Parenting

Parenting » Adult Children

Question:

Answered on 04/25/06:

Everywhere anybody goes there are always rules. There are rules in a dormitory at college. There are rules in school. There are rules at a business. There are rules in a company. There are rules in government. There are rules in prison. The fact is there are rules everywhere. You have to abide by the rules that govern that particular institution that you are receiving your care from.

If she’s receiving her care from you, her institution is your family. Your family is a God-ordained institution and organization and you have to be able to establish rules and she has to be able to follow those rules. And there have to be consequences to breaking those rules that are consistent. You can’t change the rules all the time; the rules and consequences have to be consistent.

You need to make things perfectly clear to her. Tell her you love her and you want her to stay with you, but tell her, “Here are the rules from this point on, there’s new sheriff in town, this is the way that it’s going to be.” And then, if she doesn’t want to abide by those rules, then you have to let her go.

Again, it comes down to very simply explaining, “These are the rules that the people in this family follow. And if you don’t want to follow these rules, you are eighteen years old, and you have every right to go make your own household and make your own rules. We don’t want you to do that. We would rather you follow the rules that we’re setting up, but these are the rules. And once you follow them and once you’re willing to follow the rules of this family, and willing to follow them no matter what, then we’ll let you be a part of the process of making some of the rules. But only when you demonstrate that you can follow the rules that your father and I have already made.”

That’s how you establish authority in your house. That’s how you give her a sense of hope that if she follows what you establish she will eventually have some influence in it. But she can’t have influence in it if she she’s not willing to yield completely to the rules you have right now.

Question:

Answered on 04/25/06:

I strongly urge you to cast the care of this upon the Lord and turn it over to Him. Embrace your daughter and tell her you love her and you are with her and you are there for her. You don’t endorse her lifestyle, but you let her know that you love her to pieces and you will do anything to help her. Let her know you will always be there for her. Turn her over into the hands of God and let God deal with her. Don’t ever stop praying and thanking God for her salvation.

Question:

My daughter is dating an Irish guy. I recently found out that he is a pagan worshipper and I can tell that she is kind of impressed by that. Should I try to break them up or is this something that is just satisfying her curiosity?

Answered on 04/25/06:

It’s important to instill in your daughter the values that you stand by. So, first, you need to make sure that the Word of God is the final authority and the base for your life.

Second, you need to make sure that the Word of God is the final authority and the base for your daughter’s life. If your base is just in a denomination or a religion, then you don’t really have a base that you can build a life upon. The foundation has to be the Word of God. If you have any foundation other than the Bible, then it’s going to crumble when the test comes.

As long as you have this base and she has a base, then you go to this young man and say, “This is the foundation of how we live. If you can live this way and want to live for God, then you are a candidate to date my daughter. But if you don’t want to live this way, then just tell me now.”

But you’ve first got to explain all that to your daughter and get her on board and get her going in the right direction. Sometimes we want to bring rules upon our children when we haven’t instilled into them principles that they need to base their life upon, so it’s important that you establish those principles first – before you start telling them that they can’t do this and they can’t do that. Without the underlying principles, you’re only giving your children rules and regulations and legalism and they won’t catch the spirit behind what you are talking about.

Question:

Answered on 04/25/06:

People need to realize according to Genesis 8:22 that as long as the earth remains, there will be seedtime and harvest. The people we hang around, the decisions we make, those are all seeds. We’re going to get a harvest from those things. Let your daughter know that you are concerned about the kind of harvest that she’s building up in her life.

Sit down with her, have a heart-to-heart talk with her and then cast the care of it upon the Lord, release it into God’s hands and let her know that you trust that she’ll eventually make the right decisions. You want to encourage her to begin making the right decisions now. You don’t judge her or condemn her, but you point out the bad seeds she’s sowing and you encourage her to sow good seeds so she can get a good harvest.

Question:

Answered on 04/14/06:

In a situation where you have an adult child that is living with you that is not willing to work, who can’t get a job, and who has problems with drugs that could affect your other children, then you have to create clear boundaries on what is acceptable and what isn’t. Make it clear, put it on a piece of paper, show it to them and say, “Are you willing to agree to these terms for you to stay here with me?”

You make the guidelines strict and you make them serve what you believe is in the best interest of him and the rest of your family. And if he’s willing to abide by those, then give him a time-frame, maybe 3 months or 2 months or whatever, and then you’ve got to get a job and move out on your own.

