Raise Your Kids to Know Their True Identity

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Jen Wilkin
This is a goodness, what a great turnout. And I’m happy to see that there are dads in the room as well as moms way to go dads way to go dads. So a little about me, I am a mother to five children for who we received through the miracle of biological birth, and one through the miracle of semi adoption of an adult child, who we are thrilled to have in our family. My husband, Jeff and I have been married for 30 years. And so our kids are now all between the age of 27 and 23, we had four kids in four years. Let it hit you for just a moment. And so I do, I do like to say anytime that I talk about parenting issues, first of all, anything that I’m going to say will be the product of an enormously just beautiful partnership with my husband, Jeff, and that I can only tell you what we did, I cannot tell you what to do, I will offer you some principles that I hope are helpful to anyone that you can apply. But in terms of the specifics, you are on your own, because every family is unique in many ways, the ages and stages in which you find your own children are going to be perhaps very different than what our home looked like. But I do think there will be some general principles that will I hope be helpful to anyone. So I’m wondering, Oh, nope, it’s stuck on there. We’ll just leave it right there. Hi, buddy. Let’s put you over there. We’re here today to talk about gathered, not scattered parenting toward a shared identity in an age of individualism. Has anybody else noticed that we have what we want when we want it in this particular culture that we are in. And so when we think about what it means to be a family, it’s going to be important for us to understand how the family unit can impact individualism. Now there is individualism. And then there is being an individual, we do want to recognize the beauty of an individual, but individual ism is when the needs and wants and preferences of the one person supersede or are the first thing to come to the surface up and against the needs of the group. So my daughter, Mary Kate, she’s currently in Korea with her husband, who is inconveniently in the Air Force. I’m just kidding. Thank you for your service. But she has had two of our grandchildren in the last couple of years. And so we went over there at the beginning of my sabbatical that I had back in April, because it sounded super restful for the birth of her second child. And what Jeff and I were responsible for doing is making that as easy as possible, which means that you get up with the baby or I did at least that was my thing is I’m going to get up with that baby every time. The baby cries in the middle of night and see if I can help her and all of those things. And here is my takeaway as someone who is 54 and had my first child at age 27. child rearing is for the young. I was so tired and I wanted to like put on a happy face and act like it was not hitting me like it was hitting me but it was something about the 14 hours of jetlag, and then the the baby part that it was just like, wow, this is really this is really a thing that you should do when you have more energy than I do, but also very happy to help and and to share the burden. But when you think about a newborn, what does a newborn do? And a newborn self advocates, they cry for what they want. I hear someone testifying right now we’ve got somebody who’s given a testimony. They cry for what they want when they want it. In fact, if you think about it, newborns are incredibly individualistic. Like they are there to tell you what they need, and they don’t need it in a few minutes. They need it immediately. But do you know what nobody did during the two weeks that we were in Korea dealing with this newborn baby? Nobody said, Why are you doing that? Like You’re so selfish? Could you please pull it together? Like we understand that a newborn is by their right by their biological stage, it is their right to be exactly that to be someone whose needs come before the needs of others, and who cries out for their own needs. But if you have a 25 year old, who is still doing the same thing, then something has gone very wrong in the parenting process, because it is the hope of parents that we will raise children to be others focused to consider the needs of others, particularly as Christian parents, we want to raise children who think of others first. One of the ways that this has shown up in our family at different times was when We would have people over for dinner. And then you know how you’ll realize all of a sudden that you don’t actually have enough food to serve everyone and you have 5000 children of your own, who are also very hungry. And so we would some of you’ve probably done this, we would sort of whisper quietly to the kids FHB FHB, which means family hold back, do you guys not do this, this is worth the price of admission. And right here, you’re gonna be like we’re doing, yeah, family hold back. And so that means that our kids are going to wait, they’re going to move to the back of the line, we’re going to move to the back line. And or if you’re in the line already, and you can’t get out, you’re going to take a very small portion until you know that there’s enough food for everyone. And so it was just a small way where the kids were learning, oh, I’m going to delay gratification, so that others can be served first. And we’re in the process of doing that they’re not thinking but I will never get to eat. Right, they know that there will be food, even if it’s not actually during that meal, they know we’ll order a pizza after everybody leaves later or something like that. And so this idea of giving, letting others have the place of precedence is rooted not in in a scarcity mentality, but in abundance mentality. And that’s, that’s a way of thinking more maturely than an infant would know how to think. And infant thinks that if the meal is not supplied, immediately, maybe the meal is never coming. In fact, a toddler would also fall into that category. And we don’t would judge a toddler for that we understand that as appropriate, it is appropriate for them to