“Stop Saying 3 Things That Hurt Your Parenting”

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Episode Summary

Purpose to believe the opposite of these popular three statements mentioned in this episode.

The Tolpin’s have had to purposefully recognize and refuse to adopt many things they’ve seen or heard along their parenting journey. These three phrases they’ve been completely against since the beginning and it has made a big difference. It will for you too. Another raw episode where they don’t hold back but is sure to encourage you.

Main Points in This Episode:

  1. Recognize the power of your expectations as a parent.
  2. Audit where your expectations are too low.
  3. The words you use could become problematic for parenting fruitfulness.

 

Scripture in This Episode:

Mark 10:13-16 –And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them.But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.”

Psalms 8:2 – “Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.”

Proverbs 29:15-17 –The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame. When the wicked are multiplied, transgression increaseth: but the righteous shall see their fall. Correct thy son, and he shall give thee rest; yea, he shall give delight unto thy soul.”

Proverbs 28:13-14 –He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.Happy is the man that feareth always: but he that hardeneth his heart shall fall into mischief.”

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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 Ma’am.

We’ve been married for twenty one 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 in the all. Welcome back to the podcast. Hey, guys, while we got an interesting episode here, I don’t think we’ve ever talked about these three things in one episode

On one episode, we’ve definitely talked about them in Parenting Mentor Program a little

Bit. Yeah. So we’re excited. Stop saying these three things already know these three things that hurt your parenting. You may or may not be saying these things. You for sure hear about these things from others, and you might have adopted some of them. I don’t know. We’ll find out.

Mm hmm. It’s interesting how the cultural culture plays such a huge part in our our mindset as parents, isn’t it? Yeah. I mean, the reality is is we can be just enjoying parenthood and then we can go into the world and someone will say something like,

Well, don’t say it. We’ll get to it a little bit. Ok. So thanks so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. We put a podcast episode out every single week. There’s one hundred and seventy ninth time that we’ve done so and haven’t missed a single week, Lord willing. Thank you Jesus, for why he brought us through. We kept going during our family, getting COVID three times and all kinds of stuff. So, man,

I mean, it was going through all kinds of things in the last three years.

So wild fun ride. Thanks for being on the journey with us. If you’re a new listener, welcome. We’re so glad you’re here. And you know, we often talk about this the one million families and their legacies and having an indelible impact in that way. It really you think about how can you shift culture, how can you impact the the world and everybody has is called to different ways to do that. It really appears clear, has for a while that God has called us to do it in this way. But imagine what happens when one million legacies are impacted.

It’s incredible. I mean, it’s incredible. It’s incredible journey this has been on.

It is. And so every time you guys share or download the be courageous app and subscribe to that or buy one of our courses or just write a review, it’s really helps us to be able to do this full time. So we really appreciate it, by the way. Quick note Courageous parenting a very important place. You can find out all the information about the new Be Courageous app. So many good things happening there. Also, the Home School Blueprint Postpartum Course and the Parent Team Mentor program. Also another place to go is courageous mom, but all the show notes for every podcast in the video version is also a courageous parenting. So hey, let’s get started, though, and I think we’re going to kick things off with the first point here, which is that how much power there is in our expectations when it comes to parenting.

Well, it has all to do with what we were just mentioning. Is mindset, right? Like, I know that in the past, I’ve shared some personal testimonies of times when I was a younger mom and how I used to take personal offense when my kids would sin. Have you ever struggled with that personal offense and I would get frustrated or I’d feel discouraged, or I’d feel like a failure or get down, or it would ruin my morning or whatever you want to call it, right? But it was mindset and expectations that truly had the biggest impact

On me because behavior, our behavior tends to follow our expectations.

Exactly. So then once I became a little older and I realized, you know what humanity we all sin at times it’s not something kids have to learn. I stopped taking personal offense to those things. My mindset changed. I had different expectations. And guess what? I enjoyed motherhood so much more.

