Latest / Equipped for Impact / The Parenting Handoff- Built to Last Part 2

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The Parenting Handoff- Built to Last Part 2 · Equipped for Impact

• 0:07
  Nate: Welcome to Equipped for Impact, the podcast designed to assist Christian parents, leaders, and educators to raise up the next generation, to stand firm in their faith, and influence the world for Christ.
• 0:18
  Nate: We're your hosts.
• 0:19
  Nate: I'm Nate.
• 0:20
  Nate: And I'm Lewis.
• 0:21
  Nate: And we are glad you're here with us today on part two of our miniseries built for the long haul.
• 0:29
  Nate: If you're just jumping in, this is not a back to school series.
• 0:33
  Nate: Uh we're a few weeks into the school year.
• 0:36
  Nate: If you're listening to this the day it comes out, maybe you found this in November.
• 0:40
  Nate: Maybe.
• 0:40
  Nate: And then we're a couple of months into the school year.
• 0:42
  Luis: Maybe you found this in the year 2027.
• 0:45
  Nate: Or or uh yes, or 2037.
• 0:48
  Luis: It's incredible.
• 0:49
  Nate: Or 2067.
• 0:50
  Luis: I don't think podcasts will exist in 2037.
• 0:52
  Nate: You don't think so?
• 0:53
  Nate: Not the way they exist now.
• 0:54
  Nate: Okay.
• 0:55
  Nate: I believe you.
• 0:56
  Nate: It'll kind of be like a VHS is to us today.
• 0:58
  Nate: Yeah.
• 0:59
  Nate: Okay.
• 1:00
  Nate: But here's what this series is.
• 1:02
  Nate: This is a series about making sure your family has the patterns and rhythms it needs to be running right.
• 1:10
  Nate: And really, this could be applicable any time of year.
• 1:14
  Nate: If you go back and listen to our last episode, it's the episode about marriages, because strong marriages are the foundation to a strong family.
• 1:24
  Nate: So if you miss that, go back and listen to it.
• 1:26
  Nate: You don't have to, though, because today we're going to be talking about the parent-child relationship.
• 1:33
  Luis: And specifically, we're going to talk about the handoff that happens, right?
• 1:38
  Luis: So somewhere in the last few weeks, in a lot of our Christian homes, the spiritual formation of a child quietly moved out of the house and it moved into somebody else's hands.
• 1:50
  Nate: And usually that somebody else, they're they're good people.
• 1:53
  Nate: They're Christians, they want to be part of your community.
• 1:56
  Nate: We've we've talked about that a couple episodes ago with the community that you kind of build, right?
• 2:02
  Nate: It's teachers, it's youth leaders, it's it's you know youth pastors who really want to pour into these children, your children.
• 2:11
  Luis: Nate, you and I are one of them, right?
• 2:12
  Luis: Yep, that's exactly right.
• 2:14
  Luis: We work at a Christian school.
• 2:15
  Luis: But here's the thing, right?
• 2:16
  Luis: None of us can carry what God handed to the parent.
• 2:20
  Luis: Yep.
• 2:21
  Luis: So let's look at what the handoff actually looks like and where it at where like where it happens, because nobody, nobody really decides when it happens.
• 2:31
  Luis: It just happens, right?
• 2:32
  Luis: You pick a Christian school for good reasons.
• 2:35
  Luis: You wanted your kid taught by people who love Jesus, and so you wanted the Bible treated as true in every class, and you didn't want to spend the drive home undoing what happened in their non-Christian school.
• 2:49
  Nate: And that's a very good decision.
• 2:50
  Nate: We fully support it because we understand that's why we have the job we have, right?
• 2:56
  Nate: So we're not bashing Christian schools or youth groups or anything.
• 3:00
  Luis: And it's a decision that we would make over again, right?
• 3:03
  Nate: Yep.
• 3:03
  Nate: I think both of us we made the decision to put our children in a Christian school before we were employed by that Christian school.
• 3:10
  Luis: Absolutely.
