Raising Amazing Kids – Part 3

Raising Amazing Kids – Part 3

Raising Amazing Kids – Part 4

Today’s Kids Need Today’s Parents … On Purpose

May 21-22, 2011

IT’S A DIFFERENT WORLD!

“All these men [the men of Issachar] understood the temper of the times and knew the best course for Israel to take.” (NLT)

Key idea: We’ve got to parent to

“Teach your children to choose the right path, and when they are older, they will remain upon it.” (NLT)

IN TODAY’S WORLD … AMAZING KIDS NEED

1.

“The words of the wicked are like a murderous ambush, but the words of the godly save lives.” (NLT)

2.

“And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are away on a journey, when you are lying down and when you are getting up again.” (NLT)

3.

>Chores

>Consequences

“A prudent person foresees the danger ahead and takes precautions. The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences.” (NLT)

Natural consequences

Logical consequences

>When natural consequences are too dangerous

>When natural consequences don’t exist

>When natural consequences are ineffective

“My child, don’t ignore when the Lord disciplines you and don’t be discouraged when He corrects you for the Lord corrects those He loves just as a father corrects a child in whom he delights.” (NLT)

WHAT DO PARENTS NEED?

1.

“Cry out for insight and understanding. Search for them as you would for lost money or hidden treasure… the LORD gives wisdom!” , (NLT)

2.

“God began the good work within you, and will continue his work until it is finally finished on that day when Christ Jesus comes back again.” (NLT)

3.

“…by him [Jesus] God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of his blood on the cross.” (NLT)

“Therefore, since we have been made right in God's sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.” (NLT)

Today’s Kids Need Today’s Parents … On Purpose

Raising Amazing Kids – Part 4

Doug Fields

May 21-22, 2011

Well, hello everyone. Well, you know why they asked me to speak this weekend? Because they knew that if the rapture did happen, I would still be here. That’s my best guess, but it doesn’t matter. I’m thrilled to be here, thrilled to be a part of this series. We’re in part 4 of Raising Amazing Kids and I’m thrilled to kind of land the plane on this one.

I know this has been a great series for me and my family. And really, it doesn’t matter what age your kids are, or even if you have kids; we need kids in our life to be better people. We’re influencing kids. All this has been really, really good.

I realize there is a small portion of people who chose not to have kids. You don’t like kids; you don’t like to be around kids. I understand that. I worked with kids many, many years. And before we had kids, working with kids was our form of birth control. So I get that. I get that.

We sat our family down at a restaurant one time and this couple who were by themselves, they asked to be moved. So I asked the waitress if we could move next to them. I just felt people have a lot to learn by being around kids.

My kids are getting older, but I’m definitely in the dad zone. My kids all grew up at this church. Here’s a quick picture of the Fields family. My oldest is Torie. She graduates from college next week, which, like 95 percent of all college students, she will move back home with us. This is my son Cody, who is a freshman at Azusa Pacific, went there to play football. And

my youngest is Cassie who is 16, a sophomore in high school.

And they get all their good looks from the queen of the family, Cathy Fields, who is the greatest. And everything I’ve learned about parenting, I’ve really learned from her, just watching her. All my kids are as beautiful on the inside as they are on the outside, but they’ve had an incredible mom.

I’ve told Cathy before that if parenting were a high school, she would be the valedictorian and I would be the guy in the gymnasium trying to burp the alphabet. So everything I’m teaching today I’ve basically stolen from my wife.

But if you grab your notes, you’ll see that I want to start by just saying it is a different world that today’s kids are growing up in than the one you grew up in. This was the family of yesteryear, Ozzie and Harriet. Today’s family is a little different, it’s Ozzie and Sharon.

Now by show of hands, who would agree that the world has changed? Let me see. Yeah, absolutely. What’s the number one way the world has changed? Okay, technology, big. Yes, absolutely. When Grandma said “Log on,” she was cold. It’s a different world. But this might surprise you: as much as the world has changed, I don’t think kids have changed all that much.

Look at this quote, “Youth today loves luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, no respect for older people and talk nonsense when they should be working.”

Sounds like kids you know today, right? This quote was from Socrates, 500 years before the life of Christ. That means kids have been driving adults crazy for a long time. There is nothing new.

Today’s kids are still asking the fundamental questions that you and I ask. They are asking, “Who am I?” “Does anybody like me?” “Am I okay?” And “Can I get an allowance for doing nothing?” These are common questions that kids ask. These are questions for identity and

questions for meaning and purpose.

And the best way to understand kids today – this is very important – is not to learn how different kids are today, but to have a good memory. If you can remember the feelings, the feelings that you had when you were a child or a teenager, those feelings are very similar to the feelings that kids have.

So for example, I could get mad at my kids and disappointed at my kids, that my kids are into appearance, that labels are important to them. And I could say like, “That is so immature,” and “You need to grow up,” or I can just remember when I was a kid, you know, and appearance was important to me.

I was a teenager in the seventies. OP shorts, very big deal. They were a pair of short pants that had an “OP” logo on them. It was Ocean Pacific, and everybody had them except for me.

