448 | When to Say No (Sean Allen)
Show Notes:
The second part of a 3 part series, in this episode we focus on when it's appropriate and necessary to say "no" to your child. The truth is, no one is more appropriately positioned to say this word to our children, but it is also true that no one can more inappropriately wield the power it possesses in their lives. We have to make sure that we're not issuing a "no" when the response should be "yes", or nothing at all.
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.
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Good day, everyone. How is everyone doing today? Thank you for joining me. You know, it's such an interesting thing to welcome people that you can't see or hear, but I hope that it's a warm welcome nonetheless. So thank you once again for joining us on the podcast. Hope that you are doing well. I want to present to you the second part of this three part series. The first part, if you haven't heard it already, was When to Say Yes, this episode is entitled When to Say No, and it's going to be followed by the last episode entitled When to Say Nothing at All. So the first one is very important, particularly if you are a right-leaning parent, you probably say "no" more than "yes". And let me just briefly clarify what I mean: by saying "no", I mean you are very particular about correcting your children when they are misbehaving. And so you say "no" to them a lot or "stop it" or "don't do that". You're not particularly fond of lifting them up or encouraging them because you think that they should be doing what's right just because it's right, not as a result of any kind of reward or any kind of praise on your part. And so, you know, those things fall in the category of "yes" or those are "yes" kinds of responses. And you're not very prone to making those responses.
And so go back and listen to that episode first, because really, I do believe that is perhaps the most important episode, When to Say Yes. You probably need to be saying "yes" more than you're saying "no." And you might be asking yourself, well, where do you get that? How are you so confident in saying that? Because I believe that that's the kind of ministry that marked the Lord Jesus when he was here upon the earth. His was more of a ministry of "yes" than it was "no." There were certainly noes, but what I mean by yes is that he's not accommodating to us or he's not giving us allowance to be who we are, you know, or whatever we think, or to satisfy our whims or inclinations or anything of that sort. But he's saying "yes" in a sense of it is an encouraging, hopeful, inspiring kind of ministry to spur you onward and upward, to lift you, to give you a sense of hope and courage and vision for what could be, the potential that he sees, and hopefully that we will realize, in each one of us.
That's the kind of ministry that I'm talking about. That's the ministry of yes. And I don't want to negate the nos because that's what this episode is about. There is a time to say no and he also portrayed that in... It was perfectly balanced is what it was. Never at any time were his nos misplaced or did he say no when he should have said yes or vice versa. And that's where we fall into traps oftentimes, is that as parents, we're saying "no" when we should say "yes," we're saying "yes" when we should say "no," or we're saying either one of those things when we should just shut up. I'm sorry to put it that harshly, but you should just keep your mouth shut because you're doing more damage by saying "yes" or "no" than by saying nothing at all. And we'll talk about that in the next episode. But let's focus on no.
When is it that you should say "no"? Just as I said the last episode, say "yes" while you still can, that also applies to this word. There are instances in which or situations wherein you should be saying "no" and those opportunities have a short shelf life where in the opportunity passes and you're no longer able to say "no." And what kind of situations are we talking about? Well, there's lots of different ways that this could come about. You have accommodated, you have appeased, you have been far too lax with your child in a particular area. There's an anomaly in his character, his or her character. They have a character flaw or they're struggling with a particular character attribute. Maybe they're lazy, maybe they're dishonest, maybe they're unkind, maybe they lack diligence, you know, all sorts of... Maybe they're angry, you know, those sorts of things. And so you've accommodated them and you've thought that, well, maybe they'll grow out of this or maybe it's just a season and they're just going to be like this for a spell. And sometimes that's true. We could talk about that too, and see, that's and instance where if it is a spell or it's a season, and oftentimes in these seasons what you'll find is that the seasons appear when they're very young.