be there, but that we don’t want someone to stay there. So an infant thinks me right now. But an adult thinks we not yet. An infant thinks me right now. And adult things we not yet they differ personal needs and concerns to meet the needs and concerns of others. So I am willing to get up in the middle of the night, fix the bottle, change the diaper, even though I would like to still stay asleep. Because I understand that my needs and my concerns are not the primary needs and concerns of the moment. In fact, you could probably define maturity is a movement from me, to we, that is the way even that developmental psychologists talk about the stages that children move through, they become aware of others, and then they become aware of the needs of others. And they become aware of the ways that they might meet the needs of others. So maturity is a movement from right now instant gratification to not yet eventual gratification. And so it’s fascinating to me that our culture is dealing with what I would call the two eyes of immaturity that we need to gouge out. And those two are individualism. And instant gratification. me right now me right now, think about how many things in your life are fighting for you to buy into the idea that it is your right to have what you want when you want it. So like I can vaguely think about something I want to purchase and Amazon will drop it on my front porch 30 minutes later. If you’re waiting for a website to load and it takes longer than 10 seconds, you get irritated and you move on to some 10 seconds you’re like that’s an eternity Why would I wait 10 seconds. And in fact, our our attention spans have dropped to seven seconds now which is officially one second shorter than a goldfish. Good job guys.

And so when you think about the way that our culture even thinks about waiting, for example, waiting is viewed in our culture as an enemy to eliminate instead of as a virtue to cultivate. And so as a parent, what you will find is, all of the other parents around you who aren’t concerned about training a child in the virtue of waiting will find ways to medicate the wait for a child, they will find ways to distract a child they will find ways to entertain a child. And it’s not that we can’t ever fill waiting times with distractions or entertainment. But if a child never has to actually learn to wait than what happens when life hands them a circumstance that will defy any expectation of when they want it to come to an end. And so we’re in a culture that is telling us waiting, it’s an enemy to eliminate, not a virtue to cultivate. And with individualism. I mean, if someone grows to adulthood and they’re still focused on themselves above others, will we have a word for that? Because what’s natural and mature when an infant is appalling in an adult mature adulthood is placing the needs of others before my own and delaying gratification because I know eventually it will come an adult who demands what he wants when he wants it is at best a spectacle and at worst in our subsist not only that that kind of an adult is a costly presence in any community, there is a communal harm that we suffer when someone does not understand placing the other’s needs above theirs. And so though physically adult, an adult, he’s emotionally an infant, he has not learned to put away childish things as the Bible would say. He somehow managed to grow from a baby to an adult without shedding the childish habits of instant gratification, and individualism. So we do not want to have children who grow to adulthood, thinking of me right now, we want to have children who grow to adulthood thinking of others. And here’s one of the biggest problems with individualism, you may rise alone, right. But you will also fall alone when life does not go the way that you are hoping that it will. And so I want to propose that we think about the family as a collectivist space in which a child can ask the question, Who am I? And receive an answer that has some shock absorbers to it? Because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but in our culture, children are asking children and adults are asking the question, Who am I? And they are being given only the alternative to answer it in an individualistic way. In other words, they are to take counsel with themselves and come up with an answer. And so as parents who are raising children, I want you to consider how the family can help a child to have a better answer to the question, Who am I then an answer that they come up with on their own or that they come up with in a group that is outside of your home? So let’s take a look at let’s think for a second about the goal of raising children in a Christian family. And it would be that in choruses is one goal. In chorus, the family answers the identity question together, there is a group that can say to you, this is who you are. And what we would like is for the opinion of the family to be stickier than the opinion of the peer or the peer group that our children are going to be in. Because we we need to know that in the absence of a gathered family of a family that is forming this identity around a child imposter gathered groups or interloper gatherer groups are going to step in. But what the family can serve as if you’re familiar with the the theme in scripture of bearing witness of the eyewitness, and how it’s on the testimony of two or three that the truth of the matter is established. What the family unit can become for a child is the collective eyewitness to the truth of who that child is, where two or three are gathered, and the shared identity of the family forms the context for the individual identity of the child. So the child absolutely will have an individual identity, but that individual identity lives within the shared identity of the family as a whole. As Christian parents, we are not tasked merely with raising children who are independent and self governing. Although I very much hope you are trying to raise children who can become independent and self governing. But we are tasked with children with raising children who are able to do for others what they wish would be done for them. In other words, they use