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007: Teach, train, and discipline your kids like God does

CAREY:

Imagine yourself as a busy mom or dad, and you hear your two kids screaming at each other in the next room, what needs to happen in that situation? Do you need to go in yelling yourself, trying to quiet them down so you can have some peace and quiet, or is there something deeper that needs to go on? This is God fearing kids and the parents who raise them

MINDI:

Welcome back to God, fearing kids and the parents who raised them. We are so happy that you are here. My name is Mindi Green

CAREY:

And I am Carey Green and Mindi we’ve hit episode seven. Can you believe it?

MINDI:

I’m amazed.

CAREY:

Yeah. Seven episodes already. And if you’ve been listening for episodes, I think we even started with an episode zero. So zero through six, you know that we are talking about things kind of from a different perspective than you might have heard before when it comes to parenting, because we believe that what God says goes and his wisdom is better than human wisdom. And that really can be a high bar for us as human beings, especially if we’ve not been raised in a Christian home. And so we just want to remind you to set your sights high, to let your hearts expand, to receive God’s truth and be willing to apply it in your lives. And in light of that encouragement. Let me give you a Bible verse here to encourage you in that way. This is Colossians chapter two, verse number eight, and this is the apostle Paul telling us a mindset that we should have.

CAREY:

He says, see to it that no one takes you captive. So stop for a moment. Think about those words. See to it. This is your responsibility. My responsibility Mindi’s responsibility. We, as believers in Christ are to see to it that no one takes us captive by philosophy and empty deceit. According to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ, there’s a lot of phrases in there that you may say, what’s that? And what’s that what’s that? Well, let’s just forget about what all those are for a moment and realize what he’s saying is don’t let anything take you captive, accept what Christ teaches. That’s where you want your focus to be. So, as we dive into this episode, that’s just a gentle reminder to you. That’s where we’re headed with these episodes. And that’s why we talk about things the way we do. Alright. Today, we are encouraging you that as a parent, you need to teach, train and discipline your kids like God does. And we’re going to unpack a little bit of what that means in just a moment. Mindi, give us some examples of the kind of parenting approach that shows that a person is not parenting. Like God does

MINDI:

Something that I’ve heard a lot about is I guess you could call it free range parenting. Many times I hear parents say they let their kids figure it out. They might see their kids arguing in the room and they’re just going to let them figure it out. They’re not going to instruct them how to work through that argument.

CAREY:

So the parent’s not going to intervene or step in and instruct, they’re just going to let the kids hash it out.

MINDI:

Right? Same kind of thing. A kid is picking on the younger sibling, let’s say, and the parents do nothing about it. Or an older sibling being irritated by a younger sibling. You know, mom get my little brother out of my room. He’s bothering me. So the mom comes in and takes a little brother out, but she doesn’t say anything about the fact that her daughter was irritated.

CAREY:

Yeah. Okay. So these are all examples that we would say are incorrect approaches to parenting. When it comes to a comparison between how God quote unquote parents, us, and how we should be parenting our kids. The reason we would say it’s incorrect is because God doesn’t approach his role as a father like that. He is always, always intentional and always active in his intervention and instruction in our lives. And we are to imitate him. Ephesians five. One says that as Christians, just as a general overall principle, we are to be imitators of God as beloved children. And the imagery Paul is giving us there is that we are the child, he’s the father. And you know how a little boy acts like his dad at a certain stage of life. And he wants to wear his hat like dad does. He wants his hair to be like dads. You know, that sort of thing. That’s the picture we are to imitate God as a devoted little childhood, their parents. So we need to look at how God approaches parenting and his role as a father. And we need to imitate him and act like he does. So when it comes to parenting, how does God do it? I think it’s important that we get this nailed down mind. We’ve got a couple of verses here from the gospel of John. You want to read that first one for us,

MINDI:

John 14, 26, but the helper, the holy spirit, whom the father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance. All that I have said to you,

CAREY:

Okay. So why are we talking about this first? This is talking about what the holy spirit does in our lives.

MINDI:

Well, I would say that God wants to help us to obey him in every area. And he did it the most loving thing to give us the holy spirit to help us because every little area, every little attitude and action that we have, that we do is important to him. It’s important that we are holy. So he’s going to help us to be holy. So he gives us that holy spirit to teach us those things.

