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Reacting To Bogus Modern Parenting Trends (With Biblical Wisdom) · The Family Teams Podcast

0:00
And then the statement that she's making in this New York Times article, basically, like you need to set your child free to determine for themselves what is right and what is wrong.
0:10
Have we tried that before?
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Was there ever a time where God was saying, I want to tell you guys what right and wrong is?
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And humanity said, no, like we would like to figure that out on our own.
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I don't know, maybe like the garden or.
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Yeah, I remember that.
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That's it's like that's kind of how everything fell apart in the world.
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It's like the root of all evil.
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Oh, it's not funny, but if we don't laugh, what are we going to do?
0:35
Hi, welcome to the Family Teams podcast.
0:38
Our goal here is to help your family become a multi-generational team on mission by providing
0:43
you with biblically rooted concepts, tools, and rhythms.
0:46
Your hosts are Jeremy Pryor and Jefferson Bethke, and we can't wait to chat about all
0:51
things family.
0:53
Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast.
0:55
I'm here with my wife, April, and with our friend, Justine Cirillo.
0:58
Thank you, Justine and April, for jumping in here today.
1:01
Hello.
1:02
Yeah, it's fun to be here.
1:04
Yeah.
1:04
So, yeah, we're going to dive into a topic that I think is kind of like getting more, I think, understanding.
1:13
There was like, I feel like we went into a season where this was really confusing.
1:16
And that is like, how exactly does authority interact with children?
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Is that a good thing?
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Is it good for them to sense that they're not in charge?
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Or does that really limit their freedom of expression?
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And I think there's just been like kind of a wide range of thoughts about this.
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There's sort of like a Christian version of this conversation.
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There's sort of like a secular version of this conversation.
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But there is a convergence happening, I would say.
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I mean, I'm just finding more and more people saying very similar things.
1:43
And so I think it would be really helpful to like look at some of these clips and get y'all's take on this.
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So I'm going to play two quick Instagram reels, one from Dr. Becky Kennedy.
1:52
who we kind of commented on one of her videos not too long ago in a motherhood podcast.
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So we want to talk about that.
2:00
And then Gabor Mate, very interesting Jewish psychologist.
2:05
I wanted to get your guys' take on both of their thoughts on this.
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And we've got a few others that I want to look at today.
2:10
So we'll start with Dr. Becky Kennedy and how she describes this topic.
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And I think that's really important, right?
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I always say, like, you're the pilot of the plane.
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And if you are flying from San Francisco to New York,
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and at any point you received some type of data
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that made you think you had to change paths,
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you would and you should.
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And if passengers said,
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I don't want to make an emergency landing in Iowa.
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This is so annoying.
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I'm going to miss my meeting.
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Like imagine the pilot who's like,
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okay, don't want you to be mad at me.
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No problem, right?
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And I actually think that's a really important thing
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to keep in mind.
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We actually do that to our kids all the time
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and it makes them feel incredibly unsafe.
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And then we say our kids take advantage of us.
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No, we just made our kids feel unsafe without leadership.
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So they're more dysregulated
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because they feel so confused and untethered,
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just like you would on a plane.
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You would no longer be scared
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that you were gonna have an emergency landing.
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You'd be terrified that this person was your pilot, right?
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Now, that also doesn't mean it's a pilot.
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You wanna hear like, stop screaming back there.
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You know, like you actually wanna hear something
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that's like, look, I know this is annoying to you.
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I know this isn't what you want.
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My job is to make good decisions to prioritize your safety.
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Right.
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And something I say to my kids, you know, when I can remember, which is, I don't know,
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10% of the time in the moments I want to say them, it's like, Hey, I love you so much that I'm
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willing to make decisions that I know are, you know, going to lead to you protesting.
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Like that's
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actually how much I love you.
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My number one job is to keep you safe, not happy.
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And that is our
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job is to keep our kids safe, not keep our kids happy.
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Trying to keep them happy actually makes
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them unsafe and makes them trust us less, just like we would not trust a pilot who are prioritizing
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our happiness over our safety.
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Awesome.
3:56
Yeah.
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So we'll get one more clip.
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There's a couple of
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things I just want to like maybe highlight there.
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And yeah, maybe we get your guys' comments on this
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before we keep going, because there's really two things, two cases she's making there.
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One that I
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really, really like.
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And one that I think is really an interesting critique or expression
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of kind of modern parenting.
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So the first thing she says that I really like, and I completely
4:20
agree with, is that the idea that exhibiting authority in the home actually benefits our
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children and that we just need to suck it up as parents and kind of give them more freedom and
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not exert our authority.
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And that if we can just put up with the annoyingness of just going along
4:37
with everything they want, then that's actually what's best for kids.
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And she's, of course,
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saying that's crazy.
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That's not true.
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We know that's not true.
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We know that's not true in any
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other part of life.
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There's something else going on there that's causing us to want to do that.
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Kids actually want to know that they're not in charge.
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Like it's actually helps them feel more
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safe, which I agree 100%.
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It does make them feel more safe.
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Now, she does make kind of a fascinating
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value statement at the very end there, that our job is to make kids safe, not happy.
