CHAPTER 6

CULTIVATING OBEDIENCE

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FAMILY MOVIE NIGHT AT our house is probably more about eating pizza in front of the TV than the actual movie. One Saturday night, we were curled up with blankets, a couple of us on the floor and the rest sharing the couch, enjoying a relaxing night together. Toward the end of the movie, Emerson, a second grader at the time, got up and pulled out a folding chair to sit on. I ignored her until she stopped sitting on the chair and started climbing through it.

“Honey, stop. You’re going to get hurt. Watch the movie,” I whispered. But she continued.

A couple of minutes later, the chair fell and she nearly closed it on her finger. I said again, “Stop. You’re going to hurt yourself.” She told me she was fine and shrugged off my warning.

Y’all know where this is going, right?

Two minutes later, she did pinch her finger. Ah, natural consequences. She started crying so I checked for damage. (There wasn’t much.)

I didn’t feel very sympathetic, but I said, “I’ll go get you some ice if that will help.”

She said, “Wahhh!”

Terrell paused the movie, and seeing that she would survive, gave a little laugh and said, “Honey, Mom told you to stop.” Well, Emerson forgot all about her pinched finger, and her pain turned to anger at our lack of sympathy. In her rage, she crossed a line (the one parents all have) and said things she shouldn’t have. We told her to go ahead and get ready for bed.

She wasn’t happy about that at all.

Maybe it’s just our house, but sometimes it’s easier to ignore disobedience. We let our kids act out, blame their behavior on being tired, and look the other way. Sometimes. But once we decide the consequence (in most cases I second-guess myself), we do more harm than good if we back down. Obedience isn’t easy, but we make parenting even harder when we don’t follow through.

Parenting is one of the most difficult things on the planet, right up there next to marriage. That’s why this verse in Ephesians is so important and challenging.

Children, do what your parents tell you. This is only right. “Honor your father and mother” is the first commandment that has a promise attached to it, namely, “so you will live well and have a long life.”

EPHESIANS 6:1-3, MSG

We are all born into disobedience, and sin causes us to focus on ourselves. So asking kids to obey is an unnatural directive. I warned my firstborn when she was a two-year-old to stay away from the stove because it was hot, and she looked me in the eye and replied defiantly, “No!” And then she marched over and touched the stove. Obedience is a learned behavior that places our authority over our kids. Without this authority, there is recklessness. I didn’t have to say, “I told you so”; instead I stuck her burned little finger in ice. Some lessons are learned the hard way.

Obedience is a learned behavior that places our authority over our kids. Without this authority, there is recklessness.

God calls us as parents to teach our kids to obey us. Obedience is expected, not suggested. Before our kids learn to submit to God, they submit to us. In my early parenting years, I made the mistake of expecting immediate obedience all the time, which, when it didn’t happen, only left both me and my child frustrated and discouraged. To be honest, as an adult I don’t always obey God the first time He expects me to. And yet, as author Sally Clarkson says, that doesn’t keep God from extending His grace to us each and every time.

I have made so many mistakes over the years . . . and still [God] is there loving me, instructing me, showing me His compassion and gently leading me daily to better understand His holy and righteous standard for me.[57] . . . He has never pointed out all of my weaknesses and disobedient attitudes at once —and if He did, I would be devastated.[58]

I believe one of the ways children learn submission to God and doing what He says is by being taught to submit to the authority of their parents. So yes, require it, but do so with love and grace because deep down, I think our kids want rules and guidelines and the structure obedience brings.

If we aren’t our kids’ authority, who is? They are.

My teenage daughter had a school friend over for dinner. I heard Madison tell her friend, “I need to plug in my phone downstairs at nine o’clock. It’s one of my parents’ rules.”

“Really? My parents really don’t care.” It wasn’t her friend’s response that made me sad —it was the way she said it with a certain longing.