CAREY:

Yeah. And it’s very interesting on that note that in this verse, it says he will teach you all things and bring to our remembrance. All that I have said to you. So the holy spirit is not saying I’ll step in on the big things and I’ll leave the small things to them. They can figure it out. Does that sound familiar? One of the examples we just talked,

MINDI:

Right? Yeah. It matters to God. He doesn’t want us to take revenge. He doesn’t want us to slander. He doesn’t want us to complain about anything. I mean, those are some kind of, and in some ways picky details.

CAREY:

Yeah. And they’re basics of life though. We all experience them every day and God wants to be involved in those. All right, let’s look at John 16, 13. Can you read that one for us?

MINDI:

When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth for, he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

CAREY:

Okay. So again, kind of reemphasizing the same thing, God, in his role, as our father speaks to us, guides us through the holy spirit and he guides us into all the truth. He guides us in everything in all perspectives. So this is how God parents,

MINDI:

This is our loving heavenly father.

CAREY:

Yeah. <laugh> yeah. And that’s the example he’s setting for us as parents. He’s saying, as I parent, this is how you should parent. So practically what this means for us as parents is first off, we got to get our mindsets around the fact that God cares about the details. He really does. You brought up earlier this week, the book of Leviticus is a great example of that. Why don’t you explain to us what you mean by that?

MINDI:

Well, Leviticus is actually a boring read because it has such detail of all the laws that he wanted the Israelites to keep. And that was representing the comparison of his holiness and all the things that they needed to do to please him. And God’s holiness hasn’t changed. We don’t have to follow that law anymore. Praise the Lord. But he gave us the holy spirit to be able to fulfill the demands of his holiness.

CAREY:

I love that example. I mean, looking at Leviticus, it’s one of those books we shutter when it comes up in our annual Bible reading because <laugh>, you know, it’s just such a slog to get through it. But I think your point is very well taken. God sweats the details. And this is not to mean we’re overbearing, totally critical parents of our kids in every little detail, but it means we are just acting with discernment, watching our kids, watching their lives, seeing where an attitude is often wisely coming in to help instruct on that. So this means we should be teaching our kids in every area of life, similar to what God says when he says the holy spirit guides us into all truth.

MINDI:

Right? Also we realize that it’s important for us to teach our kids how to think, how to feel, how to act, how to respond. And the verse that says that we need to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. Why? I mean, why does that matter? God knows that it’s important that our thoughts are in line with him. So at a young age, if we can teach our children to think, rightly they’re going to be so much further along and having their thoughts, being obedient to the Lord, if we can teach them those things.

CAREY:

Yeah. That’s great. And in your list of things there, the four things you mentioned, there’s how to act. That’s usually where we put our focus as parents. You know, if we’re going to curb anything, it’s going to be actions and behaviors, but there’s also one in there that I think some people’s eyebrows might have gone up when they heard that. How to feel it’s easy for us to feel like feelings are outside of control. I mean, like I just, it’s just a feeling. It just comes up. What do you mean I’m supposed to teach my kid how to feel?

MINDI:

I think a good example of that. I think of how Proverbs talks about a wise man overlooks an offense.

CAREY:

Hmm.

MINDI:

We easily can get offended and we could feel irritable and bothered and hurt by things

CAREY:

Which are feelings,

MINDI:

Which are feelings. And so yes, feelings come honest without our control. But if we can teach our children, you should not have been bothered by what your brother did, or you should not be bothered by what mommy asked you to do. And here is why, because here’s what God wants you to do. This is how he wants you to respond. You should actually be thankful that I’m asking you to clean up your room because it’s for your good, Hmm. Or you should be happy that you can love your brother and serve him because mommy needs you to watch him while she is busy doing this or that. So that’s teaching them how to, okay, next time, I’m not going to be bothered. I will be thankful and I will be happy.

