Keep Your Kids | Doug Wilson & Nancy Wilson

so you two lovebirds can sit over there I'll sit over here so first question would be I grew up I think with smart parents and dumb phones but a lot of myself included we're living in a generation where their smartphones and perhaps many dumb parents so how do you advise what's the advice that you give to especially young parents dealing with technology and and the risks that are involved in that how do you help help families navigate that the issues issues not smartphones in themselves because they're just another tool but smartphones are like kitchen knives you don't let the three-year-old play with the kitchen knives and so it's an age-appropriate thing and the real issue is not the technology itself but the attitude that the kids have toward the technology so if if they are desperate for a smartphone because everybody else in the seventh grade has a smartphone everyone in their class has a smartphone your the problem is the peer pressure not the phone and you would have the same problem if it was hula hoops right so so what we've seen our kids do with our grandkids because when our kids were little it was not an issue but I'm really glad about that right now sure so we've seen our kids letting introducing that kind of technology as time goes by as the kids are going in growing into upper reaches of high school and they're they've got demonstrated maturity okay we can entrust you with this responsibility but you don't get it just because we can afford it financially and because all the other kids and what's the underlying is it envy that's the underlying one of the underlying issues there with the kiddos wanting the the cellphones the the gizmos and gadgets of all the other kids well it could be but it could also just be feeling left out monkey see monkey do is the big and and so you you want to fight that you want your kids to be leaders yeah in their in their company and not to be doing just what everybody else is doing because they're doing it and also this is a really wonderful piece of equipment right you know that they want to get their hands on for good reasons so it's just teaching them the guidelines and obviously like Doug said equipping them to handle it but it is a wonderful tool and it's a way to call home right to keep track of them the the find your phone feature is pretty convenient right where they are texting feature that you can communicate with your kids it's great maybe more broadly speaking maybe talk about how you hunt down that in their lives hunt down the the peer pressure the the desire to fit in more maybe more broadly speaking what are some of the things you do to nip that in the bud with them listen first you have to be talking to your kids all the time so dinnertime in our home was routinely every night was debriefing from school we would all the kids would they they wouldn't call it reporting out but everybody would tell about the day and this is what happened and this is what happened and this would happen what I would encourage parents to do is to listen for it's a keyword search that you're doing on your on your kids conversation and listen for words like popular yeah right well I'm not popular or you know Suzie Q is so popular and you should your antenna should perk up at that and and talk about those things popular by who who says well I would standard yeah actually I remember being surprised when somebody asked me about that like so were your kids popular actually no but all those years I don't remember that word ever coming up it just wasn't on our radar yeah but some of them would not be invited to some of the parties because they would be the ones saying that we're not watching that maybe the wet blanket and the foolishness so or they would not or they'd be the ones leaving so they just but they were good with that though my mom would always say Ben you need to have a contempt for the cool you know don't don't be looking at the side of your eye saying what are what does everybody else doing you need to be doing what you're supposed to be doing well we've what we've raised you to do I've heard you say before that 94 95 percent of a child's spankings should happen before they're 5 can you elaborate on that so hard to remember you guys and it's not because you're counting right it's not because you've got a little tally mark that when the kids were preschool the the that comment comes out of a common tendency that parents have when when kids are little when they're just a toddler sin is either cute or not destructive you know you they can pitch a fit they can pitch a fit and it's embarrassing at Walmart or something but it's not the end of the world but that lack of discipline gets bigger and and stronger and louder and by the time you've got a 15 or 16 year old boy you've got a package of a bundle of undisciplined passions that have never that have never been disciplined and then and then parents panic and crackdown you're grounded there's a curfew and they strut it they start trying to implement discipline for the first time when the kids 15 or 16 and all that does is provoke rebellion so we proposed flipping that so that when there's my philosophy is when you're bigger than they are make them do what you say right so and and that is that is more than reasonable when they're little kids so we established your authority where it was strict discipline sometimes things would get old raggedy around the house and we'd we lined the kids up and we called it a reign of terror we say fondly fondly yeah we'd say no kids things have gotten a little raggedy around here and and so I want you to know for the next few days it's no there's no warnings it's just you know discipline immediately so we sometimes have to adjust that way but overwhelmingly the corporal punishment was prior to the school years and then a handful of times during the elementary school years and then I don't recommend I learned this from my dad I don't recommend physical discipline after a child's 12 12 years old or so because you get to the point where you're not just disciplining them you're insulting their dignity yeah maybe tease some of that out what would be when you're sensing that things are going raggedy