Creating a Culture of Values Not Rules
In this episode of the Daron Earlewine Podcast, Daron and Julie discuss the importance of creating a culture of values in parenting, rather than focusing solely on rules and punishment. They share their own experiences growing up with strict rules and how it shaped their approach to parenting. They emphasize the need for a strong parent-child relationship and the importance of teaching children to make wise choices based on values.
They also discuss the balance between discipline and gentle parenting, and the need for consequences that teach and allow for redemption. Overall, they encourage parents to focus on building a relationship with their children and guiding them toward wisdom and freedom.
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| Daron | I want you to get to a place where you you feel like I don’t have a good answer for this. Perfect. That’s great. Because then what what we’re getting to is a place in our in our parenting, where we’re going, god, I’m not wise enough to know how to deal with my raging 13 year old. Here’s the great thing. What God says if you lack wisdom, ask me. I give it generously. Here’s what I don’t want us to do. |
| Daron | Grab in the toolbox of what our parents gave us, what culture’s given us, what some gentle parenting book gave us. Whatever. Maybe it’s the greatest thing ever. And just use that tool. Not thinking about the culture we’re creating, created on purpose and for purpose. Everybody. Welcome back to the Daron Earlewine Podcast. We’re in episode six of this Parenting for a Purpose series here with my wife, Julie Earlewine. |
| Daron | You’re almost done, Jules? |
| Julie | Thank goodness it yay. |
| Daron | Think about it. 20-25 minutes away from not having to do the podcast. |
| Julie | People will listen to these. I definitely hope they don’t watch them. |
| Daron | Why? You’re a beautiful woman. |
| Julie | No one really wants to be on this, I can promise you. I’ve never made an Instagram live anything in my whole life, so I’m pretty sure I don’t want people to be watching me right now. Hey. |
| Daron | Well, you’re jumping in just a big cannonball in with six episodes of a podcast. |
| Julie | Yeah, it’s actual torture. |
| Daron | Okay, this is our last episode, and I just want to thank everybody that’s that’s reached out the feedback that we received throughout the series. It’s been a ton to us, and you guys are giving us a lot of questions and different things that you’ve sent us that are going to allow us to even work with this material in the future. Do have some aspirations, some dreams, I guess you would say, to potentially work on a book out of what we’re talking about today. That could be helpful to you. |
| Daron | And hopefully, because my wife does have an English degree, writing degree, she would join me and we could co write that book. |
| Julie | He did that on purpose. And the answer is currently. No. |
| Daron | Currently. |
| Julie | It’s forever now. Soon he does this stuff. See, he’s trying to put me on the spot. This is how I get stuck in these situations. If you really want to know about parenting, just meet me for a mimosa. |
| Daron | Yes. And you could talk about the book. Maybe you could sign a copy. |
| Julie | No, I’m not going to do book discussions. Call me. We’ll have some coffee, go for a. |
| Daron | Walk over a book. |
| Julie | Anyway, there was no video cameras involved. |
| Daron | Again, we’d love to hear back from you, hear more from you. Once again, always. You can email me, daron@blackbirdmission.com, 317-550-5057. You can text or just reach out through any direct message on any social platform because we’re out there. Last episode. Julie, we’re going to talk about the topic or title for this episode is for not against. And when I said it was for not against, you were like, oh, you say that every episode. This is a different context. God is for you, not against you, which is great. But the context we’re talking about is in our parenting for a purpose. We’ve done our best to be for values, not against behaviors. |
| Daron | This is not how we were raised at. And we Julie and I both grew up in a very conservative denomination here in America, and it could be called in the holiness tradition. And so within that tradition, and you may come from a different stream of Christianity, but there were a lot of rules. And you may be at a place right now where you’ve found the podcast. Maybe you’ve just started a relationship with Jesus or you’re curious about it, and one of the things that may be making you nervous is like, oh, if I start really getting into this Jesus stuff, I’m going to have to start following a bunch of new rules. |
| Daron | And hopefully this episode will help you not ruin your life by becoming religious and thinking that rules are the thing that you need to focus on and that you need to protect. And if you did grow up the way that we grew up, I hope this episode brings you some personal freedom. But more than that, in your parenting and the culture that you’re creating in your family is shaped a little differently as the focus doesn’t become obedience to rules, but actually becomes perspective that leads to wisdom, which leads to freedom. |
| Daron | And what were some of the rules that we grew up with, Jules? |
| Julie | What rule did we not grow up with? |
| Daron | Okay, let’s hit a couple of them. |
| Julie | Like rules that have impacted our parenting, how we’ve done it differently, or just rules? |
| Daron | Just rules. Like, when we were growing up, there was a lot of rules, whether they were from church or from a home. Top ten rules that made sure you were a good Christian and a good. |
