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As parents, it's easy to wonder, Am I doing this right?
With three adult children and years of student and college ministry under their belts, pastor and author Andy Stanley and his wife, Sandra, know a thing or two about parenting.
For over 25 years Proverbs 31 Ministries' mission has been to intersect God's Word in the real, hard places we all struggle with. That's why we started this podcast. Every episode will feature a variety of teachings from president Lysa TerKeurst, staff members or friends of the ministry who can teach you something valuable from their vantage point. We hope that regardless of your age, background or stage of life, it's something you look forward to listening to each month!
Kaley Olson:
Hi, friends. Thanks for joining us for another episode of The Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast, where we share biblical Truth for any girl in any season. I'm your host, Kaley Olson, and I'm here with my friend and my co-host for this episode, Melissa Taylor.
Melissa Taylor:
Hey, Kaley.
Kaley Olson:
I'm so glad that you're here, Melissa. For those of you listening and aren't familiar with Melissa, she's the Senior Director of Ministry Experiences [at Proverbs 31 Ministries], which means she oversees all the fun things like Online Bible Studies; First 5; and our events, like She Speaks and maybe some other fun things we've got up our sleeve for 2023. I pulled her in to record with me today because … Well, Melissa, you want to tell them what we've got in store for them today?
Melissa Taylor:
I cannot wait. I am super excited about our guests that we have today, and I'm so excited to talk with them. You guys, we are here with Andy and Sandra Stanley to talk about their new book, Parenting: Getting It Right.
Kaley Olson:
It is such a good episode. We keep using the word “it,” and you'll understand what we mean whenever you listen, but you've got to listen all the way through. It's such a good one. But just in case you want to go ahead and check out the book, we've linked it in our show notes for today's episode.
Melissa, this episode we are talking about is great for parents in any season, and you and I represent that well because I have a 1-year-old and you've got four kids all in their 20s.
Melissa Taylor:
All out of the house.
Kaley Olson:
I know. You're in the fun stage of parenting where you can all go to Disney as adults and not hold all the things. But I know one thing all moms like us have in common, no matter how old our kids are: Our heart's deepest desire is for our children to know the Lord. So before we jump into our conversation with Andy and Sandra, I wanted to let you guys know about a free resource we've also linked in the show notes from our President [of Proverbs 31 Ministries], Lysa TerKeurst.
She created a really simple guide for moms in any season, called “15 Prayers for Your Son or Daughter.” This is one of our most popular free resources because, honestly, our mama hearts know that you can never have enough prayers to pray. And I love how simple they are to print off and maybe stick in their nursery, if you have a little one like I do, or tuck in the pages of your Bible to reference when you need to. You can grab this free resource using the link in our show notes.
All right, friends, enough from us. Let's go hear from Andy and Sandra Stanley.
All right, everyone. Let's welcome our friends Andy and Sandra Stanley. Welcome to the podcast, guys.
Sandra Stanley:
Thanks.
Andy Stanley:
Hey, it's great to be here. Thanks for having us.
Kaley Olson:
Of course.
Melissa Taylor:
It is such an honor to have both of you joining us on The Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast, and I have been a huge fan of your books for many years, Andy, and I'm a podcast listener. I've seen you at Catalyst and Global Leadership Summit, and I just love you and Sandra on Instagram, and I'm so excited for our listeners to get to know you better today and hear this message. But for those who maybe don't know you, would you guys take a moment and tell us a little bit about yourselves?
Sandra Stanley:
Sure. So let's see … Andy and I have been married 34 years. Yep. We've got three kids. Andrew is 30; he's married to Anna. Garrett is 28; he's married to Danielle. And Allie is 27; she is married to Clay, and they have just given us our first grandbaby two months ago.
Kaley Olson:
Congratulations!
Melissa Taylor:
I saw pictures of her.
Sandra Stanley:
Oh, yep. She's everything all my grandparent friends told me. Everything.
Andy Stanley:
And as probably some of your listeners know, I'm a pastor. We started our church 27 years ago. I worked for my dad for 10 years and then left that to start the church. We [Sandra and I] were in student ministry together, which is one of the reasons why we wrote this book and one of the reasons why we waited to write this book. So we worked with teenagers for 10 years. I worked with college students before that. So we've just done life together, ministry together, all these years, and we’re excited about an opportunity to talk about something that's near and dear to pretty much everyone's heart. So thanks for this invitation.