Never take somebody into your home without a time frame that is understood by both parties. If it’s not an exact date, it should be as exact as you can be. But too often, people overstay their welcome because we weren’t clear with what we were doing to help them. Say, “Look, I want to help you, son. I want to work with you. But here are the boundaries and here’s the time-frame in which we need to get this done so that you can get on with your life and this family can get on with its life as well.”

Parenting » Limits & Boundaries

Question:

Answered on 04/25/06:

And so discipline is to teach children to follow God and to follow their parents. That’s clearly why we should discipline our children. Not to punish them, but to protect them and to train them in the way that they should go and to train them in the proper manners and habits of life.

Punishment is for those that don’t listen to discipline, that don’t follow the discipline of their parents. They’re eventually going to end up in more trouble with the law, trouble in prison, trouble with all sorts of problems.

That’s how God treats us. He disciplines those whom He loves. Love should be the motivation of our discipline, not to make our children feel bad that they did something wrong but to train them in the way they should go.

Question:

Answered on 04/25/06:

You have the responsibility to tell them what to do, not ask them. As parents, you need to stop being afraid of whether they like it or not. Yes, they’ll put up a fight sometimes. Yes, they’re going to throw a tantrum here and there. You just need to be firm and not even tolerate any of that.

Both of you – you and your husband – need to go to God and go to His Word, and find out what God has to say about how to deal with our children. In the Old Testament, there were severe consequences for rebellious children. In the New Testament, the Bible says children are to obey their parents. That means we don’t ask or request of them what we want them to do; we’re commanding them to do what we want them to do.

If that’s too harsh for you, then you shouldn’t have children. It is your responsibility to make them surrender their will to you so one day they’ll surrender their will to God.

And if you and your husband are out of agreement, then you need to get some counseling. You have to both agree that something has to be the common denominator, the common bond in your marriage and in your home that is greater than your own experiences and opinions, and that needs to be the Bible. That’s the base, the foundation on which we build our lives. If you’re not in agreement with that, then you need to get to the place where you are in agreement with that because the Bible is the Word of God and that’s the only way to have successful families.

Question:

Answered on 04/25/06:

So with a four year old, you have to say, “Now, here’s the rule. We are not allowed to pull hair in this family. If you do that, then here is the consequence; you will be spanked or whatever the consequence is that you or whoever are the parents of that child decides. And then you have to enforce consistently that consequence every single time that they do it. You can’t hit-and-miss. You can’t sometimes enforce it and sometimes not, sometimes you do what’s right and sometimes you don’t, sometimes you’re too tired to enforce it and sometimes you’re not.

If you want children to obey you, you have to have clear rules, you have to have clear consequences and you have to have consistent execution of those consequences every single time.

I also think that you should get a Children’s Bible and start reading it to them even at 2 years old, 3 years old, or 4 years old. And you should read that to them because their comprehension is more than what you think it is.

Question:

Regarding discipline – when would it be over the line?

Answered on 04/19/06:

God gave children buttocks to absorb the sting of a rod, the sting of a wooden spoon, or whatever you use that you can control. I don’t believe that people should use belts or anything like that because you can’t really control those as well. It has to be something that is controllable and your emotions need to be controlled, the child’s body is controlled and the execution of the spanking is done with control and that it releases and produces an attitude of change, of humility and of repentance.

So, if you’re angry, do not discipline your children in anger. The Bible says, “Fathers, do not exasperate your children, do not bring them to anger.” Well, what is the thing that causes children to learn to be angry? It’s through their parents being angry themselves. So we have to make sure that we discipline our children without anger. We make clear rules that have clear consequences in advance so that you’re always abiding by exact rules that you’ve set up before the offense is committed.

For example, we have a chart that if our child does this, if our child does that, here’s the exact consequence for this action; action “A” equals consequence “A,” action “B” equals consequence “B”. And you have all that in advance so that when a child stumbles or commits one of those actions, then you already know what the consequence is and you’re doing it with their full knowledge of the consequence that is to be expected. That’s what keeps you from going over the line.

The Bible says that the rod of correction drives out foolishness from a child, not punishing them by embarrassing them and shaming them and things like that. That’s unacceptable. I would never endorse that. I don’t find that in the Bible. You should never do something that would belittle your child or make your son or daughter feel inferior or feel belittled or feel abused or feel exposed in some way.

But it should all be done lovingly, and it should be done orderly, decently, something that you would not be ashamed of letting all the world see. I would not be ashamed of letting the world see me spank my children because there would be no abuse in it, there would be no anger in it and the world would see that this is a good model of how to discipline a child. And so if you would be embarrassed for somebody to see what you’re doing or see what you’re saying to your children, then you know you’re crossing the line. And that’s embarrassing and belittling to a child.

