Your influence is important as a parent, but if your kids don’t have a teachable heart, your actual influence is diminished and usually leads to conflict. For this reason and others, it’s a vital heart attitude that needs to be instilled in your children. This effort will improve your ability to correct, teach, and equip your children. As the speed of change accelerates, the ability to adapt to change by learning new things becomes instrumental to their futures as well.

Main Points in This Episode:

1. In your kid’s eyes, you must remain their most valuable teacher.
2. Don’t let other influences diminish your influence.
3. Beware of perfectionism.
4. You don’t want to raise “know it alls”.
5. It takes patience.
6. Pride is the enemy of a teachable heart. It must be addressed whenever you see it.
7. Model having a teachable heart in front of your kids.

Scripture From This Episode:

Proverbs 1:5 – “A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels:”

Proverbs 18:2 – “A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself.”

Proverbs 11:2 – “When pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly is wisdom.”

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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 following. Hey, everyone, welcome to the podcast.

Hey, guys.

We’re so glad you’re here.

We are talking about a really crucial, important topic right now, cultivating a teachable heart in your children.

This is important for so many reasons. We’re going to give you some practical wisdom on this.

That’s right. So I’m going to ask you a few questions just so that you can get excited, because a lot of times when we start a podcast, we start talking about something else at the beginning. But I really want you to be thinking for a second, maybe maybe you are listening and you’re like, okay, Isaac and Angie, what what do you mean by teachable heart? So, yes, we’re going to talk about your kids having a heart attitude, wanting to learn from you. But really, it goes much deeper. Are your kids hard to correct? I’m just going to ask you questions. Are your kids hard to correct? Are they hard to teach? Are they do they have an attitude of like, I know it all?

Do they assume they know what you’re going to say and interrupt?

Or maybe and when I say, are they hard to teach or are they hard to correct, like I’m talking about their attitude. Do they roll their eyes? Do they talk back? Maybe they don’t listen and they keep doing what they’re doing. Maybe they say no.

Or maybe they pretend to listen, but don’t implement.

That’s right. There are so many different ways that that this specific topic of what we’re talking about could actually be like if it was cultivated within your family culture, it would impact so many different aspects of your family life.

And let’s just be candid here. This is an ongoing, never stopping effort.

Oh, 100%. And with what end goal? The end goal is, is that we would prepare our children to be confident, courageous kids for an uncertain world. But honestly, like the whole uncertain world, part of that, like they need to have a teachable heart so that when they’re living life, if they need to do something they’ve never done before, they have a heart attitude that’s like, okay, I’m going to learn something new.

That’s part of being resilient. In a few weeks ago, we did a podcast about being resilient, but having a teachable heart is an important part of being able to adapt to change. Do you think that’s going to be important in ten years when your kids launch?

That’s right. So anyway, today we are going to be talking about cultivating teachable heart. We’re super excited to dive into this topic today. But before we do, we just want to say thank you for joining us on this awesome journey of just impacting legacies for the Kingdom of God. We love hearing your testimonies. We love it when we get emails from you, when we see written reviews on iTunes. And thank you. Thank you. For those of you who have supported the ministry, either through donations or buying a course or merch, it just really encourages Isaac and I.

And you can do that at Courageous Parenting. Also, I’ll show notes, lots of free resources. Courageous Mom has great blog posts and Resolute Man since Father’s Day is coming. He’s got a great man merch shop. But you can also find the Be Courageous shop at Craig’s parenting dotcom, too.

That’s right. Awesome. So let’s dive in. Yeah. So first thing we want to kick off with is this concept. It’s really a question. Are you esteemed by your child as the most valuable teacher?

Such an important question to ponder. Maybe have a marriage conversation about. Maybe one of the spouses is esteemed more than others. And why is that? So let’s talk about some of those reasons why sometimes maybe we’re not esteemed in the way we should be and what is going on with how you lift up your spouse in front of your kids?

Right. So I guess another way to put this would be to ask yourself a question. Has your influence in your child’s life been diminished? Has it been diminished?

Yeah.

How has it been diminished? And by.

