I don't even have little kids anymore. We have safely graduated all of ours into adulthood, and it makes me want to crawl inside my house, lock the doors up tight, and not let anybody see what's going on, because there's so much judgment and expectation out there. And so, seriously, my heart breaks for young parents, because I know the conflict that you are facing is heavy.
Well, hello again, and welcome to the Trim the Wick podcast. I'm, Dan.
And I'm Becky.
And we are with you again this week.
Yep. Starting a new series.
Yes. We are ready to go, and we're gonna call it simply parenting.
That's right, because it doesn't have to be that complicated, y'all.
Nope. And we're gonna break it down, make it easy. Ah.
we're not gonna make it easy.
Oh, wait.
I wish we could make it easy. No, we're gonna make it simple, though.
We're gonna break it down and make it simple, hopefully address one of the biggest things that we're seeing right now in families.
Yeah.
And that's dealing with this mountain of expectation that just seems to be put on, parents.
Yes. And that's always been the case to some degree. When we started having kids back in 1996, it was a long time ago.
Wow.
There were lots of expectations on us at the time. We were young parents, and I think every parent brings their own set of expectations to parenting. We have dreams for our kids. we have goals that we envision them accomplishing and us accomplishing with them. We have ideas about the type of person we want them to grow up to be. Everybody has their own set of expectations in themselves as a parent. And then in our day, we had the expectations of other family members. We had the expectations
of friends. And mentors have always been societal ideals.
Well, that's the thing, is that when we were growing up, when we had our kids, and, you know, usually the only time you got around other kids or parents was at the playground or at church or around families.
Yeah.
Or what you saw on television.
Right. But those. I mean, that was what Cosby show.
Yeah.
family ties.
You know? But now you are inundated.
You really are.
There is just this nonstop thing when you pick up your phone and you open up instagram, and it is just this non stop of my kids do this. And if you want to be a good parent, you do this if you want to. These six steps to great parenting or how to get your child to sleep through the night at, you know, four days old and stuff like that.
Right. At least when our first was born, if I felt like I was getting too much judgment, I could pick my kid up and walk away and leave the place.
Right.
You know, I didn't have to stick around and hear it. By the time two, three, and four came along, there was a little more media interaction. We were in a workplace, you know, because you were in full time ministry by that point.
Yeah.
we were in a workplace where there were definitive workplace expectations on our parenting.
Yes.
And we felt the pressure of that greatly.
I can remember one of, I believe, the lowest times, darkest times in my parenting was, getting angry at the kids and pulling them together and saying, listen, if you guys don't stop, daddy's gonna lose his job. Like, if you guys don't ship up and do what's right, I'm gonna get fired.
And that's not a place you wanna parent from.
No, it was a horrible place to be.
Yeah. But again, all of those, those were external expectations that we still had a level of insulation from. We could walk away from it. We could go back to our own home and close the door. My heart breaks for young parents now that there's no place to hide from, the external expectations. They're with you in your pocket, on your phone all the time, and they're not quiet. They're very, very loud. And like you were saying, there's all the tips and tricks and tools. And if you're
not doing this, you should be. And if you're not allowing your child to do that, you should be. You know, how many news stories have we seen where just a, tragedy happens in a home and a child is injured? And the very first comments underneath those news stories, where were the parents? What were they doing? What were they thinking? I don't even have little kids anymore. We have safely graduated all of ours into
adulthood. And it makes me want to crawl inside my house, lock the doors up tight, and not let anybody see what's going on, because there's so much judgment and expectation out there. And so, seriously, my heart breaks for young parents because I know the conflict that you are facing is heavy, and.
It'S not just from the socials and stuff, advertisements, and even our government now, right as it's getting more and more stricter. but there's a heaviness of even just when you're going to the park, you're looking around and you see people. We were at the park with some friends recently, and you're looking around and you could tell there are people going okay, do I sit at the bench or do I stand, do I hover?
Am I supposed to go up the slide with, with my youngin or am I supposed to stand here at the bottom of the slide with my youngin.
And everybody's afraid they're not doing anything right.
I know, it's just insane.
And that's too much pressure. Yeah, it's too much pressure. Guys, if your parenting is coming from a place of, I have to do it exactly right, or someone's gonna judge it, or I have to do it exactly right, or my kid's gonna be traumatized and broken for the rest of their life. That's not parenting in a way that's gonna be good and healthy for you or your kids.
Right. Because you both need to make it out of this.
Yes, you do.
You need to make it out with your own sanity. And you wanna raise your child to make this to adulthood.
Right. And you want to make it out in a way that leaves a good, solid, healthy relationship between parent and child. Because your children, just because they graduate into adulthood, they still need you in their life, and you still need them.
Yes. Yeah. I think that is one of the greatest things that has been a benefit in our life with our kids, is that even our kids, at 16, 17, 1819, were now in the twenties and married. And, they still come to us and they still talk to us, and they still share things of their heartaches and celebrations.
