[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us
[email protected] be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast. Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Alright, so tonight's class is a little bit different, a little bit different style.
This class was not originally on the schedule.
We had an open TBD topic night and we also had some teachers that had to move around a little bit because of other commitments. So this, this night ended up with nobody teaching it and no topic for it. So, so I guess volunteered or got volunteered to jump in and fill this week up. But what I wanted to do tonight, like I said, it's a little going to be a little bit different.
It's really just some miscellaneous advice.
So I have a whole bunch of slides, just kind of random thoughts, my random thoughts on parenting.
Some advice maybe I can give, some lessons I've learned from experience, maybe some lessons I've learned the hard way.
Some things maybe I saw that we did that worked and some things I saw that we did maybe didn't work or wish we would have done a little bit better.
So that's kind of the context, the context for all this.
So I called it David's Practical Parenting Proverbs.
And I don't say I put my name on it, not because I have the answers. I put my name on it because I don't have the answers.
So this is my advice.
So some of you can agree with, some of you may not agree with. That's fine, you don't have to, right? This is just my advice.
I think there's a biblical foundation, but I try to base, try to base things off of a biblical foundation, obviously, but some of these things are just kind of my personal opinions and advice and you don't have to agree with all of it, that's fine.
You may see some stuff and say no, that's not going to work for me and that's fine. So I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments as we go through as well.
It won't necessarily be a traditional discussion class, but I'd love for you to just jump in and kind of share your thoughts as we go through.
So like I said, they're in no really order.
So just kind of starting number one is spend a lot of time with your children.
That sounds like. And some of these are going to be obvious, Some of these may challenge your thinking a little bit. I think this is probably one of the more obvious ones, but maybe just something we need to be reminded of.
Last time I talked, I talked about the power of your example and I think this goes to that. If we want to be that example for our children, we need to spend a lot of time with them.
We looked at that Deuteronomy 6 passage of when you're walking and when you're sitting and when you're rising, you know, all those times. So we're parenting and teaching all the time. Whether we're intentionally teaching, we are teaching.
But spend a lot of time with your children. Figure out how to do that. There's quality time, there's quantity time.
And to me there's no substitute for quantity time.
So I think any way that you can do that is a good thing. For us, that was.
We took a lot of family trips together.
It was seven of us in a little van, right.
Which seemed really tight sometimes, but those were great times.
Just family trips, family vacations, time on the sports field.
I coached a lot. I coached for many years and usually multiple sports at the same time. We had different kids, so I spent a lot of time on the fields with my kids.
I wouldn't trade any of that time for anything. Those were all great times.
We went camping a fair amount.
We went tent camping in Florida in June and realized that was a horrible mistake.
So we bought a little pop up camper that had an air conditioner.
So seven of us would pile in this little pop up camper and we fit barely. But we learned to either get along or not get along in those times.
Well, seven of us and a dog, I guess I should say.
But anyway, whatever you do, just spend a lot of time together here sometimes. And I certainly understand it at the end of the summer, I'm just so ready for my kids to get out of here and go back to school. And I get that, I get the sentiment, you need a break. But at the same time, you know, I hope that's not your all the time thought. I hope you love just spending time with your kids. I hope you, when they, if they're going back to school. I hope you miss them. You know, I hope you crave that time with them and cherish it. They do move out one day and you'll certainly miss that time then.
Alright, pray together. Another obvious one, but you know, it was a big part of our family life. This is something, this is something I would say at times we did well with this. At times we didn't do well with this.
And when they were younger, we would have Bible studies and prayer time together as a family. We did that regularly. As they got older into teenage years, that transitioned into just prayer time and we would do that on Sunday evenings. That was kind of a dedicated time for us.
And those were very valuable times that we spent together. So there's some periods of time when we didn't do that as well as we should have. You know, I regret that, but the times that we did, it's so valuable.
Fathers, you need to lead your family in prayer.
I would say that, but more than anything, lead them in a culture of prayer.
So leading them in prayer doesn't mean you have to lead all the prayers.
I would encourage you to have everybody in your family praying together.
So for us, we would pray every meal and I would just call on a different kid to pray. Boys and girls, I know some people are sensitive to girls praying, but this is not a worship service. When you're with your family, you're at home.
Teach your girls to pray. Teach your girls to pray in front of other people.
My girls really appreciated that. I know some of their friends haven't really had much opportunity to pray in public and are a little nervous about it, but mine aren't.
When they get together with other girls and pray, they're used to it. So encourage you to not only pray yourself as parents, but have your children pray, pray and say those prayers as well.
