Momtime | Summer 2021 | Kindergarten to 2nd grade

dear lord thank you so much just for the evening for the moms that are here the families that they represent thank you for the beautiful worship and i pray lord that you'd bless these gals for taking a stand for you lord i pray that you would just surround them with your love grace kindness and strength and that these moms who are here lord would do the same that they would stand um knowing that we're made righteous only because of you and this that separation work that you have done in atoning for our sins or we just thank you for that and we embrace it and so we are just really just blessed immensely by the chance to meet and so go before us tonight in jesus name amen okay so i have an exciting announcement to make so this whole time when i've been up here i'm like yeah yeah the tightest two ladies yeah yeah the tightest two ladies and today i was like okay this is crazy you guys can only see the backs of these tightest two ladies so a few of them have graciously agreed to come up on stage tonight and help with some of the questions which are going to be good ones so um these gals are just deer so elaine if you could come up and janelle if you could come up and then jackie walters if you could come up um we tried to get judy but you know she's just now getting over covered so we'll give her a break whatever she feels like painting you know no i'm just joking because i'm like praise the lord that she is better you know because that's like thank you jesus like we we need you and we're glad you're here we're glad bear's here so it's just really good there's a lot of us that have had that and it's behind us now and we're so glad and listening to our bodies and so when i asked judy to come up she is listening to her body and she is stained in her seat so um so these gals are precious to me and she and these they're all of these gals plus several more are part of a team called the titus 2 team and so some of you are new to 8th greek since shut down and all of that and the titus 2 model in titus chapter 2 if you want to go ahead and open up in your bible just so we can go over that kind of figure out like what's titus 2 mean what does that actually mean so in titus 2 it says um in verse 3 it says likewise well let's start with the very first part it there is a directive towards guys and since some of you are raising young men we may as well go through it you must teach what is in accord with sound doctrine and as you guys know that's a priority at a the crete the word of god and sound doctrine and then it says teach the older men to be temperate worthy of respect which means acting honorably self-controlled and sound in faith in love and endurance or patience and then verse 3 says likewise teach the older women to be reverent in the way that they live so behavior that becomes holiness is what that means not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine but to teach what is good and then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children to be self-controlled another word for wisdom and pure to be busy at home to be kind to be subject to their husbands so that no one will malign the word of god and then it goes on and talks even more instruction which is so great so the titus ii model is taken from the word and our dear duty slaughter helps with training the titus two gals and has them sit in on counseling appointments and is here and available for prayer for you and all of that so i thought tonight would be perfect since we have kindergarten to second grade as the evening that we're covering um the age group that we're covering i thought perfect perfect we'll just run these questions buy the tightest two gals that'll give you sort of a flavor for what it is if you were to ever come and have questions but you're also going to learn each of their personalities who i love dearly each one of them so and you'll i know you'll be blessed you know and the main thing too is just know that a titus 2 gal like they they want to serve the lord by serving you and they want to come alongside you and help you and it can be something as simple as hey how do i structure my day more effectively or what am i missing here why am i feeling so overwhelmed and simple things like one year i remember paula manser who's not here right now but she is a girl that is also open to helping and i think she and judy had gone to a gal's house and it was just so simple but all she needed was just a little bit of help folding laundry and then just to be said hey set your timer for 10 minutes see how far you go and then go to the next thing and then after that go to the next thing you know and that that one little thing of seeing a mom who felt very overwhelmed having two older moms come alongside and just say we're gonna make this it's gonna be okay and here's some steps and you can listen or not but that day was better for that mom you know so it's just it's just really cool to watch the love of god and the experience that he gives us good and bad but like to pass that on is a real honor don't you think okay so we're gonna go to the first question so the topic that we're gonna hit first is schooling everybody's all about schooling especially now with the delta variant we don't know if we're going to open or not masks or not so a lot of people are curious about homeschooling all right so homeschooling tips socialization during homeschool and implementing bible study elaine take it away elaine was a teacher well i never homeschooled my kids i taught school for 20 years when i could teach i mean i i loved i taught first grade and third grade so i'm not an expert on homeschooling however i did a lot of teaching with my kids when they were little mainly teaching in the scriptures we memorized a lot of scripture we had a bible time before school every day and um so what did that look like well what it looked like i i first of all had a little chart and we start with the proverbs pleasant words our honeycomb sweet to the soul healing to the bones um you know one thing brett said a number of years ago i so appreciate what he said he said you know it's so important to teach god's word to our kids however we we need to also teach them how to respond to issues that come up how does the word of god apply to you know where they're at so here's a situation of our seven-year-old grandson this was a number of years ago he's 15 now we're driving in the car uh tom and i and thomas and sydney and out of the blue and i don't know if i'm this isn't homeschooling but it is homeschooling because i'm in the car driving because that one environment environment deuteronomy 6 4-6 you shall teach your children when you walk by the way when you lie down and when you rise up you know it's a way of life you're going to have that separate time with them but then it's a way of life so anyway out of the blue thomas says what happens to a baby who dies at 13 months and i first of all i couldn't believe that he would ask such a question and right away i thought well david the whole story of david when the baby was sick after besheba and how he was crying and crying for the baby to live and then when the baby died they were so afraid to go and tell david because he was out it was crazy when the baby was still living and now what are you going to do when he dies after he they told him that he died he said well the baby won't come to me but i will go to the baby and i told thomas i said thomas that baby is in god's presence and i just love being able to use god's word to validate um even later he said this was a couple years ago something about abortion and almost taking the offen the side of the the woman and my husband tom said it wasn't the baby's fault so i i just feel you know the importance of how do we know god's word can we teach it to our kids and can we give them answers from from his word to to fit the times i'm just starting to read the book by elise childers and it's amazing how many people lose their faith because their questions can't be answered and so i just feel so strongly that do i know god's word am i teaching it to my kids and can i make it apply to them so as far as homeschooling you know doing a curriculum i i've never done that but i definitely yeah made it a priority yeah the environment is that's the big thing you know you're going to lose your kids in public school if you don't have an environment at home that is suiting of what you're saying you can say all you want on the outside but if you're not living it they see right through that we talked about that a little bit last week for those of you who were not here but as far as technically on homeschooling you know every state is different um as far as just actually doing it and so i think some of you who have been to mom time before know this that we homeschooled our kids for part of the time for eighth grade and then in high school casey was the one that took me