The past couple of days I've been at a children's ministry conference. It has been really busy and tiring but such a blessing. My brain is chalked full of all kinds of great ideas and information. I'm in that place of being completely inspired and slightly overwhelmed. I have gotten lots of new resources and books. Side note, I have a book problem. Look, I'm just gonna admit it. It's a sickness. I love them. I probably have 20 or so in my "want to read" stack already but I keep adding them. If we won the lottery, I would just buy all the books. Belle is my favorite Disney Princess for a reason. If the Beast had given me that library, he would have instantly looked like Ryan Gosling or James Marsden in my eyes. "What fur? I love you, forever." When the kids bring home scholastic brochures it takes all of my self control to not buy 20 of them. Maybe I should start singing the "Fruits of the Spirit" song when I see that lovely flyer full of monthly specials. If you know of a 12 step program for hopeless nerds who are unrealistic about the actual amount of time in a day, sign me up. Anyway, back to the conference. I have heard a lot of things in the past couple of days that have impacted me. But this evening in my last class of the day the speaker said something that stopped me in my tracks. She was talking about kids that are particularly difficult. In her context she was referencing foster child situations she works with. And then she said it. She just breezed on by it like it wasn't profound or life changing. She said "Instead of a time-out, we take a time-in." And I caught my breath in my chest.
Take a time-in. I've been learning a lot lately about parenting to the heart of the child. The thing about behavior modification is that it's just that - BEHAVIOR modification. Now, when a child has a bad behavior, we want to modify it. That is just the sane thing to want to do. And it is a good thing to want to do. As one of the speakers yesterday pointed out, psychologists like Pavlov gave us the useful methods that we call behaviorism. We can train a dog with the sound of a bell. We can make them salivate or do whatever if we condition them. This is great information. We have taken this information and applied to children - in the home, in the classroom, in the church, wherever. The only problem is - kids aren't dogs. So, we can train our kids to do the right things. In fact, many would say that it is what parenting is all about. There are a lot of people of people who will judge your parenting solely on whether or not and how quickly your kids fall into line when you blow the whistle. The parent should be "in control". The parent should be teaching the child how to behave. And certainly there is some truth to be found here. It IS our job to teach our children how to behave. But MODELING is the ideal means to this end.
Molding our children into well behaved citizens is a great thing, but there is a major problem if you stop there. If we simply treat the symptoms of our children's behavior and ignore the heart condition that precipitates the behavior we are raising robots. They may behave as we say, but their hearts will at best be unchanged and at worst become hard and rusty. Having to constantly vie for approval from your parents leaves a deep whole in the heart of a child. If your parents are only interested in your good behavior, the message you will get is that it's all that matters. And then you end up with this: An adult person who does the "right things" in a legalistic sense, but has a corroded heart. They might follow all the rules, but they might treat their waitress like crap. They might make good money because they learned good behavior strategies, but they might be lonely and not like themselves. Good behavior alone does not a joyful life make. Separate from emotional health, it is void of meaning. Jesus was consistently pointing this out. In Matthew 23 he is talking to the Pharisees. If you read the gospels you quickly find that the Pharisees, AKA the best behaved of all the people, were the ones that Jesus rebuked again and again. In 23:25 he says this: "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the bowl and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside will also be clean. What if we applied this teaching of Jesus to our parenting? What if we cared more about the condition of the inside of our kids than we did about what someone else thinks about the appearance of the outside. What if we spent our time connecting with their hearts and pouring love into the cracks in their souls. What if instead of a time-out when they are in the wrong, we took a time-in and spent enough time with them to see what is actually going on in their hearts? What if we then took the time to train and disciple their hearts in a way that would kill the root of the problem? And what if during this whole process instead of casting them from our presence we stayed calm and connected with them? I wonder what our families would look like.
A couple of weeks ago I did an "exegetical" assignment for my current graduate class on the book of 1 Kings 18 - Elijah and the Prophets of Baal. This was the first assignment of this type I had done. We are learning how to interpret scripture. There was an entire long process we had to follow and a lot of questions to answer to the tune of 15 pages by the time it was finished. I had one week to do this assignment. For the first 10 pages I loved the assignment. "This is so exciting. I love diving so deeply into scripture. This is fascinating. I love graduate school so much. Everyone is beautiful. I hope we do this every week." By the time I got to the last 5 pages I had decided that everything was stupid. "This assignment is stupid. Graduate school is stupid. The prophets of Baal are stupid. King Ahab is stupid. I am too stupid for this class. I was stupid to sign up. It's just all stupid." I found out that doing "exegesis" on a portion of scripture is basically looking at it so closely that if it were a person you were studying you would know how many nose hairs they have by the end of the process. Help me Jesus, with the exegesis! All in all it was a great learning experience though.
How does this relate to this post? It does. I promise. As I was going through this process I had to answer the question about why I thought the prophets of Baal started to cut themselves and maim their bodies in an attempt to get their "god" to do what they had been asking all day long and send down fire upon the altar. For me the obvious answer was that they truly believed that this "Baal" was a god who cared for them. He wasn't doing what they wanted, so they thought maybe hurting themselves would get his attention. If he cared for them he would act in order to keep them from hurting themselves. And immediately it hit me. This is what our children do. They can't get our attention, so they will do all kinds of negative things to see if we will respond. "Mom says she loves me, but I can't get her attention. Maybe if I do something that worries her she will prove that she cares about me." Our kids are fighting for our attention with so many things. We are a busy society with so many commitments. We work, we volunteer, we have hobbies, we have our television shows we just" have to watch". And then there are the phones. Y'all, I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here because it has been said many times, but our phones are stealing away gobs of attention from our children. And let me be the first to raise my hand and say "guilty". When people can reach you at anytime and anywhere, when you can check email messages from work from anywhere, when you can see what your friends from all periods of your life are up to on one site from anywhere, you start to do these things from EVERYWHERE. And suddenly, there are no sacred places. Their are no places where we are fully present. Our kids are talking to us and we are responding to texts. Our kids want to show us what they just made and we are sending that email. They are begging us for connection and we are too connected to our phones to look into their eyes. So maybe sometimes it isn't our kids that need a time-out. Maybe sometimes our devices need a time out. Maybe sometimes we need to put all the things that are on our to do list in a time-out. Maybe our "Netflix binge" needs a timeout. Maybe we need to put our need to be constantly productive in a time-out. Maybe we need to put the opinions or expectations of others in a time-out. And maybe we need to give our kids a TIME-IN. Maybe we need to press into them and truly know them. Maybe when their faults and weaknesses start shining through we should give them appropriate discipline, but make sure it includes generosity of spirit and a loving tone. And then we should spend the time and do the heart work that is needed. It is harder this way. I requires more time this way. It requires intentionality. And sometimes people will even judge you, it's true. But what you just might end up with down the road is a grown child that you launch into adult life as a wholehearted person. You might have an imperfect person with a beautiful heart. And I would much rather launch a beautiful heart into this world than a toy soldier. Wouldn't you? Every time I get intentional about spending quality time with my children their behavior improves. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Connection, love, empathy, guidance, approval, modeling - they will cost us more than yelling "Go to your room!". But the interest returned in our wholehearted adult children will be well worth the investment.