Alright? Focus on their spiritual being above all else. So you have a lot of concerns and a lot of things you have to think about and deal with.
And all those things are important.
Their social aspects, their health, their education, all those things are important and you need to spend some time on those things. But you need to be spending the most time thinking about their spiritual well being and put your time and energy into that and thinking about those things.
If you're spending all your time online researching the latest health, whatever concern, okay, that's fine, do that.
But kind of, look, am I putting that much energy and thought into their spiritual well being as well?
So focus on that more so even than all those other things.
All Right. Enforce what you say.
So, and also put this implies you need to think about it before you tell them to do something.
If you don't intend to enforce it, be careful about telling them to do something. If you tell them to clean up their room, but you don't really mean it, well, why did you say it?
So if you tell them to clean up the room, mean it, follow through on it, make sure that it's actually done.
And if you didn't. If you didn't really mean that they had to do it, why did you tell them they had to do it?
So kind of think about it. Before, we tried not to give too many commands.
We'll call them commands, right? Instruction, you know, because, you know, if you're going to tell them to do something, you got to make sure that they actually did it.
All right? Parenting varies from child to child and also varies based on the age. We'll get to that one second. But it varies from child to child.
So with our five, you would think two of them would have been the same just by odds, but it didn't work out that way. They were all very different, very different personalities. I mean, in some ways they were similar, but there was definitely differences from child to child.
And we had to parent a little different in how we handled different situations with them. So just to give you a little story before I say this story, all three of these boys turned out good. So let me just say that, okay?
But I'm thinking. I'm thinking my three boys in particular, when they were about five years old, if I told my oldest, don't touch that ball, he's going to pick up the ball, he's going to bounce it off the ceiling and the walls and the floors and just giggling and laughing. And he's not trying to disobey me. He's just trying to have fun.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: Right?
[00:10:39] Speaker B: So that was him, my second son. If I told him, don't touch that, he would lock eyes with you and he would take his finger and he would touch the ball and basically, what are you going to do? Right? What are you going to do about it? Do you mean it?
Then when he found out what happened, when he touched it, maybe the next day, he was like, okay, now I'm going to touch it with my elbow right now. What did you mean that? And then the next day would be like, I'm gonna see if I can get a millimeter away from it. Right?
So that was him. He wanted to challenge and kind of see where the lines were and where the boundaries were. And if we were gonna hold to what we said, he was testing us.
You could kind of figure out he was the stronger willed one of our kids. So he would want to test those boundaries.
My third boy, if you told him don't touch the ball, he would say, okay, and then go off and do something else.
All, like I said, all very different responses. So how you handle those, how you handle those kids is a little bit different because they have different personalities, different responses, and how they respond to different things.
But then once you kind of figure out how am I handling this kid, and then it changes over time. So what you did when they were 5 isn't the same as 8 or 12 or 15. You know, it changes significantly.
So the one that was the oldest that would just bounce the balls off the wall as a teenager, he was probably our most compliant. He never gave us any problem. You know, he never did anything that, you know, we had to get onto him about other than do your homework.
We had to do that with him. But anyway, so they change over time.
I would say loosen the reins as they get older.
You can't really tighten the reins as they get older, and that doesn't work well. If you're going to tighten the reins when they hit the teenage years, that's not going to work.
Those are the times when they need more freedom, more personal decision, more responsibility.
So really, really in the younger ages is my opinion, you need to be teaching them obedience.
We didn't really teach much obedience.
We didn't have to teach much obedience to our older kids. They already learned it when they were teenagers. That wasn't really what we were focused on. It was more maturing and decision making and those kinds of things. But.
But it wasn't really obedience as teenagers. They learned that at a lot younger age.
So we were able to loosen the reins as they got older.
For us, the teenage years were really the best. You know, a lot of people talk about the teenage years being rough, and I get that, but they don't have to be. Don't buy into that, don't listen to that. They don't have to be.
They don't have to be bad. Teenage years for us were great.
We played together, laughed together, occasionally got onto them, reminded them stuff. But man, we really built close relationships, especially as they got into those teenage years and could interact more, not as equals, but as older as older. Right. I mean, they're becoming adults and so we love those years.
All right. Understand the difference between childishness and defiance.
This one was, it's Hard to see. Always real time.
Sometimes you just see disobedience.
And it's hard to say, is that childishness or is that defiance?
And like I said, sometimes it's a little hard to discern, but you treat those a little differently.
Defiance, to me, takes a little stronger response.
Childishness takes a response, but more patience. I mean, they both need patience, but hopefully you kind of understand kind of what I'm getting at.
