470 | Your Children Need Someone to Talk To (Sean Allen)
Show Notes:
Can your children trust you? Before you answer that question, another question should be asked: "Do your children talk to you?" In our relationship with our children, trust is a precious commodity; but it's not one that magically appears in abundance, as if you've suddenly won the lottery of your child's confidence. Trust is acquired and saved over time. Over long and sustained periods as we prove our love and commitment to our children. As we talk to them and encourage them to talk to us. Because if we haven't convinced them they can talk to us, it's going to be very difficult to convince them to trust us.
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.
Well, hello everyone and welcome again to the podcast. Thank you as always for joining us and for listening. And we would also very much appreciate your feedback if you have anything to say (hopefully it's good) about the podcast and the episodes that you're listening to. All of the contributors to this podcast, we're trying to do our best to provide you with information that's helpful and useful and needful. And so if you're hearing anything that falls along those lines, we would very much appreciate hearing from you. And again thank you for your support.
As of right now (at the time of the recording of this episode), my family... We are just about to actually leave — leave for South Carolina for the Great Homeschool Conventions there in Greenville South Carolina so maybe we will see some of you down there and if so, hope that you'll stop by our booth and say hello. Yeah, it's an exciting time. It's hard to believe that we're back here already. Spring is on its way and convention season is here and we're gonna hit the road and we're gonna travel thousands of miles and it's gonna be fun. It'll be fun. We're looking forward to it.
And one other thing that I'll mention before I get started here today is, and we're very excited to announce this, but we've launched a podcast. It's called the No Ordinary Days podcast. Now what you're listening to here today is the Home School Solutions Show and I'm just one of I think four or five contributors and I'm very grateful for that opportunity but we've decided to launch our own podcast. Again, it's called the No Ordinary Days podcast, you can find it on Apple Podcasts, find it on Spotify, just about every popular podcast player that there is out there. And as of this recording, I think we have about 10 episodes up. So go check that out, if you'd like to hear some more thoughts that I have on the issues of parenting and home life and raising children and many other things related to it. We're not exactly sure where we're going to go just yet, but I think we're going to be getting into lots of other things as we go along. But yeah, check us out on the No Ordinary Days podcast. We're really excited. We've got a lot of great things planned and we're just excited as to where this thing might all lead.
So today, seeing as how I am short of time, I don't want to take too much of your time either. I wanted to talk to you about talking, actually, is the topic of today's podcast. And the question is, are you talking to your children? This is a question that is probably more important as it pertains to your older children, but it really pertains to almost every age. Actually, it does. Let me just say that. It pertains to every age. Are you talking to your children? And not just you, but if it's a husband that's listening to this, is your wife speaking to your children? And if it's a wife that's listening to this, is your husband also speaking to your children? Are you both speaking to them together? You obviously have a lot to say, and you both have much to contribute in your own unique ways.
And so, it can't be as it is in many households, and I recognized this even growing up, that it seemed like a lot of the households that I grew up around that the mother was the one that was doing most of the talking and the father wasn't really communicating with their children. They would on a very limited basis but not to the degree that they should have or that should be expected. So there's only one doing the talking and both of you need to be talking and of course we also need to talk about the quality of the nature of the communication that you're engaging in. But are you talking to them?
I remember, you know, everything was so new, everything in relation to family life and raising children to some extent is always going to be new to new parents, but for me it was very new because I hadn't really given it any consideration and hadn't really taken the time to observe how other people did this as I was growing up. Certainly as it pertained to infants, because I wasn't really around a lot of them and wasn't aware, didn't take the time, to be considerate of these things. But I remember when my wife would talk to me about talking to our children in the womb, and how she would communicate with them, and that she felt it was very important, and she had read about this and learned this from other people, it was very important for them to grow accustomed to the sound of her voice. And that really surprised me. And I'm still being surprised to this day folks. This is all... We're just learning as we go here.
I thought that was a beautiful thing. So from the very earliest opportunity that you have, you should be talking with your child. They—and it is an important principle—they should become accustomed to the sound of your voice, just as we should become accustomed to the sound of the voice of our Heavenly Father. And the more that we hear Him speaking to us, the more acquainted we become with that voice and it becomes the most familiar, most comfortable, most well-respected, most longed-after voice that we have in our life. And that's the way that it should be with us as parents.
