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Pastor Harvey Friesen and his wife, Shadlee Friesen join the podcast today to discuss the relationships of parents and children.
Just like Matthew 5:13 says, Christians are the salt of the earth so join us as we find our saltiness on our journey through life together. Listen as Dr. Douglas Peake dives deep into the topics of his sermons each week, breaking down content, discussing evidence, telling stories and speaking into current events using biblical truths and principals.
[00:00:00] We have mistakes. It is a redemptive community. That means we have failures along the way we dissident, we distinguish and the prayer parenting principle two, we distinguish the difference between when something didn't go right or it failed. And us being a failure. And I think one of the things that the world does, it sets up this ideal family.
And it says if we don't meet that ideal family with the right teeth and the right driveway and the right house and the right garage and the right car and the right dog and all those kinds of things that we are some form of a failure, those are lies. That's actually an illusion.
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Salty Pastor Podcast, a podcast dedicated to helping you to learn and think for yourself to grow your critical thinking skills, to grow your faith and most of all, to grow your relationship with God. We are in the middle of an amazing series titled Storybook Endings, and we are here with two special guests.
My name is Jesse Maher. I'll be your host. Without further ado, [00:01:00] our special guests, Mr. Harvey Friesen and Mrs. Shadlee Friesen and our special guests today on the Salty Pastor Podcast. Say hello everybody.
Good to be here with you guys, and good to be on the Salty Pastor with my wonderful wife. Shadlee.
Thank you.
Thanks Jesse. I don't know how Salty of a Pastor's Wife I am, but we'll just keep going.
We take all spaces here. So, um, we are in the middle of our Storybook Ending Series. What story are you writing in the relationships of your life? Um, and we, we kind of hit a couple of different spots along the way.
Pastor Doug talked about, you know, the killer of all relationships, unresolved conflict, then he talked about Don't Be That Guy. And then he followed it up with a very, um, dangerous series, uh, telling the girls Not Be That Girl. He survived. So we'll say that it went over well and. We're doing, Don't Be Those Parents.
And that's why we have Harvey and Shadlee on. They're going to, Pastor Harv is going to be preaching this Sunday, [00:02:00] but we figured we'd have, um, uh, a mom and a dad come in and, and they are not the perfect parents, but they are definitely people that are steeped in the Bible and look to the Bible to learn how to parent properly.
Yeah, well, anyway, I think one of the things that was important for our lives is that we took, uh, the biblical truth and said, is it true? Does it work in our lives? And how do we apply it? And how do we humbly find out from God, how to parent these children? I grew up in a very dysfunctional family. Uh, Shelly grew up in a wonderful family that had was not perfect, but it was a really wonderful intact
family. Uh, they lived in the same town for all their lives and built long-term relationships, et cetera. My family, we moved every two to three years and lived on dif two different continents. Do you remember growing up, um, moved all into all kinds of different towns from inner urban to rural, to, uh, military bases in Germany to different parts of America.
So, we have very different [00:03:00] backgrounds and different upbringings. And that actually helped us once we got past the idea that the way we grew up in was right. What we came to is not Shaldee's family was right or Harvey's family was right, but God's family is right. And how do we learn to be a family of God?
Exactly.
So let's talk about what kind of parents should we be? I'm not a parent yet, but we have a lot of listeners who are parents are looking to be parents. I eventually would like to be a parent. What kind of parents? Uh, should we be striving
to be?
Well, I think that the, the kind of parents that we first want to start off with is, and that is that we want understand first that we are children of God.
We are in God's family and his teaching principles about how to be in his family, matter in how we are to build a family. So those principles of the truth of following Christ, knowing Christ apply in a family as well. Um, and in that there's a very, very important thing, and that is a proactive step, to be a child of God.
It says, if you [00:04:00] confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the father, you will be saved. And in that, there's that confession of faith. There's that beautiful act of faith, which is baptism. There's that beautiful act of the Holy Spirit of God coming into our lives. And what God's telling us when we're joining his family is I will be your parent,
and I am with you. You are not alone. And I think one of the biggest difficulties to parenting today is that we feel so isolated and alone, especially a single mom or a single dad really feels like they are alone in this process. One of the most beautiful things that we learned early on, in fact, in premarital prep and then also in our learning and growing in the way of God in the Bible at a Bible college was what is a biblical family.
