TLP 155: How to Handle "I don't know.”

Is I don't know your children's favorite phrase? How does a Christian parent deal with I don't know? Today we're going to discuss five ways to respond when your kids just don't know. Welcome to Truth.

Love. Parents. Where we use God's Word to become intentional premeditated parents. Here's your host, AM Brewster.

Have you ever asked your children a simple question and received I don't know? No doubt some of you listening to my voice today are grieved by the fact that I don't know has become your child's go-to response and you're not sure how it happened, why it happened, or how to stop it from happening.

Well that's the topic of today's show and I pray that as we look into God's Word we'll find the answers our families need today. And I kind of feel like mixing things up today so instead of saving this for later I'm going to share it now.

On our next episode we're going to discuss concrete family talk. Avoiding misunderstanding, encouraging true understanding. I know it's a mouthful but isn't that the core issue of our family talk? We don't speak to each other inside the communication house so rarely does anyone have any good idea what anyone else is trying to say and so we relate to each other based on our own interpretations of reality instead of grounding our relationships and communication on solid fact.

I hope you'll join us for that next time and of course I want to encourage you to write and review the show on iTunes, Facebook, and whatever other director you may use. And if you review us on iTunes or Facebook I look forward to reading it on the show.

And don't forget that we are a listener-supported ministry. Even if it's just a one-time gift or a dollar a month we will do our best to steward it to God's honor and glory as we serve families all over the world.

What to Do When Your Child Says “I Don’t Know”

Okay, let's talk about why your kids don't seem to know anything these days. As I often do, let me start by explaining what this episode is not about. In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul says, I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven.

Whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know. God knows. And Psalm 26 1 commands us, Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring. There are an infinite number of things we and our children don't know.

When you ask them questions to which they don't have an answer, you need to expect an I don't know response. That's completely appropriate. So the larger question would be, how do you avoid asking your children questions they can't answer?

And that is a fantastic question. And though that's not the focus of today's discussion, I do want to give you some pointers. It is appropriate to have an understanding about what our kids know. Parents who have no idea what their kids understand are in danger of really being absentee parents.

Number one, this means that we have to be an observant parent on the one side, and two, it means we'll have to ask pointed questions on the other so that we really get what our kids get and we know what they know.

Most of you don't have to ask your children anything to realize they have no understanding of astrophysics. There are many questions we don't have to ask if we're just paying attention and using our brains.

Hopefully, this will reduce the number of times we need to ask questions to understand our children's knowledge base. And generally, if you're parenting well, we won't be offended or annoyed if they say, I don't know, to questions like that.

How do you change a tire? I don't know. Cool. Let me show you. What bothers us is when they reply that they don't know something, but we believe they do. For example, if last week I taught my daughter to change a tire and this week she tells me she doesn't know how, I'm going to struggle understanding that.

And that's the main focus of today's talk. But before we move on, most of us have to acknowledge that there have been very legitimate situations where we believed someone had an answer. They told us they didn't know the answer.

We felt annoyed or offended because we thought they were withholding the answer, and later we discovered that they legitimately didn't have the answer, and our response was plain and sinful. How do we keep from finding ourselves in situations like that?

Well, two more pointers. Number one, don't be arrogant. Yeah, I said it. It's really arrogant to be pridefully ignorant. Here I am. I don't have an answer, but I just know you have the answer. We don't like being out of control, so we latch onto any delusion that will give us a sense of that control.

The fact could be that I didn't teach my daughter how to change a tire very well. She could have been confused the whole time. Her ignorance about the issue may be my fault, but I don't want to accept that fact.

And number two, trust the Lord. Another symptom of being a control freak is that everything ends up being on our shoulders, but it's not. God's in control. He's the one who makes certain that people's sin find them out.

Perhaps my wife knew I was going to teach my daughter how to change the tire, and this week I'm gone, the tire needs changing, and my wife asks my daughter how to change it. My daughter says, I don't know.

And now my wife, believing my daughter's lying to her, flies into an impassioned tirade about how my daughter never listens, and now, when we need her the most, she's failed us. Unfortunately, in the midst of dismantling their relationship with their words, my wife learns that my daughter and I never got around to it because we ran out of time.