That's right. You know, so, and that's a treasure to us.
It is a treasure.
One of the things that we would love to do through this series is talk you through how we got there.
Yeah.
How we were able to, you know, it's not that we didn't have both internal and external expectations on us as we were parenting our kids. There's a way to properly handle those expectations. There's a way to put them in their place.
Yeah.
and there's a way to simplify your parenting. Trying to meet all of those expectations. Generally, what happens, what started to happen to us early on that we quickly identified as very, very unhealthy is in order to meet all of the expectations that we knew existed, we started putting rule after rule after rule after rule into our home. And y'all, our poor little firstborn,
blessed. We have had conversations with him as he's grown up, and we have apologized and we have said, you know, mama and daddy, we grew up with you.
Yeah.
And we had to learn that just because somebody else expected something, if it wasn't something that God expected of us or of our child. We weren't going to bow to other people's expectations anymore because it tied us in knots.
Yeah. And that's something to kind of look at, is that a lot of times, we will put these others voices ahead of God's voice.
Yeah.
And we don't realize the damage that we're doing because we're actually pointing our kids away from God and pointing them towards man and the rules of man.
Right. We're saying, be good little people pleasers, because then we can kind of get along without rocking the boat, and that's raising kids who don't rock the boat is not the goal.
No.
Raising kids who honor God is the goal.
Yep. And just by nature, that's gonna cause some boat rocking.
It's gonna rock the boat.
You know, we're coming to you not as people that have got PhDs in this. We're coming to you as people that have been married for over 30 years, raised four children, all four to adulthood.
That's right.
And we've done it right. We've done it wrong. We've done it with tears. We've done it with slaps and smiles. And we want to share with you the things that we believe in God's word and through practice so that you're raising kids that, number one, love the Lord, right. And come to know Jesus as their savior, but love him in all that they do, and then love the people around them.
That's right. And really? Oh, you just did the big old teaser. Okay. That's how to simply parent. It's not this complex network of rules and regulations and guardrails and boundaries that you have to set up to keep your kids all penned in so they act right all the time.
You mean doctor Spock wasn't right?
He was wrong on a lot of things. And name whoever the next philosopher is. There are some great strategies and some great tenets out there. I know the big hot take right now is the gentle parenting thing, and I'm seeing a lot of that. There are some really solid foundations in there that do, line up with some biblical advice with how we speak to our kids and how we pour into them, but it's not a formula.
Right?
And it's not a case of going, well, I have to do this or I'm a bad parent. Or I have to do that, or I'm a bad parent. It's not this massively complex network of rule keeping and people pleasing to keep your kids safe, happy, and well adjusted. In the world so that they don't grow up traumatized and messed up.
Right.
It's too much. It's too much for them to handle, and it's way too much for you to keep track of.
Yeah. Just going around, always looking for, am I doing the right thing? That constant thing of. I don't know if you've ever taken a test where someone literally has sat over your shoulder, and while it's intimidating, you do, you know, you can't do it.
You can't think straight. Yeah.
You know, that's why, you know, sitting down, it's like, put me in a cubicle, let me be by myself to take my test and stuff, you know, I don't want to be around other people. I don't want to be, you know, people looking at me. Orlando. Because it is very intimidating, and it stresses you out, and it causes you to do things you probably wouldn't do because you are feeling that pressure.
One of the things that is our goal with this series is to lift that pressure from parents shoulders today to go, you know what? We know that you are under the microscope. We know that everything you do, every story that you share about your home life, with your family, with your friends, with people online, it invites judgment and comment in this day and age, and you
can't just simply go home and shut the door on it. And so one of the things that we would love to do with this is to help you set aside the weight of that and break the bondage of that in your life, because it was never intended to be a weight that you were supposed to carry as parents.
Right. Well, and on, that, here's one of the things I wanted to kind of talk about is that, we had four children. We have four children. We had our first son. And then there was a six year difference between son number two. M so the ideas and the checklists and the how you did this, you know, do you buy this type shoe or do you have a kid doing that? That all changed between child one and child two.
Right. The societal expectations even changed.
Yeah. There were so many differences that changed between your first child and your second child. So if we were treating our 2nd, third, and fourth child like we taught our first child, we would have been in a world of hurt.
Right. And so chasing those expectations, trying to devise the perfect formula, that's gonna be the right way to parenthood, because it doesn't hold true. So you really need to go back to the thing that is solid. The thing that does hold true. And the thing that, according to scripture, gives you an easy yoke and a light burden, right? Jesus says that his yoke is easy and his
burden is light. When he's training us, as people, when we get into that yoke, like two oxen, when the bigger ox, who knows what he's doing, takes on the young ox, who doesn't, all of the weight of that yoke sets on the bigger one. And all the little one has to do is walk alongside.
