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Christian Parenting Beyond the Checklist: What Scripture Offers Instead · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

0:01
Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that
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Speaker 1: deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become
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Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.
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Speaker 1: I'm doctor James Spencer, and through calm, thoughtful theological discussions,
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Speaker 1: Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the
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Speaker 1: world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions
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Speaker 1: that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now onto
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Speaker 1: today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone, welcome to this
0:31
Speaker 1: episode of Thinking Christian. I'm doctor James Spencer. I'm joined
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Speaker 1: again by doctor Cheese Farmer. We're continuing our series on
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Speaker 1: Christian manhood and we're going to talk a little bit
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Speaker 1: more about fatherhood today. Last conversation we had on fatherhood,
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Speaker 1: we got into this idea that there isn't a recipe
0:45
Speaker 1: for being a Christian father. Like a lot of times,
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Speaker 1: it requires improvisation. We've talked about that in other episodes
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Speaker 1: and different topics, but one of my favorites is Chopped.
0:56
Speaker 1: It's this Food Network show where they give you a
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Speaker 1: mystery back ask it, and if you're an expert enough chef,
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Speaker 1: you can actually make something edible out of gummy bears
1:05
Speaker 1: and beat root and other strange ingredients. Right, And so
1:10
Speaker 1: the idea I think with the kids is sort of
1:12
Speaker 1: like a kid is like a mystery basket. You're given
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Speaker 1: this set of ingredients, and your job as a Christian
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Speaker 1: father is to be an expert enough chef that you
1:21
Speaker 1: can actually help this child become something palatable. It's probably
1:27
Speaker 1: a little more important than that, but you get the drift.
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Speaker 1: There's an improvisational aspect to raising kids that's really crucial,
1:35
Speaker 1: and so Ashesh and I talked a little bit about
1:37
Speaker 1: this after the last episode, and one of the things
1:39
Speaker 1: we both had sort of interesting convictions around was and
1:44
Speaker 1: a question I've been asking off a lot, why didn't
1:46
Speaker 1: I send my kids to private school, specifically private Christian school,
1:50
Speaker 1: And so we thought we might dive into that. I
1:52
Speaker 1: know that's kind of a hot topic right now, with
1:54
Speaker 1: public school education taking a bit of a hit in
1:58
Speaker 1: recent years, and so it might be an interesting topic
2:02
Speaker 1: and for us to just talk through this improvisational aspect
2:05
Speaker 1: of being a father. So I'll leave it there. I
2:07
Speaker 1: don't know whether you want to give any additional preamble, but.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, let me give the warning label of this isn't
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Speaker 2: bash on private school. This isn't no one should send
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Speaker 2: their kid to private school. That's not that's not the conversation.
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Speaker 2: The conversation is specifically geared towards its improvisational reality. As
2:28
Speaker 2: we think improvisationally, as we think about what's before us.
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Speaker 2: Why is it that we've come to the decisions that
2:35
Speaker 2: we have with our kids? Not nothing more than that.
2:39
Speaker 2: Nothing prescriptive or totalitarian about whether or not you should
2:45
Speaker 2: send them. There.
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Speaker 3: No, And it's a good disclaimer.
2:48
Speaker 1: And I will say that just to give people a
2:50
Speaker 1: little bit more context. My wife and I recently adopted
2:55
Speaker 1: a young girl. She was four, and we adopt her.
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Speaker 1: She's five now she's going to private school. So we
3:01
Speaker 1: sent her to a private Lutheran school in her area.
3:05
Speaker 1: Just to give the brief thumbnail sketch before we jump in.
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Speaker 1: It isn't a choice that we probably would have made,
3:11
Speaker 1: but the preschool in our area, the public preschool in
3:15
Speaker 1: our area, was full, and so we needed a place
3:18
Speaker 1: to send her. Obviously to preschool. And so given that
3:21
Speaker 1: the public school couldn't take her for full days, you
3:24
Speaker 1: could take her for a kind of half days. There's
3:26
Speaker 1: a whole thing there, But because they couldn't take her
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Speaker 1: for full days and we needed her to be in
3:30
Speaker 1: full days.
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Speaker 3: We opted for private school. So it was a pragmatic choice.
3:35
Speaker 1: But I can talk about this a little bit more,
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Speaker 1: but it's ended up being a really good spot for her,
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Speaker 1: and I don't know that we would have recognized that
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Speaker 1: had we just, you know, sort of not been pushed
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Speaker 1: to it. But I think we're both very glad that
3:52
Speaker 1: she ended up in a private school. So yeah, no
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Speaker 1: private school bashing, no real public school bashing either. Quite frankly,
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Speaker 1: I think the whole point of this is you have
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Speaker 1: different kids with different needs, in different dispositions, and so
4:07
Speaker 1: you're asking yourself as a parent, particularly as a father,
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Speaker 1: where is it that this kid is going to thrive?
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Speaker 1: And I think that's the real big question, at least
4:18
Speaker 1: we were trying to answer as we were thinking about
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Speaker 1: our kids and where to send them.
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Speaker 2: To school, right, and that question about where they're going
4:26
Speaker 2: to thrive gets maybe to the heart of the question
4:29
Speaker 2: of improvisation that we tried to start to draw out
4:33
Speaker 2: when looking at the text that these passages. We looked
4:36
Speaker 2: at Ephesians colautions, neither one is terribly specific, and you'd
4:41
Speaker 2: be hard pressed to find really any passage in scripture
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Speaker 2: that's terribly specific. Even when you look at something like
4:48
Speaker 2: the Book of Proverbs. That's the framework that it's written in,
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Speaker 2: is a father talking to his son. At least the
4:57
Speaker 2: first part of the Book of Proverbs is written that way.
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Speaker 2: While you do get this distinction between Lady Wisdom, who
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Speaker 2: this father wants a son to chase, and Lady Folly,
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Speaker 2: who this father wants to warrant his son about, the
5:13
Speaker 2: descriptions remain still general, right, They're about the sorts of
5:18
Speaker 2: things that Lady Wisdom does and produces and the sorts
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Speaker 2: of things lady Folly does and produces. Right, And why
5:27
Speaker 2: long term, one truly is the path of wisdom, and
5:31
Speaker 2: one truly is the.
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Speaker 3: Path of folly.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, but if you're looking for, you know, the ten
5:39
Speaker 2: things that you need to have to make sure that
5:41
Speaker 2: you avoid lady or Lady Folly, you're not finding.
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Speaker 4: Them, right.
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Speaker 3: Yeah.
5:47
Speaker 2: And that but that dynamic, I think is to the
5:50
Speaker 2: heart of the Biblical account that it is, especially with
5:53
Speaker 2: its abundant concern for wisdom, right, such that Paul even
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Speaker 2: frames several his own letters in terms of wisdom. Jesus
6:02
Speaker 2: speaks his Sermon on the Mount is him as the
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Speaker 2: wise teacher. This very strong and deliberate focus on wisdom
6:12
Speaker 2: in the scripture is meant to create people who are adaptive.