And so I bet you can think of some cultural norms that aren’t as fruitful is other norms, other decisions. And you can think about that in Christian circles as well. Where you know, a lot of times Christian families look very similar in their decision making to non-Christian families. And if we want better fruit, we have to have better expectations, improved decisions and of course, the most important thing the Holy Spirit acting in our lives and in our families. So in being led by the Holy Spirit as well. So but expectations are a big deal. I wanted to just share with you Jesus’s expectations of kids. I think this is really cool. Mark, 10 13, which is really, really awesome. And they were bringing children to him and he might touch them and the disciples rebuke to them. So here’s Jesus with his disciples, and the disciples rebuked these people bringing children to Jesus. But when Jesus saw he was in indignant and said to them, Let the children come to me, do not hinder them for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. And he took them and his. Arms and bless them laying his hands on them. What do you think about that?

This is a huge, huge encouragement to me because how many times do I get in a place where I start thinking, Oh man, I am failing in this or that as a believer? And then God will gently remind me to have faith like a child or to to have belief or compassion or grace or forgiveness actually like a child does. Have you ever, you know, offended a kid and then had to apologize to them? It’s pretty humbling, but one of the things that’s even more humbling to me is how quick kids are to forgive. Yeah, that’s a huge deal. And so there are so many things that we can learn from our children. Forgiveness is one of those things. Yeah. And so is faith. One of the things that Isaac is always encouraging our kids in is in prayer. He’s always reminding them that God hears your prayers and he so will you guys join with us and pray? And and we have seen mountains be moved because of our kids prayers.

It’s an interesting point we weren’t going to talk about, but it’s important during our biggest trials. I was like, I want the kids to know about it because a lot of reasons, but their prayers. God, here’s a person to hear my prayers too. But I know children are special to Jesus, and I just I think that we need to remember that in our parenting and have really amazing expectations for children. And that’s important. So here we’re going to go into the first of the three things you do not want to say because it will hurt your parenting because it hurts your expectations for your kids. And the first one is the terrible twos. And of course, we’ve all heard this before. Some of you may have used this yourself or not

Or believed it, even if you didn’t say it. If even if you believe it in your head and you’re expecting that the two year old age is going to be terrible, you are setting yourself up for a really hard time. And can I just be blunt? You’re believing a lie from the enemy? Yes, actually, because there is this is not even a biblical thought to expect two year olds to be terrible. No. I mean, the reality is, is that all kids from the time that they’re babies, they’re learning, they’re growing, they’re experimenting. They’re curious. Aren’t children, especially little children. They’re so curious, and they get so excited about the most simple things in life. I love it. It’s one of my favorite ages because it helps me to slow down and appreciate the things that God has created for us. But sometimes people who are actually more selfish. I’m just going to be honest when when we struggle with selfishness, we get annoyed at the the slow pace that sometimes a two year old can slow us down to the pace that they slow us down to. But really, our perspective should be the complete opposite of that, and we should be enjoying seeing the world through our two year old’s eyes. And the reality is that when we take time to really get down to our kids level and we’re developing a close relationship with them and we’re cuddling and we’re reading them books and we’re having routines and we’re letting them do crafts and we’re engaging their age and helping them learn things and teaching them things.

The two year old age is so much fun. It’s so cute. We have a scripture verse here for you and Psalm Chapter eight, verse two. But first I want to read verse one. It says, Oh Lord, our lord, how majestic is your name and all the Earth you have set your glory above the heavens. So here we are, magnifying and glorifying the Lord. And then guess what it says? Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes to still the enemy and the Avenger. That’s awesome. Yeah, that’s so powerful. Oh yeah, babies and infants to still the enemy still him. And and the Avenger, that’s huge, and I am reminded again, there’s so many times where we as parents, if we just look to scripture for the encouragement that we really need deep down in our hearts for the season life we’re in. God provides. I love Isaiah, 40, one that says that he is gentle with those who are with young. Amen. Love that, right? Because so many times as a mom, I can start feeling like I’m a failure, and I have to remember that I need to give myself grace because God has given me grace. And he is gentle with those who are with young amen.