| Julie | I had to go church. Had to go to church on Sunday. I had to go to church on Sunday night. Had to go to church on Wednesday. |
| Daron | Had to go to church. |
| Julie | Had to go to church. |
| Daron | There’s a rule. You have to go to church. |
| Julie | Had to go to church. |
| Daron | Absolutely. The I mean, in our denomination, I can hit a couple of my top ten. There’s no drinking. There’s no smoking. There’s no dancing. There’s no R rated movies. There’s no secular music. |
| Julie | Yes. |
| Daron | There’s no mixed swimming. |
| Julie | Oh, yeah, I had to wear a T shirt over my bathing suit. |
| Daron | T shirt over your bathing suit. |
| Julie | When I went to camp, girls couldn’t wear bathing suits. |
| Daron | Right. |
| Julie | Which is ridiculous, but probably say the things the way I feel about all these rules on this podcast. |
| Daron | I know we can fire us. |
| Julie | It’s our podcast turned off if you don’t like it. |
| Daron | Yeah, that’s true. This is the beauty of this. We can’t be fired from that. |
| Julie | Yeah, I mean, in today’s world, you could never do that to females. Hey, your body, it’s the problem. But that’s what they were saying was that we were the problem. But it’s not that any one particular person is the problem. It’s just there’s things out there that should have been taught differently. |
| Daron | Right. |
| Julie | So we had to wear T shirts. |
| Daron | Some people maybe have like no sleepovers, no social media. |
| Julie | I think still kind of for that. |
| Daron | I’m not saying I’m just saying there’s rules. No, cussing I think we already said that one. Right? |
| Julie | I’m great at that one. |
| Daron | There’s just a lot of rules. And what happens is this has been new in my life as far as an actual understanding that has helped in my life, in my relationship with Jesus, in our parenting probably in the past 15 years, maybe. And for me, what I didn’t know growing up is I’ve always hated rules. And I thought it was because I was just a really rebellious kid. And God’s done a lot of work. Helped me realize I’m not just rebellious, but I think there’s a part of me that I didn’t know this when I was young, but when you gave me rules without giving me a why behind it, I can’t function in that. |
| Daron | Right? And you can say, well, you should just trust authority, maybe. Although sometimes authority is really suspect and a lot of people that I’ve trusted with authority didn’t deserve that trust and they were total shams. So that didn’t help. So that questioning of authority, that questioning of rules. What I’ve realized now is that I think it’s because, and maybe I’m wrong in this, but I don’t think that’s the heart of God. |
| Daron | Right. God didn’t create us. And his design wasn’t that there would be a bunch of rules with the crazy part about the Garden of Eden. When God created us as his children, he put us in this vast paradise provided for all of our needs. And there was one rule like, hey, don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Basically just so you wouldn’t have the knowledge of good and evil and you could just be free to enjoy relationship with Him. |
| Daron | And somehow we’ve taken that heart of the God that created this amazing, beautiful, free paradise for us to think that his heart is that he was going to be really been out of shape about a handful of rules and that the breaking of those rules would somehow destroy the connection of love. |
| Julie | I think the interesting thing for me is that I actually like rules. So it’s been an interesting I really like rules. Like I’m an Enneagram six, we think, with a lot of one, or I’m a one with a lot of six. So working on figuring some things out about myself. But I really like roles and so it was almost easier in my life. It wasn’t actually true. It just felt easier to me when there were rules. So I was raised with a bunch of rules and so it was easy for me to choose to follow the rules so I would have good things and not follow the in knowing that if I didn’t follow the rules, I would have bad things. And so it was like a very like I’m pretty black and white and so rules for me until I had some freedom in Christ where I realized that I actually was more in love and in tune with the rules of a religious organization than I was with the heart of Jesus. And it was a very pivotable change in my life. |
| Julie | When the religious organization it was like they say, sometimes when you’re walking through something that’s not actually the way it should be, it’s like you have a bunch of straw over your eyes, and then one day something lights it on fire, and all of a sudden you can see things. And I didn’t get it all figured out away, but I realized that there’s reasons for rules. You need them. You need them in driving, you need them in all the things in life. |
| Julie | You need rules in cooking, you need rules. I mean, you need instructions, you need guidance, you need barriers. There’s value in all of those things. But when you act in the rules as of the most value and not within the heart of what is the most value of why, that’s where the danger comes. And I’ve had to spend the last probably twelve years of my life digging out from under rules to find my way back to the real Jesus. Because I loved the rules so much that it made me think that I really loved Jesus. When I realized what I was doing is just loving a lot of rules. And it became a thing in our parenting where I didn’t want that for my boys. I didn’t want the only reason they said no to things was because it was a rule. |