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And our
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highest priority is their safety.
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Um, so anyway, uh, would love to get any reactions you have to
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that April when we start with you.
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Yeah, I think I keep having a flashback to, um,
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you know, God gives us all different personalities with kids.
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You know, even if you just have two,
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they're going to have two different personalities.
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And, um, I, I remember, uh, we had one in
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particular and unfortunately she gets called out cause it was our youngest.
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And the reason I
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say that is, um, it, it took like five personalities to get to this personality
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and for her to be, um, she was the one that I had to really, really, um, win home the idea that I
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am in charge.
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You are not as like a two-year-old.
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And, uh, so I think that, um, I just remember
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were saying to her, I am in charge.
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I am the mama.
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I am in charge.
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You are not in charge.
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She thought she could boss me around, tell me what to do.
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And, um, and then just as recently
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as this morning, she's like, mom, you're such a good mom.
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Thank you so much.
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After, you know,
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like tough conversation yesterday.
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So at age 16.
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So, um, I think that there is this,
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this fear that we have as, um, when parents, um, that our kids are going to end up hating us or
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something.
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If we decide to like set up a boundary or push back on them or be the one who has the
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wisdom to say, no, you can't have, you know, a bag of candy for dinner or whatever the thing is.
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Um, I am going to be the one to tie your shoes right now.
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Cause we're in a hurry.
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And then you
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can try to tie them later when we're not in a hurry.
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So I feel like there are, we have this
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fear of like, oh, our kids aren't going to like us.
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Or I think some of, some of us are more prone
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to that than others about wanting to be our kids' friends and that kind of thing.
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And to see, to get
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to experience the long-term fruit of having a 16 year old child come to you and say, you're such a
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good mom.
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That was a really hard conversation we had yesterday, but I see what you're saying
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and it makes a lot of sense.
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And, you know, I feel like that was kind of a hard one.
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That's a hard one thing like that has taken years and years and years.
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Um, and that she
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can appreciate the fact that we hold our ground and, um, that I think that the, the Dr. Becky
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even used the word tethered, like we are to tether them.
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And I think that that's that, um,
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And we, that rope gets longer and longer, the older they get.
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But when they, when we give them some rope, we're still tethering them.
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So we're still saying, this is still the reality that we're going to function in.
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But we're going to, we're still going to be this.
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And then we're going to give you this much rope.
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So that starts at a very young age.
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And I think we can have that perspective of long-term now that our kids are a little bit
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older to see that it's a positive thing.
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And it does help them trust us.
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We can say to them, hey, I think that, you know, the stage you're at, this is what wisdom says you, but you do have to decide.
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And then they need some time to think and they can come back and say, okay, basically what she's saying is like, I trust you.
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I trust you.
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And that's like, that's a huge deal.
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Yeah.
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It's such a, such a weird thing.
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If you think about if your child has any wisdom and they know that they don't know anything and they suddenly realize that they're the ones in charge, that's terrifying.
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if they actually like apprehended what that really means, which sometimes they won't.
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They're like, oh, this is great.
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I can eat all the candy I want.
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But I think oftentimes there's
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like a deep sense of like total instability.
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Like really?
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Like me with the fact that I know nothing,
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I'm the one who's going to make the final decision about all the things.
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Or if I just push hard
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enough, they're all going to follow me.
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And that's, that's, yeah, it's, it's kind of counter
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to like you're saying, April, it's really wonderful to see kids.
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We have had many of
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these experiences where a kid will push, push, push, you know, their agenda, their desires,
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their preferences, you know, and we know it's kind of in a foolish direction and we just
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become that brick wall.
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And when they realize they can't stop us, that they're not going to
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be able to overthrow our authority, they become incredibly peaceful.
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They're like, oh, that's
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actually really good after they kind of, you know, have their tantrum.
9:33
So.
9:34
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9:35
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9:39
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9:41
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9:51
Justine, what are your thoughts?
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How does this strike you?
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Well, April and Jeremy both, it's encouraging to hear because we have an almost three-year-old
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that's very much in that stage of wanting to assert his like opinion and his desires over
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ours and sometimes it's just exhausting so if you like that again and again no this is like i'm in
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charge you are not in charge um because they can be relentless with the their opinions um so that's
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encouraging to hear.
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And like you said, April, I think that it can tend to be that we want to
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be friends with our kiddos rather than be the mother or father of our children.
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And that sets
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us up for so much.
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I heard someone say once that if you don't parent your children, you'll end up
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parenting your grandchildren and that they'll end up under your roof because your own children
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cannot take care of them right because they weren't shown how to yeah um and then i also think
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saying no now allows you to be able to say yes more later down the road because if you're saying
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yes now then you're gonna have to say no more down the later which i do feel like that's where
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it comes in where you start exasperating your children and we're told not to do that and so
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So the way to not do that is to tell them no when they're younger, even though they do seem like they're exasperated in the moment as a two year old or three year old that's upset because they've been told no.
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It it allows you then the ability to and I'm sure you probably can speak to this like being able to be more friends with your children later if you're not so much a friend to them.
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Right.
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In the younger ages.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, that does come.