And one of the challenges of these sayings is they are labels, and once you give something a label, you can’t change the outcome because the label has become true in your mind, whether it should be true in your kids or not. You often will look for it and then you’ll allow it to happen because you won’t believe you can change it. See, that’s what happens. It’s like, and it’s almost when we’re together, you know, terrible twos or these things can come out to almost save face like, I’m doing a great job as a parent, but it’s just that they are in this phase and there’s nothing that can be done to change the behavior because they’re in the phase, because we gave the phase a label and that label is detrimental. Once we take away the power of our influence from our belief, then we tend to not influence something. So if we want to have a great experience with our kids when they’re two and three and four, we don’t want to give bad labels to it because then we take away our belief that we can change things and influence our kids to have great behavior and to learn these things. And you know what’s happening when kids are too? They’re exerting themselves in a new way, aren’t they? Right? They’re becoming more capable and they they’re learning how to be more independent in some things. And so during that time is a very important time to influence as they’re coming a coming of age, right, as a two year old. So I think that’s really important. And to look at it as an opportunity when there’s the behavior we don’t want to look at as an opportunity to influence them. But if we give it a label, then we aren’t going to necessarily try as hard to influence them.

Yeah, it’s true. I mean, I think a lot of parents do the exact same thing for teenagers, which we’ll be talking about in a little bit, but it doesn’t matter what season you’re in. This concept of making a label on a specific season or age or even gender. I mean, you know, we’ve heard parents just nonchalantly go, Oh, boys will be boys, and I’m literally like, Are you kidding me? Yeah. I mean, to be honest, I actually I get a bit frustrated by that because it’s just an excuse.

Well, I think that goes into our next point goes right with it, which is kids will be kids. So this is the second thing you don’t want to say, which goes along with boys will be boys. There is an acceptance of the wrong behavior or certain kinds of things happening that we shouldn’t just accept because kids are a certain age so kids will be kids. So think about this terrible twos. Around the two year age, kids will be kids, middle school age. A lot of times where parents are saying this and then all wait until they’re teenagers and we’ll get to that point in a second. Right. And so now we’re kind of covering everything. And you know, what are all of these three things? There’s transitions, there’s new learning happening about who they are and all these things. And also these are times where parents are more needed in a new and different way. And I think sometimes parents don’t adjust to the season.

It’s really like instead of saying, Oh, terrible twos, we should be going, Oh man, terrible parents who don’t understand their two year old. Like, imagine right? Like if we would be offended by that? Yeah. And so we we need to realize like, well, we wouldn’t want people to be saying that about us, right? So why in the world if we would take offense to that kind of expectation on us as parents? Why in the world would we be putting an expectation or label on our kids? And not only that, but doesn’t it just set yourself up for failure like none of? I mean, we all feel the pressure that there is in parenting today that that for sure, is a real thing. Like, there are times when I struggle with mom guilt and feel like a failure, and I have to remind myself what in the world? Why am I feeling this way? Do I have unrealistic expectations on myself? Do I need to recalibrate my expectations to be more biblical? Where where are these coming from? Are these imposed upon me by the culture? Or they are imposed upon me by by what I? God wants for me when in reality, he loves me regardless of what I do or don’t do and do my kids think this way? These are all questions we need to ask, but at the same time, when it comes to these labels, we need to recognize that.

Guess what? The enemy does not want you to be a purposeful parent. The enemy does not want you to enjoy your kids. The enemy actually is set out to kill, steal and destroy. What does that mean? He wants to kill your relationship with your kids. He wants to steal the joy from your parenting, and he wants to destroy any kind of family legacy that you’re going to have that God has already predestined for you. Amen. So the reality is is we have an enemy who wants to get into your mind. He wants you to doubt yourself. He wants you to doubt your kids. He wants to. He wants to create this illusion that there is an expectation that you should have on kids that’s going to actually prevent you from being a purposeful parent. So we’ve recovered one, right? Terrible twos. How many of you guys have heard that or terrible? Three. Sometimes people call them terrible threes and then then you hear kids will be kids.

Now kids will be kids is a terrible thing because this is a place. This is an age where they really need to be learning how to yield to authority. They need to be learning how to behave themselves in different settings and to be more included with different ages in conversation and things like that. And what happens when we so kids will be kids is we’re allowing them almost by expectation excuse to be immature. When actually they should be rising up in maturity, it should be called out of them. But instead, when we give it a label, we’re suppressing them and keeping them down like, you know, other people that believe this about kids. And so they need to be learning, not how to resist authority. They didn’t need to be learning how to be obedient to authority in these middle school years. And we shouldn’t ever excuse create excuses for bad behavior with each other. As other parents, when our kids are around and we say, Oh, kids will kids, we shouldn’t do that right and we shouldn’t have that thought. Instead, we should have proper expectations for our kids, which should be higher expectations.