• 3:10
  Luis: Yeah.
• 3:11
  Luis: But you see, that decision was a means, and somewhere in the last three weeks, it started functioning like an end.
• 3:18
  Luis: You made the choice, and so you're sending your kids to a Christian school.
• 3:23
  Luis: The kids are now in the building, and there's a part of your brain that filed it under the category of it's already being handled.
• 3:32
  Nate: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 3:32
  Nate: And and it is like you you you should be able to trust the school, the youth group, the whoever it is that you're you're delegating for a small amount of time that that discipleship, right?
• 3:44
  Nate: And they should be assisting you and they should be keeping you up to date on what's going on in your child's life, in chapel, in class, in youth group.
• 3:53
  Nate: You know, you know what's being talked about in the small groups in church, the verses that they're memorizing, right?
• 3:59
  Nate: But if that's what you're focused on, really it's like a program, and those are the measurable outcomes, right?
• 4:06
  Nate: That's good.
• 4:06
  Nate: You can say, Oh, well, my kid memorized 17 verses this school year, so they're a great Christian child.
• 4:12
  Luis: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:13
  Luis: And you know, we also do it at church in some ways too.
• 4:16
  Luis: Like at our church, right?
• 4:17
  Luis: We do word of life on Wednesday night.
• 4:20
  Luis: And so there's a lesson, there's a leader who knows their kid's name, and all of it's good, right?
• 4:26
  Nate: Yep.
• 4:26
  Luis: And it's exactly what Deuteronomy six is describing, right?
• 4:31
  Luis: That we shall love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.
• 4:36
  Luis: We're teaching our kids those things, and we think we've checked off a box.
• 4:43
  Luis: But here's the problem.
• 4:45
  Nate: Yeah.
• 4:46
  Nate: The the problem here is that in that Deuteronomy six passage, it specifically says, you will take those things and you will teach them diligently to your children, right?
• 4:57
  Nate: It's the parent teaching them to their child.
• 5:00
  Nate: We've talked about that here on this podcast a lot, right?
• 5:03
  Nate: We here are all about equipping you so you can train your children and send them out to influence the world for Christ.
• 5:11
  Nate: And that order is important in Deuteronomy 6.
• 5:14
  Luis: We should have done that like dun dun dun There we go.
• 5:17
  Nate: I still am not a very good audio editor, so when we put in sound effects after the fact, actually, I just don't.
• 5:24
  Nate: I don't put in sound effects after the fact.
• 5:29
  Nate: Yeah, but we still have to like put it into the podcast.
• 5:32
  Nate: We have to hook it up somehow.
• 5:33
  Nate: Your computer to my computer.
• 5:34
  Luis: Yeah, it wouldn't work like just me playing it.
• 5:37
  Nate: It could, but it wouldn't sound good.
• 5:38
  Nate: It wouldn't sound great.
• 5:39
  Nate: It wouldn't sound as good as we sound.
• 5:40
  Nate: Exactly.
• 5:40
  Nate: But of course, we're also uh AI, and this is all fake right now.
• 5:44
  Nate: Don't believe that.
• 5:45
  Nate: Oh my goodness.
• 5:46
  Luis: Like Nate pointed out, the order here matters, right?
• 5:49
  Luis: The order is the whole thing because before God says a word about the children, he says something to the parent, right?
• 5:57
  Luis: He says, These words shall be on your heart.
• 6:01
  Luis: The teaching comes out of something that is already true in the parent.
• 6:06
  Nate: Yeah, that's exactly right.
• 6:07
  Nate: And and here it's saying, you know, you do it in your house first, and then while you go by the road, when you're lying down, when you're getting up.
• 6:14
  Nate: All of those things, there's no institution other than the family continuing on what God has already told them, which is that you should love him with your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
• 6:26
  Nate: And Glenn Schultz, we've talked about him before, and and he puts it really clear in his book, Kingdom Education, which is geared towards parents, not towards teachers, right?
• 6:36
  Nate: He says the home is the primary place.
