“A Parenting Epidemic”

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Episode Summary

Overlooking sin in your children for the pursuit of tranquility only creates a fake peace in your home

This a must-listen for every parent as there is passivity in a certain area that is hurting even the most well-intentioned parents at times. The repercussions are huge way down the road especially. Overlooking sin in your children for the pursuit of tranquility only creates fake peace in your home. It’s twofold of calling our children up into greater maturity by giving them new responsibilities and addressing the sin in their life in real-time. In the toddler years especially we need to not overlook the behavior problems, but instead, believe that we can guide them.

Main Points From This Episode:

  • The desire to create a fun upbringing should never discourage you from correcting your children and giving them greater responsibilities. Part of them reflecting positively on growing up in your family are that you did those two things well.
  • A silent belief of “let kids be kids” is hurting the futures of so many children. Don’t accept low standards for your children even in the toddler years. You are there to guide them in the right ways!
  • It’s vital to pursue friendships where we can speak hard truths into each other’s lives. If that’s not the case we tend to conform to the group’s mediocrity without realizing it.

Scripture From This Episode:

Galatians 6:7-9 –Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

Romans 12:3 – “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.”

2 Timothy 4:2 – “Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.”

Proverbs 11:2 –When pride comes, then comes disgrace,
    but with humility comes wisdom.”

Proverbs 29:15 –A rod and a reprimand impart wisdom,
    but a child left undisciplined disgraces its mother.”

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Full Transcript:

Note: This is an automated transcript and misspells or grammar errors may be present.

Welcome to Courageous Parenting Podcast, a weekly show to equip parents with biblical truth on raising confident Christian kids in an uncertain world.

Hi, I’m Angie from Courageous Mom.

And I’m Isaac from Resolute Man.

We’ve been married for 21 years and have seen the fruit from raising our eight kids biblically. Based on the raw truth found in the Bible.

We can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children. Too many children from Christian families are walking away from their faith by age 18. And it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. Join us as we start an important conversation about effective parenting and the following. Hey, welcome to the podcast, everyone.

Hi, guys.

So glad you’re here. We’re talking about a real epidemic happening.

An epidemic in.

Parenting. That’s right. So I think it’s important as we tune in to these episodes, you just guys, you all realize that we’re following the Holy Spirit’s promptings and requests from you out there of challenges that are happening. And we don’t come from a place of having it all figured out or any kind of perfection. Actually, we’re imperfect people and our kids are too. And but we’re running the race and and doing our best to teach you on a weekly basis. What we’ve learned with the Bible says and what all the training we’ve gone through says on these things. And so I just wanted to say that because this is a particularly touchy subject potentially.

Yeah, it is a touchy subject. I think that parenting is personal, right? Yeah, We all take it very personal because we care so much. And I think that as we’re diving into this topic, I want you to remember that even if you’re struggling in one area, I don’t want you to think that Isaac and I would in any way go, Oh, you don’t care. No, that’s not it at all. It’s that you’re human. And and so we hope you’re encouraged by today because we’re going to really be diving into biblical parenting. This is hardcore. This is an epidemic. I think that parents from all generations struggle with the things that we’re going to talk about today on one level or not. So we’re going to go over five points today. The first one is actually kind of myths or lies that the world teaches that I think even Christian parents fall into thinking or desiring for their kids. I’ll just share one of those with you right now. It’s Let kids Be kids. Let me ask you this question. Is this a worldly concept or is this backed up biblically? Think about that for just a minute. The second thing that we’re going to be talking about.

Is the balance between visionary and being sober minded. So finding that right balance and that’ll make sense when we go through it.

The third thing we’re going to talk about is overlooking sin in the pursuit of tranquility, which is really fake peace in the home. And this is one of the biggest issues I think, that parents struggle with today and reaps some serious, serious consequences.

And the big deal is the lack of training that actually exists even in well-intentioned homes often.

Yeah. And then the last thing we’re going to talk about is like minded community and how this actually impacts your growth and your children’s growth and who they become in the future, which is really big.

So what is the epidemic?

The epidemic. So here’s the deal. When we’re trying to come up with our title, it was hard because everything that we really want to pour into is wrapped around this conversation of children. Children will rise to the level of responsibility that you give them. So not raising lazy kids, understanding that every child because they’re human, because every human has this intrinsic desire to be needed and to contribute. And when we don’t as parents teach our kids and train our children, and just being productive and contributing to the family or contributing just as a person or.

Correcting, they miss bad behavior.

Right? They will potentially get depressed and act out or they will act out to get attention because they haven’t they don’t feel good about themselves.

So really, the epidemic is allowing kids to stay in their misbehavior, to allow them to stay in their lack of contributing to the family when they can’t even verbalize it. They don’t even know themselves, but they could be contributing and that would make them feel more satisfied, more of a part of the family, part of the team. And when people rise up, they contribute better. And so just think about this, you know, how are your children doing when you go out to a restaurant? How are you doing when you go to friend’s house at church? And especially if you keep the kids with you as an example.

Or do you try to avoid taking them in public because you’re just the thought of doing that is exhausting to you because you haven’t trained them well at home. And so maybe you avoid taking them in public or or taking them places because it is so much work now.

It’s easy to look around us sometimes and go, Well, I’m doing a good job because, you know, my kids are kind of like everybody’s kids. They’re kids. And what we’re saying is, don’t look around you for as a comparison for how you’re doing.

Like, don’t let that define don’t define expectations.

We can expect more. We can do things in our homes that actually produces better fruit, even when kids are very small and when they’re very small, that is training for how they’re going to be in their middle school and teenage years.

I even think about like the scripture that Paul is exhorting people where he talks about growing from spiritual milk to spiritual meat, and that is a spiritual teaching that he’s giving regarding knowledge and understanding of the word. But but there is also this element of like not keeping our kids babies, not coddling them to where they don’t grow into the next season of their life and actually grow in capacity and grow in maturity and grow in their abilities and their responsibilities and their privileges and all of those things. Let me ask you a quick question. What what do you see in your child’s face when they accomplish something that you’ve asked them to do? I’m sure that you see what I’ve seen. I’ve seen it in my 18 month old. I’ve seen it in my three year old, I’ve seen it in my five year old, my seven year old. And it’s that complete joy and delight that they have that they were able to do something new for the first time. It encourages their confidence. They feel big. Don’t don’t you remember back when you were a kid how you wanted your parents to view you as big? Mm hmm. I remember wanting thinking to myself. I just. I wish people saw me the way I see myself. I’m big.

