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Dr. Danny Huerta: Well, hi amazing parents. Welcome to Practice Makes Parent, where we understand it's not about perfection but about transformation. I'm Dr. Danny Huerta.

Rebecca St. James: And I'm Rebecca St. James. We are coming up on the season of Lent in preparation for Resurrection Day. Lent isn't just about giving things up. It is about leveling up, and we're going to hear a lot more about that with our guest coming up here really soon. We're going to really explore what Lent invites us into. It's an invitation, isn't it, Danny?

Dr. Danny Huerta: It is. It's a wonderful invitation, an amazing sacred invitation. We'll talk about how this session can bring fresh purpose into our lives, which we constantly need. We're also going to be sharing a listener email about the concept of gentle parenting. You want to tune into that. It's something we're sure you've heard about, too, so we'll offer some solutions a little later on the show.

We're in Easter season. Easter is near and dear to our hearts and just the most important holiday for a Christian: the death and resurrection of our Savior.

Rebecca St. James: It's the center of our faith. Yes, I love this time of year. Our guest today is Dr. Alicia Britt Chole. She's an author, a speaker, and a leadership mentor. She's written the book "40 Days of Decrease." Danny, I know that you read this book and you were very moved by its message, weren't you?

Dr. Danny Huerta: Yes. I think it gives a unique perspective on what you can decrease from during the Lenten season. Things that our soul becomes attracted to or entangled in or overloaded by. It begins to change our pursuit, and so this is about decreasing some of that so that Christ can increase inside of us.

It's very practical. It leads you towards Jesus, and I encourage you, if you haven't read this book, to read it and to soak it in. Definitely inspired by God. It's an intuitive and inspiring examination of the idea of fasting. Dr. Chole, it's great to have you on Practice Makes Parent with us.

Dr. Alicia Britt Chole: Oh, thank you so much. It's an absolute joy to join you and your listeners today.

Rebecca St. James: Thanks so much for joining us. I'd love to just start our time together by having you just share a little bit about your passion for this topic. How did God ignite your heart for it in you and in your story?

Dr. Alicia Britt Chole: It actually occurred while I was doing my studies for my dissertation. One of my passions is to help us have a framework, to help us process not just day faith but night faith as we walk with Jesus.

When I was thinking about a practical offering, I thought about perhaps reintroducing Lent to our generation. Not the only voice doing that, but to add my voice to those that were attempting because what Lent does is it helps us walk with Jesus and the first disciples during some of the most painful, disappointing, and discouraging days of their lives. And of course, on the other side is the resurrection.

There's so much we have to learn about walking with Jesus in the midst of real life and real pain if we slow down and journey with him crossward as his first disciples did.

Rebecca St. James: We just learn so much from them in that Lenten journey that we can then apply to our own lives when we're in a winter season, right? When I hear you say "night," I think of "dark night of the soul." I think of winter seasons of the soul.

I've definitely been through those with miscarriage, infertility seasons, and my husband losing his job, navigating grief and navigating burnout. Things like this all at once, and it can feel so overwhelming if you don't have a framework like you said. How did the people, the saints, the people that have gone before me in biblical times journey through these hard times and trusted God in the middle of it? What's the example that we can learn from them? I think that's a wonderful idea. Thank you for writing a book that can really encourage us in these ideas.

Dr. Danny Huerta: I think of Joni Eareckson Tada and many others that went through tragic things, difficult things. Still a lot of pain for her, like daily pain. Right, and for that mindset of being able to—and I picture this winter scene, everything is—the trees have no leaves, it's cold, it's dreary, but then some people find warmth and comfort still in that winter scene.

You see people, families being able to have more time together. There are moments that we find in the winter seasons when we draw near to God and he's saying, "I'm right there with you." That was something that happened in your life. Tell us about what that looked like in a very personal way to you, if you wouldn't mind sharing that with us.

Dr. Alicia Britt Chole: Yes, I'd be happy to. Truly, there's so many different seasons in my life where Jesus has made it extremely clear that theological truth: that he is just as present in the day as he is in the night.