what are some of the ways that you draw those lines of they're not quite crossing the line but they're getting awfully close to it you've said to do this and they haven't they just come right up to the line they don't cross it how do you begin to clamp down when they're not quite breaking the rules but they're getting awfully close to it well a reign of terror was a formal event so it meant there been squabbles it's just kind of not quick obedience a little just not the feet or dragging everything's not in shipshape so then they knew ahead of time there's no warnings it's just gonna be a SWAT or whatever and it just immediately improved because I think most of time when we had that little family meeting everyone was it was all different yes also also when when kids are walking the line you need to understand that that they know what they're doing oh yeah right you draw the line and they just walk one time one time kids reading babysat and the babysitter said or something well they first they were playing hide-and-seek and Rachel the youngest kept messing it up somehow or other isn't that what happened this is so story but okay I better you tell yours and you tell yours have a bet so we the woman we asked babysit ended up becoming a cop so I mean that's the same so she at some point told Rachel one more peep out of you and you're going to bed and Rachel went so yes when we got home and heard about it she was we disciplined her and she had to make an apology yeah but when the kids walking the line parents can oversee it and say all right things are raggedy they haven't disobeyed yet but they've got all the willingness to participate is there and so what you do is just watch them like a hawk right they they they clearly need discipline and and so you just wait it's just a matter of time before it totals it over the line and when that does then you act you act decisively at that point and the discipline is the cleansing they're right sure and all the times you can in a certain sense manufacture the crisis where you say go get me the ball or and when they disobey they've now formally crossed the line and it truly is cleansing so it's this happened here's the discipline judicially you know meet it out and then there's restoration forgiveness and there's happiness you mentioned the the teenagers you know that are going off the rails my dad was a youth pastor for many years and you know perhaps one of the most common things he would see is people bringing in their rebellious teens you know that are getting piercings and smoking marijuana behind the high-school kind of thing and the parents come and say fix him fix her you know what he's what do you say to parents who maybe feel like the concrete has set with their 15 16 17 year old what do they need to do where's the starting point for a parent like that it's hard to know with apart from the particular situations but some of you may be aware of the broken window philosophy of policing in a big city instead of sometimes people say well this is just police for the big crimes the murder crime you know the murders and the assaults and stuff but one of the ways New York City was cleaned up and made habitable again made livable again was because was through disciplining minor offenses so if you if the police start disciplining for people who are jumping the turnstiles in subways or if they start addressing petty vandalism the broken window thing it's it was amazing what that did to the other big-ticket items so what many people don't realize is a kid with permanent bedhead and he wants a tattoo and you want you you know he's he's surly all the time is many times people say see look at this total rebel and what they ought to be thinking is man how much louder does this kid have to scream would somebody love me would somebody please draw a line with somebody establish definition for me so I think teenagers who look far gone not nearly as many of them are far gone as look that way right if so I would encourage parents like that to start addressing day-to-day things you can't talk to your mom that way you know you just start loving through discipline sometimes they're they they really are around the bend and they're in full tilt rebellion and what they need to do is be made to join the Marines one of the things we were interested in was a morale of the crew so it wasn't a heavy hand and lots of rules and it was a happy place to be and the reason it was happy is because we were dealing with the little things that started bringing everybody down and you can tell when a kid just looks miserable and and/or and when they look happy and your dad talks about the poor on the love kind of and I think he and how to be free from bitterness he talks about speaking at places and saying how many of you your dad say he loved to you right and how many of you wish he had said he loves you more you know but and everybody raises their hand and along those lines my dad's written a short little article booklet called saturation law yeah that is a wonderful way of addressing some of these problems somebody writes in and asks we had our first toddler all-out tantrum recently congratulations to whoever that was how do you how do you train up a child out of that disobedience and anger and when you're both when you're both determined to win the battle you know how do you deal with the tantrum issues you have to start by realizing what a big deal that winning that battle is sure so going back to what I said earlier your establishing who's gonna be king of the house yeah and the child has gotten my my dad also quoting him a lot he calls little babies in in their swaddling clothes he calls them little bundles of sin all they need is the requisite muscle strength and intelligence and they will start sinning but and the first place they will start sinning is in challenging your authority because they want to be in authority so what you have to do is make sure that you win you just have to win and if you say but I don't know how to win well wait your two-year-old knows how to win yeah something about Nate he learned how did argue early on he had that skill but but I remembered this was a turning point he he was just about on the edge of outgrowing his nap