We aren’t just the provider and protector for our kids; we are their authority. We have to expect obedience because God expects us to be in authority. If we aren’t our kids’ authority, who is? They are. I think kids in our culture lack a healthy fear of their parents. Often they see us only as their protectors and providers. But they need to have a reverent fear of us. They need to know that there is a consequence to disobedience.

One of my kids came home disgusted at a classmate one day. “Mom, this kid wanted the newest phone that just came out, but his parents said no. So do you know what he did? He dropped his phone and broke the screen on purpose so they would have to get him another one.” This kid definitely needed a good dose of godly fear of his parents, but instead they played into what he wanted and put him in charge by buying him another phone.

On the night of the home movie incident, as I tucked Emerson into bed while the movie finished playing, we talked about some of her choices, and she clearly understood why her action caused an early bedtime. As hard as it was, it was also a clear reminder that disobedience leads to discipline. Obedience is not a suggestion; it’s a requirement with a consequence. It’s hard but it’s necessary. We discipline because we love.

In this all-out match against sin, others have suffered far worse than you, to say nothing of what Jesus went through —all that bloodshed! So don’t feel sorry for yourselves. Or have you forgotten how good parents treat children, and that God regards you as his children?

My dear child, don’t shrug off God’s discipline,

but don’t be crushed by it either.

It’s the child he loves that he disciplines;

the child he embraces, he also corrects.

God is educating you; that’s why you must never drop out. He’s treating you as dear children. This trouble you’re in isn’t punishment; it’s training, the normal experience of children. Only irresponsible parents leave children to fend for themselves. Would you prefer an irresponsible God? We respect our own parents for training and not spoiling us, so why not embrace God’s training so we can truly live? While we were children, our parents did what seemed best to them. But God is doing what is best for us, training us to live God’s holy best. At the time, discipline isn’t much fun. It always feels like it’s going against the grain. Later, of course, it pays off handsomely, for it’s the well-trained who find themselves mature in their relationship with God.

HEBREWS 12:4-11, MSG (italics in original)

We are training our children for life, but we have to do so in love and with grace, careful not to crush them with our expectations or discipline. As our kids grow and mature into young adults, they will get glimpses into the why of obedience.

A PLACE FOR GRACE

When I was in the tenth grade, I went on one of my first dates with a boy I really liked. My parents had firm rules about dating, one of which was that I wasn’t to be alone with a boy at either of our houses. But that’s exactly what happened after we left the Valentine’s dance early. I knew my parents weren’t home, so we went to his house. And before I knew it, I was sitting on his bed while he changed in his closet. We were completely alone in the house. When he kissed me, all I could think about was my parents’ rule, and for the first time, I understood the why behind it. My disobedience could have put me in a dangerous situation, and considering my racing heart, I was a danger to myself. Thankfully, my date was a really good guy, and we eluded temptation when he agreed to say good night and took me to my house.

I exasperate my kids when I demand obedience but lack grace in handling their disobedience or failures well.

I didn’t become perfectly obedient after that incident, but I appreciated my parents’ rules and understood they were for my protection and provision.

Ephesians 6:4 tells us, “Fathers, don’t exasperate your children by coming down hard on them. Take them by the hand and lead them in the way of the Master” (MSG).

I know I have exasperated my kids when I demanded obedience but lacked grace in handling their disobedience or failures well.

Tedd Tripp, the author of Shepherding a Child’s Heart, cuts parents some slack.

During times of failure . . . , your teens need positive interaction. You need to keep your eye on the goals you have for your children. They need Mom and Dad to be constructive and creative. You need to have a proper sense of proportion, remembering that your child is worth much more than a car [or something else they have wrecked or ruined]. . . . What I have in view is parental interaction that is full of hope and courage. This interaction is able to turn a fiasco into an opportunity to learn and go forward.[59]

There must be a healthy balance in our parenting. We can’t offer too much grace and not enough discipline or vice versa. I love this comment from my parenting poll: “Sometimes I feel bad because the follow-through is difficult, consistency is difficult, and requiring it of myself feels like a sacrifice, but when I do say no (in their best interests), usually the lesson is worth learning. Both for them and for me!”

