Dealing With Problems Before They Begin

When our kids provoke us, and let's be honest, they do, right? Have you ever said anything you wish you hadn't said? Chap Bettis reminds us that the Bible tells us we are to let no corrupting speech come out of our mouths. That's just an incredibly convicting verse. So when I taught on that, I say, look in your Bible and see if there's a little asterisk there that says, unless you've had a hard day at work, you know, are there any other exceptions? No. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth.

No trash talk. Having said that, that's going to motivate me to say, when this happens, what will come out of my mouth? This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com.

Are there parenting strategies we can employ that can help us to respond rightly and use the right words when our kids provoke us? We're going to talk with Chap Bettis about that today. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today. Thanks for joining us. We're going to do a little test here at the beginning. No, not for you.

This is for the listeners. Although you can play along if you'd like. Those of you who have children in the home, that lets us off the hook on this one. But if you have children in the home, when was the last time you got irritated or angry with them? Has it been less than 24 hours?

Has it been within the last three days? Have you gone a week without getting angry or irritated? The reality of parenting is that frustration is always kind of easily in reach. And it can be that the kids are just out of control. And we don't know how to bring order into the chaos, right?

Exactly. Because that can be the atmosphere, the home, especially when your kids are little. I know when we have our kids come visit us and bring the grandkids, which we love, kids, listen, we want you to come. We want you to bring the grandkids.

It's always a joy to have them there. But we do have to become mentally prepared for the house is about to change for the next couple of days. The level of activity is going to increase. The level of disruption is about to increase. And we have to be emotionally and mentally prepared for that.

I find that I have to go to the bathroom more. It's the only place I can shut the door, lock it and be alone for a few minutes. I'll go in the bedroom like, what are you doing?

He says, I just need a little time. And we love it. We're talking about how we deal with frustration and anger and impatience as parents. And we have a recovering impatient parent. Chap Bettis is with us again on Family Life Today. Welcome back.

Thank you. Chap is an author. He's a conference speaker speaking on parenting, wrote a book called The Disciple Making Parent, and a book we've been talking about this week called Parenting with Patience that, as you've shared, came out of your own reality, your own observation, your wife's observation, actually, that your anger and impatience was creating the wrong kind of culture in your home. And you began to go to work on this in your life. If you were sitting down with a young mom or a young dad right now who's saying, I just every day find myself losing it with my kids. But Chap, you don't know, they're throwing stuff, they're doing this.

One of my kids, I just put up this new thing and they tore it down. You understand the frustrations and it's a fertile field for anger to manifest itself. What's the process we go through to try to get to where we can bring peace to the home and peace to our own heart?

Well, for that specific instance, I think what you're getting at is really, and I actually covered this in some of my other material, I call it Parenting with Confidence, Parenting 101. God has given us the right and the responsibility to rule our home well. And 1 Timothy 3 says a leader needs to manage his household well. And that's really everybody.

It's not just this pastors and deacons. And so to say, okay, actually, anger here is a frustration. I'm not leading my family well. And so I need to get a strategy to deal with those particular issues. And on the one hand, anger is a foe in the sense that I need to fight it.

I need to repent of yelling. I need to, as I walk in the door, expect that my kids are going to be yelling or whatever, you know, whatever that is, or wake up in the morning, the parenting paradox I call it, we expect our children to obey because God commands that we expect them to disobey because they're sinful. So I'm going to wake up and expect that they're going to disobey whatever happened yesterday is going to happen again. Having said that, God has called me to lead my family well to come up with some consequences. So children are to obey their parents. I need to be okay with that as an authority.

And now let's go with one or two of those and let's have a plan. So, you know, the policeman, he doesn't get upset. He just writes a ticket, you know, I mean, and he goes out, he's not, he expects people to speed today and he just, he's got a consequence for it. It's all thought out. And so I think sometimes we're trying to parent on cruise control rather than saying, children are going to misbehave. That's what children do. That's what they do. And that's okay.