• 6:39
  Nate: The church, the school, these other organizations, they just support and reinforce what's already happening in the home.
• 6:47
  Nate: You can't replace you as the parent discipling your own children.
• 6:53
  Luis: And here's the thing, right?
• 6:54
  Luis: That if parents try to outsource it to the school, you get to tenth grade and you find out that your kid has been going to school for twelve years, they know all the right answers, they pass every Bible class, they sit through hundreds of chapels, they graduate without ever seeing a Christian adult wrestle with God in real time about the things that they felt mattered.
• 7:20
  Nate: Yeah.
• 7:21
  Nate: Because everything was running in a schedule and nice little teeny tiny blocks, right?
• 7:26
  Nate: And it was it was, you know, curated information, and and what you didn't get was life transformation.
• 7:33
  Nate: And so then you hit college and something really hard hits in their life, and you know, uh he's got that subject he took in high school, but he doesn't have a a mentor, a model to watch and and follow and emulate.
• 7:50
  Luis: But here's the good news, right?
• 7:52
  Luis: The kid who almost always makes it is the kid who saw it happen at home.
• 8:00
  Luis: Not perfectly and probably not even that impressive, right?
• 8:04
  Luis: But he watched his dad read his Bible on a Tuesday when nobody made him, right?
• 8:08
  Luis: Yeah.
• 8:09
  Luis: He heard his mom pray about something that she was actually scared of.
• 8:14
  Luis: And that's what the school, that's what the church, right?
• 8:18
  Luis: That's what programs, that's what the schedule, it can't produce that for you.
• 8:22
  Nate: Yeah, and and we don't want this to just be one more thing you feel like you need to do as a parent, right?
• 8:29
  Nate: Really, the most important thing is that this this doesn't require a curriculum, it doesn't require a program, it just requires you being a Christian, living out your Christian life in front of your kids and helping them learn and grow as you are learning and growing.
• 8:49
  Luis: That's really good.
• 8:49
  Luis: Now here's the second thing that usually happens this time of year, right?
• 8:53
  Luis: Your kid is now older, they are in a different grade, they're learning different things, they're in a different stage in life, but parents, sometimes we are late catching up, and we are parenting a kid who doesn't exist anymore.
• 9:10
  Luis: And so let's unpack that.
• 9:12
  Nate: Yeah, yeah, let's unpack that because really your child is not the same kid they were in May at the end of last school year, right?
• 9:18
  Nate: Sometimes we miss it.
• 9:19
  Nate: Like that's one of my favorite things of back to school like events here at the school is like I haven't seen these kids that I've I'm around every day, you know, for 10 months, and then I don't see them for two months, yeah, and then they come back, and like this kid I used to have to kind of like bend down to look at now is standing at eye level with me.
• 9:37
  Nate: Like it's that grown up.
• 9:38
  Nate: But we're not talking just physically growing, right?
• 9:41
  Nate: But your child has grown.
• 9:42
  Nate: They're they're in a new social position.
• 9:45
  Nate: That maybe they're in a new school, maybe they've got new friends because some left, some new ones moved in.
• 9:51
  Nate: You know, some friendships didn't survive the summer, and that's okay.
• 9:54
  Nate: Some maybe you're glad didn't survive the summer, right?
• 9:58
  Nate: But you have a a new child, really, that you're parenting.
• 10:02
  Nate: I heard who was it?
• 10:04
  Nate: It was I think it was J.D.
• 10:05
  Nate: Greer, pastor of the summit in Raleigh, North Carolina, and he said something along the lines of like, you know, you're never parenting the same child.
• 10:13
  Nate: It's always a different child that you're parenting because they're going through these different stages.
• 10:17
  Nate: So you have to you have to keep up with where your child is right now.
• 10:22
  Nate: Yeah.
• 10:22
  Luis: And I actually r heard something similar this summer is that you never take the same kid on vacation twice.
• 10:30
  Luis: And that was really good.
• 10:31
  Luis: Yeah.
• 10:32
  Luis: And so the problem, parents, is that for most of us, we haven't updated the file, right?