I grew up down the street in the city of Orange. My dad was a cheapskate accountant and my mom was a stay-at-home seamstress. And my parents were not going to pay twenty-eight dollars for a pair of short pants. My mom said this, “I'll make you a pair for five,” and she did. She made me a pair. And from a distance, they looked exactly like OP shorts. She was a great seamstress.

But she was scared to embroider OP on there for the fact she might get arrested for trademark or something. So if you looked real closely, it was a “DP” for Doug's pants.

Now I’m telling you, growing up the way I grew up with an accountant for a dad and a seamstress for a mom, that is a minor form of child abuse. You should see some of the clothes that I had to wear.

But appearance management is important to all kids. That's where there are certain shoes and shirts and pants and rips right in the right place in the jeans. And the boys that sag – do you know what sagging is? Where they wear their boxers up to their nipples and they wear their pants down to the bottom of their rear end. They are not wearing it that way because it's comfortable. It's called “sagging.” I actually tried sagging for a while. My wife said, “Doug, you're scaring the kids”

But a good memory, a good memory of when you were a child, plus a good understanding of where today's culture is makes you a good parent or grandparent. I think grandparents are some of the most influential, and can be some of the most influential people in kids’ lives.

We must become like this little group of people that we read about in the Old Testament in 1 Chronicles, the men of Issachar. It says, “All these men understood the temper of the times and knew the best course for Israel to take.”

We need to become parents of Issachar. We need to become grandparents of Issachar. We need to understand the temper of the times, what's happening around us, and chart the course for our best parenting or grandparenting. If we're aware of the times, we just have to realize they are very different than the world that we grew up in.

I was thinking this week, I can't even think of a divorced family in my old neighborhood. Now it's over half the families. For me, this was my family tree. This might resemble yours as well, pretty standard. This is today's family tree, with all these blended families and multiple this, and this lives there, and it's just wild.

In the past, you know, kids entertained themselves. We rode bikes, we built forts, we played outside. Today, kids are entertained by media. And if you say to a kid, “Why don't you go outside and play,” they look at you like you're insane. “Do you know what you're asking

me to do?”

You know, in the past there was this innocence of childhood. Now children are exposed to everything. In the past, there was this national consensus of values. Now everybody's values are left up unto their own.

So where this comes into play is if we’re going to be parents and grandparents in today's world, we've got to understand today’s world and we have to stop using that very famous parenting phrase, “When I was your age.”

Here is the deal, you were never their age. You were never their age. It's like comparing little league baseball with the major league World Series. That essentially it's the same game; right? There’s X number of innings. There are three outs. There are batters. Nine players play. You run, you throw. You inject steroids, essentially. But it's a much different context. And because it's a much different context, it's a whole different ball game.

So the big idea is this, you were never their age in this age. So we have some choices, parents and grandparents. We can either curse everything that they're doing or we can meet the negative in the world with a positive response. And I think that's the winning way to go. You meet the negative with the positive and you figure out, I've got to parent different or grandparent different in this age than my parents did in the past.

Let's take, for example, the whole idea of busyness. Our culture is so, so busy. In my family, we ate at the dinner table every single night. That doesn't happen in today's culture. So I can either curse how busy the culture is or I can figure out how am I going to be a parent and carve out time and figure this whole thing out so busyness doesn't destroy my family.

Let's take the idea of sex. The idea of sex in my growing up, you just didn't talk about it that much. You weren't exposed to it that much. But kids are seeing sexual images at an alarming rate today.

The first experience for most kids, statistics say, is eleven years old while doing homework. Ninety percent of all children will see extreme sexual images by the age of sixteen. That means if you are a parent or a grandparent and you have a computer in your home, you run, you don't walk, to get the nearest filter and help protect some of that.

But the reality is, if you are not talking about sex with kids, you are the only one at the table without a voice. So dads, what that means, it's not “the talk.” You don't give “the talk.” You remember “the talk”? You don't give “the talk.”

What my dad gave when I was growing up would not work in this generation. I remember it so vividly. It was so painful. “You know, Doug, sit down. I want to talk to you.” I'm like, “Oh, here it comes,” you know. “Dad, I'm twenty-seven.” Yeah, I am. No, just kidding. But you know, my dad sits down and he was just like, “You know, Doug, there comes a time in a person’s” – he was sweating – “that there is a man and a woman. And well, when they love each other, they – it's good talking to you. Let's talk again, Son, some other time. I appreciate your attention,” you know.

That doesn't work. Dads, it's not “the talk,” it’ “the talks,” plural. It’s continuing education, because kids are seeing it at alarming rates. You've got to be talking about it.

Children are growing up too old too soon and it’s confusing for them. Today’s kids are just confused. Children are too old too soon. And teenagers, young adults are acting like children. There is this great confusion about, what am I? Am I a child or adult?

And I understand the confusion. It's confusing in society. Think about the messages that we send in society. You are an adult, according to Bayer aspirin, at what age? Twelve. You are an adult at twelve. If you want to go to a movie without your parents’ permission, you need to be what? Thirteen. Okay, PG-13. To drive, you are how old? Sixteen. To vote or go into the military, eighteen. To drink alcohol? How old do you have to be to be an adult to rent a vehicle? Twenty-five, that’s right.

