Early, Often, Less

If you are interested in watching Chuck Durham's lessons, or viewing his slides, please reach out to me: emersonk78@me.com. You can also find them at www.lindalechurchofchrist.com.

Also, I highly recommend Lakita Garth's book: "The Naked Truth about Sex, Love and Relationships". You can find it on Amazon. Her success story is a benefit to us all.

Few topics are more important to us than the wellbeing of our kids. You and I play an enormous role in shaping who they become. We have important work to do. It is not easy. But there is some great news: harder work now will lead to less work, and incredible results, later. 

- How important is discipline in your home?

- What happens to children who get what they want when they are little?

- How does infrequent discipline usually just make things worse?

- Why is immediate and repeated attention to a problem lead to long term solutions?

- What about you? Are you employing early + often = less in your own life?

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Excel Still More podcast. I am your host, Chris Emerson. I'm here to encourage you in your walk with God. Thank you for joining in. Today's podcast is sponsored by Cunningham Financial Group. John Cunningham is a friend of mine and a brother in Christ, and he can help you with financial decisions and future planning. He's been a big help to me and my family, and I commend him to you. You can reach him at 205-913-1720. I am so thankful you're here, so let's get started. This week at the Lindell Church, we had the most amazing series of lessons. Chuck Durham came in and he preached six sermons all related to the family. How to build stronger marriages, how to create generational faith. There were several thoughts about parenting to raise Christian kids. His thoughts this week and a particular book he suggested are responsible for the direction we'll be taking in today's podcast, but I cannot recommend strongly enough that you go and catch those lessons. You can go to the Lyndale Church of Christ webpage or Facebook page, or you can just send me an email, EmersonK78 at me.com, and I will add you to a list where you get all the sermons every week, and I'll make sure you get those links. All of the lessons were so good, some of them kind of hard to hear. Maybe I got a little taste of my own medicine this week. But as a husband and a father, I found them super beneficial. And especially the last night when he talked about parenting, and afterwards there was all this conversation going on. I felt like we were there for an hour afterwards, just talking to families about the way they're trying to keep their children directed towards a self-disciplined life that really learns to be faithful servants to the Lord. From those conversations, and really Chuck's lesson, there were three words that kept coming to mind for me early, often, and less. It's kind of a mantra that Summer and I have had for our entire parenting lives, a method of approach, a strategy that we both feel like has made an enormous difference when we implemented it, and ultimately I do want to share it with you today. Before we get into that, I do want to mention a book. Chuck referenced and quoted this book frequently in his final lesson. It's called The Naked Truth. It's written by Lakita Garth, and it's ultimately an instruction book on abstinence. It focuses in on teenagers and how we can help them understand the need to keep their bodies from the immorality around them and really come to grips with the statistics. How much more likely you are to achieve what matters most to you in this life when you, as a young person, are able to discipline yourself and not engage in things that you know will hurt you. I have not yet read the book, but I heard some things that Chuck said and I watched some interviews with her today, and she is an amazing story. She and her three brothers were raised in the meth capital of California. There was violence and danger all around them in their neighborhood. And yet their parents, and she gives so much credibility to her parents, they raised those four children to escape the confines of that neighborhood. They became business owners, attorneys, successful by every metric. She recounts in the book how they've looked back at all of the other children who lived in that neighborhood. And while many of those children did end up escaping that environment, she said their family was the only one on the whole block where all of the children made it out. Every other family was marred by death, addiction, or incarceration. And while that may not hit home with you, you might say, well, I'm not raising kids or grandkids in an environment of that nature. Let me ask you to think more spiritually. How many families in the church do you know wherein the discipline of the parents, the focus that they put on the right kinds of things helped all of their children to grow up to not just be successful in this world, but to be faithful servants of the king? To be sure there are some, but a great many lost one or more, or maybe even all of their children to the world. Now Chuck Durham did a nice job this week of saying, listen, parents, every child grows up and has two wills, the spiritual will and the physical will. And despite our best efforts, they may grow up to choose the wrong one over the right one. But I'm here with you today to talk about making sure that we in fact do put forth our best efforts. Let's do the best we can to give them the best chance. Discipline and the setting of rules and the enforcing of rules will be a big theme today, because I have seen it too many times, where families raise their children to do pretty much as they please and push everything beyond the limits. And then once they move out, the last thing we tell them is, hey, by the way, God's not going to put up with any of that, so you're going to have to tighten everything up. I don't think that works. We need to show them the way while we can, not just our way, but God's, so