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Chapter 6 Alabama Seminar

By Michael Pearl

Transcription

[music]

Announcer:  How do you teach your children to deal with life and know its meaning? Mike shares the rest of his 12 basic keys to parenting.

Michael Pearl:  The fifth one is communication. Communication is what society is built on. One person by himself doesn't communicate. You get two people together and they have to communicate. To work together you communicate. The Tower of Babel was about communication. When you cut off communication, you cut off unity. When God came into the garden after Adam and Eve sinned, he said, "Where art thou?" That was God's attempt to open a dialog, a communication. "Why have you done this?" That was an attempt to open dialog and make them reflect. "Who told you you were naked?" That was an attempt to open dialog and cause them to think and reason. That's communication.

All social order is built on communication. Interpersonal relationships are built on communication. Communication is essential for intellectual growth and emotional and moral development. All schooling is communication. All home life is communication.

Children that are not objects of communication, children that you don't talk to, read to, smile at, pray with, children that are not part of communication become incommunicative. They come to the place where they are closed up. They won't talk. They won't communicate. They're just emulating you.

The sixth thing is time. Spend time. We've talked about that, about the need, how it takes time out of your busy life to raise children.

The seventh thing is boundaries, and we've talked some about that. Life is built on the concept of boundaries. Chemistry has boundaries. You mix the wrong chemicals in your washing machine and breathe the gas, it will kill you. You mix the wrong chemicals cleaning your commode, breathe the gas, and you'll die.

There are boundaries when you drive your car. That's what that line down the middle of the road is. That's a boundary. You stay on your side. They stay on their side. Everybody gets there. You cross the line, somebody's dead or in the hospital. That's a boundary.

All the physical world is built on boundaries. Gravity is a boundary. Now, in the social and moral, metaphysical world there are boundaries. And when you violate those boundaries, there are social, moral consequences.

And if you raise your kid with the idea that "I'm just going to kind of keep my hands off and I'm going to let him develop himself." [laughs] "He's going to learn to express himself," what you're communicating is that there are no boundaries except the ones that are convenient for your gratification. That's totally the wrong message about life. That's non-reality. That's communicating chaos.

What you have to cause your child to understand is that there are boundaries. The Ten Commandments are boundaries. The message of the Bible is about boundaries. The laws of this land are boundaries. Laws in schools are boundaries. A home life has its boundaries. Personal relationships have their boundaries.

And you have to communicate those boundaries to a child and then you have to—this is important—you have to enforce obedience to those boundaries if that child is going to mature socially, mentally, and morally.

And if you do not enforce those boundaries, you're communicating a lie. You're saying, "There is no final judgment." You're saying, if you don't enforce those boundaries, "There is no right and wrong." And ultimately—listen to this, parent—as a Christian you’re saying, "There is no heaven and hell."

And if a child is going to understand there is a hell, that there is a day of judgment, there has to be a Great White Throne every day right there in the home, or judgment seat of Christ, as you'd have it. Right there, every day in the house. And it has to be as certain as the law of the Medes and the Persians, which faileth not.

The kids have to know that you respond to boundaries. Mother, if your husband gives you boundaries, and when he's gone, you say, "Daddy won't know it. Daddy won't see it," you're saying there are no boundaries. You only have to do that about twice in a kid's youth.

Daddy says, "You can't play with Barbie dolls." We're visiting a friend's house. “She's got Barbie dolls. Can I play with her Barbie dolls? Well, Daddy said I couldn't.” What do you say? “Well, we just won't tell Daddy this time.”
What you just did is you just undermined all authority in that child's life, now and forever. Because that child, at any point in the future, when you're not there and another kid says, "Do it," she'll say, "Well, we just won't tell Mamma." That's an acceptable way to live. You just taught here that. She'll always remember it. She'll live by it the rest of her life, unless she gets born again and decides to make a commitment not to, then she'll struggle against it. All you have to do is, just one or two times, communicate to your child that it's all right to break a boundary, if you're not seen and you've fouled up.

Eighth thing is structure. Structure relieves boredom. If a child's life has no structure, they're going to be bored, disorganized and they're going to learn to go through life by passion and whim and desire. If it tickles here or tickles there.

There must be a structure. Structure gives a child a sense of security. It minimizes their stress. That doesn't mean you have to structure out creativity. What you do, you structure in creativity. In other words, you have a schedule. You get up. You clean your room. We eat. We wash dishes. We'll have an hour here of fun schooling or something. We're going to do some housework. In the afternoon, you've got two hours here that you can play and do this. We're going to do a little yard work. You've got two hours, three hours in the evening, you'll play. And then Daddy comes home. We eat dinner. We wash dishes. After we wash the dishes, then we're going to read. Daddy's going to read to us. We're going to play. We're going to go in here and we're going to do this and that. Finally, we go to bed about nine o'clock every night or whatever.