So there is just this incredible confusion. And to buy a seat on United Airlines, adult fare, you have to be two years old, okay. That’s when they start charging you for an adult fare. So think of the confusion here. I’m an adult anywhere from the age of two to twenty-five.

And people say, “Oh, no. You are an adult when you get married.” Well, the problem with that is people are getting married much later in life. “Well, you are an adult when you begin puberty.” The problem with that, the onset of puberty is getting lower. “Well, you're an adult when you are finally independent,” in which case, none of us are adults.

And I think a classic mistake that we parents make is that we don’t make adjustments as our kids change. Kids are changing all the time and those changes are good, they are positive, they are important and we have to change with them.

For example, when children are little, you can get kids to do chores by making it a game. So I could be laying on the couch and go, “Buddy, buddy, buddy, come here. Come here. Come on. I’m going to time you. Let’s see if this works. I’m going to time you. I don’t know if you can do this or not, but I want to see if you can take the trash can from the back yard to the curb and come back in here in under three minutes. Do you think you can?” “Oh, I can do it. I can

do it. I can do it.” “Okay. Ready, go.” And he comes back sweaty. “How did I do, Dad? How did I do?” “Son, you did okay, but I think we’re going to need to practice every Wednesday night.”

Now you fast forward a couple years when he's a little bit older, lying on the couch, watching the fifth episode of Jersey Shore and you say “Hey, Bud, I'm going to time you to see how long it takes you to take out the trash can.” And he says, “Dude, your legs broken?”

And then all of a sudden, as parents, we go, “Oh, they’re being so rebellious.” No, they’re not being rebellious, they’re just thinking different. You’re trying to parent them like a child. The kid’s sitting there going, “Wait. Wait. I've learned. This is not a speed issue at all. This is a mobility issue and neither of us wants to be mobile right now.”

So the key idea is this: We’ve got to parent to their changes. We’ve got to parent to their changes. That’s why we’ve got to understand the times and what they’re going through.

In week one of this series, Pastor Rick talked about a major role in parenting is helping move children from dependence on parents to independence to then a dependence on God. And that whole stage of moving from dependence on parents to independence is a very messy complicated stage. It’s where kids are trying to form this identity on their own. They’re trying to say this, “Who am I apart from my parents?”

And with three kids, twenty-two, nineteen and sixteen, I’ll tell you, this is the most hurtful time in my parenting journey, when they’re trying to say, “Who am I apart from my mom and my dad,” and they begin to disengage a little bit. And it just hurts, it stings. “Oh, do we have to eat dinner together?” “Oh, I don’t want to go on that vacation.” “Oh, can you drop me off way in front so my friends don’t see you?” “Dad, are you going to wear that to church?” You know, it’s that type of stuff.

And when kids disengage, here is what happens to a lot of parents – parents disengage. Their feelings are hurt. “Oh, okay. If you don't want to spend time with me...” That's part of the process. What you need to hear me say, parents and grandparents, when kids disengage,

you can't disengage. They need you more than ever during that time.

And I don’t care what you hear from other people, peers and media are not the most influential things in kids’ lives. They are not. Parents are the most influential. All research points to this.

As a matter of fact, look at this graphic. The foundation of which kids stand on, the biggest foundation is parents, then extended family – that would be grandparents, aunts, uncles, other

key adults – that’s why you need to get your kids involved in children’s ministry, youth ministry. Get them around great people.

And lastly, peers and media. Peers and media have the smallest influence. Where peers and media have the greatest influence, it’s by something that I call “the influence by default.” And the influence by default is when the other significant adults are either too busy; they’re too busy to spend that significant time with kids, or they’re just absent for whatever reason. Kids, you need to be there for them and they need you to help them grow into responsible adults. God's design for family is that parents would teach children and be there for children.

Look what it says in , “Teach your children to choose the right path, and when they are older, they will remain on it.”

So we understand our time. Now I want to just go after what do kids need. And I wish I had six weeks to talk about what kids need from caring adults, but I don't; so I'm going to give you three things that I think are important whether you're a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle. You have an influence on kids. Here is what kids need.

First is this: They need affirmation.

Affirmation. No kid gets enough affirmation. I've never met a kid who says, “You've got to stop encouraging me, man. I just can't take it anymore. I've had it up to here with all that encouragement.” No.

And I'm guessing you’re a lot like me, that we like to hang around people who like us and we don’t like to hang around people who don’t like us and who criticize us; and your kids are no different. So if you are constantly on their case, constantly talking negative to them, you are actually conditioning them to avoid you because they would rather be with people who like them.

What does affirmation do for kids? Well, it helps you stay close to your kids because you are looking for things in their heart and in their life that are right and speaking into it. It actually

encourages positive behavior in kids, because you affirm what you want to see repeated and it gives kids the approval that they’re looking for from their parents. Kids are looking for approval from you and you don’t outgrow that.

Now some of you might argue that, because you’ve hardened yourself against your parents for many years; but you don't really – in a normal relationship, you don't outgrow the approval for your parents’ love and appreciation.