And so for young parents who have one or two children or aren't experienced with what they're seeing or what they're dealing with (and this applies to sickness as well), they'll overcompensate. They will be overbearing in the situation and employ too much force. And so that might be a situation where I would recommend that you say nothing at all and you just wait and see. But there are some parents who have been down the road a little ways, and they should know better that maybe when your child is older and it's not a season or it's been going on for five years. That's not a season. And you've just accommodated them too much. You've said, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I will allow you to do this. I'll allow you to do this. I'll allow you to do this. I will allow you to act out in public. I will allow you to act out in our home. I will allow you to act out in front of friends and families and acquaintances and everything in between." And this terrible plant that has sprung up in your garden, this weed, this noxious weed, and you see it as such, like hopefully... Sometimes parents don't recognize it, but if anybody should recognize it, it should be you because you should be a student of your child's life. And so when passers by come into contact with this noxious weed in your child's life, it's just like one interaction or two and it's difficult to tell. You know, maybe they're just having a bad day, maybe they don't feel well or you don't know why. Maybe it's just one of... We all have off days. And so to them, they're just like, okay, I don't know what this is. I can't characterize this or categorize this. And so they just move on. But you have been living with it and it's right there in the middle of their garden and hopefully you have eyes to see and you've identified it. And you've let that go on for five years? Or you've let it go on too long, let's say. It's time to say "no." Time to say "no" to your child.
In the last episode, I said, you know, "If you don't say 'yes' to your child, your child will find someone who will eventually." Now, there are particular requests that are made when they're younger that no one could fulfill but you, but that does not mean that the requests go away. I think they just mutate and morph into something else because there's a deep-seated need in their life for love and for devotion, for loyalty from someone that they can trust. They have a deep need their life for someone who they can trust. All right? And so if you continue to rebuff them with, "No, no, no, no, no," eventually they're going to come to the age where they are free or they have the ability or the access to individuals who will potentially say "yes" to them and to them they will give their allegiance, you see?
Now, this is the reverse of that situation. If you don't say "no" to your child, the weeds that will crop up in their garden will so choke out the good that is in their life that they are spinning out of control, they're turning into someone that you do not particularly like, they don't particularly like themselves (by the way, they're struggling with this), and that is also a scenario where it's become too late for you to say what you need to say. And in this instance, it's "no" because they won't listen to you anymore. So wherein with the previous situation, with yes, where you have rebuffed the requests and the requests no longer come and therefore, you do not have the ability to say "yes" any longer, this is kind of the reverse of that but the result is the same: you no longer have the ability to say "no". You could say "no" all that you want, they're just not hearing it, you see.
So there are no requests in this instance, by the way. They're not coming to you and asking you, you know, "What do you think about my behavior?", "What do you think about my course of action here or there?", "What do you think about the trajectory of my life?" They don't care what you think anymore. And so in that sense, it is a loss of opportunity on your part, but you can go right on saying "no," it's just they're not hearing it. And in both instances, the result is the same: when you've refused to say "yes" when you should say "no" and you've refused to say "no" when you should say "yes," and both of those, the opportunity, the well of opportunity, has dried up. And in both of those instances, your child does not trust you the way that they should. And because they do not trust you, they do not turn to you. And you and your husband or you and your wife, you are the two people on the face of this earth whom they should turn to. If they turn to anybody, they should turn to you. This is what God has ordained and so many people, they throw this privilege out the window. And I'm going to try not to get too animated about this, but really it's an upsetting thing. It's a disgusting thing. If there are any two people on the face of the planet to whom your child should turn to for advice, for counsel, for guidance, for love, for encouragement, for a sense of trust and safety and provision, it should be you. You should not turn this over to anybody else.
Okay. That's not to say that other people cannot perform these duties to some varying degree of success. They can. That's not to say that there aren't other individuals who do not have your children's best interests in mind and that they wouldn't do good by them and so on and so forth. But bar none, there's nobody — there's nobody that is more adequately equipped... And that's not to say that there aren't bad parents out there. But I'm saying nobody comes preprogrammed to love their children the way that a mother and a father can love their child. That's just nature. That's just baked into the very deepest wellsprings of being, if I could put it that way. There's just no way around that. And so, yes, there are many different reasons why parents abrogate this responsibility and why they cast it aside and they make themselves unfit to fulfill those roles, but that does not mean that if they had their head screwed on straight or if they had a clearer vision of who they should and could be, that they would be the very best suited to fulfill those roles. I'm just utterly convinced of that.