up on my offer because i would go around the house and any takers any takers any the more crazy i heard of what they were being taught in the classroom i would say offer up anybody that wants to own school i will do it i will get you out of the zoo and so casey was the one that took me up on it and in the 10th grade she did public school for chemistry and culinary arts which was amazing because i loved that she could blow things up someplace else and then to this day she's the greatest baker like we always say your name's casey you should be the kc bakery because she is such a good cook and such a good baker and it was so sweet that um utilizing those tax dollars like for what actually is important instead of all the crazy stuff so the eighth grade piece what we did um we just checked in with the principal and you know laws protect kids they're still able to do sports they're still still able to do music or band or anything like that if your school district does have a band um they can't discriminate because of homeschooling in our situation i just wanted my kids to have a greater scope and sequence of history i wanted to go back to the days of martin luther and the gutenberg press and when the bible was actually printed because that was like the first of the whole reformation and that is why we have our western civilization and they just weren't going to touch on that in eighth grade even though it's like it takes maybe four lessons to go through the whole thing but most schools just don't teach that and i really wanted my kids to get that and then i also wanted to offer them better social studies than what they were getting it was so dark you know so in elementary if you're in elementary kindergarten to second grade and you're thinking about homeschooling we have awesome teachers raquel could you raise your hand raquel's out there so she's a teacher elaine's a teacher if you have questions on actual curriculum and you're actually wondering is this actually looking good in terms of curriculum and whatnot and then jamie o'halloran you raise your hand she is a teacher a former teacher but these ladies have experience and can help you see if you're missing something they can also help you figure out easy things like going to the oregon department of education website and seeing what their standards would be in public school so that you can actually go okay i'm going to be able to teach my kids math check this check hmm teaching my kids that they're not a male or female i'll skip that standard hmm okay uh doom like they could help you navigate through all that stuff if it's actually what oh janie can you raise your hand janie is a kindergarten teacher she is your girl okay so she has been teaching kindergarten for 13 years she's been on this miraculous leave but she is for kindergarten like go to her because she will help you so much to get yourself set up and then also in the very back i see kaylee clark can you raise your hand so kaylee doesn't probably want this but her mom um and so kaylee grew right in there her mom is susie murray who's not here tonight but susie's done preschool for like how many years like so many 30 or something like that yeah so kaylee she's the shortcut to preschool and knowing like hey what what do we do because then you get to susie okay so hopefully that helps you on the technical stuff yes absolutely jackie thank you our first year up here um which was about 16 years ago i did homeschool the first year we were here because we came in the middle of the school year so it was sixth and second grade and what i did biblically wise for the bible is i got a one year bible for my sixth grader and it was an nlt it was it was a bible through the year and we would just do the questions we'd read i'd have him read the whole chapter and then we'd discuss it and that's how i was able to just pour into the kids when it came to the bible and then my second grader i had like a little devotional and we'd read that and talk about it too and and then the ymca had a homeschool pe so that was my piece yeah that's awesome yeah we're all christian kids so it was great yeah and i know we're starting the co-op this year at ap and that's exciting and i think it's probably gonna just between you and me i think it's probably going to be more than what they're saying because there are so many people who are interested so just keep on um you know ask and seek and find right jesus said that so about schooling keep doing those things ask the lord seek him about it and he he will show you he'll show you there's some questions came up christians or private you know do we how do we know because you could send your kids to a catholic school and get a great education but you just need to know that you're going to have to sift through some of the theology that they're learning and um same goes for any private school just because it says christian i mean pretty much you can tag christian onto anything you you would be shocked at how much is actually okay to slap onto a school and then it's actually you you have to kind of get into the weeds a little bit look at the bylaws of the school look at what their theological statement is all of that kind of stuff i think my main thing that i would guard anyone in doing is because parents do this all of the time i think all of you have your radar up right now about public school and you know that if you put your kids in public school you need to have a good relationship with the teacher you need to have a good relationship with the school secretary you need to have a good communication rapport with the principal and really let your concerns be made known you are the ones with the power teachers will tell you that the ones that are shaking their heads in here now you are the ones with the power the teachers do not have power to change it's the parents that have the power to change so if you don't like the environment in the classroom the only one who can change it are the parents and so you do need to rally 20 gals and they're easy to find right now who don't like what they're seeing and you will change that school but if you're like no that's not for me i'd rather go to private school do not just shut your brain off on what is being taught in those schools because kids are being taught an agenda if those teachers i could name private schools right now that are very confused in terms of the direction of their hiring practices towards teachers if some of those teachers being hired have agendas you better believe your kids are going to get that agenda it's you just cannot it's not mayberry rfd guys it's just not it's not guaranteed that there's going to be prayer if there is prayer it's not guaranteed that they're going to be praying to jesus you know what i'm saying so the control is yours but also god's given you the strength to do it it's you should feel super excited not daunted but very excited um we've been raised for this you know we we have been put on this earth for this time and so everyone should just know you have the holy spirit and that's all you need you know so we'll let's go on to the next exciting topic lgbtq okay we all love that okay what age if at all do you write we do we do we do love we love first corinthians love is patient love is kind i'm very patient with this group right now because the problem is is that there's the truth and then there's a lie so this is this is what everyone's got these same questions so what age if at all do you recommend allowing kids to watch movies such as luca that are cute yet have an underlying lgbtq agenda number one number two how do we talk to our kids about homosexuality in a loving and kind way okay i know what i would say about those things uh i'll just quickly answer and then you guys can try me okay so um i think from the very first day your child is placed in your arms read the story of genesis to your child you know in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth male female he created them read psalm 139 over your child elaine is going to share from psalm another psalm with you tonight about this let your children be super strong and what the word of god says about their identity because it's just like studying uh false money you know like counterfeit your kids when they know the truth when they see a lie they will absolutely be able to know well that's totally a lie now regarding the movie thing it may be luca now but when my kids were younger it was something else you know so it's real easy you just you hit pause if you if you are really stuck on watching that show you hit pause and you just break it down and this means you need to be able to break it down as well which means you probably should preview the movie or at least look it up and see what like folks on the family and different movie critics say about these things but you're going to want to outline okay let's do some literary criticism and break down what world view is