Focus on the Family Parenting Podcast

John Fuller: Raising kids who are mentally well requires both affirmation and some discipline. We'll explore that today. I'm John Fuller, welcome to another episode. Dr. Danny Huerta is here and we're going to hit the ground running fast as we hear a conversation Focus president Jim Daly had with Deborah Fileta.

She's always popular, and we've got two of her books in a special bundle for you. Don't wait until the end to hear about this; go online and click the link in the notes for the book for adults, Are You Really OK?, and the kids' companion, Any Day Emotion. They're available to you for a donation of any amount to the ministry today. So donate and get those books. With that, let's go ahead and hear Deborah Fileta and Jim Daly.

Jim Daly: I remember one time with Trent. Trent was our hard, strong-willed kid and Troy was so compliant; it was night and day. But Trent got some discipline and I remember one time he just clammed up. It's the balsa spoon. I remember one time he said to me, "Dad, that doesn't even hurt." I said, "Well, okay."

But I remember one time disciplining him like that and he just clammed up. I remember talking to him and he wouldn't respond verbally to me and I said, "Would you be able to write down what you're feeling?" He gives me this nod, like one shake of the head. So I went and got him a pen and paper.

I said, "What does it feel like when you've misbehaved and I'm disciplining you?" And he wrote, "It feels like you don't love me." Isn't that awesome? I mean, and he was probably eight-ish. It opened up an opportunity for me to talk with him and I was so grateful for his ability to communicate that. He went right to the core of it. "If you spank me, it feels like you spank me because I hit my brother. What's the difference?" That kind of logic. It did catch me, and I did back down on that and found different ways, like taking a toy, because it was communicating something I didn't intend for it to communicate.

Deborah Fileta: And you invited him to share. If you wouldn't have invited him to share, there's a good chance he wouldn't have shared. I think that's where we as parents have to open our eyes for the opportunity to invite our children. It's not, "I need you to do this. Tell me how you're feeling. You better talk." It's an invitation. It's creating opportunities to talk with them.

That's one of the reasons I'm really excited about this particular work because I believe it's a conversation starter. It's an invitation for children and parents to sit down and talk through 13 different emotions that they might not otherwise know how to talk about. And not just, "Here's what the emotion feels like," but "Here's the healthy way to respond to it." So hopefully, it's an invitation to a lot of families to go a little bit deeper.

Jim Daly: For us as parents, we're looking sometimes very superficially at our own emotions. We don't understand them very well either. Then to become that parent and intentionally begin to help our children understand the emotions they're feeling—you really can make an art out of this and you should as a parent.

This is a way you get to know your child and what helps them respond. You're shaping their personalities and their responses. I just find it really important to be engaged that way and deal with anger and deal with those things in a deeper way.

Deborah Fileta: And here's why this matters to us as parents. When the disciples asked Jesus what is the greatest commandment, Jesus said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength." Those are four different compartments of who we are. They're four different quadrants.

Jesus could have just said, "Love the Lord your God," but he was intentional in saying heart, soul, mind, and strength. Your emotional health, your spiritual health, your mental health, and your physical health. All of those quadrants matter. Often as parents, we focus on the spiritual health or the physical health. Sometimes the emotional health component gets neglected. That's why it's really important for us to be intentional about having these conversations.

Jim Daly: Since you raised this, I had some observation of parents behaving poorly at sporting events. Jean actually went to one baseball game that Troy was playing in and she told me about two of the dads that were so on their kids when they were at bat. They struck out and they were verbally shaming them as they walked away from the plate.

It was so unhealthy. You think this poor 14 or 15-year-old kid—that's what he's getting at home. "Why didn't you hit the ball?" My gosh, I was terrible at hitting. To have my worth based on one of my weaker sporting assets. I could throw a football; I just couldn't hit a baseball. I just felt so bad. Even when she expressed it to me, I felt like if that father knew the damage that he was doing. So speak to that idea, concentrating purely on the physical.

Deborah Fileta: Sometimes we have a tendency to affirm our children based on what they do rather than who they are. Think about your encouragement. First of all, we're not good at affirmation in general. Generally speaking, the rule of thumb in psychology is five affirmations to one critique. I think we're not even close to that most of the time.

But then when we do affirm our children, we're affirming them on, "Oh, good job getting good grades" or "Great job cleaning the house." But we also need to be intentional on affirming them for who they are. "I love having you as a son. It's so fun to just be with you. I enjoy your company."