You don't have to stick to it perfectly, but that child needs structure. What structure does, it says . . . if you don't have some structure, then you're not going to do the painful thing. You're not going to do the unwanted thing. If you don't have structure, you're not going to wash the dishes. You're going to let them pile up. You're not going to cook. You're going to just eat junk food.

If you don't have some structure, you're not going to wash your clothes. You're not going to clean your house. You're going to end up living in a garbage dump. You're going to be lazy if you don't have structure. Structure says, “Okay, it's time to do that. I don't want to do it. I'd rather be doing something else, but it's time to do it so I'm going to do it.” And you learn to do what you don't want to do. A child needs some structure.

They need to be given those boundaries that discipline told us, “It's time to do it. It ought to be done. Let's do it. It doesn't matter how we feel.” Once a child falls into that habit of structure, life is a lot more secure for them than it is when they don't know what you're going to do next, and all of a sudden out of the blue you say, "Clean the room up." "Clean the room up? I don't want to clean the room up."

If they cleaned their room up every day, they'd never say, "I don't want to clean the room up." It's the time to clean the room up. There's nothing else to do in this hour but clean the room up. We just finished breakfast, you clean your room up. They need that structure.
Now, I've seen some people that structure life out of . . . you know, that's not necessary. But some form of structure that causes the child to do what's not pleasant, but do it every day, is valuable for all future living.
Then the ninth of twelve things is belonging. It gives the child a sense of history and perspective to belong to a group, to belong to a people, a society, to be an Alabamian, to be from this town, to be from this church or whatever church you're from, to be a part of that family that you are. Like my kids say, "We're Pearls," and that's important to them. They're Pearls. To belong to something; it makes you accountable.

The greatest sin in the United States, or in those cities that are made up of people who weren't born and raised there, who drifted, that's where people sin the most. The most stability and the highest rate of morality is found in towns where the people have lived there for several generations. Why? Because they're all accountable to each other. There's great sense of pride.

I'm from the Midwest. My heritage is from Sweden, and we eat cheese. All of our women are fat and got rosy, pink cheeks. All of us men were big.

I was up there preaching—I'm kind of big myself, 6' 4½", 240—but I was up there in Minnesota around Thief River Falls, and I stood up to some guys I had to look up to. And I had to look twice, like that, to get to see their width. Man, there were some big guys up there, bad-looking dudes! They ought to have a John Deere sticker right across their chest like that and have a beeper when they back up. I mean, these guys could pull a 30-foot wide disk. It's something else, and big ole women, too, pretty good-looking gals.

They've got a sense of pride. You talk to them, they're just like a bunch of South Texans that have been living down there all their life around some ranch, or just like a bunch of Kentuckians up there in the hills. They say, "That's who we are. That's where we're from." A child needs that sense of belonging, that sense of history, a sense of who I am and what's expected of me in my position.

Then a child needs modeling. In other words, they need you to be an example. That's the tenth thing.

The eleventh thing is a child needs problem-solving skills, emergency management, how to deal with crises. When you see a child fall down and not get hurt and start screaming hysterically, the parents have taught the child to scream that way.

We've taught some of the people in our church, and they've learned to do that, and it amazes other people. But you'll have a little two-year-old girl out there, and she'll be playing on a little . . . we've got this little coil spring off an automobile with a little elephant welded on the top of it. You get that thing going like that and every once in a while it will throw you off—wheeee—like that. A little light kid, they get that thing bopping and it'll just fling them off somewhere.

A little girl, she'll go fall over here and bang on her head like that and get up and have a little strawberry on her head. The mother will be right there playing volleyball. She'll go oh . . . ow . . . and get back on that thing again. Why? Because if she did go to mother and say, "Oh, I'm hurt," mother would say, "Yeah, that's what happens when you play on elephants." Why? Because she doesn't need medical treatment. The mother's not going to teach her that you get Mama's attention by hurting yourself. Why? Because she'll hurt herself all her life just to get attention. So you just ignore little things. You make them tough. We've got some tough little girls in our church.

My girls, they'd come in and I'd notice them kind of limping. They wouldn't say anything about it. They'd come in, and they'd go like that. We'd eat supper, and they'd do the dishes and finally sit down for the evening. “Ohh, uhh.” They'd sit down like that. I'd say, "Why are you so stiff?" and they’d say, "Well, we were playing on the rocks today, and I slid off."