FROM APPRECIATION TO EXPECTATION

For our tenth anniversary, Terrell gave me the best gift: a clean house. He hired a lady to come and clean our home from top to bottom. This was a humbling experience, not only because we invited a stranger to serve our family, but also because it showed just how dirty our house really was. I had no idea. There’s nothing like sweeping all your filth into one giant pile to make it evident. I’m a neat freak by nature, but I discovered that neatness doesn’t always mean cleanliness.

Terrell had heard James Dobson on a Focus on the Family radio program say that one of the best gifts you could give a mom with young kids was a housecleaner. The idea behind it was that anyone can clean a house, but only a mom can raise her children, and too often moms get frustrated and discouraged about housecleaning and spend most of their energy there. Well, I totally agreed. So we gave up cable TV and a couple of other extras for a season and hired a wonderful woman who needed a job to come twice a month to help clean our home.

Those two days a month quickly became my favorites. For me as a busy mom who worked from home, those acts of service were like a reset button. I understood it was a luxury few families could afford, but right or wrong, I justified it. I was working and volunteering countless hours for our nonprofit and felt I deserved it. As the kids grew, they took on age-appropriate chores, and Terrell and I continued to do what was needed, but what once had been a greatly appreciated service became an expectation for all of us. That didn’t become apparent until the day I asked my son to pick up his room and he said, “But the maid is coming.”

Clearly, it was time to make some changes. I realized having someone serve our family in this way was robbing my now capable children of an opportunity to learn about hard work and serve each other. We were missing a good opportunity to work together to accomplish a necessary task.

Sometimes on the surface, everything looks good, just like my house did. But when you start peeling back the layers (or moving a piece of furniture to clean under it instead of around it), you discover things aren’t always what they appear to be. We had gotten lazy, and it was time to clean house —and not just with a vacuum and duster. It was time to sweep up entitlement and expectations.

We thanked the wonderful lady who had served us so well, divided up the household chores, and created a family economic system. (I’ll explain more about what works for us in chapter 9.) Within weeks, we were all very aware of the blessing we had taken for granted. I won’t lie, there were a lot of complaints and whining, but it was the right decision for us.

CLEANING HOUSE

So how do we walk in obedience to God and also expect it from our kids? How do we swim upstream against the strong current of excess? We do the same thing in our parenting that we do in our home when we recognize we have too much stuff. We clean house and get rid of it.

I’m not a parenting expert (maybe you’ve gathered that by now), and my list might look different than yours. Here are some of the areas we decided to clean up.

Handout Mentality

A couple of years ago in December, I got behind with all the holiday busyness, and when I finally had a chance to sit down and wrap a couple of Christmas gifts, it was already late in the season. I don’t know about your house, but the minute I do this every year, my kids get really interested in what’s happening.

“Mom, when are you taking us shopping to buy gifts for you and Dad?” one of my kids asked.

“Do you have money to buy gifts?” I asked.

“Well, I was thinking you could give us money to, um, buy your gifts,” came the answer.

As a part of our family’s economic plan, we give our kids money every month if they complete their assigned chores. After they give a percentage into their savings and tithe, we stress that this money can be spent however they want, but we expect them to take care of their own entertainment and gifts for others. When I reminded my daughter of this, she said, “Oh, I wanted to buy a cute Christmas shirt with my money.” Ah, choices.

I refuse to rob my kids of the privilege of hard work [and its monetary rewards] because that’s when the joy of giving is revealed.

When I polled my other two kids, they were also short on funds and big on expectations. Now, I’m not a Scrooge, and I didn’t want to rob my kids of the opportunity to give gifts to others. But I also refuse to rob them of the privilege of hard work because that’s when the joy of giving is revealed. I hired them for some jobs around the house and yard, and when they shopped and used their own money, it made all the difference.

