Episode 50 - Parenting and Deconstruction

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[Music] today we are finally getting to a topic that is one of the most commonly asked questions that we get how to parent after deconstruction this episode is sort of a sequel to the lost and found series that we did in the first season as well as the other side of the mattress in those episodes science mike and i discussed our loss of faith and the rebuilding and then on the other side of the mattress we brought in our wives lisa and jenny and talked about how all of that affected our marriages and our lives today we are talking about how our families have handled the big questions since then we don't claim to be experts on any of this so please don't listen to this show as such we are not experts we haven't even finished parenting our own kids but we're simply fellow travelers sharing our experiences with you so welcome to the liturgist podcast we're so glad you've joined us [Music] i think what makes this topic so requested is for a lot of us that have gone through changes in our faith we value and especially if you're a listener to this show if you listen to the show there's probably something in you that values something about where you've come from and the stories you've inherited and the faith practices that you've been given but there's a lot of bath water that is very dirty that should go so like how do you pass that on to the next generation to your children who you're responsible for helping form their thoughts and get hand them this what stories do you hand them which traditions and how can you do that in a context like for us we aren't currently going to church but when we even do visit churches we're like super nervous about what are they going to we just hand off our daughter to whoever happens to be teaching or volunteering in the back yeah and let's hope that they don't give her a whole world of shame and darkness and it's interesting because a lot of parents we've talked a lot about this on our last tour it was the question we got a lot and some parents will tell us like oh i'm just going just for my children and that even seems so backwards right like for some reason they're thinking well what the main guy is teaching they don't like but they're they want their kids still to have this foundation and something that they don't believe it seems so backwards like somehow that's not going to mess up their kids because they're kids and maybe it somehow doesn't matter as much i mean it's the same thinking that goes along with what women can teach children because women are second it's this whole idea like it just doesn't matter as much with the children and it's crucial you're setting the tone for the rest of their lives of what they are building on or what they have to deconstruct and so yeah we are so careful about uh where we take homily you can have shame can really sneak in so quickly and easily where there's just like this i mean i remember one lesson from when i was in children's church where this guy brought this popcorn and he's like hey kids you want some popcorn and we're like yeah it smelled delicious it was just microwaved he's like here you go and then he poured paint all over it right as he was about to hand it to us [Laughter] am i told this on this podcast i don't remember so man um and then and then did some brownies like i'm sorry about that here's some brownies and we ate into the brownies and had cotton inside and we're like what the hell he's well not what we know what the heck and uh what the gush died and he's like you got sin in your hearts this was like this just real memorable lesson about like you have sinned in you and you are evil and you just need to do this to not be and i just don't want that [Music] i remember in youth group uh at my church they told us um if you took communion and you weren't ready or prepared you could get sick or die yes i was told that too i was told that too i was so terrified i was terrified every i would like be so devoutly praying every time it was time to have the lord's supper because i didn't want to get sick or die because i had unconfessed sensei because you've mastered everything i could have possibly done you messed up with these crazy like contractual prayers like god please forgive me for all the sins i'm aware of i'm not aware of i lay them all before you like you know i mean just like really really dependent to man will pass the pentagonal past like just this intense time of fear and shame associated with you know the most holy sacrament of the christian tradition i got sick once afterwards and i thought i just didn't find the sin that was in my heart i just couldn't i couldn't find it but god was hiding it from me i mean to be fair it's in the bible so if you're going to go to a place that they're going to teach the bible true well yeah with a certain with one lens so that's kind of the point yeah exactly there's one thing to kind of acknowledge in this conversation is the perspective we're all in is parenting after a faith transition but there's also a lot of people parenting during faith transitions and so for many people the reason they go back to church with their kids even though they're not sure if they buy all this or not is basically insurance what if i'm wrong i don't want my kids to go to hell like maybe i'm okay if i go to hell i don't want my kids to end up in hell i i my kids have tough questions about the afterlife about where we came from about god that i can't answer so maybe the church can also frankly in many cultures in america if you're not part of a church you are more socially isolated and your kids have less opportunity for socialization so there's all kinds of social and economic incentives associated with church participation and people especially in faith transition they don't have some new way of viewing the world they simply have a critique of the old way they viewed the world but in the absence of a new system or a new vision they fall back to something that seems safe or normative because especially like a faith transition tends to be a stressful experience it tends to be something that creates grief or depression or stress and so you might look back to the way you once believed in a very nostalgic way and then want to give your children that positive experience and maybe even spare them from what you're labeling as a more negative experience during faith transition so i think it makes a lot of sense really that people end up taking their kids to church even when they're not sure they're on the same page even when they've had really bad experiences so i think i think what many people are wondering is like how do i have better conversations with my children how do i how do i address some of these big issues how do i give them some of the good things that came from my religious upbringing without also giving them the shame the oppression the stigmatation and the fear that have come from that that same tradition [Music] hey madison hello when did you first know that things were different or things were changing around here and how i think about god or how mom thinks about god well i never really actually knew until even then i didn't really know but when we moved churches i wondered why something would happen like that how did you feel when we changed churches i felt really sad like i remember we were on the couch and we hadn't gone to ibc in a couple of weeks and i was wondering like when are we gonna go again and i asked you guys and you guys said we weren't gonna go anymore and i was just really sad because i had grown up there pretty much my entire life your entire life you went to that church before you were born and i had to leave my friends behind which was sad but i got to see them in fifth grade do you like church now yeah i'm really i'm really i'm actually kind of gla well not glad but i feel like we left it was really good that we left because now i've made new relationships with adults at good sam friends my age and our youth directors i just have a really good friend group there how did you feel when you found out that i didn't believe in god for a while i was just surprised i didn't judge you at all at all like i was just kind of surprised