And so again, if you're saying "no" and you should say "yes," "yes" when you should say "no," or you're saying "yes" and "no" when you should shut your mouth, the result of that is that there's a lack of trust. There's a loss of trust between you and your child. They're going to turn to somebody. They've got to trust somebody. They need somebody to lean on. They need somebody to help guide them through life, and if it's not you, then who? Perish the thought that it not be you.
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When is it time to say "no"? When you have done your due diligence and you have studiously observed the anomalies in their life, their strengths and their weaknesses, the areas in which they struggle, the things that make them upset and the things that makes them quite glad. When you are truly a student of those things... Because nobody has access to them the way that you do (unless they're public schooled). I guess you could say that some of the access that some teachers and peers have to your child would rival your own. But even still, despite all of that, nobody ought to care for them the way that you do. And so nobody's looking at them the same way that you are. So you have access to this singular life and hopefully you have eyes to see, you know, and to discern the things that are going on there, the issues of the heart. And when you see things that need tended to and you feel confident that you have correctly ascertained what you're dealing with here, then it's time to spring into action.
And that might come in very short order, it might come over much time, because I've done both of those and a lot of times I get them mixed up. A lot of times there are instances in which I've waited too long to address it because I'm lazy or because I'm scared or because I'm soft, because I'm left-sided in that regard (we talked about right-sided parents in the last session). No is a word that left-sided parents struggle with because they love yes. They love throwing their arms open wide and blessing their children and lifting them up and encouraging, encouraging, encouraging and never crossing them. And there are times when you must cross your children. If you won't, who will? And so you've got to examine that and you've got to be able to look out for it.
And there are other times where I feel like I've been too quick and I should have waited. You know, there have been so many times that this has happened because right-sided parents are quick. Left-sided parents are slow. Right-sided parents spring into action much too soon because they think that they know exactly what's going on because any time your child kicks a fit or any time that they tell a fib or any time that they knock something over, they destroy your property or they hit somebody on the head, you think you know them, "Well, all you have to know is that's wrong," and that's justification enough for you to jump in there and to, you know, make their life miserable enough in the hopes that they'll stop. But oftentimes what I've discovered after the fact is that I've completely misjudged their intentions or the reason why they lied or the reason why they hit somebody or the reason why... Or because you are so busy and you're so put out, you know, with your own life and you're so stressed (I'm talking to myself), you just want it over with as quickly as possible. And so you'll kind of, you know, figuratively speaking, you'll smack them around a little bit. And I'm not talking about literally. You'll do that with, you know, a tongue lashing or yelling or screaming or becoming very disagreeable. And then their little hearts close up like a flower and they're scared and they don't know what to do and they're disoriented, and so they think twice the next time. They would like to be able to explain to you exactly what it was that happened, but you've already rendered your judgment and you've moved on with your life and so to avoid that disagreeable situation again, from there, they're less inclined to speak on their will behalf or to defend themselves, you see? And you should have said "yes" and you said "no". You said it too quickly.
I've done that so many times. But there will be a sibling or some other situation that'll crop up that helps to lid context to what happened previously and then you realize, good grief, I misjudged that. And if you haven't had that happen to you, I want to suggest that you're either the best parent on the planet or you are far more right-sided than what you know. You're so confident in your judgment, the judgment that you've rendered on all of these situations, and that word is final. And you will not let another word in edgewise. You are in trouble. And you need to... Why am I speaking so strongly? Because I'm speaking to myself because I've done this so many times and I've seen this also in so many other parents. I've seen it in parents across the country and it makes my heart shrink because I know that I was just like that. It's so painful. It's painful to see. What makes it the most painful is to see the effect that it has on the little children.
Again, that scenario that I was just describing to you that had their hearts just fold up like a flower. They close up and they're going to hold the truth within them so tightly because it's too painful to let it out. You won't let them let it out. It's disgusting. You're so confident and would to God that he would open your eyes to see that there are other reasons, perhaps, why your child has done what they have done. Maybe they're lying because you're screaming at them all the time. That's a possibility. Did you ever think of that? And when you come face to face with that, you'd like to hide under a rock, folks, that's how you feel when you realize that you've misjudged your child. I've had this happen to me so many times, and so you need to go back and you need to say you're sorry and in so many words, you need to beg them to let you back into their life. And you could do this appropriately, but you don't have to use those words, "I beg you." But effectively what you're trying to do is you're trying to rebuild the trust that has been lost there in the hopes that in the future, they will be forthright with you and they'll explain themselves. They'll open up their heart. But if they don't have feelings that those lines of communication are open, you are in trouble. Because you are going to look at your child as if they're just predisposed to do everything naughty and everything wrong and everything that causes you harm and puts you out and all of these sorts of things, and that adversarial relationship between you and your child, that is not good. That is not good.