being pushed in this movie and you might say oh well that takes all the fun out of the movie well guess what there is no fun okay the fun is tv off the fun is actually real people you and your family and making cookies and having you know birthday parties with like-minded people and that's the fun the stuff that's on the tv you better believe is pushing something it's if it's not pushing what you know to be the truth then you have to make sure that your radar is on same thing as what i was talking about like don't shut your brain off for private school and especially not public school so what else i i can share a little bit so i fortunately did not have that at that time my kids are now in their 20s so i didn't have to have to struggle with that but my sister-in-law my husband's sister is a lesbian and my in-laws are very liberal they were very active in the gay community i mean we're talking christmas eve it was all lesbians at the house and so we didn't really talk to our kids about it but when our son was in the seventh grade he started to see that my sister-in-law's girlfriend was always around and so he finally came and asked us what is that all about and kevin was able to take him aside and explain to him what homosexuality meant and what the bible says about it hannah i don't really remember addressing it with her i think because it was it was really right on the forefront of our family that she knew that was wrong and the wrong and i know i'm not really answering the question no you are you are it's the strength of knowing you have to take a stand yeah you know like either you believe the word of god as the word of god or you don't i mean anymore it's like it's very clear it's either we believe this this is what we're doing in our family or we have to change everything and i'm sorry but i really believe at the very end in revelation when it says if anybody changes anything in here let him be accursed i take that seriously so i would rather know peace in my conscience of raising my kids to know you know what we might not understand all of the twisty pretzel ideas that the world is trying to throw at everyone but we sure do know that it's not the truth and so let's trust god and let's just weigh this one out i think what probably pains me the most is how educated you actually do need to get all of you on you know it's just it's hormone therapy is what is happening you know you just pump in more testosterone or for the guys raise up the estrogen there's just this balancing act with the hormones that is making people believe a lie and and you can put stuff on all you want fake this and that and you can make fake things um but it's god made you to be who you are in the skin that you're in in the bones and the dna that you have and even your heart you know we have a sweet friend that goes to ap fran you see her running around sometimes she's doing security and stuff but she's an emergency room doctor and she's very she's so i mean she blows me away i always think she's like superwoman you know because she is the first female to ever graduate from swat school in oregon so she's got that and then she is an emergency room doctor so she doesn't fool around she takes seriously um emergency medical help and really the care of the patient and when all of this started coming out all the lgbtq stuff started coming out she said this is a real problem because in the emergency room you have to know the gender because there's certain things that are just different about uh male blood male you know like their arteries are gonna look different the way a doctor chooses to treat a patient in the emergency room if they don't have the right gender that person could die so i think what's exciting is for you to tell your kids the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth and your kids will come to their own conclusion that man you know what god knows more about me and my body and my friends and their bodies and so let's just trust god with how he's going to work it out and that's that's just always been our view so really when the lgbtq thing happened and it's like whoa q xyz like onto hundreds and hundreds of however expressions they want it still doesn't really matter you we have x and y i mean that's it right you've got you've got two two sets and anything beyond that is just it's not accurate mentally there may be something different and then we can get into other issues of talking about the psychology and surrendering to god and the holy spirit and the natural man versus the desire of the flesh all that we can talk about those things but those are conversations that you are totally in the right bracket to start talking to your kids about because you're past the toddler age right now you're past all the stuff that kind of is like it's super exhausting and you can actually start getting into a little bit more philosophical conversations which includes biblical discussion and don't think they can't understand it they can and they will grasp it and the biggest blessing you could do for your kids is to um like elaine was saying be in the word yourself and then also be solid with your kids about the truth you know because you guys the devil is never going to stop throwing things and curveballs never that's never going to stop until the lake of fire so get over it let's just be strong and courageous like joshua going into the promised land we're with a bunch of spies right now we're going into a dangerous territory and it's totally okay because the lord has us and go ahead if you guys have anything else you want just one more thing too sorry i'm talking a lot it's great um uh so there is a way i loved my sister-in-law and she saw that i loved her but it was about 15 years of marriage she cornered me and she confronted me on what i thought biblically was her lifestyle yes okay or no okay and so i had to tell her the truth and she was so angry at me but i'll tell you after that our relationship changed a little bit but she knew that i would always tell her the truth and do it with love because she knew i loved her but the truth had to be told and i think if you teach your kids that there's always a way to tell somebody the truth but with love i mean it's powerful it's it's yeah it's powerful your kids are so precious you know and they're they they're looking at their bodies and everything and there's you know different school districts are um really going after it as far as i believe good and bad reasons but the good side of it is so that kids are self-aware of their body parts and so letting kids know what appropriate touching is versus inappropriate that's kind of how it all started was to try to help kids avoid being abused and not understanding that they're actually being abused so that's not a bad thing but what i do think is really crummy is that parents should be the ones to talk you guys are not the parents that this is geared towards you know i'm saying you are the ones that are proactive you're going to be talking to your kids you're going to be communicating with your kids it's the it's the parents that are are just out of it you know like my daughter casey is a fifth grade uh teacher now she was teaching fourth grade and i can't even tell you how many parents are either on drugs don't even show up their kids are up all night long because the mom is on the tv all night long and it's a one-room apartment and the kid doesn't have anywhere to sleep homeless kids walking watching walking the streets at night police pick them up and drop them off at school because those it's those kids why the government is doing this and so i i'm like with jackie you know i just we need to be truthful but we also need to be really honest with ourselves that our society is so messed up we need to reach all of those families you know so i just it's a bummer that public school has gotten so rough that so many of us feel like okay peace out because there are so many families that you could be coming alongside of and saying hey you know mom i see you and can i just help you can i make a meal for you this week can i just take a load off so that you can bring your kid a jacket these kids are really suffering so you guys i'm sorry it just breaks my heart so much the things that casey has seen and that's that's where it goes in public school you know because it becomes a nanny state because these kids have kids and they haven't been taught and they don't have god on the throne of their life you guys have the opportunity to at a very very early age be instrumental in teaching your kids how to put jesus on the throne of their life so that your child is stable the stability that the parents are missing and therefore they're not passing that on to their kids that is a jesus thing that has to get resolved and that's that's where the influence of you in the public school taking that away it breaks my heart but if you have to do that for the good of your own kids then you