So tell the story about the oldest, the one who would bounce the balls off the wall. So when he graduated high school, when he was a senior in high school, he was playing in a basketball game his senior year, and I was sitting next to basically the school principal, and I was telling. He was telling me, I can't believe Samuel's a senior. I was like, yeah, so do you remember when he was in first grade and we interviewed with the school, and you almost didn't let us into the school because of him?
And he's like, what, Samuel. Samuel ever gave you problems? Like, yeah, when he was in first grade and we came in for a family interview, he was the one giggling and crawling under the table and basically just kind of, well, himself kind of bouncing off the wall. Right. And he had forgotten about it. And he's like, yeah, you called me and said, we're going to let you in, but I just want to give you a warning that we don't tolerate misbehavior in the classroom. And if there's an issue, we call you, you're going to have to deal with it. I was like, yes, sir. I get it. I said, I know my son. I know his heart.
He's got an incredible heart.
He's childish.
He hasn't learned maturity yet, but.
And he truly did. He had an incredible heart. He's incredibly honest and loving and all those things, but you can kind of see.
You could kind of see his heart already.
But he had a lot of childishness about him that he grew out of a couple years later. And, you know, that was behind him. But anyway, so that was our oldest.
All right, teach your children to work.
This one, to me is just.
To me, this is a big one.
There's just so much value in them learning how to work.
There's so much character in that.
You know, when I looked at. Kind of looking at my teenagers, and they're young adults, and they still got a lot of.
They still got a lot left. I mean, they're not right.
They're not done yet. But when I look at them and I see that they all Have a work ethic. You know, I feel pretty confident that they're going to be okay because they learn to work.
Sometimes that's physical labor, and it often is. I think sweating is a good thing.
Teach them to do that. Teach them to work.
People that know how to work know how to serve.
People that don't know how to work usually expect to be served.
So teach them to work and develop a servant, a servant heart along with that.
And oftentimes physical work. I think there's just value in sweating. And, you know, I think especially for the boys, the girls, too, but especially the boys need to learn how to do physical labor.
All right, Protect. Who influences your children?
This includes media, too. Maybe it should be especially media.
But, you know, this kind of goes back to the earlier one. Focus on their spiritual development.
So kind of talk about sheltering a little bit right here.
We didn't really shelter our kids physically.
I mean, we obviously weren't going to put them in dangerous situations that could really harm them. But I don't feel like we really sheltered them from physical things and even from social things. Not really so much.
But where we did maybe kind of a little more is things that would influence them spiritually. We didn't want negative spiritual influences around our kids. So if we were sheltering any, it would have been more in that and not so much in the other areas, you know, that parents sometimes shelter. Right.
So, you know, we were cognizant of who was influencing our children, who was around our children, but we were also very cognizant of what we allowed them to watch.
And we were probably a little. A little tighter on that than maybe some families were.
I mean, there are kids. Just because it's kids programming doesn't mean it's good.
Let me just say that there are some shows that were kids shows that we wouldn't let them watch.
And they were convinced that those shows were from the devil. We didn't tell them that, but they came up with that and we didn't correct it.
Anyway, there's some shows we just didn't let them watch because if it involved children whining, nope, we're not watching that. If it involved children being disrespectful to adults or parents, nope, we're not watching that.
Especially those kinds of things.
We want. If you're watching something, we want the people in the show to be modeling the kind of behavior that we want you to have. So we were kind of particular about shows that we allowed them to watch.
Of course, that's Changed a little bit. I mean, you got media, different kind of media now, more so even than we did a few years ago.
But just be really aware of all the media that they're seeing and watching and realize that all that stuff affects them. You're including Internet in that? Yeah. So Internet now a lot more than we, you know. Yeah.
Be diligent. Be diligent.
We were pretty diligent about this one. Be diligent about this. Be diligent about what they're seeing, experiencing, watching, who they're around. I mean, that's part of it, but they're through a screen. They're around so much now that, you know.
Yeah, it's just. Be diligent. Be diligent about it. Being aware of what's going on.
I know we have a class on media, so I know we'll probably get into that topic a whole lot. I don't remember who's teaching it, but I know whoever it is, we'll get into that a whole lot more as well.
All right, so put in the work when they are young and it will pay off later.
Kind of already said that one a little bit. But, you know, to me, the younger years were the hardest.
They're balls of energy, and they don't have a lot of maturity, and they're awesome, and then they're rotten, and they just seem to kind of go flip between the two sometimes.
But parenting is hard.
But put in the work is kind of what.
Really what I'm after here.
Sometimes it's so easier to just.
You finally sit down and you're just like, I just want to sit for a second. And then something goes on in the other room. You're like, I just.
