Parenting Styles

SERMON: 2010-05-23--g0310--parenting-styles SOURCE DURATION: 00:39:31.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 2 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The material begins with the continuation of a sermon from a previous week and concludes with theological exposition/scripture reading, indicating continuous main sermon content throughout. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the start and end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:03:28.920-00:07:24.420, 00:35:50.780-00:39:29.900 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: start, end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:00:00.000; remove through 00:07:24.420] [CUT] Well, I want to pick up this morning where we left off last week. And last week we looked together at the first two of three factors that family systems specialists tell us separate healthy families from unhealthy. The first one that we looked at last week is that the parental coalition must be primary. That is to say, the primary relationship ought to be between husband and wife. And this relationship must not be broken by any other thing or any other relationship, including grandparents, children, friends, work, hobbies, drugs, or alcohol. As we'll see later on, Lord willing, one of the characteristics of unhealthy families is that that parental coalition is not primary. The primary coalition is with somebody or something else that sets in motion a whole series of factors which can bear very bad fruit in the lives of offspring. The second thing then that we looked at last week is this thing called the separateness relatedness dialectic must be kept in balance. And I explained that dialectic means opposing forces and how in every nuclear family, every child lives with two opposing forces, the desire to be related or connected and the desire to be separate or to be your own person. And in a healthy family, there is a healthy balance where the child begins with close connection and bonding with a parent, laying the foundation for separateness, being one's own person, being able to leave home. That's what the Bible means when it says a man shall leave his father and his mother, cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one. And the story that Karen and Jim shared this morning is a good example that if that bonding does not take place very early in life, you grow up lacking the security, the ability to be your own person and to contribute to a relationship. And that's when life begins to spiral down very quickly. And that then brings us this morning to the third principle that family systems specialists tell us are important for healthy families, and that is a thing called parenting styles. And before we look at that more closely, I have a little four-minute video that I want to show you based on the song "Cats in the Cradle." Do any of you remember that song? Written back in 1974 by Harry Chapin. It was the only number one song that he ever had, but it's a fascinating description of how children end up imitating their parents not always in a good way. So take a look at this and then we'll come back and we'll talk in more detail about parenting styles. My child arrived just the other day, came to the world in the usual way, but there were planes to catch and bills to pay. He learned to walk while I was away. He was talking for a minute and was so cool. He said, "I'm gonna be like you, Dad. I'm gonna be like you." And the cats in the cradle and the silver spoon, little boy blue and the man on the moon. When you're coming home, son, I don't know when we'll get together then. You know we'll have a good time then. Well, my son turned ten just the other day, came to the world in the usual way, but there were planes to catch and bills to pay. He learned to walk while I was away. He was talking for a minute and was so cool. He was talking for a minute and was so cool. He was talking for a minute and was so cool. He was talking for a minute and was so cool. He was talking for a minute and was so cool. He was talking for a minute and was so cool. He was talking for a minute and was so cool. He was talking for a minute and was so cool. He was talking for a minute and was so cool. He was talking for a minute and was so cool. He was talking for a minute and was so cool. He was talking for a minute and was so cool. He was talking for a minute and was so cool. He was talking for a minute and was so cool. 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He was talking for a minute and was so cool. He was talking for a minute and was so cool. He was talking for a minute and was so cool. He was talking for a minute and was so cool [CUT]. [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:07:24.420; resume after this marked segment] Quite a song, isn't it? But it embodies a significant truth about the importance of our parenting style, even when we don't think about it very much. Well, it was back in 1994 that Statistics Canada and Human Resources and Social Development Canada undertook the most comprehensive study ever of children and youth in Canada. The study is called the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, and it is a long-term study of Canadian children that follows their development and well-being from birth to early childhood. The study is designed to collect information about factors influencing a child's social, emotional, and behavioral development, and to monitor the