got to do it you know but you still have a neighbor next door you know you still have the ability to look and just kind of say you know maybe maybe i need to go to target and get some jackets and pass do some stuff like that i mean the lord has us here for a reason in the time that we're in maybe some of you have enough means to be able to provide a private school education for someone else i have no idea some people may be able to do that i don't know but our creativity has to be we got to stir it up you know because we have a really hurting world debbie i'm curious i'd love to know how casey is handling this as a public public school right yeah she's being forced right now um teachers run out of time yep i've heard this that's what i've heard you run out of time the the if you find a christian teacher just encourage them to run out of time you know like oh you ran out of time bless you because you don't know what they're saving from having to tell your kids different districts are implementing certain things at a faster pace casey happens to be in a district that is not going to be implementing quite so severely so she's got a year or two left but the state is wanting to have some really forced conversations regarding critical race theory and regarding all the lgbtq stuff so um you know there's rainbows everywhere and all that and i'm like yay noah's ark that's amazing they're honoring god isn't that great you know casey's like mom i can't really say that i said oh but you can pose the question you can ask the kids if there's any other meanings to the rainbow and what do you think miss met her so she's kind of i did that all the time with my kids in fact i have a former student here heidi can you believe that you guys oh that's so cool yeah it was a couple it was during um the last study galatians and i went up to her because i felt sorry for sitting there all alone and i said the first i said you look so familiar oh it couldn't be me we just moved here from montreal and um no no and the more we talked she went to my grave school i said heidi i had you in third grade oh that's so sweet that's so cool um i forgot what i was going to say about anyway i would like to say um here's a scripture you guys psalm 100 psalm 100 is only six verses your kids can learn that in a week my kids did so i know yours can too and verse 3 says know ye that the lord he is god it is he who hath made us and not and not we ourselves i just i just bank there you tell your kids this is god made you he knows who you are and and you hang it's the truth it's like debbie is saying you guys it's the truth we are we gonna either the bible is the truth or it's not and we know it is and don't you think that's gonna give stability to our kids and this is what this is where we're going yeah we're not yeah and also so that you know like your rights um you know you can good news clubs are legal you know when i was a kid they had good news clubs and then it seemed like they kind of went away but the law you can still do good news clubs you could start those in your schools you you if you have a christian teacher they have the right to have an after-school club they can do that kind of stuff it is not going to be something that they are going to do i don't think these days without having cheerleaders behind them so get behind the teachers if you're doing that and if you are private school or homeschooling either way your kids are going to have to talk about the lgbtq thing it's everywhere it literally is everywhere so some people are like i'm moving to idaho or i'm moving to texas you think the phone does not work in texas you think the phone is not working you know what i'm saying like the phones are everywhere so they're you know i mean we use them and i know technology is what we need to um it's the world in which we live in but um you know it's just because you move across the state boundary does not mean you have a guarantee of an outcome for your kids you just you can't escape and you have it's just the lord is teaching us to engage and engage and engage and you stay on your knees and you engage and you know his word and you fight with the sort of truth and we pray for casey you guys when i'm motivated to pray for her daughter in a public school and all the teachers you know there's a lot there's several um in the past couple of sessions we've had there's been teachers in the audience and you know yeah they they we need that support yeah we need we need that support for teachers that's for sure okay we're gonna move on to friendships so um how to navigate parenting this age and guiding your children's friendships with all the gender confusion happening in our culture today i think we kind of touched on that but let's chew on that for a minute how do i navigate bad friends this early on especially when mom is pushing to interact so then the next question is what do i do if my kid gravitates to the naughtiest kids in school when i first read that i was like move change districts tricks on you but yeah um we we did get to talk with judy pierce a little bit about this and you know those one of those go-to scriptures is in proverbs foolishness is bound in the heart of a child you know um kids are foolish so like we shouldn't be surprised that they're going to be participating and finding other kids you know we all like to be in the same boat you know what's that saying um misery loves company it's the same thing with sin you know like if sin loves company it's the same thing just soaking in your sin you know like kindergarten through second grade they're sinners just like third grade through all the way up just like when they're born clear until second grade you know you you have a little sinner and you're really trying to reshape that kiddo but do you guys have any um encouragements about eliminating bad friends not through death of course but um you know i would say that i would ask my kids questions like you know tell me about your friend and kind of get them thinking about maybe they're not that good you know just a conversation and and kind of directing the conversation and maybe letting them come to that conclusion that maybe that's not the best you know i think you know open-ended questions conversation um and again back to what how god would have them to live you know you don't have to come out and condemn that kid yeah you don't have to condemn your kid but just help them because they're gonna have to do that when you're not with them they're gonna have to know how to think through yeah things and say you know even thinking ahead is good to be planning and the next person they meet maybe they're gonna be thinking wait maybe that's not good so yeah just yeah you know i'll share an example of a personal story that happened in our family and this was a couple of really cool things that the lord did um because my radar was not up about this okay so um most of you know my parents divorced when i was four my dad left when i was three and a half um so my mom married just a few years later and then that man was abusive and i swear the lord killed him i he ended up getting a really serious disease he had liver cirrhosis and then hepatitis you're laughing but no i'm serious i was in fourth grade and he and he got sick and then he was sick for a few more years um second grade was when they got married and by the time seventh grade rolled around he died and i was like relieved i was so i was like he's gone because he had been horrible and none of us knew this he had been horrible to my stepsister and um and i he was bad to me but not like my stepsister but coming out of that when you have an environment that's secretive and you have an environment that's just so horrible you know and so you i didn't see things the way brett would have so going back to the story um so brooke joey casey so there brooke and then you know 15 months later i had joey and then um about two years and three months i had casey so we've got this little staggering so enters in this family seemed really sweet great you know and and really me the global one now keep in mind there had been a few men who had lived in my life you know when i was younger so in my life so i was like hey everybody's a friend and i think that that is a benefit that god has made my personality to be especially being married to a pastor where he it is a social ju if the joke is i'm married to an introvert you know what i'm saying that's the biggest joke he is not an extroverted dude he but god's called him to do this so the fact that i'm like that is a gift you know because when he when it's off for him i can turn it on and so that's good but this particular situation happened and um it just it brett it did not sit well with him and it was a husband and wife and they had a daughter and this daughter just was tight best friends with brooke and great that's good my daughter has a friend that's sweet you know and they were little but