Just sit down. I don't want to deal with this. I know I should, but I don't want to because I'm tired.
And it's easier just to yell in there. Right.
But that's hardly ever the best option.
It's almost always.
I won't even say almost. It's always better to get up and go in there and deal with the situation. And it's work and it's hard and you're tired. But put in that work and it will pay off.
Like I said, if you teach them obedience when they're younger, those older years will be a blessing.
Really well.
But also be patient because the results don't always come. Right now, you know, I'm putting in the work, but I'm not seeing the results.
Well, it may take two or three or four or five or Six years, you know, to see the. To really see the results that you really want. So be patient, but stick with it, you know, kind of. I'll go back to the story you mentioned.
So again, my eldest son, when he was 5, he was a handful.
And I remember putting him in bed and just wore out. And he's finally asleep and thinking, I don't know what in the world I'm doing.
Where have I gone wrong with this kid? I had all these hopes and dreams and where have I gone wrong? So all I would know to do is just put my hands on him and pray.
That's what we did when he was 5, 4, 5.
So that's what we do.
And it would usually, the next day usually would be better.
It didn't always stay, but it would kind of cycle. But I mean, it got better, Got much better. Like I said, he was our most easy, compliant kid as a teenager. They were all good, but he never gave us any issues.
What did you pray? What did I pray?
Help me know what to do with this kid.
Yeah, I don't know what to do. You know, a lot of that.
Yeah.
And like I said, through that I could see his heart. I could see that his heart was good, but he was just. He was just childish.
He was just immature.
Parents need to be united.
So you need to be on the same page as far as far as parenting.
Your overall strategy on parenting, your overall approach, your goals, encourage you to talk about it, think about it, but definitely in front of the kids, be united. You don't want to. One parent wants to do one thing and the other parent says, no, we don't, you know, need to do that. Don't have that conversation in front of the kids. Have that conversation privately, you know, if you need. If you need to have that.
But Daddy said this. Well, you know, you don't really have to do that, or Mommy said this, but Daddy says, no, you don't have to, you know, don't do any of that. You know, have each other's back and then.
But also talk to each other and kind of figure out likely one of you is going to have.
Likely between the two of you, you're going to have slightly different personalities and slightly different approaches, and that's okay. I think there's balance in that. I think there's goodness in that.
Not always, but I think maybe moms sometimes are lean a little more nurturing and sometimes fathers lean a little more on authority.
Not always, but you don't need to be over here. But if you're here. That's okay. You know, one of you can kind of balance each other a little bit, but basically be on the same page with parenting.
They will definitely learn. They know who to play.
They know how to play. They know how to play against each other.
So if you're not sure, say, let me talk to your mother about that and I'll get back. You know, we did that a lot of times. Let me talk to dad or let me talk to mom, and we'll let you know. You know, we're gonna have one answer for the two of us. We're not gonna have two different answers.
All right, this one's a little different. So being busy is okay, but always make God your priority. I think. I think Brent did a great job a couple weeks ago talking about being too busy. And if our busyness crowds out God, we got to fix that.
Absolutely. We 100% got to fix that.
God's got to be first.
And if it's not and the busyness is causing him not to be, we need to cut something out. We need to fix it.
But that said, you're still probably going to be busy, and so don't beat yourself up too much over that. As long as God's first in that, right?
We were busy.
I can't say we weren't busy. We were very busy.
We were always doing and going, and there was always something, but we always made sure God was first.
I think when my son was 9, the travel teams came calling, right? He was a pretty good athlete and travel teams and, like, I really don't want this to take over our life.
And so I told the coach, I was like, like, look, here's. Here's our standard. We're not missing Sunday morning. We're going to be at church Sunday morning.
We're not missing Wednesday night. If you got practice on Wednesday night, we can get there 8 o'. Clock. But we're not going to miss.
We'll be either late. We'll be there for the last 15 minutes. And we did that. I mean, we would hustle out and run, you know, so we would, you know, we would do that. There'd be tournaments that went over into Sunday morning. And, like, we'll be there. If y' all win the first game and you're still going, we'll be there for the second game.
If not, sorry, sorry we couldn't be there. But he knew. I mean, we made it clear up front kind of what we were doing. And.
And so we made sure that was our priority. And our son Knew that as well in that, alright, be your child's friend.
I hear a lot your children need a parent, not a friend.
And I totally get that sentiment and I agree with that sentiment.
But at the same time, I don't feel like that means you can't be their friend.
If those ever come into conflict, yeah, you got to be a parent, but it doesn't mean you can't be their friend. We were good friends with our kids and we had a lot of fun together. We built relationships, doing lots of fun things when they're little, I mean, that's your buddy, right?