impact of these factors on the child's development over time. The survey began studying 22,000 children. It is now in its seventh cycle. They do it every second year, and it now involves 37,000 kids all across this country. Their conclusions are interesting as they are enlightening, particularly as they relate to parenting styles. In the time that remains this morning, allow me to run those conclusions by you as quickly as I can. The first conclusion is that parenting style is the single most important factor in how well a child turns out. Very interesting, profoundly significant. Parenting style is more important than any other single factor, including geographical location, religion, race, or socioeconomic background. That's their first conclusion. The second conclusion is that they identify four primary parenting styles, and those parenting styles are permissive, permissive irrational, authoritarian, and authoritative. Let me talk just briefly about each one of those. Permissive, and I talk about this in more detail in my book Blessings and Curses, permissive they define as overly nurturing, providing few standards, and having an extreme tolerance for misbehavior. 25% of Canadian families place themselves in this category. Permissive irrational means permissive without rhyme or reason. Such are people that should not be parents at all because they're really pretty crazy, and as we'll see in a few moments, they turn out very crazy children. 15% of the Canadian population describes themselves as permissive irrational. Authoritarian they define as being highly controlling, lacking in warmth and responsiveness, and setting unbending rules. 25% of families place themselves in this category. And then authoritative is defined as warm and nurturing, setting firm limits on their children's behavior and allowing them to participate in family decisions. And 34% of the Canadian population place themselves in this category. Here is still another way of looking at it. You'll notice that on this particular graph, you have the vertical line and you have the horizontal line. The vertical line varies from high control with lots of rules to low control and not many rules. And the horizontal line from low support, not much of a relationship, to high support and lots of relationship. That automatically divides then into four quadrants, each of which represents one of these parenting styles. And you'll notice that down here is permissive, high support, lots of relationships, but low control and not many rules. That produces a permissive parenting style. Not much relationship, low support, low control, not many rules. That produces the irrational, permissive, sometimes described as neglectful parenting style, parents who just really don't mind their kids and they pay no attention to them. So low support, not much relationship, but high control, lots of rules produces an authoritarian style. And then high control, lots of rules, high support, lots of relationship. That produces authoritative parenting style. Now let's do a little test. Which of those four parenting styles do you think statistically produces the healthiest kids? Let me take a little poll. We'll start with the least likely, irrational. Any supporters for irrational parents here? I'm so glad you're rational. How about permissive? How many support a permissive parenting style? Authoritarian. Any supporters for authoritarian style? Authoritative. Oh you're so well trained, I'm impressed. We shouldn't have one dysfunctional kid in this whole church with good parents like this. So that's the third conclusion that this particular report comes to. The authoritative parenting style produces by far the healthiest children. And again, let me show you statistically what that looks like. You'll notice that the permissive irrational parenting style produces the most brokenness in children. An astounding 43.5% of children raised in this kind of home have acting out problems. And when we talk about acting out problems, problems that are big enough to be measured and that are clearly evident to parents and to teachers and to friends, these are kids headed for disaster. Over low rules, low involvement, and low relationship. Tying almost for second place then are permissive and authoritarian. And authoritarian parents produce children who are described like this. These children are obedient and achieving, but they are also anxious and insecure. They comply with their parents out of fear. And by the time the child is of school age, this conflict with the authoritarian parent has been internalized. What was originally an interpersonal conflict becomes an internal conflict. These well behaved, insecure children become harsh, critical, and demanding towards themselves just as their parents have been with them. Many of these offspring will seek therapy as adults presenting with symptoms of guilt, depression, unassertiveness, anxiety, and low self-esteem. Lots of rules, but not a good relationship. Parents who don't explain the rules to their kids, who have high demands, but who leave the kids struggling. Now permissive parents, those children will also have adjustment problems, but their symptoms are different. They often learn that they can avoid the consequences of their own behavior by manipulating others. They learn that rules and limits do not apply to them, and they expect wishes to be gratified without delay. Which has found these children to be dependent, immature, demanding, and