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they're amazing friends yeah yeah it's so wonderful to be able to have a deep relationship
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with your children as they become adults but man it's like when they're really young and one of
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the things i love about dr becky's analogy this plane analogy which i think is really helpful
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what's really great about the analogy is that if the pilot gets on the the pa and says we're
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gonna have to land in iowa and we're supposed to be going to california everybody on the plane is
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going to complain.
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And everybody on the plane still wants the pilot to land the plane in Iowa.
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If he's like, we've got a problem, there's a, there's a, there's a serious, like mechanical
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reason we need to, we need to, like, you can, both things can happen at the same time.
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And I think
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this is one of the things in parenting that you have to really be okay with.
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You have to be okay
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that your kids can be really mad at you and can really protest and still be wrong.
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And that's all
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okay.
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That's just part of the process.
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So, all right, let me play for you guys this, this, this
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clip and um and one of the things i like about you know what uh gabor mate starts to tease out
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here is kind of the the tone or how to think about this kind of parenting kind of at a high level so
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let me play this for you guys what three modes of parenting one is the permissive parenting where
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you allow any behavior and you don't intervene you know that's not that's the worst thing you
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can do kids need to feel that somebody's in charge yeah parenting is not a democracy it's a hierarchy
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In a hierarchy, there's a dominant force.
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The parent dominates the child not to exploit or to suppress,
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but to nurture and to support.
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If you have a one-year-old child, they don't get to vote on
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whether they get to crawl outside in the wintertime.
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That's just how it is.
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It's a hierarchy.
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It's not a democracy.
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The one-year-old doesn't get a vote on being going into the slush and the snow.
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So that's permissive parenting.
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That's not very good.
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then there's repressive parenting
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which some experts that we've talked about
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advocate
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that's authoritarian parenting
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in between them is the golden mean
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so there's permissive parenting here
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authoritarian parenting here
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then there's authoritative parenting
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in the middle, authoritative parenting is I'm in charge
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I know what's good for you
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I'm the authority, so I know what to do with you
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so if a child is upset
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you say, oh you're upset
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you know, you're angry with mommy
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Mommy, wouldn't you have a cookie before dinner?
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Yeah.
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You're really upset about that.
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Yeah.
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Well, come here.
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I know how you feel.
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In other words, you validate the emotion.
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You don't punish the child for it.
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And you hold the child because the child needs to learn that they can go through these difficult emotions and get through them.
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And still be loved.
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And still be loved.
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Okay, so he's describing permissive parenting, authoritarian parenting.
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These are the two extremes he's describing.
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and authoritative, he's saying is the mean or the kind of the right kind of a mid ground there.
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Yeah, the average between these two, these two poles.
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And he's, he's trying to describe, look,
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you know, there's, he kind of used this word repressive.
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I think the point of that is,
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the way you parent, the way you exert your authority is you exert the authority over
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your child's emotions in order to help them learn to repress their emotions.
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Now, this is this is
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challenging.
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One of the things that I want to do some more podcasts on, I have got a bunch of
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clips that I want to like walk through things like whining or like there are ways in which you need
15:13
to help train your child how to manage their emotions.
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And I don't think he gets into this
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here.
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I do think that that's part of the training, but man, that's a process.
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I mean, I still struggle
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managing my emotions.
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You have to have a lot of grace for your child, especially when they're
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three or four years old and they're like, you know, having a really hard time with that.
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But
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I think that this idea that we want to avoid particularly the permissive parenting, I think that's really what Dr. Becky was talking about.
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I'm curious if either of you have any thoughts about trying to tease out this difference between authoritarian parenting, which he says is this repressive, like too top-down, and authoritative parenting where the child just feels like they're not in charge and they're not going to get what they want when their parents are telling them something.
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something.
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So yeah, April, I'm curious at that.
16:02
Yeah.
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What are your thoughts about
16:03
the way he's framed?
16:04
Yeah.
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I think, um, especially if you're a conscientious, like I,
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on the scale of conscientiousness, I'm pretty high.
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Um, and so what, the way that translates
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is when I feel like I'm responsible for something that I'm going to try to do it really well.
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And so I am going to try to follow all the rules.
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I'm going to try and do the right thing.
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and I therefore expect results.
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And it doesn't work that way with kids.
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You know, there is an
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ebb and a flow and there is a trying this thing and maybe it working halfway or not at all.
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And
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then you have to try a new thing.
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And like, so that, that I wanted to tend towards that extreme
16:47
authoritative, like, because I said so, because I ran out of things to try kind of a thing.
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And that is a tendency, but I think that I've, I had to really, really learn about how to
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come back to that middle ground and make sure I'm hearing hearts.
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And especially as they get older, when we're talking like, you know, eight to 10, and then
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of course on up, you're, there's a lot more conversation happening.
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There's a lot more listening and trying to understand, you know, you're not doing that
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with a two-year-old.
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So there is a difference and it is a gradual progression.
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But I feel like the authoritative thing, I mean, that's just like you can see that play itself out in like hyper religious scenarios or if you know sometimes in religious, even like Christian sects, even that tend to be more like really like rules above everything else.
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You can kind of see the playing itself out.