| Julie | I wanted them to say no to things in their life that weren’t the best for them because they were honoring themselves and they were honoring Jesus. That’s why that was my newfound perspective in parenting then when it came down to rules, because I loved rules. I like them. I think they make you feel safe and protected. But what I realized is they’re of necessity, but they’re not of demand and they can’t be the thing that controls you. |
| Daron | Well, I love that you shared that because we kind of came at this from polar opposites, right? You loved them. |
| Julie | I hated hated them. He still does. |
| Daron | I still do. But here’s the thing is I heard an author say once, and this was so eye opening to me and it’s true of God and it’s kind of a summarization of what you just said, but it can be seen in our kids. Is it’s easy to mistake obedience for a good relationship? |
| Julie | Yeah. |
| Daron | And that’s tough to think about in our parenting. What kind of culture are we trying to create? Is our number one goal is we want our kids to be obedient to the rules that they have. And you may say, well, because I know why we have those rules. So the key here is obedience. What we want to challenge you on a thought in this episode is that you may get obedience from your kids. Chances are your strategy to get that obedience is to use fear and punishment to get it, which is a very, in my opinion, Christian way to parent. Right. Spare the rod, spoil the child. We’re not going to talk about spanking on this. But what I’m talking about just the idea that, well, yeah, I’m going to put the fear of God in my kids through punishment. |
| Daron | And what we need to do is make sure they fear breaking the rules and punishment and we get them to be obedient. And what we’ve seen for the past 20 some years of living in the city that we’re in and the life we’re in and experiencing thing is that I’ve seen a lot of kids that grew up in Christian homes that grew up like that. They had all the rules, they followed the rules, they were punished. They were scared. They were afraid to break the rules because they thought it broke the relationship with their parents, because sometimes it did or broke the relationship with God. |
| Daron | So they were obedient and followed all the rules until they didn’t have to, until no one was there to punish them, until they weren’t afraid of their parents anymore, until they got tired of being under God’s thumb if they thought that was the case. And then they went nuts because they weren’t actually for anything. They just learned to be against certain things. And that’s what we want to get you to in the points of this podcast is you start taking a look at the culture of your home is in your home are you creating an ethos? An ethos is a spontaneous reoccurring habit. Let me give you some examples of ethos. |
| Daron | Ethos comes from values. Whatever your value is, what begins to happen is you start to create these spontaneous reoccurring habits that become behaviors and outcomes, but they’re formed in values. So, for instance, no one probably had to tell you this morning to brush your teeth. Anybody remind you to brush your teeth this morning? |
| Julie | No. |
| Daron | Is it a rule in our home you have to brush your teeth? Well, it’s not necessarily a rule, right? |
| Julie | Yes, it is. |
| Daron | That’s gross. |
| Julie | Our best friend’s a dentist. You have to brush your teeth in a house. Get that shout out, more berry dentistry go there. |
| Daron | My point is this you don’t brush your teeth today because you’re afraid of someone punishing you or you breaking a rule. You brush your teeth every day because you have a value of fresh breath and not being a stank mouth person whose teeth are falling out. |
| Julie | Also a fact. |
| Daron | Okay. |
| Julie | The barrier. |
| Daron | Yes, I value oral health in having teeth. Right. Our kids, there wasn’t a punishment based thing. If you got to brush your teeth, you’re grounded. Right? |
| Julie | I can’t remember the last time we’ve even told them to brush our teeth, and they always go, just brush their teeth. |
| Daron | Because we probably found ways to help them value not having stinky breath and their teeth actually not falling out. Right. You probably said it like I for sure said that like, you smell like you just ate dog poop. Go brush your teeth. |
| Julie | So bad. |
| Daron | But here’s the thing. When you got in your car today, when you drove somewhere, if you’ve driven somewhere, did you have to think about putting your seatbelt on? Julie did, because sometimes she doesn’t put her seatbelt on. But here’s it in our culture, we had a value for life, and we have a value for I don’t want to put my head through my windshield. |
| Julie | Oh, here we go. |
| Daron | Right? So I spontaneously put my seatbelt on every day because there’s a value there. Now, granted, this illustration kind of falls apart because now we actually do have a law that if you don’t have our seatbelt on but here’s the point of all this. What I wanted you to see is looking at what kind of culture are you creating in your home? Is it a culture where we’re against things or we’re for things? |
| Daron | Because what comes down to this is based on that you have to figure out what role as a parent you’re going to choose with your kids. What we want to encourage you to think about is playing the role of a parent that brings perspective, that leads to wisdom, that produces freedom. Or you can choose the role of the punisher, that punishes bad behavior, hands out consequences, creates fear, that drives hiding, produces shame and breaks relationship, which I want to strongly encourage you not to do that, because this it’s not the way that God loves us. |