Too often in situations like this, we feel the need to catch our children in a lie so we fabricate our own reality, forgetting the fact that God knows, and He's much better at exposing sin. Now, please don't misunderstand.

I believe we parents need to help our children be honest, mature, and trustworthy, and this will often require us to call our kids shenanigans. My prior observations weren't given to say that we shouldn't drive to know the truth.

I was merely speaking to the attitude we should have while doing it. Alright, now let's jump into the real meat of today's topic. Here are five reasons kids say, I don't know. Number one, they genuinely don't know the answer, and we already talked about this one.

Number two, they forgot what they learned. I'm going to deal with this more when we discuss children and lying, but for now, I'll make the observation that this point is closely related to the fifth point, and I frequently deal with them the same way.

Number three, they're careless. Too often kids will start saying, I don't know, for other reasons, but once they've solidified the habit, it slips out brainlessly. Number four, they're spiritually blind.

Have you ever explained a spiritual concept and then not long after, your child sins in the same way, so you ask them to remember the previous lesson and they don't know what it is? 1 Corinthians 2 14 gives us one of the reasons this happens.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. And number five, it could just be that they're lying.

But since we rarely know which of those five reasons is the truth, I want to give you some practical ways of responding to your kids that will hopefully help them be less forgetful, careless, blind, and sinful.

Help Them Learn What They Don’t Know

Number one, if your children legitimately don't know the answer, you can equip them to learn it. In 1 Samuel 17 55 through 56, we read, As soon as Saul saw David go out against the Philistine, he said to Abner, the commander of the army, Abner, whose son is this youth?

And Abner said, As your soul lives, O king, I do not know. And the king said, Inquire whose son the boy is. I like how Saul wasn't offended or annoyed. He merely instructed Abner to do whatever it took to find the answer.

Now, there are some situations where our children won't have an answer and we won't want or need to give them one. For example, from time to time, the boys who live at my home at Victory Academy may say something inappropriate in the hearing of my children.

I may then pull my kids aside and ask if they heard what was said. If they say, No, I don't know, I say, Good, and I move on. Most of the time, though, if our kids don't have the answer, let's give it to them.

Remind Them When They’ve Forgotten

Number two, if your children should have known the answer, but they forgot, you need to remind them. There are a couple ways of doing this. It'll depend on the situation, your relationship with your child, their age, the context of their forgetfulness, etc.

But let me just give you a couple examples and a bonus thought. A. In John 14, 5 -7, Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way? Now, we know from Scripture that Jesus had taught his disciples these truths in many ways over many days.

They knew the answer, but had once again forgotten. And we see that Jesus didn't get annoyed, he merely retaught them. Jesus said to them, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on, you do know him and have seen him. We see Jesus reteaching them, but he also reminds them that this is something they should have known and that they have no excuse to forget in the future.

However, there's another way to address our children's forgetfulness. Letter B. In Matthew 23, 21 -27, we read, And when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching and said, By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?

Jesus answered them, I also will ask you one question, and if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man?

And they discussed it among themselves, saying, If we say from heaven, he will say to us, Why then did you not believe him? But if we say from man, we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet.

So they answered Jesus, We do not know. Now don't let this illustration with the scribes and elders confuse us. It's true they had nefarious goals, and one could argue that they were merely lying. However, this situation is akin to struggles our children face.

These priests and elders knew a lot, but they were uncertain which answer was the best. This is a version of forgetfulness, where they choose to not remember the best answer. This happens when our kids find themselves with a number of seemingly good answers, but no clear grasp of which is the best.

Instead of exerting some brain sweat, it's easier to claim ignorance. But look at how Jesus responds. He said to them, Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. Sometimes it's okay to provide our children the answers they should have remembered, and sometimes it's appropriate to require them to figure it out on their own.

I do this when I'm homeschooling my kids. I'll teach a concept, and if they forget the next day, I'll review it. But if that keeps happening, at some point I'm going to require the child to go back into the book and relearn it.