Question:

Answered on 04/19/06:

So, perhaps one thing you could try is to have your child practice. I know this sounds silly, but in times when they’re not being disciplined, in times when things are happy and cheerful and everything’s okay, have them practice, have them rehearse bending over. I used to do that with my kids just playfully. “Okay, let’s pretend I was giving you the rod. Now, bend over. Let’s pretend I was spanking you, now, bend over.” And it’s in a light-hearted way; it’s not a militaristic atmosphere or anything like that. But just in a playful way to show them, to tell them, “Look, this is what I want you to do. This is what I expect you to do when you do need to be spanked.”

That’s one suggestion. But the goal and the key to it all is a surrendered will. And yes, that may take time. But it takes time to potty-train your children. Who potty-trains their children the first time around? It doesn’t happen the first time around.

It takes more patience but it’s more loving because it prevents you from disciplining your child out of rage or anger or frustration because you’re lovingly, patiently getting her to bend over. And I know this sounds almost silly to people that don’t have any children or don’t think that it’s important.

And yet, when they’re fifteen, you’ll thank God forever that they surrendered their will when they were five, that they surrendered their will when they were four. Because when they’re fifteen and they want to go out and date and they’re not ready emotionally and they want to go out and do this and do that and they want to do all these things and they want to open their heart to boys and they want to open their heart up to girls and they want to do all these things and they’re not ready to do that and it’s not proper for them to do that, you want to be able to say something to your child and they’ll surrender their will to your will.

And if they don’t learn that when they’re 2, 3, 4 years old by getting spanked and bending over or surrendering their will then, it’s certainly going to be harder when they’re 13 and 14 and 15 and 16 years old. I hope that helps.

Question:

Answered on 04/14/06:

And so, I think what you’ve got to do with your wife is you need to sit down with her and say, “Let’s come into agreement about things. If you have a higher standard than I do on what our children eat, then let me defer to your standard. If I have a higher standard on who they hang around, then you defer to my standard. If you have a higher standard on what kind of movies to watch, then let me defer to your standard.” In other words, what you guys need to come into agreement about is which ever one of you has a higher standard, that’s the one that you should stick with. Don’t go with the lower, go with the higher one.

Again, I think you need to sit down with her and you need to figure out where in you marriage she started to question her ability to trust you because this is the root of the problem is that there is a lack of trust there. And because there’s a lack of trust, anything you do that’s good or anything you do that’s right is still going to be met with that mistrust. So what you’ve got to do is put that individual situation aside a minute and say, “You know, what I really discovered is that I’ve done something to hurt you to cause you to not be able to trust my leadership and I want to heal that and I want to apologize for that. Can we talk about that?” And she’s going to open up.

When you talk to your wife with tenderness and compassion like that, she’ll open up and talk to you. And if you do that with kindness and love and she still is not open, then I think that you need to take it to the next level and look into some marriage counseling. Because it’s not an issue of TV, really. It’s an issue of trust. And somewhere in your marriage, she feels like you’ve betrayed her trust or she feels like she has a hard time trusting you. And you need to get to the root of that.

Question:

Answered on 03/16/06:

And, you know, children are a reward. Let’s start with that. Children are a reward. You’ve got to change your thinking; you’ve got to realize, God has rewarded you with those children. God has gifted you with those children. And you’re anointed; you’re capable of raising those children in a godly way, without having to get angry. But let’s talk about that.

First of all, having children did not cause you to become angry. Having children simply revealed the anger that was already inside of you. And that’s the most important reality you have to accept, and acknowledge. Circumstances don’t create a problem; they simply reveal a problem that already exists. And, so we have to come to grips with that. You have to come to grips with that. The circumstances—having children—did not create your anger. So you’ve got to be careful so that you don’t resent them when you think that they’re the source of your anger, then you’ll start to resent them even more, and it will feed into that anger and you’ll get even more angry towards them. And so you have to realize that they are not the source of your anger. The anger was already there. And that is the most important, critical assessment or acknowledgement that you have to make. The anger was already there. It just didn’t have an opportunity to show up and to manifest itself. Okay. That’s number one.

Number two, you have to realize. Here’s how I get people out of anger, and how I’ve gotten out of anger. You have to realize that James 1 says “Be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger, for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.” The anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God. What God is trying tell us in that verse is the reason people get angry is because they have a conviction in their mind and heart that anger will achieve something. That anger will accomplish something. And God wants us to have the truth—that anger will not achieve, it will not accomplish. So we have to accept that our anger will not achieve and it will not accomplish anything, and therefore that will be another reason why you’ll be restrained in your anger, and it will be another reason to withdraw your anger. Because, when you recognize that it will not achieve anything, then you’ll stop using it to manipulate and stop using it to try get people to do what you want them to do.