I think of surgeries. I was diagnosed with breast cancer around 12 years ago and had multiple recurrences. My body hasn't always responded well to the invasion. I remember one surgery that I was poised for and I had my to-do list. I thought, "Okay, on the back side of this surgery, we are really going to knock out so many projects that have just been in the wings."

But the pain was so debilitating afterwards. I couldn't produce anything. I couldn't organize anything. My list completely vaporized, and all I could do was be loved. I was reduced to just being loved. Not for anything I could offer, not for anything I could coordinate. Just for who I was, Jesus' beloved. My family met that need tremendously.

Also, Jesus began speaking to me about his love and about my belovedness that's not based on doing. It's based on who I am in him, regardless of whether it's a seemingly fruitful season or a seemingly barren season. Perhaps one of the greatest challenges that we're facing right now is that we're leading, whether it's our families, our businesses, our churches, our communities, perhaps we're leading without being convinced that we're first already loved.

When you lead to be loved instead of leading because you already know that you are loved, you lead in a very different way. There's something about helplessness that reduces us and reminds us of God's great love, his eternal love that is always with us based on us being his, not based on us being productive.

Rebecca St. James: I so agree with you. I so resonate with what you're saying, and I think we can almost become human doings instead of human beings when it comes to even just our interactions with God. It's almost like we're trying to earn it and earn favor instead of just knowing that we're the beloved.

I remember in a particularly hard season of my life, a counselor just saying, "Hey, Becca, do you know that you could sit in a room with someone and just your presence alone, just who you are, is a gift to that person before you say anything, before you do anything that you feel like has value?" Just your presence, who God has created you to be, is enough. It was huge for me to really just try to sit in that because I felt so weak in that season.

I think a lot of parents do feel overwhelmed and weak and struggle with that. Just sitting in our belovedness, I think, is a huge word that I hear you saying, Dr. Alicia. Can you unpack a little bit more about Lent? You're really an expert on Lent. When you're speaking perhaps to parents in our audience, there's so much value in this time, sitting in this season. How would you describe the deep values of the Lenten season?

Dr. Alicia Britt Chole: Well, even in our country, whether people believe in Jesus or not, Easter Sunday's special. It can be a day off. It can be a day where family gathers. It can be a day of great eating. It can also be a day of great sorrow for those who are lonely.

Even for people of great faith, Easter Sunday can come and go and we can leave well-fed but something a little short of awed. I mean not O-D-D, but A-W-E-D. Awed about Christ's sacrifice and Christ's resurrection.

Lent is an opportunity for us to thin the clutter in our lives so that we can see Jesus, we can see his sacrifice, and we can see his resurrection more clearly, not just on Easter Sunday, but all year round. It's an invitation to slow down and realize that God's hand is not just on greater and more and ever-increasing everything. God's hand is equally with us in times of less, in times of loss, and slower spaces. God is just as present.

The purpose of Lent is to prepare our hearts not only to celebrate Resurrection Sunday, but to truly live in awe of what Christ has done for us 365.

Rebecca St. James: I love that. I love the language of slow. Isn't she just speaking to you? He knows the kind of things that I obsess about in the spirit, and slow is my obsession right now. Slow your life down so you can hear. Exactly. I love it.

Dr. Danny Huerta: And it's important for us to be reminded of that daily. How do we thin the clutter of the day? How do we thin the noise that's coming at us? I think the word that you've added here, though, is awe. How are we in awe? There's a lot of research on that also that's come out in the area of gratitude. Do we have awe? Do we come out in life with that?

In this idea within your book of "40 Days of Decrease," you bring in some ideas of fasting things that strike at the heart of who we are and what we get entangled in. Can you speak to some of them? I know some of them are comparisons, collecting praise, self-protection. Speak to some of those and how they made it into these 40 days.

Dr. Alicia Britt Chole: Well, historically, when people were preparing their hearts through Lent to be awed by the Resurrection Sunday, many things were commonly fasted: some food, entertainment, luxuries.