So we took notes and we wanted to learn. And we've grown in that. The opposite of that, Jesse, I think is. And this applies by the way beyond parenting. And that is, we live in a world that just wants to cope. How do we just not mess it up? Well, God's got a better way than that. God's got a better way than, than, than just saying, okay, how do I cope?
Or how [00:05:00] do I not mess it up? God says, what would it look like if you turned to me and asked me to be the leader of your lives, and that will be a leader of your families, when you say that's how we try to do a Shadlee?
Absolutely. And also, we learned that we were a family before any kids came along and they became a welcome member of our family.
So we had Harvey, child of God's shadowy child of God. We became a family and then we added to our family.
Absolutely. And one of the big mistakes of our culture today is that we. Is it, we actually think that children make a family. They don't a biblical family, started with a husband and a wife that was a biblical family.
Children are a welcome addition to that family. They don't make it a family. And I think that's a very important distinction because sometimes that puts in fact, a lot of times thinking that way puts the pressure on well, when we become one, no, we are a biblical family, a husband and a wife.
When you talked about, um, not just coping, but.
You know, it's kind of that idea of, we don't want you in your lives here as listeners of the [00:06:00] Salty Pastor Podcast, just to survive life or make it barely through. We want you to thrive. We want you to grow. We want you as successful as you can be. And being a coping parent is basically striving for the lowest possible bar.
Right?
The notion of downstream living it's I'm in the rapids. I have no control. I'm just trying to keep my nose above the water and I'm trying to not hit my head on a rock. And I'm hoping I don't drown. What we believe is that parenting is upstream in every measure in every way. Upstream living means that we will be proactive parents looking to God for biblical truth on how to parent and, and it's in the word of God.
It teaches us that, Shadlee.
We
would rather teach you to swim, then save you from drowning.
Absolutely. Now understand. We do know and understand there are moments in our marriages and in our families where we feel like we're drowning. So this isn't about, Hey, you've already started parenting. And there's nothing really to be said here because wow, you're already drowning.
We don't have any help. We actually want to teach that there is a way to help you wherever you are in [00:07:00] that river. But with that, sometimes it means, okay, let's step out of the river for a moment. Let's go back upstream a little bit. And along the way, let's learn how to swim and how to actually live better.
And the Bible does that for us.
So, uh, If you've been coming here to this congregation for any amount of time, you know, we're not here to make you feel awful about your life. At all. We're not here to pass judgment on whether you're a good parent, bad parent, you're drowning or you're swimming like an Olympic swimmer.
As a parent,
We released one of the most beautiful things in the family of God. And this actually a biblical family principle two is we do not sit in judgment of each other. We're redeemed. We're. Jesse lives in salvation, Shadlee lives in salvation, Harvey lives in salvation, your family lives in salvation, and there's this beauty that comes to the identity we're in God.
And look, we know and understand that a lot of us, when we're coming to God or when we're growing in God, we have mistakes. It is a redemptive community. That means we have failures along the way. We just, we distinguish, and this is a [00:08:00] parenting principle two. We distinguish the difference between when something didn't go right.
Or it failed and us being a failure. And I think one of the things that the world does, it sets up this ideal family and it says we don't meet that ideal family with the right teeth, and the right driveway, and the right house, and the right garage, and the right car, and the right dog, and all those kinds of things that we are some form of a failure.
Those are lies. That's actually an illusion. There's a biblical family with normal ways, and normal garages and normal walkways and, and a normal way to live. And it's actually built on biblical truth. And so we've got some verses that we're going to talk about.
Going to say, God has a better way. Right. And so, and he shares those within, um, his scripture.
And so, um, in Ephesians 6:4, we spend a lot of time in Ephesians. This is a couple chapters ahead of where we've been primarily focusing in this series, but it says fathers do not provoke your children to anger, by the way you treat them, rather bring them up with a disciple, discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord.
Yeah, this is a beautiful verse. And by the way, pastor Doug's been camped in Ephesians chapter [00:09:00] four, a teaching about all those conflict resolution principles about biblical manhood, about biblical womanhood and, and hold you get chapter five where the first half of it is imitate God. The second half of it is here's how you imitate God in your marriage.
Then chapter six starts out with how to imitate God in your family. And one of the key principles. I think two of them, new derive here, and I'll take them in reverse order. Is this the second part of verse four says rather bring your children up in the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord.
The, the, the admonition, the teaching is that we would bring our children up in the discipline and instruction that comes from God, not the culture. We have, we have drawn in, in a coping modality as well as that. We often let the culture set the tone for everything around us. That's not upstream living.