Thirdly, it says, “it does not achieve the righteousness of God.” So, one of the reasons we get angry is because we’re trying to be righteous, we’re trying to get things to be right in our life. We’re trying to make ourselves right, we’re trying to make others right, we’re trying to make the circumstances around us to become right. And that’s why we get angry. We’re using our anger to try to make things become right. Or try to cause things to become right. And what we have to do, is we have to go back, since we’re using anger to make things right, let’s find out a better way to make things right. And the better way is, Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5 that “He who knew no sin was made sin for us that we would be made the righteousness of God inHim.” And so we have to accept our righteousness and understand that we are the righteousness of God, that we are right with God, and God looks at us and says, “You are righteous, you are right.” He looks at us and He claims that we’re righteous through the blood of Jesus as we put our faith in the blood. That establishes our righteousness. You say, “What does that have to do with anger?” Well, simply this. It has to do with anger because we use anger to become right. We use anger to prove we’re right. We use anger to make other people act right. And what we need to do is we need to realize that we are right through the blood of Jesus. We’re righteous through the blood of Jesus, and that will deliver us from anger.

So, so far I’ve given you several steps to take in dealing with anger and you can go to our website, at changinglives.org and you can get more information on anger. We have some great teaching. Simple steps. “Absolute Freedom From Anger” is a great teaching that we have. You can order that material. That will also help you deal with anger.

And another thing that I would do in your household since you are raising children, is you have to realize that one of the reasons we get angry is because we tolerate bad attitudes and bad behavior in our children. We tolerate it until it bothers us. And what we have to do is we have to stop tolerating it right away. In other words, you can train your children to listen to your voice when you’re yelling, or you can train your children to listen to your voice when you’re speaking with a whisper. But all you have to do is you have to discipline them when they don’t listen to you.

With my children, I don’t have to raise my voice, and I’ve trained my children that I don’t have to repeat myself twice. Because when I say something once, and when they do it, they’re blessed. When they don’t do it, they are disciplined and they are punished. Not in an ungodly way. They’re spanked. They lose rewards. Or some way of being corrected. Then, we have a set of rules, we have a chart with rules and we have a chart with consequences and we have a chart with rewards as well. Good consequences and bad consequences. And when they violate one of those rules, then we implement immediately those consequences.

And if you implement them immediately when the action or the behavior takes place, or the attitude takes place, then it will change your child and you will not have to get angry because their behavior will not be over and over again, because you’re dealing with it the first time. And when they know that you’re going to deal severely with it the first time they violate a rule or have a wrong attitude, when they understand that, then they’re not going to cross that line a second time. But when you say, “Stop that Johnny” and then they keep doing it. And then you say, “Stop that Johnny!” and then they keep doing it. And then you’re like, “STOP THAT JOHNNY!” and they finally stop because you go so mad. You’ve trained them to only listen to you the third time, and you just trained them to only listen to you when you raise your voice at the highest level. Instead, say it one time, make sure they hear you, say it one time, and if they don’t respond, then you have to discipline them immediately.

And that will not only change your family and change your children, but it will change you—you’ll be so happy, you’ll find that joy. That joy will come back to you. And to all the parents that are listening to this broadcast, you’ll find your joy again, and you’ll love your children. I love my children. I love my children because they respond to me now. Right away, whereas they used to not. I had to discipline them, and train them, and it took weeks, months and years for them to do it. And even today, if as teenagers they don’t listen to me right away, they get consequences right away. I’m not saying anything twice. Why should I? Why should I get angry? Why should I get stressed out? Why should I have a heart attack in raising my children? I’m absolutely not going to do that. I’m going to say it once, and then if they don’t do it, they’re going to be disciplined. Period.

That’s how you got to be. That will stop the anger in your family, that will restore the joy back to your life. And that will cause you have godly children that will be raised to listen to the voice of God right away. They’ll listen to God’s voice. And you train them to hear your whisper. They’ll learn to hear that still small voice of God. Now I come home, we have dinner, we sit around the table and I say to my children, “What has God spoken to you today?” And they tell me. “Well, I just heard God tell me this.” Or “Today I heard in my heart God tell me this.” Or “I heard God tell me this.” And they’re hearing God’s voice. And you know why? Because I’ve trained them to listen to my voice. I don’t want God to have to tell them something twenty times before they listen. I want them to hear God’s voice and immediately respond. And how do I train them in that? By having them hear my voice, and immediately respond. I hope that you’ll follow that policy and your life will be changed.

