Focus on the Family

Guest (Male): I feel like I blinked and now my newborn can walk and talk. Kids change so fast, don't they? It can be hard to keep up with each new phase. That's why I love Focus on the Family's age and stage newsletter. Each week, I get an email with resources curated by experts. They're full of biblically and clinically based tips tailored to your child, no matter what age they are. You can sign up today at mykidsage.com. That's mykidsage.com.

John Fuller: The following program is sponsored by Focus on the Family and is supported by the prayers and financial gifts of wonderful friends like you. Please remember to let us know how you're listening to these programs on a podcast, app, or website.

Juan Sanchez: Number one, you're not a perfect parent. (Jim: What?) And your child is not a perfect child. And your child does not need a perfect parent. Your child has a perfect savior. And that's what your child needs. What your child needs is for you to be a faithful Christian. And that's what's important for us to understand.

Jim Daly: That's a big statement.

Juan Sanchez: We sometimes overcomplicate what we're doing. What we're really doing is we're growing in Christlikeness before our children.

John Fuller: That's Juan Sanchez and his wife Janine are with us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Thanks for joining us. I'm John Fuller.

Jim Daly: Parenting doesn't come with a manual. We're scared to death. I remember when Trent, my son, was born—my first son—and they handed him to me. It freaked me out. It was like, what do I do now? There was nothing that came with it. It was like, "What a blessed son you have." And I was like, yeah, I hope I don't break him. Today we're going to talk to our guests about the ins and outs of parenting and getting on the same page and what happens when you don't.

John Fuller: And reaching your child's heart is a real critical component of the conversation today. In fact, the book title is *Reaching Your Child's Heart*, and the authors are Juan and Janine Sanchez. We're so glad to have them. Juan is senior pastor of High Point Baptist Church in Austin, Texas, and Janine teaches English and writing to children and helps women understand how to apply God's word to everyday life. They've got five adult daughters—bless you—and a growing number of grandchildren. That is awesome. Welcome to the program.

Juan Sanchez: Thank you. It's a joy to be here.

Jim Daly: Here's the question. What have you learned raising five girls? I'll ask both of you.

Janine Sanchez: Wow, so much. I think one of the big things is that formulaic parenting just doesn't work. You know, the A plus B equals C, and if you do this then your children are going to turn out this way. And the Lord in His kind providence did not allow that in our lives. And what a mercy.

Jim Daly: Jean and I walking through a grocery store when we were first married, no kids, and we'd see a child out of control and we would say, "When we have children, our child will never act like that."

Janine Sanchez: Well, my child was there. My child was that child throwing the fit.

Jim Daly: Mine too. That's the funny thing. But Juan, you did military. Did you come into the marriage and into the parenting role as dad as that guy?

Juan Sanchez: I was Captain von Trapp without the whistle.

Jim Daly: *Sound of Music* is your story.

Juan Sanchez: What's interesting is I didn't know what was going on. I had a warped understanding of parenting. I thought, I read the theology books, you deal with the kids, and then once they are old enough to talk and potty train and all that, then I'll jump in there.

When we had our first daughter—very surprisingly because we were going to wait two years to get to know each other—we had a plan. And six months into our marriage, we're pregnant. We didn't know what was going on. We were making things up as we go along. She didn't sleep through the night consistently until she was four years old. I told Janine we can't keep doing this. There was a lot of learning the hard way.

Jim Daly: Juan, you said when your firstborn daughter turned six, it was kind of a change of the game. What happened when she was six that changed it?

Juan Sanchez: One of the things I would say is Janine knows she is not the Holy Spirit. She wasn't critical, she wasn't nagging, but she prayed for me for six years. One day she came to me and she said, "Hey, there's this parenting conference happening not far from us. Would you be willing to go?" I said yes. Again, my thinking was I'm in ministry, I have to pour myself into this.

The speaker spoke my language, which is biblical and theological. He helped me understand from scripture what is God's design for the family, what is God's design for the husband and the wife, and what is my place in all of this. I realized my place is to be the leader. I'm supposed to be the spiritual leader.

In the way that Jesus loved the church with a sacrificial, servant, and sanctifying kind of love, I'm supposed to be reproducing that culture and that environment in my home—leading my wife in that way, but also leading my children. We came back and I began reading and thinking about that, very convicted. It was amazing to me how our home was upside down where Janine was leading us in the parenting, the discipleship, and the discipline.