so I put him down for his nap he came out like no you need to stay in bed and if you get up again there will be swats so he gets up again there are practice swats happen and she knows how to deliver well we used to talk about getting a holster made so then he got up again and so swats and then I put him back down like you need to stay in bed got up again swats how many times four or five times so each time I'm probably giving him maybe five swats I may have moved up to ten at the end but I called Doug finally and I said so I put him back down this has happened four or five times what do you suggest I do next because I have to win he said I will be right home I wasn't expecting that nor was Nate we won and I remember it vividly because we lived in this little duplex and I pulled into the driveway and Nate was sitting out in the living room on the couch believing with all his heart that he had won and he saw the car pull into the driveway and I saw a little well he's got his hair shaved off but his little blonde head jumped off the couch and headed for the bedroom see he wanted to get under the covers and start snoring yes I'm obeying now daddy and one of the things that we taught them was and particularly to a son because when boys see mom they see a woman you know and they don't necessarily want to be in under Authority under the authority of a woman so Doug would say I want you to always see me right behind you know my shadow looming right behind mom so that was the only time I remember a serious backup call one time I had a conversation again with Nate and I said I he was in bed and I said so you've been having trouble with obeying your mom yeah and is it is it because you don't like taking orders from a woman he said yeah and I said well that's too bad that's the way it's gonna be what you got that's what you got to do but I want you to understand that when you're obeying her you're obeying me and so that's one of the things another principle here is that mom and dad have to be on the same team and they have to if there's any difference of opinion and how this ought to be approached that not ought not to be voiced in the presence of the children who will see that fissure and will exploit it you know if you've got some sort of difference talk about it out out of the earshot of the kids can I say a word about the tantrum yeah please do so we've had a lot of great examples in the last 20 years of watching our kids handle their own kids and I don't know that I should drop names on who this was but one of the granddaughters had been a princess for Halloween it was like that fall carnival or something you know they weren't anyway and when they got back they came by our house and they were gonna swap the kids into their pajamas and she did not want to get out of her princess outfit she was a princess and totally straight out straight to her head flipped out and she was what - I mean - and so I may as well say Luke took her back to the hall bathroom at our house all he did is he just sat in there with her on his lap holding her he was just telling her to you know calm down and I thought is he spanking that child you know what is happening and she screamed for I don't know 45 minutes um he just stayed in there with her until she was all Denton and they well he won until he won and he was not paddling her he was just holding her but she couldn't get down you know I mean she was and then Rachel's response was that does it next Halloween you're a puppy so beware yeah but he won he won and I was really impressed because she was totally you know fixed when she came out it's so much that for even young married couples before they have kids so much of that is setting those precedents and then once you have kids setting those precedent setting those order setting that order in that tone and that aroma in the home right away from the beginning so it's really crucial that you win these battles with the toddlers with your first because one of the things that that will do is older kids will teach the younger kids the Rope yep you know this is what flies and this is what doesn't fly and it really helps as a new grandma so Ben merkel broke me in and and my grandson knocks so knocks sometimes didn't want to leave our house when you as a toddler and you just lie down on the floor by the door and would not budge and when they do that they like double their weight at least like they somehow find a way to be like 300 pounds but not to bend it wasn't so he would just scoop him up and take him back to the bathroom and I can remember I don't know if it was that offense but some other where I think Oh Ben and you know and I think that's bad I should not do that and when he I'd say I'm so sorry I should have said that I bless you Ben I want good grandsons go do it you know but he was a Marine you know I mean he was gonna take care of things and I do have very good grandson so I bless their dads for all those and we didn't want to visit any of her grandkids in the penitentiary no how's it going in there you know but one time Ben was leading knocks he was just half-pint he was leading them off down the hall and to be disciplined and knocks look back over shoulder and said yes hang loose as they say kids say the darndest things you know talk some more about the the role of as you've gone from parents to grandparents what does that look like what does that role look like to be a grandparents I think you can fall into two two camps either be the cheerleader or the the critic you know and it has to be the cheerleader Nancy and I have had this conversation often with minor things but what it boils down to is you don't have basically you don't have a right to your opinions that way because you had your chance if you you've got your opportunity when your kids are under your authority and they're still in your home if you wanted to teach them the importance of this thing you should have done it then so overwhelmingly I would say grandparents keep your mouths shut and I mean there have been many times where I've said I'm very sorry that I said that you know to one of my kids about their very gracious but I especially Ben was the one who had that to me just learning how to stay out of it and let