certain things started happening that brett started perceiving as hmm this kind of actually seems like this guy is trying to win over my daughter and it was just very subtle and maybe most people would not have picked up on it but i promise you over time which was ended up being about a 10 to 15 year period of time i mean brett was like this on it you know and he was like pointing it out like i am not comfortable with this this is not cool this is not and this person has like basically been disfellowshipped by everybody now but um it just there was a couple things going on with that it was undermining the value of brett's role in brook's life which if you take that to the spiritual sense what do we want to do as parents with our kids we want to make them be independent and strong in their own walk with the lord like their walk with the lord their heavenly father the sweetest thing about marriages that stay together even if it's by blood that you stay together but the sweetest thing is that there is this work that your kids are able to see an example of a father figure in the home maybe not perfect but there for someone to come into that and undermine that is like it's satanic i mean it's like horrible that that would happen and brett had his finger on the pulse on that and he was uncomfortable with that and for me as a wife so here's the second part for me as a wife to trust god through the covering of brett in our family that was a big deal because i didn't mock brett about it i didn't i wasn't like her you know but we were like okay this is noted and let's wait and see on this and then when things got very uncomfortable now this was never anything that was sexually abusive nothing like that it was an emotional manipulation that was happening and it was undermining brett and that was not cool for our family our family needed to have our you know links all in place we didn't need to have instability coming and go book book like that you know does this make sense i don't know if this makes sense at all but i just feel like it was like kudos to brett for being super protective of our family and also even though i didn't have like the emotional sensitivity to it he did and he didn't fear me fear he didn't have the fear of man or the fear of a wife he feared god and he knew what the lord had for our family and kept that strong and i just feel like that's such a good thing as far as what the male role is like huge and all about which is security and protection and so never be afraid to allow your husbands to just really do that it's a god-given thing we uh i had the blessing to be able to drive the kids to school and that was an opportunity when i got to talk to the kids about who they were hanging with what the kids were doing but at an early age i started praying over my kids they would it just was natural for me to pray for the kids when i dropped them off at school or if they were having a problem we'd pray about it but especially for our son i always prayed and he would hear me that i always pray for him to be a leader of truth and not a follower of the world and so i think at an early age because he heard that constantly and not realizing it when you're a leader it's a very lonely life you don't have a lot of friends and he struggled with that he didn't have a lot of friends but he was a leader of the truth he always spoke truth to his friends and he made enemies out of some of the kids because they didn't like what he was saying to him even though it was the truth so just praying for your kids and just really just pouring in the truth to them and then they'll recognize it like we've talked about and they'd notice the counterfeit of somebody who's really not walking with the lord and and pray with them and talk to them about yeah going and claiming verses for them like you did one verse for me was psalm 5 or i think it's the new international says it that you'd surround them with your favor and protectionist with a shield i pray that especially for my grandkids that god just protect them as they're out there and and you know as they grow to have discernment to know what's wrong and right and and the lord's good i mean he is faithful and taking the lord out of his word you know you don't always see it but you will see it there will come a time wheel so oh that's what that was about you know just like um what i shared with you regarding brett it took several years until i said oh oh no i see i'm really glad i went with brett on that one you know so um hopefully that helps you with the friendships i think before we leave that move on to the next uh set of questions which are about discipline um don't be afraid to lean on your husband and get his input too um most of you are married here tonight and really just run it by your husband you know what are your thoughts about this what are your thoughts about you know these kids and these boys or these girls what are your thoughts about this and that and get the input sometimes it's going to mean you've got to be a little bit more brave and maybe less of a helicopter mom or whatever you know it just it just depends every situation at home is different but don't be afraid to lean on your husband because it's just the two shall be won and you don't want to be unbalanced i think it's really huge so okay the next question um parenting a strong-willed boy who seems to lack the remorse my husband and i would like to see parenting a child who has such a different personality than me and my husband um i know exactly what this is like [Applause] actually what's funny is usually what that means is that they're more like you than what you realize and so you sometimes are looking in the mirror and you're seeing this reflection and you're like this is exactly opposite of me but the reality is no it's exactly you it's just a different form with a different body in this little bit maybe different hair color so it's just like wow you know this is the remorse thing you can't force remorse but you sure can remove privileges or have consequences if they don't at least say they're sorry which is really by the time you're in kindergarten to second grade this should already be like this should be past tense like we're way past this we we already make our kids look at each other and look at each other in the eye and say i'm sorry you were wrong you were right i was wrong will you forgive me and then the other person says i forgive you even if they don't feel it you say i forgive you and then i always made my kids give each other a hug give each other a hug say i love you even if they hated each other say i love you and here's the thing guys is all three my kids they are best friends now and that's what you want someday you're not going to be here i know it seems like it's miles down the road years and decades and hopefully it is you know and hopefully we're actually all raptured right but i parented with the end and view of gosh if i do live to be like my grandmother who lived to be 101 i would love that that would be awesome i still want my kids to be the best of friends you know when they're in their 20s when they're in their 30s when they're in their 40s when they're in their 50s however god blesses them i want them because i didn't have that you know i so many families just have fallen apart and what i wanted for my children was to have a heritage like the psalm talks about their heritage is from the lord and it used to be when we actually taught thanksgiving um in schools and talked about the cornucopia you know i used to be so intrigued that there was this cool cornucopia which is a gourd you know that's been cut out but all the vines and all the leaves that's always what i pictured when i read their heritages from the lord just like just this non-stop of nourishment and beauty and just goodness and faithfulness that's in my mind when i was taught about the cornucopia and thanksgiving and the pilgrims and how the indians helped them survive and all of that and when it was that was the truth and you were telling the truth um i loved that image and so then when i became a christian leader and just reading how children are a gift from the lord and that's what i pictured like just this cornucopia you know well all those vegetables are stuffed into that gourd whether they liked it or not so you make your kids look at each other say i love you make them hug and make up and the remorse part will come later so do you guys have anything to add about that i had two very different temperaments in my kids my son was very strong-willed and that's difficult especially if you're not and and so i've been reading dare to discipline it's a dobson book from back and my husband and i were discussing it and jeremy was three at the time and he disappeared after while we were talking you know and i go to find him he had taken that book and thrown it in the toilet oh i'm serious oh that's three years old however he was the perfect