You know, it’s interesting because in that that topic of middle middles, right, your kids when they’re the Middle Ages and that concept of kids will be kids, you guys, this is a big deal. I even think about we mentioned boys will be boys, which I think is something that is said more frequently. But in regards to daughters, I think that there’s maybe not necessarily like an actual idiom that people say. But but I’ve seen moms kind of shrug it off and be like daughters, you know, like if they’re if they’re daughter sassy to them or disrespectful or rolls their eyes, which is another form of sass, right? Or scowls or has is manipulating or is sighing and oh oh, you know, emotional or whatever. Like, I’m sorry, but there is an element here where we need to stop believing the lies that the culture has taught us about kids in every single season. The reality is, is the enemy wants to steal your season when they’re one two three four five six seven eight. I could go on and on and on. You get the point. He is behind the scenes because these are labels. These are expectations like, Isaac said, and they set you up for failure. They set your kids up for failure. And to be honest with you, it’s just disrespectful to say it.

And kids will respond by continuing in whatever they’re doing when you make it OK by giving it a label. So see how all of this is bad. And it’s just we’ve got to move on from this. And in this kind of thinking, sometimes we might even just be thinking it, but instead, let’s wash our minds with good expectations, biblical expectations, you know, as kids.

Biblical vocabulary, even they just even think about like, how many times you’ve even said in the podcast that kids will rise to the level of of responsibility that you give to them, or they’ll rise to the level of expectations that you give them? Well, if you have low expectations, then kids are going to be like bump, bump, bump. They’re not going to rise

And then they get bored with life. They get rambunctious because they’re not being expected to be more responsible, more mature in these kinds of things. And then, you know, here’s here’s another one that you might be thinking. As I’m talking about, we’ll let kids be kids. I know. Well, depends what you mean by that. Let kids be growing and maturity and responsibility and feeling important because everybody needs to feel important and growing in the Lord and those kinds of things. If that’s what you mean by Let Kids Be Kids, I’m all with it, but a lot of times. That let kids be kids is more of a no, they’re not ready to contribute, they’re not ready to do important things, and I would beg to differ. They are ready and you probably agree with us here because, you know, strong Christians, strong Christians listening to us.

But what Isaac’s meaning is like, for example, responsibility. Well, let’s take responsibility, chores or responsibilities around the house, right? Contributing to the family. You know, sometimes there are people who don’t give their kids responsibilities or opportunities to contribute to the family, like let’s just use dishes, for example, right? And they won’t give them that responsibility because they’re like, Well, let kids be kids, I’ll just do the dishes. Hmm. Or or or they’re regarding video games or just playing constantly and not having to actually take care of the dog or clean up the room or whatever it is. Oh, let them be kids. There they go to school and it’s been a hard day, and I don’t want to ask them to do that because it will just let kids be kids. I’m sorry, this kind of thinking will literally stunt your child’s growth.

It creates entitlement in later years to potentially,

But it will stunt their growth because they’ll learn less skills. Though they won’t learn responsibility, they won’t experience the the good kind of pride that comes from a job that they’ve done, that they’ve worked hard to do at a young age. Have you ever seen a six or seven or an eight year old do something that they didn’t think they could do, but you believed they could do it and you encourage them to do it? And then they did it. And then they just are glowing with with that proud of like, look at what I did. Every kid needs to experience that because it is a feeling of being productive and contributing to the whole and being needed. And every human was given this innate desire to want to be needed to be valued. And a lot of times kids don’t get to experience that, and that actually contributes to their struggling with depression, struggling with feeling loved by their parents or known. Because let’s, let’s be honest, like if someone on the on the job think about yourself in a job situation. If your boss, if you worked for somebody, I don’t know if you do or not, but just put your role, play here with me for a minute. If your boss had a set of duties for you to do and you felt bored because you were like, Man, I could be totally doing that other thing over there, if you just let me try it. I know I could do it, but he never asked you to do it, and he didn’t believe you could do it. Wouldn’t that just drive you bonkers? That would drive me insane. I know it drives you crazy. But imagine now being a child and living with parents that do that to you all the time because kids will be kids. So it would be so

Sad, so sad. So the final one is wait until the teenage years. And this is usually people that have already had their kids through teenage years or currently have kids in the teenage years talking to families with younger kids. And especially a lot of times they’ll say that if you have lots of younger kids, at least that’s what we found.