it didn't hurt or i was just surprised so it was more concerning to you that we changed churches than anything that i believed well the thing was i was i didn't know that you'd been going through this stuff until you started writing your book and so i was like sad and and i felt empathy and sadness or that time you went through and how you had to hide it from us and mom for a while i felt sad about it but i wasn't gonna judge you because i mean if dad doesn't believe in god it should be okay so that actually ended up being encouraging then and it helped me realize that i can believe what i want to believe what would you how should parents talk to their kids about god well it kind of depends on the age i remember when i was little we never really talked about god that much when we were i was really tiny we just like you guys explain what god was or that like he created the earth and stuff like that you just taught like the basics of what you believe and if you believe something differently like just teach them like kind of the groundwork of that and as they get older kind of build up that and if all of a sudden you have like a big bang and you think something differently well then try to like do some new ground work for that that's good advice thanks kiddo you're welcome [Music] i know for me i was really scared and the way i was raised was if you were not within the religious context that you're going to be a less moral person so i think yeah peop so many parents have that fear and um in looking in at knowing that we were going to talk about this i was looking online a bit about some different studies and there's a study i mean there's so many out there but one specifically from duke university says uh that kids that are raised in a secular upbringing they display less susceptibility to racism peer pressure they're less vengeful they're not less nationalistic less authoritarian they're more tolerant and the the list of benefits for not being raised in a religious family is amazing it's amazing too bad they go to hell [Music] so i think taking this just kidding people don't understand that said i was kidding i think they do i think they know who you are i don't think that would surprise anyone at this point so taking away that fear of oh my god you know what's gonna happen to my kid if they don't have this they're not moral i thought it was surprising even one study was saying most of the people in prison have religious upbringings and there's this this idea of moral licensing that's happening when a person feels permitted even unconsciously to do something wrong because they see themselves as a morally correct person so your religion is like you can do whatever you want to do with your religion because you've said something is saving you so kids are being raised in religious circles to not even be kind because they have this idea that it is that it doesn't matter as much and obviously not every single family but as a generality uh parents and religious circles are so concerned about their child's happiness and are not teaching them as much about caring for the other person which is very interesting considering like what jesus's life was about there was a harvard study on this like asking all these children in that were that grew up in religious families um what the most important thing was and they said their own their own happiness and it was interesting the more they focus on their own happiness the less happy they they are they more the focus on someone else's happiness the the more moral uh they are and i found that interesting with amelie because as we when we were going through this whole crisis i didn't really know what to say to her and the only thing i kept being sure of was and it sounds really simple but omely love like love yourself love other people be kind to others and i've been really surprised at how emily has adapted to this whole shift with us and i think it's been really smooth i don't think she's been confused i mean the conversations i have with her have been kind of even profound for me on i'll ask her like what do you think of god what do you what do you think that all of this is because she she'll ask us i mean just the other night we stayed her and i stayed up she wrestles a lot with why are we here why did why did god make us and what's our purpose so she's she'll kind of like throw herself on the sofa you know in this uh anguish what is what is all of this and i mean she's really really asking it and so we'll i'll ask i'll just throw the question back at her and i think there's a lot of wisdom in our children that we cover up when we just want to hand them all the answers so for us i've found it very even enlightening for myself listening to what she has to say about it i think it's important to listen to our kids [Music] emily hello dada how you doing good so you've been on the podcast before you know this whole thing yeah we're talking about parenting and how do people talk to their kids about things like god and love now that is a very good question tell us tell me your thoughts about god i think god's a really i think god is made of love and i think god's um and i love and we i love him because he made us and he made a wonderful life and created us where'd you learn that school you did [Music] when you think of god do you think it's a he that god is literally like a boy no so why do you say he because i just have to find a name you know i know what you're saying if you could tell parents how they should teach their kids what are your thoughts about it i think they should tell teach their kids that love is better than i'm hate what are some of your biggest questions why we were made and what do you think about that do you have any answers no no answers no so if you could tell somebody what if somebody says what do you believe emily what are your beliefs i would say santa god and fairies [Music] [Music] well the secular thing i think it's worth mentioning that's an interesting interesting study i think you need what does it mean to be in a secular environment i think in post-christian environments that's a different thing than you know pre-chris it's a different thing than babylonian culture that's whatever you know uh so to say a secular a lot of times in our in our society that means post christian which means that there's been the foundation of christendom is inescapable in the west for most people if you've gone through the typical structure so all the essential 10 commandments moral teachings that have come from a practice christendom all the turn the other cheek and love your enemies and all of the things that have taken root through things like we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal all of that speaks of where we've come from as a society which you can't divorce from christianity so secularism is a you can have a whole thing about just secularism what is that in our society well i think what they're speaking to in this study is the nuns and duns well yeah the thing so i did a lot of research i actually read that study um i did a bunch of those uh writing finding on the waves and the big thing you will look for in studies that contrast differences in religious and non-religious or church attending a not church attending people is did they adjust for income and education yeah because secularization isn't almost in america and even in europe an incredibly affluent high education phenomenon and what you typically find is the sample size is so low for low income or below poverty line secularists that they can't create an adjustment in the data and they usually disclose that in their findings or their methodology so there's a lot of interesting correlations but i don't think the assumptions we can pull from that data are as clean as are often presented to what degree are the attributes associated with secularism actually attributes of high income high education individuals yeah and can you pull that apart um and then in the same way there are also some studies that show advantages to people who attend church in terms of uh generosity uh personal satisfaction levels but in in both cases pulling either direction you are drawing a bell curve of a population distribution which is never going to be true