their independence for service to others, not just for self actualization. So, how can we do this? How can we develop a shared identity as a family? Well, it starts with a very determined perspective. And that is this home is seen as the primary place of belonging, home is seen as the primary place of belonging, it does not mean it is the only place of belonging, it does not mean that they never leave it. It means that when they do leave it, they are always glad to come back to it. That is what we mean when we say that home is the primary place of belonging. And when you think about having that kind of a home, the most important way to start is to begin with the end in mind. Begin with the end in mind. Many parents are trying to parent to get through five o’clock. No shame. Well, a little No, I’m kidding. Just no. Many are trying to just make it until those kids get to bed. But if you want to have a child who is going to have a culture in their home, that is strong long enough to impact their identity beyond just an individual understanding of themselves, then you are going to need to think with the end in mind, you’re going to need to ask the question when my children are adolescents, where do I want them to belong, even when you have very small children. And so I want to give you a few ways to think about what needs to be shared by a family motor the overlaps that we need. If we want to have children who have a very strong sense of the family unit that they are a part of, then the first would be this shared expectations, shared expectations. The one way to think about the shared expectations is along the lines of obedience, it means there are things that we have let’s call them family rules, or expectations that we know are good for all of us to be able to live at peace with one another. So we’re gonna get to hear a message tonight on the 10 commandments. I’m so curious to hear what JD Greer will say about them. I have many, many thoughts on the 10 commandments. But most people think that the 10 commandments are or many people think 10 commandments, bad sundry God gave me in laws that no one could follow, then came grace, and we don’t need to worry about them anymore, right. But actually, what the 10 commandments were doing is they were God’s showing us how to live God’s way in God’s world. They’re actually a gracious gift from God to His children, that he doesn’t give to them until they have been delivered from slavery. And so what they’re like are God’s house rule. Now, Israel’s going to be terrible at following them. But that doesn’t mean that they weren’t good. Because what God’s law does is it shows people how to live at peace with him, and what else with one another, right? And so think of it this way, if you lived on a desert island, there would not need to be a speed limit for you. If you’re the only person living on the desert island. Why do you obey the speed limit? You’re like,

I don’t? Let’s pretend for a minute that we all do. Why do we have speed limits? Is it just so that you the driver of your vehicle can reach your destination safely? No, it’s so that all of us can be safe together on the roads and the community in which we live. And so laws or rules are by their very nature, communal, they help us to live with one another. So if you’re a parent, who leans more toward the grace side of things, and not toward the law, law side of things, then perked up your ears because you will want to have a peaceful and ordered home that is shaped by shared expectations for behavior. And if you’re a person who makes rules for your rules like me, then you’re gonna need to remember that grace matters a whole lot in this conversation. So you can self diagnose on that. And then if you’re married, think about your spouse, which one is that person, because if both of you were rule See, Lord, help those kiddos and and if one of you is the grace person, and one of you is the rules person, then you probably have a nice mix. And you need to honor each other’s strengths and also help each other in your areas of weakness, but shared expectations will be a very important element of what helps you develop family identity, you’re going to want to balance law and grace and expectations should be clear age appropriate and achievable. They should be clear, age appropriate and achievable. When we give a disciplinary consequence, for a an infraction that we did not make clear up front, we fail our children. But if we have made it clear up front, and the child has hopefully, if they’re old enough acknowledged verbally what that expectation is, then the consequence is actually you showing that you are a credible and a parent. Okay, so don’t miss them as we’re told to be people of our word in the scriptures, let your yes be yes and your no be No. And so it is both in rewarding a child for good behavior and in following through for bad behavior that we show our child, you can trust me, I’m a parent of my word. That will be part of the shared identity of your family that we are people who do what we say we will do. So you have to follow through and only set an expectation that you plan to enforce. Don’t just randomly say, Oh, don’t do that and then not follow through on it because you’ve told your child I didn’t really mean it and then guess what the child is going to do that 1 million times. Which brings me to another point related to obedience. We dramatically underestimate the resolve of a child not to follow a rule. How many people right now are living Groundhog Day in their home? Right. And what we don’t recognize is where like we you did it great. Like we had three times you messed it up and then you’ve you got it like you did it right and now why are we back here again and the kids like because it did have more resolved than you do? Who. And so we can’t be frustrated at that, it just means we have to keep showing up for Groundhog Day and keep trying to get to the next level keep trying to crack the code on that kid. So there’s shared expectation in terms of obedience. But then there’s also shared expectations in terms of responsibilities, responsibilities. And so depending on your context, you may have more or less