And then they say, Oh, wait till they’re all teenagers to get at the same time.

And what we’ve always said to each other when before we had teenagers is we’re going to love the teenage years. And why? Because we’re going to expect to love it. And we’re going to do the hard work today where because when they’re younger, it’s like you’re planting seeds for different things. And as they get older, those seeds are turning into little plants and in the teenage years, they’re young plants. Right. And what what did you do in all the cultivation of that young plant to to realize it’s not that they all of a sudden became that young plant, it was all of the watering and the soil and all the things leading up to it. And so what are you doing as parents? A lot of times it’s the mistakes parents made that they’re seeing the wrong fruit in the teenage years, the way they set up the relationship with their kids, the poor expectations, maybe the lack of really being there for them and open creating that open communication from their young and and the teenage years. But we don’t want to have that expectation and we will candidly say we absolutely love the teenage years. We now have launched two kids out of our home. One is married and we have three teenagers in our home right now and a whole crew coming up into that in the future years. And so far, it has been nothing but awesomeness now. Does that mean all our teenagers are perfect? No. None of our kids are perfect, but I’m just saying that we went into it before we had them expect. You get to be awesome going against what everybody told us. And it is

Awesome. I mean, what Isaac means when he says that we were going against what everybody would tell us. The reality is is that it was everywhere it was in the church, it was in family, it was in grocery stores. Everywhere we went, people were like, Whoa, you got your hands full. You know, they’re all going to be teenagers at the same time, right? And I literally would think to myself, and it’s going to be awesome. And that was my response. It was, Yeah, yes, I know it and it’s going to be awesome.

And I was in line today at Starbucks, and I had Zander with me, and he’s nine months old, nine months old. He’s holding Zander ordering my latte. And there’s a mom behind me with three teenage girls with her. And of course, Zander strikes up a conversation with everybody, right? Everybody loves a baby. So the mom starts talking to me and she goes, Oh, wait until the teenager is right in front of her teenagers. And I just was kind of like, wow, way to set an expectation, way to anchor bad behavior, to say that in front of the teenagers right there in front of a stranger, too. And I just, you know, and I it was fun. It’s always fun because then I’m like, Well, you know, we have lots of teenagers and you know, I didn’t really say much about it, but

When Mary and another one and

We kept it all friendly and everything, I didn’t know confrontation or anything, just just appreciate, you know, grace and love and all that. But you know, it’s but it’s it reminds us of this topic, which is so important not to do that. You don’t want to anchor the wrong beliefs. So any time you if teenagers hear parents lamenting about how hard the teenage years are like, it’s a thing that can’t be avoided ever. Then it’s like a something they’re going to fulfill and continue and anchor in whatever the behavior is. That’s annoying to parents. And so we don’t want to do that. We want to move our kids beyond that in belief that they can be obedient, loving, respectful young adults that are contributing to society and kind of helping and helping the younger siblings and all these things. We should expect that and we should parent from when they’re younger expecting that, because then we tend to do more of the right things all the way leading up to it.

You know, it’s interesting because you definitely depending on what circles you’re in on social media, you will either see people who are delighting in their children. Or you will see people who are lamenting in the season that they are in with their children. Mm hmm. And sadly, what I have noticed over the years is that the ones that spend more time lamenting are the ones that really struggle long term in their marriages. They struggle long term and even having relationships with their kids when their kids are older. And that’s not the vision of what you should expect. Mm hmm. A godly family, a godly legacy. You, this word, God’s word. Is limitless regarding the grace, the unconditional, unconditional love and grace and forgiveness and and believing in the God and one another and calling out your kid spiritual gifts and studying your kids and knowing them and learning about them and allowing them to grow and celebrating their growth and encouraging them to try new things. That approach in parenting completely night and day to woe is me. You’re slowing me down. This is a nuisance. Oh, potty training. Oh, temper tantrum. No, I’m sorry. If you come across something when you’re a parent, that is really difficult and you don’t know what to do. First thing you need to do is get on your knees and pray and ask God to give you wisdom in how to parent your child in the situation that you are in. Second thing, find a mentor. Find someone who’s older, who has been there. Third thing, do not underestimate the power of studying your word every day to transform your heart to where your heart is towards your children, towards loving them well towards your home and in your eyes are set on Jesus Christ. Your perspective will greatly change if your eyes are on Jesus. The fourth thing you need to do is have worship in your home. It literally changes the atmosphere of your home. It changes your heart attitude, it changes your kid’s heart attitude, and you will enjoy them so much more.