| Daron | And this jules this was a world changer for me. I struggled most of my high school, college, career, career, life, and even into my 20s thinking that God was really bent out of shape when I broke the rules, because rules were broken and he was angry, and it created shame. And here’s what I would do. I would hide from God when I was caught in my badness, which your kids get caught being bad, my first reaction was to run away from God. |
| Daron | Why? Because God was mad because I broke his rule. Right? Because what God’s against, he’s against breaking rules. Rather than realizing, no, what God is for is me learning how to stay in connection into love with Him. And when I began to understand God’s love that way, it transformed realizing that when I find myself in sin, the best place I could run is to the presence of God, because he can actually help me understand why I’m doing what I’m doing so I can begin to make different decisions in the future. |
| Daron | And where this started to come clear to me in our parenting was watching other people parent, watching us parent, and hearing about kids that are getting punished and they’re grounded and they’re this and they’re that. And I remember one day coming back this is a couple of years ago, whatever, and being like the last time we’ve grounded any of the boys and realizing, like they’ve broken some rules, like they’ve done some stuff that I wish they wouldn’t have done. |
| Daron | But realizing we weren’t creating a culture where we were against these behaviors and the breaking of these behaviors was going to bring about punishment. Because we stepped into a place where we began to have conversations around what they did, why they did it, and who did they want to become. And in that conversation, we started helping them realize, no, I want you to be for this value, and as you grow in that, you’re not going to be perfect in it. But I’d rather have a long conversation about how we get to be for that and why you don’t feel like and get curious and compassionate in that conversation than feel like, oh, well, we punished the behavior, so we must have fixed the problem. |
| Julie | I think the interesting thing, too, right now in society, in some mean I don’t think that punishment. I’m not saying I’m for punishment. I am fully in agreement with Daron. But I think one of the things we’re walking into in a generation now, though, is also mean, is the whole gentle parenting, like the other side of the coin. And that’s where discipline and behavioral and stewarding, a little child, teenager, preteen teenager and adult can be really complex. |
| Julie | Because now we’re of the mindset sometimes in the generation we’re in, of like, oh, let’s just give them this freedom to find themselves and figure themselves out, and we don’t put any barriers right. There’s a flip side of it where I feel like sometimes in the world I’m in the career I’m in, we see so much gentle parenting that there’s no parenting. And sometimes what happens is there’s so many consequences and so much discipline that there’s actually no parenting. |
| Julie | And the words actually not parenting, what’s actually happening is that there’s really no relationship. |
| Daron | There you go. |
| Julie | And I would say I would say that if you had to say, oh, Julie, how did you parent? I was like, I built a relationship with them. I didn’t really parent them. I have a relationship with them. And we talk about our why we talk about it, because either extreme isn’t going to set them up to be the best humans that we want and this society needs right now. This society needs humans that love and care and give and serve and see the world and share Jesus in it and share love in it. And if we’re always focusing on doing nothing or doing too much and we are not really focused on the relationship, that is where in my heart, I feel like I would have let my kids down and I would have not been at my best. |
| Julie | And that’s the unique thing about now. The relationship I have with my parents now is, like, I joke with them about some of the punishments and the rules, and I make cracks at them now and jokes because I’m like my mom asked me recently, what’s the worst thing I ever did to you as a mom? And I told her right away this one scenario that’s been very marking in my life. It was that I broke a rule. There was this outrageous consequence that now to this day, makes me actually laugh. |
| Julie | And she was like, oh, at that point, I didn’t know what else to do. She didn’t have any instructions. Goes back to our last podcast. We’re like, we’re all working in generations to try our very best in the world we’re in right now to make it better than it was given to us. And most days we’re failing at that. So for me, there’s too much gentle parenting, and then there’s also too much over disciplining that we’ve got to come into the middle and really take a hard look at what’s the relationship. |
| Julie | Are you willing to have tough conversations? Are you willing to have fun with them still? Are you willing to be relevant, but yet also an example? It’s a balance between those words that I just said that creates a space of healthy disciplinary parenting. Yes, both words are necessary. There’s gentle punishment, maybe I don’t know, like, what the term would be, but I really do think that ultimately, at the end of day, it comes down to being a relationship. And I’m not saying be their friend because there is a season in life you absolutely don’t need to be your child’s friend. |