Who? Yeah. In Husbands, I just a just a quick encouragement is we really have a lot of power with our words and we need to not be mean. A few words. We need to be men of. A lot of words, good words, wisdom.

The right amount of words.

The right amount of words. Yes. More than sometimes we think we need to share. That’s something I’ve learned. And it’s important that we’re proactively with purpose lifting up our wives as a person. That’s good to glean wisdom from. That’s brilliant and smart and loving and to to talk about her in ways that just really make the kids look up to her. And it’s not the only reason they’re going to do that. But, boy, do you make a difference.

Oh, makes a huge difference. And I would say that when you were mentioning like one thing that you’ve been challenged in over the years is having more words like actually speaking affirmations about me, for example, to the kids or in front of the kids so that they have more respect for me. Sometimes women, we need to use less words, right? I mean, that’s something that I’ve learned over the years, less words in even in teaching. Right? Sometimes you can give a kid the right direction in learning something and you don’t even have to be the one that’s reading all of the content. You could have them read it too. Right. And so sometimes one of the best ways to grow and respect for the from your kids, like for your kids to grow in respecting you as a teacher is to ask them questions, to lead them to truth and to teach them things to.

Yeah. So that’s one thing. Look at your spouse relationships and then look at external relationships and influences on your kids. It could be teachers coaches, it could be peers, it could be extended family, lots of different areas. And do those relationships with your kids? Improve your influence or diminish your influence?

I know that there’s when we’re talking about this topic of influence and if people are actually helping us or hurting us, really our reputation with our children, because that really is where it begins. I think that it’s important that we understand that, you know, there are a lot of great teachers out there that can actually help improve your influence with your child. And then there are teachers out there that also believe they’ve been indoctrinated by their education. Actually, they believe that they are the ones that are knowledgeable and should be teaching your children and you should just be encouraged.

You have some proof of that from.

Right? Well, I mean, you guys know, on Instagram, you get messages from all kinds of people. But there is one time where Isaac and I shared a simple truth, such as you are your child’s most valuable teacher. And I got a few messages from teachers going, I’m a teacher. And actually, I think that it’s better if parents are just in encouragement and they leave the teaching to us teachers. And I was just like, Whoa, you’ve got to be kidding me. Biblically speaking, try reading Deuteronomy. How about Exodus? How about even just in the New Testament? And you’ll see that God has commanded us as parents to be proactive with the jurisdiction of teaching our children. And so no one can take that away from me. This is a God ordained stamp of approval. You are your child’s first most influential teacher.

Now, this isn’t just about academics either, because if if they don’t look at you as the most important teacher, this bleeds into all kinds of other things. You’re trying to influence their character. You’re trying to you want your kids to be obedient to you because they love you and respect you. Right? Well, if there’s others usurping your authority and they’re looking up to others more than you, for one thing, it might bleed into other things and just be aware of how peers might even cause disrespect to some. Kids are raised to believe that parents don’t matter too much or they shouldn’t be held accountable or shouldn’t obey their parents. And that might that influence might spread off on your kids.

You know, and I would also say to that, I think that this is an important I mean, we’re talking about our children respecting us as an authority, being able to teach them. Right. That’s really what we’re talking about here. But there’s also an element of spiritual development, too. I know that sometimes Isaac will post things like on Resolute Man, encouraging other men saying, Hey, man, if you’re a father, you’re a pastor, you’re a pastor of your family, and that in no way should be in competition with your pastor. They should be working synergistically together in a way that is building up your child in spiritual maturity. Right? Same thing goes for like youth pastors or different things like that. There shouldn’t be a loyalty to those spiritual authorities in your child’s life more so than you. Actually, there needs to be a proper and correct alignment, if you will, of who your kid respects most on these different things. And that might be actually a challenge. Maybe you’re a dad and you’re listening right now and you’re like, Oh, I don’t know if I have that much respect for my kids that they would want to learn about the Bible from me. I want to challenge you because I have seen Isaac over the last 22 years. He yes he’s grown and you will to like it is awesome to see your kids come back when they’ve grown. We have two that are launched right. We’re about to graduate our third and it’s awesome to see them say, hey, dad, can I go out with you? And they ask him wisdom and they talk to him about different things. I love that. I love that they come to him for spiritual wisdom and knowledge. And that wasn’t something that we like set out to do back 22 years ago when we were pregnant with our first baby, it was something that a few years in we realized, Hey, hold on a second, that’s our position. We need to really own that and start stepping up our game and trying harder.

