Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Friday, October 9th. Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey and I am Bob Lepine. The art of listening as a parent and it is an art is something we need to prayerfully cultivate.
Welcome to FamilyLife Today! Thanks for joining us! As a parent have you ever felt like your tank was a little low? Like you were banging on empty?
Dennis: Barbara and I would go to bed many evenings and some of those prayers were one sentence prayers. Lord, we are whipped. Good night.
(laughter)
Bob: Amen.
Dennis: And we would fall asleep. Really that theme Bob of adding fuel to parents’ tanks that these broadcasts are all about. We have the author of the book Parent Fuel, Barry St. Clair with us. Barry welcome back.
Barry: Thank you and I would like to say just as we begin here that there have been many times when my tank has been on empty as well.
Dennis: Fumes.
Barry: Fumes.
Dennis: Barry has worked with youth for more than thirty years. He had four children of his own with his wife Carol. They raised them to now become adults and has written this book to equip parents to know how to handle the challenges and stresses and not run out of gas.
Bob: You have shared with us this week that you and Carol were married 28 years when Carol received a diagnosis from the doctor that eventually led to her death. You became a single parent at that point. You still had one daughter at home, right?
Barry: Yes.
Bob: Your daughter, Jenny, who was ten years old at the time. A little over a year later you connected with, fell in love with, and married the woman you are married to now, Lawanna. You have been married for how long now?
Barry: We’ve been married almost ten years and it has been quite an adventure. Lawanna is a gifted wonderful woman who loves me in spite of myself. We have been through this whole process of blending the family. When people say what’s that like I say, well it’s not just complex it’s complexly complex.
(laughter)
Barry: We’ve been through that and it’s just when you remarry and blend parents out there will understand this it is just a complex situation on the best of days.
Bob: I think that is important because here are two people who passionately love Jesus Christ more than anything else. You’re committed to Him and you are committed to one another. You understand the Scriptures and blending a family is maybe the biggest challenge you’ve experienced in your life?
Barry: Yes and all my kids love Jesus. You take a bunch of Jesus lovers and you’d think we can do it pretty easy but it’s not as easy as it appears.
Dennis: As I was reading your book Barry you actually use a similar illustration that I’ve used back when I used to work with youth a number of years ago. That is as a parent we need to build a bridge from our hearts to our children’s hearts and in the process of building that bridge you develop that relationship and across that bridge called relationship you take truth. You take life lessons, training, all kinds of developmental aspects of raising a child into adulthood and really you are parenting success humanly speaking is only as sturdy as that bridge you are building, right?
Barry: Yes. When you go back and look at sort of the context of that in this generation you have what I would call a disconnected generation and by that I mean kids who are pretty isolated from their parents and sometime isolated from the people around them by the kind of culture that we have.
Really what happens there is because kids are isolated even now more than ever they need this security and love and support from their parents and often times that is where they are not getting it. Therefore the bridge is not built and when that bridge is not built then kids struggle with their true identity. So they build their life on a false self. Kids experience all kinds of internal pain that creates for them angst. They look good on the surface but really underneath when you get down and scratch and sniff a little bit there is a lot of pain that the kids have.
That makes the bridge illustration all that more significant because if you don’t have that bridge or establish that strong bridge between yourself and your child then the result is going to be that you minimize rather than maximize the influence you’re able to have on your kids.
Bob: Was that bridge in place in place between you and Jenny when your wife Carol died?
Barry: Yes.
Bob: So you had the framework in place when your wife died and you not only had the damage that was done to your heart with that but now Jenny had damage done to her heart. Did that affect this bridge that existed between the two of you?
Barry: When Jenny would answer my question “honey, how are you doing?” the answer was always the same. Dad, I’m fine. She’d give me this little smile that was really not all that authentic. I would continue to ask the question. One night I remember so clearly. We were standing in the hallway and I said Jenny, how are you doing? She said fine. I said, I don’t think you are doing so fine. She said, Dad, see this? This is a box. Inside this box are my feelings and the top of that box is closed and it’s locked and I have the key and you can’t go in there.
Dennis: She’s 11 years old?
Barry: Eleven years old…I said, nothing. I dropped the subject at that point but I knew at that point in time that what was under the surface was going to come out in due time.
Bob: What’s in that box could be explosive unless somehow the top gets open and somebody helps you deal with the mess that is in there, right?
Barry: You cannot with your kids force the box open.
Dennis: I want to talk about that for a second because when most parents confront this circumstance and they get pushback from a child who does not want them to know what is in the box most of us do not know what to do at that point forward in the relationship. Basically what they have just done is they declared a certain area of the relationship off limits.
Barry: Yes.
Dennis: And if parents aren’t careful that box will remain sealed and off limits through the age of 13, 14, 15 all the way through the teenage years.
Barry: That’s what is so important here for all parents of teenagers to say. When my kids are giving push back, when they look like they are rebelling and pulling away toward independence the key for me as a parent is to keep the bridge open. I need to keep praying for my kids, relating to my kids and investing in my kids because unless I do that then there is no opportunity to influence there as time goes on. Many parents tend to pull back at that point instead of pursuing the building of the bridge. With Jenny we went through a period of time there from the time she was 11 until she was about 15 or 16 I saw signs of the top bulging.