What I can't do is yell or be frustrated and I need to, I need to come up with a consequence. So if anger is a foe, you also say anger is a friend, which I've never heard. How can it be a friend? Well, I want to make sure that that's a little asterisk on that to say that if someone is a recipient of abuse, that that's not acceptable at all. And I'm sure we agree 100%. I'm just talking about normal, everyday anger. But what I'm saying is that it's an emotion given to motivate us for good.

So back to the definition by Dr. Paulson, it's anger is an active stance that you take to post something that you assess is important and wrong. So our son should have done his homework. Our daughter should obey us.

So it needs to motivate us to say, what, what plan are we going to have when this happens again? So in that way, it's a friend. It's okay. In that moment, I'm like, my daughter just said no to me, you know, okay, I need self-control, you know, but don't, don't lose it, but make a mental note.

What is the consequence for saying no to me? I know that's wrong. It's important. It's wrong.

A four-year-old shouldn't say no to his mom or her mom. And yet I don't know what the consequence is. So I'm just yelling.

So I need, I need to come up with a consequence as a computer programmer before the internet, believe it or not. I get a call at 2 AM and there were two things I needed to get the program running back so I could go back to sleep. But the very next morning I went in and said, this is going to happen again. I don't want to get woken up.

So let's kick it out to our error report or something like that. So by that, that's what I mean by, by a friend in the sense that it motivates me to say, maybe I need to change my heart, which is what you're talking about, which is, I just need to be prepared. This is the situation we're in.

I need to work on my heart or as the ruler of my home, I need to, I need, we need to talk about some consequences. This is, this is not right. It's really having a plan. It is. Yeah.

It is. And it's being intentional and knowing beforehand. Otherwise we just react to our emotions. You also talked about no trash talking and words really do matter. Talk a little bit about that too. Well, that's right in Ephesians. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth. And I, that's just an incredibly convicting verse. So I, when I taught on that, I say, look in your Bible and see if there's a little asterisk there that says, unless you've had a hard day at work or unless it's that time of the month or unless something, you know, are there any other exceptions? No, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth. No, no trash talk. And having said that, that's going to motivate me to say, when this happens, what, what will come out of my mouth? And Jesus is our example there.

First Peter tells us when he was reviled, he did not revile in return, but he blessed. So to say, okay, this is, this is the pudding on when, when my child says no to me again, what am I going to say? What am I going to do in the moment when I was going to say the exact same word? I literally was going to say, yeah, but in that moment, it's so hard to have that kind of self control. I mean, sitting here right now, I was like, yeah, I can do that when I'm in the family room and balls are flying and a chunk gets taken out of my drywall.

Or how about this? When your youngest son takes a rock and carves his name in the side of your minivan, of course, where was mom and dad for that amount of time? I don't know. But we came out, how old was he?

I don't know, four or five. And there's his name. The pain is gone all the way down to the phase of kind of marking his name and everything. We had that same thing where we finally got, you know, a new to us van and I come home one day and my six year old and my four year old have a stick and they're just like heating the van.

What are you thinking? Well there's this situation. So in that moment, a level of anger is expected. You know, you can have actually righteous anger without corrupting talk. You can trash talk.

You can end up there as well. I've done that many times, but is it possible to be self controlled, have a level of anger and still be in the moment and be honoring God? Well, that's Ephesians 4 26 says, in your anger, do not sin. So you're feeling that emotion. You come home and they're beaten. They've carved into your car.

They beat into your leg. And so, yeah, in your anger, do not sin. So how do you do it in that moment? I mean, if your kids are wailing on the car with a stick. So I don't think it's wrong to go, what in the world are you doing?

Which is exactly what I did. I mean, I didn't confess that as sin, but I think when you then take that and attack, so really, yeah, if that had turned into a personal attack, like you're an idiot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So words, words, especially words that attack their identity are just satanic, you know, so that's, if kids are going to be kids and it's a car is a car, but I just paid a lot of money for that car.

So you just go, what are you doing? And of course they realize later that was wrong. But I don't, I don't, I think in that moment, I don't, I don't see that as sin in the, in the moment I didn't attack them personally.

Yeah. You were stopping destructive behavior. And I do think with moms and dads, we have to pull back and go, did we ever teach our kids not to beat the car with a stick?