So when your kids are misbehaving and it’s a consistent thing, it could be small things, too, but there’s consistent things that bother you a little bit. But then you’re like, Oh, he’s only. Three. Whatever the age is, right when I ask you, Well, what if that could be different? What if you change something and your approach that actually stopped that bad behavior and and instead made a productive behavior that actually helps the family? And I just think that there is so much opportunity in the moment. We think, oh, kids will be kids. That’s how kids are. We’re separating ourselves from being able to influence any change. And parents have massive influence. You have so much influence. And if we want some kind of change in the culture of our family behavior or family joy and our family peace and our family, then there’s something that parents need to do to change. If parents don’t change anything, if they don’t believe they can change anything, then you’re just going to you don’t even just get the same behavior just gets worse. Right? Especially as people get older, unless they’re taught and trained and empowered to rise up to do things that contribute. So it is so important. I just want to say thank you so much for being part of the 10 Million Legacies movement. You can find everything at B courageous Ministry dot org. We now have everything in one place that will get you out to courageous parenting, where the podcast notes and so forth. That’ll get you out to the coffee that will get you out to free workshop.

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You can always listen and watch.

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And you can listen, but you can also watch you guys. A lot of people forget. I mean, we we shifted from one place to another. We have our videos on Rumble. And so you can definitely watch there. But it’s literally the video is embedded at Craig’s parenting dot com as well.

So, yeah.

I just want to encourage you because a lot of you like to watch while you’re listening as well, which is kind of fun.

And hey, a lot of things launched in recently in the coffee be courageous ministry dot org to make everything easier. We are reinvesting constantly working really hard to further the impact of 10 million legacies. So your gifts really do make a difference. Thank you for all those that do that. Financially sharing makes a big difference. Reviews makes a big difference. We really feel like we’re alone. We have this army of biblical Christians running the race with us, especially, although those of you in the app that has been so fun. We just added two new groups because you requested it, the homesteading group and the app, and also the book club group in the app. And so of course we have all the staples of the rest of the things.

It’s also exciting too, if you guys aren’t aware of the be courageous social media platform that we launched last November, we have a pregnancy and postpartum and birth group as well, which I started actually reading Redeeming Childbirth and doing a discussion slash Bible study and equipping moms, and they’re in that super exciting. I’ve been doing that weekly and those will stay in that group indefinitely in the app as well. And so that’s that’s special because for years we’ve been getting people asking for an audio of the book and we’re just that’s not something that we are in a position to spend a lot of time doing right now. So this is even better in my mind.

I put tons of value in there, powerful community, no advertising, and it’s 899 a month for the app. And you think, Oh, I don’t pay for apps? Well, actually, no. People do pay for apps all the time now for things they actually want that aren’t woke. And it’s and there’s a need for that because.

We pay for.

Something is free like a metta. Metta in Hebrew means death. If something is free to use, it means you are the product and advertisers are advertising to you. So nothing’s actually free. It’s just that we’ve decided to go the model of not throwing a bunch of advertisers in there at you in the app. And so we have hard costs on that thing. So anyways, let’s dive in. So an epidemic in parenting, which is really not believing we can influence the behavior of our children even when they’re young.

And it’s also not being proactive in raising our kids up. Can I say that there’s this concept of like in it’s biblical to train up your child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. When we were creating this podcast. Outline. Something really hit me hard when I was reading a specific scripture and it dawned on me, If we don’t do our job as parents, the church suffers. And this is why. Because our kids are also going to grow up and be active brothers and sisters in this family of God. They are going to be part of the body of Christ. And if we don’t raise them up, but instead we raise them down to a lower standard and we don’t train them and teach them, in all things discernment, encouraging others, exhorting others, using their gifts, being wanting to desire to serve. Can I just talk about like that concept of serving, for example? Leadership is service and we should have a servant leadership attitude. But servant hood, if we’re raising kids in selfishness instead of selflessness, they’re going to grow up and potentially, if they are Christians, go to a church and have a mentality of what can the church give me? And they’ll be taking, taking, taking, not giving, and proactively participating in a way that edifying the whole body as it’s meant to. And so if we don’t do our job as parents, the church suffers. Do you see that there’s a direct correlation to that? And so if we want things to change in the church, if we you know, I get comments after comments, messages after messages of people asking for how do I find like minded community, How do I find a church like all these problems that they see in the churches that they’re visiting or part of and they’re frustrated and you’re probably listening going, Hey, man, I have that problem. Do you have a solution? Yeah, do your part by parenting well, so that the church in the next generation is actually more biblical.

Amen. So Galatians six, starting in verse seven, I’ll probably read a little extra. I’m going to pull an Angie says, Do not be deceived. God is not mocked for whatever one sows that will he also reap. So the spiritual love, sowing and reaping for the one who sows to his own flesh, will from the flesh reap corruption. But the one who sows to the spirit will, from the spirit, reap eternal life and let us not grow weary of doing good. For due season we’ll reap if we do not give up. A lot of times we just do. Galatians 690. Let us not grow weary of doing good for and do season will reap if we do not give up. Well, what’s right before Galatians six nine sowing and reaping which what is sowing and reaping it means when you’re doing something and reaping something back like.

You mean it’s consequence.

And so now we’re diving into this first point, which is the myth of let kids be kids, especially when they’re little and they’re being normal. Yes, they’re a little misbehaving. Yes. They’re not responsive to the parents.

Sometimes kids do.

That. Yes. They oh, they can’t sit still during church and they can’t do these things.

