Melissa Kruger on Hopeful Parenting in a Secular Age

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Collin Hansen
I remember asking Tim Keller why he never wrote a book with his wife Kathy about parenting. After all, they wrote one of the most helpful books on marriage, the meaning of marriage. I interviewed them twice for this podcast gospel bound, and they’re among the most popular episodes among listeners of all time talking about marriage. It’s why didn’t they write the book? I didn’t feel like they’d been very good parents. Despite how their three boys turned out. The boys have families, they’re in church, one of them even followed in his dad’s footsteps as a pastor. The Killers looked at friends though, and thought that those friends had actually been better parents, but they didn’t see necessarily the same positive results from their own children and the colors and didn’t think they could give parenting counsel that would deliver what so many of us in the end want, which is assurance that our kids will turn out. Okay. Now, Melissa Krueger in her new book on parenting does not promise that our kids will turn out okay. But I can definitely say that this book parenting with hope raising teens for Christ in a secular age reflects so much of what I admire about her and her husband, Mike, she grounds us with hope and the gospel. We can trust God with our kids that his purposes can never be thwarted. And she grounds us with wisdom that we can grow in our parenting to better help our children flourish. And Melissa serves as vice president to discipleship program and for the gospel coalition. She is the author of many books, including walking with God and the season of motherhood, growing together, taking mentoring beyond small talk and prayer requests. Wherever you go, I want you to know, and His grace is enough. By the way, a lot of different genres of books there that contributes to unlock different audiences. I know we have a lot of a lot of women who listen to and watch gospel bound and I want to you to make sure no, you can hear Melissa when you register for the gospel coalition’s 2024 Women’s Conference, June 20 to 22nd in Indianapolis, she’ll be recording a live resin motherhood podcast with Emily Jensen and Laura with Fleur. They’re among other responsibilities. Melissa is probably our most popular guest on gospel bound, no pressure, Melissa. And she returns for the first time ever on gospel, but I say you’re a guest. But actually, Melissa, you’re always the interviewer.

So now you get to answer all of my questions on parenting. So thanks for joining me yet again, Melissa. And maybe for once. We will keep this podcast under 90 minutes. But I am not so sure. Because I got a lot of questions.

Speaker 1
We will try.

Collin Hansen
All right. First question, Melissa. Were you scared to write a book on parenting?

Melissa Kruger
Terrified, absolutely terrified. In fact, the publisher came to me asking, would I do this? And I told them no. And I was just said, No, I don’t think that’s for me. It’s too close. I’m just out of the season. And felt a lot of peace about that. And then they came a year later and asked again, and so and there were eight people on the call. So basically, you can say I was pressured. I was peer pressured into writing this book. But no, you know, I would say what I was was, I’m a big person, I always try to write what’s not there. I have no, you know, me, I have no desire for extra work. And so what I did look around is I said, wow, there’s nothing for the mom of teens that I could find, especially in our circles. And you know, I was a high school teacher. Yeah. And so a lot of these things I realized I did actually, in these child teen development classes, there were some things I had learned that were really helpful when I got to my own teens, that you kind of forgot you had learned along the way. And so I was hoping to pass some of those along as well.

Collin Hansen
And what did your kids think?

Melissa Kruger
They were like, Why are you doing this? Mom? Don’t do this. Don’t do this. What are you doing? You’re not going to tell our stories are you and I promise, I was not going to tell their stories. I was going to tell my story of being a teen parent. But they have actually been incredibly gracious to me to let me do this. And my daughter read it and my youngest read it. She’s 17 She’s still at home and she read it and she said, No, I understand some of the things you’re doing when you’re talking to us. So yeah, it’s it’s been fun. They’ve been actually very supportive, as we’ve talked about things we do and they’ve actually been very insightful as they look at other families in our community and say, yeah, it doesn’t go well in this situation. I mean, their pain ATTENTION TO and had a lot more insight than I expected.

Collin Hansen
Do you think that a mother could actually read this book with her teens? I mean, I know that’s not the primary use of it. But would that be? Would that be plausible?

Melissa Kruger
That’s a great question. I think it’d be pretty interesting. I think what it can help the teenager realize is, you know, what, your parent is doing this for the first time, too. And so perhaps it could lead to a little bit of openness. You know, I think often as parents, we feel like we’re supposed to be the experts. But you know, every every oldest child is your first time you’re going through it. And so you never really get to feel like you’re a parenting expert, because you’re always learning. I’m currently learning what it’s like to be the parent of a child who’s getting ready to get married. You know, we’re always learning along the way, as we parent our children.

Collin Hansen
I mean, I hadn’t thought about that going into this interview that possibility, but that is a interesting thing, maybe to help our children be a little more sympathetic that we don’t have all the answers that we have to learn along the way, just as they just as they do. We’re continuing to grow up as we learn new experiences there with them. When somebody finishes this book, Melissa, what do you want them to think? And what do you want them to feel?