Totally. And it was just a process over time. It’s a journey. Yeah. And you get better and better at using your influence and words are powerful, right? So in Proverbs one five, let the wise hear and increase in learning and the one who understands obtain guidance. And so we want our kids to have that perspective as they’re growing older. This is an uncertain world and they need to be resilient and adapt to change well. So it’s super important.

And that’s I mean, that’s also part of like preparing them for the uncertain world, right? This verse actually is one of the things that I would say across the board. All parents would want that for their children, that they would increase in learning and understanding. Right. Isn’t that something that we want for kids? I just think that if you give your kids this this insatiable teachable heart, if you model it for them, if you’re really working hard at trying to teach them how to have a teachable heart, really, you’re going to be setting them up for success.

Yes. Now, here’s a test. Do they listen and ask questions or do they argue with you? Or do they assume that you’re wrong?

I mean, that’s a big thing. So do they immediately assume you’re wrong? I would say that, like, maybe this is more for older kids. You might see this. Parents will oftentimes come to us and be like, we’ll try to correct our 16 year old or a 13 year old, and they’ll roll their eyes or they don’t listen or this and that, or they’ll start Googling it to see if they’re right. And that is really a heart attitude. That is a symptom of something that’s deeper on a respect level of them not being wanting to learn from you or them not trusting that they can learn from you, actually. And so we need to ask ourselves, why does our kid view us this way and either work at the relationship or maybe we need to really switch some things up to fix and correct that.

And you have to work on this when they’re young so that it is good in the teenage years because that’s when there is a lot of influence from the world, regardless of how they’re schooled or anything, there’s there’s a gradual exposure to the world and that that can impede on you. So you’ve got to do that early and it’s never too late if you already have teenagers and you can always have a clean slate on this, too. So. Right. But hey, our second point for you guys is be aware of perfectionism and you can start to see this in your kids at a young age. It’s really important that your kids do not grow up to be perfectionists, because what will happen is they become afraid to risk. And in this world, appropriate risk is important. They’ll be afraid to risk trying new things, for example, unless they know for sure they’re going to be able to do it really well. That’s the enemy. That’s the problem with perfectionism is they only do things they know they’re going to excel at and do well at well. How do you try new things? How do you learn new things? This could really impact what vocation they go into and all kinds of things they maybe won’t even explore areas that would have been a better path for them. So it’s so important when they’re young that we pick up on this.

Mm hmm. I even think about certain kids being wired different ways. I mean, with nine children, we have one child that is more wired to to be prone to only want to do things that he’s going to succeed at. For example, I don’t know if you have a kid that’s that way. If you do, though, you guys cultivating a teachable heart in your children, you will see even that child start trying new things. And it’s beautiful because that’s what we’re seeing in the specific child that’s really hardwired that way.

And I would be careful, too, if you have a kid that you always say, Wow, you’re really smart. Well, you’re really smart. Wow, you’re really brilliant. Wow, you’re so smart. And it’s not balanced with Wow. I really like the courage in trying something new. Wow. I really like how you did that. I know it didn’t turn out the way you wanted, but way to go. I’m so proud of you for doing something challenging. You’re courageous. So as much as we should say someone’s smart, we should be saying you’re brave, you’re courageous. Way to try new things over and over again. Because if it’s only on the smart side when they’re older, they’re only going to do things if they know they’re going to look smart.