6:17
Speaker 2: And that's the idea of improvisation. Can I enter into
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Speaker 2: a situation that's totally new or totally outside the framework
6:25
Speaker 2: of what I might have expected, and have the ability
6:28
Speaker 2: to operate within it, And in some ways we get
6:31
Speaker 2: this in other avenues of life. I've never been a
6:35
Speaker 2: great instrumental player, but one thing that I've noticed from
6:39
Speaker 2: those who are is the truly best musicians are the
6:43
Speaker 2: ones who have such a handle on their craft that
6:46
Speaker 2: they're able to riff off others. In fact, the whole
6:48
Speaker 2: genre of jazz is built on this. We've talked before
6:52
Speaker 2: about sports and athletic events, and that's been where much
6:56
Speaker 2: of my life has been wrapped up. And I think
7:00
Speaker 2: think what I've seen is what makes the best basketball
7:02
Speaker 2: players and the best tennis players. Right. You think of
7:05
Speaker 2: the Michael Jordans, you think of the Magic Johnson's, the
7:08
Speaker 2: Roger Fetterer's. That is their ability to take what you
7:11
Speaker 2: give them and to over accept is what some sociologists
7:15
Speaker 2: would say, I receive it and I can in that
7:19
Speaker 2: moment from my training, use my mastery of the footwork,
7:24
Speaker 2: use my mastery of understanding defensive rotations, things like that
7:30
Speaker 2: to make the next play in a way in which
7:33
Speaker 2: you can't you can't shock me. Right, If we can
7:38
Speaker 2: transfer that to the parenting landscape, there's so many things.
7:42
Speaker 2: There's so many things that we encounter, and in a
7:45
Speaker 2: world that's changing more rapidly than ever, there's so much
7:49
Speaker 2: you can't anticipate. But it's about being able to both
7:52
Speaker 2: understand who your children are so that you can help
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Speaker 2: them become the kinds of people that themselves can understand
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Speaker 2: situations that are totally new, and work within the patterns
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Speaker 2: of God's grace to live accordingly. Right, And that's what
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Speaker 2: wisdom is.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think the other side of this so
8:15
Speaker 1: I agree with all that. I think the the other
8:19
Speaker 1: side of this is there are some things that we
8:22
Speaker 1: can do that will help us to move toward wisdom,
8:27
Speaker 1: move toward a fear of the Lord. I think of
8:29
Speaker 1: something like Deuteronomy seventeen, right, the Instructions to the future
8:35
Speaker 1: Israeli king supposed to write himself his own copy of
8:38
Speaker 1: the law, have it approved by the priests, read it'll,
8:41
Speaker 1: you know, read it every year, and in that way
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Speaker 1: he is going to learn to fear the Lord. And
8:48
Speaker 1: so I think as fathers, there is something to us.
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Speaker 1: You don't just develop this sort of improvisational instinct because
8:58
Speaker 1: you're a father, right. It isn't just this like, oh, okay,
9:03
Speaker 1: I have kids now, and so automatically I'll just emerge
9:06
Speaker 1: as this wonderful father.
9:07
Speaker 3: And that's not quite it.
9:09
Speaker 1: I think there is an intentionality that we have to
9:11
Speaker 1: go through in order to develop that expertise, just like
9:14
Speaker 1: anything else.
9:16
Speaker 3: You know.
9:17
Speaker 1: I can remember when I was a personal trainer, right,
9:20
Speaker 1: and when I started out, I did what I would
9:24
Speaker 1: when I knew how to do what I'd done for myself.
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Speaker 3: Right.
9:26
Speaker 1: You have people come in and lift really heavy weights.
9:29
Speaker 1: But as I got more and more experience training different
9:32
Speaker 1: sorts of clients, what you quickly realize is that that
9:34
Speaker 1: doesn't work for everybody. It's not really tailored to the individual.
9:38
Speaker 1: There are some people come in, maybe they have an injury,
9:40
Speaker 1: maybe they have an event they're going to go and do.
9:43
Speaker 1: Maybe they have maybe just a particular preference for something,
9:47
Speaker 1: and you have to learn to adapt the workouts to
9:50
Speaker 1: the person while still getting the results. And I think
9:54
Speaker 1: that's sort of it required of me a different sort
9:59
Speaker 1: of learning. I couldn't just lean back and say, well,
10:00
Speaker 1: I've been lifting for fourteen years, I know exactly what
10:03
Speaker 1: I'm doing, because I didn't. I think there had to
10:06
Speaker 1: be adaptation there. And so as we're thinking about fatherhood,
10:09
Speaker 1: there has to be that sort of impetus on fathers
10:12
Speaker 1: to figure this stuff out and to really deeply embed
10:16
Speaker 1: ourselves within God's instruction.
10:20
Speaker 3: In a way that will allow us to have a.
10:24
Speaker 1: Spiritual sensitivity, a godly sensitivity to how to direct our children,
10:30
Speaker 1: so that we're not just thinking through how do I
10:33
Speaker 1: set my kids up so they can be maximally successful,
10:37
Speaker 1: but how do I set my kids up so they
10:39
Speaker 1: can be wise, so that they can be followers of
10:42
Speaker 1: the Lord, so they can be disciples as well. I
10:45
Speaker 1: don't think anything you said contradicts that. I'm just kind
10:48
Speaker 1: of throwing that in there as my little nugget.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's good, that's good. And to that point, not
10:54
Speaker 2: to overextend the metaphor. If you're training someone, what that
11:02
Speaker 2: person's doing matters, right, You're gonna you're going to try
11:05
Speaker 2: to reduce bulk and the create and the increasing of strength.
11:09
Speaker 2: For a guard in basketball or for a tennis player
11:11
Speaker 2: who doesn't want bulk, that's going to hurt them. If
11:14
Speaker 2: you're if you're working with an offensive lineman, you.
11:17
Speaker 3: Want bulk, You just want meat.
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Speaker 2: That's right, and that matters both in terms of how
11:23
Speaker 2: the two groups eat, but also in the in terms
11:25
Speaker 2: of the way that they're going to train. Yeah, and
11:28
Speaker 2: that's recognizing that maybe after the fact seems more obvious,
11:33
Speaker 2: but walking into the situation maybe is less obvious. And
11:36
Speaker 2: that's what it is with kids, right. We have kids
11:38
Speaker 2: with different personalities. And one of the things that you
11:42
Speaker 2: and I were discussing that I think would be fun
11:44
Speaker 2: to just sort of lay out, parse out the differences
11:49
Speaker 2: is both of our oldest child children are our boys,
11:54
Speaker 2: and as we talked to them, talked about them, we
11:58
Speaker 2: both came to the conclusion that public school is better
12:02
Speaker 2: for them than a private school setting, even as we
12:05
Speaker 2: recognize very different things about their personality. Is what gets
12:09
Speaker 2: them going.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, we came to the same conclusion, right, Yeah, I'm
12:14
Speaker 1: happy to we came to the same conclusion, but for
12:16
Speaker 1: very different reasons.
12:17
Speaker 3: And so.