• 10:37
  Luis: Like we're working off the same file from the spring.
• 10:42
  Nate: If you actually have a file on your kid, like please email us, podcast at waynechristian.org.
• 10:47
  Nate: We want to see it.
• 10:48
  Nate: We want to see it.
• 10:48
  Nate: Because that would be funny if you actually kept a file file on your child.
• 10:52
  Nate: In in in your brain, though, right?
• 10:54
  Nate: Digital file.
• 10:54
  Nate: A digital file.
• 10:55
  Luis: An AI file.
• 10:56
  Nate: An AI, because your brain is AI.
• 10:58
  Nate: Okay.
• 10:58
  Luis: Can't can your brain be AI?
• 11:00
  Luis: Because it's not artificial.
• 11:01
  Luis: It's intelligence, but it's not artificial.
• 11:03
  Nate: Unless you're like one of those transhumanists.
• 11:05
  Nate: We were talking about that before we hit recording.
• 11:08
  Luis: Yeah, there you go.
• 11:09
  Luis: Fair enough.
• 11:09
  Luis: But here's the problem, right?
• 11:11
  Luis: Is you are working off of your knowledge of your child that you had last school year.
• 11:16
  Luis: And that's a problem because you can't disciple a kid that you don't currently know.
• 11:21
  Luis: Now you can lecture one, you can manage one, but discipleship is very different.
• 11:27
  Nate: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:27
  Nate: So let's let's get practical of what this updating actually looks like.
• 11:32
  Nate: If you're going to talk about, you know, knowing your kid and knowing, you know, where they are right now, like what are things you need to be looking for to kind of update that proverbial file?
• 11:42
  Nate: Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah.
• 11:42
  Luis: So you need to start understanding what's around your kid before you ask about your kid, right?
• 11:47
  Luis: Because they'll tell you anything about their friends and almost nothing about themselves.
• 11:53
  Luis: And so find out like what's new in their life.
• 11:56
  Luis: Are there new friends in school?
• 11:57
  Luis: Are there new people that they're hanging out with?
• 11:59
  Luis: Are there new kids in the youth group, right?
• 12:02
  Luis: Who's sitting at your lunch table this year?
• 12:04
  Luis: Who's the funniest kid in the class?
• 12:06
  Luis: Who's who's having a hard time?
• 12:08
  Luis: And then listen for what they don't say.
• 12:11
  Luis: Because three weeks into the school year, most kids have a thing, right?
• 12:15
  Luis: Something that stung.
• 12:16
  Luis: There's been some place where they have felt like they don't measure up.
• 12:20
  Nate: Yeah, and rarely is that academic, right?
• 12:23
  Nate: It's almost always a social thing where they feel like they didn't measure up, right?
• 12:28
  Nate: And I'll add, you know, where are they physically?
• 12:32
  Nate: We talked about this when we we did our legacy milestones, right?
• 12:36
  Nate: And and and they're growing physically.
• 12:38
  Nate: And and also like think of geographic location, right?
• 12:42
  Nate: Uh a conversation in a car is a different conversation than one across the table.
• 12:48
  Nate: And and Deuteronomy six that we've talked about before includes all of that, right?
• 12:52
  Nate: When you walk by the way.
• 12:54
  Nate: It's like while you're traveling, you know, side by side.
• 12:57
  Nate: Sometimes kids, especially teenagers, like if you're looking them in the eye, you know, they they will shut down, they'll look away, they'll divert their gaze.
• 13:05
  Nate: They use it it feels intimidating.
• 13:06
  Nate: Yeah.
• 13:07
  Nate: Unless you're, you know, at some informal place.
• 13:10
  Nate: But you've got to work that in.
• 13:11
  Nate: Like while we're driving, we're sitting side by side, and and it's a little easier to kind of open up because you're not like staring into somebody's face.
• 13:18
  Nate: So that's a big part of that.
• 13:20
  Luis: Yeah.
