Recognizing Your Son's Need For Respect - Emerson Eggerichs Part 1

is there any vocabulary word that I'm using that would cause my son to think that I don't respect him that I have contempt toward him that I despise who he is that I find him unacceptable as a human being that he's less than he ought to be and those are the words that we need to refrain from welcome to the focus on the family broadcast helping families thrive today we want to be there for you mom because we're gonna speak to your heart particularly as you are raising these sons to become men and we have a very special guest to do that and John once you introduce him or say well Emerson egg rich is with us today he's a popular guest here at focused on the family he's an internationally recognized expert on male-female relationships he leads conferences with his wife Sarah around the world and he's the author of a number of books including mother and son the respect effect ever said it's great to have you back to focus on the family I've been looking forward to a gym and thank you John you are really gifted at speaking right to the heart of people when it especially in the area of marriage obviously love and respect has been really impactful to literally millions of people and you now are applying those kind of principles to the area of parenting which i think is perfect why did you take that message of how you relate in marriage into the parenting relationship well they're two levels of that I wrote the book love and respect and the family and looking at everything in the scripture concerning parenting I had the privilege of studying the Bible 30 hours a week for nearly 20 years as the senior pastor of a church so that gave me a lot of time to think and then of course the academic bent looking at what research said so I waited though in the parenting topic until my children were grown John and David and joy are now adults and and out of the home and I waited on that but this more recent book mother and son it was Sarah my wife as well as the hundreds of women who went to our love and respect marriage conference who began to apply these principles to their boys and began to email me Jim and telling me what happened in the boys heart in the sense of connection they were beginning to experience as they began to apply what I call respect talk well let's refresh or introduce that concept to the listeners who maybe didn't catch those programs love and respect or read your book on that theme talk about the general principle of love and respect and what you're driving at when it comes to gender and what we need right well the University of Washington studied 2,000 couples for 20 years and they said we now know the two key ingredients for successful marriages when those two ingredients are present the marriage succeeds when they're not present the marriages fail many of us think that if we don't have money problems in-law problems health issues work-related issues these stressors if we could remove those we'd have a happy relationship but they found out it's our attitude toward each other during those conflicted moments that really is the key so if I come across hostile or contemptuous to the spirit of the other person that's when they deflate I'm stepping on their air hose well I found it intriguing that Ephesians 5:33 said husbands love your wives and wives respect your husbands and the love and respect dynamic there isn't a whole lot of debate on that first part of that verse but the second part women will say dr. Emerson I don't feel any respect for my husband he's not superior to me I'm not inferior to him I don't want to be a hypocrite and do something I don't feel he hasn't earned he doesn't deserve it I'm not gonna give him a license to do what he wants to do I'm not gonna return to male patriarchy and female dominance I'm not going to subject myself to emotional abuse to lose a sense of my identity or self or set the feminist team back 50 years but other than these things I'm really open to hearing what you have it's a tough intro well it's what we're up against and see that the disconnect between what women feel about honor and respect and what you and I as men feel we serve and die for honor we don't see it as narcissistic we honor each other and we die for each other but when you talk about respecting a man then that mantra that I just went through is what women feel and they're not mean-spirited about that at all women are fearful that they're going to be unloved in that process that they're going to be second-rate and second-class but once we begin to unpack the power of showing respect toward the spirit of men not respecting is bad behavior when you come across honoring to the spirit of an individual no husband feels fond feelings of love and affection in his heart total wife he thinks despises who he is as a human being any more than a woman is gonna respond to her husband whose harsh and angry certain vulnerabilities we all have but we've kind of removed the male need from the radar screen and so we put it back on to say if you want to motivate your husband the way in which you do that is by meeting a need he has especially during conflict and watch what happens he'll connect with you he'll move toward you rather than withdraw 85% who Stonewall and withdrawal or the males and he'll stop doing that he'll stay engaged with you because he thinks you're using the topic as an opportunity to send him a message that you don't like who he is as a human being in these principles these wives Jim began to apply it to their boys and instead of these boys withdrawing and stonewalling and just shutting down the boys were staying engaged they were actually looking at their mother they were actually responding they were actually soft in that response and the mothers were blown away by that how does that transform that relationship and then we're gonna get into that very specifically but at the top level when a mom is supplying that that son with that respect what is being achieved how is that response what does it look like well I define it as a positive regard toward the spirit of your boy when you're spitting mad at him and one things that I want mothers to know is not to move into shame as they're listening of this because mothers immediately begin to think of those moments where they've stepped over the line and I want them just to relax here this is just an insight in addition to your love I want you to think about some vocabulary words that can soften him especially when you're trying to get through to him but in terms of the question you're asking it's a positive regard