If we hand out money freely, most kids will take it, and it won’t take long for them to acquire the habit of keeping their hands out for more. If we require a little sweat and hard work, we are flipping a switch and beginning to do away with the “you owe me” mentality.

Goody Bag Mentality

My first two kids are barely two years apart. On Madison’s fourth birthday, Jon-Avery was nearly two. I didn’t want him to feel bad that she was getting gifts and he was not (in other words, I didn’t want him to have a tantrum), so I gave him a gift on her birthday. But a couple of months later, she expected one on his birthday. Before long, I realized I had created a monster of a problem and put a stop to it. It’s good for kids to learn that they aren’t always the center of attention and that it’s wonderful to celebrate others.

We’ve probably all taken our kids to an over-the-top birthday party a time or two. We might have even thrown one for someone we love. We’ve attended parties where the goody bags we took home were far better than the gift we brought. And while I appreciated the hostesses’ generosity, I also felt it was unnecessary, especially in our society where we already have so much.

It’s okay for our kids not to be rewarded all the time. Goody bags are harmless, but if the mentality behind giving these party favors is to not make kids feel bad, then maybe we are missing the point. And it’s not just birthday parties —it is school parties, holidays, made-up holidays, soccer parties, you name it. We constantly reward our kids with trinkets they don’t need and that eventually end up in the garbage. The intent of a caring mom who has the time to make thirty intricate cat cupcakes is certainly admirable, but the message we send our kids every day is about more, more, more —and it doesn’t take long for a special treat to become an expected one.

Participation Awards

I can still remember my pudgy three-year-old son’s soccer party at the end of the season. Group sports were still very new for our family, and I was surprised when I got an order form to buy my toddler a trophy. It didn’t feel genuine, but I certainly didn’t want him to be the only one not getting one. I was sucked right into the $3-billion-a-year trophy industry[60] when I paid for his made-up award. He held it high like an Olympian that day while I took a picture, although we all knew he had barely even run down the field at all. It was cute and seemed harmless. He didn’t complain when I stopped buying trophies, but it took some time for me to stop feeling guilty when he didn’t get one.

Journalist Ashley Merryman addressed the subject in her New York Times article “Losing Is Good for You”: “Awards can be powerful motivators, but nonstop recognition does not inspire children to succeed. Instead, it can cause them to underachieve.”[61] We all probably have a shelf or a shoebox with our kids’ participation ribbons and a trophy or two. It has become the standard in our society. But it’s affecting our kids in a way that was unintended. Instead of making them want to win, it makes them want to quit if they don’t win.

Merryman examines the long-term effects too.

In June [2013], an Oklahoma Little League canceled participation trophies because of a budget shortfall. A furious parent complained to a local reporter, “My children look forward to their trophy as much as playing the game.” That’s exactly the problem, says Jean Twenge, author of Generation Me.

Having studied recent increases in narcissism and entitlement among college students, she warns that when living rooms are filled with participation trophies, it’s part of a larger cultural message: to succeed, you just have to show up. In college, those who’ve grown up receiving endless awards do the requisite work, but don’t see the need to do it well. In the office, they still believe that attendance is all it takes to get a promotion.

In life, “you’re going to lose more often than you win, even if you’re good at something,” Ms. Twenge [said]. “You’ve got to get used to that to keep going.”[62]

Constant Praise

I think telling our kids they’ve done a good job when they have is great. It’s the overpraising that comes off as artificial and disingenuous and causes more harm than good. I know I’ve been guilty of saying, “Good job” and “You’re the best!” when their attempt was just average. Kids know the difference.

Stanford University psychology professor Carol Dweck “found that kids respond positively to praise; they enjoy hearing that they’re talented, smart and so on. But after such praise of their innate abilities, they collapse at the first experience of difficulty. Demoralized by their failure, they say they’d rather cheat than risk failing again.”[63]

Replace constant praise with encouragement.