That's downstream living. That's reactive. That's on our heels. That's saying you tell us how we should raise kids that are acceptable in the culture. That's not. That, that is a way that kill the biblical family and to [00:10:00] destroy your own life. So that's an important part. The second one, and Shadlee and I talk about this.
We have a partnership in our marriage around parenting our children and that we partner together. And one of the important parts of this verse is that it starts out with fathers. Cause here's the assumption. We know moms are in the game. The biblical teaching brings into the concept of, Hey dads, you're in the game too.
Right. There's no. Well, she's doing all that. And I'm, you know, sort of this dormant personality or dormant person in the project, we have a teamwork, right Shad?
Absolutely. And Harvey as the father, his. His spiritual. He is the spiritual overseer of the entire family. He bears, uh, a big and important burden.
Yeah. This is a responsibility and people hear that as a power dynamic and it's not a power dynamic. It's this notion God's going to hold me responsible for helping set the tone in my family, uh, about how we followed God. We're doing that in partnership together. So it's not about who's in charge. It's about God's in charge.
[00:11:00] And in that fathers, we are in the. Because our culture has done nothing, but for the last 30 years, beat down the role of fathers and said, they're useless, meaningless, not necessary. We disagree with that. We think God knew what he was doing and saying that we should be together as a husband and wife and parenting.
We had a couple more verses. I want to read really quick. And then, um, Shadlee and Harvey, you can, you can, um, chime in on those. We had Proverbs 22:6, it says, train up a child in the way he should go. Even when he grows older, he will not abandon it. And then we also wrote down in our outline. Luke 2:52, and that was Jesus grew in wisdom and stature in the favor in favor with God and man.
So talk to me about what you guys get out of these verses.
So Shadlee, wa um, uh, have her talk about Luke 2:52 here in just a moment, but you know, the operative thing, and we'll talk about it more on Sunday morning, but the operative thing of this. Proverbs chapter 22 follows with Deuteronomy chapter six, and that is train up
your child. Training is a proactive word. Training is the [00:12:00] notion of you've got a plan and you're working that plan training comes to the idea that training is a failure feedback loop. We're going to try fail, try, fail, try fail. And every time we do, we're going to get better and learn and grow in that process.
One of the most important parts of yours, God is saying a directive and that is train up a child in the way that he should go. That follows with the notion of the instruction and in the truth and the way of the Lord, we have a responsibility to teach them God's truths that increase then in includes, sorry, God's morals along the way.
Shelly talked to them about how we use Luke 2 :52 as a principle of prayer over our children and how those four pieces are a big part of how we planned to raise our kids.
So when we talk, when we pray with our kids at night, we would always pray over them. We would want them to grow in wisdom, in stature and favor with God and man.
And so, um, with, wisdom, is taking something that is an idea and knowing [00:13:00] how to apply that idea. Why is that?
Yeah. And w, w, we would say Shadlee, is a lot of the culture is focused on knowledge learning only, rather than wisdom learning wisdom is the ability to take that knowledge, knowing how to apply it.
And importantly, I think as well when to apply it, and then maybe even the third one is whether or not to apply it. Right. Critical thinking skills.
Exactly. In fact, Wisdom is more than just teaching your child to restrain wrong, but we need to elevate the good in your child. So how can they, how can we elevate the good, unless we teach them what is the good and we, we want to teach, put that teaching in a moral warehouse that that's inside their head.
And I'm one of, one of them get in there unless you put it in.
Oh, absolutely. And one of the big misconceptions about biblical parenting is that it's filled with all the nos. It's not all the nos. Yes. There are nos, but included in that is what to say yes to that's actually wisdom. Then we talked about them growing in stature.
[00:14:00] So talk about just the, how children grow and how they grow purposefully along the way. I mean, they grow from little babies and now we have six foot, two inch Isaac Friesen. Right. So talk about, so talk about stature, how that was a part of the plan.
So, um, stature being a part of the plan. I mean, you, you talk to them about nutrition, you talked to them about, um, how to keep themselves sexually pure.
You talk to them about how to, um, how to be a teammate on a basketball team.
Healthy self perception about how you view your body as opposed to the airbrush bodies that are shown in magazines and on online social media. One of the big things that came out about Fang Facebook was they knew internally in their internal studies that actually the way they were showing bodies to people on Instagram was hurting the way that girls would look at their own bodies.