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And then that's when you get the rebellious teenagers who have to try, you know, something wild and crazy and, you know, all that stuff.
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So we don't want to go that route.
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And I think that's where the authority authoritarian one extreme one will kind of lead that direction.
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So learning how to still be able to put your foot down and, you know, claim authority and say that you're in charge and that you do know what's best and have your child train them to respond to that well is very valuable.
18:24
And I just I do agree with that.
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And you definitely the permissive stuff.
18:28
It's just like having your kids walk all over you thinking that your two year old knows better, not wanting to squash their personality or squash their will.
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You know, that kind of thing just does not play out well.
18:41
No, it's not.
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And I got for them.
18:42
Justine, what are your thoughts?
18:45
well and i think too to add to that is it being like a dereliction of duty when you're just
18:52
letting them it sounds good maybe to say oh well i'm gonna allow them to decide what they want to
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do um that's like very big of me to let them do that but really you're just um
19:10
letting go of the responsibility of actually putting in the hard work of parenting the child
19:16
yeah and so yeah it doesn't it's not good for anyone and then people wonder why they don't
19:23
enjoy their children and it's like they're none of the training has happened to enjoy them they
19:29
are a blessing from the lord from the get-go but the blessing isn't always enjoyable if they're not
19:36
trained in the ways that they should go.
19:42
Yeah.
19:42
I think, I think one of the,
19:44
that's a really interesting observation,
19:46
the dereliction of duty.
19:47
I think part of what creates this is sometimes men and women become convinced
19:52
that their own,
19:54
in their own life that they want complete freedom to do whatever they want.
19:59
And they want to be able to express.
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And that this is somehow like a God-given right.
20:04
and that all hierarchies are always oppressive.
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And so they come to this conclusion about themselves
20:10
and then start having kids.
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And then they try to apply that same philosophy
20:16
on their children.
20:17
And I think that we have to be really careful about,
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like, what do we really believe?
20:21
It's okay, you know, that it's just,
20:23
it's so extreme to think that all hierarchy is bad
20:26
and that there's never a situation
20:27
in which we need to be led
20:30
or that we're a part of a community
20:31
and therefore there is reasonable sacrifices
20:33
or there's just a differential on either who has authority or who has knowledge or who has wisdom.
20:37
And that sometimes that leadership is really for everyone's benefit.
20:41
So these are incredibly simplistic ideas that I think people are really buying into all of a sudden that, oh,
20:49
we need to live in this hyper individualistic world in which there is no hierarchies,
20:53
I think is really creating all kinds of strange kind of parenting ideas.
20:58
Jeremy, do you think, too, that it has anything to do with being just American and like the idol of freedom that kind of.
21:09
Yes, 100 percent of what.
21:12
OK, yeah.
21:13
Yeah.
21:13
Like even on that that that real if you guys were watching on YouTube, I think it actually was somehow like it was titled something like, you know, parenting is not a democracy.
21:22
And I think that democracy is part of what really confuses parenting in that in a democracy, one of the things that occurs is we've made a decision that even though there is a massive difference when it comes to wisdom, nobody is going to get to rule or lead without my consent, you know, at some level, or at least without majority consent.
21:46
that's actually and everyone who's who studied political science will say that's actually not
21:51
the best way to do government um or leadership um unless uh there's some kind of massive
21:59
corrupting influence that you're trying to resist in other words if you could wave a magic wand you
22:03
actually would want just the most competent people to be in charge you wouldn't want democracy you
22:07
would want something else closer to like monarchy or something but we don't believe that that that
22:12
can happen without it becoming corrupt.
22:14
And so the next best thing, like Winston Churchill says,
22:16
democracy is the, you know, the worst form of government on the planet, with the exception of
22:21
all the others.
22:22
And his point is that it just, it breaks down.
22:25
And so one of the things that
22:26
Gabor Mate said in that clip is you don't have this authority to suppress or to your children
22:33
or get your own preferences met.
22:35
And so there is kind of like a deal being struck between parent
22:38
and child.
22:38
And that is the child is going to give all the authority to the parent or the parent is
22:43
going to have all the authority over the child.
22:45
You know, the government's going to admit that
22:47
God says that and has set that hierarchy up with the understanding that the parent has this
22:51
authority in order to build a thriving situation for that child and for the family.
22:56
And there are
22:57
situations that people have been in, in which the parents have taken control of that power to get
23:01
their own preferences met.
23:03
And so there's this incredibly pernicious ideology that all authority
23:06
exists as basically a power game.
23:08
And to the extent that you believe that that authority is
23:11
only about somebody trying to take somebody else's power away and not necessarily lead to some kind
23:16
of, you know, communal thriving or familial thriving or societal thriving, that's all about
23:21
power.
23:22
Then of course it just, everything devolves into, okay, nobody should have power over me.
23:26
And that's where a lot of these parenting ideas come from.
23:29
It really, you become convinced that
23:31
that all power is about exerting preferences.
