TLP 604: How You Describe Your Kids Determines How You Parent Them

They were clearly afraid, they reduced the whole problem to one of superficial might, and they doubted the promises and commands

God had given them. Parenting isn't about us. In fact, parenting isn't even about our kids.

Parenting is just one way Christian dads and moms are to worship God. So welcome to the Truth, Love, Parent podcast, where we train dads and moms to give

God the preeminence in their parenting. Welcome back to the show. We're honored to have you join us today.

If you are new to the show, my name is Aaron, I'm a husband, father, and biblical family counselor, and I've had the privilege of hosting this podcast for almost 10 years now.

Wow, that actually just kind of sounds crazy even saying it. Well, anyway, well, we hope that you all subscribe to this show and join us every week to learn about how

God would have all of us parent our kids to his honor and glory. If what you learn here today is helpful, please check out the description of the episode for free notes to use as you please, a transcript of the show, and related resources to help you dig deeper into the topics we'll discuss.

Now let's talk about how the way we describe our kids determines how we parent them.

Tim Pazma is a man I respect very much. He's a pastor at LaRue Baptist Church in LaRue, Ohio, has his

MDiv from Grace Theological Seminary, serves as a fellow in the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, and is on the

ACBC Board of Trustees. He's often quoted as saying, the way you describe will always determine the way you prescribe.

When I last heard him say this, he was talking to an auditorium full of biblical counselors, and the point he was making at the time was that our perception of the problem will always dictate how we try to deal with the problem.

The very first step of this cycle is whether or not we perceive something as being a problem in the first place.

For example, on our Biblical Conflict Resolution series, we discuss the fact that disagreement isn't inherently a problem.

There are many things about which we can disagree and still glorify God and love each other. Therefore, if I don't inherently view disagreement as a problem,

I'm not going to be bothered by it or seek to bend everyone to my opinion. There will be no perceived prescription necessary for the problem because it won't be seen as a problem.

However, many behaviors and attitudes, and even disagreements, actually are problems. For example, a child's sin is a problem, but there are any number of prescriptions for such a problem.

Secular therapists may describe the child as being the victim of a mental disorder or physiological malady that makes following instructions impossible.

Based off of the description of the problem, a psychiatrist may prescribe drugs in order to help the child calm down or focus.

Of course, we know there are no physical maladies that can cause a person to sin, so a

Biblical counselor would look at disobedience and rebelliousness of a child and prescribe discipleship in the form of Biblical teaching, reproof, and Lord -willing correction as the

Christ -honoring prescription for the issue. This is not to say that the

Biblical counselor would ignore legitimate physical issues, but those concerns would be in addition to addressing the spiritual problems.

But even if we don't subscribe to the secular notions concerning parenting, we still have the same parental temptations as everyone else when it comes to describing and prescribing.

But before we dive any deeper, I'd like to swing back to that crazy observation I made a minute ago about coming up on our 10th year of podcasting.

We have been honored to walk with so many families over the past decade. Most of the families in whose living rooms we've sat, kitchens we've talked, and cars we've ridden, we've never even met.

So many dads and moms from all over the world invite us into their lives every week via this podcast and we're so honored to walk this parenting road with all of you.

Of course, there are so many others we've had the chance to meet, perhaps it was a conference at your church, the

ACBC annual conference, or homeschool convention. Those times of fellowship and conversation are always a highlight of such events.

And then there are those who we have toiled together week after week in counseling. I praise

God for the friendships I've made over the years counseling and I magnify Him for the change that He has wrought in people's lives, including my own, through His word.

I'm always humbled to be used as a channel for His truth and to learn what He has me to learn in that season of counseling.

So whether you've been impacted by this podcast, conference, or counseling, I'm going to ask you a question.

Will you please prayerfully consider how the Lord might use you to help us continue ministering to more and more families?

Truth Love Family is trying to raise $100 ,000 before December of 2026 so that we can enter our 10th year of podcasting and 6th year of full -time ministry with enough money to pay our bills, support the

Brewster family, create new resources, and potentially even open a brick -and -mortar Faith Tree Biblical Counseling Center in Brevard, NC.

But we can't do any of that without you and your generous donations. So please visit truthloveparent .com forward slash donate to learn how you can partner with us by giving a tax -deductible gift.