Parenting » School Issues

Question:

Answered on 04/25/06:

The Bible says to be faithful in the little and God will put you in charge over much. If you’re faithful in the little things, you’ll be faithful in the bigger things. If you’re unfaithful in the little, you’ll be unfaithful in much. So, have her stay at home and give her specific responsibilities in your house and send her to a community college in your neighborhood where she can show and demonstrate faithfulness and demonstrate effort and demonstrate initiative.

Until she does, until she gets great grades and shows improvement in taking initiative at home, do not, under any circumstances, send your child away to college.

Question:

I am a single parent, and my 15-year-old is struggling with school. About four or five weeks ago, his grades came out and they were pretty good. So, when I went to his school yesterday, I was expecting to see that his grades had increased a little bit. Instead, he went from an A to an F. Help!

Answered on 04/25/06:

I recommend that you establish a clear, consistent set of rewards and consequences for his behavior in school because from what I hear you saying, he’s a smart enough young man to do well all the time. You just have to give him incentive. You have to let him know what the consistent rules are and what the rewards are as well.

So sit down and write out a bunch of rules and say, “Here are the goals. Here is what you are going to achieve. Here are the consequences if you don’t.” Obviously, you’ve got to be fair – and be creative; come up with a system that will motivate him.

You’ve also got to work with him on a weekly basis so that it doesn’t get five weeks down the road and all of a sudden he’s failing again. I know how busy you are. You are a single mother, and I empathize with you. But you have to be in his life more consistently and you have to be in communication with his teachers more consistently.

Question:

Answered on 04/25/06:

The fact is that as we have developed, our bodies have gotten worse. In the first centuries, people actually lived much longer. The people in the Old Testament lived 500, 600, 700, 800 or 900 years. It is amazing that we could actually believe that we came from an ape.

Here is what you do. Sit down with your daughter and talk to her; read her the Bible and show her how God created the world. You tell her there will be people that will tell you otherwise so she will have to be strong in what she believes. Tell her to believe what the Bible says. The Bible is the final authority. The textbooks that are evolutionist and the textbooks they put in front of your children in school are only 30 or 40 years old. The Bible is thousands of years old and is tried and true. It has been tested.

I want you to get a book written by Josh McDowell called Evidence That Demands a Verdict. It clearly goes through the scientific reasons for creation, the scientific reasons why evolution isn’t true, scientific reasons why the Bible is true and why the Bible is the Word of God. Get that book and read it to your daughter. It is very intelligent, so you will have to break it down into understandable things.

Read her the book of Genesis. Show her how God created Adam and Eve. You have to realize they will program her to believe in their thinking if you don’t beat them to it. You have to de-program her every day and find out what they’re teaching her. Then give her the truth and she will be able to trust you.

If it gets worse and it continues to get worse, find a way to get her out of there and get her in a Christian school or home school her if you have to, which isn’t a bad idea. We home-schooled our children for years and just recently put them in the school we started because we were so fed up with the education that America offers people. It is pathetic, unrighteous and unbiblical.

You’ve got to sit down with your daughter. You’ve got to read her the Bible again. She’s not too old. I read to my kids still. She is going to have to be able to decide for herself and have an answer when people come and lie to her. In college, it just gets worse because they believe their lies and they are convinced of it. But, it’s just theory.

What they should do is teach it as theory and teach creation as well and let people decide for themselves. That is a better use of the public education. I have very little confidence in public education -- not public educators. There are a lot of great people in public education; great teachers and great administrators. The system is broken. The system needs to be fixed. When we took God out of the schools, it messed everything up. Protect your children. Pull them close to you and talk to them and continue to work with them and tell them the truth.

Parenting » Sexuality

Question:

Answered on 04/25/06:

If there’s open communication and there’s no apprehension on your children’s part to talk to you about anything, they will ask the question at a young age, such as 8, 9, 10, 11 years old. They will eventually ask questions about that subject just because kids say things; they hear a bad word or they hear the word “s-e-x” or whatever. I believe that the natural evolution of intimate fellowship with your children would be that they would come and ask you about what they hear.

However, that’s not the answer for most people because they don’t have that active communication with their children. Therefore, the answer to your question is probably around 11 or 12 years old is the time to have that discussion.