23:34
And of course, as believers, we know like there's
23:36
just like you said there's duty there's responsibility um there's there's wisdom
23:40
there's a lot there's a lot of grounding for the authority that is not simply i'm trying to get my
23:44
preferences you know met at your expense yeah it kind of makes me think too of like the feminist
23:52
movement it almost feels like an extension of that like women wanted their freedom to decide
23:58
what they want to do and now why shouldn't we give children the freedom to decide what they want to
24:05
do right there's no yeah like you said no authority yeah yeah there is a real analogy here and these
24:13
clips aren't speaking to that obviously about um even within the home there's been a a real
24:19
tension between the fact that in a modern western family um having any kind of authority structure
24:26
where like uh the husband um has some kind of male authority in the home that could only exist
24:33
because he's attempting to get his preferences met at the expense of his wife.
24:38
And of course, in order to balance the powers,
24:40
we need to make sure that we don't submit to that kind of a power structure.
24:46
And the thing that I'm always wondering is,
24:48
but what if God designed the family to be a team
24:50
and we're actually supposed to accomplish something?
24:52
That's why I don't agree with Dr. Becky's statement
24:54
that the highest priority in the family is safety.
24:58
No, no, no.
24:58
The highest priority in the family is that we are extending
25:01
and expanding the kingdom of God as a family team.
25:04
Like there's, we have actual a mission that we're given.
25:06
But if you don't have a mission,
25:07
it's just about like creating a nice safe environment.
25:09
Then yeah, putting authority into that structure
25:11
between two adults is kind of weird.
25:13
And I think that's where a lot of the confusion has come from.
25:17
All right, let me play a couple more of these
25:19
and get you guys to take.
25:20
So this next one is Dr. Leonard Sachs was on Andrew Klavan.
25:25
He said something really interesting around this topic
25:27
that I wanted to get your all's take on.
25:29
because I can't take the phone from my 12-year-old.
25:34
That's really common.
25:35
And that's also what I mean by the collapse of parenting.
25:39
Parents who are unsure of their authority,
25:42
parents who cannot exercise their authority.
25:45
And the result is kids who are struggling,
25:49
kids who aren't getting the sleep they need,
25:51
kids who are anxious and depressed.
25:53
And a big chunk of the book is showing how so many of these problems
25:57
that we're seeing right now,
25:58
kids who are anxious, who are depressed, who are overweight.
26:02
So many of these problems can be
26:04
tried directly and clearly to parents' failure to exercise their authority.
26:09
But the emphasis of the
26:11
book is on empowering parents to do their job, especially parents of faith, showing how Deuteronomy
26:19
6, Proverbs 16, there's so many clear messages of Scripture that this is your job as your parent.
26:27
If you are a parent of faith, if you are a Jewish or Christian parent, you are called to do this.
26:34
And I have a presentation for parents called Evidence-Based Parenting, which could also be called Biblical Parenting,
26:42
because the evidence, the longitudinal cohort studies show that the authoritative parent, that kid is going to have the best outcomes,
26:53
but the authoritative parent is also the biblical parent.
26:56
and what we what i show in the book is that if you're doing your job as a parent your kid is
27:03
going to flourish but what has happened is the parents are not looking to the research they
27:09
don't know it for the most part and that's that's again the mission of the book is to share that
27:13
research instead of looking to the research they're looking to the new york times and national
27:18
public radio and unfortunately the new york times and national public radio those those i cite a
27:25
a column in the, in, in, in the New York times, uh,
27:29
Jennifer Finney Boylan, a long time,
27:31
a long time columnist for the New York times wrote a column for the New York
27:35
times on, uh, on an enlightened parenting in which she inserted,
27:39
asserted that the enlightened parenting, enlightened parenting,
27:41
according to the Jennifer Finney Boylan, New York times columnist,
27:45
enlightened parenting means, and I quote,
27:48
setting your child free to discover for themselves their own right and wrong.
27:53
and if in so doing if in so doing your child becomes a stranger to you then so be it wow
28:00
all right yeah so i think it's i was i really like the fact that he actually brought in
28:06
like a different philosophy you know and like you said there this there is sort of like this idea
28:10
and i think that's a really helpful understanding enlightened parenting in other words we've all
28:16
got it wrong for thousands of years this idea that parents have wisdom that children don't have
28:21
and that they have responsibilities to their children to lead their children properly,
28:25
that they have that authority for good reason,
28:27
all of that wisdom is now being questioned as really darkness
28:33
and that there's an enlightened kind of parenting.
28:35
And then this statement that she's making in this New York Times article
28:38
that basically if this, like you need to set your child free
28:43
to determine for themselves what is right and what is wrong.
28:48
What does that sound like?
28:51
Have we tried that before?
28:52
Was there ever a time where God was saying,
28:57
I want to tell you guys what right and wrong is,
28:58
and humanity said, no, we would like to figure that out on our own?
29:05
I don't know, maybe like the garden?
29:07
Yeah, I remember that.
29:09
That's kind of how everything fell apart in the world.
29:13
It's like the root of all evil.
29:16
Oh, it's not funny, but if we don't laugh, what are we going to do?
29:18
Yeah.
29:20
Yeah, what are your thoughts about that, April?
29:21
Well, I feel like this the way OK, so the way I experience this personally, because I'm obviously not like I think it's obvious I'm not an extreme thinker like this New York Times person on that side of things.