Today, when we think of fasting, we often think along the same lines, and that's valuable. We think in terms of fasting perhaps a meal or we're fasting designer coffee or we're fasting extras in our life in a culture where we're inundated with messages of more and restlessness and discontentment.

But what I started to do with "40 Days of Decrease" is I started to think not so much about the clutter in our kitchens or the clutter on our desks. I started thinking about the clutter in our hearts: the apathy, the comparison, the avoidance, the isolation, the stinginess. The different things that collect in our hearts and block our view of Jesus.

For 40 days, we engage—not necessarily as a substitute for the other types of fasts, but perhaps alongside of them—we engage in heart fasts. Right off the beginning, I think it's Day Two, we fast regret. Later on, we fast God as a job. We fast speeding past sorrow.

The way these particular fasts were chosen: as Jesus and I were journeying with the disciples crossward, I would stop and ask, "Lord, what was it that you were thinning in their lives? What was being thinned so that their communion with you could be thickened?"

The fasts just came one after another. I think I could have written 100 days of fasting, but we stayed with 40 in a hope that the offering would help us emerge on the other side less cluttered. Isn't that the agenda of our age? We are cluttered.

Dr. Danny Huerta: We are. Let's talk about three, if you don't mind, for families that I think would be so important. One of them is criticism. What does it look like to fast from criticism? This is a tough one and in some personalities more than others.

Dr. Alicia Britt Chole: Sure, absolutely. Well, let me give you a real practical example in my own life. I'll give you one from marriage. When Barry and I were first married, nobody told me that visionaries dreamed as a form of relaxation. Nobody told me this. I didn't think people would actually talk about doing things unless they were planning on doing those things.

Poor Barry, he would release all of these visions and these dreams into the atmosphere. One of my gifts is troubleshooting. I would pull out my little troubleshooting shotgun and blast those things out of the sky with, "Oh, you've got to be kidding. Have you thought about how complicated that would be? Or before you even—I mean you jumped all the way to Z. Have you thought about A? Have you thought about B?"

I told myself that in critiquing his ideas, I was helping him be more realistic. I was helping him steward his time better. But the fact is, I was using my troubleshooting gifting to cause him to doubt how God created him. I was criticizing how God had created him.

The Lord began to speak to me and he said, "Alicia, if it's not a matter of life and death—in other words, if no one's going to go to hell—keep your mouth shut. Hold your criticism. Fast it." Whether it's the fastest way to the doctor's office or whether or not that's the best thing to put in that recipe or whether it's correcting a memory from a year ago Thanksgiving. Whatever it happens to be, if no one's going to go to hell if you don't correct it, just keep your mouth shut. Let the man dream, the Lord said. He's dreaming with me.

In very practical ways, we can fast some things that they may be needed in a board meeting when we're critiquing a plan, but they may be being overused in our family and actually causing people to doubt how God created them.

Dr. Danny Huerta: There's just a natural way to deal with life sometimes, and sometimes it's that criticism. That comes from the comparisons that we have. So that's another one. How do we fast from comparison in this social-media-saturated world filled with comparisons, especially in parenting?

Dr. Alicia Britt Chole: Yes, absolutely, because we are comparative, especially as parents, aren't we? Examples are held up for us of people and all 2,000 of their children are walking with Jesus faithfully and don't seem to have ever missed a beat. We tend to give a ton of credit to parents when things are going well and a ton of blame to parents when things aren't going well. The fact is that our kids have choices to make. Our kids have free wills even in the best of circumstances, in the best of environments.

When we fast comparison, what we're doing is we're actually asking God to weigh in on our thought process. Does God ask us to measure our obedience compared with somebody else's? Does he initiate the thought process in our mind that says, "Oh wow, this family's getting to do that and we haven't been able to"?

Fasting comparison is really an invitation to think with God, to let God lead our thinking, to filter our thoughts through, "Jesus, is this something you'd like to think about together?" Because if I don't have permission to think about something with God, do I really want to think about it all by myself? That's often where we find ourselves in states of comparison. We're not thinking with Jesus. We're thinking all by our lonesome. We're thinking in isolation.