Three-and-a-half months ago, my mom passed away. This is the first time that I've spoken at Saddleback that my mom hasn’t been in the audience. And she came home from the hospital in January to be in hospice. And for a month before she died, my sister and I took care of her.

And that whole time I was taking care of her, I was thinking to myself, “I hope my mom is proud of me.” “I hope my mom is proud of the way that I'm caring for her.” “I hope my mom is proud of the way that I've kind of stopped my world and she is everything right now.” When I spoke at the memorial service, “I hope my mom is proud of me.” See, you just don't grow out of that. You know, kids want their parents’ approval.

When my son was young, he had two favorite words, “Watch this.” “Dad, dad, dad, dad, watch this, watch this, watch this!” My kids all grew up at this church. I'd be standing there. He’d be jumping off stage. “Hey, Dad, watch this,” you know, and he’d do something. “Hey, Dad, watch this. Watch. Dad, dad, dad, watch!” Whatever it was, it was always “Watch this.”

Now with kids that they tone it down just a little bit, but it’s still in their heart. They want you to watch and to notice and to comment. So let me slice this affirmation a little bit thinner.

What are we talking about here? Well, my challenge to you is you affirm character, character and behavior connected to character. Because think about in today’s youth culture, here is what kids are affirmed on, what I call “the four A’s”: Appearance, Athletics, Academics and the Arts, meaning band or arts. That’s where they get their strokes. But you and I know that you can have a brilliant, good-looking athlete who's artsy who's a terrible human being. So you need to affirm character qualities.

So it's things like this, “I was really proud of the way that you handled that situation.” “I love the patience that you showed to your little brother.” “Oh, I was so blown away by the kindness that you displayed to your mom without her having to ask you.” “Oh, son, you know what, I was looking at your report card and it’s just so obvious that you’re not cheating.” So you look for character traits and behaviors.

Another thing under this, under affirmation, is you don’t qualify praise. You don’t qualify praise. Any time you throw a qualifier on there, it’s not affirmation. It’s like saying, “Yeah, for a fat guy, you don’t sweat much.” You know, that doesn’t work.

Last weekend I was speaking to the high school students here and I talked to a teenager afterwards who came up to me and she was telling me what her mom had said to her about her contacts. Her mom said, “You look very pretty when you wear your contacts,” affirmation.

“You're not as attractive when you wear your glasses.” That's what I mean by qualified praise.

You look at a kid’s report card and you see a B plus. “B plus, pretty good. Now just think…” – you know where I'm going with this, don’t you? “Just think if you worked a little bit harder, you could have gotten that A minus.” That's qualified praise. “Hey, you played a good game, Buddy. That was a good game. Tell me about that fumble, though.”

The Bible has a lot to say about the words that come out of our mouth and the power of these words and the words that dictate what’s going on in your heart and your soul.

In it says, “The words of the wicked are like a murderous ambush, but the words of the Godly save lives.”

What I'm suggesting to you is that your words are life-giving. To kids, they’re life-giving. They’re memorable and they’re powerful.

And another thing I’d say under affirmation is, don’t add modifiers. Kids tend to live up to a modifier. You’ve all seen this before. “This is my daughter Jill. She's the shy one,” as Jill cowers behind the legs of her mom because she’s heard that a million times. She’s living up to the modifier. “This is Carlos. He's my wild child,” as Carlos makes some evil noise and lights a tree on fire.

Affirm. Affirm. Affirm. Watch the words that come out of your mouth. Most parents, your words are negative, criticizing, condemning. Kids need affirmation.

There’s a second thing they need… they need communication.

They need communication. This is big. When kids fail to learn good communication skills they find themselves ill equipped to function in life, in a job and in relationships. These would also be called interpersonal skills, people skills. They’ve got to learn to communicate to survive and be responsible adults in this world.

Case in point: Any time you go to a fast food restaurant and you see a teenager working behind the counter, you realize that people skills are rare amongst young people. You think, “Okay. You had to have a pulse to get the job, but I’m not seeing that pulse at all right now.” And kids need help.

And here’s the deal with this, kids learn to communicate by talking with adults. That’s where they learn to communicate, by talking with adults. But – and here's the big but – kids also learn at a very young age that when adults want to talk to you, it’s usually not a good thing. When adults want to talk to you, you are usually in trouble.

So when I’m sitting in home room and over the loud speaker, “Will Doug Fields please come to the principal’s office,” what does my class do? “Oh.” Yeah. They’re not thinking, Hey, the principal must be lonely. No. They’re thinking, you know, Doug brought firearms or something to school, you know. He’s busted.

Even in my own home – we live in a two-story house. I’ll be downstairs and I’ll yell for the kids, “Kids, come on down.” What do they say? “Are we in trouble? What did we do?” that's right, as if downstairs is the torture chamber. You know what I mean, “Come on down. Mom’s got a machete. You’ve got to face the music.” You know, that type of thing.

You know, I was a youth pastor here at this church for eighteen years. And the number one question parents asked me over these eighteen years is “What do you do when you’re with the kids? When you’re meeting with them, what do you do?" And I would ask, “Tell me why you're asking this.”