Her words and actions didn’t always match. The music she was listening to was somewhat suspect. The dreaded first boy friend came on the scene and she was pulling back from some of her friends and spiritually pulling away. I can see that this is coming to me now.
The box is bulging and it’s going to blow open here somewhere and I said Lord, I do not know what to do. I think a lot of parents are there. They are raising teenagers and know they don’t know what to do. Just please speak to me and show me what it is that I’m supposed to be doing here.
Really over a few day period of time the Lord gave me two really clear things that I needed to be doing. One was to delight in Jenny. That wasn’t hard because we were together. I want you to continue to do this and do it more. The other one was I want you to begin to meet with Jenny every week to help her discover her heart and for you to know what is in her heart. I didn’t know how to approach that with her so I just awkwardly said Jenny can we begin to meet every week and talk about your heart and what is in there. The answer was no.
Dennis: So she pushed back again.
Barry: Yes. I said I’ll tell you what. Let’s do this. Let’s go to Starbucks and I’ll pay. We’ll just do it one time and if you don’t like it we won’t do it anymore. She said, okay dad. So we went and I paid and we talked. One week turned into another week and another week. We talked about school and homework and friends and money and always needing more, the boy friend and all this kind of thing.
About six weeks into this the lid blew off this box. One day I asked her a question about her mom or something. I don’t even remember what the question was. She got so angry.
I asked her, Jenny are you angry at me? She said, yes, I am. I asked, are you angry at Luwanna? She said, yes, I’m angry at Luwanna. I said, are you angry at God? Yes, I’m angry at God. Are you angry at your mom for dying? Yes, I’m angry at mom for dying.
That started a process of this thing blowing open for her. Our conversations in kind of an angry tone went on for three or four weeks but as the anger came out it was like the Lord was putting something else back in. It was a beautiful thing to see and it pointed out to me at that point that was such an important point for me in my parenting and for hopefully helping other parents. It’s not about the behavior it’s about what is going on inside my child’s heart.
There were some painful things going on inside of Jenny that needed to come out. They needed to be nurtured and cared for. By God’s grace I was able to enter into that with Jenny in a meaningful way and I was able to connect with her heart. The result was we began to establish this heart to heart relationship that went all the way through high school and college. When she comes home next week before she takes off for out of the country for her last semester of school one of the first questions she’ll ask me is Dad, when are we going to Starbucks?
Dennis: As you were talking about how you pursued Jenny in that period of time I was thinking of a couple of key points that parents need to take away from here. One is there is always a lot more going on in a teenager than you’ll ever realize. They may respond with a fine, or okay when you ask them how they are doing. They do hold the key. You no longer hold the key as a parent and that is frightening. That’s really frightening for us.
Secondly and you’ve said it well. It’s our assignment to keep the bridge in place even though the traffic may shut down from the child to the parent. We keep crossing the bridge and appropriately pursuing so that when they are ready to talk we can listen. The reason I know about this Barry, is that I didn’t do this right.
We have to listen and not lecture. We have to listen to understand and not be quick to offer a solution. Just listen. There may be a time later on to offer some conclusions and some guidance and maybe a lecture or two (laughter) but not when the child is opening the box. Not when they are letting you in.
Bob: I have to tell you as you were describing that scene in Starbucks with a daughter who says yes, I’m angry at you. I’m angry at my step mother. I’m angry at God. I’m angry at my mom for dying. I’m thinking if I’m a parent and my daughter is saying that I would go I’m scared.
I’m scared because I know what anger can do and I don’t know how to reach over and turn that valve off in you. How did you respond when your daughter started saying yes, I’m angry at all of this and that went on for three or four weeks?
Barry: Well, anger was expressed toward me and toward everything around me so your natural response as a parent is to say I don’t want to hear this. Don’t talk to me about this and become defensive about it. The thing I’ve learned over time and I don’t always do this well, is to say I need to hear this all the way out and I need to reserve my judgment on this because there is always a different point of view. I need to let this child have her full say. If I am a parent who has respect for my child as a person then she has as much right to talk as I have to talk and I have to listen to that all the way through.
A couple of things I would say as a result of all this is first it wasn’t just a one or two time conversation. The part B of that story is that Jenny went off to college and she had an eating disorder that was directly related to her mom’s death. If we never had this connecting experience while she was in high school it would have been 10 times worse but because of our connection and because she knew a lot about her heart we were able to get her the help she needed to overcome that.
It was a life transforming experience. She is not just physically healthy but emotionally healthy person as a result of having gone through that but I don’t want parents to think well you have a few little conversations with your kids and you don’t say much and then all of a sudden everything gets better. It is an ongoing process of keeping that bridge open and building that bridge and going over the bridge.
Bob: When you and Jenny started going to Starbucks this wasn’t a new thing for you. You had met with your son Jonathan for years with the two of you going to Chick-Fil-A every week. Did you go to those times with him with an agenda, with a chapter to study or with something on your heart that you wanted to talk to him about? Or did you just go to say what’s on your mind today?