toward his spirit see the gestures of contempt that the University of Washington's studied that females manifest her eyes darkened face turned sour hand on the hip scolding finger the sigh the role in the eyes the head goes back and when estrogen kicks in the word choice of contempt is incredible women will fight with words okay but I say to you know in our conferences you know you do you speak disrespectfully to your husband yes but he should know I didn't mean it I will stop mid-sentence he should know I didn't any newness and all the women say mean it I didn't mean it and mothers don't mean it toward their boys but the the way in which that boy is filtering that his mom is using this topic to send me a message that she doesn't like Who I am she doesn't respect Who I am and she finds me unacceptable and I can give an illustration between how a mother would confront her teen daughter one night and the next night confront her teen son in the very same way and I can paint a picture in a moment if you'd like me to and show you why there is a huge difference we'll give it let's hear it well suppose she's Tuesday night she's upset with her a thirteen year old daughter and she's got a 14 year old boy and she comes and she just rips in verbally to her daughter and they all go back and forth at each other and then you'll watch a few minutes later that both be on the bed legs crossed and they're going at it venting negatively and and then the daughter's no I'm sorry mom I shouldn't have said that well no honey I'm sorry I was out of line I'm will you forgive me I shouldn't have said it the way I said it well yeah mom I forgive you but you forget yes honey then they'll hug tear wipe away their tears and then once witty no say something start laughing and they'll hug and they'll be good to go until that next episode and they'll do it again next night she confronts her boy on the same thing teen boy and she comes at him and he just shuts down and withdraws and looks angry and so then what does she do she ups the disrespect to get through to him until she sees tears in his eyes and those tears are not there because he's finally feeling her pain it's like he's thinking my mom finds me disgusting and even though I know mom loves me I don't think she likes me and particularly when he moves into his teen years where there may be some things that she's discovered that shame him now he's filtering much of her behavior through those episodes that he feels ashamed about tell me what that team boy beyond what you just described how does that shaming I do really deep damage to that boy who then becomes a man what is the lingering effect of that shaming well I'm always cautious in that answering that because again I don't want that mother to feel like she has damaged her children mothers are very loving very nurturing very caring and they care deeply and they're very quick to go to the fact that I've ruined my son I've ruined my family I've ruined heaven if I could ruin it I've ruined everything I'm horrible I'm rotten that's what she begins to feel so I'm its it takes a lot to really get a boy into deep shame so what I want to do is backpedal from that but if every wee you're ripping indium over a 10-year period and basically communicating discussed I just got a an email and we're getting all these emails a single mother who adopted several children and her son's great he's very good at math but he had a 65 percentile and she saw the report card and she said on the way home I was in she said I knew the barrage of words I was gonna use to get him to get his grades up but she'd just been listening to the audio on the mother and son the respect effect and so she came in and she said son I don't understand what's going on here I don't want to be dishonouring to you I don't want to be disrespectful but can you explain to me why you have these great abilities and why you have a 65% here can you help me understand this because I'm not pleased but I'm not trying to dishonor you right now but I'm upset because I expect more from you he looked at her and he said I will take care of it mom and she says he studied and brought his grades up to 95 percent and she said his though she said we did not have yelling tears and regret yelling which was heard his tears and then her regret yelling tears immigrant we did not experience it and she said I was absolutely blown away when I used the vocabulary word I'm not trying to diss you I'm not trying to dishonor you I believed in you I don't understand this can you solve this and she said it was over with hmm but see the point there is there are single mothers as well as regular mothers out there that you know have fathered but they're doing that kind of thing week after week toward their boy because he's not performing so they feel I have to up the disrespect they have to up the contempt and over a period of time he'll just close off before he'll probably begin to in so many ways what you're doing with that approach is you're raising the bar even higher and making them feel even more like a failure that they can't attain it and and so I love the approach I love the thought of give them the responsibility that's what men appreciate that's what boys need to learn and they'll gravitate toward it that's what you're saying hugely so and we know in marriage you know the whole joke is women tend to be empathy oriented but men are solution oriented men think in terms of solution they try to help by solving it well you can reverse that with your son and ask him how is he going to solve this problem appeal to him to solve the problem you're an honorable young man this is unacceptable I'm sure you and to me how can you solve this rather than telling him to solve it ask him and watch what happens right and and then step back and let him allow allow Emerson you talk about that crazy cycle you talk about that in marriage with love and respect you've brought that thing you're describing it I don't know that you've used the term yet but make sure that we understand the vocabulary of the crazy side right you describe it with the mom and the teenage daughter that they're fine until their next eruption that's the crazy cycle right well the crazy cycle that we talk about between husband and wife is without love she reacts in ways that feel disrespectful to him she's not trying to be that's how he processes that conflict when a man feels disrespected he ends up reacting in a way that feels unloving to her like stonewalling pulling back and that same dynamic happens between a mother and her son they're not married but it's a male-female issue far