CAREY:

Yeah. Those are great examples. And I think what you’re pointing out without saying these words is that we all live in a culture where we have been taught. And then I think in most cases convinced that what we feel is the real us and what we feel is reality. And that’s not true at all. We often feel things that are not true. We often feel things that are reprehensible and we should not feel. And God, in telling us take your thoughts. Captive is telling us, be aware of how you’re thinking and feelings often are influencing how we think. And so we’ve, we’ve got to teach our kids how to take control of their emotion and direct them in the right way.

MINDI:

Yes. And this is huge. As a parent, you will have opportunity to do this probably daily, especially as your children become older and they get into school. And so they have a lot of opportunities with their peers to have really happy feelings and really down feelings. And it’s something where we as parents really need to be alert to see what kinds of thoughts and feelings are our children having. And practically the way you can get to that, to, to know those things is you need to have regular conversations with your kids when they come home from school or when they’ve had a time to be with peers, were they encouraged that they have a good time? Was there anything that was said that hurt you? How were you towards them? Cuz you’re trying to figure out how the interaction was so you can guide them in what to change and what to correct. And encourage them when they did something that was Christ like

CAREY:

How to respond to their peers in love, those kinds of things. Yeah. That’s all great. You know, there’s a lot more to it than how was your day or how was school fine? I mean, that’s not going to get you anywhere. You’ve got to ask very specific questions like Mindi just said of asking about how did your peers treat you today? Was there anything that happened that made you feel criticized or bothered or hurt or those kinds of things. You, you have to know your kid to ask the right questions, but you also just have to be diligent about being persistent. If they’re not giving you much.

MINDI:

Right. And you, you know, your child, let’s say you realize they, they have a tendency towards being critical of others or they have a tendency of being really quiet. So you’re going to ask kinds of questions. Were you loving to your friend Johnny today or were you upset with him? Because he did that thing that irritates you all the time. I mean, you’re, you’re wanting to train them how to be loving and pursue their peers in love. Just like Jesus does. It goes both ways. It’s helping them to be initiating in their behavior. It’s helping them to respond well.

CAREY:

And I think a part of this that really is kind of its own point is we need to help our kids learn how to define things. Rightly according to truth, instead of making up their own definitions and stories about what’s happening. A good example at school, they may be in a situation where their best friend, because a peer pressure with the other cool kids are around, says something spiteful mean to them and they come back home and you get them talking about it. And they say something like, I must be a terrible person because Susie said that to me, she’s right. She’s you know, and, and they’re making up their own conclusions about what happened based on how they feel. And so of course it was a hurtful situation, but are they a terrible person? Well, no, they’re not. They’re making up their own story. They’re telling themselves a story that’s not true. And so we’ve got to learn how to guide our kids according to truth of what God says about them, to redefine the situation and in a sense become bigger than the situation in their attitude and in their maturity level.

MINDI:

Yes. And talking about their maturity level, something that is really important is to communicate to them the heart of God, how God feels about their friend, their sibling, their parents, so that they can start having that mindset develop. So many times we talked with our kids who were truly mistreated by friends at school. And we talked through that. We helped them to see what was true about themselves and we weren’t critical or scolding of them. But we also helped them to see that. Even though your friend is treating you wrongly, God still wants you to love them. He wants you to have the attitude of turning the other cheek and to help them to see your friend is probably treating you that way because they’re feeling insecure because they’re not being loved. But no matter what the reason is, how does God want you to treat them? And that has helped to grow a maturity in our children to be like Christ, no matter how the world is treating them.

CAREY:

That’s what I was thinking. As you were wrapping that up, you’re teaching them how to be like Jesus in sacrificing taking the abuse yet loving anyway. And that’s so powerful and a little nuance within what you said there is. I don’t know if you noticed, as you were listening to what Mindi said, she wasn’t afraid to call wrong, wrong in this situation. Many parents feel like, well, they don’t want their kids to learn how to judge other kids. And so they’re not going to help their kids point out. Well, yeah, Susie did something wrong to you. That’s totally ridiculous. Wrong is wrong. When the, when it’s done, we can call it wrong because that’s what it is. But then like Mindi said, we help our kids to get bigger than the wrong and their maturity and their spiritual strength and say, nevertheless, I’m going to love Susie.