for any one individual in those distributions and the curves overlap significantly so one thing i would want to say is it's not like a panacea or a death sentence for your children to go to church or not go to church and it's also highly dependent on the type of religious traditions there are big differences reported between catholicism mainline protestant evangelical in terms of how those uh curves play out as well it's an infinite sea of data that's that's i don't know i had a real hard time drawing meaningful conclusions from and i actually got to the point of like data paralysis yeah that's what i was going to say too because as i was looking through these different studies even on some different science sites it would say the exact opposite all of our stuff new research has shown and that i was actually going to say that after this of the or the duke study uh because i was reading this other one right after that that said the exact opposite uh percentages and i just don't understand that but i know you've done a lot of research in that of like what you know what prayer does to your brain i believe prayer and meditation are good for us and have long-term effects they're very beneficial but i felt like all the arguments were just all over the place well the amount of variables are too great like how can you possibly held i think pretty much all child rearing studies in my opinion michael that's rbs i mean how can you possibly account forget about here's here's here's the rare point of agreement between michael and jenny [Laughter] jay's like don't give me your studies i mean i know i normally love studies but in far as like you're taking one factor of a childhood and just just put it in a different lens of like spiral dynamics you know you could watch colors are secular which you might you're probably pulling most of the people from like orange or green but that has a whole bunch of other stuff attached to it other than just religious stuff um and yeah you're right what what sort of religious background are you talking about are you talking about pentecostal are you talking about it's and that's still even if you narrow all that down to precisely what about the this kind of schooling you had what about the temperament that you have what about the adaptability of your parents to move with your personality and change up their styles what about the i mean just the millions of things i did think it was interesting just even from personal experience in i think this the study that you and i both read mike was if the parents if it's a struggle within the household of faith like there's two different faiths happening you're constantly fight about it that creates a confusion discord for the child which that's how i grew up and that's what i was terrified of when michael and i started believing a little bit differently than each other i was just like well this is all going to fall apart because it didn't work for my parents genu for you and mike he was straight up atheist you were still a christian what did you how did you handle that with your girls and how how did you walk that well because he was hiding it for so long we kind of continued to hide it the best we could even from the girls you know i mean like madison was baptized mike walked her through prayed with her through salvation while he was an atheist and i didn't even know it and so we kept going to church because mike kept going to church by the time it came out that he felt the way he had he had already had like his coming back to his belief not the belief that it was but believing in god again however that brought with it new things you know um new issues like bt dubs hell isn't real um you know our evangelical upbringing and being southern baptist there were things that didn't bode well for the way like in the church the things he wrote about or the way he felt about things and because we were such you can get married and you can get married and you can get married everybody gets married and because we were such active members you know people and he was a deacon and a sunday school teacher people looked him on that so once that started falling apart that's when it kind of then made its way into our household madison has always been um you know just extremely intelligent you know i know we say that about all our children you know we feel that way about our children but she's also so well read you know from an early age she started reading and reading and reading she's really good about coming to some conclusions on her own when she's 12 now and in sixth grade you know she herself has really um been developing what she believes in and what her faith is and you know from mike and i part of that is we don't guide her into a specific path we help guide her in her discovery you know what are the things she can consider what are some things she can think about but we're not there saying this is what you believe because we believe it we try not to make it like so resolute like that this is the line you know kind of thing this is where you should be [Music] for kids that go have parents that go through deconstruction and then the kids themselves might go through it and since we have one that's already in middle school um you know one of the things now for madison especially with this past year and all the different issues that come about it's not just religious issues anymore it's like social justice issues um it's like political issues um because those are all things that are part of our household at least you know those are things that we start talking about um especially when you start changing your faith starts changing and the the specifics of like okay so we're not southern baptists anymore because in that denomination they believe you know and that's not what we believe anymore so for her what's happened as she's been um transitioned into middle school is that her friendships you know she's having a hard time because as she becomes more vocal and convicted in her beliefs she wants to tell people and she wants to share that and she has a lot of pushback from her friends her friend group she's had to kind of navigate those waters of you know are these are her friends so she has to learn that also that they're going to have different beliefs than she does and that's okay but her friends aren't always okay with that yeah even if she's okay yeah and what different way does she believe in her friends that's the thing i just like so she here's some big things in her middle school they're really excited about a recent election oh yeah yeah about the victory in the affirmation yeah a lot of our friends are conservative evangelicals so they believe in literal hell and they believe that the changing marriage laws in this country are an abomination and an affront to god and my little justice advocate daughter is not only disagrees but isn't she's not just going to be quiet that she doesn't agree and so that creates social strife and some teasing and some bullying just because she believes differently yeah and part of the problem is she's maintained some friendships all the way back from the time period uh when we went to a baptist church in town and so it's not like every kid in her school is in that place in terms of spiritual or political affiliation it's just a lot of her friends are and she doesn't want to just move on and it's a tough thing to to talk to a middle schooler about navigating i didn't well i didn't have any friends in middle school but uh so i never had to worry about that problem but to try to imagine it's actually easier for me to talk to her about theological and existential and philosophical issues than the mechanics of no what do you actually do in middle school about this and our circumstance is maybe is different of course from some people in that you know her father speaks and he writes about you know these issues and so it's a regular part of our life but i mean kids are so different i mean that's that's got me at the beginning of the episode because our macy our youngest daughter she just doesn't give a crap about any of this stuff she's kind of can be a hedonist but she also like believes in the liberal hell and fights with madison about that oh yeah hell is the place people go there