Kaley Olson:
Yeah, of course. Well, we know you guys are here because you have co-authored your book together called Parenting: Getting It Right, and beforehand we were talking about the kids we have and how I have an almost-1-year-old, whereas you guys are in the grandparent season of life and adult parenting season of life, and Melissa has adult kids. But I feel like for parents all around, this is a right-now message no matter what stage of parenting you're in. But as a mom to a 1-year-old who is really just ramping things up, I must say the most common phrase that I often say to my husband is, "Jared, I'm so scared I'm going to get all of this wrong."
So, Andy and Sandra, can you please help me get it right today? Will you please teach me and share what's on your heart? I can't wait to hear it.
Sandra Stanley:
You have a lot of fun stuff ahead of you.
Kaley Olson:
Yes. Well, I can't wait to hear. Why don't you guys go ahead and take it away?
Sandra Stanley:
Sure.
Andy Stanley:
So the book is entitled Parenting. We struggled with the title of the book, but we did not want to bury the lede, so we didn't. Parenting. But the subtitle is really the theme and really encapsulates the content. The subtitle of the book, as you just mentioned, is Getting It Right, and the emphasis is on “it.”
So in the book, we do two things: 1) We challenge parents to consider what is their it? And by “it,” we're asking the question: What is your win as a parent? Because one of the things that is easy to lose sight of in the chaos of parenting is that every parent is parenting their children in a direction — and direction, not intention, ultimately determines destination. That's true. I call that the “principle of the path.” That's true in every area of life. Direction, not intention, determines destination.
So if parents don't stop and ask the question, “What is the win for us?” … In other words, when our kids are adults and maybe parents themselves, what do we want to look back on and say, "We did it. We got it right." What is your “it”? And here's the challenge: If parents don't choose their “it,” it will be chosen for them. Culture will choose it. A crisis will choose it. Just the chaos of the different seasons of life will choose it. Busyness chooses it.
Sandra and I spent 10 years doing high school ministry together, and we saw all kinds of “its” and all kinds of parents choosing all kinds of parenting styles. We saw parents who were parenting toward compliance, just obedient children. We saw parents parenting toward education, “We just want our kids to get a good education.” Athletic success … fulfilling mom and dad's unrealized dreams on Broadway … or on the football field … At times, it seems like there were parents who were just parenting toward, "Don't embarrass me in front of my friends."
So I feel like we saw it all. And so one of the challenges upfront in this book is, "Hey, you're parenting in a direction. Choose your win. Determine your ‘it.’" And then the majority of the book is then we turn around and say, "Hey, here is our ‘it.’ Here's what we chose as our finish line, our win." And because we're in a season of life where we have adult kids, all three of them married, we felt like we chose the right “it,” as arrogant as it might sound. And so we try to build a compelling case for why this is the “it” every parent should at least consider.
But even if you don't like our “it,” you need to choose “it” or life will choose it for you. Now, the way we settled on our win for us as parents … This happened for us when our firstborn, Andrew, was still in a car seat, so this is something we have aimed our parenting toward for years. And the way we stumbled upon it is: I saw something in Sandra's family that to me was so compelling but that she wasn't even aware of because for her it was just normal. It was just another day in the life of the Walker family.
So I'm going to let her share a little bit about that journey and how we stumbled upon “it” and let her lay out what our “it” is in terms of getting “it” right.
Sandra Stanley:
So I'll start by explaining where it originated but also why it became so important for us. Every year my parents rent this big house in Hilton Head, on Hilton Head Island, during Memorial Day week. And my whole family goes there for a week. So there are a whole bunch of us.
So Andrew, like Andy said, when he was a baby … The three of us were making our annual trek to Hilton Head, and so we started talking about goals: “Now that we have a baby, maybe we should set some family goals.” But neither one of us are really concrete goal setters, and so that was a short conversation. But we started talking about what kind of family we wanted to ultimately have. And like Andy said, he had seen something in my family that just was normal for me, and it wasn't until he pointed it out and pointed out what he saw that I realized, Yeah, that is the kind of family we're hoping to have, and it was just what I assumed we would have, but he knew different.