and also your family history, you may have more or less of a reflexive move to get children involved in the work of the home. But it is very important for children to take on household responsibilities that are age appropriate. And I will say that the age appropriateness of many household responsibilities is younger than many of us think, to start a little sooner than you expect, by lowering your expectation for how the the detour will be executed. For example, folding clothes, they can fold clothes at a very young age, they just do it very, very poorly. And it will take everything in you to say you did a great job, let’s go put them in your drawer, and then they’re going to whatever, even if they were a little folded, they’re going to just dump them in the drawer and shove the drawers shut. And you will have to die inside just a little. But what is hard for you to watch when a child is three becomes a genuine source of contribution to the family as the child grows older, I remember so distinctly needing just absolutely needing Jeff to do his laundry, and everybody else to do their own right, because it was just too much laundry. And so he would Jeff was cool about it, he didn’t make a he was no trouble, he actually folds clothes better than I do. And the kids, it took a little while longer for everyone to get the hang of it. But once everybody was up and humming on how to do laundry, there was a genuine lift to the requirements of running the house. And so I think what we can sometimes think is we need to train our children to do things so that they can grow Do you hear they individualism, it’s like so that they can feel important, or like they have a skill. But it’s not just that they can feel important, they need to understand that they have contributed to something bigger than themselves. Because I knew we were starting to make progress on the laundry scene when one of the children did the other child’s laundry, because they knew that that child was having a busy week. Do you hear it? Do you hear how it was shifting, it was moving from just I’m gonna manage my stuff to we’re all in this together. And I’m looking to see who has a need that needs to be met. So we have shared expectations in a family with a strong family identity around obedience. And around responsibilities, responsibilities should be real, they should actually contribute and a child should be told many times, you made things better for all of us because you did your part. Another funny thing my kids were since they were so close in age, when when they were old enough to be left alone, they were too close in age for one person to be in charge. And so I had would hand them out a little note. And they had to check off whether they had managed all of their own things like I brushed my teeth, I got my homework done i This and that. And I did allow them to turn it over and on the back right one grievance that they needed to stay about the other about the other children. But then we would say hey, when you manage your stuff, and you get yourself into bed at night, what you’ve done is helped all of us, you’ve helped all of us to live together. So absolutely, you develop the skill, but the skill is not just for your benefit, it benefits all of us. Okay, so second, another thing to help with with a shared family identity is shared language, shared language in your home. So most parents I meet are concerned about having big conversations, right? So they’re thinking I got to talk about sex, and I got to talk about face. And I’m going to have a sit down and we’re just going to knock those out at some point. I don’t know when it’s gonna happen. I hope I can anticipate it, I might have to schedule it if it feels like I’ve waited too long. And so I would like to urge you toward thinking of your home as a place where you have a climate of conversation. That means that instead of having big conversations, although you will have some big conversations you are having 1000 small conversations about big things all of the time, big and small things. Think about the number of things that are warring against you having a climate of conversation in your home, all of the devices which either you or your child are tempted to give your eyes or your attention to instead of the people who are around you think of all of the car rides where you make a choice whether you’re going to play music that will shut conversation down or you’re going to let the silence just crush their little souls until someone starts to speak words out loud. And again, these are waiting spaces a lot of the time right a lot of the waiting spaces that we have that we fill with Something are spaces that are custom built for these climate of conversation moments to happen. And so it means that you’re thinking about how you can draw your child into dialogue all of the time. Not all of the time, I had one child who wanted to talk all the time. And I would have to say, Mommy is done talking for now, come back in three days. No, I’m kidding. It’s not that long. But a climate of conversation happens when you think about how good conversations happen. Think about the conversations you’ve enjoyed the most. It was not one person talking and one person listening, right? The best conversationalist that you have ever been in conversation with had one particular skill that was really important. What is it? They know how to ask good questions, right, they draw you in? By asking questions. I think that’s what you all just said. You all said something very similar. I hope it was not the opposite of what I just said. So when you think about interacting with your child, you’re showing interest in what they’re thinking and doing. But for a very small child, it means you have to ask very simple questions, right? So don’t ask how was your day? I have a two and a half year old. Say, did you sit next to someone at lunch today? If they go to a little pre K? Who did you sit next to? Jimmy? Nobody knows your kids Jimmy anymore? Stay with me. And then I would like I would draw something on their napkin that they had in their little lunch so that I could say, was there something drawn on your napkin? What was it turtle?