And I just want to say one thing that if you already have teenagers and you’ve already made me feel like after listening to this, I’ve done some things wrong. Hey, if you’re a parent, you’ve done some things wrong. Ok, yeah, it goes with being a parent. None of us are perfect

And knew what we were doing when we got started.

And I would say this too, is that it’s never too late. And so but you do need to change something in your rhythm of parenting. So if you have teenagers right now and it’s already, you’re kind of not enjoying the teenage years, maybe because of things you’ve said or whatever’s happened expectations, whatever it is, it’s never too late and you can always meet with your kids and go, You know what, I I try to be the best dad I could with you. I try to be the best mom I could with you. And but I wasn’t perfect, and I’m learning some new things right now, and I just wanted to let you guys know that I’m going to be, you know, really looking at our relationship and how I can lead even better. So it’s even a better relationship. And you can say that and however you want, but it’s never too late to have a little bit of a reset conversation with your kids and love in anticipation and excitement about how much better things could be, not because of them changing, but because you’re changing as a parent, that’s where it’s got to start. Of course, they should be respecting you. They should be loving you, and they should be, you know, honoring the parents. But I think what we need to start with? Well, what can I change? First is the leader that will then potentially create a change, and I think that’s powerful.

You know, as we’re talking about these, these different sayings that are often repeated in the culture which are not biblical, none of this stuff is biblical. This is all just people, parents, people’s experiences, imposing expectations on other people that are not biblical. Ok. They may be common in society, in a sinful society where families don’t have love and respect for one another, where parents are not actually parenting their kids, where they’re just, oh, hands off, oh, kids will be kids. Oh, terrible twos. Yeah, I knew this was it would be this way. So I’m just not going to do anything. Well, you know what? The Bible has something to say about that. Go and read Proverbs Chapter twenty eight and twenty nine and you will literally be blown away. And I just want to read a couple of verses. One is in Chapter twenty eight, verse 13. Listen to this. Think about this verse from a parenting perspective regarding kids will be kids and not parenting your kids when they do something wrong or when they’re disrespectful. Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper. Do you want your kids to prosper? Then let’s not cover up their sins and their transgressions and slap a label on it like, Oh, well, kids will be kids, it’s OK. And we’re not supposed to do that as parents, OK? Whoever conceals this, transgressions will not prosper. But he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy. Blessed is the one who fears the Lord always, but whoever hardens his heart will fall into calamity. You know what? These things are these scenes. It’s like parenting or people’s hearts are hardened towards children who are too. Hmm. That’s what it is. And the Bible warns us about having a heart and heart towards the Lord. But there is also a warning in here about having a hardened heart towards our children.

Right. The relationship between father and son, mother and son. Parents and children is an image bearing relationship to God the father. At to us as his children, and it is a powerful one, and if we want to be a good image bearer to our kids so that they know the fullness of how much God loves them, and we want to model that for them and we want to introduce them to the Lord. God does not look at them and go, Oh, those terrible twos. God doesn’t do that. He doesn’t look at babies and go, Oh, they’re crying and whining again. He doesn’t look at kids and boys and go, Oh, boys will be boys, whatever and roll his eyes. That’s not God. He doesn’t do that. He he. We need to be more like God. We need our expectations to be completely transformed into his. If you go to Chapter twenty nine, there’s two other little verses I just want to share with you, OK? The first one is is very interesting. It’s verse 15 says it’s the second part, says, but a child left to himself bring shame to his mother. No, that’s a warning. A child left to himself brings shame to his mother. Verse, 17, says, Discipline your son and he will give you rest. He will give delight to your heart. You will delight. That’s a problem in your children. There are so many good promises for parents in the word of God. If we only take time to soak our minds in the word, to take our thoughts captive into the obedience of Christ, which is found in the Bible, and we change our thinking so that we don’t say life numbing statements like Wait till they’re all teenagers.

Amen. Well, hey, we hope this has been helpful. And God bless you guys. Take care.

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. Ranji 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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