Here I am going on and I want to justify this because for a lot of parents, it's more important that I emphasize the word yes than it is no. It's very easy to say "no". Parents say "no" because they are lazy. Oftentimes, not always. But they say "no" because they're lazy, because they want to get their children out of the way. Like, you're naughty and I know that you're predisposed to do what's wrong and you're getting in my way, and I've got lots of things to do. And so how about we just, you know, cut to the chase and you obey me and life will be easier for both of us. You see? And you're not even half a parent if that's the kind of parenting that you engage in on a daily basis. You're not even half a parent. And you have control of your child in that situation, you will have control of them for about 10 to 13 years. Maybe a little less, maybe a little more. But you'll have control of them for about that long.
And you might be convinced in your heart that you have control of them longer, but you don't. You've lost control. And you know, 10 to 13 on up, you've entered the phase where the complexities of their understanding of the way things work in the home and who you are is becoming way more well-developed than what you know. And that's all developing in secret because you've already burned the lines of communication, and then one day you're going to realize, whoa, my child is doing something that I don't like and all of a sudden I've woken up to the fact that I don't have the same tools of discouragement at my disposal. And that's going to scare you. It should scare you. And so you might try to resort to screaming and yelling again and scaring them and intimidating them, but the effects of those tactics are becoming weaker and less effective as the days roll by.
And some parents never come to a realization of this but what you should realize is that you have not built that storehouse of trust. You've got nothing in your storehouse to turn to. When you want to appeal to them concerning what's right. You want to appeal to them on the basis of who you are and who you represent and that doesn't mean anything to them anymore, because when you should have communicated to them love, you've communicated to the authority. That's all you ever communicated to them. And they're looking for love. Now love can be mingled with authority and it should be. And there was never a person in whom those two things were more perfectly mixed than in the Lord Jesus Christ. I like to call him an authoritative advocate, and that's who you need to be in the life of your child. An authoritative advocate. If you're just merely right-sided, you're an authority figure, but you have no advocacy.
What do I mean by that? You're not upholding them. You're not in their corner. They don't get the sense that you have their best interests in mind. All you care about is lording your rules and your standards over them and ensuring that they comply with those things. That's all you really care about or that's, you know, that may not actually be 100% true, but that's all you've ever made a true and earnest effort at communicating to them. So that's what they see and that's what they believe. That's their assessment of who you represent in their life. The love is overshadowed by the authority. Conversely, if you're a left-sided parent, all they've ever seen in you is the advocacy. Like, I'm here for you, I'm here for you, I'm here for you. But you've never crossed them. This is the time when you say "no." When they've stepped out of line. When they have been rude or they have been cruel or they've been dishonest on a consistent basis and you've observed that character attribute for a sufficient length of time to be able to characterize it as a noxious weed in their garden, and you've done nothing to uproot it. If you continue to let it grow... and this is, you know, this is my rub against the left-sided parents is because they cannot bring themselves to cross their child. They think that they're going to discourage them or they're going to have a loss of relationship. They value relationship.
But what you don't understand is that your child needs an authority figure in their life just as much as they need advocacy. And you haven't represented that very singular and yet very important word of no in their life. Okay, because their teachers probably aren't going to tell them, their friends certainly aren't going to tell them. Their grandparents and aunts and uncles don't have the same degree of access to them that you do. And yet you will not tell them no. Is it any wonder that the weeds start to come to seed, they spread other weeds, the garden is overrun and the child is lost? Because you have not said "no". There is a time to say "no". Say "no" while you still can. Same as the last episode, say "yes" while you still can.