CAREY:

I’m going to reach out to her. All right. Here’s another example that I think we’ve seen a lot and we’ve just seen such benefit in doing it differently with our kids. And that is being wise enough to prepare your kids ahead of time for situations that you know are coming. This could be as simple as you’re going on a trip to grandma’s house and it’s a six hour drive. And so you’re telling the kids, it’s going to take us a long time to get to grandma’s house. You guys are going to be in the back of the van. We don’t want you fighting. We want you loving each other. We don’t want you complaining. Someone’s on your side of the seat. That’s not loving. It’s going to be long. It’s going to be hard. We all just have to be ready for that. It could be that simple or it could also be a situation like the family’s moving. And you know, it’s coming because your company’s transferring you, you know what it’s going to entail? You know, leaving all the friendships, selling the house, maybe having a garage sale and getting rid of some stuff, making new relationships that the new, and you know, your kids may not respond well. They may not be happy about that fact. Do you hide that from them? Because they’re going to be unhappy or do you not want to talk to them yet? Because it’s not close enough, many. What’s your thoughts about that?

MINDI:

I would say that no matter what is going on, you’re wanting to train your children. How to think like God does. So if you know that you’re going to be moving and you know, it’s going to going to be hard for your child, no matter what age, what is the wisest way to help them to prepare? I mean, let’s think about a teenager and all their friends that they might have and how devastating it would be for them to move well. You’re wanting to help them to want what God wants more than anything. Amen. So you might need to tell them ahead of time and say, I know this is going to be hard for you daughter, but we’re telling you ahead of time, cuz we’re wanting to pray with you about this. We’re wanting to talk about it and have many nights of being able to talk about it.

MINDI:

We want to hear what may is so upsetting to you. We want to hear things. You’ll be sad about just that whole process of working through. It would be so valuable. And you’re always bringing in what God is saying on the situation. Another thing, thinking of a little child, knowing let’s say a child who is really shy, our oldest was really shy at the beginning and he would hide behind our legs when we would introduce them to new people or going over to someone’s house. And I remember us preparing him, you know, let’s say before we went to church, you know, we tell him, Aaron, we introduce you to somebody. You hide behind our leg because you’re feeling shy and embarrassed. And we don’t want you to do that. We want you to stand right by us. And we want you to smile at them and say, hi, and that’s all you need to do.

CAREY:

Yeah. It’s very simple.

MINDI:

And that’s being like Jesus, you’re loving them like Jesus. And so we’re preparing them ahead of time before it even happens. And by the way we knew this happened because it, it happened. Yeah. And so that’s a lot of what will help as a parent is when something happens, you realize, oh, this is a situation. This is an issue. Next time I need to prepare my child.

CAREY:

And it comes back to what we’ve already mentioned, knowing your child and observing your child, seeing those subtle attitudes and actions we’re teaching needs to be done. They need to be instructed. And like Paul said, we want to be careful that we are not being taken captive. And our kids are not being taken captive by any false teaching, any deceit, any spiritual powers that are coming in to tell them lies. We want to help them every step of the way to be doing this.

MINDI:

Yes. And I just wanted to, to say another thing about that with our young child, who’s shy. I think a lot of times parents they’ll say to an adult, who’s saying hi to them. Oh, he’s shy. And they just leave it. That’s not a good thing because they’re allowing their child to be controlled by their emotions. And I’m talking young, I’m talking 3, 4, 5. So whenever we there’s a behavior in our child that we instinctively know, it’s not good. We’re not going to call them out right then and there and make them feel embarrassed and ashamed. We’re going to pray about it. We’re going to ask the Lord, how do I help my child to have godly behavior in this? Give me wisdom. And then after you have heard from the Lord, then you talk to your child and you tell them and you prepare them. We’re going to work on this. This is something that you need work on and you tell them why they need to work on it.

CAREY:

Yeah. And I think in that situation as well, if, if you’re just saying, oh, he’s shy and that’s how you leave it. You’re also subtly telling the child, your flesh, your sinful pattern, shyness is an excuse for you. Not to be loving to people. You didn’t say those words, but you are giving it to the other person. As the reason tells your kid. It’s okay for me to be this way. I don’t have to be loving. And they, they will never articulate it that way, but that’s how it will land in their heart.