oh interesting i wonder what lucy doesn't believe anything he sees uh lucy's just with god all the time okay macy how are you good good um so here's the thing even though i'm your dad and you're my daughter right now we're just talking as friends and everything you say is fine and nothing you say can get you in trouble okay okay so just anything you say all i want to know is your thoughts feelings and opinions okay okay i see who is god is um he's like a spirit that watches over us and he cares for us and he makes us i imagine him kind of like a blue light that shines on us and um cares for us and wraps us and marked them are cold and when our heart closes it cools us down and who is jesus he's he's like god's son but he's not a spirit he's like a human how do you think parents should talk to their children about god i think parents talk to their children about god very calm and if child says something that they don't like they shouldn't start yelling at them they should be very calm and they should say hey we don't say that in a very calm voice if parents start to believe different things about god than they used to should they tell their kids about that i think they should but i also think that they should let their child believe what their child wants to believe because you don't believe whatever your parents believe because you need to be your own person but it's good to tell them so that way they can like know more about that what would you tell parents who are afraid to talk to their children about new ideas about god or going to a different church or not going to church at all um i would tell them to be confident that their children still love them no matter what they say and even if they get upset they'll forgive you and and also when you do talk to them just be in a very relaxed voice and be very calm and don't get nervous you should be excited to tell your children about god you're very wise maybe you [Music] it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us 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that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over 1 million people taking care of their mental health again it's betterhelp h-e-l-p-com liturgists hey everybody with this episode being the first one in 2017 we just wanted to first say happy new year and a huge thank you to all the liturgists out there who have made this show and everything that we're doing possible those of you that have contributed to patreon especially we are so grateful for you and actually with the contributions of the patrons over this last year we've been able to start doing a whole bunch of cool new stuff we have a team assembled that is working on more liturgies we are working on some meditations and things like that that we're going to be able to offer we're working on a new app that is going to be coming out later this year and and we're able to continue doing this podcast so we just want to thank all of you who have been a part of that if you'd like to join the patrons and get the bonus podcast that mike and i do on the off weeks of this show called the liturgist conversations you can go to the liturgists.com and just click on that donate button and become one of the liturgists that make all of this happen we are so grateful for all of you for your generosity and time and we look forward to this new year with you we think that this world needs these sort of conversations more than ever there's a lot of work to do so let's keep talking keep working keep loving so much love for all of you all right let's get back to the show [Music] emily had a confrontation with someone in our family someone our family was here and was talking with a friend of mine about jesus and how they needed to invite jesus in their heart and i was upstairs when this conversation was happening and amelie was downstairs with with them and i came down anomaly pulled me aside and and told me about the conversation and she said that um she needed to speak with this certain family member right away and tell them that people that are born with god in their heart so she she sat them down she goes to portugal and she said if we're born of god how could we ever be outside of god yeah like sure i like that i like that i said well honey you're born and then then you here's the boys they masturbate here's a brownie emily how's that cotton taste [Laughter] let me really teach you i know you think that you are pure and godly but let me teach you what's at the core of your heart but i like that thought that she has like we're born with god in our heart you know like growing up evangelical in southern baptist we go to vbs all the time every summer there's vbs and i worked vbs for many years you know and vacation brainwashing school vacation bible school so i even hesitate even talking about it because you know it it did you know give me a lot of the bible stories and a lot of foundation in bible knowledge i will say though that the the way vbs is set up is you know to tell the kids essentially if you don't believe in god and if you don't make a confession of faith and on on that thursday and you're gone on friday then you know hell's what's going to be the end result you know you know because that's what they look for they want that thursday for those kids to come forward with a confession of faith and to go with someone and have a prayer of salvation and then they get baptized the following week or the week after you know and you know those kids you know when i think about the the things that the way vbs was set up and the lessons and stuff you know it really you know mike and michael had mentioned it shaming you know it really guilts and shames the kids into some kind of confession of jesus christ as their savior and lord and i i don't think kids really fully understand that or can even you know contemplate what that means when it's almost a coercion week you know [Music] well though there was just one instance like even in our um our new church and we haven't really had any kind of situation where something was being taught that we really didn't you know like about what the kids were listening or anything but there was you know i was helping with vbs and i was doing um the story time and on that thursday in that vbs book that we got you know it was what they wanted you to do was take a across two beams of wood and get some nails and have the kids nail you know a piece of paper that had their name on it because they were the reason jesus died and and the age that these kids were they they were little kids they were little kids i mean because the way our vbs was small so it was actually set up where you had kids mixed in with other ages you know so you didn't have one set age so you had like some kids that were like maybe kindergarten maybe even younger than kindergarten like vpk to fifth grade and so how are you gonna tell a kid that's in vpk who's four years old you know why you know you're the reason jesus died it's because of you so i remember you know we i i saw it we talked to our um minister of education and we came to a conclusion because even once once we pointed it out to them they were like oh no we can't do that yeah so we did it in a different way in fact i invited mike in that night you know we talked more about the love that jesus has for all his children for all you know and it was more about our love for jesus we cut out hearts and we had the kids write their names on the heart and then i talked about how jesus came and taught this message of love and grace and peace and it upset the powerful so much that he was executed and it was to show god's response to violence and so i would have them come in and tape their heart to the cross and tell them that god loved them but there was no like zero substitutionary atonement theory [Music] that whole coercion and shame thing i think that's the most important thing if you're going to involve your children in spirituality in religion in a church i think the most important thing is avoiding those elements at all costs and kind of like you said lisa like the the discomfort with just handing your child over to someone those teachings are so prevalent in the modern american church you don't know what they're go even if you've