Within a matter of time, it seemed fairly quickly, she began to come to me and ask questions about discipleship and parenting and discipline. We came to it as a team. What we've discovered is that there are three pillars to faithful parenting. The first one is godly parental example. We lead by example. Just as elders are supposed to lead not under compulsion but by example, we're displaying to our children who God is, His love, His authority. Secondly, biblical instruction is the foundation, and then corrective discipline.

Those three pillars are given to us in scripture for us to be able to model for our children what the Christian life is like, for us to teach them who God is and what He requires of them, and then that corrective discipline that God Himself uses on us. It's been amazing how it not only transformed our parenting but actually transformed our marriage.

Jim Daly: And it's actually not that complicated, but you have to get focused on it and understand what the inputs need to be for those predictive outcomes.

Janine Sanchez: I was reading all the parenting books trying to gather all of the information that I could. And then Juan would come home and ask me, we'd talk about what to do, and that just switched and he took ownership of that information.

Now he was reading and he was formulating what is the best plan for our family, the best plan to handle these types of situations. And that can be clunky at first, especially with a stronger, "I've been doing this for six years," and then having to change that leadership over to him. But it was such a great thing.

Jim Daly: It was probably a relief too to have more of a partner in that regard. A lot of wives are probably going, "Oh, I only wish." But let's get you a copy of the book. That would be a great place to start and talk about it.

Janine Sanchez: And to pray. Really pray. I think sometimes we think of that as a last resort, and that really needs to be our go-to because the Lord was going to do a better job with Juan than I was going to do any day.

Jim Daly: I mean, that's so true. And that's true for both spouses. Husbands want change in their wife and the wife wants change in the husband, and you can only work on you.

John Fuller: Our guests today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly are Juan and Janine Sanchez. They've written a terrific book, *Reaching Your Child's Heart: A Practical Guide to Faithful Parenting*. Call us today for your copy at 800-A-FAMILY, or stop by focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.

Jim Daly: What does healthy, dedicated discipleship look like in a normal, busy week for a family? This is the real stuff. Everybody's moving different directions. You've had five girls. I mean, dinner, getting things ready. I can't imagine the bathroom difficulties. "It's my time in the bathroom!"

Janine Sanchez: Absolutely. That's discipleship right now at that moment. We chose to capitalize on things that we could count on that we were doing together anyway. Mealtime is such an important time in the life of your kids. When they're young, teaching them how to sit and how to have nice table manners. As they grow, to consider one another, how to be kind to a host and hostess. Even in the teenage years, that's where you're going to have conversations.

God was so kind to help us realize that we have those dedicated times. Use those times to be in the word and to think about issues of the day that we could point the kids to Christ. Have those conversations that can mold them. Once again, it's just another opportunity to point them to God's word. Juan was able to do this at different seasons. Sometimes it was in the morning, and other seasons it was during the evening where we tried to be as consistent as a schedule would allow. We were in the car often and we also utilized that time to listen to *Adventures in Odyssey*.

Juan Sanchez: Think Deuteronomy 6: teach when you wake up, when you lie down, when you walk by the road. It's not either-or, it's both-and. But we do have to know the age of our children and their development. When children are younger, they're in that concrete stage of thinking where it's more facts. They're memorizing and they're telling us back. But as they grow older into their more abstract stage of thinking and begin to reason, we have to know what stages they are.

When they're very little, we're just basically teaching them truths. A catechism is a great way for very small children who are in the grammar stage—that concrete stage where you teach them a question and the answer, then they say it back to you. We learned from a very young age children can learn a lot. They're sponges. They can even communicate before they're verbal just using some basic sign language.

Like Janine said, there is so much going on in those times. They're learning to read and we're teaching our children a love of reading. If we instill in our children a love for reading, they'll be lifelong learners. They're also learning how to sit. But it's so simple. Like we would sit at breakfast. I used the New Living Translation, it had just come out, and we were just reading through the Bible. We would just read a portion, maybe as much as a chapter. We would say a few words and then we would pray for one another. When they could understand, then we would just simply ask what questions they had and how we could pray for them.

In the evenings after dinner, we would check in. I would read aloud. I love fantasy—Janine not so much—and so I would read *The Chronicles of Narnia* or *The Hobbit*. Bedtime was really simple. We would do the catechism and then I would sit with them. We would sing three little songs, ask them how we could pray for them, and just pray with them in bed. It really was very simple.