12:19
Speaker 1: I think the first thing to recognize is, so my
12:22
Speaker 1: son is now twenty. He's studying theology and history at
12:26
Speaker 1: Saint Louis University, so he's double majoram there. He's doing great,
12:32
Speaker 1: great kid. But when he first started school, I would
12:38
Speaker 1: say two things. Number One, we were living in a
12:40
Speaker 1: small town. We were living in Carlonville, Illinois, and so
12:44
Speaker 1: there aren't a lot of private schools around. And my
12:47
Speaker 1: mom was a teacher in the public school. She knew
12:50
Speaker 1: a lot of people, and so it just made sense
12:51
Speaker 1: for us to send him there. Now, once he got
12:54
Speaker 1: started in the public, in the private school or in
12:57
Speaker 1: the public schools, we we eventually moved to Chicago, and
13:01
Speaker 1: so going into Chicago public schools is no simple feat
13:05
Speaker 1: when you're coming from a small town. So you think
13:08
Speaker 1: about going from a class of like I graduated with
13:10
Speaker 1: a class of one hundred. Chicago public schools have a
13:15
Speaker 1: few more students than that. They're really large, they're very urban,
13:21
Speaker 1: and so I can remember thinking about sending my son
13:24
Speaker 1: to this very new context, even though it was still
13:27
Speaker 1: a public school, very different context in Chicago than in Carlinville.
13:32
Speaker 1: So we did look at a private school at that point,
13:37
Speaker 1: but we'd already started to see in Judo this sort
13:40
Speaker 1: of sense that he was going to be a little
13:42
Speaker 1: bit more contrarian. He had this way of thinking through
13:46
Speaker 1: issues even at a very young age, where it was
13:49
Speaker 1: he wasn't going to buy it on the first try,
13:51
Speaker 1: and he was going to question what you were telling him.
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Speaker 3: And so he just had that sort of bent.
13:56
Speaker 1: I think it's part of the reason why history and
13:58
Speaker 1: theology are so fitted to him, right, Like, he likes
14:02
Speaker 1: that sort of pushback and contrariant nature of those disciplines.
14:06
Speaker 1: And so I was concerned about sending him to a
14:09
Speaker 1: Christian private school, not because I thought that he would
14:13
Speaker 1: be getting wrong information, but that I thought he would
14:15
Speaker 1: be reacting to the information he got in that contrarian way.
14:21
Speaker 1: And so if I'm going to lean into his personality
14:24
Speaker 1: and say he's going to push back on whatever he's
14:26
Speaker 1: hearing and he's going to question it, I might as
14:29
Speaker 1: well just send him somewhere where I can deal with
14:32
Speaker 1: the wrong teachings.
14:34
Speaker 3: Right.
14:34
Speaker 1: I was happy to have the conversations where he's going
14:37
Speaker 1: to push against some of the things that he may
14:39
Speaker 1: be learning in public school and help him come to
14:42
Speaker 1: a more biblically oriented solution to those or biblically resolution
14:47
Speaker 1: to some of those problems. Then I would have been
14:49
Speaker 1: having to defend something that a private Christian school is
14:53
Speaker 1: teaching him and now becoming part of the antagonism. Let's say,
15:01
Speaker 1: you know, he's pushing now not against the Christian school,
15:03
Speaker 1: but also against me as I'm trying to correct things.
15:07
Speaker 1: And so I felt like it would be simpler to
15:11
Speaker 1: be on the same side with him, that I could
15:13
Speaker 1: question these things, and that we could push against some
15:16
Speaker 1: of these things together, and I could help him sort
15:19
Speaker 1: of refine the way he's doing that and refine his
15:22
Speaker 1: thinking overall. And so public school made perfect sense then
15:27
Speaker 1: for my son, even though we'd moved from, like I said,
15:30
Speaker 1: Carlinville to Chicago. My son went to Chicago Public School
15:35
Speaker 1: for his entire elementary school all the way up into
15:40
Speaker 1: eighth grade. We moved out, he started in the suburbs.
15:44
Speaker 1: We'd moved out to the suburbs at that point for
15:46
Speaker 1: his freshman year in high school. But he went through
15:49
Speaker 1: you know, second grade through eight all in Chicago public schools,
15:54
Speaker 1: and we did fine, a lot of good conversations, a
15:59
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of pushing together on things, a
16:02
Speaker 1: lot of refining thought. But I will say that was
16:06
Speaker 1: probably one of the better decisions my wife and I
16:08
Speaker 1: made was it turned out very very well for us.
16:12
Speaker 1: But it was because he was that contrarian nature and
16:14
Speaker 1: was pushing against things. I didn't want to be trying
16:18
Speaker 1: to defend the Christian school against my son, which is
16:21
Speaker 1: what I felt like would happen if we'd send him
16:24
Speaker 1: to a private Christian school.
16:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense if I can be so bold.
16:29
Speaker 2: I wonder if there was another layer that you're not mentioning.
16:33
Speaker 2: Why that you know, as a studied biblical scholar who
16:38
Speaker 2: knows what you're talking about. I know when I go
16:40
Speaker 2: to church, and this isn't a knock on church, but
16:43
Speaker 2: you know, a pastor will say something just this past
16:45
Speaker 2: weeks that the Greek says such and such and that
16:47
Speaker 2: means such and such, and I'm just listening, and you know,
16:50
Speaker 2: it's not one of those things that go around and
16:52
Speaker 2: tell everyone pastor said that and that's just garbage, right.
16:56
Speaker 2: But I heard him and I said, yeah, I know
16:58
Speaker 2: the Greek there.
16:58
Speaker 3: And.
17:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, you kind of go completely completely non issue.
17:05
Speaker 1: No, it's definitely another layer. I appreciate you bringing that out.
17:08
Speaker 1: I had the same problems. I don't like the the
17:15
Speaker 1: Christian private schools we looked at had very strong stances
17:18
Speaker 1: on things like seven day creationism, They had very strong
17:22
Speaker 1: stances on particular eschatological positions. They had very strong positions
17:27
Speaker 1: on even one of them we looked at on Christians
17:30
Speaker 1: and politics. And so as we talked with some of
17:33
Speaker 1: the private school teachers, I did not get the impression
17:36
Speaker 1: that this was going to create the sort of open
17:41
Speaker 1: environment I thought Judah would drive in. I think there's
17:44
Speaker 1: a way that that could have worked, you know, if
17:45
Speaker 1: there's a I think a classical Christian school would have
17:48
Speaker 1: been much more amenable to what we were looking at,
17:51
Speaker 1: where they're doing more reading and socratic method and talking
17:55
Speaker 1: through texts and those kind of things. I probably would
17:57
Speaker 1: have gravitated more towards that this was more of the
18:01
Speaker 1: private schools that we had available at the time, would
18:04
Speaker 1: have been more classroom instruction based. You listen to the
18:09
Speaker 1: teacher and regurgitate what the teacher is going to say
18:11
Speaker 1: to you. There wasn't a lot of dialogue and back
18:14
Speaker 1: and forth, and to me, I was just kind of
18:17
Speaker 1: sitting there going I'm probably what's going to end up
18:21
Speaker 1: happening is I'm going to end up in the awkward
18:24
Speaker 1: situation of disagreeing with a lot of his teachers and
18:29
Speaker 1: having to try to explain to a second grader why
18:32
Speaker 1: Daddy thinks what he's being taught isn't quite right. By
18:37
Speaker 1: the time he was in eighth grade, I would have
18:38
Speaker 1: felt much more comfortable with that. But as you know,
18:42
Speaker 1: when you're at those younger ages, I always felt like
18:46
Speaker 1: limiting dissonance right between me and the school, right me
18:52
Speaker 1: and what he's being taught, particularly theologically and biblically, was important.