Yeah, Turtle mom drew a turtle on your napkin. That’s it. But what you’re doing is over time, those conversations age as the child ages, but the child’s expectation now is when I come home from somewhere, we talk about it. And so you keep that building, year after year, so that it is reflexive for them. And I’ll tell you, when they hit middle school in high school, there’s always going to be some of that, you know, they become more their own person. And that’s completely appropriate where they’re going to withdraw some. But if you’ve given them this muscle memory around entering into dialogue with you, it comes back, they start to just do it reflexively. And so they’re not as withdrawn as they might otherwise be. When all the hormones begin to rage and all that stuff happens. Okay, then another important aspect of shared language is communicating in conflict. And that means that we’re going to think really hard about our tone and our word choice when there is conflict that needs to happen. And we are always going to remember in a time of conflict, that at a bare minimum, our child is also our neighbor. Which means that we will speak to our child in ways that dignify them as a person, even when we’re frustrated, even when we’re tired, even when we’re angry, because what you’re telling them is conflict does not mean relationship is sacrificed. I still value you and see you and we can work to the other side of this. Both in communicating in conversation and communicating in conflict, it is important for us to remember and it needs to be a dialogue. Because when conflict arises in particular, we have a tendency to not have a dialogue but have a monologue where one person is talking and another person is listening. But if you have ever sat through a monologue, you know that a monologue turns pretty quickly into a soliloquy, which is where one person is talking, and no one is listening. So if you are prone to lecturing, if you are prone to making statements before you ask questions, you’re going to be even more prone to that when you are dealing in conflict with a child. The best thing I can give to you, especially as you head into the adolescent years, is give yourself the instinct of Ask Don’t Tell. Ask Don’t Tell, draw them in with questions, identify what’s really going on and make sure that the question is not asked in a snarky tone or frustrating tone, ask a genuine question that can help move through to the other side of the conflict. So you will need a climate of conversation and that conversational climate will be characterized by kind words, by kind words, kids with kind words will be alien and strange everywhere outside of your home. But your home can be a place may be the only place where they here kindness used on the regular sarcasm, bullying and teasing. Make a home unsafe. And so even if you grew up with it, and it felt normal to you, because that’s me, I had the spiritual gift of sarcasm, it was the love language in my family of origin. And we all got the joke. So for a long time, I didn’t know that nobody else who I was trying to be in relationship with was receiving it the way that my family had. But these things are things that erode trust and keep people on guard with one another. And so in your own home, rent your child the safety of a place that says sarcasm, bullying and teasing will not have a foothold here. words of gratitude, encouragement and support absolutely will. And so when you have a time where you sit down as a family for family devotion, devote some of that time to to building one another up in love, it will bear rich dividends. shared language should also involve reconciling words. In other words, we train our children in the liturgies of forgiveness and in the liturgies of repentance. And I would urge you to do so even before your child is able to feel the right emotions to support those liturgies. We train a child to say I’m sorry. And we allow them to say the words even before they feel sorry, you know what this kid looks like? Sorry, you’re like, good. Sal, you tried hard on that? No, but that would be sarcasm. So you wouldn’t say that.