that they will be prepared to serve Him. Okay, so I've given you a couple of things not related to this podcast that you can jump in this week from Chuck Durham's sermon series to the book The Naked Truth by Lakita Garth, but I want to use the rest of this time to share some things that I believe that are personal to Summer and to me and to our children in hopes that it will help you. Let me break the rest of this episode down into three pieces. First of all, I want to tell you what I believe to be the top two things parents can do if they are interested in raising spiritual and successful children. To say that I've done a lot of research on that in the last 15 years would be an understatement. Every meeting I would go preach, every wonderful family I would interact with, I was polling them all. How do we raise faithful families? Two things emerged. I want to share them with you. Secondly, I want to tell you about the three words that represent today's title. Early, often, and less. As I was listening last night after the sermon and we were having all of these great conversations, I just kept thinking about those three words. When we get that right, a lot of things go right. So we'll talk about that in terms of parenting, and then hopefully at the very end, I'll have a little time to try and convince you that early, often, less is just as powerful in your life, your adult, independent life, as it is in the life of your kids. Alright, longest introduction ever out of the way, so let me give you those top two things. I'm sure the list is really long. Important things that Christian parents and grandparents do that have an influence on their kids. And when I started asking families, and I mean all over, everywhere I went, I probably got 10 or 20 different answers. But two things began to emerge, some of which they told me directly, but more often than not, it was just two things I picked up on that seemed to always be present in strong families. Number one, the father, the dad, genuinely loved God. I know that children can grow up to be faithful servants even if they have no father. I'm just telling you, our best effort is when the dad goes to church because he loves to go to church. Dad does Bible reading at home because he genuinely loves the Bible. Dad serves other believers because he has a servant's heart for Christian family. Going to church or even reading the Bible is not enough. But you also don't have to be a Bible scholar. You don't have to be someone who takes them through the whole Bible survey packet once a year or has Bible studies three nights a week. All of that is great, but it's not necessary. More importantly, they need to observe a man committed to Christ. So gentlemen, if you want to give your children or grandchildren a better chance of loving the Lord, love the Lord. Find a passion for God in your heart. This isn't about the amount of things you do, it's about the depth of each thing that you do. Secondly, at least one parent needs to have a 100% transparent relationship with the child. This is usually the mom, though not always. In our marriage it is, Hannah, who's now twenty, told Summer everything. Luke is seventeen, Nick is ten, Ella is eight, they can't hide anything from her. They don't want to. She is an authority figure in their life, but she is also a great listener. She takes genuine interest and they love to share with her. Any details I would give you would just embarrass my kids, so I'm super tempted to give you a bunch. But suffice it to say that my seventeen year old son has shared all of the ups and downs of being a teenager with his mom, and sometimes with me. Listen carefully. To the extent that a teenager begins to build a life, pursuits, friends, direction that is hidden from his parents, he has already begun to live a double life, and this leads to really scary results. Okay, so that wasn't a part of our title, and I may have even talked about it before, but those two things mean so much to me. Genuine, loving passion for God from the parents, and an open, honest, transparent relationship with the children is huge. But as we get to this second portion of today's episode, I feel like we need to back up a little bit. Those points relate to teenagers. What about two year olds? What about kids when they're five? What about when they're throwing temper tantrums? What about when they're pushing the buttons as far as they can push them, or they tell their first lie? Do you realize as parents or as teachers that the way you handle those situations is setting the table for the next ten or twenty years? If you've already raised children, you probably already know that. Lakita Garth put in her book this great quote by her mother if you don't raise them right the first time, you'll be raising them for the rest of their lives. So here's a big secret for that. Early plus often equals less. It's not just three words, it's an equation. One plus two equals three. When your child or student does something they should not do, catch it early. Don't wait until they push it as far as it could go or they cross some arbitrary line that is honestly already way beyond proper bounds before you do something. The opposite of early is late. Late is after they have stretched it as far as they could go. Late is sitting back waiting on unpleasant things to unfold, and then after they wear out, you'll step in and do something. Well, when they're 17, they'll practically never wear out. So that strategy's not good. So the first step is when you see something they should not be saying or doing, act early. Now that's not too tough until you add in the second thing. Not just early, but often. How many times should I act early? Every time. How many times should I address the small offense or when should I wait to see where it goes and then address it? Answer always and then never. Always address it early and never wait to see how far it goes. Now you might be thinking that sounds super cruel. I'll be getting on to them all the time. But I'm