And so that led us to realize that in our parenting journey, we never wanted to take our eye off of the relationship prize. We wanted to parent in such a way that when our kids launch out of our homes, the relationships are still strong and healthy. And the way that we said it was: We want kids who want to be with us and want to be with each other when they no longer have to be.
And that's what he had seen in my family. There are three of us. I'm the middle of three kids, and anytime two of us were together, the other person who wasn't there always felt left out and wanted to be there and wished they were there. And that was just foreign to Andy's thinking. So Andy and I decided we wanted to have that kind of family. And so we decided we would parent with the relationship in mind. And like Andy said, there are lots of directions in which parents parent, but we decided to decide it ahead of time and be intentional about that direction, and the direction we chose to parent in was the relationship direction.
So that became the lens through which we made a lot of our parenting decisions. And because we had decided ahead of time the direction we were going to parent in, that gave us clarity about our win, or our North Star, or according to the book, what we call our “it.”
And so our decision-making and parenting became so much more streamlined because the question we asked was simply, "Is this good for our relationship?" When we were making any kind of decision as it related to family, parenting, how we spent our time, all the things … Is this good for our relationship? We had decided ahead of time to parent with the relationship in mind. So we knew the three main things we wanted our kids to take away: how to honor other people, how to restore broken relationships, and how to prioritize most important relationships. And we felt like that would set them up to develop and maintain healthy relationships for their whole lives.
Andy Stanley:
So again, our North Star, or our win, was to raise kids who would want to be with each other and want to be with us when they no longer had to be. So that really was the win.
Now, as obvious as that might sound — and especially for those of you in the audience who are Christians or Christ followers, even as spiritual as that might sound — it is not intuitive. And the reason I wanted to do this is because I realized if I didn't focus on that, my tendency would be to parent toward compliance and toward obedience and toward some sort of rule-keeping and staying morally pure and all these wonderful things that are extremely important. And again, the education, the athletic skill, passions and following your dreams … All that's so important. But what I saw in terms of the health of Sandra’s family relationally, I realized that's really “it.”
All those other things hopefully will come along. We want our kids to be educated and successful, and they are. But at the end of the day, we wanted to have relationships with our kids, again, where they would enjoy being with each other and enjoy being with us and would want to even when they no longer had to.
Now, as Sandra just alluded to, to make that a reality — and we talk a lot about this in the book — that meant when it came to establishing rules for our children, we established rules around the health of relationships or what facilitated relationships. So for example, when our kids were young, we only had two rules in our home, and our two rules were: 1) honor Mom and 2) don't tell a lie. Honor Mom, and don't tell a lie. Not “obey Mom,” and here's why: Relationships don't thrive on obedience. Relationships thrive on honor, and we didn't make it “honor your mother and your father” because I wanted to ensure as the head of our home, and by that I mean the primary disciplinarian in our home, it just fell to me … That's not always the case in families, but I wanted to funnel our children toward honoring their mom and prioritizing honoring their mom above everything else. Because when you learn to honor someone and when honor characterizes a relationship, it is a healthy relationship.
So “honor Mom,” and then the second rule was “never tell a lie.” And we did not harness “never tell a lie” to the Ten Commandments. We harnessed it, we attached it or tethered it, to something relational, and that's this: I would tell our kids (they heard this a thousand times) the reason you don't tell a lie is because lying breaks the relationship. You never tell a lie because lying breaks the relationship. And I would say to our kids, “I don't want you to break your relationship with me, and I don't want to break my relationship with you. So the reason we don't tell a lie is lying breaks the relationship.”
So again, when you choose the win, whatever your win or your “it” is, you need to tailor your rules to the “it.” So we had those two overarching rules.
Then at the same time, when we disciplined our kids for breaking one of our rules, we disciplined with the relationship in mind as well, and I'm going to let Sandra tell you a story or give you an example of this in a minute. But this is so important, and it is not intuitive.
To discipline with the relationship in mind means we're not punishing our kids for what they did — we are connecting the dots between what our children did and how it damaged a relationship. Because every infraction of a rule, both in society and within family, impacts some sort of relationship. So we wanted our kids to understand the issue isn't the rule; the issue is what you've done in terms of how it impacted a relationship — which meant as well that when we disciplined our kids, we disciplined toward relationship restoration, which requires more creativity and oftentimes it requires more time. But what it kept us from doing … We did not get in the habit of just take this away, restriction, isolation, all the things that are the easy levers — timeout, all those levers — all things that are easy to go to for parents.
