444 | When to Say Yes (Sean Allen)
Show Notes:
This is the first episode of a 3 part series followed by "When to Say No" and "When to Say Nothing at All". In this episode we focus on a simple word that is often so difficult for parents to say to their children - "yes". Whether it's in answer to a request to go on a bike ride or in response to an act of obedience, so often our answer is "no" or nothing at all. Children are always probing, though, searching to discover the true quality of our love for them. We have to be careful that our responses to their requests (whether vocal or not) do not result in a lack of trust that will come back to haunt us when they are older.
About Sean
Sean Allen is the founder of The Well Ordered Homeschool, husband to his beautiful bride Caroline and a proud father of eight. He has a bachelor of fine arts in graphic design and is passionate about creating materials to assist parents in the incredibly challenging, yet surpassingly beautiful, work of schooling and training their children at home.
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Show Transcript:
Sean Allen Hello. Welcome to the Homeschool Solutions Show. My name is Sean Allen and I am one of the many hosts here on the podcast. Since you're listening to this, I'm guessing you already know that homeschooling is both incredibly challenging and incredibly beautiful. Every week we're here doing a little guidance, some helpful counsel, and a whole lot of encouragement your way as you navigate this busy, yet blessed journey of educating your children at home. Now, even though the show is called Homeschool Solutions, it should come as no surprise to you that we do not have the answer to every homeschool related question. But if you come away with nothing else, our hope is that today's episode will point you to Jesus Christ and that you will seek His counsel as you train your children in the way they should go.
Here's a riddle for you parents: Homeschoolers love them, enemies of freedom hate them. What are they? It's the Tuttle Twins books. With millions of copies sold, the Tuttle Twins helps you teach your kids about entrepreneurship, personal responsibility, the Golden Rule, and more. Get a discounted set of books with free workbooks—that's right, free workbooks—today at TuttleTwins.com/homeschool. That's TuttleTwins.com/homeschool. And now on to today's show.
Hello everyone. Welcome again to the podcast and thank you so much for joining me today. I hope that you're doing well and hope everything's going well with the new school year. We're in full swing here in the Allen household. We're doing pretty good. It was a little bit of a slow start there but we're finally up and running with our homeschool and the close of convention season and everything. We've got one more left. It's not exactly a convention, but we're heading to Magnolia down in Texas here in just a week or two, and we're very excited about that. That's a big opportunity for us. We had to apply for that and to be accepted and we're just so thankful that they accepted us. And so we don't know what to expect from that. Apparently, there's a lot of people that are going to come through there. So if you're down in, you know, Chip and Joe's territory, if you're down there and you're going to be at the Silobration, we're going to be there. We're going to have a booth there so we would love to see you. We're going to have our Chalk Full of Design down there so we're excited. We're looking forward to that and we're doing a lot to get ready for it and a lot more yet to do.
But what else? What else to say? We're loving the fall weather. The change in the seasons is so beautiful. We're so thankful for that as well. We had quite the dry spell in Missouri (in the Midwest, really) for like, probably a couple of months. And so we're thankful for the return of rain and cooler temperatures and all of that sort of thing. But enough about me. Oh, one more thing. One more thing I wanted to mention — our Well Ordered Homeschool Planner. The dated version sold out very quickly this year, more quickly than we expected, and we're very sorry about that. We were not able to arrange a reprint. There's a lot of different factors that go into that. We wish we could have, but we were able to produce an undated version. And so that is currently being manufactured. And so many of you have already preordered that. That is going to be shipping in late October or thereabouts is what we've been told is the latest report. So we're very excited to be able to offer that to you.