Well, and I think that there’s a temptation for them to even grow arrogant, actually, if they’re always being called out for the smart thing, but not for the other things. And they’re going to actually subconsciously think that you value their intelligence above everything else. Now, if I was to ask you that question, what is the most important thing that you want for your kids? You’re you’re likely thinking, well, that they would believe in Jesus, that they would have spiritual maturity, they would grow up in him, that they’d want to live their life for Jesus. Yes. But if you are not ever affirming those things in your kids and the only thing that you’re focusing on affirming or the thing that you’re affirming the most is intelligence. For example, there’s going to be your kid is receptive and they’re going to take something away from that that maybe you don’t even intend. And so we have to be really careful. And I think, you know, another aspect of this regarding perfectionism is report cards. I really don’t like report cards because there can be some good aspects to it, I guess, as far as like evaluating what your child has truly comprehended. But for the most part, most parents just want their kids to get straight A’s, right? Or they want the report card and they’ll they’ll praise the the A’s, but they don’t praise the harder earned B or C that had a really tough teacher where they were communicating all year long and knowing how hard that subject was with their kids, I would say like go out and celebrate the kid getting a C plus if they that was their hardest subject and you saw them toiling and working really hard and standing up for righteousness, maybe when their teacher was not. I mean, like there’s all kinds of things, right? Like you get them the ice cream cone for that, not for the A’s they got on the report card.

For where there’s adversity. They need to be strong. They need to be open and receptive to learning new things. Being challenged by you are your. Kids receptive to the challenges you bring to them, to persevering when they want to quit and these kinds of things. That’s part of having a teachable art.

I think that perfectionism, too, can oftentimes, you know, I’ve seen this over the years where you bump into a kid that is kind of a know it. All right. Isaac Yeah. And a lot of times that no at all. It’s a cultivated thing in a child if they have that kind of attitude.

Sometimes it’s a family culture and then.

It’s the right where it’s right. Yeah, it can be. But a lot of let’s let’s just talk about this for a second because it’s actually part of a a parent making perfectionism and idol, right. In regards to like if they’re in school or home schooling, it can happen in both outright, equally, if there is such a huge appreciation or there’s no other word for it, if they’ve made an idol out of knowledge, then they, the parent will be putting so much emphasis on like gaining knowledge and getting the best grade or whatever it is, and then applauding it and affirming it. So much so that the child starts to grow arrogant and then they they think they do know everything.

And part of building good relationships isn’t about telling people all that. You know, we all know this, right? Yeah. So if if your kids grow up and they only share their knowledge with people, they’re going to have a rough time. Because really part of building good relationships is asking other people what they have knowledge about and having a back and forth kind of conversation. But having that know it all attitude will be harmful and it develops pride, which we’ll talk about a little bit.

It’s interesting. Proverbs 18, verse two says A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only expresses his opinion. So that’s kind of like what we’re talking about here regarding a know it, all right. They’re going to express their opinion or their knowledge, their opinion based upon their knowledge, and they’re not going to dig deeper for understanding. And so this really is again, this is a true gift that you can give your children, even for them to be able to develop deep, long lasting, healthy relationships as an adult and as a child. If you teach them to have a teachable heart, having a teachable heart, what is the characteristic of that? One characteristic of that is going I want to learn from all people, regardless of their age. Ageism does not exist. We don’t puff ourselves up or have a low confidence because we’re young, right. And so, like within our family, this is you guys have you’ve been listening to the podcast for any length of time. You know, we talk about ageism, almost every single podcast because it’s something that we noticed among actually public school kids because of segregation and kids going to Sunday school and being segregated where older kids were being mean to younger kids. And we were like, Nope, this is not going to exist in our family. We want our kids to respect one another and learn what that looks like at a young age. But part of this is also like, can your kids learn things from one another? And so, you know, there have been a few traditions that we’ve done over the years. You don’t have to do these. These are not prescriptive. But if you want to adopt them, go ahead. We don’t care. The birthday tradition where we sit around the table and we we each share with that person one thing that we love about them or we appreciate about them or we’ve learned from them or something like that, and we get to speak into their lives.

Yeah, many things. We share many things.