If they ask questions because you have open communication when they’re 8 or 9 or 10 years old, I would be limited in what I would share with them at that age. I would share much more with them at the age of 11, 12, 13, 14 years old. I started talking about the subject with my kids when they were around 10, but only got into depth with it when they were 13 or 14 years old. And so, that seems to have worked for us, but it’s different for different people.

Obviously, you don’t want to say things prematurely or get into stuff that they’re not ready to talk about or ready to hear. Nor do you want to avoid the subject when they bring it up. Most of all, do not treat it as a dirty word or something wrong or something like a swear word or something like that. It needs to be something that they understand, that that’s how they got into the world and that’s one of the joys and one of the pleasures that God gives in a married life. And those are the things that they need to understand.

So, based on their maturity level, their age, you talk about it at any age after 8 or 9 or 10 years old. Talk about it at any age, but you only talk about pieces of it and pieces of it that will truly give them what they need for that time. A 10 year old doesn’t need to know much. They just need to know that’s how they got into the world.

But as they get older, they need to know more and they need to know about the pleasure of it that comes as they get older and as their body starts changing and their body starts having those feelings and experiencing those feelings. We don’t need to shut them down and tell them, “Don’t ever feel that, don’t ever talk about that, I don’t want you to ever feel those feelings again.” You don’t want to shut that down because obviously, their body is preparing itself to be awakened to the physical, sexual side of life and it’s not something that they should have to suppress because then it causes problems later in life.

Instead it’s something that they should be able to express to their parents, not to express to their friends and other people, but to express to their parents. Let them know to come to you with that but if you tell them, “Oh that’s wrong to ever feel that” then you’re obviously doing more damage than good. Instead, you need to say, “Man, that’s normal to feel that. But let’s talk about the context in which that needs to be expressed.”

That’s when you start getting into that. Really, it’s 13, 14, or 15 years old when you start getting into it in more detail. But little by little when they’re younger, you can explain to them about sowing and reaping and seedtime and harvest and how everything in life comes from a seed. A seed is planted to produce everything. Everything in life is a harvest of something. And so, you have to understand seedtime and harvest and that’s the context in which I started explaining it to my kids.

Question:

I found out that my 16-year-old daughter is having sex with her 18-year-old boyfriend. She is technically a minor; he is an adult. I could press charges against him for statutory rape, but then he would end up getting convicted and have to register as a child sex offender for the rest of his life. He’s a good kid who is honestly in love with my daughter and she’s in love with him. I just don’t know what to do.

Answered on 04/25/06:

Your daughter doesn’t know a thing about what it is to love at 16 years old. She doesn’t know what it is to be committed. She does not love this guy because she does not know what that is at the age of 16. But the problem with this relationship is by having sex, they end up becoming one and they think that they are in love. In actuality, they have betrayed each other’s emotions.

Because you are the responsible steward of your daughter and a crime is a crime, I would get a lawyer and get some legal counsel before doing anything. But I would pull this young man aside and say look, “You have an opportunity to change your life right here and right now. And if you leave my daughter alone until I say that you can have a relationship with her, then I will not press charges against you and you will not be convicted as a sex offender for the rest of your life. If you violate that, then I will press charges against you.” I would get this in writing.

Now with your daughter, I would sit her down and say something like this: “Look, you cannot be in a relationship because you cannot be trusted. The fact that you had sex with somebody before you were married is a betrayal of trust. The Bible calls that fornication and it is a crime and a sin against your own body.” So you are going to have to create some boundaries for her and show her that she has to earn your trust to be afforded the luxury of a relationship with somebody.

Parents that think that 16-year-olds can make up their mind on things and they cannot. Just because they can get a driver’s license doesn’t mean they have a relationship license. You are the one that issues the relationship license. Anything beyond holding hands at that age is, to me, immoral because it opens the door to so many other things. Their maturity level isn’t there yet, and obviously your daughter has demonstrated that by not living holy and pure. That’s how I would handle it.

Question:

Answered on 04/25/06:

I wouldn’t even let those cousins live with you. I would tell them, “Get your life together. You follow the rules in this house or you will remain homeless.” That’s the way that I would do it. I would not allow people that could corrupt my children to come into my house just because they are homeless because there are homeless shelters that they can live in. If they’re going to live with you, they need to live by your rules.

Listen to me, don’t be a softie on this. I believe that we should take family members in when they’re struggling. But if we take them in, they have to live by our rules. And if they’re not going to live by our rules, by our codes, by our morality or whatever, then we need to have them move on. But you cannot let your nephews tear down in a few days or a few weeks what you have spent so much time and effort and energy building up in your son’s life. Don’t do it.