If you missed out on the dated version, we have an updated version and it's going to have some unique features. Obviously no dates. You're able to fill it out whenever you want. You can start any time, end any time, pick back up at any time, so that's the nice thing about an undated planner. It has all of the same features as our dated platter, all of the same pages and everything. So we haven't taken anything out. But there is one nice feature that we have, is that it still has tabs, but the tabs are going to be blank. And so we thought about different ways that you could fill those out. And so what we ended up doing is we’re going to include stickers. Nobody knows about this yet. You're the first ones to hear about this. We're going to have stickers, a pack of stickers, to where you can start the date at any time. So if you pick your planner up in October and you start November, that top tab, you can put the November sticker on there and start from there. You make it through November, December, and maybe you fall off the horse in January and you pick back up in February, the next sticker you put on could be February. So that's nice. I think that's a nice feature. If you are still the market for a planner and you missed out on the dated one, we have an updated one. It's available for pre-sale now on thewellorderedhomeschool.com and also chalkfullofdesign.com so look at that if you think that might help you at all.
Okay, enough about that. What do I want to talk to you about today? I'm actually wanting to do a little three part series here. And this is the first part, obviously. And this is entitled When to Say "Yes". The second part will be entitled When to Say "No". And the last part will be entitled When to Say Nothing at All. So all three of these are focused and directed towards you and your relationship with your children. These are very simple concepts that have very complex ramifications, and I had to learn these lessons the hard way. On the convention circuit, I talk a lot about right-side and left-side parents and what kind of parent you are and if you're right or left. And we want to try to bring balance between those two extremes. The interesting thing about left-side and right-side parents is that both of them have a preferred word when it comes to these two words, yes or no. Right-side parents like the word no and left-side parents like the word yes. And there's nothing wrong with those things except for the fact that they're out of balance. And so right-side parents say "no" too much. And left-side parents, obviously, I'm sure you know what's coming, they say "yes" too much. And good parents say "yes" and "no". And they keep those things in balance.
And so this first session or this first talk, I guess you'd say podcast episode, is going to be about saying "yes". And I consider myself more of a right leaning parent. There's lots of different reasons for that that I won't necessarily go into right now. But suffice it to say that right-side parents are more stringent, they're more strict, they're more focused on first time obedience and obedience for the sake of authority and respect. That respect being the respect that your child owes to you or that is due to you by them or so you believe. And right-side parents are very concerned about stamping out disobedience and misbehavior. And so they do that by... Well, in a number of different forms. They do that by using the word no. Sometimes to good effect, but oftentimes with negative effects.
And that's who I was when we had our first born, really on up through my third child. I started to try to come out of this with our second. And woke up and realized, you know, that's really all that I ever say to my children. And what do I mean when I say that? I mean all that I ever really felt that I was required to do when I raised them and as I'm parenting them, is to make sure that I check their misbehavior. And so any time that I found them out of line, I was very quick to jump all that to say, "Stop it" or "We don't do that" or "You shouldn't do that" or what have you, and it was often in the form of chiding and chastisement. And I made it very uncomfortable for them. And, you know, the logic behind that, the way that that reads is, you know, if you make it uncomfortable enough for your children, eventually, seeing as how you're, you know, stronger and more powerful and scarier than they are, eventually they're just going to wave the white flag and say, "You know what, I've had enough. I don't want to be this naughty child anymore. And so have it your way. We'll have it your way," essentially.
And I really believed that that was the pathway to success. That was the pathway that would lead me to the kind of child that I always dreamed of raising. Now, I shouldn't say always... That I dreamed of raising after I met Caroline because I didn't think about it when I was younger. So that's the word that I leaned very heavily on, was No. "No, you may not do this. No, you may not do that," and, "Stop doing this. Stop doing that." And it was very unpleasant. It's very unpleasant for my children, it's very unpleasant for me. I didn't like the kind of person that I was becoming. I'm thankful that I had enough of a hold on the person that I was, that that made me uncomfortable enough to say, "You know what? This is not right." And I had a lot of support from a lot of materials, and a lot of my peers were also experimenting with a lot of these philosophies, and you could just see it in the way that they raised their children and some of the results that came out of that. Again, it's not pleasant and it didn't seem right to me.