And I just think that that aspect I also think about another little tradition we did when the kids were little, where Isaac was. He wanted them to practice teaching the word. You remember when the kids used to do this and they would they would read from the Bible and they would teach what that little verse meant, and they were young. And for them to do that in front of their siblings and for their siblings to listen and have a teachable heart and learn from one another. If you start doing that with your kids when they’re younger, they’re much more apt to let one another have influence in each other’s life in a good way, in a spiritual way, when they’re older. But it comes down to, again, cultivating a teachable heart in your family.

On perfectionism, too. Sometimes it can be easy with kids to always have an answer, and as adults, we can always give our kids an answer to something. It doesn’t mean it’s a full answer, but we can make it sound like a full answer because we feel like this burden to be the teachers, to always have a complete answer. And what I’ve found is it’s better to only give an answer when I really, truly know the full answer. And if not, I go, let’s look this up together, or I’m not sure. I think we’ll figure that out. And what that has done, Angie, does this, too, is that that models for them. I don’t need to know everything.

Yeah, and I don’t need to be a perfect parent.

Yeah, I look up to my dad, I look up to my mom, and they’re really knowledgeable, but they’re really are. They don’t try to know more than they do know in their.

Own.

Learning.

Yeah, I love that because if they had a word for it, I hope that my kids would look at us and go. They have a humble heart attitude themselves. Right. Because that’s really what this comes down to is is having teach ability. We need to be humble enough and recognizing I need to learn something here. Right. And so but a lot of times people will make idols out of things, for example. And I think that this is just a good warning. I think a good question for all parents to make, like, do we make idols out of perfectionism and then put these these things on a pedestal and only affirm the really the perfect work? Right. This would be another thing like if we’re if we’re only affirming the perfect A-plus or the best effort possible and we’re not affirming them trying, then they’re going to be less likely to risk trying new things that they will mess up. Because the reality is, is when you try new things usually mess up a few times before you get it. Messing up is how you learn. And really, I was just even thinking about like us with gardening, right? Like, yes, I’ve gardened a lot over the years, but there was a good seven years when we lived in central Oregon where I wasn’t gardening a lot and we’re in a totally different climate, so it’s a whole new experience and experiment here. And I keep telling my kids that, Well, let’s give it a try. It’s an experiment. I don’t know. We’re going to figure it out.

I think important thing on teach ability is to teach them what failure is and that there isn’t really failure. We may not get the outcome we want, but what do we learn from it? And you guys all know this, but are we instilling this into our kids in the times where they make mistakes? Wow. What did we learn? Wow, that’s interesting. And you know, more now and you’ll do better the next time. And just how they handle adversity, how they handle things, not turning out right is such a vital skill.

And it’s interesting because it really does come down to as parents, what we model for our kids, which we’ll talk a little bit more about. But I can’t not bring this up because the reality is, is if we were going to try something new like gardening, I know a lot of people are starting to garden for the first time ever and imagine if you weren’t expecting or if you had unrealistic expectations of yourself to have complete success in every area, you’re going to be let down. Right? Do you just throw everything out, the tools out with. No, you’re not going to. You have to keep trying. That’s how we learn. But there is a certain type of person that’s wired right where they have to learn all the things before they give it a try. But that becomes their stumbling block. And a lot of times they miss their window and trying things, or they make it look so hard to their kids before they even try something because, oh, nope, I got to read all of this before we can do it. It makes it it models for your kids that it’s actually harder. And so I think sometimes we just need to do and sometimes one good thing to model which the previous example gives is do we have books? Do your kids see you learning? Do they see you having a teachable heart and going, Hey, I don’t know how to can I’m going to go buy that book on Canning. I’m going to watch that video on Canning, you know, and so whatever your thing is, your kids see you learning and do you delight in it?

I love it. Now, our third point for you is patience. It takes a lot of patience to cultivate a teachable heart. It never stops. It’s an ongoing process. You’re always going to be working on it because, you know, let’s say you really are having an issue with your kids obeying you. You know, that one thing takes patience. Why does it take patience? Because to address that correctly is going to take stopping your agenda, looking eye to eye, talking about the hard issues going on, really addressing it. Sometimes you might prescribe a consequence or sometimes you might not. You’re you’re to judge that. But it’s really important to have patience, because when we rush these moments, you’re going to just further hurt the teach ability of your kids. But when you spend that extra time and Angie’s super good at this, when you spend that extra time, it really cements a different kind of relationship. That one where, wow, she’s really taking that. And what do teachers do? They spend time, unending time to make sure you understand the deeper issues of things and what’s going on and why this is important. And what is the Bible saying? Hey, what’s going on with you to to to to be disrespecting me right now and these kinds of things and obviously age appropriate, right? If they’re really young, it’s, you know, a shorter conversation.