| Julie | You need to be in relationship with them, but you can’t be their best friend. But then if you’ve stewarded that relationship appropriately, it’s awesome to be where we are now and to watch our 19 year old be our friend. And I think that is a product of focusing on relationship and not focusing on gentle parenting or focusing on over disciplining. It’s that weird. Fine line between both of them. |
| Daron | Yeah. I love that you brought the word relationship to the center of it. Right. Because that’s the heart of God, and that is what we want. I don’t even exactly know what gentle parenting is. It sounds like the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. |
| Julie | Okay, that’s not nice. Some of you are working through that right now, and you shouldn’t say something’s dumb, okay? People, they’re all figuring it out. |
| Daron | I apologize. There are times it drives me nuts when I’m reacting to this, because I don’t want you to hear us saying, well, just Daron doesn’t care. There’s no consequences for actions. No, there’s freaking consequences for actions. And you don’t let your kid be an idiot, right? You get what you tolerate in life. And Julie and I have tolerated very little, especially when they were little. Like the amount of times when the kids were going nuts in there was. |
| Julie | Very little gentle parenting when they were little. |
| Daron | No. And I want to give you a tip, okay? If you grab your kid right here behind the arm, there’s a soft period here, right? |
| Julie | Stop. Take this off. Darren, cut this. |
| Daron | Just a little pressure. You can get your kid’s attention real quick, and then you don’t pull them close. |
| Julie | No. |
| Daron | And this is one of my favorite phrases, parenting when they were little was this one. Are you freaking kidding me? That was the opener, right? Because it was like, I am completely dumbfounded by what is happening. Then you would remove the child, take them to the car, take them out, and have a deeper conversation about how if you can’t be a real human being in public, we’re not going to be there. So there was not a great gentleness so I don’t want people hearing that, right? Because your kids have to be guided and direct. They don’t know the reason your kids do dumb stuff is because they’re unwise. They’re foolish. |
| Daron | Go to proverbs and read. What is it? They’re ignorant. They’re ignorant. And if you’re not careful and don’t help them deal with ignorance, they become foolish. And then if they don’t deal with the foolishness, they become a mocker. It’s a whole process through Proverbs in there, in between that our role then is like you just said, we have to steward such a trust in that relationship where they realize when I screw up, the person I need most in my life right now to help me with the ignorance I have is mom and dad. |
| Daron | And if I choose the role of punisher, that’s my role. And I feel bad for Dads sometimes where it’s like, moms will be like, well, we’ll deal with it. Be like when your dad gets home, he’s going to really give you a whooping. Right? So what do we just teach people every day? Somebody says that in America, right? But the idea is, like, the dad’s going to be the heavy. So then what does the kid learn, right, is, I’m not sure. Mom’s kind of here, but I’m fairly. |
| Julie | Certain in our house, they think I’m going to be the heavy. |
| Daron | Well, that’s true. That’s true. |
| Julie | I’m just saying. |
| Daron | But the point is, now we’re dealing with, like we already said, I can’t run to God when I’m in trouble because he’s going to be like my dad and he’s going to beat me, right? I’m not saying your dad beats you, but I’m just saying there was going to be the idea. |
| Julie | There’s going to be a lot of editing. |
| Daron | The point being actually, no, I’m distracted. I know what the point was. No, I do know what the point was is growing to that point where I never wanted the boys to see me as their punisher, right? I wanted them to see me as the place I come to, to seek wisdom and to grow through this. Just like little things for us to understand, right, is we talked about the lying, right? Is the idea that when our kids do something, a lot of times our response is based in the fear that we’re going to be seen as a bad parent or we’re afraid of what, oh, if they lied today, they’re eventually going to be a liar and then they’re going to do this. And then we go in this snowballs and it’s like if we don’t really come down harder now, before you know it, you know what I mean? They’re going to be a drug dealer and kill people or whatever our crazy parental thoughts do, rather than stepping into a situation with that and realizing I can’t respond from fear or I can’t see this as it reflects on me, but my kid has done something. They have a problem, and now they’ve done something that has broken trust, that has hurt people, that’s caused a mess, and someone has to clean this mess up relationally. |
| Daron | If we’re for values like courage and humility and gratitude and faithfulness and compassion, like, this is what we’re for. Honesty, all the things that are true in God’s word, this is what we stand for in our family, right? We’re not against certain rules. We’re for these things when these things are violated. Now we have to sit down and help you figure out, as a dearly loved child of God in us, how do you actually fix the problem that you’ve created? |
| Daron | Because a lot of times when we go with punishment, right, we introduce shame, we introduce hiding, we introduce lying, all these different things. We don’t grow in a lot of wisdom and we don’t actually put the problem, the mess back in the lap of the person that created it and then say, how are we going to fix this? So if you have a situation where maybe your kid does lie, you’re like, we don’t lie in this house. Of course no one’s for lying, right? |