Melissa Kruger
Yeah, I want them to think they’re active means of grace that I can employ in my parenting, that really have nothing to do with my teenager. So I want them to think about that. And I want them to leave hopeful that they can cling to those when they don’t know what to do with their teenager, they can run to what the Bible instructs us, or means of grace, meaning word, prayer church, they can run to those things, they can place their hope in those things. I can’t change my child, but I can pray. Yeah, there’s always something to do, right. I mean, I, when we don’t know what to do, we can beg the Lord for His help. So I hope that they will employ the means of grace God has given us and use this more readily, and fight our battles as parents in those ways. Rather than thinking, I’ve got to try to figure out how to control my teen, which is very hopeless, because, you know, if we try to control anyone, we’re gonna fail, whether it’s your spouse, whether it’s your boss, whether you know, whatever we’re gonna fail, but to really sort of hope. So to think about those, those means of grace, and to be hopeful.

Collin Hansen
Now, I’m, I’m a little, I’m pretty lucky in that I don’t have teen children, but I’ve benefited a lot from your advice, and talked with you a lot and, and learned a lot and picked up a lot of things. Just thinking about when my kids get get older. One of the things that you’ve talked with me about early in the process of conceiving this book, I think, what’s the difference between authoritative and authoritarian? Parenting? It’s pretty important in your book, why don’t you tell us a little bit about what that is?

Melissa Kruger
Yeah, I mean, when you developmental psychologists or sociologists, I mean, they’ll talk about different styles of parenting. And this these have been in the books for Yeah, since I was back when I was in college. So at least at least 30 years, I don’t know how long goes, I was in college. So when it comes to parenting, we often just think there are two parenting styles. We think there’s permissive or we think there’s authoritarian, and we miss this other category called authoritative, which studies have shown along the way is the healthiest type of parenting that leads to the best outcomes. So some distinctions between authoritarian and authoritative, they sound very similar. So it can be confusing. Authoritarian is a little bit of the old school my way or the highway. It’s high expectations, but low warmth. So there’s very little discussion, there’s very little conversation. It’s just, you can’t date until this age, because that’s my role. And we’re not going to really talk about it very much. Whereas authoritative is a little bit more. It’s still has high expectations, but it has higher degrees of warmth. So it’s going to be a type of parenting that is going to engage more conversation. Again, when you’re raising a two year old, it’s totally fine to be like you’re not running in the street, and I’m not really explaining why you’re just not running in the street. But when you have teens, you do want to start engaging them in right thinking, because guess what, in like three years, they’re going to be making all of their own right or wrong thinking without you. So you want to invite them into the hows and whys. You want to ask good questions. It doesn’t mean you don’t have standards, you still have standards as a authoritative parent, but the way you go about expressing and communicating those standards is going to be very different than authoritative parent 30 of parents, this is it, I’m not going to discuss it. These are the rules. Authoritarian parent, I mean, authoritative parent is going to say, let’s have a conversation. Let’s talk about the whys and they might even budge. I’m not talking about scriptural boundaries, scriptural boundaries, we all call firm. But what I am talking about are as a parent, each of us has to make curfew decisions, each of us has to make, you know, decisions about what we’re going to purchase for our kids, whether we’re going to let them have a cell phone, or whether we’re going to send them to this school or that school. There are a lot of places in parenting that we have to make decisions that it’s really wise to engage and involve our teenager, not deterministically. Like they don’t they don’t get to make all the calls. But we have a conversation.

Collin Hansen
Again, I just think that distinction is very helpful. And I see a little bit more of that in my kids. But spanning from nine to two. Yeah, big difference.

Melissa Kruger
You’re right, their nine year old, you’re right there.

Collin Hansen
Gosh, we’re getting close.

Melissa Kruger
Other people’s kids grow up so faster than yours.

Collin Hansen
That’s true. That’s true. It’s kind of like watching students come through a graduate school or undergraduate school. You’re like you just got here. How did you graduate?

Melissa Kruger
They’re like, “It’s been torture? What are you talking about?”

Collin Hansen
Four years of agony, like, I don’t know. You just showed up. Alright, so thinking about teens again, that’s the primary focus here parenting with hope raising teens for Christ in a secular age. What is the best advice you ever received from someone on parenting teens?

Melissa Kruger
Wow, that’s a good question. I haven’t been asked that before. Hmm. I’m probably going to change it. I mean, I think the best advice I’ve ever received on parenting is, I mean, is to be prayerful. I mean, like when I when I actually get down to it, I know I just said it. But there’s just nothing better than being prayerful. I would, I would say practically. One thing I say a lot to myself is just bide your time, just let it pass and have the discussion later. So if I were going to give advice, it would be let it pass, have the discussion later. The here’s the difference. When you have a two year old you get into habits, you need to actually discipline right away, because you can’t have the conversation later. So that makes complete sense. As the parent of a teenager when they come in hot, it’s time for you to bring the temperature down. And so sometimes you just let a moment of complete disrespect. You just let it pass. And you say, Hmm, okay, there’s something going on with them. That was not appropriate how they just responded to me. But it doesn’t need to be dealt with. Now. It can be dealt with in 30 minutes, it can be dealt with, you know, in an hour, and that type of byte, your time and have the conversation later can probably go a long way.