I mean, we think we'll write their name into the car. I mean, did we ever say, I used to do this with our kids. We'd go to the grocery store and I, they had acted up at the grocery store before. And so I realized I need to have the little huddle before we go into the grocery store. We're about to go into the grocery store and here's what's going to happen. You're going to want to pull stuff off the shelves.

You know how tempting that is. You see the stuff, you want to pull it off the shelves and I'm just going to tell you if you do that, here's going to be the consequence. So when we're in the store and you see something and go, I want to pull that off the shelf, just think to yourself, here's what's going to happen. If I do that, I would have that coaching moment with our kids so that I trained them.

I think a lot of parents expect kids to behave and they've never been through the training to teach them. You don't carve your name in the side of the vent minivan. You don't beat on it with a stick, right? But see, see, I think in that case you're showing wisdom and that you're looking ahead. Yeah. And so you're, you know, the temptations for them and you're looking ahead. And then I think for us then also is to say, okay, when they execute, when they do that, when they grab the candy or whatever, then you're like, oh honey, sorry. And then I'm going to follow through with the consequences. Follow through. I just got a brand new idea from you, Bob. So next time we go to a woman's clothing store, I'm going to say to Ann, you're going to have the temptation to want to pull that dress off the thing and buy three of them. I think you're a little more tempted than I am.

Maybe Harley Davidson store, maybe a guitar store. But let's go back to Ephesians 4 26 because you mentioned that and I think there's often confusion. Like what exactly does it mean? I'll read it to you.

You be the expert and explain it. But Paul writes in your anger, do not sin, which you talked about. Do not let the sun go down while you're still angry and do not give the devil a foothold.

So break that down a little bit as, as a husband or as a dad, as a, as a in marriage or in parenting. What is he saying? Obviously he's saying in your anger, don't sin. In other words, it could lead to sin, but it doesn't have to. But then he talks about the sun and the devil. What's all that what's going on? Well, I think for many years, my wife and I took that literally.

So did we. And it just led to worse things because when you're trying to resolve a disagreement at 11 o'clock at night, Oh, ours were three 30 in the morning. You're not thinking, you're not thinking clearly, you know, and yeah, but it says don't. Yes.

Before the sun goes down. Yeah. But I, I've got that in the back of it.

I got that little appendix in the back. I saw it. I have taken that and others may disagree, but I would say now as an older, older person, I need to release that anger, trusting, trusting that we are going to resolve it in the morning when we're, when we're both saying I'm going to far as possible, not go to bed angry in the sense, uh, still harboring that because I don't, I don't know about you, but, uh, what happens if you go to bed angry, then you get up, you're in the shower and you're like, Oh, I should have said this and I can't believe she, uh, you know, and you're just like rehashing it all over and then you start again, but praying and giving it to the Lord and saying, yeah, we need to resolve this. So it's, it's not, it can't go on for weeks, but in the sense that that is metaphorical in the sense of you need to resolve this quickly. That's the principle. Yeah.

It needs to be resolved quickly. And I do think that if you don't, then actually you allow bitterness that you give and the devil's got a place when they're all sorts of bitter people who have have these unresolved issues that they've never forgiven. You and your wife strategize together in parenting, even probably going through some of these issues with anger.

Tell us what that looked like. Well, I think one of the things really that it's a, it's a practical application of coming up with a plan with four kids and two years apart, our time to communicate was getting less and then we're having more issues that we wanted to talk through and we found ourselves disagreeing. And so one of the solutions that we, we hit upon was we, we kept a little notebook where we would write down, uh, things to talk about. So, so rather than sort of correcting the other in the moment, you're being too hard or whatever, uh, or we need to talk about this.

I don't know what to do about this issue. And we would keep a little notebook, each of us, uh, with same notebook, but we write down and then, um, and then once every two weeks we would go out for coffee. So I'm picturing like, oh, you just did something wrong. I'm going to write this in my book. No, but it was the sense of, I will, I want to talk about good.