“Well, because my kid gets in the car and they’ve been with you for an hour-and-a-half, two hours and I’ll say, ‘What did you do?’ And they’ll say, ‘Nothing.’ So what are you doing there because all I get is ‘Nothing.’”

Parents fail to realize that the stock answer for kids is “Nothing.” They learn very early on, the less I say, the smaller the target I represent. It’s always the answer. “Hey, what’s that mushroom cloud over your school?” “Nothing.” “When that fight broke out, what did you do?” “Nothing.” “What did Lady Gaga wear at her concert?” “Nothing.” You know, it doesn't matter what the question is, “nothing” is the answer.

Now parents, if we’re honest, we’re often the ones that teach our kids not to talk to us. I'll give you an illustration in my own life. Fifth grade year, we had mandatory dinner time. And the way that the Fields family set it up is, nobody is excused until we feel like we’ve had significant conversation.

And my oldest was beginning to clam up a little bit, one-word answers, “nothing.” Just kind of hitting maybe sixth grade, that stage of not talking as much. And so finally I said, “Babe, you’re a great story teller. You love to laugh. Something funny has happened this week. Tell us about it.”

And all of a sudden she kicks in, “Okay. Okay. Okay. So Mrs. Johnson, she’s sitting at her desk and she’s wearing this long dress. And she gets up from her desk and she steps on her dress and she falls in front of the whole classroom. It was so funny. So, so funny.”

Now I get defensive for poor Mrs. Johnson and you know what I say? “Torie, that’s not funny.” Now what did I just teach her? That when I ask you what happened, don’t answer because if you answer, you’re going to get in trouble. And you know, we wonder why our kids don’t talk. Don’t they like being rebuked? I mean, if our kids would just share their feelings we’d have so much critical wisdom to give them.

And here is something that I learned that I wish I would have learned with my first kid. It took until my third. As a parent, you don’t have to comment on everything they say. You don’t. You don’t have to make a comment because ninety percent of the stuff that they say, they don’t really mean. They’re just testing to see if it’s safe to say the ten percent that is important to them.

So you want to create environments where you allow kids to talk, where they are not fearful that you are just going to jump down their throats. So you make it a goal. Make it a goal in your family to have more dialogue, have more conversation. Maybe you build it in as mandatory when they’re young and they just grow up not knowing any different. We’re so quick to rush away from the table and hide behind the TV or the computers.

In God’s design for his family, God designed parents to talk to their kids. It’s in his design for us to teach them and train them and talk to them and develop a relationship with them.

God said there are some biggies. He says, I want you to love me and follow my commands. Love me and follow my commands. And then he says, As you love me and follow my commands, what I want you to do is I want you to pass that on to your kids.

And Pastor Rick, two of the four weeks, he's been talking about that. In essence, he's been talking about what I would call spiritual parenting, talking about things that we need to pass on to our kids.

The Bible says in , a famous passage in the Old Testament, “You must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are away on a journey, when you are lying down and when you are getting up again.”

We’ve got to be talking to our kids. As much as it feels like kids don’t want to talk, we’ve got to figure out ways, because they do want to talk. That talking is just going to look different as they get a little bit older.

And I don’t want to stand before you and say it’s really easy to talk to your kids. No, it’s not really easy. Different seasons, it’s much more difficult than other seasons.

For me, the biggest struggle I had was the junior high school season. I had two girls and the junior high girl seasons were just rough for me. They were different. First of all, they talked so fast. You know, “Oh, dad...” and I'd be like, “Say that again because I didn't hear you. What? Okay. Just text Daddy what you mean by that.”

And I thought it was my kids until their friends would come over. And their friends would come over. “Hi, Mr. Fields.” I'd go, “Oh, hi, Jennifer. How are you doing?” “Oh, my gosh...” I'm like “Oh, great. Well, you guys have a good time.” I mean, she could have been saying, we’re making crack cocaine in your garage. I have no idea.

Parents, you don’t talk when it’s convenient to you. You take talk on their terms, on their time. That’s why I’ve said to you before, you know, years ago I talked about if you’re talking on the phone in the car when your kids are in the car, I think you’re foolish. I know that’s strong. I think you’re foolish. You’re missing a great opportunity. You’ve got them trapped. Put the phone away when you’ve got them in the car. You take it on their terms.

I’ve said to my wife several times, “What is it about me being in the bathroom with the door shut that sends a message, ‘Come meet with dad and talk’”? You take it on their terms.

And this whole communication idea, it’s not just teaching them communication skills, which is so important, it’s also building a bridge of communication that you want to have with your kids, a bridge of communication that will last for the rest of your lives. And some parents wait too long to build that bridge when the water’s already risen.

There’s a third area and this is huge.

The third area that kids need from caring adults is they need to be taught responsibility.

Many people wonder why – I hear it all the time, adults saying, “Kids today, they're so irresponsible.” And probably many of you have said that.

Let me help you with this. This is not genetic, it’s not genetic. Kids have to learn responsibility. They have to learn it. And their teachers are us. The lack of responsibility reveals itself in what I call “the ABCs.” It reveals itself in A, apathy, where kids are going, “I don't have to care about being responsible.” B, blame, where they blame everyone. It’s never their fault. It’s always the stupid coach or the dumb teacher or the lame instructor. The C is the care-for-me mentality, where they’ve just been cared for and coddled and cradled their whole life.