Question:

Answered on 04/11/06:

Sex should be treated in such a sacred fashion that children value marriage and realize that there are certain things reserved for marriage. The reason that marriage is so devalued and trivialized in our society is because everything that is supposed to be reserved for marriage is experienced outside of marriage. We need to restore to our children the holiness of matrimony, the holiness of sex being reserved for marriage.

All those books that say it’s okay for kids to masturbate are just plain wrong. Masturbation is wrong because it’s idolatry, it’s idolizing your own body, it’s having sex with yourself, and it conjures up images and pornographic thought and concepts. Nothing good comes out of that – just guilt, low self-esteem, and condemnation. When people face that temptation, they can ask God, “Deliver me from this.” And He will.

Parenting » General

Question:

Answered on 04/25/06:

When you see a child who is misbehaving, you pull your child aside and say, “You know what? I just want you to know that although we don’t know what is going on with that parent, we don’t know why that child is acting that way, that is not how you act. I would have to discipline you if you did that because I’m responsible for you." You put the focus on them. “Each one looking to himself,” the Bible says. We need to look to ourselves and we need to make sure that we’re doing what we’re responsible to do.

What we don’t want to allow into our lives is a self-righteous attitude of “Well, look at that parent. I’m much better of a parent than they are.” Well, that’s one aspect of judgment that we need to avoid. We need to guard our hearts from that pride and that self-righteousness where we think we’re better than someone else.

So, in a sense, a judgment is basically like putting someone down and lifting yourself up. That’s where people get into problems. To use another child as an illustration to your child is okay. Again, it’s not the truth that you carry; it’s the spirit in which you carry it that is going to make the difference. The spirit of it should be, “I’m not against that child and I hope that that mother and that father will be able to help that child, but I want you to know, here are the rules in our house.” Or you could say, “Let’s pray for that child.” You know, mercy triumphs over judgment. And we are always to be merciful. “Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy,” the Scripture says.

And remember, we don’t know all that’s going on in people’s lives. We don’t know. Maybe that mother was sick. Maybe that mother has mental problems. Maybe that child is sick and she just is reluctant to discipline him because she’s just so afraid she’s going to lose him. That’s what I mean by coming to a judgment that we don’t have all the knowledge and all the information about a situation.

When you do find that you have judgment, what do you do? Confess it just like any sin. You confess it to the Lord. You ask Him to forgive you and you ask Him to open your eyes to see things from other peoples’ point of view and to see out of their eyes. When you see what they’re going through it’ll give you mercy.

Question:

Our 11-year-old daughter has an unusually strong fear of demons and spirits, to the point that she doesn’t sleep well at night and constantly wants to climb in bed with us. She doesn’t watch TV and she’s in a private Christian school, so how’d she get like this, and what can my wife and I do about it?

Answered on 04/25/06:

Also, different children have sensitivity in different areas of their lives and she may be very sensitive to spiritual things more so than maybe some of your other children are. Not that they won’t be able to develop a sensitivity to spiritual things, but some people have just a deeper sensitivity right away to the spiritual realm. So you have to channel that sensitivity in the right direction.

Explain to her, “You have a sensitivity to this, not because you’ve done something wrong, but because you’re probably more sensitive to God.” She’s probably more sensitive to the Holy Spirit as well, and you should encourage her in that area.

And you should deal with the fear at several levels. Tell her, “The only reason God allows you to be sensitive to demonic power is because He’s given you the power over the devil.” And so you’ve got start training her to exercise her dominion. Train her to exercise her authority over the devil and speak to that fear and command it to leave.

The Bible says, “Perfect love casts out fear,” so she’s got to meditate on the love of God. The Bible also says, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but power, love and a sound mind,” so she’s got to meditate on the things in the Bible that produce power, the Holy Spirit, the anointing, the wisdom of God. That’s what will direct her against those forces.

The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 10, “There is no temptation that comes upon us that He doesn’t give us a way of escape.” So, God would not allow her to be sensitive to those things if He had not equipped her with the power to overcome those things.

Question:

Answered on 04/14/06:

So you have to do your part in exercising your spiritual authority, and the father has to do his part in exercising his spiritual authority. And the two of you have to meet together because whether you like each other or not, you have to come into agreement and figure out what the plan is for raising that child. You have to decide what is going to be best for that child – not what’s best for you and the father.

Now, if the father is not responsible and is not providing for the child, then he abdicates his authority, and that authority then resides with you. But if he is sharing his realm and portion of the responsibility, then he should have a position of authority – just as you must have a position of authority, provided that you too are sharing in the responsibility.