• 13:20
  Luis: Now let's go somewhere that's probably a little bit uncomfortable for us, right?
• 13:24
  Luis: Progress reports are probably going to start landing right now.
• 13:28
  Luis: You might start seeing some grades come in, and then the goals start to change, right?
• 13:33
  Luis: Nobody announces it, but if you tracked what a parent talks to their kid about in September versus August, you'd watch spiritual goals get quietly swapped for performance goals.
• 13:44
  Nate: Yeah, and the and the parent doesn't really think about that necessarily.
• 13:48
  Nate: They don't experience it the same way the kid does.
• 13:51
  Nate: And so, you know, the parent thinks they're just being responsible, keeping up on their kid, but the there's this swap that goes on and and they can't wrap their minds around, like, hey, over the summer I was doing these things and it was relationships and it was vacations, and now it's like, oh, I've got to homework every night and get straight A's and do all these things.
• 14:10
  Nate: And if we're not careful, it's like Ephesians 6 4, you know, the the fathers do not provoke your children to wrath.
• 14:18
  Nate: It's like we're we're putting an unbearable burden on our kids that we're trying to hold them to this standard.
• 14:24
  Nate: And so what we've got to do is we've got to ask, like, what are you actually aiming at?
• 14:29
  Nate: Is it this performance, or are you trying to see your kid be discipled into who God wants them to be?
• 14:36
  Luis: Because here's a good thing, right?
• 14:38
  Luis: Obedient, hardworking, respectful gets into a good school and achievement, right, is becomes the standard.
• 14:47
  Luis: It becomes what they are being discipled by, right?
• 14:50
  Luis: So they start to think like, okay, as long as I'm obedient, as long as I'm hardworking, as long as I'm respectful, that's gonna help me be successful.
• 14:58
  Luis: That's what my parents wrong want.
• 15:00
  Luis: And we did a series on that last season, right?
• 15:02
  Luis: And so we're not gonna get into a rerun here, but maybe we'll play it for you again, right?
• 15:06
  Luis: Achievement might be the most socially acceptable idol in our Christian home, right?
• 15:13
  Luis: Nobody's going to confront you about it.
• 15:15
  Luis: Nobody's gonna say, hey, you have such a well-behaved kid.
• 15:18
  Luis: Yeah.
• 15:20
  Luis: You have a kid that does so good in school, right?
• 15:23
  Luis: Your church isn't going to confront you.
• 15:24
  Luis: Frankly, your Christian school might even hand you a certificate for it.
• 15:28
  Nate: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:28
  Nate: And it's funny because we actually had it was another parent stop us a couple weeks ago, and they they told us a story about how they had observed our kids and an interaction between the two of them, and then they were at home and they they their kids were like fighting or something, and then they were like, Why weren't you more like their those kids over there?
• 15:48
  Nate: And we're like, you just saw a little snapshot of our children.
• 15:52
  Nate: You did not see them the whole time.
• 15:54
  Nate: I'm glad that they were well behaved when you saw them.
• 15:56
  Nate: I'm very proud of them for that.
• 15:58
  Nate: But like, yeah, you can't you can't like people say that, and and it is a good goal to have, right?
• 16:03
  Nate: You we want well-behaved kids, but if that's our goal, we're missing, we're missing the point, right?
• 16:08
  Nate: Because that's not going to carry them through.
• 16:09
  Luis: And here's the thing, like as a parent, you can tell when this is happening.
• 16:14
  Luis: Watch what makes you emotional.
• 16:16
  Luis: If a bad grade gets more out of you than a bad attitude does, that's probably worth paying attention to.
• 16:22
  Nate: Mm-hmm.
• 16:23
  Nate: Yeah, that's that's really important.
• 16:25
  Nate: And and, you know, let's be honest, okay?
• 16:28
  Nate: Grades matter because it just shows how they're doing, right?
• 16:32
  Nate: Diligence is a good Christian virtue.
• 16:35
  Nate: And Colossians tells us, whatever you do, work as for the Lord, right?