Collin Hansen
So you don’t match hot with hot, you’ve got to match hot with cold in those cases. Which is one of those things where, go ahead?

Melissa Kruger
Oh, sorry. No, I said I call that being the parent. Yeah, you know, we match hot with hot when it’s appear in some sense, or you know, you’re in a debate, you’re the parent. So I’m the example. And so I’m trying to actually teach them how to moderate their emotions. And you know, what you may be completely ticked off as a parent, how they come in hot with you, they will come in, and they will blame you for every mistake in your life in their life. And you’re thinking, It’s not my fault. You didn’t get your homework done until now or whatever, yeah, you could be defensive. But it doesn’t really accomplish much as what I would say. And sometimes they just need a place to lose it. It’s not right. It’s not accepting of the behavior. It’s just saying, I’m gonna absorb that, and we’ll have a conversation about it later. And it normally goes a lot better that way.

Collin Hansen
Well, I think it’s why Paul Tripps advice on parenting is been very helpful to me that your response is about you not about your kids. Because that’s why the response often when they come in hot is to say, How dare you, and then it’s the appeal to authority ultimately, and then it’s, but that does, especially with teenagers, as you’re talking about here, that doesn’t seem to go very well. Like you said, being the parent means controlling your response and finding the best way to be able to communicate about the you know, what’s happened there and, and to deal with what’s right and what’s wrong. What is the worst advice you’ve gotten as a parent?

Melissa Kruger
It would probably come alongside the I can’t believe you let your kid do X, Y or Z. Because what is inherent in that is that we have control over xy and z with our kids. And some of it’s just our typical parental judgement of other people. And this happens a lot in the young years, but it continues to the old years until I mean, you’re Yeah, you’re sending your kid in shorts at 31 degree weather. And you would probably even say about yourself, I can’t believe you let your kids go to school in shorts and 31 degree weather. But you know, what you’ve realized at that point, it’s not a battle worth having. And so kind of that, whatever it might be, I can’t believe you let your kid do whatever that kind of just maybe that’s not advice, maybe that’s just judgment from other parents, I would just steer clear of those people. Because normally, they’re not going to have the best advice. They’re going to have a lot of rules with maybe out wisdom. And so I always get concerned when I hear that kind of thought rather than being curious. Hey, why do you do this in your home? Is there a reason? That’s a very different a different way to approach even a younger parents? Yes. If you’re looking for wisdom, I look for the even the older parents who are curious rather than Yeah, condemning. Maybe that’s, maybe that’s a comparison or to use.

Collin Hansen
You’re mentioning here, the role of community we do this where we see what other people do we know that people see what we do. We’re making evaluation sometimes judgments. Your subtitle of the book raising teens for Christ in a secular age, how is the church helped you raise teens in a secular age? Yeah,

Melissa Kruger
I am so thankful to have really had a great community around me from birth, you know, up up through the teen years, just other parents that you can talk to about faith. But even some older parents, just a few years, a few stages ahead of me. One of my mentors actually had the exact same lineup, she had a girl boy girl, and when I would get in the car with her to go on a retreat, I came question ready. Because what I knew about her kids was they actually liked still liked being around their parents, even when they were struggling, even when they were having seasons of, you know, doubts about Christianity or whatever. There was still an open door with the parents. And so I would ask God to get in the car and say, What did you do to create a home like that? Why do your kids still want to talk to you? Tell me what you did? You know. And so so having people one stage ahead of us who can still remember that stage? Because honestly, I’d be terrible with like an 18 month old mom right now. I can’t remember what you do.

Collin Hansen
It is amazing what you forget.

Melissa Kruger
But like one stage ahead, and then come with your questions. Because everybody has different questions. And I found that to be a huge part, but also having peers who you can just discuss different issues with, I will say this about the teen years, though, that can become a lot harder. When you have two year olds, everyone can talk about and laugh about the situation at target when your kids having a tantrum, and you’re carrying them out. And you’re like, Oh, my goodness, it was so embarrassing. We’ve all had those moments. In the teen years, it starts to be your kid’s story. And you know, so there are things my kids have struggled with that I don’t I don’t talk about with anyone. And so it’s it’s a different reality, because it’s not just your story anymore. And so it can be harder to find people to talk to but but there are great ways you can do that. And I’ve actually found older people a little bit easier to do that with. And so I would say, but what you can always have is people who are praying, even when they don’t know just like, hey, my daughter’s struggling through an issue right now. I can’t talk about it. But will you just pray for her. And we can do that for each other even when we can’t explain and and you just want to say don’t assume everyone’s parenting world is just perfect. I think a lot of my friends I’ve been on the inside have a lot of discussions with people who are going through heart wrenching things in the chin teen years. And so don’t assume oh, it’s all great over there. It might it might not be. And so that’s why we really do need each other and we need not to make those assumptions because if you make that assumption, it can really prevent community because you think no one understands me and they might not understand your particular situation. But they can understand this is really hard. You don’t know what to do. And we’re gonna cry out to the Lord together.