Barry: That brings up a very important point here because as parents when we take on the responsibility of helping our kids love God with all their hearts then we enter into their spiritual formation and a part of that is discipleship. We can disciple our kids in informal ways which is really what I was doing with Jenny. You do that at home and here and there and everywhere.
When I began to meet with Jonathan and his friends in the ninth grade that was formal discipleship. We did that over a five year period of time where I walked them through a step by step series of things that would help them to know God and follow Jesus. My son, if he was here today, would say to you that those five years that we walked together with his buddies through this discipleship process was the key to taking him through those class seven rapids of his mom’s death and the blending of our family and the struggles that we had. It’s the thing that kept us close and it’s the thing that kept him grounded in his faith.
Bob: It was as much the relational investment you were making each week as you met with him as it was the truth you were imparting each of those weeks wasn’t it?
Barry: Yes. What you had in that situation was context and content. Relationship and I would say to them every week after they got their chicken biscuit and orange juice okay guys let’s get going. We are here to become men of God let’s get started and we would jump into it.
We would be interrupted 10 or 15 times by the bodily noises, laughter, and all these other things that guys do but at the same time all those guys would say that was a really valuable time in my life where some adult gave me time and focused attention around the word of God where the Holy Spirit had an opportunity to work. I think every parent has the opportunity to invest in their kids in that kind of way.
Dennis: It’s a real privilege to be used by God to touch your kid’s lives spiritually. It’s not only a privilege it’s a responsibility.
Barry: It’s something that often times we pawn off on the church and say here, I’m going to drop them off in the sixth grade and I’ll pick them back up when they graduate from high school.
Dennis: Right.
Barry: We miss not the responsibility. Sure it’s a responsibility but we miss the incredible privilege. I wouldn’t give anything for the things that happened in my discipleship with my son Jonathan and in this process with Jenny.
Dennis: I look back on those years and I’m convinced that is when I grew up. Not my kids but me. In walking through what you call the class seven rapids and keeping the bridge in place and being intentional as a parent. Hanging in there and loving them when don’t love you. Attempting to listen to them when they are not listening to you. Trying to keep that relationship intact. Be honest, have humility, be teachable and admit your mistakes. All that is wrapped up in that that’s when the Christian life really became I think most authentic for me because if someone loves you the Scripture says, what profit is there to you. But if someone doesn’t love you and persecutes you and sometime teenagers can persecute you.
(laughter)
Dennis: They can persecute you.
Barry: And it takes every aspect of the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace and the patience, the kindness and the gentleness and the self control with your kids. It takes all of that in order to be able to move through one day. That’s why it is so important to love God with all your heart which is going back to the beginning. If we do that then we have the Spirit and we have the fruit of the Spirit and all the resources needed to be able to go through those times. Sometimes it’s wonderful and beautiful and I wouldn’t give anything for it and then there are sometimes when you just say at the end of the day I’ve had it.
Dennis: It’s a one sentence prayer like Barbara and I pray “Lord we are exhausted. Good night.” If I might say of behalf of literally hundreds of thousand undoubtedly millions of parents who have benefited from your ministry of equipping youth pastors and coming alongside them decade after decade of encouraging them and bringing resources that they can use to disciple young people I want to say thank you for your faithfulness. Many of our listeners have benefited from your ministry although they have never met you. I want to say thanks to you for your faithfulness in God’s work. I think your best years are yet ahead.
Barry: Oh, man, that is a good word. I like that.
(laughter)
Bob: I think in the mean time there are going to be a lot of parents who benefit from what we’ve talked about this week from getting a copy of your book Parent Fuel and from getting the video curriculum. You’ve put together a video curriculum for this book so that small groups or whole churches can go through the material. Husbands and wives get an opportunity to get on the same page with their parenting. Even within a church there can be a community of parents who are thinking alike about the priorities of parenting.
We have information on our web site at FamilyLife Today.com about both the book and the video curriculum. You can order from us online if you’d like or call toll free 1-800-FL-TODAY. That’s 1-800-358-6329. That’s 1-800- F as in “family”—L as in “life” and then the word TODAY and someone on our team can make arrangements to have the resources you need sent to you.
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This month if you are able to help with a donation of any amount we have a thank you gift we would like to send to you. It’s a two CD series that features a conversation we had not long ago with Dr. Tim Kimmel, a friend of ours who has written a book called Grace Based Parenting. We spent a lot of time talking about how discipline and grace fit together in the same matrix and what it means to have the right goals as parents. It’s a great conversation and the two CDs are our gift to you this month if you’re able to help support the ministry of FamilyLife Today with a donation of any amount.
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We hope you have a great weekend. We hope you and your family are able to worship together this weekend and we hope you can join us back on Monday when Dr. Meg Meeker is going to be with us. We are going to talk about the differences between raising little boys and raising little girls. She has a lot of great insight on this. I hope you can tune in.
I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team.
On behalf of our host Dennis Rainey, I am Bob Lepine. We will see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.
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