One of the biggest things we do in parenting is helping our children understand that God made their bodies, their temples of the Holy Spirit and that as they grow. This is God's gift. And we're going to walk you through puberty. We're going to walk you through your body changes. We're going to do [00:15:00] all those things.
And by the way, we're praying for that. When we do it, one of the most important things we would say, and then Shadlee said, a moment ago, this is actually our prayer plan. They would grow in wisdom that they were growing stature, that they were growing favor with God means we wanted to help facilitate them growing in their spiritual walk with God, right?
With man, not just to be liked by mankind.
But to be joiners in good, with with other people.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the most beautiful things to understand is the closer we grow to God, the closer we grow to the appreciation that God values all people and that he cares about them and that he unders, uh, think about all the things that the world uses in parenting to. That,
we're in this, we're in this crazy period of time where it's all about race and all those kinds of. Our family always included. We didn't even think about it as people of color. We have people with color that have lived with us and not because they were people of color, but because they were people and we had this sense of family that we loved people.
And we didn't [00:16:00] see color in our friends, or our kids, friends were all kinds of people of color. Right?
Huge principle in the Bible is other centeredness. So we, our goal was to get our kids to think of other. As more important than, than
themselves, which is a biblical truth and a biblical principle. And that is regardless of whether they're a male or a female or whatever color their skin happens to be, they're creating the beautiful image of God.
And importantly, they're to be valued. The most important teaching was these people matter. So we had a little plan that we learned. We took a parenting class, we took it three times because we're slow learners and we wanted to learn it and
we reviewed it a little bit. It's like, Ooh, this is good stuff.
I'm need to read it some more.
So we, so our basic view of parenting was our plan. Pick your own plan, pick your own years, pick your own strategy, all those kinds of things. But our view was zero to five years were the years where we were disciplining them, not disciplining them by correcting them that that's included as [00:17:00] well, but discipline giving them the disciplines they needed for the notion of, of,
they're understanding themselves. So the, uh, the idea of self comfort, the idea of not being bored all the time, but actually picking up a book and learning to read the notion of building those life skills that are important in your life. And importantly, those first five years are instilling a moral warehouse into their lives, helping them understand right and wrong based upon the value of other people, the value of God's word and the value of who they are.
Then we went to ages six to 10. Six to 10 was now training them in the life skills and the application of that moral warehouse. So they had the morals and they had the warehouse and they had disciplines about personal agency and who they are. And then now train them in that. So think of it like this zero to five years is the weight room.
Uh, the six to 10 years is now we're out on the practice field. We're training in all. Then we got to Shadlee, if you want, uh, ages 10 to 13 or 15, depending upon, and each kid matures at different ages [00:18:00] along the way. But along that way, we were coaching them as they grew as social beings. And they moved from concrete thinkers to conceptual thinkers.
Right. And then the last part of it was 13 or 15 plus they moved on to a place of where we were friends in their lives.
Right. And keep in mind. That the world has it all backwards. They want to start with the friendship. I want to be my child's friend. I want my kid to like me. I that's their utmost goal.
Well, this flips that on its head. And this is the correct
way to do it.
Well, because what happens is a lot of times, guys, if you think about it, the world teaches like this. Oh, just be their friend. Let them do whatever. There's this notion of wandering parenting. We just let them do whatever they want to do.
However they want to do it. And then, you know, then you go out and eat somewhere and they eat off someone else's plate, or they throw a fit right in the middle of, uh, you know, the store and all those kinds of things. No, we, we believed in a different model because if you don't use that model, what a lot of times people do is they invert the model.
Here's what they do. Zero to five years. They say, I want to be the kid's friend and they try to, you know, [00:19:00] talk to and reason with a three-year-old. I was just doesn't work. So yeah, Disneyland, dad, all those kinds of things. And then when that doesn't work, we go, okay, well now I'm going to coach you now.
Here's what you could try to do. And if this works, you can try and the kid looks like what really? And then when that doesn't work, they keep getting older and we go, okay, now I'm going to train you. And then here's the weirdest part. Once we get to those 13 year old years, if we've been trying it that inverted way, we now want to discipline them.
And that's why those teen years are so hard. I'm not saying our teen years were easy, but they were sure joyful. And they were filled with awe. Probably some of the best years of our lives.
Right. And that brings me to the point that that I definitely want to be made is the best place to train your child.