Collin Hansen
What’s different Melissa about? She’s no let me rephrase that. I was going to ask you what’s different about parenting in a second? their age, compared to the time and place where you grew up. I’m going to change that. What’s the biggest difference in parenting in a secular age, compared to the time in place where you grew up? I mean, for you and me both and any number of people watching and listening right now, there are untold differences. So what’s the first it comes to mind? What do you think is the biggest difference?

Melissa Kruger
The first that comes to mind is definitely the influence of the cellphone. You know, and and this isn’t just a secular age, maybe this isn’t an electronically always connected age. I mean, so that so it’s, it’s broader than even just secularism. But the amount of information and the world that is on our cell phones that is accessible to a young child at a young age is pretty overwhelming. And pretty shocking what people have access to that they just wouldn’t have had access to. I mean, you know, like, when we were growing up, to be quite honest, I’ll be very frank here, because I just had this conversation last night with someone for me to have seen a pornographic image, and it would have been a still image. I mean, that would have had to be in my home. Yeah, I couldn’t have just stumbled upon it. And I was talking with a friend last night, and she was talking about a dating relationship she had with with a guy, and he at age seven, so this She’s younger than me clearly. Because, yeah, at age seven, that guy had stumbled upon porn, pornographic images of men together. And so that had caused him to question a sexuality for the rest of his life. And that had caused them to have struggles in dating it. Yeah. So this is, this is where it went. I mean, like that just didn’t. That just wasn’t a part of my experience growing up. No one stumbled upon these issues. Yeah, these images at age seven. Yeah. And in most of our, our experience, and so it’s just huge the things and it’s not just that it’s questions about all sorts of things that they can easily find online and voices who are, yeah, contradicting what you might be trying to teach. So it’s a completely different world in that sense.

Collin Hansen
I don’t our staff at TGC, we’ve got a lot of people who have teens or have had teens and are working through these things. And it’s not a coincidence that we’ve aligned a lot of the help that we try to provide, alongside what we’re studying and what we’re learning. And so if you look at the recorded podcast, which anybody can still go out there and download and watch those episodes hosted by Sara’s alstrom, you saw that we did one episode focused on college age women and younger, especially with with smartphones. And then second, we also did one on teen boys and college age boys on video games. And it’s important to note that everybody knows the smartphone is different because you and I didn’t have those when we were in high school. But video games we did have when we were in high school, but they’re not the same. They’re very different. They’re much more immersive. The internet connectivity really changes things when it comes to video games in there. The next episode that Sarah Zell is gonna have been talking about this is normally when I talked with Melissa on gospel bound, we’re giving a little bit of a preview toward the future. The latest one that I’ve talked with her about is, is travel sports, which is another major change like the the amount of travel, the amount of expense, the amount of pressure, the amount of specialization, all that. Now, Sarah also has written write a bit, quite a bit about classical schools, just another thing that’s changed as the the secular assumptions of public schools have sort of furthered. You know, you and I both grew up in fairly conservative areas, you know, in the grand scheme of things in public schools.

And there were still a number of assumptions there that are not there now, no matter where you go, and a lot of different letter different spots there. And so, of course, Christian schools, classical schools, things like that. homeschooling, of course, a lot of different good alternatives out there have arisen. So I just wanted to point out that we’re, we’re thinking about these things and later this season on gospel bound, most likely to wrap up season the first season of 2024 We’ll see about that but we’ve got Jonathan Hite will be talking about his book The anxious generation focused on on young young women, teenagers, young adults, especially with their their the causes of anxiety. I also just noticed there’s a new Book by Abigail Shara out on the same topic of anxiety. So there’s a lot of good folks who are building on this. But what I love, Melissa about what you do here is you, you root this thing in hope. And as you’ve mentioned here many times, you bring it back to prayer. So let me ask this when you’re when you’re praying for your kids, Melissa, you’re you’re alone in the dark in a dark morning on the back porch. How do you cling to God with hope is, is there a truth you meditate on? Is there a passage you pray? Are you waiting on some kind of assurance, sense of assurance or comfort from the Lord? What’s it like?