• 16:39
  Nate: So it's it's not about that necessarily.
• 16:42
  Nate: It's about carrying what's underneath the surface, right?
• 16:46
  Nate: Did they get a bad grade just because that subject's hard for them, or did they get a bad grade because their attitude stinks, they're not doing their work, and they just don't care anymore, right?
• 16:56
  Nate: There's two different problems that you can you can address there.
• 17:00
  Nate: And what you want is you want to make sure you're you're aiming at the heart, right?
• 17:05
  Nate: You're not just trying to fix the outcome, you're trying to to get to the heart of what's going on with your child.
• 17:11
  Nate: Yeah.
• 17:11
  Luis: And let me just interject this here, right?
• 17:13
  Luis: That if your kid fails and your first response as a parent is to fix the outcome instead of getting at his heart, that should tell you something, right?
• 17:24
  Luis: And kids read this with total accuracy.
• 17:27
  Luis: They know what you brag about to the grandparents, right?
• 17:31
  Luis: That's the scoreboard that they're paying attention to, regardless of whether you've actually told them.
• 17:37
  Luis: And here's what worries me as a pastor.
• 17:40
  Luis: A kid who's formed by achievement builds his identity on performance.
• 17:45
  Luis: And eventually the performance fails because it always does, and there's nothing underneath it.
• 17:51
  Nate: Yeah.
• 17:51
  Nate: And so what we want is we want, you know, a kid who knows he's loved on the basis of something he didn't earn, right?
• 18:00
  Nate: It's it's just who they are innately, that they're loved, and it's not something where I'm striving to earn the love of my parents, right?
• 18:09
  Nate: You know, that's a very durable thing that you can hand them when they know that they can fail, they can survive, and and they're still loved by their parents.
• 18:19
  Nate: So let's kind of get into this last thing in in all of this, and we've hit this a lot, but it's worth revisiting.
• 18:26
  Nate: And that's it's something that that is is super important and will happen in your home at some point, right?
• 18:33
  Nate: You mess up, and how do you handle it after you mess up in your relationship with your child?
• 18:40
  Luis: Let me say this, parents, you will mess up, right?
• 18:43
  Luis: Like every Christian parent is going to sin against their child sometime this year.
• 18:48
  Luis: You're gonna lose your temper over something that didn't warrant it.
• 18:51
  Luis: You'll be short with a kid because work has been bad.
• 18:54
  Luis: And so it's not whether, right?
• 18:56
  Luis: It's what do they see when that happens, what happens next.
• 19:01
  Luis: And most of us have a script for that, and it's not repentance.
• 19:06
  Nate: Yeah, it normally is damage control.
• 19:08
  Nate: It's covering up, hey, I'm sorry, I raised my voice, but you are being disrespectful, so you need to listen to me the first time, and you're the real reason.
• 19:14
  Nate: You know, if it if a a a conversation, you know, you're you're making an apology and you add a butt in there, it's it's not good.
• 19:22
  Luis: Yeah.
• 19:22
  Luis: And so then the question becomes, what does your kid actually hear, right?
• 19:25
  Luis: He hears that his behavior caused your sin, which means that he's responsible for how you treat him.
• 19:33
  Luis: And that's a really rough thing to teach a kid, and a lot of us teach it to them without actually meaning to.
• 19:39
  Luis: So so Nate, what's the real version sound like?
• 19:42
  Nate: Yeah, I think it it's helpful, and there's there's different things out there.
• 19:45
  Nate: Paul Tripp talks about this, there's others, but but really there's different pieces to an apology, right?
• 19:51
  Nate: The first is like name the specific thing, right?
• 19:55
  Nate: Not I'm sorry you feel that way, or I'm sorry if I, whatever.
• 19:59
  Nate: You know, no, you just say, hey, I'm sorry that I did, you know, XYZ.
• 20:05
  Nate: And then the second thing is, you know, name it as a sin.
• 20:08
  Nate: We we shy away from that word, right?
• 20:11
  Nate: It's not that you had a bad day or that you were tired or that whatever.