29:34
But I think that the way I've experienced it is that with, okay, I started being a parent 25 years ago.
29:44
And the progression that society has taken in the last 25 years, wow, I really feel it as a parent.
29:53
So what it has done with all the influences, we call them portals, all the portals that have come at our children.
30:00
And even if you're trying to like have, you know, real strict like rules or boundaries around the portals, the way they still kind of come at your kids, even in like their late teen, early adult years.
30:16
what happens is a lack of, like, it starts to erode away at your confidence as a parent,
30:25
because all these other influences are coming in and you're like, well, I don't know how many more
30:29
times to say, how many more different ways I can say, that's actually not good.
30:35
Like I've been
30:36
saying that for the last six years and that technology is only getting more, you know,
30:43
interesting to them or that platform's only sucking them in even more and more.
30:47
And I am
30:48
still saying the same stories like back in my day, you know, it's so, so it doesn't road away
30:55
your confidence and knowing sometimes how to advise or rephrasing it yet another way to,
31:03
you know, when you're trying to give your kids rope, but you do see them, you know, becoming,
31:08
you know, really attached to a particular technology or a particular way of thinking
31:14
and you're, you know, you can see that's probably not the best.
31:17
I feel like what,
31:19
what has happened is it erodes my confidence.
31:22
And so I think that I can see if you're already
31:25
in a place where you're like, maybe not well-parented yourself, or you're already
31:31
trying to make it up as you go, how these added influences around could make you just be like,
31:37
I have no idea.
31:38
Just figure it out yourself.
31:40
Cause parenting is a lot of work and doing it well,
31:45
paying attention, being consistent, um, having to come up with a new way to deal with something
31:50
that you didn't have to deal with when you were a kid.
31:52
Um, it is, it is really a lot of energy and
31:57
a lot of work.
31:57
And so I, I can see how this, you know, happens and how it unfolds for people to
32:03
get to the place where you can just say like let them find out themselves yeah and if i don't
32:08
recognize them at the end so be it no yeah let me yeah let me play one more clip and justin i'd love
32:15
to get your take on this because this is yeah this there is a there's a reason there's an underlying
32:19
reason for this and i was fascinated um adam lane smith tried to articulate that reason and april
32:24
you're describing very much what he he was uh sharing in this clip so let me let me play this
32:29
real quick and then justin look at your thoughts incredible attachment with your child have you
32:33
Have you heard of gentle parenting?
32:35
I have.
32:36
What are your thoughts on that?
32:37
I bang heads a lot with gentle parenting groups, with peaceful parenting groups, with attachment
32:42
parenting groups, because most of it is built on, I want to be nicer to my kids than my
32:47
parents were to me so that I feel better as a parent.
32:50
It's the same as people who say, I'm not going to eat meat because I feel bad for animals,
32:54
right?
32:54
There's reasons, perhaps religiously, not to eat meat, but just doing it because of
32:59
how you feel indicates huge attachment issues.
33:02
If you're, if your feeling is driven,
33:04
if you are just parenting in a way that makes you feel good, you are not parenting responsibly.
33:09
Justine, what are your thoughts on that?
33:11
I mean, that's so good and so hard.
33:14
Cause yeah,
33:15
it does not always feel good to have a child that doesn't like every decision that you're making or
33:23
that you have to like assert your authority in a given situation.
33:30
But the opposite is this child
33:33
that you might not recognize, like the columnist wrote about and how sad, like that just makes me
33:41
so sad to think about just letting them go out.
33:45
It's like, if you aren't discipling your children,
33:49
than someone else is going to.
33:52
They're not going out and there's not an influence coming in from some direction.
33:59
And so it can be scary.
34:02
Like, what are you sending them out to find or to learn about themselves?
34:10
We as parents are the ones that know them best.
34:13
And so we should be the ones calling them to what we see in them.
34:19
not letting them go try to quote unquote, figure it out for themselves.
34:24
Yeah.
34:25
Yeah.
34:26
This, uh,
34:28
there's just a real tension between these two worlds.
34:31
Um, and it's, it's so,
34:33
for certain kinds of personalities, especially,
34:35
I think it's so attractive or tempting to go to one extreme or the other,
34:39
like hyper permissive or hyper authoritarian.
34:42
Um,
34:43
and so I want to round this discussion out.
34:44
He started, you know, um,
34:45
I know Leonard Sacks are talking a little bit about, you know,
34:48
calling this biblical parenting saying, and this is part of what you're saying, April,
34:51
about kind of the loss of confidence.
34:54
And I think one of the things that really helps is that these
34:56
studies keep, you know, when they're really honestly done and they're not being ideologically
35:01
corrupted, they just keep like reflecting back to us that what the Bible says is really healthy
35:07
for children and for parents and for families.
35:10
Like what you hear?
35:12
Be sure to leave a rating
35:13
and review for this podcast wherever you use streaming.
35:16
So I wanted to like round this out
35:17
with just sort of a conversation around something that happened within the Christian world.
35:22
Owen Strachan, I was getting ready for this podcast this morning, he tweeted this out.
