Transcription
[intro music]
Debi Pearl: Papa and I are going to record, so y'all go ahead and shut the door. [door closing]
Child 1: Where's the stick? I'm playing fetch with Max.
Child 2: Here's a stick. Throw it really far. [giggling]
Announcer: Many parents struggle with anger even though they already know that it just isn't helpful to their children. Here's how the Pearls helped one frustrated family.
Michael Pearl: Now, the first part of her letter, she said...By the way, when Deb reads these letters, she leaves out the names of the people and she leaves out the ages, and we leave out the hometown quite often because we don't want all your neighbors and friends to be calling you up and saying, "I heard your letter on Mailbox Number Three." It might be embarrassing in some cases. We leave off that information that might be able to be traced back to you. Anyway, this mother says, calls her son's name, "is now getting to be disobedient, but we're really trying to be consistent." Now, I put a yellow marker on that here in the letter, "trying to be consistent. It seems to be so hard for me," I put a yellow mark under the word hard, and, "every once in a while, I get angrier than I should."
I underlined angrier. "I've prayed and prayed, but I just can't seem to get rid of the anger I feel when they do something they know they aren't' supposed to do. How can I know if I'm expecting too much?" The keywords that jump out at me here are trying to be consistent, hard for me, angrier than I should, expecting too much.
I see some frustration here in this mother. I see a lack of control. She has a desire to be gentle, to be kind, to be firm, but she's not any of those things really. In other words, she's basically out of control. It's her own emotions, her own responses that are giving her trouble here. We just dealt with a letter where a woman said her anger went away, her loud response went away immediately.
I pointed out to you that sometimes where it's strictly a matter of technique that once a parent learns the proper technique, the anger disappears. In other cases a person's anger stems from their own emotional or spiritual state. That anger is not dealt with just by applying proper technique. Even if the children were ideal, there would still be anger on the part of that parent.
She says, "I'm trying to be consistent." I want to point out to you that trying to be consistent may be commendable on your part, but it won't do your children any good. Consistency is what they require, and trying to be consistent is not enough. This mother needs a firm conviction of the dire need to be consistent. These children need that.
You need to put away your emotional state and do what's right for the children. She says, "It seems to be so hard for me." Obviously, there's some motivation or inner drive in this mother that makes it a conflict when she seeks to be consistent, seeks to be gentle, something in her drives her out of control. It sounds a whole lot like Roman seven. Every once in a while, I get angrier than I should.
Well, you shouldn't get angry at all. Seldom, maybe once a year, does a child do something that requires, calls for real anger on the part of the parent. Jesus looked around about them with anger, the Bible tells us. That was an unusual circumstance. It was a circumstance that required anger, and small children, especially, seldom do anything that should ever evoke anger on the part of the parent.
That anger, I believe, is coming from within and not actually something caused by the children's actions. Now if you find yourself in that place, to where you are angrier than you know you should be, and you try not to be angry, and you're still angry, and you've applied proper teaching techniques and still the anger boils up, I would ask you do you also get angry with your husband?
Do you get angry with the circumstances. Do you get angry when you drive? Do you get angry at church, relating to other people? Is that anger across the board. I suspect that you will answer yes, that it is. He says I've prayed and prayed. Praying and praying is not going to get rid of the anger. You need to face the selfish motives or selfish drives of the hurt, of the bitterness that you have inside and repent of it.
Turn from it. Renounce it. Then when you come to god, accept the fact that you are, in fact, if you're god's child, that you have been crucified, you're dead, you're buried, you're alive to god, and you're free from that anger. That's part of the old man. Now it says, "how can I know if I'm expecting too much?" [sighs] You can't expect too much of a child if your expectations are realistic.
In other words, we expect our children to be perfect. We expect them to always obey. We expect them to be kind and gentle, and pure in heart and spirit. We expect them to be perfect. We're not going to accept anything less than that. None of us are.
Now we also realistically face the fact that none of us actually have perfect kids. Just as god expect us to be perfect, and we expect of ourselves perfection, we expect it from our kids. Realistically, we don't expect too much, but if we're...if when we're not satisfied, for instance, when our child fails, if our expectations causes us to be angry, that's not our place.
If our expectations to cause us to break down in a relationship with our children, then it's not really an issue of expecting too much. It's an issue of our own personal response, which goes back to the anger thing that's got to be dealt with. So we don't want to lower our expectations. Actually, that wouldn't cause you to stop being angry. If you lowered your expectations, you would still be angry.
So the problem, really, there is anger, and that's got to be dealt with. Romans chapter seven and chapter eight would be the heart of dealing with anger, I would think.
Announcer: Well, that wraps up this week's archives. We hope that you've found it as encouraging as we did. Don't forget to check out the specials at Cane Creek Corner.
[outro music]
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I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth. 3 John 4
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So is the crux of the matter to reject the behaviors of the past and to get up and walk on. I'm imagining it's like a child running down the road of life, and she falls. She has two choices as God's child: 1. sit and cry and wait for someone to come by and pick her up or 2. get up and start running again, keeping her eyes on the prize. If she should stumble again, she is faced with the same two choices. Basically there is no magic bullet, just determination and a will to succeed in the things of God.