| Daron | So we’re going to punish me, you’re going to be grounded. These different things. And like I said before, we think we’ve fixed it and then the kid never really fixed the issue. And you didn’t sit down and talk about, hey, when we lie, here’s the thing that happens. Here’s the trust that’s broken. So how could you fix and bring reconciliation and redemption. And healing to what you’ve broken in the relationship, and I want to help you clean that situation up. |
| Daron | And there may be consequences. And as a part of that, here’s the thing that happens. But the goal is I want to steward the relationship towards wisdom so you know how to manage your freedom. So you go from a place where you don’t break rules. We probably heard this growing up, you know what I mean? Well, why can’t I do that? Because I said so. I think we grew up from this, I said so parenting paradigm where I want our boys, and we tried to maybe do this, where they get to the place where it’s like, why don’t I do that? |
| Daron | And they can say, Because I say so. They have been raised, and they have enough of a value connection, and they know they’re protecting, in some ways, our heart and the connection or relationship we have that they’re able to tell themselves what to do rather than only not doing things because they’re afraid of some kind of punishment, right? It’s an inside out approach to behavior rather than an outside in, controlling think. |
| Julie | And it’s not that I’m disagreeing with Daron, because I’m not disagreeing, but I think one of the things is there were certain things in our home, though, regardless, were non negotiables. So I think when the kids were little, there are some things that are absolutely worth saying no to. Like, no, don’t run in the street. You’re going to say no, you’re going to give them a consequence. Whatever you’re going to do, you’re going to tell them not to do that. But then the things that were nonessential don’t make a no be something that’s nonessential like I would be like if they wanted a cookie. It’s not like the end of the world. Don’t make your no’s matter. Make your yeses matter. And I think one of the things in our home, though, was a big non negotiable for us, was like and this comes down to the Ten Commandments. I think this comes down to one of the best practices of character, of life. But lying is a non negotiable in our home. It’s a non negotiable. |
| Julie | It’s not like, oh, hey, you don’t have a consequence in our home. If you lie, that’s a non negotiable. And from the very beginning, we have always told our children, your honesty will create less consequence than your lie. And so you need consequences. Life is about them. It happens to you. If you lie at work and you hide and you sneak at work, there will be a consequence. You’ll get fired. Life doesn’t work with no consequence and no punishment. It comes upon you naturally. |
| Daron | I was saying, life naturally brings consequence. Like, we don’t get punished as adults. We receive the weight of the consequence of our action. And that’s what I’m saying. What I want to grow in, we try to grow in is figuring out time out. |
| Julie | I feel like this is not going well. |
| Daron | No, it is going well. This is a good conversation. |
| Julie | I don’t feel good about this. No, I don’t know. I don’t feel good because I don’t feel like I fully agree with you. |
| Daron | That’s great. It’s a conversation. My point is life we’ve had this conversation before and disagreed on it is there are certain things I am agreeing with you. We’re not let our kids run in the street. Right. Because that consequence is too great if you run the street. |
| Julie | I think you have a lot more sensitivity to punishment than I do, and that’s okay. I think it’s more of a sensitive subject to you. |
| Daron | That’s probably true. |
| Julie | That’s all. |
| Daron | But my point is you have to look at life is what you’re preparing your kid for is the only punishment we have in our society is jail. Really? You have consequences. And oftentimes when we we’ve always disagreed. |
| Julie | About these words our whole marriage for 22 years. |
| Daron | Right. |
| Julie | We’ve disagreed about that. Everything doesn’t always have, like, a consequence. |
| Daron | No, everything does have a consequence. |
| Julie | You used to always say you don’t have a consequence. |
| Daron | No, I’ve never you’ve heard me say that. So now what I’m saying everything has a consequence, but most things don’t come with a punishment. And if we don’t raise our kids in a way for them to understand how to work through the consequences of their actions and the only exterior motivator to not make mistakes in life is punishment. |
| Julie | Well, no, we don’t punish them very much. We don’t have to because we’ve gone ahead of them. That’s what I was saying about the lying don’t disagree, is that if they lied, there was a punishment, there was a consequence, or whichever word you want to use, which basically, technically, basically mean the same thing. |
| Daron | They don’t mean the same thing at all. A punishment is something extra that someone else is imposing on you. A consequence is something that it gets imposed on you by the actual situation and what you’ve actually damaged. |
| Julie | But they’re still in the same vein. The words are that’s where we’ve always disagreed, because I hear them as the same. |
| Daron | You hear them as the same, but they’re not. |
| Julie | Well, my whole point is in going back to what we did as parenting, that I felt like was a balance for us is if lying was a non negotiable, like they received a consequence if they lied. Yeah, one of our children lied more than the other three. That child regularly received a consequence for his lying. |