18:59
Speaker 1: Limiting the it's between me and what's being taught in
19:01
Speaker 1: the public school was not as big an issue because
19:06
Speaker 1: he already knew that we were a Christian family and
19:08
Speaker 1: that we were going to disagree with things, so you
19:10
Speaker 1: could just frame it up like that. But I think,
19:12
Speaker 1: you know, trying to nuance with a second grader the
19:15
Speaker 1: finer points of how you should think about, you know,
19:20
Speaker 1: Genesis one one through two three, and what are the
19:22
Speaker 1: different views and how could this work? It's just not
19:26
Speaker 1: something that I felt I was going to be capable
19:28
Speaker 1: pulling off.
19:29
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's the other reason.
19:32
Speaker 1: I just felt like I could do a better job
19:34
Speaker 1: of helping him navigate from against some of what he
19:38
Speaker 1: might get in public school, which he did get some
19:40
Speaker 1: of it. So I felt like I could do a
19:42
Speaker 1: better job of helping him navigate against that versus doing
19:46
Speaker 1: a and a poor job of navigating against what some
19:49
Speaker 1: of what he would have gotten at the Putt Privates
19:52
Speaker 1: Christian schools we happen to be looking at.
19:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for that. I wanted to pull that little
19:58
Speaker 2: bit out because I thought it's actually so much of
20:01
Speaker 2: a bridge. So, even as our sons are different in personality,
20:05
Speaker 2: I think that bridge is a similar bridge. So you
20:10
Speaker 2: mentioned your son is the contrarian and I and you're
20:13
Speaker 2: a bit of a contrary, and I'm a bit of
20:14
Speaker 2: a contrarian. Yeah, that's not so much my son, right,
20:20
Speaker 2: that's not so much my son. That is very much
20:23
Speaker 2: my first daughter. So I'll put her story aside because
20:30
Speaker 2: I think in some ways it would match some of
20:32
Speaker 2: the narrative you've said, because you know, she would have
20:37
Speaker 2: a tendency to be a contrarian, and that can create
20:40
Speaker 2: layers of contrariness that a second grader, a third grader
20:45
Speaker 2: isn't ready yet to understand that they're layers. It's sort
20:47
Speaker 2: of an all or nothing thinking for a kid, and
20:50
Speaker 2: that makes sense. Sometimes it's not for an adult too.
20:55
Speaker 2: But with my son, my older son, he's very he
21:02
Speaker 2: gets very excited. He has a lot of energy for everything.
21:06
Speaker 2: He likes everything. He's energetic to learn about everything. If
21:11
Speaker 2: you give him a little bit, he'll dig in and
21:13
Speaker 2: go further. And it's actually precisely because he's not a
21:16
Speaker 2: contrarian that that concerns me a little bit at times,
21:20
Speaker 2: because it's I learned this, and I decided that was exciting,
21:26
Speaker 2: because everything's exciting, and I jumped into it and went
21:29
Speaker 2: a mile deep in it. And now I've got all
21:32
Speaker 2: this information. And he'll say, did you know this? Did
21:35
Speaker 2: you know that? I'm like, no, I didn't because I
21:37
Speaker 2: never got excited about that and didn't jump him out.
21:40
Speaker 2: But interesting, And I think that's a wonderful quality that
21:47
Speaker 2: is ripe for malformation if all you ever get is
21:55
Speaker 2: a very focused perspective on what the goal ought to
22:00
Speaker 2: be and some of the things that often happen. You know,
22:03
Speaker 2: the curriculum in a private school, just like in a
22:06
Speaker 2: private college, especially Christian college, is often going to be
22:11
Speaker 2: something much more integrated in the parts than you are
22:17
Speaker 2: in a setting where the emphasis is on the greater
22:21
Speaker 2: diversity of thinking on a topic. Right, And as a result,
22:26
Speaker 2: with a personality like my son's, it seems like a
22:29
Speaker 2: mistake to say that the goal here is for you
22:32
Speaker 2: to jump them out deep, especially when I know, again
22:36
Speaker 2: the curse may be of the academic theologian, that there
22:40
Speaker 2: are fine points that I know I'm not going to
22:42
Speaker 2: agree with, sometimes not insignificant points, whereas I know that
22:50
Speaker 2: when he's in a setting where there's a lot more
22:53
Speaker 2: scattered of an identity right where it's generally in a
22:57
Speaker 2: public school, there might be a greater openness to what's
23:01
Speaker 2: new out there than in the private school, where there's
23:05
Speaker 2: a greater sense of preserving what's not new against what's new.
23:11
Speaker 2: And as a result of this sort of emphasis of
23:13
Speaker 2: what's of of bringing in the new, the constant curricular
23:18
Speaker 2: revisions and the constant changes of you and how we
23:21
Speaker 2: understand education, it provided an opportunity to say to my son,
23:26
Speaker 2: who's already inclined to see a very specific view and
23:30
Speaker 2: jump all the way in, that there is variety and
23:34
Speaker 2: that it generates conversations. Right. So he comes home and
23:38
Speaker 2: he wants to talk about one thing, and I'll say,
23:41
Speaker 2: you know, that's good. I'm intrigued that you're learning about that.
23:45
Speaker 2: Let's talk a little bit more about that one thing, right,
23:49
Speaker 2: And I'm deliberately being vague so as not to close
23:52
Speaker 2: off the conversation, but it provides the opportunity for nuance. Right.
23:59
Speaker 2: Sometimes those one thing's very much overlap with my research,
24:03
Speaker 2: and I can say, okay, well, obviously, so my son
24:06
Speaker 2: isn't as far along as yours. He's a middle schooler,
24:10
Speaker 2: so he's maybe not getting the kind of nuance that
24:13
Speaker 2: a college student would get, and you wouldn't expect it
24:15
Speaker 2: you and you're hired to get it right. My job
24:19
Speaker 2: isn't necessarily to say, let me pretend you're a twenty
24:21
Speaker 2: year old in college, but it is to say, let's
24:26
Speaker 2: complicate things a little bit, you know, kind of tactical strikes.
24:31
Speaker 2: Maybe a little bit more is going on here than
24:34
Speaker 2: what it seems like right in this initial phase, you
24:37
Speaker 2: need to think there's less going on, so let me
24:39
Speaker 2: give you a little bit more. And I've found with
24:43
Speaker 2: his personality that that's a much easier thing to do
24:48
Speaker 2: when his exposure is broader than it is when it's
24:53
Speaker 2: a narrow exposure. And now he becomes something of an
24:55
Speaker 2: apologist for a viewpoint. In those moments, it's harder to
25:00
Speaker 2: pull him back. And I just think with this personality,
25:04
Speaker 2: that's that's just the better, the better framework, the better
25:07
Speaker 2: place for him. And then with my daughter, who sounds
25:11
Speaker 2: a lot more like your son, you know, i'd say
25:14
Speaker 2: ditto to that. Right, she's a contrary in and yeah
25:17
Speaker 2: she's going to push. Let her push where there's greater variety,
25:21
Speaker 2: because now there's an opportunity to speak into that without
25:23
Speaker 2: having to have again that overly narrow focus.
25:26
Speaker 3: That's right, Yeah, I think.
25:30
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember when I thought to myself, this
25:33
Speaker 1: might actually work, right, And Judah came home one time,
25:39
Speaker 1: and I can't remember who was what the election was, right,
25:42
Speaker 1: but it may have been it may have been, Well,
25:47
Speaker 1: it had to be a Democrat, Like they were talking
25:49
Speaker 1: about these issues, democratic and Republican issues in the school,
25:52
Speaker 1: and you know, it was definitely skewing Democrat. And so
25:55
Speaker 1: he came home and everything I was hearing come out
25:57
Speaker 1: of his mouth, it was like I was listening to
25:58
Speaker 1: a Democratic Party platform.