There's unique seasons in your child's life and there's unique opportunities to say "no". You've got to be careful with this, though. This is really more the focus of the next episode, but that the Holy Spirit would guide you when it's time to say "yes" and when it's time to say "no" and when it's time to shut your mouth and to continue to observe and to examine and to wait for the moment where the Lord nudges you and urges you to do something about it, for heaven's sake. You know, sometimes your child is interacting out there in the world, they're at the co-ops, they're at family gatherings, they're at church, they're at sporting events. Everybody else at times can see it, but you can't see it. Because you cannot bring yourself to cross them. You're scared to death that something is going to happen in your relationship with them to where they'll never trust you. They'll never turn to you again. It's probably the opposite is true. Many of them will come to the place later in their life where they will lament the fact that you did not cross them, that you did not tell them, "no". I have heard this from so many parents across the country that come up to me and they'll say something like, "You know, my daughter came to me and told me, 'Mom, I wish you would follow through on the punishments that you say that you're going to dole out in response to my misbehavior,' I mean, they put in so many words, 'because I feel safer when you do.'" There was one lady who told me that her daughter said that to her in effect, "I feel safer when you do." because your children like knowing what comes next. They don't like having to guess and they don't, like, be confused by the meaning of words.
So when you say you're going to do thus and thus and it never happens, and that happens on a consistent basis, that's confusion to them. You don't want confusion in your home. Now, are there times when you say you're going to do such and such that you probably shouldn't do such? Yes. Yes, that's true but that's another discussion. And again, that's a moment when either you should be saying "yes" or nothing at all and you say "no" and you've got to be careful with that because you're out of sorts and you're screaming and your yelling and you're becoming this holy terror in your home and it is damaging your relationship. If you feel rotten about following through on something that you said you're going to do, you probably shouldn't do it. You shouldn't have said it in the first place. Well, do better next time. But in most instances, you probably ought to follow through with it because the loss of confidence in the durability of your word has become a crisis in your home. So if you say it, you better mean it. And if you mean it, you better say it.
So with your children, you need to be observant. You need to be watchful. You need to pray that the Lord would give you discernment concerning the weeds that are in your child's garden. Is this just a phase? Is this just a season? Is this something that's very serious that I need to be watchful for? And when is the time to spring into action? When is it time to say "no"? Your children are feeling you out. I said this in the last episode. They're feeling you out with regards to the quality of your love. They're also feeling you out with regards to the quality of your authority. If you can't maintain that authority in your home, they will pick that up on you so fast. Like, mom and dad, they say stuff. They don't really mean it. They get really ugly and nasty and they yell things and then they never follow through with, so all I have to do is just like, stand here and take it. You know, it's unpleasant for, you know, the two, three, five, ten minutes, however long they go on and then we just move on with life. But there's no change. Right? So you're telling them that you're an authority, but you've got to show them and you show them by following through on what you say that you're going to do. But you best be sure that what you say you're going to do is truly fitted to the occasion or that it's necessary and right, I guess I would say. And I've talked about that before. I'm going to go into that but you've got to be careful with that.
So your children are feeling you out with regards to the quality of your love. Do not make them wonder. Make it abundantly clear. Show them. You tell them that you love them. Show them that you love them. You do that by saying "yes". At the same time, your children are feeling you out with regard to the quality of your authority in their life. Do not make them wonder. Make it abundantly clear. Show them. All right? Show them at appropriate times, both of these two things. And we struggle with this. We really do. We sweep wildly back and forth from the right to the left. I've talked to you about that period of my life when I was decidedly right-sided and then I swung back to the left-side for a little period that didn't go well either. Both of those were a train wreck. And you know, I came out of that learning I've got to be balanced and you can't do it on your own, let me just tell you that. You cannot do it in your own strength. You will be tricked, you will be fooled, you will fool yourself, your children will fool you. You know, other voices that are swirling around in your head, in your heart, at any given time will fool you. There's only one consistent voice that we can appeal to that could help us to distinguish between the instances of which we should say "yes," the instances in which we should say "no," and when we should just keep quiet.
So there's so much more that can be said about this, but I'm going to stop with that and I hope that this has been helpful. Check out the first episode if you haven't already. This second episode is mainly focused on the issue of saying "no" or when to say "no" and then we'll follow it up or close up the series with the last episode, which will be up and coming — when to say nothing at all. So thank you very much for your time and I hope you all have a good day. Bye.
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.