Proactively is out of the moment of conflict. If you are at the restaurant and your kid is tossing food around and that's the wrong time to say, oh my goodness, I'm embarrassed. Um, don't do this. Don't do that. Then you start throwing out the don'ts and there going wait a minute. Nobody told me what the dues are.
Right. And [00:20:00] so
Talk real briefly about how we would actually prepare to go to someone's house to eat a meal.
Okay. So say we're going to Mr. Maher's house. We would first, we would first we would first talk about whose house we're going to, how you dress that person. They are older than you respect for age.
He's Mr. Maher. And he might want to be referred to as Jesse, but we would say, okay, well, you're going to call him Mr. Jesse. And I'm at his house. He may ask you, we would do a role-playing thing. He may ask you. Well, it's good to see you. What's your name? My name is Isaac pleased to meet you. We would give them words to say what the response might be.
And in the car we would, we would do a little play acting. And then of course at that point in time, there's no conflict and the kids love it.
All right. Oh, I remember when we set up the whole, uh, we set a table and we sat at the table and we talked about how we use a fork and how we, and I know that sounds really [00:21:00] rudimentary, but think about this.
We expect kids to do it right, but we never train them. Our view was that we would be training them well,
and I think, you know, these are great insights. And ultimately you guys had your own struggles. And so I think the parents listening can take what they're learning from you, what they might be learning from our, our upcoming Parenting Podcast, um, with our Parenting Coach Kim Cross and take all these things and then say, okay, this is how I see this working in my family, because ultimately the freeze way is not going to work for everyone, but it might be a good template.
And you guys had your own struggles, but you know, these, these breaking down what you're doing in any change range. That's a great tactic that you could utilize in your family, even if you're already, you know, in the 10 to 13 age, you may say, okay, well, you know, I'm getting a late start on this, but maybe I can, you know, finish some things up at this point.
So talk to me about some of the goals you had as parents, um, in raising your kids.
Well, I, I, we would say our first goal was that they would know Jesus Christ, that they would hear the [00:22:00] gospel that Jesus Christ loved them, died for them, uh, and is desiring to be their savior offers to be their savior, wants to be their Lord.
We, we cared first and foremost about that. Uh, the, our culture cares seems to care more, most first and foremost about what kind of education and how their future and all, I mean, that's really all good stuff, but if they don't get the first blocks, right. That changes everything. So we wanted them to know Jesus Christ.
We wanted them to know Jesus Christ for themselves. I mean, they grew up in a pastoral family. We weren't sitting there force feeding anything down their lives, but we wanted them to be attracted to the gospel life, attracted to biblical truth. So that was a first foremost goal. Shadlee, what are the goals
would you look at?
Uh, we wanted them to have a healthy identity and self-worth, um, a family identity and self-worth, and in the family of God identity and self-worth. For example, there, um, prioritize needs of a child. The first one being that the kid knows that they're [00:23:00] loved, loved by the parents loved by God.
The second one is, is their real position in the family. They are not equal to their parents, but they are a receiver of love, a welcome member to the family. And third of all, and this is important. That they know mommy and daddy love each other. There is a huge level and of anxiety, even in a one-year-old or a baby, if there is conflict between the parents. So that if you can lay that groundwork for your child, that, um, mommy and daddy love each other and you make time too.
So that, that is what they observed. That is, that is a huge.
Right. I mean, one of the things that's important in that, it seems like a funny little thing, but they need to see you just sitting and being together and having a conversation. We would call it mommy and daddy time. We're getting mommy and daddy are going to spend some mommy and daddy time and they would come over and train and her interrupt and all of a sudden, then we go, no, no, this is mommy and daddy time.
And what they saw as well, having healthy dialogue and interaction and that we were together. If you're a parent where [00:24:00] your kid is constantly getting up in the middle of the night or wants to sleep between the two of you or any, and all those kinds of things, a lot of times, just because they are not watching you be together and just normal, healthy ways.
And when you're in sleep, that's the one time they see you where you're at peace with each other and everything seems to be good. And so they come in and check on you and go, okay, mommy and daddy, you're good. Now I can go back to sleep or, you know what? I want to stay here. And I want to be in the middle of them being good.
Let them see you being at peace with each other, not doing errands, not taking care of bills, not taking care of all these things, but just being friends and family with each other as important goal.
And if they are scared and other reasons why they went might also want to be in there. We made a spot for them at the base of our beds.
They're not welcomed necessarily in our bed, but they're welcome to be in the room with us.