26:01
Speaker 3: Right now.
26:03
Speaker 1: You know me, I'm not an overly political guy, so
26:06
Speaker 1: that didn't bother me. And so what I told him
26:09
Speaker 1: was though, I said, look at the end of the day,
26:13
Speaker 1: if you're saying this because your teacher said it, I'm
26:18
Speaker 1: not real happy about that. If you're saying it because
26:22
Speaker 1: you've come to it on your own, You've looked at it,
26:26
Speaker 1: you've thought about it, you've really you're owning this, that's great.
26:31
Speaker 1: So I said, which one are you doing? Do you
26:34
Speaker 1: really understand the other side? Do you really understand the
26:36
Speaker 1: whole issues? Or are you just parroting? I said something
26:40
Speaker 1: like that, and I remember him just sort of standing
26:43
Speaker 1: back and going, I'm just parroting. Never happened again, Never
26:49
Speaker 1: happened again, Like he would never come back home, right
26:53
Speaker 1: he would.
26:53
Speaker 3: He would come back home and he would ask me
26:55
Speaker 3: then questions.
26:56
Speaker 1: But it wasn't like he was giving me regurchitating the
26:59
Speaker 1: lecture that he'd got in school. And I think now,
27:03
Speaker 1: like as he's because SLEW is a Catholic institution. They
27:06
Speaker 1: offer what I would consider to be like modern theology.
27:09
Speaker 1: It's not really confessional theology. So someone he's getting he
27:14
Speaker 1: went there for history opted into theology, which I thought
27:17
Speaker 1: was great, But it is a different sort of theology
27:20
Speaker 1: than like you or I were exposed to in our education, right,
27:22
Speaker 1: non confessional theology.
27:25
Speaker 3: I don't really have.
27:26
Speaker 1: To worry about it that much because when he has questions,
27:29
Speaker 1: he's going to come home and we can have conversations
27:31
Speaker 1: about them. He's not accepting a lot of it, you know,
27:34
Speaker 1: he's he's doing well in it, but he's not owned,
27:37
Speaker 1: you know, like he's not Okay, great, this is exactly
27:39
Speaker 1: what it is.
27:40
Speaker 3: Right.
27:40
Speaker 1: He's calling his own balls and strikes, and I think
27:43
Speaker 1: that that experience in public school really gave him the
27:46
Speaker 1: opportunity to go Now, I can call these balls and strikes,
27:49
Speaker 1: like this person who's conveying the information to me is
27:53
Speaker 1: worthy of my respect.
27:54
Speaker 3: But at the end of the day, I have.
27:57
Speaker 1: To own this like it's it's got to be my
28:01
Speaker 1: perspective at the end of the day. And so he's
28:04
Speaker 1: sort of learned, I think, over this time, how to
28:07
Speaker 1: sort of sift and sort and think for himself. And
28:11
Speaker 1: he'll I'm sure he'll make plenty of mistakes, but I'm
28:14
Speaker 1: pretty confident in his ability to think through issues. And
28:19
Speaker 1: I would attribute that to his participation in public school
28:24
Speaker 1: as opposed to the Christian private school. Now, again, to
28:27
Speaker 1: go back to that disclaimer, it's not because the Christian
28:31
Speaker 1: private school wouldn't have been good.
28:33
Speaker 3: It's that it wouldn't have been right for him.
28:36
Speaker 1: I think our daughter, you know, our adoptive daughter, Lutheran
28:42
Speaker 1: school was perfect for her. It's fantastic, really well structured,
28:47
Speaker 1: smaller classes. You know, she came in the other day
28:50
Speaker 1: and said she was going to We had mentioned somebody
28:54
Speaker 1: was sick, and so she came into my office and said, oh,
28:56
Speaker 1: I want to pray for those people.
28:59
Speaker 3: It's kind of perfect for her.
29:00
Speaker 1: Right Like, I'm glad we got pushed over in that direction,
29:06
Speaker 1: even though we might not have considered it as closely
29:08
Speaker 1: as we did had the public school been open. I
29:13
Speaker 1: think we'll leave her in that private school all the
29:15
Speaker 1: way as long as we can. I think it's just
29:19
Speaker 1: really fitting for her personality. It provides her the structure
29:23
Speaker 1: she needs. And you know, she's the one daughter that
29:28
Speaker 1: we have who came to us with a history, and
29:31
Speaker 1: so I think that we need the extra support to
29:33
Speaker 1: kind of help give her that structure and that guidance
29:37
Speaker 1: going forward that this school particularly does very very well,
29:42
Speaker 1: and then a public school won't.
29:45
Speaker 3: Right.
29:46
Speaker 1: We're still in a relatively large area. The schools are bigger,
29:49
Speaker 1: they just don't always have the capacity to give that
29:52
Speaker 1: sort of guided structure that a smaller Lutheran school will.
29:56
Speaker 3: So again, not a I.
30:00
Speaker 1: Don't have any sort of philosophical disagreement with Christian private school.
30:04
Speaker 1: It's just a question of thinking through with this one kid,
30:09
Speaker 1: which one works best?
30:12
Speaker 3: Yeah?
30:12
Speaker 2: Right, Well, the word you use was fitting. Yeah, that's
30:18
Speaker 2: the idea at play. That's the improvisational idea. That's the
30:21
Speaker 2: idea of wisdom. It's being able to discern the best fit.
30:26
Speaker 2: And to discern the best fit is you have to
30:28
Speaker 2: know the landscape. Right. If you don't know anything about
30:30
Speaker 2: the schools of either of the kinds of schools, you
30:34
Speaker 2: can't really make an informed decision of fit if you
30:38
Speaker 2: don't know your kid. And this gets to the question
30:40
Speaker 2: of fatherhood and gets to the issues that we were
30:44
Speaker 2: discussing in the last episode that are somewhat ambiguous in writing,
30:49
Speaker 2: but are getting at that fit issue. Fathers don't provoke
30:54
Speaker 2: your kids, you know whatever precisely we see that provoking
30:58
Speaker 2: as you can't understand what that means and what that
31:02
Speaker 2: looks like without being a father of coming to understand
31:08
Speaker 2: what makes your child tick. You know, as a father
31:14
Speaker 2: of four kids, it's hard to miss that there are
31:18
Speaker 2: four different kids, there's similarities. I talk sometimes about how
31:23
Speaker 2: I can see patterns of similarities between the first and
31:25
Speaker 2: the third and the second and the fourth, and I
31:27
Speaker 2: don't really get how that just seems to me like
31:30
Speaker 2: it happened to work out that way. But it'd be
31:32
Speaker 2: a mistake to assume that the first and the third
31:35
Speaker 2: are the same, and the second and the fourth are
31:36
Speaker 2: the same. There's some major differences. And if you're not aware,
31:40
Speaker 2: how could you begin to know what it means to
31:42
Speaker 2: not provoke your child?
31:44
Speaker 3: Right?
31:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I don't think that's a weakness in the text,
31:48
Speaker 2: that's right. It's a presumption in the text. That's a
31:52
Speaker 2: right presumption that whatever it is, you need to be
31:56
Speaker 2: in tune with it. And when you're in tune with
31:58
Speaker 2: your child, you know how far to push, how far
32:02
Speaker 2: not to push. I talked last time about being on
32:04
Speaker 2: the basketball team, and my coach seemed to understand that
32:09
Speaker 2: his son wasn't going to receive certain instruction from him,
32:12
Speaker 2: but he was more than happy to be pushed by me. Yeah,
32:16
Speaker 2: and so he encouraged it. He leaned into that, as
32:20
Speaker 2: opposed to another guy in the team that my coach
32:22
Speaker 2: realized that guy's not responding to your pushing, and so
32:26
Speaker 2: he became something of a buffer there to make sure
32:28
Speaker 2: I didn't overpush him like that. That's a discernment again
32:32
Speaker 2: and fit.
32:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think as I think through that notion
32:35
Speaker 1: of provoking our children. The reason this came up, this
32:38
Speaker 1: whole topic came up with us yesterday, is that after
32:40
Speaker 1: the podcast, we were talking a little bit about, you know,
32:42
Speaker 1: this sort of co parenting that we end up having
32:45
Speaker 1: to do.
32:46
Speaker 3: I called it co parenting. It's not quite that, but we.
32:49
Speaker 1: Have a lot of unlike earlier ages, we're sending our
32:53
Speaker 1: kids to places for different things. We've outsourced largely education
32:58
Speaker 1: to public war private at schools, and so I would
33:02
Speaker 1: argue that part of what we need to be thinking about.
33:04
Speaker 1: And I don't know that I would have used this
33:06
Speaker 1: verse to think through this at that time, but in
33:10
Speaker 1: retrospect it makes good sense. Am I sending my son
33:16
Speaker 1: or daughter to a place that is going to provoke them,
33:23
Speaker 1: that is going to exasperate them?
33:27
Speaker 3: Like?
33:27
Speaker 1: Is this what I'm doing? There's a difference the way
33:33
Speaker 1: I interact with my kids. I understand. Just like you're saying,
33:36
Speaker 1: like you can push that button, right, Like you know
33:39
Speaker 1: when you're about to exasperate your kid. But then we
33:42
Speaker 1: also have to think through that, given that we are
33:44
Speaker 1: sending them to these different places, is this also going
33:48
Speaker 1: to exasperate them?
33:50
Speaker 3: Right?
33:50
Speaker 1: We knew early on that. Well, I'll give an example
33:56
Speaker 1: of my own life. Like, I didn't like team sports,
34:03
Speaker 1: didn't want to have anything to do with them. I
34:06
Speaker 1: was more of a loner, like, just leave me to
34:08
Speaker 1: my own thing. If my parents had pushed me into
34:12
Speaker 1: team sports, I would have been exasperated. I would have
34:14
Speaker 1: hated every minute of it. I didn't enjoy it. I
34:17
Speaker 1: didn't like the dynamic with the coach and liked the
34:20
Speaker 1: dynamic with the team. It just wasn't my thing, right,
34:24
Speaker 1: So buy me a gym membership and leave me alone, right,
34:28
Speaker 1: And that's what ended up happening. So, I mean, like
34:31
Speaker 1: they intuitively understood that I needed to step away from
34:34
Speaker 1: these things that they would have liked to see me do.
34:37
Speaker 1: But they were okay with me just being able to
34:39
Speaker 1: go to the gym and still get some exercise and
34:41
Speaker 1: take care of myself physically. They didn't have that need
34:44
Speaker 1: for me to be on a sports team, right, And
34:47
Speaker 1: I think that was a wise decision on their part.
34:50
Speaker 1: And I think the same as we dealt with our
34:52
Speaker 1: kids through high school. For instance, my son really struggled
34:55
Speaker 1: in high school, and part of it was just the whole.
35:00
Speaker 3: System of it exasperated him.
35:03
Speaker 1: Everything about it was frustrating, you know, how early he
35:05
Speaker 1: had to get up, why he had to be there
35:07
Speaker 1: the entire day, the classes he had to take, all
35:12
Speaker 1: these different things, like, none of it made sense to him,
35:15
Speaker 1: and it was really a challenge for him to get
35:17
Speaker 1: through high school. He just struggled with it. He pushed
35:20
Speaker 1: back against it. He was exasperated. Right now, there wasn't
35:26
Speaker 1: a whole lot we could do. We'd try to help
35:28
Speaker 1: him manage it. We worked with him through it, but
35:31
Speaker 1: it was effort on our part. Now that he's in college,
35:34
Speaker 1: it's like night and day, it's no problem.
35:38
Speaker 3: Right.
35:38
Speaker 1: That high school experience really exasperated him. And I think
35:41
Speaker 1: that's something that we need to think about as we're
35:43
Speaker 1: you know, working with our kids. Am I sending them
35:46
Speaker 1: somewhere that's going to exasperate them? Because there's only so
35:49
Speaker 1: much mental and emotional resources people just have in general, right,
35:54
Speaker 1: And so if we're pushing them into something that's just
35:57
Speaker 1: going to frustrate them. Why are we doing that. I'm
36:01
Speaker 1: not saying shelter your kids and you know, only let
36:05
Speaker 1: them do things that they like to do. Right, there
36:07
Speaker 1: is a point where you have to challenge them. There
36:09
Speaker 1: need the friction, they need that, They need that trial,
36:13
Speaker 1: right in order to get stronger. So I'm not saying, hey,
36:15
Speaker 1: don't ever trigger your kids or push them into challenging situations.
36:19
Speaker 1: But what I am saying is there's a limit to that.
36:23
Speaker 3: Right.
36:24
Speaker 1: I don't take my daughters like to lift with me.
36:27
Speaker 1: I would never put three hundred pounds on the bench
36:29
Speaker 1: press and have them lay underneath it and.
36:30
Speaker 3: Go, okay, lift this up like that's crazy town. Right.
36:35
Speaker 1: There's a progressive overload that you have to give them
36:38
Speaker 1: that's commensurate with their weight and strength. And that's really
36:42
Speaker 1: what we're kind of talking about here, like presenting with
36:45
Speaker 1: those challenges, allowing those challenges to build the resilience of
36:48
Speaker 1: your children as opposed to putting them somewhere where they're
36:52
Speaker 1: just going to get crushed.
36:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you also wouldn't do that to me, because
36:57
Speaker 2: you know I couldn't handle that either.
36:59
Speaker 4: There's a lot of people I wouldn't throw other drink
37:01
Speaker 4: about Yeah, I think maybe one more angle here is
37:08
Speaker 4: probably helpful too, because I think about, yes, the.
37:12
Speaker 2: Issue provoking, Yes, the issue of exasperating. But part of
37:17
Speaker 2: that understanding and knowing is to realize what is that
37:21
Speaker 2: point of actual exasperation and what is that point that
37:25
Speaker 2: maybe he isn't quite there but they might think so,
37:28
Speaker 2: you know, like sometimes you do have to push a
37:31
Speaker 2: little bit beyond what the child thinks, and that's part
37:33
Speaker 2: of the knowing. I think about. My youngest is a
37:37
Speaker 2: first grader, and he was doing basic math and he
37:41
Speaker 2: got a few things wrong. And when I would point
37:46
Speaker 2: out the few things he got wrong for his worksheets
37:50
Speaker 2: that he had to bring home, he started to tense
37:53
Speaker 2: up and he started to act like he was under attack. Right,
37:59
Speaker 2: it really fun like a textbook fight or flight moment.