And also say that I think parents fall prey to this lie that let kids be kids turns into, oh, all teenagers disrespect their parents or oh, all teenagers rebelled or oh, all teenagers won’t listen to their parents. So they need to have other people that they’ll listen to that are going to say the other thing. These are all lies and they go under the same myth of let kids be.

It’s so easy to believe in these things because, you know, you look around at the majority and you see these things. So it’s hard to believe sometimes that we actually can have a different outcome. But God actually tells us we can have a different outcome. And right here we can do things as parents, we can we can so differently and reap differently in our families. And that starts at a young age. It’s never too late if you have older kids, but it’s really important to do it as soon as you can.

I think that there is some other worldly thoughts as well that parents, Christian parents need to be aware of. And we’ve talked about some of these in previous podcasts where it’s like five myths that you definitely don’t want to believe, right? And one was Let Boys Be Boys or whatever, which is similar, right? Boys will be boys.

I’m sorry, I’m speaking on this for a long time.

Yeah. So we’ve been speaking on this for a long time. But here’s another one. A lot of parents, they want their kids to have fun memories of their childhood. I want that. Yeah, I’m sure you want that.

Absolutely.

Purpose to go do fun things with our family, to create family memories and experiences that are going to build relationships. We’re hyper set for that. But is that desire the driving, controlling lens that you look through everything with your kids in so much so that you’re afraid that if you correct their sin, they’re going to be remembering, Oh, Mom and Dad were always pointing out my sin and always correcting me and and I had such a bad childhood. And so you think that they’re going to remember just that so you don’t do it and you only want to have fun all the time. And so you you avoid and evade things that are going to be potentially conflict provoking.

You know, an interesting thought for you. Just think about. Your own early education and think about your favorite coach or your favorite teacher, the one that comes to mind that instantly in your memory. I got the most out of their class, I got the most out of their season playing sports. And what you’re not going to remember is the Oh, you can do whatever you want. You can turn your homework in whenever you want. Oh, you were late. No big deal. You’re not going to remember those teachers.

Those teachers. True.

You’re going to remember the ones that had expectations that actually taught you something. They expect you to rise up and expected things from you and did it because you knew they cared about you. And that is exactly how we’re to be. So, yes, kids should have a fun upbringing, but they are not going to look at it as a great upbringing like we want. If it’s devoid of expectation, responsibility and being a contributor in the team.

Yeah, I mean, I just want to remind you to like when you think back to some of the things that maybe you learned or you’re most thankful for, that you learned when you were growing up, They’re they’re generally like the things that you were taught, something hard, a skill of some kind. And those are fun memories, actually. Right now let me just share something personal. This is a personal open experience moment right now while we’re shooting this podcast. I don’t know if you can hear that in the background, but that’s our tractor. And our 16 year old son is using the tractor and he’s because he really wants to get the compost pile going before we have freezing cold weather. So he was doing school in the early morning and he’s going to be doing school in the afternoon. And right now, during the best part of the day, he’s working hard and you should see him. Like I just kind of peeked over my shoulder because I saw him and he had that like he has this open face of like, I’m doing it.

Oh, this is so fun.

Do you think that my son might, who volunteered to do a compost pile using the tractor, is having fun right now. Yeah, but it’s work. And that’s going to be a memory. Like, if you were to talk to our oldest son who’s married and out of the house, some of his fondest memories growing up were him on the tractor in our vineyard.

When.

He was eight, when he was eight. So let me just share something with you. When we say children rise to the level of responsibility that you give them, those two boys are perfect examples of what that can look like on a very practical level as far as giving them responsibility. And of course, when I say this now, I’m not saying that every kid who’s eight years old can handle the responsibility of a tractor. Do not misunderstand, understand me, because I really think that it’s a rare oddity when a child is responsible enough to do that. You need to teach them all the safety measures. Okay. I’m just obviously we wouldn’t do something that would potentially put our kids in danger. But but the reality is that he rose to that responsibility. And let me tell you, it grew his confidence and he was ready for so much more as a young kid because of it.

Yeah.

And so I just I have to put that out there. Another thing that a lot of parents fall to is this concept of being best friends with their kids. And I know that you guys probably have heard other parenting people who are talking about parenting discouraging you from parenting that way. But can I just say that if you love your child enough to actually teach them things that that they then can do on their own and you’re equipping them, okay, Your kids are going to grow up confident and they’re going to be so thankful and you’re going to have this relationship where they they want your wisdom and they see you as one of their best friends. And so there is an element of where you do eventually become like best friends when they’re older. But when they’re kids, you need to really step into your role as the parent.

And I think they really still respect you and admire you when they’re older because you did have expectations, you did teach them things. You did expect a high responsibility from them. I want to take a moment and give you something for free if you haven’t got it already. Is the date night one sheet? It is a beautiful document you can download that will have some key questions on it for your date night. Just get in alignment about what’s most important for your family. No matter what time of year, it’s always important to recalibrate. You can get that by going to parenting dot com and subscribing to our mailing list. Also, you can get all of our show notes and everything at courageous parenting dot com. And I also just want to share real quick about the parenting Mentor program. So many families are being transformed by going through this. It’s the six week self paced program with live engagement from us and even direct interaction. So if you want to join us, here’s a little bit more about it. You can find out more at courageous parenting dot com.

Steve and I realized that we were getting too comfortable with the world’s vision. Of how to raise our children. But Angie and Isaac have done in creating this is literally phenomenal. This program provided awesome scripture based teachings and just some really great practical applications. This class has just really rocked my world. It has given me a vision for not just the different things that we might focus on as parents who are trying to raise our kids biblically, like how our kids are behaving or what we’re doing with discipline, but also the things of the heart. We now have.

A game plan to how we want to raise our children. We have so many answers to the questions that have been in our mind.

It’s not just these hypothetical situations or it’s not just this. Here’s what I think you should do. It’s let me show you where in scripture this is.

Do your legacy a favor and yourself a.

Favor and just do it. One of the best things that we’ve done this year, one of the best investments we’ve made this year, and I could not recommend it more. We’re no longer fearing dark days ahead, but we’re so excited to raise the lights to be leaders for the next generation.

