Here's the review in Theresa's own words (as always ;-):
Shepherding a Child’s Heart: Discerning the Abundance of The Heart
Video Review
This week’s session really made us think… is our desire simply to have our children grow to be successful and functional in our society or do we want them to stand out above the crowd, known for their selflessness, compassion, and generosity? Will we really be proud of our children when they grow up if they make it to work on time, do their job well and make a good living, but are egotistic, narcissistic, and selfish? Dr. Tripp suggests that if we only focus on manipulating behavior when our children are young, it will be less likely that our children will have hearts focused on God when they get older. Why? Manipulation is all about getting what we want out of our children by giving them choices that will ultimately feed their own desires and wants. For example, if we are trying to teach our children to be nice to others by offering them rewards for their behavior or taking away privileges for bad behavior, that child is not going to be nice to others because they have the desire to please God and it gives them joy to be kind. They are going to be nice to others out of selfishness – to either get what they want or avoid what they don’t want. We were reminded again of Mark 7 where Jesus reminds us that it is from the abundance of the heart that our selfishness, folly, immorality, etc. originates. We cannot focus solely on behavior if we want our children to grow to have hearts focused on the Lord. Dr. Tripp drew out a chart with the word “Heart” at the top “Attitudes” underneath, then “Behavior” at the bottom. He explained that it begins with our hearts which shape our attitudes which in turn determines what our behavior will be like. An ungodly heart will shape ungodly attitudes which will result in ungodly behavior. A heart focused on God will give us a Godly attitude, and bring forth Godly behavior.
Dr. Tripp reminded us that if our way of discipline is not Biblical, it is simply manipulative and will not reap long lasting results. He then went on to describe some negative ways to address behavior.
1. The “Who had it first?” question. If we are focusing on who had it first, we are not addressing the heart and this certainly is not Biblical. After all, Luke 13:30 says, “Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last." Nowhere in the Bible does it suggest that whoever had something first shall have full ownership of that item.
1. The “Who had it first?” question. If we are focusing on who had it first, we are not addressing the heart and this certainly is not Biblical. After all, Luke 13:30 says, “Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last." Nowhere in the Bible does it suggest that whoever had something first shall have full ownership of that item.
2. Manipulative threats: “If you can’t share your toys maybe we should give them all away to other children who know how to share”. Again, this will not give us opportunity to bring the gospel or forgiveness, grace and redemption into our childrearing.
3. Guilt and emotional appeal; “Daddy has been very upset about your behavior lately and it is dragging him down. He is not doing very well at work because all he can think of is how sad the way you treat each other makes him feel. He may lose his job and then we won’t have this house anymore, and where will we get our food…?” Of course, this is an exaggerated example, but I’m sure we can all think of times we have tried to guilt our children into the behavior we desire from them – I know I can!
4. Bribery and prizes:
a. Sharing to win a prize: If the child knows they will get a prize when they share, they are still performing out of selfish ambition. They also know that they only need to share when mom is looking and as soon as she is out of the room, they can take the toy right back.
b. Be nice to get money: There was an example given of a father who in hopes to get his teenage daughter to be more respectful toward him and his wife, he put 100 $1 bills in a jar and told her that each time she disobeyed or spoke disrespectfully, one would be taken out. After a month, whatever was left over was hers to keep. On the surface it seemed to work. The girl started thinking before she said something and wasn’t complaining about doing her chores. In the end however, it proved to be an artificial change. She was simply jumping through hoops to get what she wanted, not obeying her parents out of repentance or a desire to please God. It was easy for her to fall back into her old habits once the reward was gone.
5. Fear of Abandonment: Dr. Tripp then gave an example of a little girl at an airport who he witnessed being bratty and disrespectful to her mother. At one point the mother got so fed up, she told the daughter, “I’ve had enough of you! I am sick of your behavior. You can go find someone else to be your mommy because I’m done with you!” and she walked to the other side of the waiting area. The daughter of course followed her, begging and pleading for her mom to take her back. And while again, this method worked for the mother in that moment, the cure was worse than the disease and only behavior was changed.
If we believed that behavior was the ticket to heaven, these kinds of teaching would coincide. But on the contrary, we as Christians believe we are all too faltered to enter the kingdom of heaven and we need God’s grace and forgiveness to come into His presence. After we have received his gift of salvation, we perform well out of thankfulness and love for our heavenly father, not out of fear of condemnation or out of the selfish ambition to earn a ticket into heaven. The other problem with these attempts at manipulating behavior is that we as parents both display and encourage hypocrisy. Can we honestly say that we are selfless, generous, thoughtful etc. all the time? Aren’t the attitudes and behaviors our children struggle with something we struggle with as well? How many times have we passed up a spot close to the door at the supermarket so that someone else can have it instead? How often do we think about what our spouse should be doing for us rather than what we could be doing for our spouse? We are all selfish and sinful by nature. When we say things to our children like “I can’t believe you just did that!” or “How can you treat your brother that way?” We are in essence condemning them for things we surely are guilty of ourselves. So how are we as faltered humans supposed to rear faltered children?