So of course we speak about the presence of the voice, we also speak of the quality of the voice, of the sound of what the children are hearing. And in the case of my wife and with so many mothers, I believe that this is the case when they are hearing your voice when they're in the womb, it's the sound of a voice of an advocate, someone who loves them, someone who cares for them. It is, in fact, their mother. And she also would encourage me (and I was uncomfortable with this at the time, I'm a little ashamed to say that now) to speak to our little ones in the womb as well. Why don't you say something? And I thought, well that seems... It made me uncomfortable, I didn't know how to go about doing that. I also believe that the children become accustomed to our voice as fathers in the womb. They hear us talking to our wives. They hear us talking to other people. They hear that voice and somehow they know who that is.
And so when they are born, I don't know that there's much, if any, of a transition there. They've already been hearing that voice for nine and a half months. And so again, the importance of speaking to our children. So very important. Well it should not end there, it should continue. When they're so very young, we should continue to talk to them. You know, it's a little easier after they're born and hopefully you're being so gentle and so careful with the way in which you're communicating with them. They're growing in trust and they're growing in the expectation, I guess you would say, of the presence of that voice—that it will always be there, and that it will speak on their behalf. Now can they rationalize this in their minds? No they cannot. But all this amounts to is that they're growing more and more comfortable with you as their parent, and if there's anyone in the world that they ought to trust and ought to want them to love them, it would be you. So they need your love before they need anyone else's love.
And so here we are from conception to birth and beyond. What's this process that we're engaging in? We're building trust. We're building trust. We have to build trust because I promise you—the foundations of that trust will be tried. It will be attacked. There will be many attempts made on that edifice or that structure. So you're building a structure of trust and the children need to find shelter in it. They need to be able to have that to turn to or to retreat. They need to have that as a bulwark against the affronts of the various philosophies and various entities that they will encounter in their life. They need to be able to return to that trust that they have with you.
If they don't have that, then it's very bleak. It's a very dire situation that they find themselves in. Who do they turn to? Who can they talk to? Who can they expect actually has their best interest in mind? Now when they're very little, they don't have much of a choice, do they? And so if you're the kind of person who's not doing a whole lot of talking or the talking that you are doing is not of a high quality, they don't have anybody to turn to. Now they might have a grandparent or they might have, you know, an aunt or an uncle—whoever might be in their life to more or less of an extent. They might have someone who advocates on their behalf from time to time, but in most cases they have nothing, they have nobody. And even in those instances that's, you know... The presence in their life of these individuals is very limited.
But as they grow older, if they don't feel as if they have this trust in their life, they will go looking for it. If they don't have that individual to whom they can turn and talk to, they will go looking for him or her. And so if they've found that lacking in their mother, they're going to go look for a female to try to fill that void. If they feel as if they have that lacking in the form of their father, they're going to go looking for a male to fill that void. And even though it might be filled in part (if at all), it will never be filled completely. No one can fill this role like you can fill it. And so you need to be sure that you're filling it to the best of your ability.
And the only way that you can know if you're truly upholding your responsibility in this area is to turn to God and to ask him. To ask him for his approval, or ask him for his opinion. What is his mind in this matter? What does he think about how you're doing this job? And if there are deficiencies, if there are gaps, if there are areas in which you're failing to communicate a true sense of trust to your child, then he will make you aware of that. If you're humble and you're sincerely asking him those questions, he'll open your eyes to see areas in which you're maybe making a mistake or in which you're failing in your duty towards your children.
Are you talking? Here's a sign. Here's a good indicator as to provide you with the information as to whether or not you are truly talking with your child. It's very simple. This information can come in and through you asking yourself another question. And the question is, are your children talking? Are they talking to you? If they are talking to you freely, it's probably a very good sign that you're talking to them freely. Why? Because if they're talking to you, that means they trust you. That means they respect you. You see, it's a question of if they are struggling with something, if they are sad, if they're despondent, if they're angry, if they feel as if they've been mistreated or misjudged, do they feel as if they have an avenue through which they can reach you. Do they feel as if they have an open and an honest hearing before you if they feel the need to bring something that falls within those categories to you?