Now here's the bonus point. When my child was taught something and forget it, it's not really honest to say they don't know. They did know. They had it, and they kind of, in a way, have it in their brain.

Brain science has taught us, supposedly, that the brain doesn't forget anything. It's just a matter of retrieving it. It's appropriate to say, I forgot, but to say I don't know is actually false. Now this may seem like splitting hairs and straining at gnats, but as we'll discuss on our next episode, we need concrete family talk in our homes.

We need words that clearly and intelligibly communicate the reality of our hearts and lives. If I allow my children to excuse their forgetfulness by speaking as if they were never taught the material in the first place, I've basically given them permission to redefine reality.

And I think you'll agree that the communication styles in our world today are full of redefinitions and delusions. But like I said, I plan to discuss this more in detail when we talk about children and lying.

So moving on, we looked at what to do when our children legitimately don't know the answer, and we just discussed a couple ways of handling forgetfulness. Number three, if your children carelessly say they don't have the answer, you need to admonish them and discover the root of their habit.

In Matthew 12, 34 -37, Jesus said, Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.

I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. Now this is a huge doctrine that applies to a scary amount of things our children say.

This is why we must admonish them. To admonish is to instruct via warning. We talked about the Bible's uses of this word in episode four, Don't Lose Your Influence, and we extrapolated the ideas even more in my interview with Heath Lambert in episode 53, called Counseling and Parenting.

I would highly suggest you listen to those in chronological order. So if our children have fallen into the mindless habit of saying, I don't know, we need to admonish their careless speech because they will be held accountable for it, but we also need to dig down to the root of the issue.

In this context, carelessness grows from building a habit, but what motivated the habit in the first place? The answer is going to be one of the remaining four reasons kids say, I don't know. Perhaps people frequently ask them questions to which they didn't have the answers and they built the habit of saying, I don't know, because they rarely did, and by saying it they found themselves off the hook.

Perhaps they were very forgetful and built the habit that way. Maybe their spiritual blindness laid the foundation for their careless speech, and maybe they found themselves in a never-ending stream of lies that became a brainless response.

Either way, we need to work to discover the root so that we can parent it. This ties into our discussion of the Mirrors Christianity, which started in episode 95 and helps us answer the question, why do our children do what they do and say what they say?

We cannot glorify God in our parenting by being superficial. We've got to dig down to the roots in order to understand our children and help them mature in Christ. And this ties into our next point, which is number four, if your children are spiritually blind to the answer, you need to introduce them to Christ.

This point deals only with spiritual matters, okay? In Romans 8, 5 through 8, we read, Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.

For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot.

Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. And Proverbs 4, 19 teaches us that the way of the wicked is like deep darkness. They do not know over what they stumble. Can a lost person graduate with honors, start a business, get married, become a millionaire and live a seemingly peaceful life?

Sure, but they will do so as an enemy of God, and nothing they do will ultimately please him. What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul? Evangelism parenting is something about which we talk a lot on this show.

I work with boys every year who either know they're unsaved or believe they're followers of Christ when they're actually not. This is the largest and most important foundation stone of what I do with the at-risk teens here at Victory, and it's also the biggest thing we need to do with our own children.

As I said, we have many episodes that address this. If you know or are concerned that one or more of your children are unsaved, I want to point you to episode 45, the second most important question to ask your child, and then encourage you to listen to the 4 Children series that starts with episode 55.

Your children will never be able to truly understand and know spiritual truth until they have a relationship with Christ and are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Jesus teaches us the importance of the Holy Spirit in John 14, 26.

He says,. And then, whether our children are born again or not, sometimes they just say they don't know because they're lying. This is always a spiritual problem. So, number five, if your children lies about not knowing the answer, you need to admonish them and attempt to discover the truth.

I save this one for last because it's the harder one. And now we've made full circle. At the beginning, we discussed the fact that we are limited people who often have no idea what people know and don't know.

Therefore, whether you think your children may be lying or have conclusive evidence that they're lying, we must be certain that our motivation is God's glory. Like we discussed two episodes ago, our responses to such situations must achieve the purposes of God, not the purposes of man.