And so it seems so very simple and yet, like I said, the ramifications are very... The outworking of these principles and these philosophies are very complicated. But it was merely a switch from no to yes is what took place or transpired in my life. I woke up and realized one day I never say "yes" to my children or very, very rarely do I say "yes". And yes is a general term that is kind of all encompassing for, "Yes, let's go outside and throw the ball," "Yes, let's go on a walk," "Yes, let's play this board game," "Yes, you did a very good job there," "Yes, I'm very pleased with the way that you reacted to that situation," and so on and so forth. So, yes is kind of an all encompassing term. If you could picture it, if you could visualize it, the right-side parent stands before his or her child with his or her arms crossed and kind of a stern look on their face. They're very serious. They love their children, but they're very serious about this business of raising their son or their daughter. And the left-side parent, if you could visualize this, they stand before their child with open arms and, you know, a very pleasant and happy look on their face. Both of these forms of parenting in and of themselves, when left to themselves, are toxic. If you say "yes" too much, you're toxic. If you say "no" too much, you are toxic. If you never say anything at all, you're toxic. So we're going to try to bring balance throughout all three of these sessions to these three principles. Again, they're very simple, but the way in which you employ them in your life is very serious. It needs to be very thoughtful, very considerate, very prayerful, in the way you go about this.
So the first session is about "yes", because if you're right leaning like I am, you probably have trouble saying "yes" to your children. And that's a problem. I'm here to tell you that that's a real problem in your life. It's a problem for you now. It will be more of a problem as you get further down the line. As your children get older and older, it will become more and more of a problem for you. And the reason why that is, is because you have a serious deficiency in the area of trust. You are not building trust between you and your child, and that is going to pose a problem, a huge problem for you down the road. I cannot emphasize this enough.
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So when your children or younger, you can get away with not saying "yes" to them for a period of time, and convince yourself and perhaps also them that you still love them and you're still there for them. And you know, they're not... the level to which they're thinking through the nature of your relationship with them has not risen to the level of being alarming, I guess I'll say.
Now there are signs and there are pointers and there are certainly things that you could do to your children or in relation to them that sets off all the bells and whistles in their minds as to whether or not you're truly committed to them. And I want to say this to you. This is something that I've discovered that I had to kind of unearth. And I was shocked when I discovered it, is that I really do believe that our children are kind of... they're feeling you out. They're trying to determine whether or not it is true, what you tell them, that you love them. They're trying to determine if that's a true statement. Now, there are parents who do not tell their children that they love them and I've talked to all kinds of current parents who have said as much about their parents that, "My father never told me he loved me. My mother never told me she loved me. Never gave me a hug, never exhibited any kind of affection towards me whatsoever." And that's a whole nother discussion. We're not talking about that. I'm assuming that you're the kind of person that does tell your children on occasion that you love them. You may be a parent that tells them every day, multiple times, every day. That's wonderful. But your children are... you have to give them more credit. They're smarter than that, okay?
And so if you're just telling them with not showing them, they're going to feel that out. They're going to discover that at some point in time. And they do this in many subtle, oftentimes, undetectable ways. And you won't realize that until they out-and-out tell you about it, or you just have to, like I did, unearth it. It's like you lifted up a rock and there it was. You're like, "Oh, what is this?" And I've been shocked how many times my children have revealed to me that they've struggled with whether or not, you know, that love that I have for them is genuine, because to me, I know it is. There's no doubt in my mind. I've said this many times — I'm smitten with my children. I don't know how anybody could love children more than I love my children, but I'm sure that there are many parents out there that have just as much, if not more, love. And so that's not really up for debate or question for most parents, do they love their children. Of course they do. But to your children, it's maybe not so obvious at times. The way in which you speak to them, the way in which you deal with those instances where they step out of line.