unhappy. They have little self-control, low frustration tolerances, and do poorly with their peers. As adults these offspring tend to be impulsive, to avoid taking responsibility for their own behavior, and as a result they are more likely to develop acting out disorders such as alcohol and substance abuse. They also tend to be more self-centered and demanding in relationships, and less capable of making commitments and following through on obligations. Now the healthiest kids, as demonstrated statistically, are children raised with authoritative parents. The authoritative parenting style produces the most healthy, well-adjusted children. Authoritative parents possess a wide range of parenting skills, and are able to combine firm discipline with nurturance. Although authoritative parents set and enforce firm limits, they also communicate with their children, they give reasons and explanations for the rules they set, and they will negotiate compromises and discuss alternatives with their children when appropriate. While authoritative parents expect responsible behavior from their children, they also provide physical affection and spoken approval. In short, authoritative parents combine the most effective features of the other parenting styles. They are nurturing parents who communicate with their children, but they are also firm disciplinarians who place high demands for maturity on children. And research has found that authoritative parents produce children who are independent, self-controlled, successful with peers, and who generally have a positive and happy attitude. Do any of you see your own kids or grandkids anywhere in those descriptions of children? Now the authoritative parenting style, that is to say strong rules but strong relationship, is of course the biblical norm. And that's why I find it fascinating that secular people who want nothing to do with scripture yet in surveying the human population, come up precisely with that same conclusion. And again to the scripture passage that we read a few moments ago, "Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. Fathers do not exasperate your children, instead bring them up in the training and the instruction of the Lord." Notice again that balance. Children honor your parents, but parents don't exasperate your children. Don't demand more of them than what they can perform or produce. Don't value their place in your life on the basis of what they can accomplish, and don't connect love in being loved with success or successful accomplishments. I was listening this past week to a snatch of Focus on the Family and Lisa Welch, a famous actress was on, and she was telling this story of how her life went askew at a very young age where she did a whole song and dance routine that was far above and beyond anything that she was expected to do, and everybody loved her. Father sat in the back beaming, and her mother clearly approved, and everybody was applauding, and written on her heart in that little episode was that if you want to be seen, and if you want to be loved, you got to do more than what is expected of you. And that set in motion a whole series of events in her life whereby she became a straight A student, she wrote numerous books, and became a marvelous actress and successful speaker until finally she had a nervous breakdown because she couldn't keep up the charade of always having to be the best. As we'll see later on, unless kids can be accepted for who they are and know that, they're going to start going in one direction or another because they are trying to find their roots and they're trying to find their life, and very often it is parents who do not have the primary coalition between husband and wife straight, and parents who don't understand the proper relatedness, separateness, dialectic that we've talked about who become parents who make demands on the lives of their children that will mess them up and mess them up badly. So of all the parenting styles, it is the authoritative parenting style that is the most effective, it's the most biblical, and yet in some ways the hardest for us to adhere to. Now let me make three additional observations that I think will be helpful for us to lay hold of. First of all, very few parents consistently follow one style or another. It would be wonderful that all of you who say that you buy into the authoritative parenting style would always have high control, lots of rules, high support, and lots of relationships, but you and I both know that's not always the way that it plays out at home, is it? There are days we're not in a very good mood. There are days we're lazy. There are days when we overreact. There are days kids can't get away with anything. There are days when sometimes we are permissive. There may even be days when sometimes we are irrationally permissive, and there certainly will be days when we pull authority and rank, and so we're inconsistent, and you might find it interesting to note that the study that I quoted earlier defines lack of consistency in parenting style to be as important as parenting style itself. Isn't that interesting? To go all over the map only teaches kids that what they do or what they don't do depends on learning how to study you and how to follow your moods. Good parents try as much as they can to be consistent in their parenting style, not playing one off over against the other, not saying yes today to what you said no to yesterday, not teaching the kids that if they