found a church that's not so theologically abusive you don't know what some person in a study is going to say right exactly and so you almost have to equip your kids like how encouraging is it that ami came to you and expressed a concern and communicated about to me that's a sign that you're doing a good job teaching your children to navigate spirituality and religion as opposed to just being indoctrinated yeah and i think one thing that became it's funny michael always had a harder time with authority than i did as everyone knows but i think it's been after in the aftermath of all of this that that it that i'm right there with him um and and can clearly see what the authority did in my own life even of going wait why was i why was i told that yes you respect everyone but this idea of like well this is the adult and they know and they have the authority to teach you this and what they say goes um in sunday school i mean that's how it was for me and so i just had to buy everything that they were dishing out you know because they were our elders they were they're older they have the authority of the the man of god right so for us we've had many conversations with amelie and we will have that with lucy of like you need to question you need to think deeply about what someone is telling you and just because someone's older does not mean that they know because that every kid feels that way even about you know about their parents like you know everything how do you know all these things how can you lift things that i can't lift there's this like god-esque thing about parents when your kids are real little because we know things they don't know and so they automatically think we know everything and so that's easy for them to look to any adult and just look for the answers and so for us i feel like that's been very important for us to tell amelie if you don't trust everyone love love people be kind to people you don't need to trust people and just accept what they're what they're telling you specifically in sunday school i think we were we were at the lake michael's parents lake house one day and there was an older boy and some friends came with us and there was an older boy and then it was amelie and then he is a little sister and he was like all right i'm the leader today that you guys have to obey me and the little his little sister goes okay and ami goes no [Laughter] they laugh so hard they're like well she's you guys thought her that's for sure she was like no that's not what's going to happen we're all going to take turns ladies something like that but it should like shock their son because he's so used to you know be like i'm the oldest and i'm the boy so i'm going to boss everyone around so i think there's this thing about parenting in our society that is sort of like the the higher part of the hierarchy of needs in deconstruction itself where we have this we get to this place in society where we feel parenting i think how much more we're all concerned about this than a lot of our parents were about us we have all this um extra like everybody's in car seats and everybody's got the right diets now for their kids you got the right you got to have how can i be the perfect parent and um and we stress out about it and all the parenting magazines and parenting blogs and parenting everything our parents podcasts have car seats like not even right in the front between my parents and the console which is not safe but but there's a stress about it and i think there's a there's something fine and good about wanting to be the best parents we can be but i also think that just like part of why i think the studies are always going to fall short with child rearing uh at least until we figure out some other way of getting all the data like putting plugging in the actual dna of the child into the studies like i think that talking about a human being it's too complex to think about issues as determining factors and what percentage of determining factors i don't think there's any way we can know such a thing i mean if gandhi was born as a pentecostal to a really overbearing mother would he have been gandhi how do you how do we know i don't mean would have been gandhi and the things he actually did but like would he still have been a peaceful person would he still have been changing the world but from christianity rather than from you know i mean would francis if he had been born as a hindu would he been a different saint francis what hitler have been what he was without how do you can't just it's too complex um so you get we get all stressed out about all these things which religious doctrines should i teach what kind of diet should they have what kind of school should they go to should they live in an urban environment should they live in a country rural environment what how what's the perfect thing to make the perfect child and i think thinking those questions about those questions too much ends with anxiety you know as parents we do have an incredible mark on our children we do have this tremendous responsibility and what we do is going to make them largely who they are but we don't know what's going to do what like think about your own parents i'm imagining the things that my parents thought were the most important things for me and the things that would really change me and shape me are probably things that i don't even remember but there are things that i saw that they probably didn't realize that i saw that actually did make a difference in what my assumptions about marriage were or my assumptions about business or how to be a friend or you know like all the little things it's often the unseen things and the unsaid things that make a huge difference so like i think the thing that you can be is the most spacious loving and present person that you can be as a parent and all the details as far as doctrines and do i take my kid to church do i uh we're gonna make bad decisions good decisions i think that all we have really to offer is our kids is who we are i guess is what i'm trying to get at um we have you you can all these little things come out of who we are we're gonna say yeah i think we should teach these sorts of doctrines and and avoid these kind of churches and whatever this that's the specifics coming out of who we are uh the most important thing we can be is healthy and true to who we are as human beings and offer that space for a new human being a new soul to grow within and thrive within [Music] like on the one hand i completely agree with you like completely like i think we we just worry too much about it like mainly don't drop your kids on their head don't throw them in traffic don't actively cause physical harm to them and we just obsess about things too much and that we kind of overplay the role we have in their lives as parents so like on the one hand i completely agree with everything you said michael you're literally describing my parenting philosophy and on the other hand i've been in my house and i've been in yours and i'd be really interested to see to what degree lisa and jenny agree with that sentiment as arguably more active parents in their respective homes than you and i and i'm 100 serious because like when it's when it's just me and the girls are just michael and the girls like it gets pretty pretty wild pretty fast everything's i don't really know where the kids are or what they're doing or yes yes i feel like especially over this last year for me something that's been incredibly important has been is is two things and i was thinking a lot about these two things before we were talking about this one uh being just being present with my girls because from what i've learned is people from i have friends from all kinds of religions and what they speak most about is if their parent was present with them or not not specifically what they taught them about their religion because a lot of them have left whatever religion they've come from but was their parent present with them and were they listening to them instead of just only teaching them all the time was a parent present enough to see the child and what the child and listen and what the child wanted to say the other thing was kindness you know michael when we met he would laugh a lot and say you