In the sense of fasting comparison, we're really just bringing our minds, bringing our thoughts into alignment with asking God to mentor our thought processes even in the smallest details of our lives, and especially with regard to our family and those that we're closest to.

Dr. Danny Huerta: That's freeing. The last one—and super difficult one—is self-protection. That habit of self-protecting, being teachable, being open to feedback. What would that fasting look like?

Dr. Alicia Britt Chole: Well, first of all, let's say this: self-protection has its place. If a bear is chasing me out here on our five acres, I'm glad that self-protection kicks in. If I see something coming, let's brace. Self-protection has its place. It protects us from something that might harm us. So when we're self-protecting from God, what does that mean about what we believe about him?

Rebecca St. James: How do we do that? How are we generally self-protecting from God? How do you see that, people doing that?

Dr. Alicia Britt Chole: I think at least from what I can see and from what I've experienced, it primarily occurs for me in terms of avoidance. I let my emotions backlog. I don't stay current with God about how I feel and how I'm processing and what I think about what he is or does not seem to be doing.

I think that we self-protect when we serve him but we're no longer silent and still with him. I think we're self-protecting when we're busy doing his work and busy taking care of his people, but we keep stuffing our life with noise and distraction where we're not just sitting and dealing with our own disappointment. We self-protect when we put a barrier between who we really are and our conversations with the Almighty.

Dr. Danny Huerta: It'd be a defensiveness, a defensive posture of being able to justify our behaviors and what we're doing. That self-protection in that way as well, that I'm not doing anything wrong and maybe we need to hear something.

Rebecca St. James: And just not making ourselves available to hear from the Spirit or be quiet enough to hear from the Spirit.

Dr. Danny Huerta: I love what you said: "Let the man dream, the Lord said." I just wanted to point that out. I want to have a t-shirt that says that, Alicia. I think that'd be a great t-shirt to just take home.

Rebecca St. James: Could they be customized and say, "Heather, let the man dream"? Or, for Cubby, "Rebecca, let the man dream"? "Barry, let the man dream"? Or Alicia, "Let the man dream"? That's so funny.

Dr. Danny Huerta: I'm thinking about a family that has kids in different stages of development. Let's talk about how a family could do this together as a family, and especially if they have young kids. Let's start with that: with the young kids in the home, maybe a one-year-old, a two-year-old, and a four-year-old, pretty common with our listenership. What would that look like with the family with young kids?

Dr. Alicia Britt Chole: Yes, okay. I actually made a prop for this. I was so excited about this question. When I think about families, I'm not quite sure what a typical family looks like, but I know mine isn't it. We have three children through the miracle of adoption. We have autism, cocaine exposure, meth exposure, a variety of learning challenges and needs. See the family. See the Chole clan. Extraordinary kids that love us with all of their hearts, and it's been quite a journey.

When I think of communicating spiritual truths to my kids, I think in terms of doing something physical, something visual, and something personal. No matter what their age.

This was one of the ideas that came to my mind. You know how during Advent often we have like those little Advent calendars and every day you open up one and it has a scripture or a little chocolate or something? You can do the exact same thing for 40 days of Lent.

What I did is—you would normally have something bigger, but you think about even just getting a picture frame. One of the ideas that I thought about is: take everybody's hand and trace it around, make a bunch of hands, plaster—these are only 12, but imagine 40 different hands with all of the different days labeled and with numbers, too, for some of our younger littles.

Each day, you can go and you can say, "What are we doing today? Go find number one. Well, today we're going to fast God as a project." What on earth does that mean? Now, behind this frame, you could have a picture of the resurrection, the picture of a sunrise, a cross, whatever you would like, because as we keep taking off these hands, after you remove 40, it's going to be Resurrection Sunday, so plan accordingly.

Let's talk about how on earth you would make practical "God as a project." This is what comes to my mind. Do you know how yesterday we made cookies? Well, making cookies was a project. We began, we ended, we ate them, it's over.