Melissa Kruger
Yeah, you know, one thing I actually use is a resource. I created a NACA with this good book company has a series series called five things to pray. And it’s five things to pray for your church, five things to pray for your workplace five, yeah, they have all these different ones. And they had actually asked me to write five things to pray for your kids. And I still use it. That’s what I’m going through and what it does just lead you through Scripture. So sometimes, you know, I was in a rut, just praying, Lord, bless my children, Laura, let my children have faith, Lord, yeah, and those are great prayers. I mean, goodness, if we’re gonna go anywhere, that when starting with Lord, let my kids have faith, that’s a great place to pray. But what I love about five things to pray for your kids, is it just leads you through a lot of different scripture for a lot of different things. So for instance, this morning, I was actually using it to pray for my kids. And the prayer I was praying for them was about strength and courage, when they’re fearful and anxious. That was what the passage led me to pray. And, you know, it wasn’t like there was a presenting issue for each of my kids today, but what I did was take that scripture, and I used it to help me pray for each of them, and something that they might even be fearing, you know, or whatever. And so I just applied it in that way. So I’m a big believer in prayer and Scripture back, I think, also just praying the Lord’s Prayer. Goodness, what if we really started every day?

One, you remember our father, Okay, guess what, you as a parent, are still a child. And so you get to have your father who you can call on sometimes I feel like that, don’t you? Like, I’m so tired of the weight of everything being on me, I wish I had a, you know, someone I can take everything to and feed me and put on my socks and help me get dressed. This stuff actually causes us he says, pray to our Father, and then who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. May you be glorified today in my parenting. May you be glorified today in our family, your kingdom come your will be done. You know, not, I really want my kids to make the football team. I really want my kids to make the soccer team. Actually, let me hold it loosely before you and say, Lord, will you do what’s best for my team? Because I don’t even know what’s best for my team. Forgive us our debts is a great place to pause and say, Do I need to apologize for my team for anything? have I sinned against them? Do I need to go before them and earn my own behavior? Yeah, or do I need to forgive them for anything? Am I holding a grudge because of something they’ve done and not act walking and forgive this? You know, again, these things that we’ve prayed a million times we can apply them to our families, and what a rich blessing that can be.

Collin Hansen
I love that. Now, raising teens has changed a lot, even between your oldest and youngest daughter. We know things in 2024 that we didn’t know in 2014. Would you change anything? Going back?

Melissa Kruger
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I was completely clueless about smartphones and social media. So when my daughter at 13 asked, Could she have Instagram? Maybe even 12? I was like, Sure. And I was just sharing pictures. What? How convenient is this rather than having to print them and pass them around, like we used to do in middle school, there’s this little app called Instagram. Great. Sure. share your pictures with your friends. I have no idea would become this marketing tool. But also this like an A like thing? Or yeah, I mean, like this. You can’t imagine Oh, it’s hard enough as a teenager to realize you didn’t get invited to a party. Well, now not only did you not get invited you see them all posting about it. What’s that going to do to a teenager heart? Yeah, like this is I just didn’t even know. And, and you know, and this is where part of part of the hope comes in. And I’ve told you this story before. That same daughter, I didn’t know the harm. The Lord knew the harm. And we were at church one Sunday and her teen years and she heard a sermon from a visiting pastor on not wasting your life. It had nothing to do with social media this is before everyone was aware. He said not one word about social media. She got in the car and said, yeah, just delete it, Instagram, I think it’s a waste of my time.

And yeah, and so I’m like, oh, again, the means of grace, the word preach, it has real power to act in ways that we don’t know how the Lord will act. And so I just again, want to say one of the best things you can do for your teen is to take them to church. I mean, we’re suffering from a crisis of isolation, a crisis of loneliness, or crisis of anxiety. And the studies have shown the benefits of weekly religious service is for teens, on those very things. Things like anxiety and mental health are improved, just by going to church to a weekly religious service every week. And again, what we know to be true in Scripture is proven true. As we look at common grace insights of studies that have been done by even non Christians who can see these things.

Collin Hansen
When what you said right, there is related then also to what I mentioned about the youth sports that we’re discussing in there, because just because somebody is offering something to your kids, that sounds good, and might be good in some ways, does not mean that they have your children’s best interests at heart. And sometimes, as a parent, you don’t know either. And so that’s where the prayer comes in, but also just an awareness of the scope and the scale of some of those things. So if you had known I mean, the Lord provided, but it was also helpful to know some more things about what was happening with smartphones, like in smartphones, video games, travel, sports, things like that. It’s interesting, I think, Melissa, you mentioned earlier that you were a teacher is pretty amazing.

When I go back, and I see my kids in elementary school, and you realize that if you’re not a teacher, you only frame of reference you have as your own school growing up. And that does not tell me a lot about the situation today. I don’t learn a lot. I mean, it’s so much has changed in there that I realize I don’t know what I’m, I don’t know, I don’t know exactly what I’m dealing with. And so I can only imagine what that’s like, then when you’re raising teens, you’re thinking back to your own experience. You don’t have the paradigms necessarily to understand a lot of the differences what’s happening there. So along those lines, you know that my youngest son is two, what should I be doing and praying now, that can help him as a teen?