35:26
He's the senior director of the Dobson Culture Center.
35:30
And he writes this, and I don't know if he kind of mentions kind of Gothard
35:34
and some of the things that has really influenced Christian parenting
35:38
and how these extremes have really been played out.
35:42
And it was fascinating to me kind of the way he described this.
35:44
He says, some years ago, there was what I'll call a parenting prosperity gospel.
35:50
That's a bold term, but I'll use it.
35:52
Buckle up for a lengthy post on this persistent problem and its devastating effects on the church.
35:56
I'll just read part of what he says here.
35:58
In simplified form, the parenting prosperity gospel taught a generation or two of Christian parents this.
36:05
If you teach your kids to obey, if you set up a system in the home of authority and obedience,
36:11
your kids will almost certainly become a believer.
36:13
This thinking was based largely in Proverbs 22, 6, which reads,
36:17
Many parents who were taught this approach, notably by Bill Gothard and other legalists,
36:25
had zero experience with Christian parenting.
36:28
They got saved in adulthood and had no idea what they were getting into.
36:31
Major Baptist and evangelical leaders recommended this vision of parenting
36:35
and platform Gothard and other legalists to the skies.
36:38
It is absolutely right to train children to obey rightful authority.
36:42
Children need discipline, structure, order, moral training, and boundaries.
36:46
Be careful about systems like gentle parenting that soften these things in some ways.
36:50
In Ephesians 6.1, for example, Paul says this,
36:52
Children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right.
36:54
This is a non-negotiable.
36:55
For the generation raised on formulaic parenting,
36:58
in which everything tends to boil down to obedience,
37:00
sometimes found as their kids grew up that the system didn't work.
37:04
That is, it didn't produce kids who professed faith as they aged.
37:07
In many cases, there was an early profession, maybe aged five through eight,
37:11
but as the child grew older, they didn't stick by it.
37:14
In some cases, they rebelled, lost their way, rejected their faith openly.
37:17
Sometimes this prompted a blowout fight in the family
37:20
with the child tragically going full prodigal on their parents.
37:24
And then he says this,
37:25
No father or mother can save their kids.
37:27
This only God can do.
37:28
However, we cannot miss that there is a generation or two of Christian parents
37:32
and their kids who are very much recovering from parenting prosperity gospel.
37:36
The parents thought if they did all the right things,
37:40
then they would get the right result.
37:42
That's what the mega famous Christian experts told them,
37:45
but they didn't get the right results.
37:47
Their kids are distant from them,
37:50
or perhaps even openly estranged from them.
37:53
So that was interesting idea that like, oh, like the way he, you know,
37:59
I kind of his parenting prosperity gospel,
38:02
I think that's a little bit, you know, of a complex way of saying it.
38:04
I think, I think that it's, it's simply a formula,
38:07
a really simple formula.
38:09
Like you train your kids to obey and you become amazing Christians.
38:12
That's what he's saying.
38:13
And, you know, and I certainly saw this movement emerge in and around
38:19
us.
38:20
April, I know that, you know, you saw some of this and I do think that it was too simplistic,
38:24
but like you said, there were some things that part of what it was trying to do was give parents
38:28
the confidence to train children into obedience.
38:33
And Owen says here that that's essential.
38:36
It's
38:36
very biblical to train your kids to obey.
38:38
Um, the problem is that, you know, uh, there's a lot more
38:42
to parenting than training your kids to obey and that there's no guarantee that if you do, um,
38:47
they're going to suddenly, it's going to actually shape their character in the way you think.
38:50
Um,
38:51
and so there's, there's a lot to this, but yeah, I'm curious, April, what, what does that start
38:54
for you?
38:56
Yeah, I, I think I kind of touched on it a little bit, um, already about like,
39:01
I think I just have that desire to like do it the right way and expect the results
39:08
is kind of just the way my brain thinks.
39:10
And, but, but I learned, I wouldn't say early on,
39:16
probably when our oldest was 10 to 12 is when I started to realize like, wow, I, I'm expecting,
39:24
I think this isn't the way humans work, you know, and understanding that winning our children's
39:30
hearts is a good idea.
39:32
So it's this weird balance between like not wanting to just try to be their
39:35
best friend, but not being like pushing them away with all the rules and obedience and discipline
39:42
and disobedience and all this stuff.
39:43
So there's this, there's this middle ground of that.
39:49
I mean,
39:50
ebb and flow is really the way I feel like it ends up being.
39:54
My desire is to like put a, put a
39:56
role or like an expectation and have it be met.
39:59
And, and when that doesn't happen,
40:02
then it leaves me like, Oh, well then I don't know what.
40:04
So I feel like, um, learning how to,
40:09
um, listen to your kids as they get older, learning how to, um,
40:16
to discern what's actually going on.
40:18
I think that that's one of the, uh, especially a mother,
40:21
her part of her role.
40:24
I feel like I spent hours, I have spent hours trying to discern
40:29
what's going on with my kids' hearts, what they're actually saying.
40:33
I pray and ask the Lord,
40:35
please wake me up if I'm asleep about something with one of my kids.
40:39
You know, to me, it feels
40:40
a little scary to have a lot of kids because what if I miss something with one of them?