But what are we looking for? We’re looking to give them a framework that as they mature into the feelings, they already have the right words. We we do things before we feel them. Why? Because it’s good for the community. If we do, you don’t like to obey the speed limit when you’re late, but you know that you should, because it’s good for others. And the same is true with these speech liturgies that we can give our children. We also want to give our children slow words, James 119, we should be slow to speak. We want to give our children the training to know that the first person to speak isn’t always the one who says the most important or the most helpful thing they proverbs 1728, which should probably be my life verse says even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent and discerning if he holds his tongue. If I could count the number of times where I didn’t say anything, because I wasn’t sure what to say. And someone came up and told me they thought I would just been profound in the way that I sat there and thought deeply. And I’m thinking well, no, I just couldn’t figure out what the right thing to say was proverbs 1019. When words are many sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise. And so we want to invite them into dialogue. But we also want them by modeling to see that it is okay to say I don’t know the answer to that, or I’m not sure how we need to handle this right now. Let’s just set it down for a little while and come back to it when we’re more able to have a good conversation. Of course, we also want to give children in our homes eternal words. We want them to be given the Bible, and we want them to be comfortable with it. We want to help them to memorize Scripture. Lifeway did a study on the top fires, five reasons that kids don’t leave the church when they go into adulthood. The number one reason was because they were taught to read their Bibles. The number one reason Colossians 316 says, Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. As you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom. Our homes can be characterized by the word of Christ dwell in them richly. In addition to shared expectations, and shared language, a home with a strong family identity will have shared affection. In other words, they will prefer to spend time with each other. I’m gonna talk about the time ishi more in just a second. But they think of family as their favorite people. Now many of you grew up with, let’s just let’s just see, I told you was that in here that I told you that my brothers pin me down and dangled spit over my Yeah. Okay. So you got it? Did anybody else in here have to somebody? Yeah, good. Anybody else have sibling rivalry in their home where it was a competition instead of a collaboration kind of a setting? I think it’s important for us to understand what happened in Genesis chapter three at the fall, because what we saw were image bearers who were built for collaboration and cooperation become in competition with one another. And so an important way to think about how you want your family to be is to ask, what should it have been like in Eden? What will it be like in the New Jerusalem? And we were built for collaboration and cooperation. We were built for mutual edification. And so when you start to see rivalry come up in your home, you can say, Oh, we’re living in Genesis three, how can we get back to Genesis one, and the impulse that we will have is when there is conflict between children is to what separates them, right, you guys need to go to a corner and pull it together. And that might be the immediate solution. But if what they wanted in the first place through that rivalry expression was to not be around each other, you just rewarded them with exactly what they wanted. And so look for ways to have them have a shared task that they have to work toward together, when those kinds of frictions arise. Not only that, but we would tell our children if you can’t be loving to the people who are your closest friends, then you won’t be spending time with any of the friends who you’re not related to. And we told them, You guys are best friends. They’re old enough now for me to be able to report that it worked. Even on the days when we weren’t sure that it would you guys are each other’s best friends, Jeff, one of my favorite parenting moments. was when we were sitting at dinner and he said to the kids, he goes, Hey, do you guys know who my best friend was in second grade? And the kids are like, No. And he goes, Yeah, neither do I have no idea where that kid is now, do you know who I do know where they are my sister, me and me, she was my best friend growing up, she’s still my best friend. You know who your best friends are these people right here. There should be shared affection within the family, we should be thinking of ways to cultivate our deepest and most beautiful affection for the one and others that are underneath the roof with us. Fourth, eighth family with a strong identity, we’ll have a lot of shared time together, they will have shared interests. And they will have shared experiences Deuteronomy six, which I’m sure you’re all familiar with speaks of this kind of overlap in time, it seems to assume that there will be moments when we all sit in our houses together. And when you think about your child’s schedule, this is where the individual identity of the child really is going to rise to the surface. Because the way that children grow up today, in most cases is where I’m trying to think of current kids names. So I won’t say Jimmy again. Declan. Declan. Well, he’s a baseball player. And Ryan is a girl Ryan’s a girl, Ryan. Ryan, she does golf and dance, you know, but it’s like it when people walk up to your child, they will often say, Well, what do you do? I said, Well, he’s actually unemployed. He’s on the dole in my home right now. But we tend to think of oh, what is the thing? Or the things? What are these things that my child needs to be able to develop their individual sense of what they are good at. And I think that these things matter. We had a particular circumstance where we had so many kids so close together, that the financial cost and the calendar cost for a child to do more than one activity, any given child to do more than one activity was not going to be doable for us. So our family rule, I am not prescribing this is one or none. We said you could do one activity or no activity? Well, I’ll tell you when someone finds out that your child is involved in no activities, because we had a kid who chose none every single time. They’re like, what, what is wrong with you? Do you not love this child? I’m happy to report he turned out to be a delightful human being. He does not seem to resent that we did not try to expose him to the things that would have made him a pro athlete, et cetera. But here’s the reality, parents are the gatekeepers for our children’s schedules if our children are over programmed, and it seems that many are based on what we’re seeing with anxiety and depression, and related to sleep deprivation, which is what the high school counselor told us was the number one thing that she saw, then the arrow doesn’t point at the child, the arrow points at us as the parents were the gatekeepers for our children’s schedules. And we all want quality time with our kids. Like that’s the unicorn of parenting is that quality time moment. But everyone understands implicitly that quality time is a function of what quantity time, it just shows up when you’re not expecting it. You don’t get to schedule it. And so quantity time, if we’re going to prioritize that is wanting to have a shared identity as a family means we’re going to have to time a time and time again, assess what has wandered on to the calendar, as we’ve just kind of added things but never taken things off. Have you seen this happen in your own life? So periodic evaluations? Do we still want to do this? We were doing this it still makes sense. Here’s some evaluation tools that Jeff and I used with regard to activities. I’ve told you one or none. But we also had to ask does it sabotage life skill training? So in other words, is the child so busy doing the activities that they don’t have time to learn to fold the laundry? Or, or they don’t have time to manage all of their contributions that keep the home running because they are out doing these other things? Second would be DOES IT sabotage weekend downtime or worship? I know that occasionally things will pop up that take place when your church is holding the gathering. But it’s one thing for that to be a one or two times a year thing. It’s another thing if it is torpedoing the ability of you all to be together at church on a regular basis, or just weekend downtime when is the time when everybody just relaxes and sits around together waiting for those great conversations to emerge. A third and related to that is DOES IT sabotage family dinners. It is not an understatement to say that if you want to live a countercultural life, had family dinners four nights of the week, you will look completely different than other parents that you encounter. It’s been shown that children who have dinner with their families four times a week are at far less risk for risky behaviors and substance abuse.