Melissa Kruger
Yeah, I think the biggest thing you can do is create a warm home environment. All of the basic building blocks of society comes starts with the family. And so in a lot of ways, living like Christians in the home, helps them with every relationship, they’ll have, you know, look, I have made so many mistakes. As a parent, I had to call my daughter, you know, a couple of weeks ago, this is my adult daughter. And I called her back and said, Hey, I’m so sorry for how I said that critical thing. It just wasn’t helpful. It wasn’t needed. I’m really sorry, that I said it. So I would say, practice getting really good at apologies, and owning your own behavior. Like that. That’s the place to start even with my two year old. Because here’s what I’ve found. My kids all know how to apologize. And they all give quick apologies. And they all own their behavior. And they own their behavior with each other. And what it does is set the basis for the type of people they will be attracted to, to be friends with, to to Yeah, they’re just not going to put up with certain behaviors.

I would say the best offense for peer pressure for teens is a strong family unit where they know that they are loved, that they know that they are accepted for who they are. And what I mean by that is not accepted in their sin, but accepted that maybe they’re your musical family and they’re not musical, maybe your sports family and they’re not sporting and you still love them because of who God made them to be. And that this is a home of grace, where when mistakes are made. We look to the gospel and we look to Christ and we say Hey, we love you. We’re gonna we’re gonna help you in this mistake, those type, the family unit can have a profound impact on the world around us. And I think we we so we’re, we’re so excited to go and make disciples and that begins in the home. And that can in fact affect cities that can have an impact neighborhoods and cities and the whole world around as as we create loving and warm and affectionate hubs. And so I say there’s two year olds, all this hugs you give all these books you read need all of those, you know, smiles of delight? Wow. I mean, to me that’s culture making. And that’s going to change the world as we as we do that well.

Collin Hansen
At a fun moment recently, I was lecturing here at at Samford University on Tim Keller. And there was a q&a session and we started talking about the same things that I opened this podcast with started talking about parenting. And I mentioned, one of Tim’s sons, saying that the most important thing my dad did was he apologized to me when he was when he was wrong when he was in sin. I mentioned that to the group. And afterward my, my older son came up to me and he said, Dad, you do that too. And I was like, Well, I have plenty of occasions, unfortunately. But it was just good to see that there’s some of that recognition. And I’m not gonna say it’s easy. Usually what the way I work, I think that I’m right in the moment. And then I realized that I’m not afterward, because I matched the hot with hot, that’s one of my biggest problems. And so what you were talking about earlier, so that’s usually where I end up having to apologize there. Because my own emotions just kind of run away. And I don’t quite realize it and catch it in the moment. And there’s not a lot that’s deeper, you know, and runs hotter than relationships with your with your kids. And if any of us wonder about that, I don’t think anybody does, we just have to remember our own parents. And what that felt like for us. I’ve got just a couple more questions here. Your three kids are so different from each other. So are mine. What is constant Melissa in your parenting? And what needs to change from child to child?

Melissa Kruger
Yeah, what’s constant in my parenting is being curious about who God’s making them to be. I can say, Wow, it’s so much better to go into parenting open handed, and say, Who have you given me, Lord, and seeing each child is kind of a gift to be to get to know, rather than a product to be curated? I think there’s a lot of curating of children going on, rather than a lot of enjoyment of them going on. And so to really look and say, Who’s God made me to be? How can I? How do I get to be a part of that? What a gift, I mean, what an absolute gift to get to be a part of that. And then with each child, it’s going to change, there’s going to be different ways that we have to discipline different kids and instruct different kids. But what you know, what that’s gonna look like, isn’t even all that different. Even when the kids are really different. If you’re doing the first thing which is delighting in who God made them to be. I would say the principles haven’t changed very much the practice may have changed, but not not basic principles, those are really remained the same, to be curious to ask a lot of questions to be available to listen. Well. Those things have have have, I would say, gone across gender have gotten across way different personalities. And the ability to kind of not take yourself so seriously, is really helpful in parenting teens.

Collin Hansen
Well, I think, Melissa, that there’s another trend we haven’t discussed here yet, but that I I’ve covered a lot in other interviews, especially earlier this year with with Brad Wilcox, but I wonder if the curated children phenomenon is connected to having fewer kids. Because if you had if you had 567, or more kids, and they were all the same, and they were all just like you that would that would strike everybody as wrong, odd and wrong. But if you have one child, or even two children, I think there is the sense that they should they’re kind of reflections of me, and extensions of me. And I need to ensure that I need to sort of control those outcomes. Not just says a reflection to me, but because I just have a sense of sort of, I don’t know, a misguided sense of control. I think it’s similar to we didn’t know if we were going to have any kids. We didn’t know if we were going to have one child. This is just how the Lord blessed us, especially having to start later for a variety of reasons, but it’s amazing what I would think about parenting if I had one child versus three because I would think that what I do has a certain outcome. And I would go back and I’d say, Oh, this is this way, because I did this, or this is this way, because I did this, the more kids you have, and I think, especially when you get to three, there’s like a tipping point where you think, yeah, I’m not in control of as much as I thought.