whine long enough and put enough pressure on you, they'll get what they want. Yes is yes, and no is no, and what you're ultimately concerned about is the good of the child, not how you feel or what you want out of the relationship. Single parents, particularly in that area, need to be very careful, and the same thing is true for parents who are split up, it's very easy to want to be the good person in that relationship and not to be alienated from your child if you're too tough. But it's not about you, it's not about the love that you're going to get from the child, it's about what's good for the child that you need to step into by God's grace and by God's power. So very few parents are actually consistent in their parenting style. Secondly, not all kids respond to a parenting style the same way. If you look again for a moment at the chart that I just showed you here, you will notice that even the authoritative parenting style doesn't turn out perfect kids. You still have one out of five who was acting out behavior. Now it's a lot less than authoritarian and permissive, and certainly a lot less than permissive irrational, but no parenting style is guaranteed to turn out a kid who is a hundred percent right. And very often when you teach them this, parents will come to you and they will say, "Well, I raised all my kids the same way, but one turned out this way and the other turned out this way, and I have no idea why they turned out the way they did." There are many factors involved in that. Parenting style is only one. You deal with the kid's own makeup. You deal with the history that your child has gone through. Later on we'll see that in unhealthy families, kids will be slaughtered into particular roles where they can receive love and affection because of what the parents need. And so we need to understand that no parenting style ever produces perfect kids. That having been said, the more seriously we follow what God says in Scripture, the more we seek to receive His grace to be the best kind of parent that we can be, the more we can expect God's gracious presence. And you know, the beauty of grace, and I've often said this, if God's in it, you can do everything wrong and your kid will still turn out amazingly right. And if God's not in it, you can go by the book, do it all right, and your kid will still really mess up. That's why dedication and baptism services and community are so significant because we take our children, we lay them before the Lord, and we say, "Lord, you know that his parents were going to screw up here, there, or everywhere. The kids are going to make mistakes, the kids are going to sin, they're going to hide things from us, they're going to get into stuff that maybe we'll never know about until they're adults and maybe not even then. But Lord, you've got angels assigned to those little non-angels. And you just use the circumstances of life to work grace into their lives so that they will bend their knee before God. And here's where doting parents need to be really careful. Don't play divine providence in the lives of your children. Let God do what needs to happen in order for them to come to repentance and come to faith because at the end of time it will not have mattered how successful they have been in worldly eyes. What will matter is have they bent their knee before Jesus because he says, "As surely as I live," says the Lord, "before me every knee will bow." So use all the means of grace that God provides. Get them involved in community, get them involved in healthy relationships, and pray like crazy that God will just make himself real in the lives of your children and that he will protect them from things that will take them down the tube. One final comment then as we wind up this morning, and that is this, changing parenting styles is very difficult. You will have noticed that no matter how often you talk to parents about how to raise their kids and how many teachings they have sat through, people almost inevitably default into the parenting style that they are most comfortable with. Have you ever noticed that? The permissive people always go back to being permissive, the authoritarian people always pull rank, and the irrationally permissive, they're just crazy all the time. No matter how many times you help them, no matter how many times you point out the error of their ways, and how many times they nod their head and say, "Thank you," they just default back. Why? Because by the time you become a parent, your internal mechanisms are pretty well established and you view life through certain lenses, and you view your life through your own trauma, you view your life through your own experiences, the lack thereof or the good ones, and you will read them into the life of your child, and your own log in your eye will keep you from correctly seeing the splinter in the eye of your child. And so to change parenting styles, our internal default condition needs to be changed. Our hearts need to turn towards our children, we need to see what the real issues are in their lives, and we need to see our role in helping them grow up in the ways of God. And that's why it's so significant that today is Pentecost Sunday, because the only one who can do that is the Holy Spirit. And when you and I, by faith, are joined to Jesus, and He allows us to be parents, and we're willing to be taught, and we're willing to learn, then by His Word and through His Spirit, He will come along and He will first of all