Janine Sanchez: A lot of us have kids in different ages and stages and it's like, who am I teaching to? Am I teaching to the 10-year-old or the 2-year-old? It's amazing as you're teaching to the older kids what the younger ones are getting, just doing it again and again.

Juan Sanchez: One time Janine was taking the girls to brush their teeth and I had the 2-year-old. We had been doing the catechism and I'm looking at her and I'm thinking, "What do I do? I'll just wait for them to come back." And I just thought, let's go. "Who made you?" She said, "Todd made me." I said, "Well, what else did God make?" "Todd made all things." I said, "Well, why did God make you and all things?" "For His own glory." I thought, my goodness, she gets it. She's been absorbing it as we're doing it with the older sisters.

One of the things that's helpful to understand is that little children's brains are like a warehouse. They're shelving, and our job is to put the truths of God in those shelves in the right places so that as they grow and develop, the Holy Spirit has something to work with. Those truths to convict of righteousness, truth, and judgment and to draw them to Christ. What we're doing is we're just filling the warehouse with God's truth.

Jim Daly: I like that concept. For the parents of young children, I want to speak specifically to you. One of the things that I felt was the progression for me in parenting was going from expectations of behavior to being a little bit more relaxed. And that poor firstborn! You take so much because the parents were so rigid. In that context, how do we learn earlier to relax?

Juan Sanchez: Number one, you're not a perfect parent. And your child is not a perfect child. Your child does not need a perfect parent. Your child has a perfect savior. That's what your child needs. Your child needs for you to be a faithful Christian. That's what's important for us to understand.

We overcomplicate what we're doing. What we're really doing is we're growing in Christlikeness before our children. We're modeling Christlikeness. Ephesians 4:11-16: we're speaking the truth in love to one another until we all grow in Christlikeness. Then we just helpfully correct one another.

What we encourage and advocate for in the very early years is a more parental-directed home because your children need that. As they learn responsibility, you give them more and more responsibility. When they can accept your authority, you want to give them opportunities. What ends up happening in child-centered homes is they're giving away all the authority now and then when the kids become teenagers, they don't like the choices they're making and they're trying to rein them in. It's the very opposite. You will do the hard work. The later you wait to do the hard work, the harder it becomes.

Jim Daly: That is so true. Janine, let me amplify this a little for moms. What I've seen is when moms' fear goes up—especially in those teen years—control rises higher in order to get their feeling of security back with the kids. That can be the exact wrong move at that time because your teenage child is trying to get independence. Hopefully, you've done the hard work so that they're wise in their independence. But if not, that fear rises, then your control rises higher, and now you've got rebellion.

Janine Sanchez: Fear is an awful master and it kills relationship. That's just one of the things that I think is so important on this journey of parenting. Am I being winsome in how I'm dealing with this child, discipling them, and pointing them to Christ? Or am I being an authoritarian ogre?

The more permissive we are in the younger years, we're just doing it backwards. We have more fear and then we get to these teenage years and we want to clamp down and it chokes the life out of that relationship because at the end of the day, you're not trusting. First of all, you're not trusting the Lord, you're not trusting the teen, and you're not trusting in God's word.

This is just such an amazing time to have positive instruction opportunities and conversations. It takes time, but it will not be void. It will bring back that relationship so that before your kid goes out, you're talking about it. "What are you doing? What are some pitfalls? What are some dangers you might see as you're going out? We're giving you all the freedom, so what are some expectations that we have of you?"

We would talk about those beforehand. "We expect you to go where you say you're going to go, be with who you say you're going to be with, and be home at a certain time." My dad instilled in our home that if there was trouble, I knew I could call my dad. I knew that and I did. Now, there are consequences to that, but I knew that I didn't have to handle that situation myself. I wanted my teenagers to know that. All of these situations are opportunities for discipleship and there have to be natural consequences afterwards.

Jim Daly: Your oldest girl—is she out of the house?

Juan Sanchez: She's 34. The youngest is 23.

Jim Daly: So you guys have lived this. I want to speak again to a different spectrum of parenting where we get a lot of calls for counseling help. It's kind of to your point where if you were passive in younger years, at some point you pay the parenting piper.

So these kids are raised in good Christian homes, go to Sunday school, go to church, they hear it, they can recite it. They get to a point where they get out of the home, they go off to college, and they're free from that parenting throttle and they go crazy. Your influence as a parent is really diminished at this point and there are people that are suffering in that spot right now. What advice would you have for them when that control is now gone and it's only influence?