• 20:14
  Nate: No, you sinned, right?
• 20:15
  Nate: I sinned.
• 20:16
  Nate: And saying that helps your kid recognize sin is sin, you know, no matter how big, quote unquote, it is, right?
• 20:23
  Nate: And then the third is don't attach your child's behavior to it, right?
• 20:26
  Nate: No butts, leave that out of it.
• 20:28
  Nate: And you just say, hey, this is what I did, I sinned, and then end it with, I'm sorry.
• 20:36
  Nate: Right?
• 20:36
  Nate: Yeah.
• 20:37
  Luis: Ask for forgiveness, right?
• 20:39
  Luis: Don't just say, we're good, right?
• 20:41
  Luis: But actually ask, will you forgive me and let him answer, even if it takes them a minute, because that's where most of us bail out, because the question puts you in a genuinely vulnerable spot with your child.
• 20:56
  Luis: You have no control over what they are going to say next.
• 21:00
  Nate: Yeah, and that's that's really the whole thing, right?
• 21:03
  Nate: Think about what your child is watching.
• 21:05
  Nate: It's an adult with authority, with power over them, who could win an exchange probably by force if they wanted to, unless you've got, you know, a 17-year-old boy who's bigger than you are, right?
• 21:18
  Nate: Which is possible, right?
• 21:20
  Nate: But but you voluntarily with humility and meekness put yourself under the gospel, right?
• 21:28
  Nate: And they're finding out what happens when a Christian sins and asks for forgiveness.
• 21:33
  Luis: That's that's that's really good.
• 21:35
  Luis: And then at the end of it, right, a parent who never repents teaches their kid that Christianity is a standard that other people fail to meet.
• 21:43
  Luis: But a parent who does teaches him what it's like that it's what you do after you failed.
• 21:50
  Luis: And and if you've never done this, then don't start with the biggest one.
• 21:54
  Luis: Start with the most recent one.
• 21:56
  Luis: And dad, sometimes this is very disproportionately on us because in most homes, the father is the hardest one to approach after a conflict, and he's the one whose repentance will land the heaviest.
• 22:09
  Nate: Yeah.
• 22:10
  Nate: So so all of this, right?
• 22:11
  Nate: There that we didn't really have a you know a four-step model or a three-step whatever today.
• 22:17
  Nate: But really, this was just for for us to kind of re-evaluate, like, where are we taking the moments, those everyday moments in our house to to you know, check where our kid is right now and make sure we're we're seeing them as an individual and then dealing with you know our own failings, because that's gonna be one of the biggest things we we need to do if we're gonna train them to see what is it really like to live a Christian life under the influence of the gospel.
• 22:48
  Nate: So, Lewis, bring us home.
• 22:49
  Nate: Tell us, you know, uh what what encouragement would you give to a parent as they're listening to this, just thinking about their own parenting?
• 22:56
  Luis: Let me just start by just reminding you this, right?
• 22:58
  Luis: Just pick one thing to do this week.
• 23:01
  Luis: One conversation with one of your kids where you're not teaching, a conversation where you're not correcting, a conversation where you're not checking on anything, just finding out where they actually are.
• 23:11
  Luis: Ask about their friends and and don't bolt that into a lesson.
• 23:15
  Luis: And then here's the harder one.
• 23:16
  Luis: If it applies to you, go find that kid that you owe an apology to and give them a real one.
• 23:23
  Luis: No but.
• 23:24
  Nate: Just say, Will you forgive me?
• 23:26
  Nate: Yeah, that's real good.
• 23:28
  Nate: So, y'all, thank you for joining us today.
• 23:31
  Nate: Next time we're gonna close out this mini-series talking about rhythms in uh our our family.
• 23:37
  Nate: Um, but uh, if you enjoyed this series, these episodes, please share it with another parent uh who could use it.
• 23:45
  Nate: Um, and make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss our next episode.
• 23:50
  Nate: Um, but until then, keep leading the next generation to stand firm in their faith and influence the world for Christ.