But yeah. So I mean, patience, though, it goes into many things, not just that think ask yourself the question like what things in your parenting do you try to teach your kids? That require patience. Potty training requires an immense amount of patience on the part of the mom and dad. Right. Like potentially pulling your car over a million times for a 30 minute drive. It becomes a 50 minute drive because the little kiddo has to go potty again. Patients. Yeah, I even think about curiosity. Kids. God hardwired all kids to just be curious. And if you don’t stifle that, you will enjoy and delight in a little toddler and a two year old and three year old and four year old, maybe even an eight year old, that they they just know how to delight in the frogs and the rocks and the worms. And they slow down because they’re curious. They love to learn. But a parent that doesn’t have patience and doesn’t appreciate that God hard wiring in their kids might unknowingly stifle that curiosity and that teachable heart by rushing things, by not enjoying those things with their kid. Right. And trying to push them on to the next big kid thing too soon. And, you know, we got to be careful not to squelch the curiosity in our kids. Right. We need to not discourage them from asking the why. And when I’m talking about the why, of course, there’s two different whys. We go more into the other kind of why, which is more of a disrespectful why. That’s not the kind of why I’m talking about now. But we go into that more in the Parenting Mentor program, which you can find out about courageous parenting. But we need to be patient parents who are not scolding our kids when they ask why, but really engaging in conversation with our kids when they ask why and encouraging them to keep learning.

Yeah, and it takes patience to and repetition. Sometimes we can think, well, I last week I just taught this to this kid, the importance of listening to me. We talked about why it’s important to listen. We covered a Bible verse and listen. Why are they not listening to me a week later?

They’re not adults.

It’s parenting is a long game.

It is.

It literally repetition is vital. It takes us. Doesn’t God do that to us? He teaches us something. And then we fall back into not learning the lesson anymore. And then he tests us again and he teaches us again. You know, we need to be good leaders, good at influence, and good leaders are willing they have the patience to repeat.

That’s right. You know, but our next point here that’s so important is is really at the core of the problem of why. So we’ve already talked about like what things to watch out for that could stifle a teachable heart like perfectionism. And we’ve talked about what will encourage a teachable heart in the culture of your family, which would be patience and also evaluating influences that might be impeding upon your influence as a teacher in your child’s life. But pride is another one.

It is. It is. Start with a verse on this, because it is a big deal, isn’t it?

It really.

Is. Proverbs 11 two When pride comes, then comes disgrace. But with the humble is wisdom.

Don’t we want our kids to be humble? We do.

Yeah.

And we don’t want them to be in bondage. In the bondage of sin. Specifically, the sin of pride is what we’re talking about here. I think that when we don’t correct our children, that is probably the single most. Impactful thing. If we don’t correct our children or we don’t ever tell them no or we don’t like really address when they’re doing something wrong, they can grow in pride. Right.

And if we don’t notice when they’re being prideful and if we don’t use that word you are being prideful. Yes. Then they are not learning to temper that part of themselves when it gets out of hand because it’s really important. You know, when we’re older, what happens when we get too prideful? What happens? God humbles us. You know, we have a testing period financially or whatever it is. Yeah. And when kids are young, you know, God is working in their lives, but they’re under our direct influence, living in our home kind of, you know, their rhythms of their days are very much led by us, especially when they’re really young. And so I think God really uses us to temper that pride. And if we’re not parents that are tempering their pride when they’re young, they’re going to experience that difficulty when they’re older. And it’s really going to diminish their opportunities, going to diminish their relationship is going to diminish their path in life because we have to, especially in these uncertain times where things are changed, the speed of change is so rapid. We have to be constant learners, we have to be teachable. And of course, you’re going to also listen to different podcasts on this, but be careful who they learn from, obviously. But they need to not have pride about themselves.