But you know what? God is not a project. So in the morning when we pray and we say "Amen," he doesn't say, "See you tomorrow." He stays with us. He's a person to be with, always with us. Today, we're going to have a goal of remembering that God is with us in everything. We're going to pull up an extra chair at the table for dinner. We're going to include God in our plans. We're going to go get ice cream with Jesus in the car. We're going to fast God as a project and remember he's always with us.

Dr. Danny Huerta: Alicia, just for listeners, if you're not watching this on YouTube, I wanted to describe it a little bit. It's a picture frame and it's glass, it looks like, and then there are hands covering the whole entire picture. Paper hands, most likely tracing the kids' hands, and you can cut them out and cover the whole picture. Trace everybody's hands, cut them out, make a great fun time of it, and then write each of the 40 days with a number on each one, and then each day have the kids go pull that hand off and then talk about what it's going to be.

Rebecca St. James: That's so good. And that's the advantage of watching this on YouTube, by the way. You can see the visuals that are brought in. If people are watching it on YouTube right now, they're going, "I did it right. I chose this episode right."

Dr. Alicia Britt Chole: Day number two, we fast regret. I go over to the board, one of the kids pulls off regret. We're giving our children the language. We tell them words like "happy" and "sad," but we can start teaching them things like: what on earth do we mean by regret?

Let's give a personal example. Maybe something like this: "You know yesterday mama didn't sleep really well. And so I was kind of impatient and at the grocery store, I got impatient with dad. I asked dad's forgiveness and I asked God's forgiveness, but today I still feel bad about myself. I regret that I did that."

"So today, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to remember that Jesus forgave me so I can forgive myself. And that's what it means to fast regret." As we start normalizing some of these challenges, it gives our kids language and it gives them permission to know that they can bring their happy and their sad to Jesus.

Dr. Danny Huerta: Preteens and teens, what would that look like in a very practical way if a family has that kind of make-up in their house?

Dr. Alicia Britt Chole: Well, one of the thoughts that come to mind: I honestly think that this image of pulling it off still works regardless of their age because I know the Advent calendars with chocolate does. I think the image still works.

One of the things that our preteens are struggling with so much is what everybody else thinks. What everybody else thinks about them, what everybody else thinks they should think. Part of a door opener into some of these tougher subjects is to ask them what it might mean to their friends.

"Have you seen examples of your friends speeding past sorrow and not sitting with it? Have you seen examples of your friends—what does it look like in your peer group when people compare? How does that make you feel? How do you think it makes other people feel?"

We bring in some of their currency. Faith is so wonderfully practical. But if we only isolate it to a devotion, we're missing its power. We're missing its power of being so pervasive in every moment of every day. Bringing in peer opinion is a great way to engage both our preteens and our teens.

Dr. Danny Huerta: Because it's so important to them. There's this need to belong. There's a valuing of that belongingness that's so natural to development and to the growth of a person. It can turn pretty unhealthy quickly, and so this is the idea of being able to have awareness of the unhealthy side of some of that.

A word you used there that I think is important is "their currency." What is their currency? It takes a level of understanding of how they see the world, what's happening there, and involving them in that way, asking them questions, pulling them in.

Maybe I could see some teens guiding this for a family. Taking leadership to guide the family in this 40 days of decrease. I think there are a lot of teens that want this, and they want to have some form of autonomy. This is one way they can do it: lead this process of Lent. Many teens that could do this super well.

Dr. Alicia Britt Chole: Absolutely. College students eat this up. They love talking about the harder things. They want permission to bring it all to the table, not just parts, not just the prettier parts. They want authenticity, and if nothing else, Lent is an authentic journey to and through the cross.

Rebecca St. James: Before we move to our Q&A time, what's one last thing that you can leave with parents? We've got very diligent parents that are listening to this show that really want to love their children well, to lead them well, to point them to Jesus. What's one last bit of encouragement that you can give our listeners?

Dr. Alicia Britt Chole: I'd like to encourage us all that being human was one of the original residents of Eden. From the very, very beginning, God designed us to grow, to learn, to gain experience, to mature, to develop. Though Jesus died for humanity, he didn't die for our humanity. He died for our sin. He didn't die for our growth curves.