40:45
And so that's when a prayer that I pray a lot is like, okay, Lord, wake me up if I need it with
40:50
this one kid, because sometimes they'll say something and it goes over your head.
40:53
And then
40:53
you realize later, oh, I think they were trying to say this in their way.
40:59
So anyway, I feel like
41:01
it's the obedience and the rules, it leaves out relationship.
41:08
And I think that our human heart
41:10
can do that to God too.
41:12
Like that's the garden where we're like, no, no, God, I've got this.
41:15
I've got it and um wanting to say like I need you lord I I actually need you to face this day
41:23
I need you to face I need you so I can face this moment and then you know that show that like
41:28
builds my relationship with him and therefore it helps me understand relationship like relationships
41:33
ebb and flow there's a give and take there's a desire to understand um that that needs to be
41:40
there especially on the parents behalf yeah so good justine any thoughts on that one um yeah i
41:48
think just echoing like what is the goal is the goal just strictly obedience or is it capturing
41:55
their heart and not that it's two opposite things like they you still want the obedience we're told
42:02
to teach them to obey all of his commands and so there is that obedience that we are supposed to
42:09
still, but like you said, April, we don't want to leave out the relationship part.
42:14
We want,
42:14
we want to capture their hearts at the same time.
42:16
And I think, like you said, it is a gradual thing.
42:18
Like when they're younger, it's very much training obedience.
42:24
And then as they progress,
42:27
we have, we have almost a nine-year-old down to nine month old, five, five kiddos.
42:33
So
42:33
So between all those, the nine-year-old, I'm going to treat completely different than our three-year-old in something.
42:41
Like the three-year-old, it's very much black and white.
42:43
You need to obey.
42:45
The nine-year-old, he has started to develop a heart where he wants to obey.
42:49
And when he doesn't, he will come and repent on his own.
42:52
And so when that starts to happen, then you know, okay, I can seek their heart more than just asking for blind obedience.
43:01
So I think that it's very much dependent on the stage.
43:05
And like you said, April, you have to be discerning of where each child is at because there's it's seasons.
43:12
It's not necessarily like this specific age.
43:15
Now they're ready for this and this specific age.
43:17
There's kind of some probably parameters of like generally around this time, but every child is so different.
43:25
And so that discernment is so necessary to be able to do it well.
43:33
Yeah.
43:34
Yeah.
43:34
Hundred percent.
43:35
I love what you're saying, Justine.
43:36
There are different stages.
43:37
There are different ages.
43:38
April, like you said, when the when they hit a certain age, you're like, whoa, this I got I got a pivot here.
43:44
That's why my favorite parenting verse in the whole Bible is in John 1, where he says that the law came through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
43:52
It really describes three different modes.
43:55
The law, which is really the obedience, what's right and wrong, really black and white, really concrete.
44:00
But then there comes a time where you're going to fail the law.
44:03
And so you can either just feel miserable and live a life of shame, or you can experience grace.
44:09
but one of the things that you will be tempted to do is then to base everything around grace as if
44:14
truth doesn't exist because that also helps you kind of avoid shame and so cheap grace is without
44:20
truth becomes a real problem and so when john says that the law came through moses grace and
44:26
truth came through jesus christ one of the things that we can believe is that it isn't that god was
44:30
like i tried the law and it didn't work and so we're going to try grace and truth now no no the
44:35
the law was actually important.
44:37
Jesus didn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill the law.
44:40
And so when you have, your kids are young, they do need a much more concrete kind of law-based,
44:45
simple, black and white, you know, obedience kind of approach.
44:50
And so part of what Owen was
44:51
describing in this tweet is like, the problem is that they continued in that hyper-concrete
44:57
law-based approach into their child's adulthood, you know, and through middle school and high
45:01
school and, and, you know, we never got to grace and truth.
45:04
It's also, I'm not a big fan of like
45:06
saying grace-based parenting.
45:07
We need law-based parenting, grace-based parenting, and truth-based
45:11
parenting.
45:11
And these are various ways in which these things all interrelate.
45:15
And, and so it's,
45:16
it is complicated.
45:17
And we all, again, there's a huge temptation to simplify this in some way so
45:22
that we have a formula that we can just, you know, this is about us.
45:25
We just like, I just want to
45:26
know I did the right thing.
45:27
Okay.
45:28
Never discipline your kids, you know, train your kids to obey and
45:30
that's it like whatever these extremes are and you know that's not the way human beings work like
45:35
you said really well april this is a relationship that we're trying to manage this is not uh this
45:40
is not some uh robot we're trying to train awesome well thank you both so much for jumping on here
45:46
today i think this is a really important thing for us to kind of take a step back and just kind
45:50
of like i love just kind of getting into like and teasing out um the reason why i think we're
45:55
constantly in these parenting philosophies just like pinging back and forth between the extremes
46:00
and I think like trying to get at like what is the essence of what this is how do we how do we
46:05
really do this in a way that is consistent with scripture is effective for our families and so
46:10
yeah this has been a fun conversation thank you for listening to the family teams podcast
46:15
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46:20
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46:25
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46:31
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