You know, it’s going to sound different from when they’re talking to their kids as opposed to when my parents talked to me. Because when my parents talked to me about their generation, it was “You know, we had to walk to school both ways uphill, bare foot, in the snow after milking the cows.” That was my parents’ story. Today’s kids, I don't know what they’re going to tell their kids. “It was so rough. One time my parents made me make my own sandwich.” “Oh, and one time, one time I had to supervise the house cleaner. I mean, it was awful. You know, you guys have it so easy.”

So here is my question: What are you doing in your family, what are you doing in your family to give kids some real responsibility, to help them learn to be responsible people? Well, there are several ways to do it.

>First, chores.

Chores is a biggie that gives kids responsibility and helps them develop some important life skills.

What I did is – I have so much material. I mean, this stuff is in my wheelhouse of what I teach and live and talk about all over the world. And so I couldn’t put it all in this message, so I put a lot of stuff on my website. It’s Dougfields.com\amazingkids. I've got a bunch of stuff there on chores that might be helpful to you.

But let me just state the obvious about chores. The obvious about chores is that if you want something done right, you do it yourself. And let's state the obvious, it's going to be easier and better if you do it yourself; right? But that doesn't teach kids responsibility. That doesn't teach kids responsibility. So there are chores.

>The biggie, though, I think is consequences.

This is what I see as I survey the landscape of parenting. I see many parents; they handicap their kids by making life too easy for them by rescuing them all the time. Kids need to experience consequences, both good and bad, for their behavior and their decision making. And if rescuing your kid or even your grandkid is your default mechanism of parenting, you are robbing your kids from teaching them great life experiences.

The Bible says “A prudent person foresees the danger ahead and takes precautions. The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences.”

When we don’t allow children to suffer from the natural and logical consequences, they will remain a simpleton. They’ll stay a simpleton and they'll never develop mature responsibility and/or decision making skills.

See, here is the thing I think most parents miss. They don’t realize that consequences actually build self-esteem. When you experience a consequence, when a kid learns that behaviors have consequences, he learns that he has power and control over his decisions. So they’re going, “Wait, I am in control over that. I'm not a victim. I have power over consequences.”

And there are two types of consequences. One is the natural consequence. This is the one we all know. When you touch your finger on the stove, it burns and you smell burning flesh and you hear screams and then you realize it’s yourself and you pull your hand back. It’s a very vivid lesson to learn. That would be a natural consequence.

So for example, your child forgets to take their lunch to school. The consequence would be what? The natural consequence, they will be hungry. They will be hungry. Now a rescuer runs in to save the day because they don’t want their child to be hungry for a day. And so they rescue them and take their lunch because their kid is going to starve.

Let me help you, I've done some research on this. It takes over sixty-five days to starve to death. Your kid isn’t going to starve from one day. And when they are hungry, guess what they learn? They learn that taking lunch to school is their responsibility and not yours. That’s natural consequences.

Now what I think is really, really good and really good parenting is what we call logical consequences. And logical consequences, these do not happen naturally. These are set up by adults and often they work best when they are set up by adults and the children in advance, and

they are logical and the consequence is connected to the bad behavior.

So you use logical consequences – and I put these in your notes – when natural consequences are too dangerous. So yeah, you can play Frisbee, but no, you need to step in because they want to play Frisbee on the freeway. No, no, no, you can't play Frisbee on the freeway. So when it's too dangerous.

Or second is when natural consequences don't exist. For example, curfew. There is no natural consequence when curfew is broken. No one turns into a frog. So you have to come in and put in a logical consequence. If you come home late then the consequence will be, what? And maybe you even decide that together. You don’t have to decide it. It’s not a democracy there, but sometimes it’s helpful when they are a part of that. And the third is when natural consequences are ineffective. That means they fail to motivate.

For example, Jimmy is skateboarding in the driveway. And you say, “Jimmy, you need to come in and do your geometry homework.” And Jimmy says, “Ah, why do I have to do my geometry homework?” And you respond by saying, “Jimmy, if you don't do your geometry homework, you won’t be able to figure out the area within a trapezoid.” And Jimmy says, “I can live with that.” And you know what, Jimmy’s right, he can live with that.

As a matter of fact, you can live a long and healthy life without ever figuring out the area within a trapezoid. I learned it in 10th grade and I’ve gone my entire life, I’m still waiting for somebody to say, “Hey, we’ve got a whole bunch of trapezoids over here. And I’m just wondering, is there anybody that knows how to figure out the area of these trapezoids?” At which point I would say, “I do!” But that’s never happened. So there is not an immediate, logical consequence or natural consequence for when Jimmy doesn’t do his homework.

Now the natural consequence is he’ll flunk the class, but for Jimmy it doesn’t motivate. He doesn’t care because Jimmy’s going to be a professional skateboarder. So that’s when you’ve got to step in with a logical consequence. “Jimmy, you have a choice. If you flunk the class then you won’t skateboard again until Jesus returns.” And the goal of a logical consequence is to help them be responsible. That’s the goal. It’s not to ruin their life.