know i'm surprised that you're not a completely unstable person and just from some of the things that i'd gone through and i was thinking about that this morning and i think one thing that really grounded me was seeing kindness in my mom and in my aunt and my dad but more specifically my mom because she did this thing she wouldn't call it a practice she wouldn't call it she didn't tell people about it but her and i would walk every week and visit elderly people in our neighborhood and we would take them food or we would clean their home and we would go over and just see what they needed and um i for me i really saw my mom's faith wasn't just this idea that she had it was this thing that she was shoving down my throat but she really believed that kindness did something in people's lives i want to show that to our daughter and i um even in some of those studies we were talking about that's one thing that impressed upon me as well was don't talk to your children about just happiness talk to them about kindness so for me being present in kindness has been incredibly important as well as also letting go of my expectations of having the perfect car seat and all that jazz i i wasn't quite saying like just don't worry meaning sit back and don't like don't worry about getting the best car seat or you know what i'm more saying is be if you're the kind of person that is really passionate about getting the best car seat go with it you're gonna go with it anyway it doesn't matter like what's gonna happen is what's gonna happen i'm just kind of like the doctrines that really matter to you you're gonna teach the values that you really have they're gonna happen relax in the in that not saying don't worry don't do it don't be yourself don't do the things that you find but if you're really a person that believes a clean environment for your kids is the most important thing do it have a clean environment i mean maybe take the edge off of it with the anxiety if you can it's easy to spin your mind into all the things that you aren't thinking about all the things that you're should oh should we be vegetarians is that the best that you know like if you're not a vegetarian don't worry about it oh yeah you're not a vegetarian you know if you are be a vegetarian so jenny what was your take on any of that wait what are you a don't worry about it parent do you think that's uh again i get what do y'all think do you think don't worry i also want to say yes exactly i'll let you go like anything i probably right i probably yeah can think of even the things that you should don't really need to worry about i'll go ahead and worry about for you you know that's the kind of thing i'll i'll do i've had more anxiety being a parent than ever before in my life i'm going oh my gosh and like homily the whole thing of going into a school in la and choosing a school gosh like i really wish she could just go to our neighborhood school but we visited it and it's like it's awful and so i have all this anxiety of the school i pick for my child right now is going to determine the rest of her life or yeah if i feed her meat and there's carcinogens or different things in it she shouldn't be taking that's my fault and if she gets a disease or lucy oh my gosh i mean all the things i worry about with lucy it's i've drank more alcohol the past five years it was sending me medita like i have to meditate i have to it's not like a should i i have to meditate and pray or i like become this ball of anxiety and it's all stems from parenting because it's so it's nerve-wracking to wonder if you're going to totally wreck your kids lives and i'm probably going to somewhere this woman had a shirt at an event and it said mommy needs her bottle bottle that's a good shirt but in the end it's all meaningless and none of us exist anyway so wait that sounds like the end of a podcast we're not quite there you just rushed it right don't rush it don't rush it don't worry about your kids they don't exist and neither do you you know this just came to mind one thing that i've noticed has changed for us is we're a lot more open i think with even how we talk uh specifically to like sexual things with homily yeah and because when i was young you don't talk about sex like my sex talk was from my dad was like don't have sex because you're gonna they'll be so embarrassing to the family if you got pregnant and that was it that was all and so with amelie like we'll have these talks like she's very open with us you know and so like i don't go oh my gosh i can't believe you thought that her oh my gosh baby girl don't don't do this don't do that you know i was talking to another friend of mine and they they caught their child trying to nurse their other child and they're really young and and she realized like her first response was like oh my gosh stop doing that like that's perverted and but then the more we talked about like that that's not perverted like they're children they're they see other mothers nursing they this is the totally natural part like that all lends to the shame thing right of being ashamed of our bodies and and i find them more like we just don't live in that anymore and so i'm so much more open to talking with emily so in turn she's telling me everything you know she sees something tells me how it makes her feel and i'm like oh wow that's interesting and even i mean we've had the talk we're probably going to tell her pretty soon about sex and i don't want it to be like this massive turn of events like all of a sudden we had the huge sex talk you know it's like well yeah this is what happens and as as she has different questions we've been honest with her and i feel like it's on this course of this very natural gradual course of she's probably going to be a little embarrassed but i don't want it to be this massive thing that we don't that it's one talk and then we never talk about it but again we don't know what these effects are gonna be uh okay so like as an example i heard this podcast about this town that they found these really detailed records about i think it was in europe and they kept these really crazy detailed records about all the people in the town and so they were able to uh figure out all these sociological phenomena about you know diet and lifestyle and how it how people died and what age they were able to get all this valuable research out of these documents and one of the things they found was that the generations that had had shortage of food that they had had famines and had gone times of near starvation or real hard times they actually that really benefited them in the long run um with a bunch of different kind of diseases and being strong and and only benefit them but the their kids or their grandkids or something um yeah epigenomics yeah so like that kind of thing yeah how do you have you have no idea what you're doing to this kid or to their kids or to their kids kids you know we have we have hopes and thoughts about this is what i think this is going to do but nobody's going to say like starve your kids when they're young so that that they're stronger so they're stronger their grandkids are stronger you don't that's true we don't know what our the repression that we had now allowed us to come into free you know i don't want to repress our kids yeah but that's what i'm saying like what are you going to do you can't control any of it really so you just you got to be true to your heart and your beliefs and your convictions um and kind of rest in that i suppose but i feel like that's different of like here's what we're doing to teach our children that's one thing and it's a different thing to say i'm gonna protect them against everything that's not what it is because yeah that's that's absolutely true the more you try to put your kid in a bubble the less they know how to deal with the world so with the basic assumption that uh more conversations and more opens about sexuality seem to have better data indicators about teen pregnancy promiscuity std acquisition and other variables i've tried to foster an open environment about sexual discussion in our home and i mean you know i'm not especially prone to feeling taboo about sex discussions to begin with so it doesn't make me uncomfortable at all to talk