I think that all of us are wanting to do the best that we can with our kiddos. We're going to make a ton of mistakes along the way. We're going to have so much opportunity to ask their forgiveness, to show them what it looks like to have a humble, repentant heart.

So I know we want to do it right, so let me leave with this one thought. No matter what the discipline, no matter what the strength, no matter what the plan, we always need to remember: love is what turns disciplines into devotions. Love is what turns singing into worship. Love is what turns going to church into being the church.

And love is what turns being an adult in the house into being a present parent working for the spiritual good of our children. As I know is one of your themes, perfection isn't the goal. But being present and humble and setting an example of a real human following a real Jesus, that's what we want to deposit within our kids. So whatever we do, in word or deed, may we do it in love for the love of God.

Rebecca St. James: I hear so much grace in that too. We're not going to get it perfect and right all the time. That's a tenet of this podcast, but the grace that you just spoke over all of us in that I think was just so beautiful and so inspiring.

Dr. Danny Huerta: John 8:12 says that Jesus spoke this: "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." And that's what you're talking about here: as we decrease, that light of life comes out in following in his footsteps.

Rebecca St. James: The ideas that you've shared today, Dr. Chole, are deep and encouraging and challenging, and they'll strengthen anyone's spiritual journey. We highly recommend that everybody go out and pick up a copy of Dr. Chole's "40 Days of Decrease: A Different Kind of Hunger, A Different Kind of Fast." We can send it to you for a gift of any amount to Focus on the Family. We just appreciate those gifts because that allows this podcast to continue to bless families all across the nation and the world.

Dr. Danny Huerta: We know you can go anywhere to get this book from Dr. Chole, and we hope that you choose to go to focusonthefamily.com or our e-store to purchase that. By doing so, you're supporting this podcast, you're supporting the various ministries here of Focus on the Family, and it can make an amazing gift for your pastor, for a family member, for a youth leader, for yourself as you're growing to become more like Jesus today. You can get a copy by clicking in the show notes and if you're watching on YouTube, just go to the link below and you'll find it there.

Rebecca St. James: Let's transition into our Q&A portion of the show. Today's question comes from Krista, who writes:

"This question is mostly for Danny, but we love you too, Rebecca. I have three children, ages eight, 10, and 13. I don't negotiate when my kids try to bend the rules, and I was confronted by another mother who was promoting gentle parenting. She wanted me to think more of the way my children felt, how they need time to process their feelings, and how I should do everything in my power to allow them their autonomy when making choices.

All of these things are important, but I'm not going to allow my kids not to do their homework because they don't feel like it, or not do their chores because they don't have inner peace about it. Is gentle parenting recommended by Christian child psychologists?"

There you go, guys. What's your thoughts on gentle parenting?

Dr. Alicia Britt Chole: It is a very good question. Words can be challenging, and so I'm going to actually avoid phrases. But I will say this: I think that "present parenting" is what my personal focus has been. Present parenting with a clear communication of expectations, with my kids knowing what is required of them as far as being a part of helping our family function.

There's a difference between manipulation and negotiation. There's a difference between showing grace and letting people get away with things. As a special-needs parent, I haven't always been able to discern what was what. Sometimes it's really difficult for me to tell the difference between "can" and "can't" and "will" and "won't." I am dependent upon the Holy Spirit even in the moment to make the best decision I can to help my child become responsible and respectful of all of their responsibilities and moving toward adulthood.

Dr. Danny Huerta: That "contributor perspective" you mentioned: the contributions that kids are going to make in the home and the expectations that are there.

Gentle parenting, somewhere along the line, the definition got lost. Where it's at now, it's more along the line of a permissive parent. When you look at its origins, it was about sensitivity and warmth being a part of high levels of expectations. It was about bringing instead of that authoritarian parenting where it's all about rules and no warmth, it was bringing that other side up and highlighting it.