We first need to discern what heart issues are going on inside our children. If they are fighting, at the very least, we can discern that the love of self is being demonstrated. If they are screaming and crying because someone else got something they wanted, envy is being demonstrated, if they are upset because they want to spend more time doing something they have already done for too long, possibly idolatry of the heart is the issue… To approach issues we need to focus on the fear and approval of God rather than the fear and approval of man. If we do this, repentance, grace and hope will be present. The desire to please God will nurture a heart that sincerely loves others. Sharing will follow a heart that loves others. Contentment will follow a heart that understands God’s grace and blessings, and time in prayer and in God’s word will follow a heart that doesn’t worship idols. Dr. Tripp gave one last example regarding a fight between a couple of boys in the school yard. They were both sent to his office and he had the opportunity to speak with them both individually. He found out that there was a group of ‘popular’ boys who had been playing together. One of the boys who got in the fight was playing near them and hoped to enter their ‘club’. The other boy involved in the fight was the outcast. The outcast had attempted to play with the popular boys and the kid right outside their group was the one who was the most upset about it. It was these two boys who fought. Dr. Tripp spoke first to the aggressor and instead of pointing the finger, telling the boy his heart was full of folly and malice, he showed the boy a list of things his heart might have been feeling and asked the boy what he thought might have been going on in his heart at the time. The boy confessed selfishness and envy. Dr. Tripp reminded him that we are all faltered, no one is perfect and even he struggles with those things. He was then able to remind the boy of the hope we have through Christ to be humble, selfless, etc. He ended the session with the boy in prayer, asking for God’s help in guiding his heart and making him a man God was pleased with. When it was the outcast’s turn, he took a different approach because the heart issue was different. He was feeling dejected. Dr. Tripp reminded him that Christ too was beaten and cursed, and certainly not part of the ‘in’ crowd of his day. He then prayed with this boy as well. At the end of the school day the boys’ teacher asked Dr. Tripp what he had talked to the boys about and then explained that the boy who had beaten on the outcast spent the rest of the day really trying to reach out to him. Manipulation and mere punishment could not have reaped this kind of change. Only God can truly change a heart.
The reminder Dr. Tripp make is that it all starts with us. We need to display the kind of attitudes and behaviors we desire from our children before we can expect them to do the same. We also need to confess to them our common shortcomings and struggles in order to avoid hypocrisy. Finally, we need God’s word and guidance to do these things. If we do not know what God’s word says, how can we teach our children to live for God?
Questions/ Discussion
1. In what ways do we try to manipulate our children’s behavior?
2. How can we focus, instead, on the heart?
3. How do we display selfishness to our children?
4. How can we show them a love for others above ourselves?
5. What are some examples of heart issues being acted out?
6. What are some ways we can address those specific issues?
The first question was a very easy one to answer. I know I am probably mostly guilty of threats when dealing with behavior. I often catch myself saying something in the realm of, “If you don’t do this, then this will happen”. That is probably my first reaction to disobedience. As a result, I have noticed Sophia starting to correlate her poor behavior with negative results for her. Instead of looking for repentance she automatically just gets upset, “But I want the cupcake!” or “No! I don’t want to go home!” She is still focused on her desires instead of repentance. Or I’ve noticed her turning the tables, negotiating something good as a result of her doing something good. For example, I’ll tell her “Great job – that was a good listener!” and she has said to me “So what do I get?” Some of the other moms mentioned bribery and noticing their children only performing for a prize rather than the desire to do good coming from within. Since our group has mainly younger children, we identified that focusing on the heart can be challenging because we are not sure how much they understand. How do you ask a 1 yr. old, for example what the issues of his heart may have been when he took the toy away from his friend? We determined that while they might not always completely understand, we still need to have God’s word on out lips and even more, they need to see it in our actions. For those of us with children 2 yrs. And older, we determined that our children can understand prayer and we can begin using this tool when teaching our children to seek God’s help when it comes to their behavior. We are also fortunate enough to live in an age where there are so many resources at our fingertips when it comes to teaching our children about God’s word in ways they can understand. We need to be active in teaching our children through games, toys, and age appropriate bibles ALL THE TIME! We all agreed that it is very hard to have a clear enough mind to kneel down and talk to our children about God’s word when they are being nasty to a friend of theirs. It is much easier to talk about these things with our children in our one- on- one time when they are behaving well. Like they say, “The best defense is a good offense”. We need to be teaching our children throughout the day about our faltered hearts, God’s grace and forgiveness and what a life of repentance looks like. We need to be reminding them that no one, not even mommy or daddy, is perfect. We are all in need of a savior and God’s help to live a life pleasing to Him.
Homework
To help us identify doctrine that will help us in talking to our children about heart issues, I put together a list of Bible verses that talk about envy and selfishness (listed below). The longest, but my favorite is Romans 12:3-21. Your homework this week is to find a verse on your own that goes along with heart issues. It can also be about greed, malice, idolatry, etc. Choose a verse of your own or one that I have provided and memorize it. If we want to teach our children God’s word, we first must know it ourselves. It is not as effective just to say, “Well the bible says not to be selfish” as it would be to say, the Bible says “Honor one another above yourselves.” (Romans 12:10).
Bible Verses on Envy, and Selfishness
“Do not let your heart envy sinners, but always be zealous for the fear of the LORD.” (Proverbs 3:17)
“A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones.” (Proverbs 14:30)
“And I saw that all labor and all achievement spring from man's envy of his neighbor. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” (Ecclesiastes 4:4)
“Resentment kills a fool, and envy slays the simple.” (Job 5:2)
“For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man 'unclean.'" (Mark 7:21-23)
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.” (1 Corinthians 13:4)
“But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth.” (James 3:14)
“For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. 4Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to hisb faith. 7If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; 8if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.
9Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. 10Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. 11Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. 12Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. 13Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
14Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. 16Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position.c Do not be conceited.
17Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. 18If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,”d says the Lord. 20On the contrary:
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
21Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:3-21)
“An unfriendly man pursues selfish ends; he defies all sound judgment.” (Proverbs 18:1)
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.” (Philippians 2:3)
“For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has rejected you as king” (1 Samuel 15:23)
“An evil man is bent only on rebellion; a merciless official will be sent against him.” (Proverbs 17:11)
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