MINDI:

Yeah. We have so many excuses like that. People will say I’m an introvert. So I don’t like to be around people. Is that Christ like, no, it’s not. God wants us to love others. He wants us to consider others as more important. So yes, we might like to be alone more, but we need to have a balance of that. We need to make sure we have that alone time, but we also need to make sure that we’re reaching out and loving the world.

CAREY:

Yeah. Because as we mentioned at the beginning of the episode, we are to be imitators of God. And so anywhere in our child’s life where we notice, and I maybe a good way to say it is we notice a consistent tendency or pattern where they are not imitating God in a certain area. That’s our next project. That’s what we’re going to lovingly guide our child to examine, understand, evaluate, and take on as a character reformation area

MINDI:

And something that we’ve talked about. But we need to say clearly is watch for subtle attitudes and actions where teaching needs to be done. An example of that. We mentioned the older sibling, the sister being irritated by her brother. And she’s maybe she’s talking on the phone to her teenage girlfriend and they’re talking about boys and they’re giggling and all that kind of stuff. And then the younger brother comes in and starts teasing her. Like a lot of times that scenario happens and she’s just, she’s irritated. You know, she’s like get out of here and he’s not getting out because he’s being a typical little brother. She yells her mom, please get Johnny out of my room. And so the mom comes and says, Johnny, quit bothering your sister, come out. How is that scenario left that way, helping the older daughter or even the younger son be like Christ. They’re not being taught or trained at all. The sister’s not learning how to love her brother and be patient with him. The brother’s not learning how to be loving to his sister cuz he’s kind of, uh, egging her on. I mean, there’s just so much in that scenario.

CAREY:

Yeah. And the parent basically is coming in and putting out a fire rather than teaching the kids how to not start a fire in the first place.

MINDI:

How to not have sparks flying. Yeah. <laugh>

CAREY:

Yeah, exactly. That’s a good way to say it. I was thinking of another situation, you know, where say two siblings that are closer in age are in the room and they’re playing and they’re, they start screaming at each other because of some dispute over a toy or whatever. And the parent just steps in the room and says, you guys quit yelling. Be nice, be nice to each other. I don’t want to have to come back in here. You know? And then they walk out of the room. Nothing was accomplished. You put out a fire, but you didn’t teach either of the children, how their behavior was wrong, why it was wrong, how they need to trust Jesus to give them the strength, to love their sibling. Instead of being irritated and angry. And I’m not saying it’s easy and one conversation is going to fix it. But I am saying, it’s your role to be like God, to step in and teach in all things, how to be like Christ and your children need to learn those skills. They need to learn how to reform their own attitude and their own behavior.

MINDI:

Think of it as you’re giving your children tools and how to live life. And so let’s say you, you do help them in those things. You do teach and train them in that way. Well, when they leave the home, guess what? They’re going to know how to handle irritations here and there. They’re going to know how to handle an argument between their spouse. They’re going to know how to train their kids to not have arguments. I mean, it’s, God will be glorified through generation after generation. If you think of you need to give your children tools, how to be like Christ.

CAREY:

Amen and amen. I think we’ve probably loaded people up with all kinds of food for thought and opportunities to step into as a diligent godly parent. So let’s leave it at that. We want to start wrapping up these episodes with a prayer for you about the topics that we talked about in those particular episodes. So would you join us as we pray, Lord God, we know this is not easy, especially if we don’t have a good model of it and we aren’t mindful of it to begin with. We it’s a new habit. It’s a new way of thinking that we need to take on as parents. And we pray first off you would be the catalyst. You would be the one to put in our minds, the need for this and impress it with a deep, deep responsibility and conviction in a good way on the hearts of every parent listening and then give them eyes to see the opportunities and the needs, the heart level, soul needs of their kids to learn these things and to begin walking in the power of the spirit of Christ. This is not something where we’re just reforming behavior. We are teaching what it looks like to be like Jesus and Lord, as they learn the behaviors, many times that translates into them, giving their heart to Christ and them realizing their need for him to give them the power to do and be right. And so Lord, we pray. You will give the parents all the boldness, all the wisdom, all the strength that they need to do these things in Jesus name. Amen.

MINDI:

Amen.

CAREY:

All right. Thanks for being with us for this episode. We will see you on the next one.