And so maybe they feel as if they're being wronged by one of their siblings, and it's just got them down. There's two ways to go about that, and two ways to address that. Number one, did you pick up on that? Or are you too troubled or too tied down to even have an awareness to pick up on that condition that exists in your child's attitude. Did you pick up on the fact that they're down or discouraged? Did you go to them, "What's going on here? Are you okay? I've just noticed that you're out of sorts. What's going on?" So that's number one. Number two is, do they feel free to come to you and to communicate this to you? Or do they recognize that you're too burdened or too tied down or too busy? That you don't even have the time of day to hear them out. If they're talking to you, it's a good sign that you're talking to them.
If they're not talking to you, and of course we're talking about children that are slightly older, and if what you recognize is that as they grow older they're talking less and less and less to you, that's a good sign that you have not done your part and you have not upheld your responsibility to talk to them because you need to make sure those lines of communication are open. And it doesn't matter if they're four years old, right? Do they feel as if they have an avenue of appeal? Do they believe that they have an open ear in you? And if they don't, obviously they're not even ever going to try it. And if they're four years old or five years old and they've already given up on even trying to appeal to you, you're going to have serious problems when they're 14.
So that is another question: can they appeal to you? And we're not perfect obviously. Sometimes we think that they've done something and we think we know why they've done something and we just kind of render that verdict in the moment and we try to move on with our lives and then maybe they realize that there's some more information that needs to be brought to bear upon the situation. Do they feel as if they can bring that information before you? Like, "Well that's not exactly what happened here. Let me give you some more information to clarify why I did this, that or the other." And that's happened to me so many times. When I realize, oh, I've misjudged them. It was actually not like that at all. It's the opposite of the guilt or the motivation that I ascribed to them. Have you ever had that happen? Which is really shocking, by the way, when you've said, "Well you did this and this is why you did it, and that is so wrong and here's the punishment for you doing that." And then a little later you realize, well oh, this is actually why they did this and they're really... It's actually understandable, maybe even commendable, when taken in that light.
Well, so many parents, they do not feel as if it is proper. They actually feel it as if it is dangerous for them to have their verdicts questioned after the fact. They feel as if it's dangerous to allow their children to appeal because then the authority structure starts to suffer and there's cracks in the foundation and eventually it will crumble and we can't have that. We can't have the children thinking that they can question us at every turn. And I'm not suggesting that they do that. There is a proper way to make an appeal. And you need to teach your children how to do that but I want to urge you it is so important that your children know that they may always appeal, as long as it's proper. If they don't feel as if they can appeal, then you are going... because you're not perfect, because your vision is so narrow and so incomplete, you will miss things.
And in many situations, the only way that you can get a complete picture of what happened and why what happened happened is to listen to the testimony of your children. You see, you come into a situation, you weren't there when it happened, when the argument broke out, or when the accident took place, or what have you. You weren't there. And because you don't have time or because you're already stretched so thin, you want to make this very quick and you want to make it very clear cut. I mean how complex could it be, right? We're dealing with eight year olds here. And so you render your verdict and you move on with your life, but the only way you would really know is to hear them out. So give them an opportunity.
And sometimes when we're dealing with young children, they're not terribly capable at articulating exactly what happened. Sometimes you've just got to know your child. You've got to be a student of them. And they might say something that's very incriminating and you actually pick up on the fact, "Well, I don't think that's what you mean. I don't think that's actually what you did." And then you explain to them and maybe give them another chance. And they're like, "Oh, well, yeah, of course, you're right. That's not what I meant." So we don't have to be so quick to judge. We don't have to be so quick to dole out punishments. We want to arrive at the truth. And if the truth condemns them, then we want to be fair and just about that. And if the truth sets them free, we want to be fair and just about that.
Why do we want these things? Because we want to build trust in their lives. We want them, when they're 14, to be able to look back over the 14 years of their experience in our lives and see, my parents are fair and they're just and they love me and they want to arrive at the truth. They want what's best for me. Because you're not always right. And you should not treat your children as if their guilt is predetermined. Now I know that children are obviously capable of doing things that will make you pull your hair out and will push you to the nth degree. You know, it's the straw that broke the camel's back. It seems like they're throwing straw at you all day long. It's understandable. But you should not treat them as if their guilt is predetermined.