I think that's great. I think it's, I think you were a little over the top that time and it's several times I want to talk about it, but in the moment is not the time to talk about it. She's not beating the kids or I'm not beating the kids, you know, so in the moment is not the time to talk about it. Well, we can talk about it later. And what a coffee date does is it pulls me in, uh, as, as the dad to say, Hey, you're supposed to be responsible here. And it sits down and say, we need to come up with a plan. And so that was just, that was really helpful for us. Uh, again, and it slows down, it prevents anger because now we can say, okay, we're going into it. We have problems, we have issues and now we have a plan that we're going to execute and then we can calmly do it. We can say, okay, well wait up. You're, you didn't do your chore.

What was the consequence for that? Oh, it's on the chart. Oh, an extra chore. Okay. Okay.

No big deal. I thought the character chart and, and, and that's a great part of this strategy. You talked about the anger journal and how you were using that to counsel your own heart.

But this character chart was a great tool. So if parents want to set one of these up, they can get the book and you, you give them guidance there. What would you suggest?

Well, uh, I use this quarantine time. I've actually worked on this on another video series, parenting with confidence and it's the parenting one Oh one and it's this idea of it's okay to be an authority, a authority and affection. I think a younger generation is nailing the affection part may better than I did, but you also are okay being an authority and then there need to be consequences.

Okay. Let's not rush past that cause I think that's a key. What do you mean when you say the younger generation is nailing the affection but not realizing the more emotionally connected love their kids, grace, you know, there's not this harsh, you shall obey me. Uh, just, just identifying with the kids just, I mean just really, really well. Having said that, um, and Spurgeon talks about this, about our heavenly father, but this is true for us as well. There also needs to be authority and, and we as parents are the authority God commands out of his goodness. Children should obey us.

That's not a power trip for us. Like that's out of God's good and they should obey us. And since we know they're, they're not going to, uh, we need to have a consequence and that's okay because training is action and I just have to jump on there too because it's not just about your kids learning to obey you. It's about your kids learning that authority exists in the universe first with God, then with human authorities and they need to learn how to obey authority. The home is the place where you teach them that. And if you're not teaching them that, they're going to have problems in school or with the police or with an employer. So this is, you're really discipling them when you say you've got to learn to obey mom and dad. It's a gift of showing them there are consequences to their good actions and their poor actions.

Like that's biblical. So back to the character chart, I want to set one of these up. What do I do? You have a coffee date? Well, first of all, I think you just record, record what's going on in our house. Uh, you know, what am I getting upset at? And they're saying, no, they're not doing a chore.

Uh, my pastor, you know, his, he was wrestling with his, his second grader in kindergarten would come home and have potty talk as they, as he called it, you know? So what are, take a list and then, and then figure out a couple of those things. Don't try and do everything right. And, but then figure out what's the consequences. So would you tackle a single issue at a time and do it over a three week period?

I think it depends on the, it depends on the age of the kids and, uh, but I do try and do a lot of talking. We've been letting you do this, but we're now, we're going to implement some principle or consequences and give an example like delayed chore obedience. Okay.

So you have, who's doing this? Yeah. You have your child what to put off. Yeah. And that would be it. And then you have consequences. Yeah.

You have that on your chart. Yeah. So they knew that if they didn't do a chore right away, they got an extra chore. So, and then you put what to put on and they're supposed to put on immediate obedience. Right.

And then you had scripture. Right. Right. So how did you walk that through? Well, I wanted them to see that I was just not making it up that this was rooted in God's word, whether it's Proverbs wisdom or scripture as well.

And you'd have a training time at the dinner table and you'd say, look, kids, you haven't been doing your chores. Here's what's going to happen going forward. Right. Right.

Right. Mom and I have not been honoring the Lord in this area. We're going to honor the Lord and often, depending on the age, you might have grace time, you know, where you say, Hey, you did it again.

We're not going to implement the consequence, but it's coming up or depending on the age, if they can handle it, say, you did it. But I think also in my mind, it's the expectation and this, the circles back to the anger. It's the expectation that just because I said it at dinner time, uh, then I'll expect, Oh, well now they're going to do it.