them be parents and if you if you exercise the discipline of controlling your tongue and not volunteering criticism or input you are ratcheting up the chances of your kids coming and asking for advice so so basically be very sparing of your counsel or input unless it's requested because you had your chance earlier and I think are all three of our kids and they're just way ahead of where we were at that you know at that stage of life and so just look what we've been I mean just legitimately impressed and blessed and and we learned a lot and are still learning just watching them do this and that's where the encouragement goes such a long way to fostering that friendship relationship with your adult children that they do want to come and say what do you guys think about this or how should we handle this we didn't want our parents criticizing us and we didn't take it really well when they did sure we bristle a little bit I did so this is a gold this is a golden rule it's a golden rule thing do unto others as you would have you know if you're in the position that your kids are in with little toddlers do to them what you would like to have had done for you when you were in that circumstance well recently I don't remember where we were but someone asked me the question so now do you give a lot of like you must have a lot of input on the discipline of all your grandkids and I said oh no are you kidding and I just said my kids are like 40 38 42 do you think they want me coming along going mmm look at that you know it's like did you know you should really try did you want that you know from your parents it's like no no we just enjoy them and pray for them and yeah cheer them on somebody asks parents who didn't grow up in a Christian home and who are struggling to implement family worship activities we are wondering how consistent Family Worship relates to successfully keeping your kids what is family worship family Bible study what does that look like how did you incorporate that into your home so my parents were both first generation Christians my dad became a Christian the Naval Academy and my mom when she was 16 so they didn't have Christian upbringing they learned what they learned from just reading the Bible and figuring a lot of things out we had devotions grow at the dinner table when I was growing up but they were always this they were not regimented it was not regimented devotions and we did the same sort of thing they were unread enough that I wouldn't even call them devotions they wouldn't call it family worship but generally we did a lot of our spiritual interaction in between dinner and dessert so dinner would be the time where everybody was talking about their day after dinner before dessert we I would read something it could be read a catechism question and discuss it or it could be when the kids were younger we used a book called leading little ones to God where I would read something or you know we just read and discuss but it was more of discussion and talk just talking about what the Bible says and we've done a lot of that earlier someone said this on the playground and I'd bring well the scripture says that this is what you do when something like that happens so dinnertime was the time where we did a lot of that sort of thing and we also read we were a read-aloud family so I would read books during that time and sometimes the family would conscripted not let me remember one night reading Lord of the Rings for like three hours because because they wouldn't let me stop one time it at the dinner table Doug was reading a scripture you can remember with the whole thing when Becca wheeled oh yeah no you tell so this was great these were kids are probably two four and six just so you have a context okay so so sometime during the course of the day Nathan Nathan's in the middle so Becca's the oldest Nathan and then Rachel and Nathan had clocked Becca punched her in the nose or something in there of course the day and had been disciplined and everything was fixed as far as he was concerned he did that was all done and then and he was also at a stage in his life when whenever he caught wind that we were doing something spiritual like we're having the reading the devotions of the dinner table he was he may have been younger than four because he was in a legalistic phase because whatever he saw that we were doing something spiritual he would launch into a list of thou shalt nots never say shut up never say you know I won't tell you the other words but that were off limit he launched into this yeah he would just say he was started doing his catechism never do this never do this never do this and one of his little litany things was never hit people yeah and so we that evening that evening we were doing got out the Bible I was remember I was doing a Bible reading and I got off the Bible to read and Nate saw that reading the Bible and he launched into never say shot up and then when he got to never hit people Becca wheeled on him and said so why did you hit me then yeah and Nathan has already been disciplined earlier in the day all forgiven and typical male but but Becca was very focused and it was very clear that she was that Nate had been fixed from that episode earlier than day but Becca was still bitter resentful and so I switched the passage I was reading from Paul - I think this Matthew 6 and talked about Jesus said in the Lord's Prayer we have to forgive others you just quoted the verse that's what you did yeah I quoted the verse but Becca hadn't picked up on the fact that and she's just a little girl she hadn't picked up that I switched from Paul to Jesus and she said well who is this Paul guy anyway and I I knew that my daughter had not been allowed to play with higher critics but there was theological liberalism the Bible is telling me to do something I do not wish to do and so I either can conform I can either submit to it or I can challenge the authority of the Bible which is what she did so we we work through that said this is Jesus talking that I quoted Jesus we worked it all out so that was a natural organic that was our family worship that's our family yeah and in some sense especially when they're little you want to keep it simple tight joyful short