It’s responsibility that gives us authority. If responsibility is being shared, it should be agreed upon. You should write down what your agreement is and have a third party hold you both accountable to carry out that agreement.

Question:

I want to try to instill self-esteem into my 14-year-old daughter. Can you give me specific verses that will help her?

Answered on 04/14/06:

Tell her that God doesn’t judge her based upon how she looks even though man does. Tell her who she is with Christ and the power within her. Explain how beautiful she is to the Lord Jesus Christ and to her Heavenly Father. Help those things sink in so that she really understands them.

Question:

I recently told a lie to keep my children from finding out that there was a sexual sin in my past. Now I feel guilty. What should I do?

Answered on 04/14/06:

Therefore, while you have an opportunity to tell the truth, it doesn’t always mean confessing your sins to your children. That’s not appropriate. But telling them a lie isn’t appropriate either. So somehow you have to discuss what you’ve done without lying. And you can because the Bible says that love covers a multitude of sins. You don’t need to feel guilty for lying. You just need to apologize to them.

Having lied, I would now say to them, “I’ve done some bad things – as we all have. But Jesus Christ forgives and cleanses. One of the bad things I’ve done is to lie to you. I had something happen in my past, and I don’t want to go into detail. But I tried to shield you from it by lying rather than protecting you in some other way.”

That’s how I’d recommend you handle it. But be wise. Your children are not God, and you don’t need to confess everything to them. Nor should you betray the truth. Lying betrays trust, and that, among other reasons, is why lying is dangerous. It destroys the ability to trust.

Question:

Answered on 04/14/06:

You’ve got to teach your children to be free from fear. Let’s not kid ourselves: this is a dangerous world we live in. There are wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes, tsunamis, murder, and killing. But we’ve got to live under the shadow of the Almighty, just as Psalm 91 says. We abide under His protection. The blood of Jesus has the power to protect us and guard our lives from disaster. The children of Israel put the blood of a lamb on their doorposts when the plague of death came through, and they were spared. We have a better blood. We have the blood of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ Himself.

We put the blood of Jesus over our lives by putting our faith in Him so we can have divine protection. People put locks on their doors. They get burglar alarms and guns to protect themselves. Why not use the most powerful forces in the universe – the name of Jesus, the blood of Jesus, and the Word of God? Let’s use those forces to protect ourselves in these last days, in these dangerous times. You cannot isolate your daughter from this world, but you can insulate her and guard her heart, teaching her to stand on the Word of God.

Question:

Answered on 04/14/06:

And also, if you’re around family members that are treating her that way, you need to reevaluate whether those are the family members that you need to be hanging around or that you need to let her hang around because you don’t owe your family so much that you should subject your children to abuse and to mistreatment by their cousins or relatives or anybody. So, you have the responsibility to surround her with love, to protect her with love, to speak positive reinforcement and also, as much as you can, to keep her out of environments that are unhealthy.

Question:

Answered on 04/13/06:

You can take thoughts captive in your children’s mind by teaching them to speak the Word of God. As soon as children can speak, we should be putting the right things in their mouth. As soon as they are able to say “mama” and “dada,” they should be saying “Jesus” and “Bible” also. They should be saying, “God is on my side” and “God is for me, not against me.”

My children learned Christian poems and stories when they were just 4 or 5 years old. You also have to guard what goes in their heart. You can do that by guarding what they watch on TV, who they hang around with, what they listen to on the radio, what they read in books. They are responsible for these things too. But as long as they are in your household, you must teach them to be responsible with their heart and thoughts.

Question:

Answered on 03/22/06:

But where you’re child is concerned, you have to protect your children because you’re the steward over those children. You probably have custody of your child, and therefore you have a responsibility for that child. And when the father of your child poses a threat to the safety and well being of your child, whether it be emotionally, physically, or sexually, then you, by all means, must—must—do whatever it takes to protect your child. If it’s necessary, then you need to do it. And don’t worry about what people say, because they don’t have the responsibility for your daughter; you do.

Question:

Answered on 03/22/06:

The other side of your situation is the root of your daughter’s desire for attention. She obviously feels like she doesn’t get that attention from God, and she’s not getting that attention in a healthy way from her parents. You need to confront her about that and show her the difference between giving her the proper medical attention and lusting after other people’s attention. She’s not too young; she’s old enough to understand those things. You’ve just got to walk her through that graciously but firmly and establish boundaries and order in her life. She will honor that and she will obey that.