If we get all offended, we're sinning just as much as our children are. So, what do we do when our kids are lying? Well, there are many options. Here are the most common. A. If you already know the truth, you can make it easier for them to tell the truth by exposing the fact that you already know it.

Let's look at the first child to ever lie by saying, I don't know. In Genesis 4, 9 through 11, we read,. Then the Lord said to Cain, Where is Abel your brother? He said, I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?

And the Lord said, What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.

Notice that God knew the answer, and though he knew Cain was lying, he didn't get frustrated. He simply continued on as if Cain and he both knew the truth, because they did. As foolish as Cain was, at least he stopped lying about what happened to Abel.

He didn't try to deny that he killed him because Cain knew he was caught. Now, we have to be careful with this one. Again, in our ignorance and our arrogance, it's easy to believe we know exactly what happened.

When I say irrefutable evidence, though, I'm talking about video and audio recording type of evidence. Now, there's a lot to be said about the validity of two or more witnesses as well. But I tell you what, I've had to deal with so many different cases of lying here at Victory Academy.

And I've had so many people say they saw this and they heard this only to find out that their memory wasn't that good or they themselves were lying. And even in situations where maybe you've caught them on video, I've encountered many children who would lie as they saw themselves on the video doing what it is they're saying they didn't do.

At that point, the reality is that they and you both know what the truth is, and you can move on to the consequences for the original sin as well as the lie. And B, if you don't know the truth, but you suspect your child is lying, you need to admonish them and then let them know that you are going to work to discover the truth.

In situations like these, where I'm fairly certain I know what happened, I'll start with something like this. Listen, what I'm about to ask you is going to be hard. You're going to be tempted to lie because you're afraid of the consequences.

But you need to remember what God says about lying. Why would you take one bad choice and the potential consequences for that choice and make it worse by adding more? That's the admonishment. Now, if the child lies, I then let them know that I'm going to try to discover the truth.

There are a number of important steps to this. Number one, I let them know that I'm trusting God to reveal the truth. Their fight's with Him, not me. And He's a lot smarter and more competent than I. Numbers 32, 23 warns us, if you will not do so, behold, you have sinned against the Lord, and be sure your sin will find you out.

Number two, I tell them that the best person to reveal the truth is them. Even though they lied, the best thing to do is to apologize for the lie and speak truth. Ephesians 4, 25 says, therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.

Sometimes our kids think they need to stretch their lie to the bitter end. We need to make it easy for them to speak the truth. And three, I also explain that even if the Lord allows me to not discover the truth, and even if they think they've, quote unquote, gotten away with their lie, there are still consequences.

I teach them about primary and secondary consequences. Secondary consequences are the things about which our children are the most concerned. They don't want the groundings or spankings or timeouts, but they foolishly don't realize that those consequences are only necessary because of the broken relationship with God and their parents.

Those are the two greatest primary consequences. However, the third is this. When I sin against God, my relationship with him is affected, but I also make it easier to sin again in the future, further hurting my relationship with him and making it easier to continue down the same path.

Now, they may be spiritually blind and not care about the primary consequences, as long as they aren't grounded when it's all said and done. And that means we may need to revolve our priorities to evangelism parenting.

The final idea in all this is if you think your kids are lying, we have to remember that we are not God. We need to not be arrogant, and we need to trust him to reveal what needs to be revealed. Now, I'll have all these points neatly laid out for you on our blog, Taking Back the Family.

You can find the link in the description. You can also join the TLP family and receive an email every time we post to our blog. That way, you'll have access to the episode notes and other parenting resources when they come out.

And don't forget that you can impact your friends better than I can. When you share this episode, you're handing your friends a tool they may have never discovered without you. And if this show was helpful, but you have different questions or deeper questions, please reach out to us at counselor at truthloveparent .com.

Email counsel is always free, and we want to be the biggest blessing we can be. God wants us to parent our children as he would. Therefore, we need to be careful that we're not ignoring a much deeper issue in our children when they constantly revert to, I don't know.

So, we'll keep mining God's truth from God's Word next time. See you then.