I said, "Whoa, that makes me sick looking at it. Oh, man." And you got these red . . . and it's all scraped all the way down and the blood's all dried on it, looks horrible. My twelve-year-old girl, she didn't even bother to tell me. [laughs] Tough, man. Tough as an old Marine. That's the way you want them.

You say, “I'm not like that, I got a big heart.” You're doing that for yourself, not for your kids. You like to run over and hug them, and it makes you feel good because you're wanted. I can appreciate that. But it won't do your kid any good.

You need to teach them problem solving, how to deal with emergencies. My daughter, when she was 14, saved a boy older than her from drowning last year. Pulled him out, swift current, didn't even bother to tell me till the next day.

Teach them how to deal with emergencies, how to deal with frustrations, how to deal with disappointments. When they think they're going to get to go with all the guys out, when my daughter . . . My brother says he's going to take her with him to volleyball to Nashville and she's planning and at the last minute he says, "Look, I'm sorry, but so-and-so, I told him last week and he told me he wasn't going, but he says he is, and there's not room now." Okay. Without pouting, without throwing a fit. How do you deal with that, Mother? You're teaching your kids how to deal with problems.

Final thing, the twelfth one. This is very important. This is the final end as a Christian. We want to teach our kids, and this is a parenting essential for Christians, to teach them the meaning of life. Teach them the meaning of life—why you're here on this earth. You're here to glorify God and bless your fellow man. You're here to give, to minister, to care, to sacrifice for the good of other people. You're here to reflect the image of God, the character of Jesus Christ, and to glorify Him, and if you don't do that, your life is a failure.

If you make money, if you're successful, if you're a great musician, if you're great in fishing, hunting, or whatever else you do, or you're great on a computer—if you don't reflect the image and the glory of God, then you're nothing. Your life is a waste.

If you're a good person, emotionally sound person, capable individual, but you don't reflect Jesus Christ and don't glorify God in your life every day and express that to other people, minister that to other people, then you don't count. Your life is a waste. And folks that starts by involving your children in ministry with you, so they see that's what your life has been about, giving the gospel to other people, ministering to the sick.

My kids have been in the living room when a girl comes in, knocks on the door. We hadn't seen her in about three years. She comes in like this—you didn't know I could do that, did you?—she comes in like this. She says, "I need to talk to you, Mrs. Pearl." Deb says, "Come on over and sit down." She goes over, sits down. Deb says to the girls (hand motion) and they clear out. It gets quiet and Deb talks to her awhile and she leaves.

They come back in. They know Deb is going to explain it to them. She says, "Do you remember back when she was 14? Do you remember how she was? Remember how Daddy told the boys not to be around her any? Remember how he told her she was . . . going to be some trouble? Well, she's in trouble now. Here's what happened.

She was a rat. She came from the rat family. She's the one shacked up with a rat. She was the one in the little house with the slat boards and the cold coming in. No sewage, no plumbing, no insulation, no furniture. It was an out building, a little shed, a wood shed that she lived in with the man she shacked up with at 15, 16 years old. Now she's pregnant.

Then Deb goes there and she walks down a muddy path. She crosses a ditch. She opens a door like you'd have on an outhouse, and she steps in. She's down there on the floor on some blankets having pains. Deb delivers her baby right there inside that little shack with cold weather coming through, and then brings her home and moves one of the girls out of the bedroom and puts her in the bed and ministers to her for several days.

The girls come in and they see that we love sinners. We minister to sinners. And they see her come back for . . . to take care of the baby, you know, look the baby over, take care of her, and minister to her and her live-in. Then they get married later, and we work with them. Then they get divorced. She runs off. She shacks up with somebody else.

He comes over. He's gotten saved now. She hadn't. He was the last one I'd thought gotten saved. He's broken hearted. He prays for about six months for her to get back with him. She doesn't. She marries again. He goes on in the faith. Every once in a while he drops in. The kids are there. They hear him talk.

They know what life's about. They know there's consequences to sin. They know God saves souls and changes lives. God may save her one day. They'll see it. They may be around to witness to that little kid that was born. They'll see that kid get saved.

Their life has been built around ministering to other people and seeing those sinners face-to-face, and talking with them, and going to their homes, and them coming to our home. They've seen that that is the purpose of life.

That's what kids need. They need a purpose. That's why my daughter went with my son to a mission field in Papua New Guinea when she was 21 years old, lived on a mountain by herself in a primitive tribe for two years.That's why she's in Israel right now working with people from all over the world in every language. You come there to stay in a hostel and giving them the gospel and ministering to them.

That's the final step. The final thing that children need is a perspective on why I'm here. Who am I? What's my purpose? What's the purpose in life?

Announcer:  As always, we hope you were blessed by what you've heard today. And again, remember to check out our great weekly online specials.

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