Somewhere along the line, gentle parenting became all about the child's feelings and making sure that they weren't going to get hurt or somehow get inconvenienced by things. That's not what it was all about. When you look at the original definition of what gentle parenting looked like, that sensitivity, that warmth, that love for the child makes perfect sense along with the expectations.

It was an attempt to bring a perspective of authoritative parenting with warmth being highlighted at the highest level. Here at Focus on the Family, we highlight Seven Traits of Effective Parenting. Krista, I encourage you to take that assessment and to think about each of your children, the eight, the 10, the 13-year-old. Look at your levels of warmth, your strengths, and also expectations, boundaries, and guidance for your kids. You want to have high levels of both.

It's not about not having them do chores. They need to learn how to contribute. You're still going to have moments of negotiation with your kids. You need to figure out what are the negotiable rules and what are the non-negotiable rules and then also allowing for your kids to have negative feelings. It's okay. They can be upset about things.

Imagine a coach just letting the players do whatever they want according to what their feelings are. It's not going to go well. They're not going to grow. The team's not going to do well. There are going to be expectations that the coach comes with of how they're going to grow, how they're going to do practice. But they're going to take into consideration the emotions and what's happening in each of the players. They know what each player needs to continue improving, and they may not feel good about the improvement. In fact, sometimes they may complain about it, and that's okay. You are looking at what is best for that player.

The same with you as parenting with your three kids. Look at why they're trying to bend the rules. What do they want to do? Just listen and let them let you know what it is that they're wanting, and then say, "Well, here's expectation. Thanks for sharing that with me. Thanks for letting me know. And this is still what the expectation is. This is still what you need to do."

Maybe if they're upset about something, pause for a moment and let them be upset. Hug them, let them know you love them, and there's still that expectation. Boys that are charming will try to get away with more and more and more if you let them. They'll negotiate with you, they'll use that charm as a strength to try to get their way. Don't fall into that. What you're training them to do is learning how to manipulate to get whatever they want.

Having expectations that are clear is important. Having expectations that are consistent, that are reasonable, but also with a foundation of warmth and sensitivity. That's what you can bring your three kids. Krista, thanks for asking the question.

Rebecca St. James: Such great advice from both of you. Thank you so much for that. Krista, your question is one that I'm sure many parents everywhere are asking and relate to. So thank you for reaching out to the show. We're going to send you Danny's book, "Seven Traits of Effective Parenting," to say thank you so much for listening. Dr. Chole, we're so grateful that you were here with us. We've really enjoyed it.

Dr. Alicia Britt Chole: It's been a joy. Thank you both.

Rebecca St. James: Make sure that you share the podcast link with your friends and family. We appreciate your reviews and your word-of-mouth advertising. It so helps. We promise that we'll keep bringing you the important topics for every stage of your parenting journey.

Dr. Danny Huerta: Again, take advantage of our free parenting assessment on the Seven Traits of Effective Parenting. It was created by our research team here at Focus on the Family. There's validity built into that, so it's trustworthy on the results you get.

You take it for each of your kids. You'll consider the different personalities between you and your child, and then you'll look at these seven traits and how they're showing up from you as a parent, mom or dad. Then also thinking about, "Is my child showing more contributor behaviors or consumer behaviors?" Then you get this wonderful report, seven-ish, eight pages that you get, and it gives you practical ideas with the strengths that are identified in you on how you can apply those in your relationship with your child and then the opportunities for growth and how you can grow in those starting today.

Be sure to sign up for that, and then you'll get an email journey letting you know how you can grow, and we'll also tell you about other resources that you can look at here at Focus on the Family. I'm Dr. Danny Huerta.

Rebecca St. James: And I'm Rebecca St. James. Join us next time for more tips for transforming your parenting on Practice Makes Parent.

Guest (Male): Live your truth. A lot of people say that, don't they? But truth isn't something we decide. God has decided it for us, and it's our job as believers to share his truth with a world in need. I'll encourage you to do that through my podcast, Refocus with Jim Daly. I visit with fascinating guests about important topics like gender confusion, cancel culture, and more, while helping you share God's love with others. Listen at refocuswithjimdaly.com.