Yeah.
That kind of easy yoke is what Jesus gives to us as he trains us. And then as parents, we are tasked biblically, we are tasked with training up our children, in the way that they should go. It's not supposed to be a big, heavy burden to our kids. It's not supposed to be this endless list of rules that they're anxious and worried about misstepping in their home.
Right?
we're supposed to be walking alongside Jesus. They're supposed to be walking alongside us as we walk alongside Jesus. And this is gonna be an easy yoke and an easy burden. And it doesn't involve complexity. It's very, very simple.
So we're not talking about rules and regs. We're going to talk about principles. So how does that translate, honey? How does knowing a principle translate into the kids doing what they're supposed to do?
Okay. Well, it goes, it goes all the way back and into this concept. God gave us ten rules. Right? In the Old Testament, he gave us ten Commandments. In order to keep those ten commandments, men made 600 laws to keep the ten. Right?
Yeah. Cause if you're not gonna work on a certain day, you gotta make sure that you.
You gotta define what that work is and then you gotta. Right. So we made 600 rules to keep ten and made it way more complex than it needed to be.
Yeah.
When what God was saying and what he doubled down on and expounded when he sent Jesus, Jesus said, listen, you don't even need the ten. You need to understand that the entirety of the law and the prophets, the whole of our Old Testament hangs on these two things. And they said, okay, what are the two things? Yeah, tell us what. Tell us the two things. Two is less than ten. I can
do that. And he said, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strengthen and love your neighbor as you love yourself, y'all. If the whole of the Old Testament, everything that God says is how we're supposed to act, be and do towards him and towards each other, if all of that is boiled down to those two simple things, then that's what we need to hang our parenting on.
Right?
And those two things, you hear the difference? The law said, thou shalt not, thou shalt not, thou shalt not, thou shalt not. Right? It was a whole list of don't do this stuff. It was the guardrails that we've talked about, right? It was those boundaries. It was the don't step over this or you're done bad. What Jesus said, all of it hung on, was a hard attitude.
Right?
Love, the Lord's your goddess, love your neighbor.
Right?
So we've switched. Jesus fulfilled all of those laws and said, listen, do you understand? It wasn't about the behavior to begin with. It was about the heart.
Right?
And that's where we need to get to with our kids. We can say, little Johnny, don't do this, little Johnny, don't do that. Little Johnny, don't do this, little Johnny, don't do that. Please stop doing that. Susan. You know, we can put in all the don'ts, but if we never address the heart, then our kids are just going to have this long, long list of stuff they've got to remember to not to do, and that doesn't bring freedom or joy or relationship.
Right. Well, and I think it answers the question that we've gotten multiple times of, well, how do you get your kids to do what they're supposed to do when you're not around?
M because when we parented, we parented their hearts, not their behavior. Because everything that flows out of your mouth and everything that flows through your actions originates in your heart. And Jesus himself told us that the whole of the law, everything that I said don't do or do do. Hangs on. Love God with everything you are.
Right.
And love your neighbor in the exact same way and measure that you love yourself. It's about your heart. And if you parent the heart of your kids, the behavior of your kids will flow from that.
Yeah. And again, huge difference between principles and rules.
Yes.
And so over the next two weeks, we're going to go into this much more in depth, right. Because we're going to talk about actually, how do you do this? How do you train your kid in principles of loving God and loving people? And we're going to have some examples and tell some good, bad and ugly stories, of our, don't worry, all.
Names will be redacted of all of.
Our experiences through our, for children throughout the years to show and to let you know that this is not a thing. We're not writing a textbook here.
Right.
These are things that we've gone through. And like I said, we've had tears and we've had rejoicing in a lot of these situations.
Right. But we have found, over time, that Jesus was right.
Yeah.
when you tie every action, every word, every behavior with a lovely thread back to does this love God? Does this love my neighbor? It simplifies everything.
Yeah.
And you train your children to guard their hearts and to guard what flows from it. And then they don't have to have a long list of rules. They just have to check in what's my heart up to right now.
Yep. And believe it or not, they'll make their own rules.
That's right.
And sometimes they'll be even a little more strict than you were gonna make.
Them, so they will. They'll surprise you.
So we'll get into that over the next couple weeks. But we want to thank you so much for hanging out with us today. And if you want to connect with us, we would love that. We would love to hear from you. We would love to interact with you. you can connect with us real easily through our instagram. It is
rimthewic global. You can see all of our other posts and things we talk about of parenting and, marriage and just christian living and learn about what our bigger picture for the world and our work in Kenya and see a little bit about that as well. So next week, we are going to.
Talk about loving God.
Loving God. And we hope to see you, next week.
Keep it simple and set those expectations aside, y'all.
Oh, and guess what? You're not a failure.
No, you are not.
All right, we love you. We'll see you next week. Love you. Bye bye.