Who they are as a person, not just what they do. Think about how God looks at us. Lord knows it's not because of what we do, because so many times we miss the mark, but because of who we are.

John Fuller: Okay, Danny, so not that they're juxtaposed or contradictory, but affirmation and discipline are different. If we're going to lean one way or the other, what did you do raising your two kids?

Danny Huerta: It really depended on what was going on, but I would say more towards affirmation. That's partly because of the counseling stuff and all that. It's just learning the importance of it. If you see a child receive a true affirmation—if you say, "Man, that was funny" to a kid who was trying to be funny—there's an energizing something that happens inside of them where they feel, "No way, they found that funny? That's exciting."

You energize them with those affirmations when they're true and real and when you've taken the time to observe them. If you say, "I notice you put that away. That was awesome. You're growing up," and you're showing them when they're doing things right, they want to do it again. Dopamine surges. You're rewarding the thing that you want to see more of.

John Fuller: Think about when you get affirmed here at work. They go, "Man, that was a really good whatever you just said was really good." It feels good, right? You want to do it again. You're going, "Man, let's keep going." For a child, they have that same response. But many times we're so busy and we're trying to create order in the home that it's all correction.

Danny Huerta: Disciplining is about discipling a child, not just correction. It's not just punishment. Sometimes it involves correction, but discipling is helping them learn who they are as a person and, in that, correcting them towards who they can be in Christ.

When they make a poor decision, you go, "Man, there's a better decision out there. That really wasn't it. Let's find a different one, a new one." They know that that wasn't a good decision. They know that. But when you come in with strength under control, which is meekness and gentleness, and you correct that, you're creating a relationship to guide.

It's not just about, "I need to correct them." There are moments like that that need correction and they need to be few and far between. Maybe you have a child that is strong-willed and you'll have to come in a little stronger and have that correction, but with affirmation, it has even more power when you come in with a strong correction. They feel known by you. They feel a sense of trust towards you that you care about them deeply and you've noticed things that are right and good in them. If it's constant correction, they'll fold down.

John Fuller: I'm thinking of our parenting assessment, which is going to be eye-opening for some parents because this is an area of parenting they hadn't really thought about. Talk a little bit about why that parenting assessment is so valuable.

Danny Huerta: I was so excited when we were building it as a team with the research team because it's important as a parent to understand that your strengths are gifts to your family. You'll find out about two traits in this assessment that give you some fuel and ideas of what you can do to bless your family. Then there are two opportunities for growth that will help you become more effective in the way that you connect and guide your children.

These seven traits are about bringing a high level of sensitivity and warmth to the table along with high levels of expectation and guidance. It's hard to balance the two. It's about affirmation and discipline—bringing the two. These seven traits are research-based and biblically-based traits.

If you work on these, research shows there is a difference not only in the transformation you experience as a parent but also in your relationship with your child and in your child's behaviors. So take the assessment. It's free. You get about nine pages of content that gives you information on practical ways to live out those traits and grow in those traits, and then you get an email journey of great resources and ideas to continue growing in your parenting.

John Fuller: To be clear, it's not nine pages of assessment. The assessment takes maybe 10 minutes. But you get nine pages of results and action-oriented items to help you better understand who you are and how you can parent more effectively. It's terrific. Get the assessment; the link is in the notes. Tell some friends to take it. Maybe take it as a Sunday school class or a small group, or as a family. Try it. And you take it once per child, so just as a caveat.

Danny Huerta: Okay.

John Fuller: If you have 10 children, you have to take it 10 times.

Danny Huerta: Right, that's 120 minutes, whatever it is.

John Fuller: All right, so we also mentioned the bundle of books from Deborah Fileta that we think are outstanding. The "Nourish Your Family's Mental Health" bundle—look for that in the show notes. It includes Deborah's book Any Day Emotion, which is really for kids, and then Are You Really OK?, which is a great resource for parents.

Make a donation of any amount to the ministry of Focus on the Family today, and we'll send that bundle to you. Details are in the show notes. One other link we have that I'd like to highlight is the new Focus Live Christian music station. We'll link over to it. You can find great music from Phil Wickham, For King & Country, and so many others, and little bits and pieces of wisdom from our various podcasts and shows.

It's a terrific resource. Give it a listen. It's called Focus Live and the link is in the notes. Next time, Arlene Pellicane will be here. She's always affirming, and she has ways that you can really help build your child's character. That's next episode. For now, thanks for joining us for the Focus on the Family Parenting Podcast.