So it’s important not to just settle with this. Let’s kids be kids, but instead look at how we can expect more from our kids in return, how that contributes to their character and it contributes to their esteem, Right. And how they look at themselves and how they participate in the family. And our second point is.

Our second point is to have balance between being a visionary and being sober minded about who each of our kids are, their capabilities, their their, their abilities, their maturity level. We get a lot of people asking us, like, at what age do you teach your kids to do X, Y, Z, or at what age are your kids ready to learn? And that’s about.

This. And that really depends on the maturity, right? It’s not an age thing, and so we can never answer it specifically. You need to be the student of your own children. And let’s just face it, usually what we see is people are delayed. Parents are more delayed than their kids. What I mean, is there more delayed in seeing their capabilities than the capabilities that actually do exist in their kids are already they’re far before their parents even see it.

And that’s true. I mean, and even maybe you do see it, maybe you’re a parent that tries to have the rose tinted glasses off. But the truth is, is we’re all human and we all have blind spots. Right. And that’s why we need each other, which we’ll talk about like my community later. But we need each other and we need to have a heart of being willing to hear from our husband or from our wife. Right. If you’re the husband and and you’re not necessarily seeing reality within your child as far as the sin that they’re struggling with or whatever, or maybe not raising them up to the next level. And what I mean by that is not letting our our babies stay babies, but let them become kids. Let them then become big kids, let them become teenagers, let them become teenagers, let them become young adults. Let them become adults. Let them grow is the point. And not just let them grow, but help them to actually grow with their with the with the actual timeline of life. I think a lot of parents hold their kids back.

Here’s something that’s really important to understand, and this is true in leadership, too. I used to work with Angie with me for a little bit, but with lots of college students. And one of the things I learned back then is even before having kids is that you don’t wait to see capability in somebody because what they’re demonstrating isn’t they’re not even going to know how to show capability in something. And so, especially with children, is you teach them things and you show them how they can do more and they usually rise up to that. And so a lot of times we have to act in initiate before we see it, right? So it’s really important. Now, we never want to put our kids in danger or have them doing things that, you know, too early. And that’s for you to decide and discern. But what we’re saying, our observation is in general, parents wait too long to.

Have them do things. Kids are ready for more and they actually crave it and they need it. And when they don’t have it, they act like babies when they’re three, four, five, six and seven years old. Because the only way that they communicate or are listen to is they’ve developed this rhythm of whining or treating people in a way that gets what they want selfishly. Right. And so we need to realize that, like babies are babies for very short period of time, and then they move into toddlerhood and they start getting trained and then they move into being a little kid.

Actually, we have a, what, 16 month old right now? Yes. And so, Zander, we expect him to be obedient. I go, Zander, no. And then he pauses for a second. He can barely talk. He says like two words, and he pauses for a second. And then sometimes he comes back to me and sometimes he defies me and it continues to go. And then I have. A get up and have to talk to him about it. And it’s really important. Like, you know, do you expect your toddler to.

Understand.

To obey you and understand you? They fully understand way before they’re talking. And I think that that delay in parents understanding this and taking action on it or understanding it, but they don’t take action on it, that is is contributing to a very difficult season in what some people would call terrible twos, which we would We’ve never experienced that at a specific age because we’ve experienced, you know.

Kids being difficult.

That’s difficult for sure.

But but that’s when because they’re human and they sin just like we do. And in those circumstances we engage. We don’t just go, Oh, yep, all kids do that and walk away and ignore it, thinking that they’re they’re eventually going to outgrow the whining temper tantrum. No, I’m sorry that that actually doesn’t happen if you continue letting it be that it’s just going to look a little different when they’re four or five, six, seven, 12, 18, but they’re still going to have their emotional breakdowns. It’s just going to get more embarrassing and louder and it’s going to become more of a habit for them because they haven’t been corrected. And there’s this element of like, we need to understand, we teach this in the parenting mentor programs more in depth, you guys. But children are not babies are not born with this innate ability to have self control or emotional self control. They aren’t. They have to be taught and that teaching anything to a toddler, to a baby, to like teaching baby sign language, it takes time, it takes patience, it takes repetition, it takes consistency. Anything that you’re going to teach anyone is going to take all of those those ingredients patience, consistency, time. And and I just have to say that that can be refining on the parents character because a lot of times we have our agenda, we have our to do list, we have our things that we want to do.

Maybe we’re tired even, right? And so getting up for the 30th time in the last 2 hours to get the kid away from the cupboard or away from the bathroom, toilet seat or whatever it is that you’re training them to not be by. You’re just like, I’m tired. I wish I had an assistant that could do it for me. And you just let it go. Well, no, no, no, you can’t. Like, this is the sanctifying part of parenting, is that we have to not be lazy. We have to be consistent. We have to actually get up and be productive. And and when we do our job well, guess what happens? We reap what we sow in our children’s behavior and in their obedience. But also they also learn from our example. So if we’re lazy parents, we should expect our kids to be lazy kids. If we are a proactive, productive parents in the home and we model that for our kids, our kids are going to desire to be that. And so we need to give them opportunities to be that themselves. And then they’re going to grow in confidence and they’re going to be contributing and they’re going to have that big grin on their face. That’s like I put my diaper in the garbage. You know, the look I’m talking about, Hey.

You got a scripture for us. But before we go into that, I just want to teach you about capacity training real quick because this is really important. So you ask, well, when can my child handle X? And then I would say, I don’t know. I don’t know your child. I don’t know what they’ve experienced. Have they gone through things with you to where now they can handle more? Maybe they actually can’t because they haven’t gone through things. And what I mean by that is, you know, kids will complain about spilled milk that’ll frustrate them or you get something like that and you’re losing your patience and your mind because it’s just spilled milk. It’s no big deal. That’s where their capacity is at and we have to get them over that. And capacity training is, you know, have you ever had this experience where you’re like, wow, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to. This is going to be really hard. This thing I have in this next month to overcome this challenge we’re experiencing.

To learn.