example of when he would do something wrong you could sit him down and talk to him about what he did spank him we did spank and then um you know again reiterate and and hug and love i mean it was the perfect it was perfect i mean he could go through that my daughter you didn't spank her it made her worse so we had different um ways of dealing with her and taking something away her time out um but she it just threw her into a emotional turmoil there's some kids where you have to figure them out and it's going to be a different template but the key though is whatever you decide on you have to be consistent because it's it's all about it is all about consistency no matter what the age you know so because you're going to make roles you know when they're past second grade there's going to be rules about how you know many times a week you're having activities or there's going to be rules about hey this weekend if you get your homework done you get to do this fun thing or um maybe you know dessert you could have uh we'll have an extra dessert night maybe that's something you take away consistency on all that stuff because if you once you can you are in trouble you are in so much trouble do not cave in you have to stick to what it is you say you're going to do it's really important to that respect your kids and let them know that you respect them that you're not condemning them like satan condemns but you're you're correcting them and um and i mean that's that's uh you know what god tells us in his word so you know just be like jesus yeah yeah one one of i had my set of lines that i would do and um some of this we'll talk about next week but we can totally hit it now um some of you i talked about it last week too is the happy chat so that's the reset time where you take your kids aside and you say okay we have been being you know overly rebellious towards mommy or we have been filling the blank you know we have been um not following directions when i ask you to clear your plate after dinner we have been you know filling the blank so you have your set time when things are actually going well you know and temperaments are calm and maybe you've made cookies or something and they're just in a really good place so that's the time you spring the happy chat out you say okay we're gonna have to have a little happy chat and to this day my kids still say oh we're having a happy chat you know because they they they remember it it's the time when you have to reset you have to come together kind of do an analysis of what didn't work and now we're going to restart and this is going to be the rules these are the consequences following this and once you set that it's going to take all your strength and calling upon the name of the lord to help you to keep follow through with it you know so you you will tell your kids you know so you haven't been clearing the dishes when i've asked you to so now every time that you disobey you're going to let's just say lose whatever privilege so maybe they were collecting tickets to watch the movie or whatever you're going to take those tickets away if you choose and have it be their choice because our sin is our choice and teaching your kids to own that as soon as possible is really going to help them because when they get older you want you want them to be able to go lord i need to own my sin i own that i did this thing i am responsible for my behavior on this i i was totally lusting i was totally this i was this and lord i am sorry and i i need to tell you that i have done these things and i've been out of your well you've got to teach those things to your kids and they need to own it does that make sense so man these things it's so important k through second grade it's not just the go to sleep zone it's like the work zone don't you think and the habits that they're creating even even things like homework and being making sure their work ethic is really thorough um if they have trash around them cleaning up their room just certain things like that any opportunity you can find to reward them but also demonstrate to them the idea of consequences mommy asked you to clean your room and we have 45 minutes to do it and you what did you do instead you made more of a mess so you've got to figure out what the consequence is for that you know but it's consistency it's that's just you're doing your family a huge favor okay this says um how do i call out a lie when my gut feels someone is lying but i can't prove it hmm i'll be all the detective anyone any takers i know if you're lying jesus knows it that's it god can see the lie i think we you kind of know your kids i so i'll tell a story our son was in the fifth grade and i walked into his room he was doing his homework and his closet was nothing but mirrors and so when i walked in he had us back to the mirror and i walked in and i could tell he was doing something you shouldn't have been doing and so i said to him i said what are you doing and he goes nothing nothing wrong nothing and i said you're doing something it's written all over your face and no kidding he looked at me and he goes really and then he slowly turned around to see what his face looked like in the mirror because he thought how does she know and he was cheating he was using a calculator he wasn't supposed to be using and but our daughter too in the car because i could see her in the rearview mirror i could tell she was doing something she wasn't supposed to be doing and i'd say don't do that hannah and she's like how did you know because she didn't know i could see her through the rearview mirror so yeah you can if you know your kids i think you know when they're locked yeah i think it's easy to see yeah you know one of the essentials is to teach your kids the ten commandments and part of that means thou shall not lie and part of that means by faith you're teaching your kids how to actively walk with god and there is going to come a time when they're going to choose to lie and you're not going to know when they drive away in that car with all the marijuana that is for sale here are you kidding me you think they're going to get a job and then go vape and then just come out and tell you probably not you know like you don't know if your kids are telling you the truth that's when you it's like the holy spirit that's why i'm saying k through second grade is so huge because just in five year little years or eight little years or nine little years you're gonna be doing your 100 hours to give your kids a driver's license and you better hope that you have drilled into them how important it is to be honest so that you can know i trust you to drive this car and not go to that pot store and that's the only reason why i'm giving you this car is because i trust you because i know you value life and i know that you don't want yourself to be intoxicated and i know you don't want to cause harm to other people because i've raised you that way that's why i trust you with this car but it's not just because oh i trust you because i think you're not going to be a liar no the book of romans says all of us are liars there's nobody that gets out there is not one person that is good the bible says none are righteous no not one and you just you have to go with like zero expectation on this and really teach your kids to be like oh that's a lie that's actually really bad and god looks at that as not acceptable so what do i do about that mom and then you help your kids work through that honesty and like janelle was saying making sure your kids know that they're not condemned i know in our house we used to give our kids the choice when i knew that there was something i knew what the truth was and we'd give our kids the opportunity to tell the truth we would present it like okay this has happened and if you tell me the truth i'm gonna know it if you tell me a lie i'm gonna know it and so here you better think before you talk right now you know because there's gonna be consequences and we would lay those things out so it was very very clear and that that was probably the best way to teach our kids to be really encouraged to always move towards telling the truth because eventually i mean obviously they figure out that you know oh mom and dad don't always know everything but when they're little they don't know that when they're little they think it's like jackie like oh my gosh god gave mom and dad eyes in the back of their head they can actually see us no matter a 360 view all the time you know so you gotta use that to your advantage as much as you can you know and i do think the lord tells us things about our kids too okay so um advice on disciplining a five-year-old biblically who is not spanked who is not defiant with their behavior but has a hard time listening and is argumentative always has a response to a command and responds emotionally often um they have never been this way behaviorally until they turned four which happened to be the start