And so if you're a right-side parent and you've spent most of your interaction with your children in saying "no" to them, telling them "no" and rebuffing them, then it really is still a question in their minds as to what is the quality of this love that you say that you have for them. What does it mean when you say that you love them? Does that mean that, you know, that they're committed to providing a roof over my head and clothes and food and, you know, that sort of thing, but that they're generally displeased with me? That they're not really proud of me, that I'm a nuisance, that I'm in the way, that I'm not measuring up, you know, to those standards that they have in their hearts and their minds. You know, those kinds of things. And do they have to reconcile themselves to that, you know?
And I think some children do. They do. Like if you were to ask them, "Does your father or your mother love you?" "Well, yes, they do." But if you were to give them the opportunity to try to qualify that love, they might follow it up with, "But I don't think that they're very pleased with me. I don't think that I ever make them very, like terribly happy. They always seem to be kind of disgruntled and frustrated and put out with me." And so that's the mark of a right-sided parent oftentimes. And these children don't understand that you do love them, but apparently you don't love them enough to say "yes" to them. And again, what I mean by yes is yes to spending time, yes to lifting them up, yes to embracing them and telling them when it's truly... Like the spirit of love is truly in your heart and you want to go to extra lengths to communicate that love to them. Say "yes" to them in the sense of expressing your pleasure, your pride, in those instances where they've actually complied with your wishes or the standards that you've set up in your home. You know, those instances. So do you say "yes" to them in that way?
Now, there's this notion amongst some parents, many parents, many Christian parents in particular, that, you know, we don't have a reward for obedience. We don't ever really praise or point out those instances when the child is obedient or compliant because you're just supposed to do those things anyway. We do those things because they're right and we don't do them for praise or for reward or anything like that. And so that's another reason why with many parents, the children of those parents really never hear the word "yes" or "thank you". And that's a problem. So when is it time to say "yes"? It's definitely time to say "yes" or to say "thank you" to your children when they comply with the standards that you have set up in your home. Particularly when they have done that at cost to themselves. What do I mean by that? Well, you gave them the instruction of going and cleaning their room or cleaning up a mess or tending to some kind of task or chore, and you know full well that that butted up against some other activity that they could be involved in, playing with their friends outside, whatever it might be, something that they would rather be doing and that they voluntarily choose to comply with your request to go and clean the room at the expense of going outside and playing with their friends. And you're here to tell me that you're not going to tell them "yes"? You're not going to say "thank you"? You're not going to recognize that? You are not going to try to reinforce that continued behavior in your home? That's a travesty.
And so some parents will say, "Well, no, we're not going to recognize that in any way because we don't want to lift them up in pride. We don't want them to think that there's some, you know, they're something great when they're not." When your child exhibits that kind of behavior and they're obedient to your wishes, they're exhibiting the life of God. Do you understand that? They're doing what their conscience would dictate that they ought to do, and they're listening to the voice of God in their life. They're following in his footsteps. They're doing what he would expect them to do or that he would delight in them doing. And you're not going to give that any recognition whatsoever? There's something terribly wrong with that. That's toxic. That's expressly right-sided parent behavior. And you've really got to take a good hard look at that and to see what that's doing to your child who does not have the level of understanding regarding those kinds of behaviors that you do. You know, you've had many years of experience with that. You've had a long and probably sorry track record of stumbling and getting up again and stumbling and getting up again and stumbling and getting up again to the point where you've actually, over time, acquired a character attribute that could be characterized as being tidy or being diligent or being honest or what have you. And again, that came over many years of having stumbled and picked yourself back up again. And now you're a diligent person, you're an honest person. Your child doesn't have that yet. They don't have that experience.