yeah keep it short keep it simple get to not got to yeah it's a get to not a got to and you you you don't want to have it be a burden that everybody is slogging through that's just yours it's like making family time like in here right now we are gonna play Scrabble whether you like it or not sit down put on your happy face and the joy of the Lord is going to be our strength to be with that group yeah scripture says in the Old Testament do not boil a kid in its mother's milk and the the law is is when Paul says quotes the do not muzzle the ox he says is that oxen God's concerned about boiling the kidness mother's milk it's the same kind of thing you do not take the thing that is designed by God to be the life and nourishment of the child and turn it into the instrument of death all right don't don't take their education or Family Worship or are our discussions about Jesus put it into the cauldron and then cook your kids in it just don't do that you want it to be you want your family dinner to be a time of laughter joy music interaction free talking to the kids kids love to talk to the parents and parents love to talk to their kids if it's a if it's a get to and that's the kind of thing that your time together ought to be like maybe talk a little bit about what some of what Nate discussed last night about the maybe the balance between protecting your your children and also giving them opportunities for the failure and toughening them up and maybe particularly in the in regards to your our daughters and whatnot with sexual abuse in in this day and age where there's a narrative that you know one in four girls are sexually abused which i think is a narrative being pushed by liberals to advance a feminist narrative but at the same time we want to be wise with how we let our children interact with other with other adults and that sort of thing so what are some of the ways that you protect your your children in the world at the same time raising them up to be strong and sturdy so I wanted one of the things we covered when this is the sort of thing you start adapting you have to get into in some detail when your kids grow into junior high high school years it's it's important you know when kids are little don't talk to strangers and you know you do the basics there but when you're when they're out on their own navigating social circumstances where people can be awkward or crude or in a totally inappropriate you you want to make sure that your kids are valued righteousness more than politeness what's the righteous standard what what does God require of me rather than what is what might make this situation awkward right so and we would cover that with the the girls don't worry about hurtin feelings you know don't and don't ever believe that women generally are to be in submission to men general you are not in submission to the guys in your class you may not you may not you may not because daughter should be in submission to their father and then when they're given away they they're in submission to their husband which is a protection against having to be submissive to guys generally it's so we we would go over it one time I told the someone had made a comment about they thought that the Wilson girls Nancy included ought to be wearing dresses to church and not never to wear slacks and so I require to all of them to wear slacks the next Sunday you may not bend to that you may not bend to that kind of thing so and and and this there will be even in Christian circles even in places where you would a suit might assume were safe opportunities to do things that you take a stand will come up so one time a dad when Rachel was in high school she went to a Christian worldview camp in the summer and and she was there and they were a bunch of kids were having ice cream eating ice cream and a guy on a dare I think came came across the way and said something really crude and inappropriate to her on this dare and got an ice cream cone in his face and so we're very proud very Rachel that is well done well played that's exactly what that's exactly what we want she said I if I hadn't had that ice cream color I'm not sure what I would have done like maybe slug him I don't know but the ice cream was perfect and that's where you want your daughters to be bold daughters courageous daughters what have you found maybe last question here what have you found in the in the context of the home in general what have you found to be the most likely thing to clog the gears of a healthy home life with a healthy family happy home it's the answer is going to be unconfessed sin always and in a in a family that's committed to the Word of God and faithfully faithfully attending church that the clogging will probably begin with unconfessed secret sin so it's one thing why a lie or a hidden you know something something somebody denied having done or you know you said you did your assignment you did you got away with it so sin starts to accumulate sins are like grapes they come in bunches and so if you have unconfessed sin then there's going to be two or three or four unconfessed sins and then some of the sins sins that are unconfessed become visible to everybody and that in psalm 19 it says keep your servant from secret sins let's see secret sins presumptuous sins then it will be innocent of the great transgression so if you want if things are getting ratty around the house and or think oh my goodness is scary like this might really go off the rails and you're at the great transgression back up because you're probably dealing with presumptuous sins sins that everybody saw but nobody's oh that's just so and so or that's just the way they are that's presumptuous sin and then below that is secret sin so you ask God to cleanse you from secret sin because that's the foundation of all the wrasses let's give them a hand thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: Canon Press

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Keywords: canon press, grace agenda, doug wilson, douglas wilson, ask doug, q&a, parenting, pastor, theology, parent, discipline, christ church, moscow idaho, keep your kids, nancy wilson, femina

Id: U7c_nbaXG34

Length: 38min 43sec (2323 seconds)

Published: Mon May 06 2019