Yeah. They knew they were welcome, especially if they were scared at night or something like that. So there's obviously lots of carriers on the other things that was a goal of ours. We wanted them to learn delayed gratification.
One of the greatest [00:25:00] maladies that goes on in our culture today is I want it and I want it now. And I have to have it. That creates so many downstream problems in life. It creates downstream problems in terms of relationships, it creates downstream problems in terms of finances, it creates downstream problems in terms of the ability to interact in a healthy way in society that says that's theirs, and this is mine.
And I won't take from them, or I won't steal because I have to have it. Or as a sexual person. Absolutely. Right. You learn to lay gratification is a phenomenal goal and there's actually way to try to get there. Another one that we had was we wanted them to have a social, relational, emotional, mental skills that helped them to be able to live in an adult world.
Uh, this probably messes with some of your views about life, but we weren't raising kids. We were raising adults who happen to be kids. They had wonderful, amazing childhood times, skipping rocks across ponds, going for hikes and walks and riding bicycles. Coloring and painting and, uh, you know, innumerable [00:26:00] things, playing sports, playing instruments and music, all those kinds of great childhood wonderful things.
But we were there with a long-term view of we're raising them to be a wonderful, wonderful, healthy, adjusted human beings and an adult world. And that's where they're all going.
And we, we created a family identity where belonging matters. We had inside jokes and traditions and we would collect memories and, and we would invest in memories instead of, um, stuff.
We would, Harvey has a saying, put your feet in the right place and good things will happen. So we would make sure that we were at ball games and we were at practices and we were involved.
Interested in their lives. And that's a very, very important thing, is that a lot of times kids feel like, well, man, I just got to take you here and take you there and do it.
And I, I look, I know stress, we all know stress. We all know a lot of busy schedules. I want to be where they are and I want to celebrate those things that they're doing. And I find ways [00:27:00] to carve out and to make sure that our values match up with they are important and we show them that we're important.
So
give me, um, a few guidelines or tools, um, as we're wrapping up for the day, um, that, that have worked well. And I think the biggest thing to take away from this, that I'm hearing as, you know, a future parent is. You guys plant and that, and I think that's one of the things that usually is not happening as much anymore.
It's sort of a. We're just going to handle things as they come up. But you guys went into this and said, you know, you maybe didn't have every day planned out, but you said, here are our goals as parents here, what we're focusing on with them in these age ranges, you're going to do, you're about to talk about some guidelines and tools that we're going to utilize as parents.
And I think establishing those gives you something to work towards rather than just putting out fires as they come up your. Actively working towards something. Would you say that's true?
Yeah, absolutely. And I, and one of the things that's so important for you all to hear too, is when we talk about building plans, we do this, we [00:28:00] go to the word of God.
We look to apply those in practical ways. And we believe by prayer and the work of God's Holy Spirit, that he will actually help us to be able to do that and to do it well here. Go ask any of our kids, any of the forum we have go ask the kids, go ask them the married spouses of our two oldest children as well.
We were not legalistic parents. Legalism loves the law more than the person. God showed that he loves the person by sending his son Jesus Christ, because he showed that people matter to God, it was people driven. And that's one of the guidelines. People first and that those rules and principles and trues and commandments of God fill in or come in and guide how we interact with people.
But people matter, we were not illegal. I mean, it's a joke even to think that out loud, right Shadlee, what are some of the other guidelines that we had talk about innocence and how preserving their innocence was such an important and is such an important thing.
We, we, we made it a point within our own marriage and within the, [00:29:00] the understanding that we had, we, we kept an eye on what they were seeing, what they, who, who they were with.
Um, we, we made it a point to when they were younger, that, that they didn't go to people's houses that had an older brother, um, nothing wrong with their older brother. If they, if like a girl going to somebody's house with an older brother.
We didn't do sleepovers were places where they, where their sexual innocence could be challenged or be put into a wrong spot.
We didn't do those really, really early. We built good relationships with other families where there was safety involved and all those kinds of things. We looked after their. Personal innocence, their sexual innocence, all those kinds of things. And there were just some non-negotiables around that because we would use this line.
Our children are not an experiment. We, you, you can't scratch their soul and steal their innocence and hope it all turns out right. So we looked after those things very, very carefully. The other thing we talked. As a guideline was, we believed that good interpersonal [00:30:00] skills were valuable to everyone. Our son, uh, was studying mathematics and got an economics degree in college and loved engineering and all those kinds of things.