and above being a husband wife issue and as that boy moves into manhood mothers and sons get on that crazy cycle and we're coaching mothers on how you can jump off of that much more quickly hmm Everson you mentioned this respect talk back and forth why do you think mom's women struggle with that concept so much it is that the route that their their seeking love their languages love and you're saying your sons aren't gonna understand that love is something not as critical to them well it is critical boys need love they tend to be assured of a mother's love I mean you ask the teen boy did your mom love you oh yeah of course she does yeah exactly like you know she didn't like me right now and so in mothers will say I love my son but I don't like him right now yeah and mothers feel guilty about that and so this and we need to clarify love and respect are not synonymous you know we respect our boss but we don't love our boss and you know we we love our teen boy but we don't always feel respect for him and so they are they cross over but they're not synonymous and what we have to look at is the fact that God has wired men to need something that mothers don't always track within this culture at this time but God designed mothers to love women love to love you have to wound a woman at the level of intimacy to get her to stop loving but she is this nurturer the caregiver and she just has energy - love she wants to do that but what she doesn't always understand is that she can communicate in a way that feels disrespectful to her boys she can be motivated to do the loving thing but it comes across very disrespectful and that's why she doesn't always see it and I don't know why as a culture we haven't paid closer attention instead we seemingly have put the onus back on the boy who is shutting down that there's something inherently wrong with him rather than maybe just stepping back for a moment and saying could we just say a few things differently so for instance if she's really upset and she's just spitting mad and just you know I say you don't have to become robotic or mechanical this way you be yourself but you say I'm very upset with you right now I can't believe that you disregarded what I told you to do and I was very specific and I even let a note now I'm not trying to say this to dis you or dishonor you I believe in you more and I think you believe in yourself and I see you becoming an honorable man but for the life of me I can't believe why you did that I don't respect what you did but I respect you now we got to take a five-minute timeout because I think I'm gonna kill you right now and we're gonna come back and visit this respectfully does that sound like a good game plan a lot of times a boy will grin if he's never heard that kind of vocabulary he will actually look at mom you know is the same thing of a father says I don't know how to do this lovey thing you know my father didn't love and I'm trying to be more loving to use my tender daughter I would die for you I can't believe what you did here how do I do this lovingly I don't know how to be as loving as I ought to be I feel horrible as a man who doesn't know how to love but I'm so spitting man we need to take a timeout I want to do the loving thing here but I don't know how to do it I'm so mad I mean every daughter would probably start to grin at that if he's never done that what's so right about what you're saying is you're affirming the child as a person and as someone created in the image of God without embracing the behavior which you have to deal with always we do not respect bad behaviors we don't love unacceptable behavior but we lovingly and respectfully confront that behavior even as you're going through that kind of script of how it could be emerson does does a boy really hear a mom talking as you just did and think she respects me because I mean the tone of what you said could be taken by some to mean she really hates me right now I just blew my life apart yeah it could be but my experience says no same thing with a football coach who's chanting Matt in a locker room that were behind 14 points I expect more of you guys you guys are the greatest athletes I've ever coached I can't believe where we're at now and he he has come but you know it's it Dubois suddenly think oh the coach hates us mm-hmm so again vocabulary is why this is so exciting and the point there is mothers don't have to suddenly become something they're not you just need to add a few vocabulary words that I'm talking about so that he knows that the real reason here for you confronting him is the behavior not that you're using this topic as another opportunity to send a message that you find him despicable as a human being because that's what he's feeling particularly if he's failed or he's feeling inadequate let's unpack some of those vocabulary words that you're mentioning and you've done some of that but what are some of those buzz words that mom should refrain from using and maybe get rid of them out of their lexicon when when it comes to dealing with your son well I mean just as we would say no father should use any kind of vocabulary that suggests that he hates his daughter right I mean is there any vocabulary word that a dad may be using that would suggest that that daughter's gonna hear that you really hate me and if there's any message that he sends that is that so a mother just has to affect is there any vocabulary word that I'm using that would cause my son to think that I don't respect him that I have contempt toward him that I despise who he is that I find him unacceptable as a human being that he's less than he ought to be yeah and those are the words that we need to refrain from but I still give a lot of grace to a mother who blows it just so long as she comes back and said look I wasn't trying to dishonor your heart your create an image of God and I believe in you son and that's why I'm so upset I sometimes don't think you believe in yourself as much as I believe in you huh see that's the way your rebound countless moms will contact Focus on the Family here I mean we get this a lot and they're saying basically listen my son needs to earn my respect describe that environment and is what she's saying accurate or is that something you give you don't earn it it's something that your son deserves from you even if they're behaving inappropriately this is a cultural teaching that respect must be earned respect must be deserve and if they have not earned it they don't deserve it and I'm not going to give it and I always say that's that's understandable we all feel that it would be better to say we