| Daron | Correct. |
| Julie | And we continually talked with him about the fact that if you don’t lie and you’re upfront and honest with us, your consequence and punishment will be less, because out of the outpouring of honesty is growth. If we’re over here worried about whether or not we’re going to punish them or not, you’re really not getting anywhere. Like Daron said, but in that particular one that was in my brain was when we had a child that would err on the side of white lying. |
| Julie | We continually, through their teaching of them, remind him. And now I find there is a natural outpouring of honesty because he realizes that there’s less consequence and that’s in the world that’s my whole point is like we’re setting them up to be good citizens and be good humans through our faith based teaching obviously to teach them to love Jesus and honor him first. Then out of that comes those things that you’re naturally choosing to do. |
| Julie | Because you love the Lord and you seek and you understand Him in our home by nature. Because and this is probably why we’re a little bit, like, on the same page, because we are but we respond differently to it is I am confrontational. Daron is not confrontational. So if there’s a difficult thing going on with the child that requires confrontation, I typically am put in the mix first because I see it, I address it, I attack it, we work on it. Not attack in a negative way, but meaning I seek to solve more quickly because of my natural ability to confront immediately. |
| Julie | If you think so. Now I’m a law-aggressive. |
| Julie | He has a tendency to get easily angered and gets highly passionate. He’s very passionate and so he gets apples, trees anyway, he’s very passionate and he is reactionary in his passion. And one day he was mad at a video game and he got angry and we’ve overly discussed the ability to control your anger. Walk away, count to ten. We’ve given him all of the safety steps that you have to give the world down safety steps and we’ve given them all to him and he got mad and he threw the controller angrily at the chair and it hit ricochet off the chair. It ricocheted off of the chair and it hit his brother’s video gaming monitor which he’d gotten as a gift. |
| Julie | He immediately freaked out because he knew he was going to be in trouble because there is need for that to receive trouble. But he wasn’t in trouble for breaking the TV, he was in trouble for the why he broke the TV. So what he had to do as his consequence, not punishment, consequence, was he had to buy his brother another monitor. So he had worked really hard dog sitting for our neighbors behind us, and they had given him a very crisp $100 bill that he had held onto for 18 months. |
| Julie | It was his pride and joy, and he had to give that to me to buy his brother a new monitor, because his anger and his negative choice broke a monitor. So he needed a consequence that would teach him. So then what we did was I cut up 100 paper one dollars bills, and over the course of seven months, he worked to earn these paper $100 bills. I took that $100 bill and I put it in a drawer. I still got Ty a new monitor, but I told Knox he could work back to get that actual $100 bill that he thought was so precious. |
| Julie | And he came in for days, months, would ask for a chore, and we would just add another paper dollar to a ball jar, add another one. He would do more chores than anyone ever. And I remember the very last week, it was probably close to April that happened, like, back in the fall, it’s close to April. We were opening our pool, and he said, mom, it’s a really hard job to scrub all the edges of the pool. I only need $10. |
| Julie | He’s like, If I go out and scrub all the edges of the pool, will you give me $10 and I can get ten paper dollars back, and I can get my $100 back? And over the course of seven months, he was reminded of the consequence of a negative behavior, and he earned it back. He got the opportunity to learn, and that’s what it is. It’s more about putting them in positions to learn of, like when you do something that’s harmful to you or harmful to others or harmful to your future or is not going to make you put in the best situation possible. |
| Julie | We need, as Moms and dads, to give them space to understand, yes, this result has a consequence. And two knox. It felt like punishment to hand me that $100 bill. But then he was also given grace and love and the ability for redemption, which is what Jesus does for us to redeem the situation by in this situation. Working that’s not what Jesus makes us do, but working to earn his little crisp $100 bill back. |
| Daron | Thank you for perfectly making the point I was trying to make in this. |
| Julie | Podcast, but you are being a law aggressive. |
| Daron | No, I wasn’t. That is exactly send me an email. |
| Julie | If you think so. Now I’m a law aggressive. |
| Daron | We’ll land the plane because we’re running out of time. |
| Julie | And I got to go serve dinner. |
| Daron | Yeah, I got to go coach football is what Julie just explained was Knox created a mess, and we found a way for him to clean up his own mess. Here’s what we could have done. Knox, maybe he was still within Spanking age. If you are into Spanking, right? Like, he broke it. He was anger. We used to when they were, like, little. Yeah, but it’s like, what, are you going to spank your kids when they’re 16? |