about sex with my kids hello i'm mike i kind of when we talked to madison about sex i was like just really she was wanting to know kind of what that was i was like yeah come in here and we i kind of described it we looked in a book we talked about a lot of stuff and i was like anytime you want to know anything i'm here she was obviously significantly more uncomfortable than i was but really pretty it was a very constructive time but when macy wanted to have the talk it was a completely macy uh thing she had three questions she brought a folder like she's gonna do a presentation and set the folder down set the notebook out got a pen wrote the number one wrote out her question and then was ready for us to to write down our answer yes the first question was what is sex or how to or how do people make a baby how do people make oh you're right yeah how do people make a baby yeah and so i was like okay so like i kind of went into sex and sexuality and reproductive organs jenny drew this amazing reproductive system map that looked nothing like the actual reproductive system it looked nothing like it so i had to come in and kind of draw an actual female reproductive system but then like mesa was getting like increasingly mortified by the mechanics of how this happens and so you could tell she was just not really into it she's like okay that's enough so then her second question was what does it mean when you say sucking too hard on a lollipop in that song no in that song it was she had heard the song from the like it's one of the pitch perfect movies um anyway which i remember i'm not really into shame but i walked in and macy's watching that with jenny and she's singing i'm like jenny what do you ever watching because macy will repeat anything she sees on tv and so i was like well if you if you don't like the answer number one you're really not gonna like the answer to number two and she goes okay never mind and then she went to question three which was can i have a new bed set what she wanted a new bed set like comforter and pillowcase so her three questions were where does a baby come from what does it mean so i can turn on a lollipop and can i have a new bed set oh that's really funny my my dad just told me about our sex talks we were all with over the christmas holidays uh david do you see so good you just say that like i was very quick and factual and like okay i did i you know and i i was kind of kid like i will look up in the encyclopedia britannica anything i need to know after this conversation i'm fine let's just call it quits david was so excited i was like so excited and like dad you do that with mom how many times how many times when's the last time what does it feel like what does it tell you like i get to do it like he's just so excited i bet david's real excited you just said that he's gonna be real happy about that for that matter your parents will probably be thrilled as well [Music] we've always tried to be really conscious about avoiding shame avoiding repression that's going to turn into some kind of darkness especially when you're talking about body stuff sex stuff but there's going to be because we don't we don't try to like make we tell you can't show your genitals to people what is not because they're bad or they're ugly or anything just you know it's not what did you do in society um so but then it's funny and she's laughing about how boys have weiners and then the other day which is hilarious it is hilarious yeah she said that she didn't want to have a little boy and she died laughing i said why she just because the wieners [Laughter] [Music] but then in talking about it she'll ask like oh look this up on your phone or she asked me who like the other day oh look this up on your phone gosh and and i was like okay i'm like i don't want to pull up some like guys d on a google for my daughter but yeah we both looked at each other going oh well parenting decision [Laughter] because that's really cool that she can say that she feels comfortable saying yeah not like about hey can you look up madison madison wouldn't know macy might but even then macy's becoming the age where she's like she would probably be like she'd either start laughing or she would she might be a little she'd give a look like no but if the curiosity's there like it's not like they're going to not look it up themselves eventually when they can't so do you want to throw it that that was my like what are you and i wouldn't keep this in the light i didn't want but i also don't want to be the dad that's going to pull up that's going to show my daughter something like porn or something you know what i mean but yeah even her going like wait what's wrong about looking that up like in that moment that there was two distinct things of like are we showing our daughter porn right now or are you and i didn't know yeah of course or like in this moment she knows we think there's something wrong with this but i did pull up like a picture that i thought was funny that was like a joke picture that had the caption it was like a hot dog thing or something [Laughter] i can just imagine it it makes me laugh but those are the it's just it's tricky that it's always tricky parenting in this instance i do think that there are there's some good books out there and so like for somebody like our madison you know she does really well when she has something to read you know she if she has something to read and to um read through it and then have questions for us more specific things that actually helps her she processes it a little bit better i think in some ways so i think that uncovers an import important point like on the other side of deconstruction it's not actually anything goes in parenting it's not like your child says hey could you show me some hardcore pornography and you just pull up and go to town it's that you reflect on your own reaction to questions and it's still okay to tell a child something's not appropriate and why it's okay to redirect you to show a cartoon wiener instead of a penis that's a that's a valid strategy but there's a lightness to it [Music] a couple of months ago i was on tour i was home briefly and madison i don't know where she gets it she's super philosophical she reads a lot she asks really tough questions and so she comes in and she's like grilling me about the nature and character of god and prayer and incarnation and salvation and eternal life everything which she does pretty regularly it was also in conjunction with those confirmation classes right because she's going through confirmation she's like dad i can't be confirmed i don't really know if i believe most of this stuff so i can't like confirm that and so she's asking me all these questions and i realized she's going like chapter by chapter of a book i wrote so i reach into uh my my giant box o books that the publisher sent me and i pulled out a copy of the book which she's been like begging me for for since it came out but i told her that it was just it was like a little too grown up for her which was really dumb it's not but i didn't want to like i didn't want my book to start her like on premature deconstruction right but here she is she's like very clearly demonstrating that she's ready for this i pull the book out of the box and i just open to i sign whenever i sign the book i always sign the title page but this time i turn to the dedication page because in the dedication of the book it says for madison and macy who already have questions on their own journeys with god i was like well this is it this is happening so then i wrote to madison my love may your thirst for truth lead you to love light and peace may god kiss your cheeks and tell you you are beloved love dad and then i gave her the book like i gave her a book of questions i didn't give her a bunch of answers but ways to look for answers and ways to be comfortable when we can't find answers i didn't have any expectation that that would fix something or that anything was wrong but i thought it could help her make an informed decision about whether she wanted to go through confirmation or not and as she worked through the book and especially started to read about the church she actually got confirmed while i was out of town so it was a little