Melissa Kruger
You start to think, “Did I do anything, anything that impacts you?” And what I will say is, here’s what I will say. It’s kind of like, the bones, their bones are who they are, we probably don’t do a lot of uncertain things. What I would say is, we’re teaching them how to do the things the Lord, like so. So in some ways, we want them to do it with love, and joy and peace and patience and kindness and self control, like the fruit of the Spirit, as we are living that before them, we’re not going to really change is my kid amazing at math, because we did some two year old math program, I don’t think you know, or Oh, my goodness, I taught them to read it three, I’m great. I just don’t think that’s gonna make them an amazing writer later in life, they’re going to either be that, or they’re not going to be that, but but their ability to be humble, their ability to be kind, their ability to love, I think those are the things that we can really focus on. And some of those don’t come about because we did Baby Einstein, or we did this amazing program, some of this come about because we had family dinners. You I mean, so I just think we have neglected some of the most important things. Because we’re trying to curate and, and and it’s coming from a good place. And parents, we’re trying to do the best for our kids. But I want to say the best is to do things like take them to church, to have family dinners where you can pray together as a family to talk about God’s word. That’s the best. And our world is selling us something that doesn’t actually give life, which is they need a private tutor for baseball, they need a essay teacher, and all those things. Like, yeah, I’m not saying this or bad. I’m just saying they’re not the best thing for our kids.

Collin Hansen
Yeah. Well, I think this is why it’s helpful to have that person who’s the next level up. Because I think when you when you mentioned earlier that we don’t remember things from a long time ago. What’s interesting is that I think it’s like, when I talked to my parents, I’ll say something like, Hey, do you guys remember what it was like when I was two, and they’re like, I don’t remember anything. And at first, I was kind of offended, then, and then I thought more of it. And I realized, I mean, that was a long time ago, that was 40 years ago. And also, we the Lord doesn’t, the your attitude kind of becomes the Lord provided and he got us through. And, you know, we just, we just learned to progress through that you just have sort of a blessed remembrance of we made it through, but you don’t really remember how you remember. So you have to have both the broad perspective of you know what, it’s going to be fine, you’re going to be okay, that’s typically the ups and downs of the market, it generally will still rise. In other words, most of the time, your kids are still going to grow up, they’re going to figure things out. Now, not always, there are sad incidents, all kinds of different ways. But generally speaking, you shouldn’t worry too much. Ultimately, though, the reason you don’t worry is not just because it generally works out. But because it’s all in the Lord’s hands. And it seems like as you get older, that’s a little bit more of you what you realized was, Lauren sustained us by his his grace and and then I think in some ways, the older you get the dumber you thought you realize that you were someplace to you’re like, Oh, I did not have a clue what I was doing at that point.

Melissa Kruger
I think we can forget what life without Christ is like, like, like when I think about what a bad mom, I would have been without the conviction of Scripture. Without you know, like that check on my response is my responsibility. Well, that’s a Christian principle, right? I mean, rather than and so here’s what I will say you get you see a lot of older people who have no relationship with their children. They’re bitter. They’re angry. And I would say we really do forget that Christ is the foundation on which we have to build our homes. Yep. And that’s where because because just as we talked about, yeah, you’ve heard a million wedding ceremonies. He’s where the pastor turns and says, you actually don’t have it in you what you need to commit to this other person? Well, I would love to look at parents and be like, you don’t have it in you, to love this child in and of yourself, your love will actually run dry, you need a bigger felt, you need a better love. And so by filling yourself with that love and then filling your home with a love of Christ, and that’s just, it’s just not what the world’s pushing us towards. And I would say the biggest danger of the secular age is it’s pushing us towards manmade solutions for spiritual problems. And so we have to fight against that. Abandon the word abandon prayer, church, it sounds so simple. But man, it’s hard to live in practice in our world today.

Collin Hansen
You’re opening up too many interesting places to go. This is why we need our own podcast. Someday. Well, we’ll just we’ll talk through all these different things. So I’m going to restrain myself because otherwise we’re gonna end up at 90 minutes. Goodness, okay. I’m gonna ask this question. And I’m gonna preface this last one. We’re talking here with Melissa Krueger. I’m talking about parenting with hope raising teens for Christ in a secular age. I’m going to preface that this last question is about me. It’s not about you. So it’s about me, I’m asking you for advice, because this is about me. Now, you, Melissa, in your experience, you’ve been exclusively focused at home, you’ve worked in your church. Now you have an extremely demanding job at TJC. I know the work, that the work that we do, it really affects my parenting. And it’s not always in in good ways. I mentioned an example earlier, where it was a good way, what things I learned from Tim and Kathy, but there are other ways that it does not affect me in positive ways, just stress and anxiety, things like that. The travel is certainly hard with with having kids at that age, sometimes definitely that the stress will bleed out with them. I think part of it is because of our remote work, and that we’re working online with a lot of things. There’s not, you know, my my wife’s father was a surgeon, and you don’t bring surgery home with you. It’s there at the hospital, you’re not doing that, at home, very clear separation. That’s not the case for us. And it’s really not the case for anybody in ministry. I think the fact that my mom was a teacher, my dad was a farmer, prepared me for ministry, because there weren’t a lot of boundaries. Between work, we literally lived at my father’s work, non stop. And then my mother’s work. She definitely brought home with her, literally and emotionally. So just saying with with all that you’re trying to balance here, for my advice, how do you keep hopeful as a parent, who’s also working long hours?