And kids won’t tell you this, but it’s true; they want rules. They want discipline. They want boundaries because rules and discipline and boundaries, they give kids a sense of security. And kids want to feel secure in this very insecure world. And discipline actually communicates love. It’s one of the ways that God loves us.

In it says “My child, don’t ignore when the Lord disciplines you and don’t be discouraged when he corrects you for the Lord corrects those he loves just as a father corrects a child in whom he delights.”

The whole idea of kids experiencing consequences and having boundaries and rules, it may be one of the most loving things that you can do. And I found in my experience, it works. It works.

Now I’ll tell you what doesn’t work. What doesn’t work is the counting game. I mean, it works

if you stick with it. But you’ve seen this happen before in McDonald's playground, or wherever, with other people. Maybe you do this, I don’t know. Where you say, you know, “Jacob, do not let me get to three. One, two, three... Jacob, maybe you didn’t hear me. Do not let me get to three again. One, two, three... Jacob, oh my. Are you hard of hearing? You’re going to get the fury of your father right now. Do not let me get to three, Jacob. One, one and a half, one and three quarters, two,” you start making up fractions. Parents, get to three and let there be a consequence with three, or that kid will never learn any responsibility at all.

This is why threatening doesn’t work and yelling doesn’t work. Because here is what happens, threatening works and yelling works for little kids, but as soon as the fear is gone, it doesn’t work. It’s an ineffective, short-term strategy that just distances you and your kid. And kids learn to manipulate bad strategies.

I did. I knew as a kid that when my dad was driving – my dad was the coolest guy but, you know, back in the sixties and the seventies, he’d smack. This is what he’d do, he’d just smack. You did something, “Shut up,” or whatever it was. It was just a smack. So we’d be driving in the car and if you were sitting shotgun or back here, you’d get him. “Do I have to – I’m not even going to slow this car down. Bam, bam.”

And what I learned, I learned very early on, I’m going to sit right behind Dad because if you sit right behind Dad, he can’t get to you. It just would be sometimes me and my dad and I’d sit behind him. He’d say, “Doug, don’t you want to come up in the front seat?” “No, Dad. You know, I know airbags haven’t been invented yet, but I’m just going to sit back here.”

The most difficult part of this whole consequence idea is enforcing the consequence that you set in place because so many parents don't want to see their child experience the consequence. And it’s just poor parenting. I’ll be just straightforward. And I know some parents say, “Well, I just don’t want to be misunderstood.”

If you fear that you’re going to be misunderstood by your child, you’ll never be an effective parent because that’s why they have you. You understand things that they don’t understand. They need you. They need you to build responsibility.

And when you do this right, it doesn’t become you against your child. This is the beauty of logical consequences. It’s not me against my kid; it’s me and my kid against that consequence. Does that make sense? It’s me and my kid against that consequence.

So let’s say my sixteen year old, who’s got an eleven o’clock curfew, let’s say she comes in at 11:20 tonight. I don’t have to meet her at the door and start yelling at her and threatening her. I can meet her at the door and go, “Oh, Babe, I’m glad you’re safe. I was a little bit worried. And then after I got over the worry and thought, oh, she’s responsible. She’s making good decisions. I knew that you had made this decision to come home late. Then I started getting sad for you. I started getting sad that you’re going to have to be with mom and I for the next three weeks.” Because really, there’s is no one that she can be mad at except for herself, because she was in total control of the situation. That’s what teaches responsibility.

Now that’s three things kids need. What about parents? Let’s turn it to you. What do parents need?

Parents need to battle wisely.

And what I mean by this, if you don’t battle wisely, you’ll be battling all the time. I’ve learned as a parent, if you want to be ticked off, you can be ticked off twenty-four hours a day, but nobody wants to live in that type of house.

So the idea here is you need to save your energy for the stuff that really matters, because if you get mad and you scream and you yell about everything, you will never be heard when you really need to be heard.

So the question you’ve got to ask is, “Is it really that big of a deal?” Because not everything can be a big deal. You can’t make everything be a big deal or it will be a miserable home and you’ll

drive your kids away from you. Now some things have to be a big deal, but is it really that big of a deal?

I’ll give you a couple illustrations from the Fields family. We decided early on that the bedrooms, we were not going to battle over the bedrooms. We just decided we’re not going to. In twenty-two years of parenting, I’ve never once said to my kids, “Clean up your room.” We just decided that’s not going to be the battle. Now it can’t move its way out into the house. We all clean up the house, but your room, it’s your own.

Now, two of my three kids have gone away to college. They have figured out how to live with other people, but we decided we’re just not going to battle that because that would be a daily battle and we weren’t going to have that battle.

With my son and the hair thing, you know, that’s kind of a guy thing. We didn’t make it the battle. He played sports all his life. Sometimes he had short hair, sometimes he had long hair. This week he sent me a picture of his hair. This is my nineteen year old son's hair today. Now that’s not how he wears it. It’s just really dirty. He washes it once a week before he goes to church and that’s why he’s trying to do the dread lock type thing. Now we just haven’t made that a battle.