Well, no, they're not. And so you're going to say, I'm actually going to expect to have to deal out one of these consequences. One of the other things we did with our kids, that's in this same vein. When they were two years old, three years old, I'd say, let's play the obey game.

And that's what I called it. Let the obey game. And they'd go, how do we play? I said, you go over there and in just a minute, I'm going to call you to come over to me. And when I call you, you jump up and say, okay, daddy, and you run over to me.

Okay. And they'd say, okay, let's play that. And so they'd go over and they'd be sitting doing something and I'd go, uh, Katie, will you come here? And she'd jump up and go, okay, daddy. And she'd run over to me and I'd go, you won the game. Way to go.

I'd give her a big hug. You want to play again? Yeah, let's play again. We do this for 10 minutes. Well, I'm playing a game with them, but I'm teaching them a pattern, a habit that I want them to be in when they're four or five. I don't want it to be a game.

I want it to be a way of life for them. Right? That's solid gold.

That's genius, Bob. Haven't you shared that with us before? Because it didn't work. Okay. Continue to disobey. No, it, you know, it did have an impact and, and help them with this.

But, but then don't expect that it's just going to fix everything. And when they're four, they always obey. And it's really the same game in a sense when they're 16, 17, 18, and you say the curfew's 11, 10, nine, whatever, and they don't. Okay, daddy.

They don't show up. There's a consequence. There has to be right. And then even have to be meted out in anger. It's just, there's a consequence. Getting a handle on how we exert our authority without anger being the catalyst for that. That's really what's at the heart of this book and this series that you've put together.

I think that's going to help a lot of moms and dads and work. We're glad you've been here to talk with us about it. Thanks for coming. Good to have you here.

My joy. And we hope that our listeners will take advantage of the video series you've put together on this subject, parenting with patients. In fact, a chap, you've agreed to make the videos available right now for free to anybody who gets a copy of the workbook so you can go to family life today.com and find out how you can access for free the videos of chap bettas five sessions on parenting with patients.

And that's a subject that I think all of us could benefit from spending some time thinking about. Again, the videos are available free when you purchase the workbook. Information is available online at family life today.com. We also have copies of chap's book, which is called the disciple making parent and we've got that available on our family life today resource center along with David and Wilson's new book, no perfect parents.

Again, the information's available on the website at family life today.com or you can order the books from us when you call one eight hundred FL today. Now we're pretty excited around here because we have a weekend to remember marriage getaway happening this weekend in Indianapolis, Indiana and it's been a long time. Well, we had, we had one last month, but it's been a year since we've had a full schedule of weekend to remember getaways. David Robbins is here with us and David, our commitment, our goal here at family life is to do whatever we can do to help couples connect well with each other around biblical truth. Yeah, Bob, our seating is obviously limited at weekends to remember and our team has done an incredible job coming up with a creative resource called dates to remember where you get three moments together with your spouse to have really intentional, rich spiritual conversations together that lead to greater intimacy and just on Instagram today, I saw a post by Emily who said, Steve and I seriously talk for like three hours straight doing the first moment of our dates to remember box.

There was no distractions. It was just us and it was so awesome. And she goes on and says this is for all couples, no matter how long you've been together.

It's so great to be intentional. Yeah. And if you'd like more information about the dates to remember date box, you can go to our website, family life today.com. The information's available there.

You can order it from us online. And if you want to find out more about the handful of weekends to remember that we're going to continue having this month, may and in June again, go to family life today.com and the information is available there. And those of you in Indianapolis are going to the weekend. Remember this weekend, have a great weekend. In fact, we hope all of you have a great weekend. Hope you're able to worship together with your church family this weekend. And I hope you can join us on Monday when we're going to talk about the special bond between dads and daughters and what dads can do to help deepen that bond.

Conversation starters for dads and their daughters. Michelle Watson Canfield will be here with us to talk about that. Hope you can be here as well. I want to thank our engineer today.

Keith Lynch got some extra help this week from Bruce Goff. And of course our entire broadcast production team is involved in all of this on behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine. Have a great weekend. We'll see you Monday for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas. A crew ministry. Hope for today. Hope for tomorrow.