Something, we have to learn something new While this is really hard and then you fast forward six months down the road and you go, I can’t believe I even thought that was difficult because I’m handling much bigger challenges in things now or.

Opportunities and.

Everybody feels that way and feels that way in business and in kids, but they’re just at a different capacity for what they have experienced in life. Because when you go through a challenge and you’re at a certain capacity and you persevere through it and you come out the other side and you see the fruit or the outcomes of it, you are now capable of handling more. And the more we go through this capacity cycle, the more we can handle in life. And I think probably in our family, our kids are going through developing capacity.

Like all the time.

Quickly, all the time, because we’re engaging and we’re helping them overcome it and we’re not letting them just go in this mediocre behavior on an ongoing basis. Right. And we’re addressing it. And so now they’re and then we’re giving them more. Or more responsibility, and it’s building upon itself to where they’re consistently feeling like bigger contributors to society, that they’re important, that they’re valuable, that they have things to offer because it builds upon itself. So you think Austin driving a tractor at eight? Well, it was Austin unique kid, you know, more mature at a younger age in a lot of ways than lots of lots, you know. And I just you know, that was beautiful. But before that, there was other things he was doing that was building that capacity where there was chopping wood or, you know, going with dad to work and different things and conversations.

And he was helping me with kids when they were little because I was on bed rest. So he I remember to rise up. I remember when he was six years old taking Luke out of his crib for me because I had thrown my back out vomiting because I was pregnant with Ethan and I was on bed rest for a while with that pregnancy. But I remember like going, Wow, he can actually do that and and safely. And it was just and he was so proud of himself when he got him out of the crib or, you know, when Kelsey was changing diapers at eight years old. And and you may be listening to this going, they shouldn’t be doing that. Well, I’m sorry. They actually loved it. Do you remember playing house with Cabbage Patch dolls and little dolls that looked alive and and playing with dolls for hours and dressing them up and changing their diapers as a mommy and like and pretending house and playing house. I remember playing house for hours and hours and hours in the summer months. And I’m sure you do, too. Well, guess what? My kids just had live dolls that they loved even more. And it’s been beautiful because my kids actually delight in children. And that’s something that, like we need to understand that while the world says that’s a burden, let kids be kids, like they’re even having a better experience. I remember even thinking when our oldest was born, I wanted to get her a play kitchen and I thought, This is perfect. She can play in her play kitchen and I can have my kitchen to myself and I can cook a dinner without having to to make this take forever.

Well, short.

Sighted. It was short sighted. And she also didn’t know how to play because she was our first born. So then I ended up spending hours playing kitchen, teaching her how to play kitchen. And she didn’t want to be playing kitchen. She wanted to be in the real kitchen, making the real things, because that’s actually way more fun than this imaginative, not real dough. If I can make real roles, why would I want to play with air, right? Like, and so then I was like, okay, you can just be in the kitchen with me. And I made a drawer for her in the kitchen. She had her own drawer for baking things. This is like toddler age, you guys. She loves to cook, she loves to bake and did the same thing with my other kids. And I realized, like, some of what we think in society is the way that we’re supposed to parent like actually is backwards for training kids up and for them actually delighting like, okay, do you know how much more delight she had when her dad would come home? And she was like, Try one of my cookies, daddy? And she’s like, Do you like it? And she was just sitting there, like, watching him eat it. Well, she can’t she would try to do that with like an air cookie or a plastic cookie, but he’d have to like, fake it. Mm. Yeah. That’s tasty. Taste like cardboard, you know, like No. But if he’s like, you really? Can I have another one? Oh, that’s so good. And he’s wiping his, you know.

These were my heavy years.

No, when we had kids that were baking all the time. But I’m just bringing this to you as an example. You could think of many, many more examples. But we need to understand that we as Christian parents need to parent counter culturally. And I’m not saying that play kitchens are bad, I’m just saying don’t do that in replace of letting your kids in the kitchen and helping you bring them in. Yes, it’s going to take time. Yeah, it’s going to take a lot longer. It’s going to take a lot longer to teach your six year old how to load and unload the dishwasher, but they’re contributing to the family and that’s going to build their confidence. And they need to learn a life skill.

And their capacity is growing.

And their capacity grows so that they can then hand-wash dishes in a few years without breaking them. Like this is a big this is a big deal for parenting. I even think of like those times you guys, when you have another baby and there might be a little regression in a child’s behavior. Have you experienced that in a transition time? I know we’ve experienced that in a transition time where maybe you had potty trained the two year old or the three year old, and then all of a sudden they start wetting the bed again or or they start wanting diapers because they see the baby wearing diapers. Well, I experienced this recently about six months ago with church. I our our toddler, our youngest was starting to be a little bit more wiggly. He didn’t want to sit on my lap as much. So we started put I started putting out my blanket with a few toys for him to just look at there in church. Well, that was very tempting for our three almost four year old to come over and sit on the floor and want to play. And I was I’ll be frank, I was tired, so I just let him do it a few times, not realizing. And then it dawned on me the third time I’ve broken the cycle. He was good at sitting on the sofa with his Bible for about a year and listening. To Daddy with the sermon and participating in the worship and and doing the whole thing.

And then all of a sudden now he wants the snacks and he wants to sit on the link with the toys. I screwed it up. We regressed. And so I had to, like, get that constitution in me of, Nope, I’m going to have to have a conversation because he’s older now and he used to do it when he was younger. So I know he can. And I had to encourage him and go, Hey, bud, Like Xander looks up to you and and you should want to learn from God. And when you’re playing toys, you’re distracted and you’re distracting other people from hearing the word because you’re making little noises. And and this is important because you’re also an example to the babies in the room. And and you want to hear from Jesus, right? You love him. Yeah, that’s the most important thing. But also you don’t want to distract other people when you’re distracted. It is a distraction for mommy and for other kids because they’re watching you and they’re jealous that they’re not sitting on the blanket playing toys and that their parents are making them sound. So there’s all these conversations that I had with him that were very productive, that made sense to him, and he agreed with them. And since then, he’s been sitting on the sofa with his Bible. We’re back at it again. No, no biggie. And I now I only have one baby.