We did virtually none of that because the question was: Which relationship was damaged? How do you restore that relationship? And once the relationship is restored, and if there's restitution that needs to be made, then we're done. We don't carry this on week after week after week because oftentimes the traditional ways of disciplining our kids doesn't teach our kids anything other than “Don't get caught next time.” So when our kids were really young, something happened, and Sandra did a masterful job again of disciplining with the relationship in mind. I'll let her tell you that story.
Sandra Stanley:
So Andy and I … This was still in the babysitter years, so we had a babysitter. We went out maybe for a date night or something. We get home, and we're talking to the babysitter — she's somebody who babysat a lot for us — and we could tell things had not gone well while we were gone. And she wasn't the kind of babysitter who liked to rat out the kids, so we had to pull the information out of her, and finally we got the story.
And basically the boys had been super disrespectful to her, to the babysitter, to Julie. And so of course we apologized on their behalf, all that kind of stuff, and she left and headed home. So the next morning, I wake the boys up a little bit early, and I tell them I need them to come down to the kitchen table — I’ve got a little project for them to work on.
So they come down, and I've got note paper, pens, all the things, and I said, "You're going to write an apology letter to Julie.” And we talked about what they had done the night before. I said, "You're going to write an apology letter to Julie, and then as soon as you finish that, I'm going to need you to head back up to your room and get your wallets and meet me in the car."
So their eyes are huge. They're thinking, What in the world are we going to do?
Andy Stanley:
And you made them dress up a little bit too.
Sandra Stanley:
Made them get dressed. So they write their apology notes, and we talk a little bit in the book about how to teach our kids to apologize correctly, and so they've learned that lesson already. So they're writing their notes. And so then they go upstairs, and I can hear them whispering to each other … They go upstairs, they get their wallets, and I load [their sister] Allie into the car. The boys come, hop in the car, and they're like, "Where are we going?"
And I said, "OK, well, we are headed to Publix, and you are going to buy Julie some flowers with your money." And this was just a stage of life where they were just beginning to value money. They'd transitioned from the jars to actual wallets because money means something and they want to have it with them. So this was a little bit painful for them. But they bring their money, we go into Publix, they buy some flowers, and they've got their notes.
And I said, "Now we're going to go to Julie's office, and you're going to take the flowers and your note in. You're going to look Julie in the eye, and you're going to apologize to her in person and hand her the notes and the flowers."
And they're like, "Oh, Mom, please. Please don't make us do that."
Andy Stanley:
It was humiliating.
Sandra Stanley:
It was. And it was a big office full of people who all knew them, and so that made it even worse. So we go in, they go straight to Julie's desk, they hand her the note, they hand her the flowers, they look her in the eye, and they apologize, mentioning specifically what they did in their apology. Then they told Julie, "We hope you can forgive us."
And so, for Julie, she forgave them. She loved them so much; it wasn't even an issue for her. But for our boys, it was a real-time illustration of how you restore a broken relationship. And our hope, in a safe space with a safe person, learning this lesson now while the stakes were low … We knew it would serve them so well — right? — later in their lives when the stakes would be higher, when this would be a more significant relationship, later when they're adults, in their marriages, all of that.
We had our eye on the prize early and knew that these were the kinds of consequences that would make an impact forever. Rather than just telling them, "You're not going to be able to watch your favorite show for two weeks," or whatever, a punishment that they just have to endure … this was more of a life-changing situation.
Andy Stanley:
And the other thing that happens, and this is so important, and this is why it is more time-consuming …
Sandra Stanley:
It burns way more mental calories.
Andy Stanley:
Oh my goodness, yeah. But here's the thing: So imagine if Sandra and I had just taken things away from them. Two weeks later, our babysitter's coming back over. Well, that relationship isn't restored. We've punished them, but the relationship isn't restored. And now there's this awkward moment of her walking in the house, them knowing that she told on them, and now the relationship ... again, nothing has changed relationally. They just feel punished for they did.