It’s pretty simple. Fix. It’s also the place where some of the best conversations are going to happen. Does an activity sabotage bedtime? Is it keeping a child out? We were famous at our last church for pulling our kids out of Scripture memory, where they were a little paramilitary uniforms, you know, the one I’m talking about, we had to pull them out of it, because they were so exhausted the next day that they couldn’t function at school. And so that looks really great when you’re on staff, and you’re all about Bible literacy. And you’re like, No, we’re gonna opt out on Bible memory. But, but it wasn’t the timing of bedtime, it didn’t work. And here’s the big one where we’re talking about shared identity, does the activity pull our family apart? or push us together? If we’re all heading out the door to different things, then where are we able to either celebrate each other at our own thing that we’re doing or just be to gather? Is it appropriate for my child’s age? Is it an activity my child can enjoy or benefit from into adulthood is a very, very big one. That’s why you might choose a musical instrument over rugby. You can play rugby for a while. I’m not doubting all the rug behaviors are lovers don’t come after me after this, because you’re probably stronger than me, honestly. My daughter in law after hearing me talk about this, she said, You just really hate sports, don’t you? And I was like, yeah, no, not really. I was in the band. Okay, can we? Here’s another question. Can we afford it? And that’s a question that I think we just think, Well, why would we not spare any expense? No, no, can we afford it? And then notice that in this question, list, I do not have does my child love it? That’s because your child loves Skittles and Pop Tarts. But you don’t feed that to them for dinner every night. A child only knows that thing that they’re doing. They only know to love the thing that they’re doing, they don’t have the breadth of experience that you have. And so they don’t know whether they might love something else, or nothing at all. And so it’s important to weigh especially as the child gets older, whether they love something that they’re doing, but don’t let it have too much power over you if it’s doing this next thing. And that is if it does not acknowledge the shared costs that the family bears for any activity that any one member of it is in. So for a child to be in an activity doesn’t just cost that child it costs all of us something it doesn’t mean for a parent as well, it doesn’t mean that the cost is not worth it. But it means that we need to pay attention to the cost, and lay it against the other things that we’re spending our time on to make sure that it is in fact worth the time that we’re giving to it. So those are some ways to identify whether the activities you do say yes to might be worth your time or something that you need to pause or say no to in the future. When you think about entertainment, is the way that you spend your time you have an entertainment individual focused or family focused, we’ve undergone such a transformation in the way that we receive entertainment. Like when I was growing up, there were shows that were meant for the whole family to sit down and watch. But so often now shows are geared toward this is the show for your child and your child can watch this show while you watch the show that you don’t want your child to see because it’s to fill in the blank. And so thinking of ways that when you’re having entertainment spaces, they are ways for you to overlap the experience instead of each experience something on your own sitting right next to one another. One of the things that I did with our kids was when we were in the car driving out to we had a 10 hour drive out to Santa Fe, New Mexico to see grandparents. And one year I printed out all of the scriptures that are found in Handel’s Messiah, but not in the right order. And then I made them listen to the entire thing on the way out. And they had to number them in the order that they were being heard. And if they got it right, then we stopped at a place that you only got to go on your birthday because it’s so blessed, expensive. And that is the Lord’s chicken. We weren’t mentioned in the loud purposes. And so everybody got to have that on the way out too. Because they and now guess what they all love Handel’s Messiah, Winner winner, chicken dinner. But it was a way to have a shared moment in the car instead of each of us only doing our own thing. How about church? Is your church even structured so that it is something you can do together? Or are you all always off in separate spaces? How much you find ways to have overlap? Jeff always took the kids into serve with him and children’s ministry for another place of overlap. Just keep in mind when you’re thinking about activities, parenting is not a competitive sport. Parenting peer pressure is a real thing that will influence your decision whether you say yes or no to an activity for your child. Your friends don’t dictate your time choices for your kids. Not only that, but we can have surrogate FOMO where we’re like, oh, I would have really liked to do that number sort of self actualizing through the child. So just be aware that all of these factors can be at play and then not only is parenting not a competitive sport, it is also