I mean, do we want our society to be run like that? Societies that have been run like that are absolute chaos and death. It's just a horrible scene of death and persecution and misery when we look at various nations that have been run that way—where the guilt is predetermined or you are guilty because we say that you're guilty. We want you to be guilty. You don't want your children to be guilty, folks. I know that it might make your life easier in the short term, to say, well you did it. No I didn't. Yes you did and here's what's going to happen and that's all we're going to say about it, and they try to make it appeal and you shut them up. Nope, you will not. No, you will not back talk me. This is the way it's going to be and we have to move on with it.
Okay, there might be rare instances in which you have to move on but again, as I said, they're rare. They should be rare. And if that's the case, your children should always feel as if they have an avenue of appeal. Maybe you're in a store and you do have to kind of shut things down and move on and wait until you get to a more favorable location or time when you can actually deal and determine what happened. Maybe when you get back in the car, maybe when you get back home. That's understandable, but your children need to have the confidence that you will follow up on it when you get back home. See, a lot of us will just be, "No, that's it, it's over, I don't have time for this, we're moving on." And the children in that moment, the child learns that they do not have an avenue of appeal. There's really no use. And if I try, it'll just make matters worse. It will make my parent more upset at me than what they are already, and so, what's the point?
And then one of the most terrible things that can happen in a parent-child relationship begins to take form, and that is that your children purposely begin to withhold information from you. And you thought you were blind before, now you're really blind. You have got to watch out for that. You need them to talk freely with you. Now sometimes they're going to make an appeal and the answer is still no. "No, I appreciate your appeal, but I still believe, you know, based on what I've heard and what I know and what I've seen and all these things, I still believe that this is the best course, that there does need to be a punishment, there needs to be a consequence of some sort, this is how we're going to do that." But hopefully they could see that you're doing the best that you can with what information that's before you. You tried.
And if at a later date some more information or evidence comes forward and you can say, "You know what? I didn't know that and so that changes things and so we're gonna rectify it in this way." Okay. At least they know that you're being fair and that you'll listen to them. And you're always talking to them to arrive at the truth. Now, you can go too far with this. But they need to know that your heart is to arrive at the truth at all times. And whether that truth, again, condemns them or it sets them free, the important thing is the truth. And you're not predisposed to condemn them the majority of the time.
So are you talking to your children? A good way to tell whether or not you're talking to your children is to ask yourself the question and answer the question, are they talking to you? And again I'm going to stress this for you parents, it is so critically important. You must be talking to them, they must be talking to you. You can't force them. You cannot force this. This is something that is engendered, it's something that is fostered. It's something that starts, again, from the earliest age, before they are born, when they are infants, when they are toddlers, when they're young children, certainly when they grow into their teenage years. You cannot start this when they're teens. Because whether they know it or not, they are almost constantly asking themselves the question, do my parents trust me? Do they love me? Is it of the utmost importance to them that they arrive at the truth? Will they listen to me? Do they respect my views or my thoughts or the goings on in my heart and in my mind. Are they even interested in any of that?
And so if they can answer "yes" to those questions all throughout their life when they arrive to 13, 14, 15, then they're going to be much more likely to be talking to you. And goodness gracious folks, I cannot stress this enought—they have to be talking to you at those ages. The things that are going on in their lives at that age, it's just cataclysmic. There's so much stuff is being thrown at them. They're becoming more and more self-aware day by day. The temptations are growing exponentially more powerful as the days go on. And they're trying to find their place in the world and they need some guidance. They need a lot of guidance. Where else are they going to find that guidance? They're going to find it on the internet? They're going to find it from their friends? They will find it on the internet and from their friends. By heaven, it ought to be counterbalanced with the guidance that you are providing for them, because no one should be more vested in their success than you are.
And that counsel and that guidance that they're receiving from you needs to be informed by the Holy Spirit. As you are walking with your Heavenly Father, he needs to be informing you and talking to you and helping you in the work of guiding your children. So they should have no better advocate than what they find in you. You're building for the future. Every day that you do this, every day that you show yourself willing to talk to your children, you're building for the future. And you're going to have to sacrifice quite a bit of time, you're going to have to sacrifice quite a bit of your own wants and desires in order to bring this about, but if you will do this right when they're young, you will be so glad that you did it when they're older. So very thankful.