convict us of sin. A lot of people think that when the Holy Spirit comes along, His first job is to make you glad and happy and cheery. Well, He'll give you joy, but I'll tell you, long before you have joy, He'll rub your nose in places where things are not right. And one of the things that He does for those of us who are parents is He will open our eyes to the fact that our children are not the little angels that we like to think they are. And maybe, just maybe, we're not the perfect parents that we like to think we are. We are convicted not so that we can feel depressed and discouraged, but so that He can drive us to Jesus, because the second job of the Holy Spirit is to show us who Jesus is and to help us to understand that Jesus forgives our failures. Jesus will break the cycle of our brokenness, and He will teach us how to serve Him as we seek to obey Him. Michelle and I were raised in a very different family. She was raised in a family where I don't quite dare say it. Her parents were irrationally permissive. I, on the other hand, grew up in a family where my father did not believe in discipline at all. He was very softy, and if things went awry, my mother would give us the occasional slap, but there really wasn't a lot of structure, and so when we got together and we started talking about marriage and maybe one day having children, how are we going to raise our children? And one of the things that we did is we sat down with Scripture, and we said, "All right, if Scripture is a light to our path and a lamp to our feet, then Lord, what are You teaching us in Scripture about how we ought to be in marriage with one another and how we ought to be raising our children?" And so we lay aside our own experiences in that regard, good, bad, or indifferent, and we said, "Lord, this is what we want to be shaped by, and I'm sure that we haven't done a hundred percent perfect job. I'll let you judge that, but I'm grateful to this day that our default position could be replaced by the authority of Scripture, and if you've never done that, I suggest you do that, and if you don't know how to do that, get help, because the Holy Spirit not only convicts us of where we mess up, the Holy Spirit not only points us towards Jesus, but the Holy Spirit also works in us to change us from the inside out, and bad parents can become good parents, permissive parents can become authoritative parents, and parents who are pulling out their hair because they don't know what to do in a given situation can actually learn in the context of community how to help their children. God provides incredible resources even for kids who have been deeply broken. I mean, one of the ministries the Lord gives us in this congregation is to help people who were wounded very early in life and for whom that has shaped their whole world and life view. The Lord Jesus can go back. The Lord Jesus can take Sherri that we talked about earlier, and He can be a father to her in a place where she's fatherless. And those of you that are here this morning, you've been motherless, you've been fatherless, you've had a parent yourself, you've gone through life trying to figure it all out for yourself, and you've gone from one thing to another, Jesus said, "I won't leave you orphaned. I will come to you, I will live with you, and I will be a father to the fatherless." And so as we wind up today, let's just invite the Holy Spirit, who is after all the Spirit of Jesus and the Spirit of the Father, who is the perfect Father. Let's invite Him into our hearts, into our lives, into our families, trusting that as we will humble ourselves before Him, He will teach us, He will help us, and our kids, even [PROPOSED CUT 2 START at 00:35:50.780; remove through 00:39:31.000] in their imperfections, can [CUT] show the fruit of the gospel to the world. Lord, pour out your Spirit on all the peoples of the earth. Let your sons and daughters speak your words of prophecy. Let your vision and vision reveal the secrets of your heart. Lord, our faith is rising. Let all heavens sound the coming of your day. There's gonna be a great awakening. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. There's gonna be a great day. On all the nations of the earth. Let them see your glory. Let them fall in reverent awe. Show your mighty power. Shake the heavens and the earth. On all the nations of the world. Let them see your glory. Let them fall in reverent awe. Show your mighty power. Shake the heavens and the earth. On all the nations of the world. Let them see your glory. Let them fall in reverent awe. Show your mighty power. Shake the heavens and the earth. On all the nations of the world. Let them see your glory. Let them fall in reverent awe. Show your mighty power. Shake the heavens and the earth. On all the nations of the world. Let them see your glory. Let them fall in reverent awe. Show your mighty power. Shake the heavens and the earth. Lord the world is waiting. Let creation see the coming of our name. There's gonna be a greater way to be. There's gonna be a great divine hold in our hand. There's gonna be a great awakening. And everyone who calls on Jesus will be saved. There's gonna be a great awakening. There's gonna be a great divine hold in our hand. There's gonna be a great awakening. And everyone who calls on Jesus will be saved. And everyone who calls on Jesus will be saved. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 2 END at 00:39:31.000; resume after this marked segment]