not a popularity contest. Can I get a win? notice. And that just means that just as your friends or your peers don’t dictate the way you choose activities, neither do your children, neither do your children, you’re responsible for making sure that that child’s schedule, leaves room not just for them to master a skill, but to be a good citizen. And that starts at home. So I think about the verse that is written is inscribed in my wedding ring. And in Jeff’s wedding ring, maybe some of you have the same one, Psalm 34, three, glorify the Lord with me, Let us exalt his name together. That is what we have hoped would be the case in our home, which brings me to my fifth and final thing that we hope that our children will share. And that is shared faith, shared faith. We want to glorify the Lord with these children. And this is where it will become very important when a child is asking the question, Who am I? And we’re trying to formulate a way for them to understand the answer to that question in the context of the family. Too often Christian parents are focused on making converts. But the great commission call on a parent is not to make converts, but to make what disciples. And if you understand that it means that you will have conversations about faith in a different order than you will if you are looking for a profession of faith. If you’re looking for a profession of faith, you will get begin theological conversations with the doctrine of sin. All of us are born sinners, right? But if you are building a disciple, then you will begin where the Bible begins with the doctrine of God, who is God? Because if you know what the next doctrine is, it answers the question that we’ve been dealing with all along, who am I. And the knowledge of God and the knowledge of self always go hand in hand. And so when we have shared faith conversations in the home, we will spend a great deal of time pointing children to who made them, and to how, if that’s who made you, do you understand how precious you are? But not only that, do you understand you’re not your own, you’re a part of something bigger than you. You belong to God, and you know who else you belong to us? This family right here. You belong to us, God gave you to us. Who are you? Well, you’re a child of God, you’re part of this family, you’re one of us. And we’ve got your back. And we’re cheering for you. And we need your gifts and your contributions to be who we are. And then when those questions of who am I come up, you have a child who has shock absorbers who actually already has some built in answers that they’ve heard over, and over and over again, in a place where they understand what’s expected of them, where they understand what kind of language is makes a home safe, and a place of edification, where they understand that the people who they share a roof with are the people who are their favorite people, where they understand that the time that we have is precious, and we’re going to look for ways to have it with one another, if at all possible. Where they can think of 1000 things that they’ve done with you moments they’ve had not just of conversation with each other, but also moments of transcendence moments where the whole family has had to stop and say, God did that. My kids call these nature moments. Because I called them nature moments. I’m famous for turning off whatever was on the car, you know, radio or whatever, and saying, look over there nature moment, look out the window, I dragged them all to the edge of the Grand Canyon, so they could watch me sob. Because they need to see that Do you hear it? Like we can do all these things I just talked about. But the real place that a child is going to know who they are is by looking to a parent and knows who they are. Glorify the Lord with me. That is your invitation to this child. I see transcendence. I know my place in this world. I want you to have that. So my prayer for all of you is that your homes would be places of safety, love, affirmation, exhortation in places where the name of God and the person of God is exalted, so that those children will know beyond a doubt. I am his and I’m theirs. And so who I am, can be formed in light of that. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you for all of the earnest parents in this room. Seats full of them. I thank you for parents who know what they don’t know.

And who are doing doing their best day in and day out. I pray that for each of these parents, they would have a view for the long term, and that they would take steps now whatever age their child is, for the long haul, no parenting toward five o’clock, but parenting toward a child who grows from someone who is an individual, to someone who understands the needs of others supersede individualism that’s only appropriate for an infant. Father, we live in a society that has determined to infantilize us into adulthood by telling us that individualism and instant gratification are exactly what we need. By pray for this room. For these parents. They would raise children with a bigger and more beautiful vision, she or vision more, that we would love the Lord our God with all our heart, and then we would love our neighbor, particularly the neighbor who shares a roof with us. We would love our neighbor. As we love ourselves, we ask these things. In Jesus name, Amen.