In the floor. And you see, this doesn’t end in families. You see in the culture and the way church is set up. This whole thing doesn’t end of the Let Kids Be Kids continues. It’s in the youth programs, right? It’s like, let’s make everything super entertaining all the way up until they’re 18. Always entertaining, always doing things in an entertaining way. I’m like, Well, why are young people not going to churches once they launch from home? Well, because it’s not fun and games anymore. You’re sitting and listening to a sermon which should be edifying and amazing.

They should want to learn.

They should want that. But that’s not the training. That’s not what they’ve been brought up.

Yeah, it’s interesting because what they’ve been brought up in is the way they participate in Sunday school is that they’re playing games and that maybe they’re part of a worship team and they’re so there’s this element of like they’re participating more than what like big churches actually experience. But what they actually need to be taught is like, okay, so if we’re part of the body of Christ, we participate not just during the church meeting but all throughout the week. And there needs to be like a proactive way. When you’re part of the body of Christ, you contribute. What’s your gift? How do you are you going to are you going to help somebody move? Are you going to bring a meal to somebody who’s sick? Are you going to be on the worship team? Are you going to greet are you going to serve communion? Are you going to clean up the chairs? Are you going to set up the chairs? Are you? There’s so many things. Are you going to hold the baby for the mom in the back so that she can take notes? Are you going to whatever it is, there are so many ways that you can serve. And that’s one of the things that I love about our our home church is and people ask a lot of questions. I’m just going to go off a little bit is that everybody participates. It’s fun to see the kids leading worship and and it’s fun to see the kids helping with shared meal and and setting up chairs and putting out worship binders and different things. You need to be in a place where your kids can actually do that because that helps them to rise to the next level. It prepares them to be a part of the body of Christ. And if you’re not if you’re not a part of a church where your kids can serve in any kind of way, I’m going to challenge you that you need to think through if that is the place for you.

Normalcy, stunts, maturity. Just think about that. Normalcy stunts, maturity, the kind of maturity that we really want that produces godly fruit and normalcy is all around us. And so whatever is normal, you should really question what the normal way of things in today’s world and just look at it is that the very best? And have these marriage conversations go what is the best? It doesn’t just because everybody’s doing something a certain way, just because everybody tolerates sin and their kids in a certain way doesn’t mean it’s what we should be doing. What does God want from our families? He wants our families to glorify God, to draw people to him, to when we go out, they go, wow, kids are a blessing. Maybe they’re not a burden. Like I think, wow, look at how well-behaved they are. Not for our ego, but to point them to Christ that, wow, there’s something spiritual happening in that family. I want to know more about it. And so I think that is really beautiful. And it does take bucking the system. It does take going against the grain. Status quo isn’t what is working out there. So I just want you guys to be encouraged in that and it’s going to feel a little lonely sometimes, but that’s just the way it is. So the third point is overlooking sin in the pursuit of tranquility is not good. That is fake peace in the home. And so we don’t want to overlook sin either because we’re too busy. We don’t feel like addressing it. We don’t know how. Or we just accept it because that’s what a lot of people around us do.

So Proverbs 11 two says, when pride comes, then comes disgrace. But with the humble is wisdom. I’m going to read to you another proverb that goes with this. I’m just going to reread it a second, though. Proverbs 11 two. Listen to this. When pride comes, then comes disgrace. We don’t want to be prideful because we don’t want to be experienced disgrace. But Proverbs 2915 has a different exhortation that is also similar. And they go together. It says The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother. Shame is also disgrace. A child left to himself. Brings shame to his mother. To his parents. It brings shame to his parents.

That’s not like leave him alone in a room that’s leaving things un talked about. That’s allowing them to do the wrong things like whining and not addressing.

It, not correcting sin, avoiding conflict of dealing with sin simply because we think to ourselves, Oh man, they’re just going to have a temper tantrum the minute I go over there and I hold them accountable. And that’s going to take extra time. I don’t have time for this. I have X, Y, Z going on, or maybe you’re in public or maybe you have someone over and you’re like, I don’t want to deal with this right now because that could be embarrassing. I’m just going to brush that under the carpet and hope my friends don’t see it or it’s so common. It happens all the time. I’m comfortable with it. And so you just kind of don’t do anything. And you think that, like, your motivation is tranquility, like not having a bigger outburst, but in reality it’s fake peace because there’s no true righteous peace in a home apart from truth and reconciliation with Christ. And when a child is in sin, just like when we’re in sin, there is separation from Christ. And we need reconciliation. That starts by having repentance, and then it goes into remorse, fullness and reconciliation. We should want our children to be reconciled to God. We need to cultivate in them this like. And part of how we do this is by having a humble heart ourselves and being willing to take rebuke or teaching or exhortation from brothers and sisters in Christ when even when it comes to our parenting, which is super hard. Right. We’re going to talk about more about that in a second. But the point is, is if we’re overlooking the sin in our child’s life, most likely we’re not even wanting that from other people, too. We want to overlooked as well.

One of the things we I’ve been talking about lately is getting good at loving other people well and disagreeing with them, whether it’s believers or non-believers. And it just struck me as we’re talking about this, that in homes where kids are not corrected and they’re not taught and they’re not the capacity isn’t built with them, those kids are likely going to launch. And yeah, they might be Christians, they might be not hopefully they’re Christians, but they’re not going to be someone that’s good at loving other people. Well, but standing their ground and disagreeing with them. And I think a fall of society, at least what we’re seeing in America, largely, is Christians and churches and pastors, not all. There’s some really good ones out there, but just not getting involved and not disagreeing.

They believe that tolerance is love. Think about that for a second. They believe that tolerating other people’s sin is love, and they actually do it under a false, blasphemous teaching. And they say that Jesus was tolerant or they expect Christians to be tolerant to not judge. Right. We hear that all the time. And and that Jesus did that well. But actually Jesus said go and sinned no more. We’ve talked about this in previous podcasts. He healed people and he’d say, Repent. Right. And so the truth is, is he what Jesus was doing is he was healing people, but he was healing more than their physical ailments. He was setting them free from a bondage of sin because but they all had a responsibility to not continue in the sin that they were in. And we have to teach that on the most basic level with our children from the time that they’re little as they’re growing up. This is a huge epidemic.