38:03
Speaker 2: And I saw this and I thought, this is a
38:05
Speaker 2: little bit disproportionate, Like this is learning, right, You miss
38:10
Speaker 2: some things, you get corrected, you realize what you needed
38:13
Speaker 2: correcting on, and then you fix it. But you don't
38:17
Speaker 2: say it to a first grader that way. So I
38:18
Speaker 2: finally looked at him and I said, it seems like
38:21
Speaker 2: you're getting worked up here, and I started to ask
38:26
Speaker 2: him in basic ways, what is it that's concerning you?
38:30
Speaker 2: What's the matter? And he said he wasn't really sure.
38:34
Speaker 2: And that's about what I expected from a first grader,
38:36
Speaker 2: right that he's not sure why he's starting to get
38:39
Speaker 2: worked up. And I said, it seems like you think
38:44
Speaker 2: something's going to happen to you if you get something wrong.
38:48
Speaker 2: Does that sound right? And he said yeah, he said,
38:51
Speaker 2: what do you think it is it's going to happen
38:52
Speaker 2: to you. I don't know that's a good answer, because
38:56
Speaker 2: you don't nothing is going to happen to you a
39:00
Speaker 2: reason to think something's gonna happen to you, But you
39:02
Speaker 2: feel that, So let's work with that right now. And
39:07
Speaker 2: I spent a few minutes sitting there talking him through
39:11
Speaker 2: the fact that, Okay, you did get something wrong right here,
39:16
Speaker 2: and I did tell you you got it wrong, but
39:19
Speaker 2: then what And he started to realize, actually, yeah, then
39:21
Speaker 2: nothing right. You just told me so that I could
39:24
Speaker 2: get it right, and then we did it again. Maybe
39:27
Speaker 2: maybe the thing that happened was he had to spend
39:29
Speaker 2: a little bit longer on it than he wanted to. Yeah,
39:33
Speaker 2: but the satisfaction of oh, I get it now and
39:37
Speaker 2: getting it right way outweighed the sense of some mysterious
39:42
Speaker 2: thing that was going to happen to him. And what
39:44
Speaker 2: was remarkable to me, I tell the story because what
39:46
Speaker 2: was remarkable to me was that in the subsequent quite
39:51
Speaker 2: literally months at this point from that event, I've never
39:54
Speaker 2: once seen him get exasperated and being corrected. Yeah, So
39:59
Speaker 2: it really was a moment of he wasn't even sure why.
40:04
Speaker 2: There was just some hidden anxiety, fear wherever it came from.
40:09
Speaker 2: Perhaps it was just sort of just something in his
40:11
Speaker 2: personality that once he was able to get on top
40:14
Speaker 2: of it, immediately became a non issue. Now in every moment,
40:19
Speaker 2: maybe it's not immediate in this case happened to Ben.
40:22
Speaker 2: But I think the instructive angle that I want to
40:25
Speaker 2: bring in here is that part of that improvisation, probably
40:28
Speaker 2: that part of that fit, part of that wisdom dynamic,
40:30
Speaker 2: is just simply recognizing that sometimes the child does need
40:36
Speaker 2: to be pushed. Yes, pushing is not the same as exasperating, right, Yeah,
40:44
Speaker 2: And in that moment, that's part of again knowing your
40:47
Speaker 2: child to recognize, oh, this is actually a moment where
40:49
Speaker 2: I can push you. Yeah, and it's okay.
40:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know it and maybe, well, we're getting we're
40:58
Speaker 1: getting toward the end here, let me give this story
41:01
Speaker 1: is sort of a to give a reinforcement to that.
41:05
Speaker 1: So I think working with clients was really helpful to
41:09
Speaker 1: me when I started parenting. The difference between clients and parents,
41:16
Speaker 1: like clients and children, is that clients can opt not
41:19
Speaker 1: to come back.
41:22
Speaker 3: Right.
41:22
Speaker 1: So, when I was a personal trainer, if I pushed
41:25
Speaker 1: a client too hard, push them well beyond their limits,
41:28
Speaker 1: push them beyond their comfort.
41:30
Speaker 3: Right, and.
41:32
Speaker 1: Trip that wire where it's like I pushed them way
41:35
Speaker 1: too far, they just wouldn't come back right.
41:39
Speaker 3: Just that's what happened.
41:40
Speaker 1: And so you're constantly figuring out the line where Nope,
41:44
Speaker 1: I can make them do another three reps. I can
41:46
Speaker 1: make them do another whole set, I can make them
41:48
Speaker 1: do more weight, I can make them do more exercises.
41:51
Speaker 1: I can have them do this exercise they hate, right,
41:54
Speaker 1: because they really need to like learning. When you can
41:58
Speaker 1: put those things in and at what point in the
42:02
Speaker 1: relationship it's appropriate to do, that became sort of an
42:05
Speaker 1: art form, right. So here's the story. I used to
42:10
Speaker 1: train this gentleman. He would always bring his chihuahua in
42:14
Speaker 1: with him Bruno. He brought Bruno in and I worked
42:19
Speaker 1: at Wow Bruno to Chiuaha. I worked in this like
42:21
Speaker 1: little boutique like upscale personal training studios. Only one on
42:25
Speaker 1: one training is me and maybe three or four other
42:27
Speaker 1: trainers working at the same time, and so that's the context.
42:30
Speaker 1: So it was kind of froofy, but he brought his
42:33
Speaker 1: Chiuah would be running around and this gentleman would be
42:38
Speaker 1: very upfront, like he didn't want to sweat. He was
42:41
Speaker 1: going to work after he didn't want to. He didn't
42:43
Speaker 1: want to have to cool off, so he didn't want
42:44
Speaker 1: to sweat. He just wanted to get a workout in
42:46
Speaker 1: and it goes way and I was like, okay, that's fine.
42:50
Speaker 1: So there would be days where he'd come in he'dn't
42:52
Speaker 1: want to work out for like fifteen twenty minutes and
42:55
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be an hour session and it
42:58
Speaker 1: might be used to have drive my boss nuts.
43:00
Speaker 3: He'd be like, what are you doing with this guy?
43:01
Speaker 1: And I'm like, it's a long game, right, That's all
43:05
Speaker 1: I got with this guy is a long game, right,
43:08
Speaker 1: So I've got to get to the point where he
43:09
Speaker 1: trusts me enough that he's not doing this every day.
