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Ep. 242 | Fatherhood Wisdom from 2 Timothy · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  The instruction is really critical. You need to explain to them, especially as they get older, like why these things are important.
• 0:11
  What's up, guys? Welcome to another 5-Minute Fatherhood. So we like to dial into a particular passage every four or five episodes. And there's one in 2 Timothy 4, too, that I find really helpful for fatherhood. This is when Paul says to Timothy, kind of his spiritual son, "...preach the word, be prepared in season and out of season, correct, rebuke, and encourage with great patience and careful instruction."
• 0:34
  And I want to talk to you guys about the three things that Paul is telling Timothy to do here. Correct, rebuke, and encourage with great patience and careful instruction. These three things, correcting and rebuking and encouraging, are like three tools in your tool belt as a dad to help shape your children.
• 0:51
  And oftentimes what I like to do is try to understand for each father, which of these tools are they very comfortable with wielding and which tools are more challenging for them. And so just to kind of break this down, you guys, correcting is oftentimes those very quick moments where you're like, hey, that's going the wrong way. You need to move this way. It's not like a big conversation. It's something that's relatively quick.
• 1:14
  relatively common. We talk a lot about this in terms of using systems like the marble system or something that's really simple where you can help a child have a quick correction that takes like five to 10 seconds to give them without going into some big disciplined situation. So corrections and having tools for correction is really critical. A second one is the rebuke. It is very important to be good at rebuking your kids. This is where you actually say, well,
• 1:44
  things that are relatively like stark and sometimes said in a fairly harsh manner in that like it's very much confronting them. It doesn't mean that you're being mean to them. It says with great patience and careful instruction. And so a rebuke should still be done in a way that demonstrates patience and instruction, but it still needs to be done. You need to say that is wrong, you know, and this is why.
• 2:08
  And these are the consequences for for continuing down that path. And so learning to rebuke your kids in a way that is patient and instructive is also another tool you need to learn how to wield. And the last one is encouragement. Like we really need to be good at encouraging our kids. I love the order that Paul says this. I love that he ends with encouragement.
• 2:27
  Hey, make sure you encourage your kids. And that just means when you catch them doing things that are right, talk to them about it. Like say, man, that was amazing. Like that you did that, that we had that conversation two days ago and now you're doing so well. And so you have to get good at all three of these tools and understand that these are the basic tools of parenting.
• 2:45
  is corrections, rebukes, and encouraging. Again, with great patience and careful instruction. It has to, all three of these things have to be done patiently. In other words, a lot of times I see dads sometimes saying, I rebuked my kid or corrected him 20 times about this one topic and they still haven't gotten it. You know, and you're starting to lose patience. And this is one of the greatest sort of frustrations as a dad. You need to have, that's why Paul says, with great patience. Sometimes you need to say something 50 or 100 times before your kids are like,
• 3:15
  Oh, okay. Now I get it. I'm in a season where I can hear that. Um, so you have to be willing to be patient and use all three of these tools. And also the instruction is really critical. You need to explain to them, especially as they get older, like why these things are important, why they're, why they are critical to their character.
• 3:33
  And so these three tools and the kind of the environment of patience and instruction that Paul is describing here in 2 Timothy 4, 2, I find really, really helpful just as a paradigm for what our role is as dads in the lives of our kids. So think through which of these three things you're struggling with and you need sort of help sort of upping your game in these areas. But, yeah, Jeff, what are your thoughts on that?
• 3:53
  Yeah, I totally agree with everything. One just little nugget I'll just expand on is the encouragement one. I think you can't, it's really hard to overdose. Like there's no such thing as overdosing on encouragement. So just like most parents, I think in general, can be stingier than we think with encouragement because it's in our head, but we're not always communicating. So just let it come out, speak live, tell them they're incredible and brave and courageous and kind and specifically tie it to things you see in that moment. One fun thing I like to do, and this just happened a couple of days ago.
• 4:20
  is when Kinsley takes like initiative, I really loves trying to really encourage that of like kind of like her spotting things and doing things of her own accord. And it was, that happened the other day. We were just, we're doing stuff in the kitchen and she was helping me with some, I think we were slicing apples to dry them or something. And we were working as a team, it was super fun. And then just like, I was kind of cleaning up the counter and she just like started doing the dishes. Like she like took a chair over to the sink and I was like, oh my goodness, that's incredible. Like what a legend. When I was five years old, I would like never do that. And so like she took initiative on it
• 4:46
  And so then what I did is I just pulled her aside after and just like really looked her in the eye and just like, hey, that really I felt very loved by that. Thank you for helping the team. I love the initiative you showed. And so what I did is I went and grabbed like a cookie from the pantry and just kind of snuck it to her as like a little secret. Thank you. Like, hey, I just wanted to bless you and honor you. Here's a special little treat. Because and I think what I like with that is.
• 5:05
  I don't always love tying like, you know, activities or things or chores in the home to like you do this and then you get like a cookie. I don't like doing that. So but what I'll do is I'll do more of like a surprise. Thank you. Treat. If that makes sense. Like, hey, I'm so stoked on what you just did. I want to go. I want to bless you more abundantly than past what you were expecting. If that makes sense.
• 5:25
  And I think that's totally scriptural of like kind of this overflow of abundance when you step in line with like God's obedience, God's will, God's vision. And so I try to always do kind of small little treats like that as rewards when they're not expecting it. Because I think that just kind of sets up a little cool, different dynamic on like abundance, on overflow, on them doing it out of their heart. So with the encouragement thing, I would say definitely encourage them in that way before or after. Encourage them when they need it before they're doing something and encourage them with praise and love and maybe sometimes even little blessings after.
• 5:55
  Yeah. If you guys are struggling with, okay, how do I do this? What are some ways that are age appropriate ways of disciplining or correcting or encouraging? Jeff and I have developed a class, the masterclass on father called the skill of fatherhood. This is, we have a whole module. The first module, the longest one in the whole course is just on a system for training your kids. What exactly do you do? What are, what are a whole bunch of ideas for, for how to correct your kids? And
• 6:22
  A lot of times we struggle with that. We go straight to discipline. And so we talk through what it looks like to set up a system that includes some correction, some encouragement, and discipline when needed. So if you guys are struggling with like, oh, I need a system for how to do what you guys just described, then head over to familyteams.com. Go to familyteams.com.
• 6:37
  Check out the skill of fatherhood. If you want to get a discount on that, you can put in the code dads, D-A-D-S. We've developed that one just for our podcast listeners. So check out the skill of fatherhood at familyteams.com. If you want to grab that, just use the code word dads and you'll get 20% off.