bit of a suspense thing for me and i asked her i said massa did you decide to get confirmed she said yeah i said well what did you decide did you decide you believe all those things and she said no i said okay then how did you decide to be confirmed and she said i realize that being confirmed is not about a bunch of ideas but instead about saying that i'm devoted to the church and the church is devoted to me and it was it was all about i i did guide her but i also gave her her space and so i hope she's never in therapy one day telling about how her parents coerced her into confirmation but instead that she she found her own way [Music] okay maybe we could start wrapping this up by talking about just a couple of things that each of us have done that seemed to work i didn't know it was that formal an interview um meditation has been a very practical thing for us in homily and like amelie is the one who told me that she needed it because like if she's having bad dreams because for a little while we stopped like we would pray with her you know um when we were going to bloom and we're pastoring the church there and then we kind of stopped for a little while because i wasn't exactly sure how to pray and and then we started praying again and doing a blend of like prayer and meditation and that seems to help her tremendously because there's a difference between just going god i pray that these bad dreams go away or we pray you know i'm not gonna pray like that this happens um but and this was actually amelie's idea she said you know when i close my eyes and i calm myself and i center myself and i let the fear go then i'm just more relaxed and that's how i have good dreams instead of just praying for it and thinking it's it's kind of out of her power that someone some high being is like going to grant her good dreams or bad dreams you know and in the morning she wakes up with bedrooms she wonders why god grant her her bad dreams i mean that's kind of a rough situation so uh meditation at night time and then also when she's dealing with tough situations with kids at school or even at home she starts getting anxious and frustrated with something she can't do or frustrated with the kid that's being a little mean to her she meditates yeah practice is a good even when i think back to my childhood and what like the practices have changed for me and at least you had something like my dad just like your mom would like set the timer and say you're going to be praying in tongues for the next 15 minutes oh 15 minutes i had to do like an hour sometimes two hours yeah two hours oh my gosh um but what i'm saying what i was getting at was the practice that that i learned in my pentecostal charismatic evangelical world of prayer fasting worship all the things that have changed in their specificity for me i am glad that i learned how to practice something i am glad that i learned how to focus turn my heart towards something so some sort of religious practice or spiritual practice i i really am grateful for in my own life and we do try to pass that anomaly one thing that we've been trying to do more of is having like less distractions in the house like less tv time less um you know they just they have ipads that kind of thing and so we're really trying to make a concentrated effort on limiting that and really focusing more like on family time or conversing together or we're all reading together like because or but we're reading our own thing but reading together you know we're all in the practice of reading something whatever it might be and then when mike is in town we do make an effort to try to go to church where they're sitting together as a family and having our time afterwards you know going to lunch and that kind of thing with others we have we have a group of people that we regularly have over to the house or we meet with them and our girls are really social so we try to keep they love it when they get to interact and we try to make them be a part of what we're doing so that's another thing like there's it's not like there's not a lot of instances that we have anymore where no you can't hear this or you can't be a part of it go you know there are some times where there's like adult discussions going on but for the most part they are active contributors too in those conversations one thing that i've from the beginning but more so since we've kind of seen her personality develop is she we really feel like we have a enneagram two in the making the way she where she is and who knows that might change but i'm already trying to like use brainwashing techniques to try to minimize some of the uh the pain that comes to two in the in the form of of feeling that they need to do something to to deserve love or to to earn it so i'm just i very regularly just like look her in the eyes and be like emily you are made of love and there's nothing you can do to be loved more or less you can't do anything about it it's everything in you around you and you always be loved so i just like try to brainwash her with that i don't have any idea if it'll be effective it's something i'm trying though all right let's hear the eight bullet points mike okay they're real simple uh one a loose grip posture i always realize that i can't actually control my kids at all i can influence them but i can't control them their actions and beliefs are their own second i always affirm my love for them both with affection and words and i do that often with intention three i encourage questions and open conversation and i eliminate all taboo before i validate struggle i don't tell my kids things should be easy i don't tell them they should always be happy when they have trouble on homework or have trouble with friends i tell them you you don't know how to do this yet but you can learn or i tell them when they get a good grade i don't tell them how smart they are i tell them how hard they worked and i try to validate the fact that it's mainly through struggle that things are accomplished five i'm honest about what i believe along with the limitations on what i know um so i'm perfectly fine sharing my opinion on something but i'm also open to discussion and preemptively disclose that my understanding has limits six i set healthy boundaries a lot of people respond to the kind of overbearing parenting style of the past with a completely hands-off style for children and an utter lack of limitations on behavior or social convention are also unhealthy for children so they do need some form of boundary my thing is those boundaries are up for discussion and debate as the children grow and develop and part of that is point number seven meet them where they are and know what they value i do not parent both of my kids the same way they have unique perspectives and unique needs macy has to eat three square meals a day in order to be happy so i understand like if she has a temper tantrum and we had a late breakfast and no lunch part of that is i've failed to understand how she relates to the world and what's developmentally appropriate i also understand that for me to respond to a question from macy with 20 minutes of science isn't going to be received well whereas madison would really really really appreciate that and then the last point i think is a really necessary point today is don't over schedule don't plan too much at my life the family life or enroll my kids in a ton of extracurricular activities because they need the time and the space just to be children especially in an age where physical education and recess have been cut from public curriculum and there's more homework than ever we understand developmentally the thing that helps children be healthiest happiest and most successful is unstructured playtime and so i make sure that we have lots and lots of open time in all of our schedules to accommodate that [Music] well let's hope that our kids don't grow up to be monsters or senators if they are they can blame the liturgists thanks again to all the patrons special thanks to the team that put together this episode thanks to greg nordine as always for his editing help corey pig and madison chandler with administration and tyler chester for helping me with some of the music thanks for listening [Music] everybody [Music] you