So consequently, when they handed the flowers over and said they were sorry, that was it. That was the end of it. And when she came over the next time to babysit, it wasn't even awkward because all of that had been resolved. The reason, again, as Sandra just said, that this is so important, is that we all know adults who do not know how to restore a broken relationship or fix a broken relationship. In fact, you may be listening to this and you've been alienated from a brother or sister, or maybe one of your parents, for years, and when your friends hear about it, they're like, “Goodness, just call her or call him.” Why is this so difficult?
Well, learning to restore a broken relationship is a skill that has to be taught, and we have to teach it to our kids. And teaching it within the context that every rule that's broken damages a relationship is so important.
Now, one of the pushbacks, or two of the pushbacks, we get sometimes when we teach on this is: "Andy, Sandra, aren't you just developing codependency? You want your kids to enjoy being with each other and with you forever?" Is this just [suggesting that] we're going to be so codependent they never leave?
No. Because we want our kids to enjoy being with each other and with us. Codependent people do not enjoy each other. Codependent people just need each other. So this isn't about codependency. In fact, your kids have to individuate if they're going to enjoy the relationship with each other. So it's not that.
The other thing sometimes people say is: "Well, yeah, this is a very convenient goal you set. It's very self-serving. Your kids are going to love you and love each other."
It's not self-serving. It is win-win-win. Because your children will never be happier than their relationships, ever. None of us are. So teaching our children to maintain healthy relationships and fix them when they break … helping our kids connect the dots between dishonor, disobedience, unfairness, injustice, disrespect … helping them understand every time they do something like that, it impacts another person … that just sets them up for healthy relationships with you, with their future spouse, with their future children.
So this is not self-serving. Well, it is self-serving, but it serves everybody that's involved. And again, at the end of the day, we want healthy relationships with our kids, and eventually with your adult kids, we can just tell you there are going to be some bumps, and your adult kids will either know how to restore a relationship with you, or they won't, and you're going to want them not only to want to but to know how to.
So all of that starts at home. Again, these are some of the advantages of choosing the win to be relational integrity. At the end of the book, we of course talk about helping our children develop spiritually, or their spiritual formation, owning their faith. So I'm going to let Sandra talk a little bit about that, and we'll wrap it up.
Sandra Stanley:
So we include a chapter on spiritual formation. We did a lot of things intentionally and unintentionally with our kids as it related to all of this. We sat down with our kids, and we asked them specifically, “What made the biggest difference for you in your spiritual journey and all of that as it relates to things that we maybe did as a family?”
And as we talked to them, we came up with five things that we share in the book. And I'll just talk about one of them while we're here today. And that one is: Pray in every season. Which obviously is the cliche answer from two people in ministry, who've been in ministry for decades, but it is so true. Praying in every season was huge for our family.
Most parents pray for and with their kids, especially when they're little and they're being tucked into bed and all that kind of stuff, but our kids told us that they appreciated that we kept praying with them long after their little-kid years were over. And what this looked like later in life with them was: Around 8 or 9 o'clock, everybody's doing homework, everybody's doing all their nighttime stuff, so around 8 or 9 o'clock, we would have everybody gather in Allie's room or in somebody's room, and we would all pray together.
At some point though, Allie got tired of having the boys in her room because of all their smells and sounds that they would bring with them, and so she declared an end to her hosting prayer time. And so we started having what we called “stair prayer.” It was neutral territory. So we would all meet on the stairs, and I don't know — it was just kind of funny. We just called it stair prayer.
So we started having stair prayer, and sometimes we talked about the Lord's Prayer and how Jesus modeled prayer for us. Sometimes we used scriptures that we had helped our kids memorize when they were little, when we knew they were able to memorize stuff great and we wanted to hide God's Word in their hearts so badly. So sometimes we’d pray that. Mostly we just prayed normally, just kind of took turns praying for each other and for things going on.
Andy Stanley:
And to be clear, these weren't super spiritual moments.
Sandra Stanley:
No, no.
Andy Stanley:
[Crosstalk:] Especially in middle school and high school.
Sandra Stanley:
[Crosstalk:] The boys would be wrestling on the stairs, and finally we’d get it together long enough to pray.
Andy Stanley:
But if we missed it, they missed it.
Sandra Stanley:
They did not like missing prayer time. So, anyway, that was just kind of a thing. But there was one prayer that we almost always prayed when they were little, when they were in middle school, and when they were in high school. We always prayed this:
Lord, give me the wisdom to know what's right and the courage to do what's right even when it's hard.