I think most of us naturally praise our kids because they like to hear it. But it’s more helpful to replace constant praise with encouragement. One definition of the word praise suggests that praise glorifies; by comparison, encouragement inspires. I’ve tried to keep that in mind when I interact with my kids. I was driving home from school one day and Emerson was telling me about a test she had been worried about. When she told me she had done well, I didn’t praise the grade —I affirmed her for studying hard. I immediately saw a different expression in her eyes in the rearview mirror, and I could tell she was inspired to do it again. I once heard someone say, “Don’t tell you kids, ‘I’m proud of you,’ tell them, ‘You should be proud of yourself.’”

Recurring Rescue

It’s natural from the beginning of our parenting journey for us to see ourselves as the rescuers and our kids as the rescued. We want to take care of our children. In the beginning, they are helpless and innocent and depend on us for everything. But babies grow, and when they take that first baby step, it is away from us toward independence. It is natural. If they fall, we scoop them up. We make the falls in life better.

When Madison started preschool, she cried hysterically every time I left her. It made me feel terrible. I would stand by the door and whisper encouraging words in her ear; I would offer countless hugs. I would wring my hands and pace and check through the classroom window, only for it to start again if she saw me. When I finally left, it would take me an hour to get over the trauma I had put her through.

One day, a few weeks later, the teacher came out into the hall while I was still there. “The minute you leave her and she knows you’re gone, Madison wipes her tears, stops crying, and says, ‘Okay, I’m done now.’ She’s crying for you, not for herself.” No wonder that when I’d pick her up from preschool, she would chatter about her day as if she loved every minute of it!

All that time I thought she wanted to be rescued, and instead she just wanted to know I would rescue her if she needed me to. Part of our job is to reassure our kids that we will be there for them, and we are, but the rest of the job requires that we walk away. Kids will continue to let us rescue them if we continue to rush to their side.

When Madison started marching band a few weeks before high school, she would take a big jug filled with ice water with her every day, a necessity in the Texas summer heat. The first day she forgot her jug, she called and I brought it to her, a twenty-minute trip one way. After all, I didn’t want her to get dehydrated. The second time she forgot it, I told her to fill up her eight-ounce water bottle at the water fountain, which she did numerous times again that day. I don’t know if she ever forgot the water jug again, because I never heard her mention it. I let her solve her own problem.

Most kids will let us continue to solve their problems if we play along. I’m obviously not against helping my kids out. Mistakes happen and we all get busy and forgetful, but when it becomes a habit and we consistently bail our kids out, we are entitling them to continue the pattern. And this mentality has produced a society of adultolescents.

An adultolescent is defined as “a young adult or middle-aged person who has interests, traits, etc., that are usually associated with teenagers.”[64] Newsweek featured an article on this new breed of overgrown teens in their twenties and even thirties who still live at home or move back after college, citing findings of an online survey that “60 percent of college students reported that they planned to live at home after graduation.”[65] These are young adults who depend on their parents for both an allowance and help with landing a career job. The article describes a frightening reality.

“I’ve seen parents willing to destroy themselves financially,” says financial planner Bill Mahoney of Oxford, Mass. “They’re giving their college graduates $20,000, $30,000, even $40,000 —money they should be plowing into retirement.” And it might only buy them added years of frustration. Psychiatrists say it’s tough to convince a parent that self-sufficiency is the one thing they can’t give their children.[66]

As hard as it may be, we have to let our kids fail. It’s the only way they truly learn how to succeed. It’s natural for young children to gain independence and start to move away from us as they learn to walk and run. Self-sufficiency is as natural as those first steps. Don’t be afraid to let them take these steps, and when they fall or fail (they will do both), it’s okay to let them stand back up by themselves. It starts with saying no and following through, and then backing away and letting them learn how to navigate the world on their own.

We can all probably identify things in our lives we should get rid of, but we also need to have a checklist of things we should add, with grace and obedience at the top of the list.

GOING AGAINST THE FLOW

Parents

Toddlers/Preschoolers

Elementary

Tweens/Teens