| Daron | What are you doing? Right? But some parents would. Somebody somebody could say he did something wrong. He was a rage monster. He was he dabbles. Right. He broke the TV. Here’s what he needs to be. He needs to be spanked and grounded for a month. That’ll teach him punishment. Knox never has to deal with the consequences of his actions. |
| Julie | Yes. |
| Daron | Right. The consequence of his action was he broke a TV. He broke trust with us. He broke trust with his brother and hurt him because it was a Christmas gift for him. There’s a bunch of a mess here. Right? What Knox did for the next seven months was clean up his own mess. He learned the value we’re for, right? The value of he learned forgiveness. He learned what it looks like to redeem and restore trust. That’s broken. |
| Daron | Then he grows to the place where it’s like, seven months to do that. Maybe I should take a look at self control when I’m playing video games. All of this saying just and this is hard. Look how much we’re disagreeing with we’ve been talking about it for years. I want this episode to bother you. I want you to think about it and then get to the place I want you to get to a place where you feel like I don’t have a good answer for this. |
| Daron | Perfect. That’s great, because then what we’re getting to is a place in our parenting where we’re going, god, I’m not wise enough to know how to deal with my raging 13 year old. Here’s the great thing, what God says. If you lack wisdom, ask me. I give it generously. Here’s what I don’t want us to do. Grab in the toolbox of what our parents gave us, what culture’s given us, what some gentle parenting book gave us. Whatever. |
| Daron | Maybe it’s the greatest thing ever. And just use that tool. Not thinking about the culture we’re creating. God wants us to create a culture that looks like the way he loves us, which God doesn’t deal in a lot, in big punishment. He deals in allowing us to handle the weight of the consequences we walk through and then loving us and restoring us through that. And that’s what I want to challenge you to try to get creative in. It’s going to be difficult. |
| Daron | You’re going to have arguments. But if you’re talking about how can we create a culture that best shows and models the way the father loves us, you’re in a great argument, and that’s a great journey to go on. Okay, good. |
| Julie | I would say that land the plane. No, you’ve already land the plane. I would just say that anything we’ve said over the Six podcasts, if you’ve actually listened to this, hopefully you’ve not watched it, and you’ve only listened to it because it’s weird that I’m on a video. But I would say this, that if I could say anything as where I’m at in the season of parenting that I am is that don’t miss a moment. |
| Julie | It goes really quick and you’re going to have days. You win, you win. You knock it out of the park and there’s going to be days you lose and you feel completely defeated. But wherever you are in your parenting, whether you feel like you’re winning or losing right now, they are the best gift that God’s given you. And don’t miss a moment because it is. Stop this. |
| Daron | Just crying again. |
| Julie | This is his fault. This is not a healthy season for me to be doing this. No, seriously. Like you’re in a special time. It’s an absolute gift and there’s no better ministry than ministering your kids. I’m out. I’m never doing this again because I cried. It’s so stupid. My friends are going to laugh at me. |
| Daron | Holly would say this is so healthy. |
| Julie | Holly would say this to laugh. She would say it’s funny. Chris and Jas are laughing at me because I’m crying on video. |
| Daron | Holly’s, our counselor, she’s going to be so proud of Julie for this whole thing. I’m so proud of you. |
| Julie | It’s a nice thing to be proud of. |
| Daron | It is ridiculous. |
| Julie | Okay, I got to go. I’m going to go to raising canes. Shout out to raising canes. |
| Daron | You can take compliments. |
| Julie | Thank you. |
| Daron | Thank you for doing this. You’re welcome. It’s been such a gift to me, to the podcast audience. |
| Julie | There might be nobody listens to this and we just talked together and wasted six two. |
| Daron | I forgot to tell you that one of your friends said that she has a thing that she says in her brain called WWE. |
| Julie | Oh, we’re not talking about this right now. I know who that is. |
| Daron | Where she says, what would Julie do? Is what she goes back for. |
| Julie | That is true. |
| Daron | Helper with perspective. And the last one I’ll read this and we’ll end with this one other. One of Julie’s friends came in and said, one thing I refresh about Julie’s parenting is her perspective. Is Godly pure, bold, true, honest? Yes. And one thing I hold dear to my heart, julie has a way of listening and never making me feel like I’m wrong. I don’t have that all the time. Rather, she guides me by providing perspectives that I couldn’t see myself. |
| Daron | And I think that’s something Julie does in her parenting. I think that’s what I’ve been trying to say in this episode is that’s the role we get to play as parents, don’t choose the role of punisher for your kid. Choose the role of someone who provides perspectives they couldn’t see by themselves. Because when you do that, when they’re in their worst moment and in their best, they will run to you and to that relationship. |
| Daron | You’ve stewarded and you’ll get to experience and enjoy the greatest gift that they are is what Julia just said. Thank you so much. We’d love to hear from you. We told you how to reach out. This episode’s going too long. Three things. Always God’s for United Night against you. He’s near you. He’s not far away. And he’s created you on purpose and for purpose. We’ll see you next time. |