And so what was it in your life that finally convinced you that that was the correct path forward? Somebody or some good spirit from above came alongside you and told you "yes". They encouraged you in that way. They lifted you up. They smiled upon you. They made sure that you understood that this was good and true and holy and thank-worthy and all these sorts of things. That's how you know the difference between that particular path and, you know, a darker path, the path of disobedience. It's because somebody came alongside and encouraged you and the feelings that that engendered in your heart were something that you, you know, maybe it was unconsciously or consciously, you said to yourself, you know, I want more of that. I'd like more of that. And so how are your children going to be able to distinguish between these things if you just leave them there to themselves?
And parents are oftentimes have such strong opposition to lifting their children up in this regard, to praising them, to rewarding them. By the way, there's nothing wrong with rewarding them if you do that correctly. It can be done incorrectly. That's left-side parenting where it's borderline bribery but we're not talking about that kind of rewarding. Anytime you say "thank you", anytime you smile as a result of your child's obedience, anytime that you do anything positive in response to their obedience is a reward, folks. There's just no way around it. And so that's a good time to say "yes". That's a very good time to say "yes". Because, as I said, your children are feeling you out. Do you truly love them? Do not make them wonder about that. And when your children say or do something that indicates that they're wondering about the quality of your love, you know that you've got some work to do. Now, you may think to yourself, well, I thought I've made it abundantly clear, what else could I do? Well, there's apparently more work to do. There's apparently more work to do and they shouldn't have to wonder. You can tell them, but you have to show them. Because they're not quite sure about it.
They're insecure about this, as we all are, and we all were at one time and probably still are to this day with regards to certain individuals. You know, spouses wonder about this with regards to their husbands and wives. We wonder about this all the time about our peers, about the people that we associate with. Do they like me? Do they not like me? Did I say something wrong? Maybe they misunderstood me. All sorts of things like that pop up. And we're very insecure about this. Well, your children are the same way. And even though you live with each other and you're with each other all the time, these doubts can still arise. So this is why you say "yes" to them. When they come to you and ask you, "Would you like to go on a bike ride?" oftentimes the answer's "no", isn't it? Because you don't have the time and you know you can't say "yes" every time. I'm not here suggesting that you do, but you probably need to be saying "yes" more than what you are. I'm guessing because it's easy for us to fall into this trap. And here's the thing, the very scary thing is, is that if you rebuff enough requests to go on bike rides, to have slumber parties, to have tea parties to just go out and do something one on one, you rebuff enough of those requests and the requests will stop coming. And that is a terrifying thing.
Here's something else that ought to put you on notice — say "yes" while you still can. There will come a time when you can't say "yes" anymore. And you might be thinking, well, you know, I've got 18 years, I've got ten years, I've got six years, whatever it is, I've got so many years left until they leave my household. Well, that's all fine and good and praise God for that, but unique seasons present unique yeses or opportunities to say "yes". So when your three year old asks you to read a book, there's going to come a time in which they outgrow those requests. You know, my sixteen year old daughter loves to read. I can't remember the last time she came up to me and asked me to read her book. That request is no longer extant. And so say "yes" while you still can to your three year old, to your six year old, to your thirteen year old. Unique seasons, unique opportunities to say "yes.”
I'm not trying to overburden you here. I'm not saying that you need to run around saying "yes" to everything. You can't say "yes" to everything, but I bet you could say "yes" to more than what you do. And again, you turn away enough of those requests and they will just stop coming. And you may not even recognize it. There are some parents who are... We're all selfish by nature, folks. But some parents are so selfish that it's actually their internal wish that the requests would go away. And when they finally do go away — which they will because those children get the message that I'm not wanted, I'm not desirable, I'm in the way, I'm a nuisance — when those requests go away, the parents kind of take a sigh of relief and go on with their busy lives and they'll never see those requests again. And they've treated them like chaff in the wind.
The thing is, is that your children are going to keep requesting such things anyway, and they may not have the opportunity to have, you know, mom or dad read a book to them because there's nobody available to present that request to, but there is still a need there in their heart for something for someone and that need will continue to grow and grow and grow until it finds the opportunity or finds the individual to whom they believe they can present the request to. And they'll find someone eventually who will not rebuff them. And I can almost guarantee you that in most cases it will be someone that you would rather them not present the request to in the first place. And so if it's not going to be you, who will it be? Say "yes" while you can. Rebuff them as infrequently as you possibly can. Your children are feeling you out. They're trying to determine the quality of your love. Do not give them any reason to wonder.