If they see us doing it well with them over and over and over again, what is it training him for? Not only godliness, righteous living, repenting to God, wanting to live Christ like life, but also the ability to have confidence, to talk to people and have tough discussions, to actually be in fellowship and be iron sharpens iron. And so many times today, especially in the parenting category, it’s like, I can’t go there with so-and-so and I can’t go there with so-and-so because.

They’re too fragile.

It’s too fragile. They’re going to get defensive, they’re going to take it wrong. And we’re just sitting here like.

You love you, actually. Yeah. And we see that you’re headed down a road that’s going to be so bad.

If you see something in our children.

Please come to us.

And I hope that you’re the same way. And usually that happens when you have relationships with people and you’re running the race together. But it’s important. Second, Timothy four two says Preach the word, be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke and exhort. This is talking about Christians to Christians here with complete patience and teaching. Let’s not forget what is complete patience. It’s patience that’s lacking. No impatience. It’s simply patience, complete patience. So exhort somebody which is correcting in a loving way.

Maybe that patience is also like not overdoing it and not bringing ten problems that you see in their child or or going to your child with ten problems you see in them. Yeah, but instead, just just let’s just talk about one or maybe let’s just talk about two, depending on their spiritual maturity and then holding the rest back that’s having patience and kind of testing the waters to see how they do, if they’re going to implement, if they’re going to correct their their lifestyle. Right.

So if you’re somebody that’s like I do have a hard time getting constructive criticism from other people, especially if it doesn’t look like their family is doing better than my family, Sometimes we have these weird comparison traps within willingness to accept guidance. I understand that. But it says the next part for the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching years, they will accumulate from themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober minded and during suffering, do the work of an evangelist fulfill your ministry. All of us have a ministry. If you have friends, if you have influence with people.

Who have children.

Children, you have a ministry, your marriage is a ministry. All of these things are ministry. We all have ministries. They’re all equally important to God. Doesn’t matter the size of them. We don’t compare each other’s ministries to each other. We just do the best with the ministry God has given us right now. And, you know, it’s super important. So we don’t want to be that. There’s a lot of parenting philosophies out there that would disagree with things. We’re saying they would disagree with a lot of things. Do you know, we lose listeners to the podcast on ongoing basis. It just so happens praise the Lord that we gain more listeners than we lose. But it’s the same with social media, right? It’s like, Oh, there’s one thing that somebody disagrees with, and then they turn it, turn it off. And I just think that we all don’t have to agree on everything, but we do need to not have itching ears. And if somebody is coming out with, oh yeah, for the first time in history, I have learned something new about what the Bible says from the Greek and the Hebrew. And this hasn’t been pontificated before, but now I have it in my book and this is the way to parent.

You might want to be a little weary, but you know, you guys, this is the thing, is that sharpening Isaac was talking about being iron, sharpening iron to one another. This concept of being in like minded community is our last point. And it’s so, so crucial regarding who your kids become. You know, we talk about influences all the. Time. We know that you hear us constantly saying, What are you modeling for your kids? Well, when it comes to building friendships and choosing wise friends, you’re modeling that for your kids. You’re modeling if you’re using discernment. And I have to tell you, you know, there have been times where we’ve been friends with people for seven years, six years, 12 years, 16 years, and we’ve seen fruit or things have happened where they’ve made different choices, where we’ve gone, you know what? That’s not safe for our family. So we’re going to kind of back away from that friendship. And those were some of the wisest decisions that we ever made. Because the truth is, is you have to you you can’t expect your kids to make wise decisions on friendships like and when I say friendships, I’m not saying we weren’t like acquaintances or we weren’t trying to be loving to those people because we would be and we are. But what I’m saying is, is that you don’t necessarily have them in your inner circle that are going to be influencing your kids, Right? You’re going to kind of pull back a little bit when you see foolishness because you don’t want to become foolish and you don’t want your kids to become foolish.

And I can say as someone who’s been parenting a long time that years and years pass and we bump into those families and unfortunately, their their children have fallen away from and they’re on wayward paths. And it’s very sad. But I also go, well, praise God that we used our gut and we made the hard decision. And I’m sharing that story with you because I think that one of the things that people underestimate and that one of the things that people oftentimes do is they will choose friends like Isaac was saying before, that make them feel better about their kids bad behavior because their kids also have bad behavior. And so they feel justified because they’re like, oh, well, my kids act that way, but their kids do, too, and their kids do too. So I guess we just need to have this expectation that kids this age act this way. That’s a very dangerous place to be in because you’re you are going to reap what you sow. That is a spiritual law that no one can escape. And the truth is, is that if you’re just surrounded by people who commiserate together but don’t challenge each other’s growth capacity, don’t challenge each other on biblical truths to grow stronger, then you’re actually not in deep fellowship with people that love you.

Loving you isn’t just sitting and listening to you commiserate about your problems. Loving you is going to point you to Jesus. And the truth found in his Word, loving you is going to be wanting you to speak into their life as well, if it’s appropriate. If you if they’ve if you guys are in that kind of relationship and you have fruit in your life and you’re giving that advice, they should want that from you. Yeah. And if the closest people in your life don’t want you to speak truth about maybe the blind spots that they have in their parenting, then I would venture to say you actually don’t have biblical friendship, not on that level. You might have biblical friendship in some ways, like where you would say, Oh, we’re like minded. We believe the same thing. We believe Jesus died on the cross and rose again from the dead. We believe in many things doctrinally the same. But if it comes down to it, where you’re not able to challenge one another in the things that matter most, if you’re not able to encourage each other towards spurring one another on to more good works, then there’s an element of biblical friendship that is not existing in your relationship. You’re not necessarily allowing the gift of exhortation to even exist in your relationships, and that’s a dangerous place to be.