not talking about yelling or spanking, not all the time. I've never yelled, I don't think, at my kids, and honestly don't physically spank them all that often. It can be just a pause in the action to have a conversation, which I think my kids loathe even more than spankins. But the opposite of often is infrequently. If we discipline our children infrequently, sometimes we take the time to address it, sometimes we don't, they will start playing the odds on that. They'll be like, if I throw this fit, if I hit my brother, if I tell this lie, chances are nothing will happen. Why do they believe that? Because of how many times nothing happened. Early plus often equals less. This was our basic hope for our children. That if we always took the time at the earliest possible level of any offense, and we did that every single time, no matter what, that either their behavior would change long term or we would just sell them. Okay, I didn't mean that. I mostly did not mean that. But it didn't come to that. Because early plus often eventually led to less frequently and without too much time passing, ended up not being a problem at all. Summer and I were talking about two examples of that last night. When our kids were really little and they would scream, yell, throw a fit, she would pinch them every time. As soon as it started, pinch. Every time. And for a little while she's thinking they're not going to have any skin left on their legs. But it didn't take long for them to understand the boundaries and eventually just give up. Think about that in contrast to parenting, where sometimes you pinch them, sometimes you don't. Sometimes you let them yell for a while, sometimes you don't. Just depends on how busy you are. That is an exhausting and disastrous approach that will have no end. We've had a rule in our house during the entire time that we've been parenting that there is only one place in the home where fits can be thrown, their bedroom. Never in the living room or kitchen. That's our family space. This is a happy space. Only good things happen here. Disaster happens back there. So every time, even a little bit, when they would get out of line, they'd see me point to their room, and off they would go. Took a little extra motivation the first few times, but eventually they would just walk back there. And whenever they were ready for the land of the living, they could come out. We did it early. We did it every time, and eventually we stopped having to do it. I really hope you're hearing this the right way. The Emerson family is not a perfect place. We make mistakes. We have a beautiful, faithful twenty year old and a wonderful Christian husband. My seventeen year old Luke, things are looking pretty good, and the ten and eight year old pretty much terrify us. But we're doing the best we can do. And this simple formula has brought about the best results for us and for people we care about. As we get to these last few minutes, let me just expand on the early plus often equals less concept beyond just young children. Firstly, I want you to know that it does in fact scale well as they become teenagers and even older. In fact, I might say it becomes even more crucial when a teenager begins to talk back or they start to skirt the truth just a little bit. How long do we want to let that go? How often does that need to be addressed? And do we understand that every time we let that go one step farther, we lose that transparency between parent and child that I talked about earlier. Sit down and talk about it early. Sit down and talk about it every time. And eventually, you won't have to. All right, last thought for the day. Early plus often equals less is a good guideline for each and every one of us. Discipline isn't just something you're trying to implement in the life of kids. Self-discipline is something you're trying to carry in your own life. First and foremost, I don't want to be a hypocrite. I don't want to be talking to my 10-year-old saying, we need to address that now, we're going to address it every time, and eventually we'll get past it. Whereas in my own life, my strategy towards my own laziness or weakness or problems is later, occasionally, but probably forever. Did you hear what we did there? I just inverted everything in the strategy. When it comes to my own weaknesses, I'll let them ride for a little while. Eventually I'll do something if it gets too out of hand. I may not address it every time it comes up because I'm busy and, you know, I don't always have the time to sit down and go, okay, what did I just do? But later plus infrequently means I will probably be battling whatever that issue is until the day that I die, which I know is not God's plan for me. Whether it's the elimination of some sin that doesn't belong, which we sometimes need to help our children with, or it's the implementing of something good that I need to be doing more frequently, which we also talk to our kids about. Hold yourself accountable early. First step. First stumble. Every step, every stumble, you say, Man, that's going to be very involved. I'm really going to have to give attention to this. And I'm like, yeah, now you're starting to get it. As unpleasant as that might be, it narrows your walk. It keeps you on a very precise path. And eventually that becomes your path. And those missteps disappear. I can tell you I want that for my kids, but I can also tell you I need that for myself. Listen, I don't know what's going on in your life or the life of your children, but I want you to feel optimism and hope because the grace of the Almighty God is new every morning, and you can start from here in your life and in the lives of those you love if you will adopt one simple equation. Early plus often equals less.com. This wonderful company, run by Christians, provides beautiful illustrations of scripture from beginning to end, putting the spotlight on Jesus. And remember this whatever you choose to do today in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, excel still more.