And you should probe this. You should do some digging, do some research. Do some investigating (maybe is a better way to put it) to see, you know, what is the nature of their belief with regards to your love? And there are telltale signs. If you learn what to look for, you can see the way in which they're responding to you. Maybe they have a bad attitude. Maybe they see put out with you. Maybe it seems as if they're stewing about something or they've kind of turned inward. They've gotten sullen, they've gotten quiet, they're not interacting as much — they're struggling with something. And let me tell you, as a child, I don't want to diminish this, but there's only so many things that they could be struggling with. Particularly homeschooled homes, you know, there's only so many influences that have been allowed to be brought to bear on their lives. Hopefully so. And so, you know, who has access to their castle or to their city? And seeing as how homeschool families generally have fewer or find that there's lesser access to those cities, you just start, you know, you start on down the line. What could this possibly be. And oftentimes it's you. It's you or it's a sibling or something of that nature.
As they grow older, those influences become... There's more of them, they're more varied. It might be very difficult, if not impossible, to track down the source of the sullenness or the inward turning. And so you've got to do some more digging and they might let you in there. And so you're building trust. You start as young as you possibly can to build this trust. And say "yes" while you can. And the more yeses that you can give them that are appropriate — there are times in which yes is inappropriate, we're going to talk about that in the next session — but as many of those yeses as you could possibly give them, it helps to build the trust between you and them. It helps to qualify the nature of your love for them so that when the requests become more complex and they become deeper and the ramifications of the particular answer that you ought to give them become more serious when they're older, that you will be the first one that they turn to. That's the hope at least.
So start young. Start now irregardless of what age your children are. I don't care if they're 18 and they're just, you know, weeks or months away from leaving your home. You can still start with this and to try to build this trust. Not only do they need you in this role, it is your role. You are uniquely qualified and called to displace this role. There's nobody else that should take that from you. And if you can't be that person or if you feel as if you failed in this area and you've failed in building that level of trust that you and they will need going forward, get on your knees and repent and say that you're sorry and ask the Lord to open the way whereby this trust can be built so that you could be an influence for good in the life of your child.
So that's my hope. Just a few thoughts about saying "yes". Oh my goodness. There's so much more that could be said but I promised myself that I'd stay a little shorter this time and not keep you so long. So I think I've done a little bit better job of that. I'm looking at the time here. I usually go on for another 15, 20 minutes. I'm going to do that. So the next time we're going to talk about when to say "no", because that's also very important and I hope that you'll join me for that. Again, I hope that you're doing very well, and I pray that God will bless you in the coming days and in your homeschool. And thank you again for joining us. So, bye for now.
Thank you for joining us this week on the Homeschool Solutions Show. You can find show notes and links to all the resources mentioned at Homeschooling.mom. Don't forget to check out my friends at Medi-Share because you deserve health care you can trust. To learn more about Medi-Share and why over 400,000 Christians have made the switch, go to GreatHomeschoolConventions.com/Medi-Share. That's GreatHomeschoolConventions.com/Medi-Share. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast. And while you're there, leave us a review. Tell us what you love about the show. This will help other homeschooling parents like you get connected to our community. And finally, tag us on Instagram @homeschooling.mom to let us know what you thought of today's episode. Have you joined us at one of the Great Homeschool Conventions? The Great Homeschool Conventions are the Homeschooling events of the year offering outstanding speakers, hundreds of workshops covering today's top parenting and homeschooling topic, and the largest homeschool curriculum exhibit halls in the US. Find out more at GreatHomeschoolConventions.com. I'll be there. I hope to see you there too.