And that meant different things at different seasons of life. Lord, give us the wisdom to know what's right, and give us the courage to do what's right even when it's hard.
And the older they got, the harder that was because lots of their friends were doing other stuff, and we would celebrate it like crazy. But that was a prayer that we constantly prayed, and we still pray that prayer today.
Andy Stanley:
And we hear them pray it.
Sandra Stanley:
Even just in our marriage, we pray that prayer. So that was a big one. But praying in every season was one of the biggest things we did for our kids' spiritual formation.
Andy Stanley:
And that stair prayer really was so foundational. In fact, Sandra and I are foster parents, and once our kids were grown and gone, we had a young lady who lived with us for several years, and when her small group came over during a church event, we hosted her small group overnight, and before they got there, she said, "Can we do stair prayer?" Because she had done this with our kids while they were still in the home.
Sandra Stanley:
And we had talked about it, too, and Andy had talked about it, I guess, here and there during that time. So it was kind of a thing.
Andy Stanley:
So she wanted all the kids in her small group to come upstairs, literally sit on our stairs, and we went around and had stair prayer. So it was —
Sandra Stanley:
We would do stair prayer with just her. As awkward as it sometimes was, and as bad of an attitude as she very frequently had, she wanted us to do it with her small group.
Andy Stanley:
Yeah, it was so funny. The other thing we do at the end of this chapter on spiritual formation is I talk a little bit about, or write a little bit about, how to respond when your children lose their faith or begin to question their faith or in later years adopt a lifestyle contrary to faith.
And the synopsis there … There's a lot in this particular chapter that I think is beneficial, but at the end of the day, I just want to leave this thought with you: Think about it — we all loved our children before they believed anything. So why would our love for our children change because they believed something different than we raised them to believe? Because every parent listening can remember holding that little baby, and you would've given your life for that child who had done nothing for you, believed nothing, had zero theology, had no lifestyle.
And yet at the same time, you loved them. So this is such a big deal in our current culture, and so we talk a little bit about that. Now, to wrap up, Sandra and I were trying to figure out: How do we wrap up this time? And I thought — in fact, we both thought — maybe the best way is for her to just read the last two paragraphs from Parenting: Getting It Right. So I'll let her close with this.
Sandra Stanley:
Remain seated in the seat created just for you when your first child was born. The mom seat, the dad seat. Parent from there. Love them from there. Show your kids what it looks like and sounds like to follow Jesus as a parent. Chances are, one day they'll be parents as well. When they bring your first grandbaby home from the hospital, what may still be a bit fuzzy now will be crystal clear then. Relationship is everything. It's everything.
So do for and be for your kids what you want your kids to do for and be for the next generation. Parent with the relationship in mind. Parent in such a way that your kids will want to be with you and with each other even when they no longer have to be. That's it.
Kaley Olson:
Wow.
Melissa Taylor:
Wow, that's right.
Kaley Olson:
Guys, I wish we were actually together in person so we could have coffee and keep talking for a lot longer.
Melissa Taylor:
I do too. I do too. Oh, so good.
Kaley Olson:
Because this was so good. Guys, we talked about this earlier, but I have a 1-year-old, and so I feel very fortunate to have a long time to implement a lot of this and have so many takeaways. And so the questions that I have are scenario questions because I haven't really been through a lot of this yet.
But as I was reading through the book, I did have a question specifically for you, Sandra. As a mom, I know part of that chapter was … It was written in there, something like, "Moms, the goal is for your children not to need you so they can choose to be with you." And you talk a lot about how you want the relationship to matter most, but you don't want to be codependent.
And I remember when I was a little girl and I was growing up, and I think it was around the time that I got my license, my mom and I were talking, and she just said something like, "You just don't need me anymore." And I think, now that I'm older, I realize, Oh, she was literally having a moment. Because at one point, I did need her for everything. And I thought it was silly, but now I'm a mom, and my little boy is about to turn 1, and it's already broken me down. I'm already emotional about it. And I'm so curious: For you, Sandra, how did you process knowing that it's a good thing not to be needed, and how did you let that shape you as a mom?
Sandra Stanley:
Yeah, that is a great question because I can feel what your mom was feeling in that moment, and it's a bittersweet thing for sure. Because we are parenting toward you being independent, and the opposite of that is no fun for anyone. When you've got an adult kid or even an almost-adult kid who needs you more than is healthy, that's not the direction any of us want to parent in.