And I think one good test is if the kids don’t want to learn something like we need to ask, why is it the teacher they don’t want to learn from? Is it that they have a hardened heart attitude towards learning something new because they prideful? They think they’re doing it right their way. Their way is the only way. Whereas with most, most things in life, there are many different ways one might be more effective. But there are many different ways. I’ll use dishwashers as an example. There are many different ways to load a dishwasher. And if you watch how your kids interact when they’re when they’re loading a dishwasher, you’ll see some kids prideful to think that their way is so much so the right way that it should be the only way. And then they and they force it and they maybe even tear down their sibling and lower the sibling. Other siblings confidence who’s just learning and trying it out for the first time simply because they want it done their way. And I think there are probably some parents that struggle with that too. I know when I was a first time mom, I had to really let go of my expectations regarding how my dishwasher was loaded among many things. Sure.

When you got married, too, because I certainly do.

That’s right. And I think that part of that is understanding that people are wired differently. But part of it, too, is just going, hey, you know what? If the dishes are clean, isn’t that really the ultimate goal? Like, really? So let it go. It doesn’t have to be perfect, right? This is another example of making perfection potentially an idol or my way an idol.

And sometimes that pride shows up even more in kids when they’re not around their parents. Right. And so do you really know your kids behavior when they’re hanging out and someone else’s house or whatever’s happening that is important to really understand that and to build relationships with other parents to where there’s comfort in talking to each other about, you know, opportunities for each other’s kids. We need to get that intel. We need to know because if you don’t address it now, it just grows. It’s like a it’s like a thistle. We have lots of thistles in our house, and when they’re small, we just pulled out some small ones in our new front yard because we’re growing grass and boop, you just pull it right out.

It’s super, super easy breezy. But those big ones out in the back of the horse pasture, oh.

Five feet tall, and they’re like five inches in diameter at the base. It takes a special weed eater blade even to cut through it.

It is a big, big deal. And sin is like that in all of our lives, right? If we take care of it when it’s small, it’s much easier to change. But if we don’t take care of it when it’s small, it grows into a much harder weed to pull.

So let’s deal with it in real time. If there’s pride, if there’s a lack of teach ability, if you’re you notice your spouse not having patience, encourage one another. And you know what? Let’s make sure we remain in that God authorized position as the most important, valuable teachers in our kids lives, and that they’re responding in the right way most of the time. Hey, your kids aren’t perfect. Our kids aren’t perfect. So don’t be discouraged when you listen to this. Wow, my kids aren’t super teachable. Do you know what? There’s something called sin, and we all, as human beings, have a temptation to gravitate towards that. If we’re not being filled by the Spirit and reading the Bible and these kinds of things, and we all make mistakes. And so repetition is important just because your kids aren’t always looking at you. And I’m ready to learn, Mama. You know, it’s just it’s just not there’s no perfect utopia like that. But what we do want to do is constantly improve the teach ability of our kids.

And I think, you know, you guys, one last encouragement on this is that kids grow in their teach ability towards you when you invest in a relationship with them, when you delight in teaching them. And so if you want your kids to have a good teachable heart towards learning from you, you need to have a joy when you’re teaching your children. If you are joyful about teaching your kids, it’s amazing how much you lead your child’s heart in their heart attitude. But we are so delighted that you joined us. We want to invite you to learn more about the homeschooling blueprint at Courageous Parenting. Just hit the menu bar and you click on Homeschooling Blueprint. We have a whole session on actually cultivating a love for learning in your kid, which is similar to a teachable heart. And so if you would like to learn more about this kind of a topic, we have six sessions in our homeschool blueprint and it also comes with a 45 page download workbook. So if you are thinking about homeschooling or if you’ve been doing it for a while, this can be a huge encouragement to you. And we just want to invite you guys to take a look at that.

Thanks for.

Joining us. See you next time. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to courageous parenting and courageous mom. Com 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