But when you have a young person who's unwilling to come and to talk to you or that actually does not trust you or despises your opinion and your counsel, that's a sad state of affairs and you won't know which way to turn. Now, all hope is not lost in those instances. You can continue praying to God because it is still the case, it is still true, that your children, even in those instances, they know your voice. Even in those circumstances, they know the voice of their mother and of their father. It might just be a voice that has carried with it too much pain for too much time, but that doesn't mean that it can't be rectified. That doesn't mean that you can't turn that around. That doesn't mean that you can't go to them and say that you're sorry and show forth fruits of love and respect and of an increased desire to arrive at the truth, again, no matter what that truth may uncover or what it might communicate to them. But you can continue building for that future.
If you're starting at 15, there is still a future ahead and you can start at 15 building for that future. It's just going to be, it's going to be different. And in many cases, it's going to be much more difficult because there's a lot of water that's gone under that bridge. But it's not too late. You still have hope. So your children should feel as if they have an avenue of appeal. Now as I said earlier, that does not mean that they should feel free to back talk or to question your every decision. What that means is that they should feel free to share with you what actually happened or what they believe actually happened the way that they see it. Now when you have sat before all of the facts as they've been presented to you and you've "rendered a verdict," that does not mean that they can question or challenge or protest or throw a fit right there on the floor on account of the verdict. That doesn't mean that, because as you are their advocate, you should also be their authority. And you have to balance those two things. You have to keep those two things in mind.
You're not just their friend, but you're not just also their emperor. You're their authority figure. You're also their advocate. And what you'll find in a lot of households is one parent represents one of those figures and the other represents the other. And so you will balance each other out. Hopefully you're balancing each other out. You're not fighting against each other. But it's not just that both of those individuals should be represented within a household. Both of those figures should be represented within you. There are times when we lean towards advocacy and we need more authority in our interactions with our children and contrary wise, it's often the case with fathers, they lean towards authority and they need more advocacy in their relationship with their children. We need to find that balance in our lives.
And in so doing, we find that there's a lot more trust that is engendered in our relationship with our children and that's most beautiful thing. It's the most helpful, useful, profitable, just effective thing (effective principle or I don't know I'm trying to think what else to call it) that you could rely upon or call upon in later years in order to foster a stronger relationship with your children so that you can remain their authority figure and their advocate. When they're 16 and they're going through a tough bout with, you know, any number of things folks, they need an advocate. They need someone that they can turn to more than ever. Someone that they feel as if they could lay the facts of their life as they see them before another and ask for assistance in arranging those facts in a proper order or interpreting them correctly. And then counseling them as to what direction they should go. They need that and they're gonna need that even long after they've left your house when they're 40.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if your children had the confidence that if they were going through a trial or a struggle or had a serious question that they were just having difficulty answering that you're just a phone call away? They could pick up the phone and call their mother or their father and counsel with them over a certain matter? Isn't that what you want? Isn't that the hope that you have for your relationship with your children? I hope that it is. So these are just very simple thoughts about talking to your children. Whatever the age is of your children now, you have multiple ages, whatever it might be, start now. Start now. If you've just had children, or if you haven't had children, and maybe you're expecting, start now. Start talking to your children, that they might know the sound of your voice. And that goes for the mother and the father. And if they're just very little, start talking now. If you have teenagers and you don't feel as if you've done a terribly good job of this, it's not too late. Start today. Start talking to them. Start making your own appeals to their hearts.
And helping them to recognize something that they probably already know, but that might to some degree be suppressed and that is that you love them. Even if you failed in this area, and we all do to some degree, I think that though they may have their doubts concerning the quality of that love, they still know that you love them. And so let your testimony rest on the laurels of that love. Appeal to them on the basis of that love and start talking to them today and start building that relationship of trust so that they might be able to lean on that in the days to come.
So thank you for your time and attention today. God bless you, each and every one. If you all are in any of the areas where there's a GHC convention coming up this year, we would love to see you. Come by our booth at The Well Ordered Homeschool or Chalk Full of Design. Just look it up online to see if there's one in your neck of the woods and oftentimes people travel from hundreds of miles away just to come to one of these conventions. We'd love to see you. Stop by our booth and say hello and we look forward to talking to you and also talking to you again very soon. So, goodbye.
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. 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.