of kovid and i was pregnant at the time all of their activities pre-k school shut down and they couldn't see any friends since everyone we knew wasn't wanting to get together and my kiddo is very social that's super tough i know that the shutdown's been very hard on a lot of people um but a rule's a rule so if you have the expectation of behavior wow what a good year this has been for all of you who have been able to teach your kids wow you guys now we're we are free things are opening up more what have we learned from this past year you know we know we need to respect space from people and now we can leave our house a little bit more and i know that the past happened and you felt stressed about that but it's okay now still the rule is still the same we don't want to have emotional breakdowns i know for us when we were first in that quarantine there were nine of us in our house so we dad and marna it was such a huge blessing because well not for them they were locked out of the country that they longed to be in so it wasn't a blessing for them but it was a huge blessing for us to us it was like hey it's like family camp okay there's cad mart woohoo we're like it's old days when we would go to camp bradley you know and um brett and todd worked together for years really tightly with youth group and so um in the summers there would usually be a weekend in there or some kind of a three-day period of time where marna and her kids and me and my kids we would all drive over to camp bradley on the coast so to us it was like vacation our husbands were totally working but to us it was like the beach sand castles go pick blueberries it was great so for tattered morna to be with us during corn team was like just so sweet it was so fun but that doesn't mean there weren't days where i felt like i was the four year old and i was like i think i'm going to go to my room i think i'm going to go lay down and i'm going to quiet myself i'm going to self-regulate i think is how they say it in school with i think even with autistic special needs kids they say self-regulate have to self-regulate i was like self-regulate self-regulate self-regulate i mean and i'm an adult you know so i i i have to give a huge amount of slack to the parents who had situations like this because that was tough that was tough and we've never been through a situation like that ever but the only thing that i could say is that does the expectation for this behavior change if you put your child on an airplane like what if they explode on an airplane you know it's still it's still not okay you know does anybody have anything else that you want to add on that um i think it's amber in one of the things you were doing up here said i thought it was great her perspective and i knew that but it was just good to hear it that god knew that our kids would be raised in covent he knew this so okay lord how do we how do we manage this and like you've said the rules are still the rules and what could you do to you know get them outside when you could you know if um yeah i just that's helped my even the the newest thing that's now happening again it's like lord you're in control of all this how are we how do we cope with this i know most most of us and there's a few that here that live in like apartment complexes and stuff so that's that's tough that is tough because if the play yard was closed and they couldn't really even go out the neighbors that will report on you because i'm right oh my goodness yeah go out and the neighbors report that she was going out and that you're being watched i mean that puts it all at home i think that's where maybe for this person communicating to for instance the titus 2 mom maybe doing a little bit more networking as a group of moms and say okay what's the plan if there's another shutdown because i do know that there are a few homes that opened up that were like we have a huge yard we have a huge space we can have once a week play time um there were youth group meetings happening at different people because they had huge space to be able to do it so i mean i think that's what i would do is probably organize and structure more play dates and that's why we have things like one time is so you guys can find one another and then get your phones all with everybody in there as a big mom time group and i that's what i would do because then that way you have a plan your kids are looking forward to something and then you can also still be um doing the consequence you know like we've got that play day you know clean up your room cause we've got that playdate coming come on and man they're gonna be spit shine in the room if there's another shutdown you know but um this caught a lot of people off guard i think it made a lot of us go oh wow i didn't know i was growing that sin ugh look that's an ugly sin i need to take that off you know we just it is what it is it was hard and you know the church when i think last was that last summer we did psalm 23 and i know where's jackie i've seen her here was in my group zoom we're doing soon but i think you were doing things with your kids that you guys were all home and um it was just i think it helped other gals that we had old and young in that zoom group but just to hear what she was doing and yeah that whole connection is so important it's huge the next section moves on to emotions so how would i bring emotional stability to my children especially if one is extra emotional about everything we have to process [Music] emotions are tough because you know like elaine talked about king david you know he he basically brett has talked about too he was basically bipolar all over you know and we can see in the psalms and through his life that he was a man of battle but he was also a man of great literature and ability to write and express and um you you don't want to condemn emotions you know i mean emotions are like how you live it's it's what makes fuchsia fuchsia you know what i mean it's like it's what makes aquamarine aquamarine it's not just blue it's aquamarine you know the emotional part of our life is just it's the glitter of everything you know and but wow have you ever tried to vacuum up glitter it is such a pain i mean i opened up an art room when my kids were in elementary school um so that there would be like a sanctuary place for kids during lunch that was my way of making it so that i could learn who my kids were with they would bring their whole pack in and i think i went through 100 kids in two hours you know just because all they just rotated in well one of my first few naive weeks of running the art room i thought it'd be fun to have glitter and then at the end the janitor came to me and said i am not cleaning this up and i said thank you very much i will throw away all glitter and i proceeded to clean it all up because it was i told the principal i'm gonna do this art room it's gonna be great and it was it was phenomenal it was so fun but i learned so much about glitter how it is every janitor's nightmare because it goes all around the whole entire school that's a little bit how emotions are if you don't keep them in the jar with the lid on it and precisely put it on glue carefully shake that little paper with the glitter and put the glitter extra glitter in the trash can let the glue dry and then fill the glitter otherwise it gets everywhere and it's a mess and i think that we just have to be really careful about teaching ourselves and our kids about emotions to not be fearful of them but also to learn how to sort of step outside of their own body for a minute and ask themselves ask ourselves what do we look like right now a little bit like jackie said with jacob how when she said it's written all over your face and he like went to look in the mirror so how's my face you know like we we really have to teach our kids to take a step back and examine themselves yeah great one one time my daughter was probably three two or three and she said i just can't take it anymore and i went whoops they're watching they're watching and that was a clue to me that i better take it back but i did see something right here in this church i don't know what emotions we're talking about but you know there could be uh screaming or whatever and if you're modeling that that's not good you and your husband but anyway i saw one of our pastors one saturday night with his little girl and i have no idea what went on but that little girl's heart was broken and you know what daddy did he got down on his knees and he just held her and let her cry yeah and sometimes that's what it takes i mean i needed that from my husband and no words are necessary you know no matter where the emotions are going it's just you know and if you want to verbalize i understand why you would feel this way or you would yeah and what a sweet lesson oh i just i mean that picture is in my head and i'm like that little girl got a daddy that loves her yeah she's gonna know god's love