And so it's a bittersweet thing when we realize we've actually reached the goal that we had. But for me, really it's a mindset. And this is another place … We talk a lot in the book about the stages of parenting, and this is an issue where the stages of parenting and having that in our heads are so important, especially when we hit the coaching years where we are stepping back a little bit and allowing our kids to make some independent decisions.
And our goal in that season is connecting rather than correcting them all the time. But it really is still a bittersweet thing. But I do remember, for me personally, when Andrew, our oldest, was hitting eighth or ninth grade, I realized that what I had heard for so long from all my older friends — “this goes by so fast” and “your kids are going to be gone” — I realized that was becoming a reality.
And so even before they launched out of our house, as they started becoming a little more independent, my prayer became, God would You begin casting some vision for the next season of my life? And that was a consistent prayer I had during that season. God, would You begin casting vision and giving me some direction and some wisdom about what's next? And He was so faithful to slowly do that, not giving it all to me at once — because if He had told me that He was going to give me a heart and a passion for foster care, I would've probably run in the other direction, like, Don't cast vision for the next season of my life! But He was so gracious to do that slowly, like He always does. And when the time came for me to transition and our kids to transition to what was next, He had really given me some direction about what was next.
I would recommend that for moms as they hit those middle school/high school years. Just start getting on your knees and being prayerful: God, please cast some vision for what's next. Let me not waste my time. I knew that I could flit away my time and be busy, but I wanted to do something that meant something, and I wanted to leverage the platform of influence that I have and all of that in the best way.
So that actually helped during that transition when I realized my kids are in some ways done with me, and [in other ways] they truly, now that I'm where I am now, they truly never are.
Andy Stanley:
Can I add one thing to that? The other advantage Sandra had — again, because it's so normal for her — is that she has a great relationship with her mother. So the super dependent years … There are not many of them when you think about the course of a lifetime and the relationships between kids and their parents. So anything we can do, even the price we pay for helping our kids individuate and launch well, is an investment in the longer season because the longer season is the adult relationship between a parent and a child.
So as painful and as awkward as it is to help them launch well and to parent them toward independence … the payoff years — there are far more of them. Again, assuming people live a normal life span. So watching Sandra and her mother and their great relationship, I think, for Sandra … She realized, If I get this right, I will have an adult relationship specifically with my daughter that goes for far more years than these years where she needs, needs, needs, needs me.
So again, part of that, as Sandra just said, is a vision for the future in parenting. Again, parenting with not just launch in mind but parenting with healthy relationship in mind.
Sandra Stanley:
Well, and the final stage of parenting is the friendship years, and it really is friendship. It is so fun to have adult children who you like — you realize, If I didn't know them and I met them, I think I'd want to be friends with them. That's the win. And the friendship years are really something to work toward, and paying attention to those stages of life and parenting accordingly is huge. And we talk a lot about that in the book.
Andy Stanley:
Sandra wrote the chapter in the book on the stages of parenting. It is so critical. And we learned most of that from other people. We did, yep. But getting that right and not trying to skip a stage or stay too long in one of those stages.
Sandra Stanley:
Or be friends with your kids too early.
Andy Stanley:
Yeah, we saw parents do that, and that doesn't work. So anyway, so much of this we learned from other people.
Sandra Stanley:
We sure did.
Andy Stanley:
But anyway.
Kaley Olson:
Yeah, no, that's super helpful. Especially thinking about me as a mom right now. I've only been a mom for a year, but I've been Kaley for 31 years, and so this is just who I am in addition to the woman I already am, and I think we talk a lot about this at Proverbs 31 Ministries in general. We have a lot of moms in our audience, and it's so easy to get consumed by that specific role that you have, but it's temporary. Well, it's not a temporary role — it's a forever role, but you gained it after you are already developed into who you are.
So thank you for speaking that hope in life back into people like me and the moms who are listening, to remind them God has a plan for them that includes motherhood, but He also has a plan for them that's specific to them as a person. But I know I'm taking up a lot of time right now. Melissa, you have a question.