That's your playmate. You should be doing all those things, building those relationships, building a friendship, building a closeness.
So I never really liked the phrase they don't need a friend.
I always wanted to be their friend.
Didn't mean I wouldn't do what I needed to do. When it came to being a parent and an authority at times you gotta be willing to do that.
But I wanted to be close to them and build that friendship with them.
So if they come to you, you want them to trust you to come. That's part of why you want to do this. When they're young, build a relationship and a friendship so that when they're older especially they will come to you and trust you.
But it's something that happens over time.
It's really over years I've built the trust.
So I don't know. There's one thing other than I would just say over years we built a trust and a relationship where they did trust us to come to us with things.
And then like I said, we didn't overreact.
You know, we, if there was something that they brought to us, you know, we responded in love.
We didn't ignore, we didn't minimize, you know, the issue, but at the same time we didn't overreact to the issue.
So I would say that was an important part of it.
Alright, appropriate punishment doesn't hurt them.
Appropriate is important, but appropriate punishment doesn't hurt them.
Refusing to punish will.
So I don't want to get into this a whole lot because in a couple weeks I'm going to be talking a little more about this corrective discipline. We'll be talking about that a little bit more. I'll dive into that a whole lot more. But I know sometimes we're afraid to punish.
We can be afraid to punish because we don't want to hurt our children. We don't want them to feel bad or be hurt or whatever. But sometimes they need Punishment.
You just got to do it in the right way and in the right manner. We'll kind of talk about that a little bit more a couple weeks.
Be joyful.
This one is a big one to me as well.
Just in terms of your whole life, your whole life.
Not that every single moment of your life is joyful, but the general trajectory of your life ought to be one of joy. And your kids ought to see that.
They ought to see the joy in your life. They ought to see the joy in your relationship with God. Especially, in my opinion, if you don't have joy in your relationship with God, why are they going to want a relationship with God, you know, if it doesn't seem like it's something that brings joy?
So to me, this is an important one that people don't always think about, but I think it's a really important thing.
Teach them kindness over rightness.
I'm thinking of one kid in particular. When I wrote that, I had one kid that loved right and justice and especially for her brothers, right, wondering what was right. And like, you know, sometimes you have to say, you know, you're right, but what I really want from you is kindness.
That's what we're really trying to teach. That's what we really want from you.
You did the right thing.
Yes, it was your toy, and yes, you had every right to take it back, but was it kind?
That's so much more important than being right.
So teach them kindness over rightness.
And, you know, I can't remember how many conversations we had about that one. You know, was it the kind thing?
All right, so we got a couple minutes. So I'm going to fly through. I don't even know how many slides I have, but I have several. I'm going to fly through some.
Don't nag.
Nagging your children, but not ever actually following through. You tell them to do something, and then I'm going to nag you for 10 minutes. I'm not actually going to make you do it, but I'm just going to nag you for the next 10, 15 minutes about it. And then at the end of that, I'm going to actually make you do it. Don't do that.
I don't have enough time to really talk about that one. But treat kids as people.
You're not above them. Just because you may have authority, you're not better than them.
They're just as valuable as you are.
You may have a responsibility, but don't talk down to them, don't tease them, don't Use sarcasm, all those kinds of things that put them down.
You see coaches do that a lot. It just drove me nuts.
Go outside.
I had both of my girls in the last week, came up and told me, you know, one of the best things we did is we were outside a lot. Well, I'm gonna put that in the slide.
So just, I think there's just something healthy about being outside.
Something physically and mentally and spiritually healthy about being out in creation.
So it made the slide.
Be multi generational.
Include your parents, other adult. Other older adults have been kind of experienced. Experience. Use those experiences.
We kind of had a generation that got away from that and really wanted to be independent. I think for centuries, for centuries as a people, we were multi generational. And somewhere around my generation, we started becoming very independent.
But I think there's value in being multi generational.
Don't bribe or negotiate to stop bad behavior.
Use rewards and punishments to train the heart. That's really what it's about, is training the heart. Emphasis on that last part.
Don't yell.
I won't say I always did that one.
I won't say I always followed that. But I will say the times that I yell, it was a mistake. I wish I wouldn't have hard times. Help them grow.
Don't compare your kids to others.
Be careful using words that define them.
That one's a big one. I don't have time to really talk about it, but don't allow your children to be the center of the world.
Don't parent based on your embarrassment.
Look for parenting role models, real people, not just Internet, but real people that have been through and have done it that you can look up to and get advice from. I think that's the last one. So thank you all for your time. Hopefully you got something out of it and that will help.
