, right? And an undisciplined person in a sport or whatever will be messy and won't produce well and won't win the game at some level. And so I think that's just like, it's actually for a reason. It's not just to make a better kid or a moral kid or anything like that, but all of us, and hopefully
• 4:00
  our bodies, we discipline our lives, we train ourselves for godliness, as 1 Timothy says, so that it might bear fruit, right? So that actually the kingdom, our lives might be pointed towards kingdom-mindedness, kingdom fruit. And so I think remembering now with your kids that you get to start in those earlier stages is actually a gift and a blessing and produces a longer vision, which I think is really important.
• 4:22
  Yeah. And you guys, if you're looking for a framework for how to train your kids, that's why Jeff and I worked on the Skill of Fatherhood Masterclass. In that first module, it's all about training. And one of the things that Jeff and I do is we walk through and list out the things during each season of your child's life. What are the topics that are most susceptible to...
• 4:44
  for them to receive during that season. So we give you guys a framework for how to do it. And then we actually talk about what kinds of topics would be most valuable to train your kids in. So if you want to take it to masterclass, the skill of fatherhood, just go to familyteams.com and you can check it out there and you can get 10% off, $20 off the masterclass by just putting in the code dads. So if you're looking for a framework for how to train your kids, check that out.