Thank you so much for what you're going to do. But now we need to talk about the temptation to describe our kids the wrong way and how we can view them the way

God does and parent them accordingly. First, let's talk about number one, the temptation to describe our kids incorrectly.

If we don't know our kids, who does? Well, it's amazing how easy it is to not really see the people who live in our homes.

And since we don't know them as deeply as we should, we're bound to get the description wrong. One reason this happens is, letter

A, we're tempted to define our kids out of fear. I've met parents who are genuinely afraid of their children.

And from a fleshly perspective, I get it. Their kids do scary things. But when we view situations and people through the lens of fear, we're going to parent wrong every time.

Let's consider how the Israelites responded to Goliath. In 1 Samuel 17, we see two main descriptions of him.

The Israelite army, including King Saul, viewed Goliath as an unbeatable champion and a giant whose taunts made them dismayed and greatly afraid.

Their description of the situation was terrifyingly hopeless. So what was their prescription? What were they to do?

They did nothing for 40 days as Goliath taunted them. However, David didn't see

Goliath as a superhuman threat, but as an enemy of the Lord who was defying the armies of the living God.

He saw the battle as a divine contest, not a fair fight at all. And that's why his prescription was to confidently approach the giant with no armor, no sword, only a sling and five smooth stones.

I know all too well how easy it is to describe a situation out of fear. Fear and anxiety are real temptations for me and have been my whole life.

I praise the Lord that I'm not enslaved to it as much as I was when I was younger, but I still have to fight hard not to respond to the situation in front of me through the lens of fear because when

I do, my prescription for how to handle it is always wrong. But describing out of fear isn't the only temptation for us parents.

Letter B, we're tempted to define our kids superficially. Sometimes we do this simply because we don't actually take the time to get to know our kids.

We assume a lot of things and we don't ask the deep questions and build relationships like we should. But that's not necessarily what

I'm talking about right now. Right now I'm talking about the fact that we're oftentimes tempted to reduce our kids to nothing more than the sum of their behaviors.

This is where the temptation to parent as behavioral modifiers just crushes us.

In Luke 15, 11 through 32, we read about the prodigal son. By the way, we recently did an episode called,

What Does Having a Prodigal Say About Your Parenting? If you have a prodigal in your family, you will be blessed to listen to that episode.

Anyway, at the end of the parable, we see that the older brother labeled his returning sibling as a son who had devoured his father's property with riotous living.

That's the only way that he could see his brother. And he used this as an excuse to resent him and ignore his repentance, this return to home and to a relationship with his father.

However, the father described his son not as a permanent prodigal, but twice like this, the son of mine was dead and has come to life again.

He was lost and has been found. For this reason, the father embraced his son, welcomed him home, clothed him, and fed him.

Even if our children's behavior doesn't scare us, we can still easily reduce them to their worst actions.

We can respond to them as nothing more than liars or thieves or sexually active or rebellious. And even when they confess their sin, ask for forgiveness, and commit to repentance, we allow that prior description to be the foundation from which we continue to parent them.

By the way, we oftentimes do this with our spouses as well. Now, I'm not saying it's wise to trust a wolf in sheep's clothing or lack discernment or not keep people accountable or not give people consequences when appropriate.

We have so many resources that show the exact opposite of those wrong practices. The key to this temptation, though, will be to better understand how

God sees our kids. Yes, they sinned. Yes, they're sinners. Yes, they even need consequences.

But in God's economy, there's so much more. Our parenting needs to take into account the totality of who they are, not just a superficial slice.

By the way, if you're interested in learning more about teaching your child to apologize or how to give consequences in a

Christ -honoring way, or you just want to learn what the Bible has to say about our kids and sexuality, there are a bunch of resources for you linked in the description.

We'll never parent our kids biblically when we describe them out of fear or superficially. But we also won't prescribe the right parenting approach when, letter

C, we're tempted to define our kids using poor theology. Consider John 9, 2, where the disciples assumed the blind man's malady stemmed from sin, asking

Jesus, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? The Pharisees later labeled the healed man a sinner and a deceiver, absolutely rejecting the miracle out of hand.

But Jesus reframed the situation for them as neither punitive nor accidental, but purposeful.

John 9, 3 says, neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

Far too often our theology is twisted or completely false. We believe that people never change is more true than God changes sinners.