Juan Sanchez: What we would hope would happen is the difference between authority of command and authority of counsel. With younger children, we want to exercise the authority of command. Slowly as we disciple our children and equip them to make choices, that authority of command then becomes authority of counsel.

But what happens when that pattern or that model was not exercised and our children are out of the house? We no longer have authority of command and we barely have authority of counsel. This is where the gospel comes in. If it were me, I would just simply say I recognize where I have failed. Rather than be exasperated, remind myself we're parenting for the long haul, not the moment.

As long as that child has breath in his or her lungs and Christ has not returned, there is the hope and power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. One of the ways I would display that is to confess my sin, confess my mistakes, ask for forgiveness, and then appeal for relationship. Then just continue to pursue the relationship and slowly try to rebuild that relationship. To get to that place where that authority of counsel has come back in place.

Jim Daly: I think that's what's so critical here. Relationship is so important. Oftentimes in that emotional moment, we're cutting bits of the fiber of that tether between us and our child. When we don't respond out of relationship, when we do the "you must" lecture, a little bit of that cord is ripped between you.

I wouldn't say relationship at all cost because there are things that occur where you need to stand firmly—drug addictions and other addictions that are damaging. You need to be firm and get them into help. But relationship is critically important because that's what we're made for. That's why God created us. So we then can take that into our parenting role to bless our children with the concept of relationship. But how does a parent who is just so hard because their child is behaving in such a way that it's difficult to have a relationship with them?

Juan Sanchez: John Piper wrote an article on how to continue to pursue your wayward child that I think is really helpful. We're kind of at the mercy when they're outside the home. If we have asked for forgiveness, I find letter writing is helpful because you can write down your thoughts and that child can take that letter. I trust that the Lord might allow them to read that letter and to really think through without the pressure of having to respond immediately in conversation.

You write the letter, you let them read it, you let them have it, and you give them every opportunity. But you keep sending Christmas cards and birthday cards. You send texts and scriptures. You keep praying for them. We are wrestling with God for their souls. You never stop doing that, you never stop trusting the Lord for that, and you never stop inviting them to come back.

Jim Daly: This has been good. What a great start. sitting in a living room and having a conversation with good friends. Thanks for being here.

Juan Sanchez: Thank you for having us. That was the intention of our book—to give it to folks as if we were sitting down with them for coffee.

John Fuller: This has been such an encouraging reminder that parenting is about more than behavior and those busy schedules. It's about shaping hearts and pointing our children toward a lasting relationship with God.

Here at Focus on the Family, we're here to help you and your family to thrive in Christ. We want to equip you, mom and dad, as you're raising the next generation. We have a whole library of resources designed to encourage and equip you: articles, programs like this one, video series, and so much more. Our parenting team works really hard to stay ahead of the challenges families are facing, so you don't have to navigate them alone.

A great place to start is by signing up for our age and stage e-newsletters. Each week, you'll receive a short email tailored to your child's specific age and stage offering practical, biblically grounded insights to help you parent with confidence. You only have about 940 weeks, zero to eighteen, to shape that child's character.

We also have Juan and Janine's excellent book, *Reaching Your Child's Heart: A Practical Guide to Faithful Parenting*. It is filled with biblical wisdom and practical insight for every age and stage. It's a great reminder that our calling as parents is to point our children to God and cultivate a love for Him in their hearts. When you make a gift of any amount to support the work here at Focus on the Family, we'll send you that book as our way of saying thank you. Let me share this note from Carly:

"Because of the insight I've gained from listening to your show, I was able to help one of my teenage students navigate a very tense and difficult family situation with advice that was godly, Christ-honoring, and respectful. The conversation addressed so many challenging issues and I'm deeply thankful for the wisdom you've shared and how clearly it helped guide my response. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all you do. I can't wait to apply what I've learned with my own kids as well."

That is tremendous to hear. I'm thankful that we're able to help with very specific situations like that one. When you support Focus on the Family, you're helping parents like Carly gain the confidence and biblical wisdom they need to raise their children in healthy, Christ-centered ways. This kind of ministry is only possible with support from friends like you. You can provide that much-needed help when you call 800-A-FAMILY or online at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.

Next time, we'll hear from three adoption experts about some of the wounds caused by adoption and how God can heal.

Guest (Female): Many adopted children do beautifully, grow up and do amazing things, and are incredible overcomers. But we still need to acknowledge that God's design was not for a family to be broken.

John Fuller: Thanks for listening today to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.