But we always talked about, Hey, you've got to be able to communicate. Even engineers need to communicate anybody who's working in the technical skills. You've got to learn good interpersonal skills and those were guidelines. And that started early on. And, and I'll give you the one thing being a pastoral family.
The kids at the church have to learn to be able to interact with other people because that's a normal thing when you're in the people game, but we did work to help them do that for them.
And as our, as our kids were older and they had their own relationship with Jesus, when we would have a conflict, we, we would have to humble ourselves and say, Lord, we know that they have the Holy Spirit in them.
And I have the Holy Spirit in me and I don't know how to get past this conflict. So Lord, may your Holy Spirit work in them and in me so that we can walk through this.
Well, in a truth and a principle that we always applied was we didn't let the sunset on our anger. We [00:31:00] worked out things per like what Pastor Doug did.
I mean, you think about the progression of this whole sermon series. It was learned to resolve conflicts, by the way, you'll learn to do that as a, as men, as women, as families, as children. Et cetera. One of the greatest life skills to have. Well, there's someone who's a Christian or not a Christian is to learn how to resolve conflicts in a healthy manner that allows for the personal wellbeing of the other and the personal wellbeing of you to still be held intact, even though there was a problem.
Exactly.
So we're almost out of time and I know we could listen to you guys talk and give us some advice from your guys's learnings and maybe we'll have to have you on the parenting podcast to share even more, with Kim. But I want to wrap up today, just give me kind of like the here's the perfect storm for, for troubled kids and building them up, or here's the perfect option for trying to build the healthiest kids you can, um, as kind of like bullet points to lead out on this.
Shelly said it a moment ago and that was what mattered a high point of our parenting was they [00:32:00] know and knew that they were loved and valued and that it was safe to be around us.
W, what amazed us was that principle alone, the conversations we had because people would say, well, our kids are hiding this from us. Like, our kids aren't doing that. And one of the reasons why they don't hide it is because they knew they were loved and cared for and they could bring to us anything going on.
Right. We also talked about trust a lot and, uh, so that they wouldn't have to hide. We would, we would, if they brought something to us that was a piece of information. Don't appear shocked. Don't appear shocked. Talk about it, stay serene. Um, and then when there is a, a trust infraction, talk to them about. I am invested in rebuilding trust because trust is a huge value to me.
I want it to be a huge value to you and, and, and we would have them come home and talk. They would tell us about families who didn't have trust in. [00:33:00] They much rather like the freedom that they had working under trust than the sneaking out of another family.
Um, having trust created so much freedom in their lives.
And I think to your last point there, Jesse is as well. Is that when a kid sees us go through our personal difficulties, They, they begin to understand, wow, my mom and dad have to go through the same kinds of hardships that we do. And we actually allow them to look into our lives in those moments so that they could see that we struggle and that we work to try to get better.
And that we're trying to get back to a good spot again, in different ways, whether it was in our marriage or whether it was in our personal lives or whether it was in our company life or whatever things that we did.
Yeah. And as an imperfect parent, I asked for my children's forgivness. Um, pretty regularly.
Pretty regularly here
too.
Well, um, just as kind of notes I've taken as we've been going through this kind of the five big things you can do to, um, improve your parenting pretty quickly as: one, have a plan that's important. Two, be [00:34:00] proactive. You talked about, you know, don't be a passive parent. Don't let things happen, but instead be proactive in that.
Be prayerful. I think prayerfully proactive, you know, pray over your kids. You talked about praying over your kids, praying for your kids, praying with your kids. I think praying with each other, even just by yourselves. I think those are all important things. And then, um, letting them see the. As it is, don't be afraid of it, but don't let the world invade their innocence, you know, protect their innocence.
We talked about that and finally, just praying that protection of God over them constantly, again, praying with them, praying with them, pray with them. So as the Salty Pastor Podcast, one of our biggest things we can share with you are these points in your family, whether you are just a, a Mr and Mrs, or a Mr.
And Mrs. four amazing children. These are things that you can be working on, sitting down and developing a plan. So we think you guys so much for joining us Shadlee. Thank you so much for joining us. You're the first, um, Mrs. on the show. So we're excited that you are the very first. We couldn't have asked for a better co host with us today.
[00:35:00] And Pastor Harv, obviously thank you so much. We'll see you on Sunday. Thank you for joining us here at Foothills Christian Church.