It is. And if you want to cultivate that in your current relationships, simply lead by example. Have a heart to heart and go, You know what? I really appreciate our relationship and I want it to continue to go deeper. And as iron sharpens iron as the Bible talks about. And so if you see anything that about my marriage or about my parenting that could be improved from my kids or anything like that, of course I’d want you to give it to me in love and tenderly. But you know, I actually want to hear it. And I just think that’s important as we’re in relationship to do that. And I think that in churches it’s important to build those friendships with people where you’re running there, where you’re committed and you’re running the race like that, because none of us can do it alone. We can’t do it alone. We need to run the race with people that sharpen us. All of us have blind spots. We need to not be prideful. And someone mentioned something, and just because they didn’t mention it tenderly enough or they didn’t mention it perfect the perfect way we would want to hear something like that, which you probably can’t even describe that we get upset.

Yeah, and we don’t want it. We’re defensive or defensive, and all we do is start thinking about the other person that’s giving us the information is false, like it was an attack or something. And I think we have to get so much better at this at really receiving. And so I would. I encourage you to welcome it proactively, actually, and that will lead by example. And they may reciprocate. They may not, but at least they’ll think about it. They’ll pray about it, and you’ll start to find out who are the people you really can run the race with. Because you know what? If there’s pride in the hearts lived out of parents, then the good chance their kids are not going to continue in fruitfulness as they get older. And if you keep running the race together, but you’re being walking in humility, sharp, being sharpened by others and sharpening others and doing that, then you’re going to start to see a difference and it’s going to be challenging. So I really encourage you to build those friendships.

You know, one last proverb on this topic. When we were talking about this, I was reminded of Proverbs 27 five through ten. It says Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend profuse, are the kisses of an enemy. And you know, one of the things that we need to understand is that when someone comes to us and shares, Hey, I see X, Y, Z, and I’m praying for you, and this is actually a hard thing that we should actually be wanting that because that is love. And if we are defensive against it or we push away from hearing that, then what? Or what kind of relationship is there? Right. And I think that when friendships are found, that’s that’s the mark of if a friendship is truly founded on the truth versus on, oh, we like the same things or we’re in the same season of life. So we’re friends, right? Like having your relationship founded on truth is that you’re going to notice those things. You’re going to run the race together and you’re going to be committed to each other. Meaning, I’m going to love you through this. I’m going to be here. I’m not going anywhere, but I’m going to bring this to you and I’ll be praying for you.

And if you want accountability, yeah, sure. But also like having that relationship where you can go to someone and confess your sins to another person or confess, I am really struggling in this thing. Do you have any advice for me? Do you have any encouragement that is that’s actually inviting exhortation, inviting instruction, inviting the sharpening into your life. And if you don’t have that with people in your church, specifically in your church, if you don’t have that with people in your church, then you need to really think through, Am I in the right place? I’ve said that twice now as to different times of you really need to think if you’re in the right place. And the reason why I say that is because, again, we model for our children what this looks like. And if we want them to desire and to pursue having like minded fellowship when they’re adults, we have to model it for them when they’re young. If we want them to parent in this way, our grandkids, we have to parent them this way when they’re in our homes.

Amen. So I would just encourage you guys to stop the epidemic. It starts with you. It starts with you leading by example introspectively, looking at how are we doing with this and being an influence with the people around you.

That’s right. Being willing to say, I love you enough that I’m going to share this with you and you guys. This is not something that has to continue into your legacy. You can stop this epidemic. It can literally be changed by the power of Christ when you’ve committed to him. And so share that with your kids. You know, if you’ve been parenting and you’re like, oh, man, this has been this has been a touchy subject. If you’re saying listening and this has been a touchy subject, you’re like, I’ve screwed up, you guys, We’ve screwed up. Yeah, but we’ve also been able to experience God redeeming our screw ups, our mistakes, because we’ve been in a posture where we’re like, okay, I’m going to learn from that. We did something wrong. We’re going to turn it around and not continue that trend, right? Because that was not good. And that’s how we learn. That’s the growth capacity that Isaac was talking about. So when you’re in this role, maybe you’ve learned by having the wrong friends or maybe the the friends have they they themselves, maybe when you bring up a sin that you struggle with, they try to make you feel better about it because they themselves also struggle with it. I really would consider if that’s a wise person to be going to with things, because what you want is someone who’s like, You know what? I struggle with the same thing.

Let’s change this. Yes, that’s actually the kind of community that you want to be a part of or I’ve been there and I can give you hope because we did change it and good for you. Like, do you see how there’s two different ways that you can approach this? So commiserating, bad, sharpening one another good and biblical. And we just want to encourage you guys that with your kids remember, they will rise to the level of responsibility you give them. Don’t coddle them. Don’t keep them in the season of life that they have surpassed because they are human and they have this innate desire that God put in them to want to grow, to want to be needed to be. Able to contribute. And when you do that, they are going to win less. They’re going to grow up in ways that you’re going to be like astonished and you’re going to go, Wow, how come I didn’t realize this before? And they’re going to look back on their childhood and be like, Mom and dad taught me this.

That was an incredible, fun childhood.

See you next time. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to courageous parenting and courageous mom. For free online workshops, blog posts, and best selling courses. Also, we wanted to quickly tell you about our six week online parenting mentor program. Isaac and I created a powerful biblical curriculum. Here’s how it works. Each week we release a video with a downloadable parenting packet to make it easy for you to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

This is an incredible self-paced program where we cover everything from obedience training to overcoming mistakes most Christians are making. But more than that, it’s a supportive community. You’ll have access to our private online group, live Webcasts and the courageous parenting text message line where Angie and I can send you weekly encouragement straight to your phone.

If you’re interested in joining our next online parenting mentor program, secure your spot now at CourageousParenting.com

Written By Angie Tolpin
Angie has been married to Isaac for 19 years and together they have eight children, whom she homeschools. She is the Founder of CourageousMom.com, a doula, the author of the best-selling book Redeeming Childbirth, and the creator of the first ever Christian Postpartum Course. Angie loves ministering to Women and has created a few online Bible Studies on Biblical Friendship and Motherhood.

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