Melissa Kruger
Yeah, that’s a great question. And we do bring that stuff home. And I think what I’m what I’m hopeful about, even when I hear that is, I do believe our kids can handle better Hey, daddy had a stressful day. And you know, I know I just spoke harshly to you. And I’m sorry, I did that they can actually handle that. What they can’t handle is grown up thinking it was always their fault. You know, so, yeah, yep. And so they can actually hear that what I’m hopeful about is the truth of Scripture that tell us ask forgiveness when you sin. Like, I like those truths. This sounds it’s not just pragmatic, but they actually work. Because I think a lot of kids grow up, you’ll see this, especially in children of divorce, they think the divorce is their fault. So the reality is your young kids when they see you angry and upset, and yeah, they see you looking at your phone, and you’re like, oh my gosh, I’m sure like, I can’t believe that person said that about this. Yeah, I know. I know. The things that can they think they did something wrong in that moment? They think Daddy is because they’re inherently self focused, right? Like you and I both know, they had nothing to do with why you’re upset or why you’re tired or why you’re weary. But they think in their minds, it had everything to do with them.

So honestly, I think what I’m hopeful about is when the grown a bit of Christian home kids, kids, you actually have a place to say one I’m sorry, but you also have a right place not to dump your emotional baggage on your kid. But like I’m picturing at the family dinner table to say, hey, Dad’s really stressed about work. You know, Carter, will you pray for him? Yeah, to have these conversations and say, Hey, we pray for dad. Wow. He gets to Be Kind of like your brother at that moment yet come alongside, I’m gonna pray for dad or whatever. And I’ve watched my kids do that. When I found that my mom’s breast cancer was back. I was sitting at the table and my 16 year old came and she’s like, You look sad mom. And I was like, I am sad. Yeah, this happened to us, like, can’t pray for you. Yeah, there’s hope. Right? There’s not hope that we avoid the hard things. There’s not hope that we avoid the stressors of life. But there’s actual hope that we’re equipping our kids for how to walk through them as we walk through them with them. And I find that really hopeful that the the Christian message, the wisdom we’ve received, is actually truth. And I’ve seen it and experienced, it’s true. It works. Because that’s how we’re created to live and work.

Collin Hansen
I think it was last night, I was trying to explain to William, age 2, that I was going to be gone for the next few days. I don’t think it was was all clicking with him. I think I did ask him to pray. No, I was thinking, but I was trying to apply some of the principles there of like, well, I just just want him to know that, that I need help. And I want everything to go well at home when I’m gone. And I’m sad when I have to when I have to leave them, I just I have this a pit in my stomach every time I head to the airport. And it’s not because I’m not doing good things that the Lord has called our whole family to be able to do together. But it’s still it’s still just hard to do that. But I think you’re you’re right to kind of help the set a tone of the family participating, meaning that they’ve been called to do this together, and that we’re seeking to the Lord together for help. And, and that this is there are sacrifices. And it is hard. But there are also blessings, many, many blessings that come from that. And I don’t think that would be different. Even for anybody listening and watching. You may not be traveling as much as I do, or Melissa does.

But especially if you’re a pastor, you still have those late nights, you’ve got those meetings, you’ve got those visitations, you’ve got those funerals, the vacations that are cut short, all that sort of stuff. And so I just I like what you keep saying here, Melissa, that, let’s just take it open handed together prayerfully before the Lord instead of a culture of sort of secrecy and in recrimination. I don’t think that I don’t think that works very well, or a lack of self awareness to realize I mean, it actually took a long time, Melissa, for me to realize that my work was affecting myself around my family. It would have been blindingly obvious to everybody else, but I just didn’t see that. So maybe if you’re watching or listening, maybe you experienced the same thing there. You just might not be aware of that. Well, like I said, Melissa, we’ll just have to keep this going on our own podcast at some point here. But in the meantime, your book, parenting with hope raising teens for Christ in a secular age. I believe it’s going to do a lot of good and like you said, there’s just not a lot out there like it. And I’m glad that you took the risk. And I knew you would do a great job of it because I’ve just seen you model that kind of wisdom with me and with many others over the years. So congrats on the book, and thanks for joining me on Gospelbound.

Melissa Kruger
Thanks for having me, Collin.