Melissa Taylor:
I do. I have a few questions, actually. One of the things, you guys chose to focus on is the relationship rather than behavior and performance, and I feel like most do it the other way around. And so many moms I know ... They think their kids' behavior represents who they are. They don't want to know what other parents do. And I think focusing on that relationship not only sets you up for later, but it's building trust in your family. It's showing your kids you do love them no matter what. But what about those parents whose kids are grown, or they're listening to this right now and they're like, Wow, I really missed the boat. I messed this up. Is it too late?
Kaley Olson:
That's a great question, Melissa.
Andy Stanley:
Well, it's never too late to pave the path or drop the drawbridge or put out the welcome mat for healthy adult relationship with kids. But we don't have control. There's no guaranteed bow on the end of that or happily-ever-after ending. But there are things as adults with adult kids that we can do to make it easier for our kids to move back in our direction.
And honestly, it's one of the reasons I wrote what I did toward the end of the spiritual formation chapter about what happens when your kids either leave faith, walk away from faith, or choose a different lifestyle. Because as you know, I'm a pastor, and my heart is for unchurched people and people who have deconstructed their faith, those sorts of things.
So I'm so familiar with those stories and know so many people in our season of life who are walking through that, and I know the natural reaction when that begins to happen with a child, and the natural reaction is the wrong reaction. We tend to close our hands, become apologists, send notes and cards and “read this” and articles …
Sandra Stanley:
Try to convince.
Andy Stanley:
Yeah. We go for the toolbox that's convince, convict, coerce and control. I call it “the four C’s.” Convince, convict, coerce and control. And no one listening has a good relationship with anyone where the relationship is built around convincing, convicting, coercing or controlling.
Sandra Stanley:
That's right. We want to stay away from that.
Andy Stanley:
So we just have to take that toolbox and bury it in the backyard and forget it because 1) it doesn't work and 2) it's not conducive to relationship. So we've just encouraged parents, “Hey, you need a different set of tools, and the goal is not for your children to believe like you do. Your goal is for your children to have a healthy relationship with you.”
Because relationship equals influence. Influence paves the way to influencing. So parents unnecessarily give up influence because they're convincing, convicting, coercing and controlling. Again, they mean well — I understand that. There's so much fear, especially for Christian parents sometimes. But it just doesn't work.
Sandra Stanley:
And there's an adult version of the “Julie and our boys” story. That whole idea of restoring a broken relationship and asking yourself and praying over what is the approach that I need in this situation to help begin to restore this relationship based on my poor parenting or just handling situations poorly? What is my best approach? Being prayerful about that and really beginning on a larger level to leverage that same idea of relationship restoration and sometimes restitution, all of those things. As parents of adult children, we can do that and just do it a little differently with a different approach.
Melissa Taylor:
Right, right.
Kaley Olson:
Yeah. Wow, that was great. I love that we started talking about what you can do whenever you've got the baby in the car seat on the way, if you're in that stage of life, or the way that you guys just ended — if you're "done" with parenting or raising the kids. There's still hope. We're never without hope.
Andy Stanley:
Absolutely.
Melissa Taylor:
Exactly right.
Kaley Olson:
Guys, this was such a meaningful conversation. We're so grateful to have gotten the opportunity to learn from you. Thank you for your obedience in writing this message for parents all around. I can't wait to link to it in our show notes, but for now, thank you guys so much for coming on the show.
Sandra Stanley:
Thank you for having us.
Andy Stanley:
Yeah, thanks, Kaley. Thanks, Melissa.
Melissa Taylor:
Yeah, thank you.
Kaley Olson:
OK, friends, hang tight with Melissa and me for just a few more reminders. Don't forget to grab your copy of Andy and Sandra's book, Parenting: Getting It Right. We've linked it for you in the show notes.
Melissa Taylor:
And also don't forget about the free resource by Lysa TerKeurst called “15 Prayers for Your Son or Daughter.” You can also grab your free download using the link in our show notes. And you know what, Kaley, I’ve got to tell you: I'm going to a baby shower next week, and I think I'm going to just tuck that in with the gift because I think it would be perfect.
Kaley Olson:
That's a great idea. It's a free resource, so you can download it and print off as many copies as you want to pass it on. It's the gift that keeps on giving.
Melissa Taylor:
Yeah.
Kaley Olson:
Great idea. I like that, Melissa. All right, friends, that is all for today. At Proverbs 31 Ministries, we believe when you know the Truth and live the Truth, it changes everything.