43:13
Speaker 1: He's maybe doing it once during the week, right, Bruno
43:18
Speaker 1: is always going to be running around and that's fine, right,
43:20
Speaker 1: But maybe I can get him to do two hour
43:22
Speaker 1: long sessions a week and then one fifteen minute session
43:26
Speaker 1: right where he's just he's done, like he can't handle
43:28
Speaker 1: it anymore. And that's eventually what it came to. I mean,
43:31
Speaker 1: he was with me for four years, five years when
43:33
Speaker 1: I was training. I worked with him that long, and
43:37
Speaker 1: toward the end of our training together like he'd done well,
43:39
Speaker 1: he'd got in good results, and I could push him
43:42
Speaker 1: a little harder. I could push him a little harder,
43:44
Speaker 1: you know. Second year, I could push him a little
43:46
Speaker 1: harder than I could push him a little harder the
43:47
Speaker 1: third year. I could push him a little harder the
43:48
Speaker 1: fourth year. But it was a long game, and I
43:52
Speaker 1: think that there's something in that that helped me understand
43:55
Speaker 1: how to work with my kids, even though my kids
43:58
Speaker 1: couldn't leave right out a lot of trouble. I think
44:01
Speaker 1: you're being becoming an emancipated minor. Is it difficult? But
44:05
Speaker 1: it did give me this sense of look, I've got
44:08
Speaker 1: a long time here, I've got I don't have to
44:11
Speaker 1: solve this problem right now in this moment. What I
44:14
Speaker 1: need to do is sort of start shaving off rough
44:17
Speaker 1: edges a little by little by little. And it's it's
44:20
Speaker 1: not an immediate problem, right, It's not you know, your
44:24
Speaker 1: kid's about to touch the hot stove.
44:25
Speaker 3: I have to pull the hand away, right.
44:28
Speaker 1: It's something that I can work on this tendency over
44:31
Speaker 1: time and get them to the point where they trust
44:34
Speaker 1: me enough that I can finally just knock the rough
44:36
Speaker 1: edge off completely. And so I think there is something
44:40
Speaker 1: to be said for looking at these things longer term
44:44
Speaker 1: and understanding that as a parent, you're not going to
44:47
Speaker 1: quote unquote fix your kid in any given moment necessarily,
44:52
Speaker 1: but that part of the job is to build sufficient
44:58
Speaker 1: trust that you're with them and forming them and walking
45:01
Speaker 1: with them through the long term. Having a great relationship
45:05
Speaker 1: with your kids. And again, I know mine are at
45:08
Speaker 1: further along than yours, but like when my son can
45:11
Speaker 1: come home, we can have conversations about history and theology
45:15
Speaker 1: and different books and stuff he's studying at twenty, I'm
45:20
Speaker 1: really happy with that. You know that he trusts me
45:24
Speaker 1: enough to do that. He's got a great relationship with
45:27
Speaker 1: his mom my, seventeen year old twin daughters. Which that's
45:30
Speaker 1: another fascinating talk about improving with twin daughters and not
45:35
Speaker 1: getting Yeah, figuring out the differences between them is fun,
45:41
Speaker 1: I'll say that. But you know, having them have good
45:44
Speaker 1: relationship with me and wanting to come to me with
45:46
Speaker 1: stuff is great. And so I think there is a
45:49
Speaker 1: long game that we play as dads, and it's not
45:52
Speaker 1: just the Hey, it has to end right now, you
45:55
Speaker 1: can ever do that again. There are moments for that,
45:58
Speaker 1: but there's also a sense in which we need to
46:01
Speaker 1: play the long game here because they're going to need
46:04
Speaker 1: us well beyond when they think they'll need us, and
46:08
Speaker 1: we need to be a place and a person that
46:10
Speaker 1: they can come to as they meet lights challenges because
46:15
Speaker 1: everybody needs. Everybody needs some help every once in a while.
46:19
Speaker 3: So I'll leave it there.
46:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great. The idea that comes to my mind
46:25
Speaker 2: as you say all that is I think can sum
46:27
Speaker 2: it up with there's an attentiveness that being a father
46:33
Speaker 2: far from going in with a prepackaged set of expectations
46:36
Speaker 2: and values. Maybe maybe le's the values, but expectations. A
46:44
Speaker 2: father has to be attentive, and a mother as well
46:46
Speaker 2: has to be attentive, right, Yes, and that means understanding.
46:51
Speaker 2: That means recognizing that you receive yourself from those kids
46:55
Speaker 2: in the sense that we are not fathers without those kids.
46:59
Speaker 3: Right.
47:00
Speaker 2: Our very identities are tied into who they are. But
47:04
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean therefore duplicating ourselves in them, right, It
47:09
Speaker 2: would be a mistake to say, my job here is
47:13
Speaker 2: to take the best of what I would have wanted,
47:16
Speaker 2: and that's what you've got to be. It's the attentiveness
47:19
Speaker 2: of I received myself from you, and in that process,
47:21
Speaker 2: I receive who you are, and I work within those
47:24
Speaker 2: contexts to help you become, according to your talents and
47:30
Speaker 2: your gifts and your personality, a person who will grow
47:34
Speaker 2: up to be a wise person walking before the Lord.
47:39
Speaker 3: Yeah.
47:40
Speaker 1: And I think uniquely, as Christian fathers, we have the
47:42
Speaker 1: privilege of helping our kids learn to be the image
47:50
Speaker 1: of God that God uniquely made them to be. And
47:54
Speaker 1: that's a really crucial task. And so yeah, I think
47:58
Speaker 1: it's just fun.
47:59
Speaker 3: Man.
47:59
Speaker 1: I know, we could talk about this like it's a
48:01
Speaker 1: somber event, and it is serious, right, but it's also just.
48:05
Speaker 3: A lot of fun being a dad.
48:06
Speaker 1: I mean, I've dealt with a lot of serious issues,
48:08
Speaker 1: but at the end of the day, I enjoy it.
48:11
Speaker 3: There.
48:11
Speaker 1: You know, kids are fun, especially now that they're teenagers.
48:14
Speaker 1: I'm not a great like my five year old kind
48:16
Speaker 1: of drives me a little nuts. I'm man enough to
48:19
Speaker 1: admit that. But even her, it's like, it is still fun.
48:23
Speaker 3: It's just.
48:25
Speaker 1: When they get to a certain age, I really like
48:28
Speaker 1: my personality start to kick in.
48:29
Speaker 3: I really enjoy being with them.
48:31
Speaker 1: And so my wife and I always joke, She's like,
48:33
Speaker 1: you're you're not the best pre K through elementary school dad,
48:38
Speaker 1: but you're an amazing teenage dad. You know so, But
48:44
Speaker 1: it is a lot of fun. So I guess my
48:45
Speaker 1: encouragement to Christian dad's out there would be number one.
48:51
Speaker 1: You know, form your own character. Do what you need
48:56
Speaker 1: to do to form your own character, and then don't
48:59
Speaker 1: be so concerned about every little thing that your kid does.
49:03
Speaker 1: Play that long game really developed. Trust be the person
49:06
Speaker 1: in their lives who can direct them back to the
49:08
Speaker 1: Lord when they need it. But yeah, remember that it's
49:12
Speaker 1: supposed to be an enjoyable experience and that you're forming
49:19
Speaker 1: Little Jesus Is in your own house. So anyway, good stuff, man.
49:28
Speaker 1: We'll call it there. We're well over time, but I
49:33
Speaker 1: think that's appropriate. When we're talking about our kids, we
49:36
Speaker 1: probably should go over time, so but we'll call it there.
49:40
Speaker 1: So thanks Man for this conversation. This was helpful and good,
49:43
Speaker 1: and thanks to everybody for listening. We'll catch you on
49:45
Speaker 1: the next episode of Thinking Christian Take Care. I just
49:49
Speaker 1: want to take a second to thank the team at
49:51
Speaker 1: Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking
49:53
Speaker 1: Christian podcast. If you go to life audio dot com,
49:56
Speaker 1: you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network.
50:00
Speaker 1: They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.