earned the respect in some ways on the behavior if we're doing well you know we're honored we get honor for things that we do so there's a performance component to that all of us would agree with however let's just think for a moment so now your son does not earn hasn't earned it he doesn't deserve it what's the logic of this where are you gonna go with this so now you're gonna say he deserves your disrespect he deserves your contempt he deserves you to say he's despicable he deserves that you say that he's inadequate so if you bring this to its logical conclusion then what you're saying is I can show contempt toward him all day long because he doesn't deserve it and I'm gonna say that is one of the biggest mistakes we could ever make with any human being because no human being responds to contempt so what the mothers are basically saying is I'm not feeling that respect toward him because of his misbehavior that's correct we're not asking it a few respect what we're asking you is respectfully confront that which he's done that's not respectable because if you don't if you show contempt toward his spirit that's the same thing as a father showing harshness and anger toward his daughter because she's not performing at the level of it he wants but as a result of his harshness and anger she starts you know performing at the level that he wants but you're gonna lose her heart and you'll lose your son's heart if you continue to show contempt so we have to then talk about unconditional respect being equal to unconditional love and what are we talking about God calls the husband to love his wife unconditionally that doesn't mean honey you know I know you're committing adultery with the neighbor so just continue on because I'm gonna show you that I'm unconditional my love we say that's stupid unconditional doesn't mean you give another person license to do what they want unconditional love means there's no situation no circumstance no condition they can get me to ever hate you mmm I love who you are what you're doing is unacceptable but there's nothing you will ever do to get me to hate you unconditional respect is an oxymoron we all understand unconditional love but it's a contradiction of terms when you say unconditional respect but unconditional respect means you say to your husband you say to any human being you say doesn't mean it's easy it just means this is true there's nothing you can do there's no condition there's no situation there is no circumstance that can get me to show you contempt for who you are as a human being why because this is who I am as a person this isn't about who you fail to be as a person I'm gonna be a loving so whether you're lovable or not I'm gonna be a respectful human being as a mother I'm gonna be a woman of dignity who communicates respectfully even though what you done had done is not respectable so where does a mom who feels that her son hasn't earned respect or that he's so disrespectful she can't possibly meet him there how does she start to get out of that well again this is why the methods that she's been using we ask are they working see this way I think so many mothers are frustrated with their boys and the implication of this is staggering so I'm not here to say that the way she's approaching it may be totally wrong cuz I can't speak to every situation but if her son is pulling away from her and she knows that and women intuitively know that then just try this don't do it as a theory I believe God and His Word and the best research is pointing out this is meeting another person's need you're meeting your son's need and you're not losing power and one of the first questions most mothers say well I need him to respect me yes honor of father and mother and I wrote 300 pages in the love and respect family book that addresses that all about how to get your son to honor and respect you but the other side is you've got to understand if you're gonna expect him to honor you then you can't dishonor him to motivate him to honor you and what does it mean then as a mother to come across in a respectful honoring way as a model of the very thing you're expecting and paying attention to the innocent ways that you come across in these gestures of contempt because I say if you misrepresent your deepest heart he's gonna misinterpret your deepest heart so it's probably a good idea to kind of stop the cycle when you're not in it right I mean to be proactive about it I think Sarah and I get on the crazy cycle in our marriage and we have to all we're getting in the crazy cycle you have to at least identify what's going on here so that you can call a timeout like I did with that mother you know saying let's take a timeout here because otherwise you're suddenly gonna realize the issue is no longer the issue and that's the problem once we get into that point where your spirit is deflating as a mother and his spirit is deflating now your probably on that crazy cycle you're feeling unloved and disrespected now you're gonna react in a way that Polly feels disrespectful to him and when he feels dissed as a young boy he's gonna react in a way that feels unloving to you and he's gonna probably just shut down because that's the way he's protecting himself he's not trying to be disrespectful toward you he's guarding his heart mm-hmm and you want to get out of that crazy cycle because the damage long-term will be tough and this is why we're talking about it today Emerson man it has flown by because of I think the interest here I mean were three guys talking about it but I think many many moms have leaned in to say help me do this better I can feel it and we need to keep going and come back next time and talk more about this great work that you've put together mother and son the respect effect you have tapped into what I believe the spiritual truth here with the love and respect message right out of Ephesians you've got it and now you're applying that to the parenting role and I think it is right on the money so it's been great let's come back have more discussion about it next time can we do it love - hey I'm John fuller and thanks for watching get more info about focus over here and more from our guests over there and be sure to subscribe to our channel as well you

Channel: Focus on the Family

Views: 82,366

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Keywords: focus, on, the, family, focus on the family, parenting, mothers, sons, love and respect, love, respect, healthy, healthy parenting, mother and son, relationships

Id: W6oW20ics70

Length: 23min 41sec (1421 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 07 2019