that's so sweet yeah that's that's the total like that should always be the default you know um when my kids they didn't really have temper tantrums too much i there was a couple reasons why and i think one reason is because i told them well that's the last temper tantrum you're gonna have and if you do it again there's gonna be a consequence which meant spanking you know and um we went by age group so like if you were two years old it was two swats if you were three years old it was three swats so nobody had temper tantrums at age six you know it's just not worth the number of swats they were gonna get you know so it was ended quickly but when they're young and they're processing like that it is so true that just that physical comfort of hugging them letting them cry it out even you know just kick and scream they do have those emotions that's like one of the first things you should check off is if your child's emotional and if they are really exhibiting a lot of like drama in the house are they really actually asking for attention because i think we all know that that can be something that kids crave is they crave it so much attention that then they can actually get negative attention which is not what you're wanting really at all but so you just sometimes hugging holding sitting with them maybe taking them on their own special little run even if it's to go pick up mail or if it's to go out to the newspaper come with no mommy wants you to be with me right now come on let's go you just uni just do me let's walk out and get our newspaper walk all the way back just taking that little bit of time can fill up their little love bucket that might be a little bit empty okay my son seems to get overwhelmed easily with making decisions or if he messes up on something or even picking out the outfits in the morning do you have any advice or encouragement on ways i could help build them up more and help him not get so overwhelmed or worried well he could maybe the night before you could decide well what do you want to wear is that helping with organization oh yeah just structuring time good yeah i think there's simple things like that could you set out ahead of time yep also you know my mom had the saying don't sweat the small stuff you know now christian perspective it's probably more grace in there um but it's the truth you know like teaching your kids to know there's certain things that are going to make a measurable difference in your life and really are going to affect you for the rest of your life such as my example before of going to a vape shop smoking pot driving possibly hitting someone and someone dying that is a measurable marked difference in that child's life picking out clothes nope so just teaching your kids value right and teaching them okay these things matter and if you if it's really important for you to have everything really good that's that's great but let's work through this and this is where i actually really would defer over and i'd say genie raise your hand again because she seeing so many different kindergarten age kids through the years definitely has had a lot of different specialty kids coming through that just need that little extra and i think so yeah fine janie if we didn't answer your question um okay so um home life i think we went through some of this what are the best ways to create a good bond between siblings i think we hit that um earlier how do we best deal with their need to be independent their need to be independent their need so are you saying this is a tough one because i'm like are you saying their strong world and they they've convinced you that it's a need [Music] or or because do they really kids can't be independent i mean my definition of independence is can you cook your own food are you paying your own taxes because if you're doing that you're independent i mean i'm driving like a you know six-year-old seven-year-old i'm sorry you are not independent you you cannot live without me so you are not independent so that's why i would interpret that like hmm does actually mean more like strong they have a desire maybe a leadership it's almost some of these might be a little bit deeper so anybody that has questions if you want to follow up just you guys can write me debbie athecreek.com and i'd be glad to go over if i'm because i know some of these are like i'm not getting the right answers and maybe we're fishing but we're not exact so go ahead you can always always ask me just to follow up on that so okay um what is an appropriate amount of chores to have them do each day do you have ideas for best chores at each age at each age yeah i think it's totally house dependent i mean i think if you're in an apartment you're gonna have a different set of chores if you're out on acreage and you have a cow you've got a whole barn to clean you know and i it's just it's i think that that kind of a question is i think it breaks down to this um there are laws against child slavery so that's like that's the perspective and then there's also the bible talks about being a sluggard so your this is where the holy spirit will show you somewhere short of child slavery but not over into sluggard zone that's going to be your safety area so i think for certain homes you mean oh there's just there's i'll tell you this save cleaning the trim and also wiping down all the doorknobs save that for when they're being say oh mom i'm bored oh good let's give you the clorox wipes and that's when we have them go to all the trim she's not here tonight but angela shields and i raised our kids at the same time and we would be like okay winter's coming did you go to costco and get your clorox wipes because we're going to have busy kids inside and we're going to have clean trim and clean doors and that was just that was one of our things we saved that we saved that one because man yeah it was actually a bummer when our kids like went through a winter and didn't you know disobey because then we had we had to do ourself you know i just remember brett saying when he had to do his chores that he had to go sure mom yes oh yeah he did and then brett taught that to our kids too he literally had like he lined up joey i die and say when joey when mom asks you to do something your reply is going to be i'd be happy to mom and that is a huge part actually because kids are you're going to be asked your kids are going to be asked to do things they don't really want to do for the rest of their life because we're not we're not the owner of this life you know what i mean god is are the one we serve and um you know we have an enemy that prowls around seeking who we made to fight devour so we with wisdom want to raise our kids to be you know independent but dependent on god you know and then not moaning and griping and complaining when they're asked to do things like the bible says do everything without complaining and i used to say you know let everything be done without complaining or arguing so that you may be blameless and pure children of god you know like just wow as happy as could be from like age as little as they could be all the way up so that they could really embrace that like oh so oh okay without complaining and arguing like of course we're not going to complain or argue about that you know and then now my kids are all grown up and so all those things ring through my mind and i have to re-learn how to be an adult because now there is no one around to keep me accountable and stuff so it's like these are good this is good for us you guys it's good for us and it's good for you guys and i think we've gone through um just about everything so why don't we close in prayer and i just want to thank you all for joining tonight too so dear lord i just thank you so much for our time and just having this atmosphere of just fellowship and being unified in you we just thank you that you are the way the truth and the life and that you want us to have an abundant life so i thank you lord for your just your goodness your grace to us help us to find ways to show that grace and goodness to our kids letting them know that they're fully loved but when there is correction that you would give us wisdom on how to do that and even as they're growing up into older years for those of us who have older kids we just pray that you'd be continuing to build their homes now and their families and we pray that you would just bless us lord and we thank you so much for the steadiness of your word and that um your will and your plan for us is good so i pray for these ladies now and ask that you would bless the rest of the evening in jesus name amen you

Channel: Athey Women

Views: 169

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Athey Creek, Athey Creek Women, Devoted, Devoted Podcast, Through the Bible, Brett Meador, Amy McReynolds, Bible Study, Women's Ministry

Id: w2JP1uAV0rk

Length: 74min 17sec (4457 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 28 2021