Now I show you that because I want to show you where that hair is today. That hair is in Africa. He’s there for seven months. After first semester, he texted me and says, “Dad, I feel like God’s calling me to do something radical,” and he’s seven months in Africa. By the way, that is not a cigarette in his mouth. It’s a joint. No. I shouldn’t have said that, sorry.

I can live with that long hair because it’s not the hair that matters; it’s the inner character that I’m concerned about. And as parents, we’ve got to decide, what are those battles going to be.

Another way of saying battle wisely is, say “yes” whenever you can to give support to the occasional “no.” You've got to decide what’s worth battling for because not everything is. That’s why, as parents, we have to beg for God’s wisdom.

says, “Cry out for insight and understanding. Search for it as you would for lost money or hidden treasure… the Lord gives wisdom!”

You don’t just pray for your kids, you beg God, “God, would you give me wisdom in this situation. I don’t know what to do. If I rely on my own wisdom, I’m going to yell. I need your help.”

The Second thing that parents need to do is you don’t give up, you hang on.

You don’t give up, you hang on. I realize some of you are battling right now. Don’t give up.

When my wife first contracted pregnancy she didn’t tell me the traditional way. She didn’t put like booties on the pillow. I found out because I woke up one morning and she was vomiting in the bathroom. And that’s not normally how she wakes up so I knew something was different. So I walk into the bathroom. I said, “Can you keep it down? I’m trying to sleep.” No.

She looks back at me. I’ll never forget the splendor in her face. She just had this look and she said, “We’re pregnant.” And I didn’t really know what to do. You know, there’s vomit all over the place. “Oh, that’s beautiful.” I just knew I wasn’t going to kiss her at that time.

And you couldn’t see anything. It didn’t look like she was pregnant at all, but she said, “Don't be fooled. There is something happening within.”

And it’s really the morning sickness principle and it goes like this: Process doesn’t always look like progress. The process doesn’t always look like progress.

Parents, for some of you, you are in the process of bad report cards, negative behavior, nagging, rudeness, lack of communication. You are in this process and this process is wounding you and you don’t think that there is any progress at all. You are going, it doesn’t add up to progress. This isn’t what I thought it was going to be as a parent. I know.

I can remember lying in bed with my wife and she would feel the kicks. And I may be the only husband in the world who never felt it. I could never feel it. And I didn’t have the guts to say I didn’t think she was pregnant at first. I mean, it’s like, “Are you just gaining weight?” But then finally I just gave up. Then I pretended to feel it. I would be like, “Oh, yeah. What a kicker. Wow.” But I couldn’t see it. I didn’t see the progress or feel the progress. It wasn’t what I expected.

Even when the baby was born, with your first child, you don’t think that’s what a baby looks like. You see babies when they’re all cleaned up. You don’t see them with goo and slime. “Yeah, we gave birth to ET.” You know, it’s just weird.

And I know some of you, you have deep concern right now. You have deep concern over your child and this is not what you hoped for. And all I can say to you is you can't give up. If you give up, it’s too soon. You can’t give up.

And the good news is God hasn’t given up on you. And he began something with you and he’s going to continue it. My favorite verse, , “God began the good work within you, and will continue his work until it is finally finished on that day when Christ Jesus comes back again.”

He began a work; he's going to continue it. He’s not giving up. We can’t give up on our kids because I’ll tell you this, if you give up on them, I promise you, they will give up on themselves.

The greatest immobilizer of children is discouragement. That’s why they hang their heads, “I can’t do it.” “I’m not good at anything.” “I’m an idiot.” That’s because somebody’s given up on them.

And finally, what parents need is they need to get the right relationship right.

The right relationship right. The most loving thing you can do for your kids is to fall deeper in love with Jesus Christ.

You see, the Bible, this is not a parenting book. This is a life manual. I’ve taken principles out of God’s life manual. But anything I talked about today is pretty much bankrupt if it doesn't draw from the reservoir of God’s love and power that he’s made available through Jesus Christ.

If you want a peace-filled home you have to have a peace-filled heart. And the Biblical word for peace means this, absence of war. It means you can’t be at war between you and God. You can’t be at war with others, between you and your kid. So the most loving thing that you can do is to be at peace with God.

And Pastor Rick talked about that last week when he said you’ve got to make Jesus the central focus of your life. And when he’s the central focus of your life, he gives you his presence, he gives you his power and he gives you his peace.

I can’t do this parenting thing on my own power. I’ve tried. It doesn’t work. I need his power. And I need his power in my life and his presence in my life so I can be at peace.

You don’t want to be at war, you want to be at peace. Don’t give up. Hang in there. God is using you and the good news is God gives us his presence, his power and his peace.

Let’s pray together.

Prayer:

God, I pray that we would leave here today inspired to make a difference in the young people’s lives that you’ve entrusted to our care, either as parents or grandparents or friends or aunts and uncles, knowing what today’s kids need. God, we know we can’t do it on our own power so we beg you for yours. May we be at peace with you as we put our trust and our faith in you and we follow your ways. We beg for this in the name of Jesus. Amen.