We don't believe that God wants to use this current season of struggle in the child's life as well as our own.

We believe the religion of the world that says that all misbehavior grows from biological issues. We have a let go and let

God approach where we imagine they'll find him on their own. We don't believe what the Lord has to say about suffering and trials.

We even ignore certain sins and actually allow other sins because it's quote unquote not that big of a deal.

Our failure philosophies and poor theology blind us to the real need, and then we can't help but parent at odds with God's perfect plan for us and our kids.

Before discussing how God would have us describe our kids and consequently parent them, I want to consider one more biblical example.

In Numbers 13 to 14, twelve spies were sent into the promised land to spy it out. Ten of the twelve spies sent by Moses to scout

Canaan described the land as fruitful, but they said its inhabitants were intimidating giants before whom the

Israelites appeared as grasshoppers. They didn't believe the children of Israel had any chance of overpowering them.

The people's prescription to the situation was then to appoint a new leader and return to Egypt. They were clearly afraid.

They reduced the whole problem to one of superficial might and strength, and they doubted the promises and commands

God had given them, the same God who brought the plagues and performed so many miracles as they left Egypt in the first place.

And more often than we realize, our parental prescriptions are totally wrong because our description is fearful, superficial, and heretical.

So what do we do? We talked about the temptation to describe our kids incorrectly. Now let's talk about number two, the necessity to describe our kids biblically.

Here are some biblical lenses through which God wants us to see our kids. Letter A, they are sinners

God wants to change. Yes, Romans 3 .23 reveals that they, like us, have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

But John 3 .16 helps us see that it's this truth that causes the Lord's love for us to shine.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him, these sinners, shall not perish but have eternal life.

That's why Ephesians 6 .4 commands us to bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. You see,

God's correct description of them, they are sinners in need of a saving relationship with their Creator, Savior, and King, led him to die for them and require that we surround them with his truth and love.

Therefore, letter B, they always need God's word applied to their lives. In our

Family United in God family devotional series, we learned that the truths of Ephesians 6, the ones that we just talked about, about bringing up our children in the nurture and admonition of the

Lord, are rooted in all of the truth that went before it. That means that the spiritual blessings God has prepared for his children, the grace through faith he gives us to be born again unto good works, this mystery in Christ that unifies us so that we would help each other put off sin, renew our minds, and put on the new man and be imitators of Christ, are all necessary descriptions that will lead to parenting that focuses on the nurture and admonition of the

Lord. Our Biblical Parenting Essentials series shows how we are equipped by God to be his ambassadors to our children.

In order to do that, we absolutely need to be using his word which was given to us to teach, reprove, correct, and train.

And in our Evidence of Spiritual Life series, we learned that all spiritual maturity grows from what we learn about God in the

Bible. So our kids are sinners who need a Savior, and when they come to him in faith and follow him, they're sinners in need of sanctification.

This means that the prescription, every single time, is the gospel. Yes, they do wrong.

Yes, their sin is scary. But they're not lost causes. They need the word of God, and the love of God, and the power of God.

We need to use the Biblical Parenting Essentials because our kids are someone the Lord wants to save and sanctify.

He wants to mature them into his image. We have a whole series about parenting your kids into higher and higher levels of spiritual maturity.

It's called Parenting Your Kids into Adulthood. When we describe our kids as creations of God who need to better know, understand, love, and submit to him, then our prescription for all of their daily issues and choices is going to be scriptural truth for the glory of God and the good of our kids.

I hope we will all use this reminder to see our kids and their struggles and their choices through God's eyes and allow that to help us describe them correctly.

When we do that, then, we will parent them according to the Lord's will. Please share this episode so that others can also describe and parent their kids to God's glory, and feel free to email us at counselor at truthloveparent .com

or leave a voicemail at 828 -423 -0894 if you need some personalized help in this area.

And please pray for Ivy and me this weekend. We'll be driving to upstate New York to preach on family strife and conflict resolution at River of Life Church in Copenhagen.

We'll be returning this coming Tuesday when our next episode will be dropping. It's called, Stop Your Kids From Pitting You Against Your Spouse.

And I look forward to spending that time with you. Truth Love Parent is part of the

Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you worship God through your parenting. So join us next time as we study

God's word to learn how to parent our children for life and godliness. And remember that TLP is a listener -supported ministry.