Do your kids know that you like them?

Often in our efforts to train our children in Godly character, and encourage them to live lives that are pleasing to God, we tend to constantly comment on the negative things that we see.

This often leads them to feel like they can never please us, and they may even begin to wonder if we even like them.

In the book “Solving A Crisis In Christian Parenting” Reb Bradley tells this story while looking back on his parenting:

“Something my son said shortly after he started his job kept coming back to me.  When I picked him up the second night of work, he got int he car with a big smile on his face and said, “They like me!”  

As I dwelt on that comment, it suddently came clear to me – my son had finally met someone who liked him for who he was.  Few others in his entire life had shown him acceptance, especially not his mother and I.  

It is no exaggeration – in our efforts to shape and improve him, all we did was find fault with everything he did.  We loved him dearly, but he constantly heard from us that what he did (who he was) wasn’t good enough.  He craved our approval, but we couldn’t be pleased.

Years later I realized he had given up trying to please us when he was 14, and from then on he was just patronizing us.”

When I read this, it made me stop and wonder if my kids knew that I liked them? 

Was I conveying that I couldn’t be pleased, and in so doing pushing them away from me, and the opportunity to influence them and point them to God?

The thing we need to keep in mind as parents is that influence is more important than authority.  

I love the following words from a  post by Cary Schmidt, author of Passionate Parenting, which is one of my favorite parenting books! (Shared with permission) 

Influence Trumps Authority

“Do you want your children to love God? Do you want them to truly enjoy living life with and for Jesus Christ?

There’s an unspoken principle that many parents or leaders miss. It often goes ignored, unrecognized, and completely invisible. But it plays out in every family and church.

It is present in every parenting struggle and every parenting success. It’s huge. Stay with me!

Influence trumps authority. That’s it. End of article. Influence trumps authority! But it sounds trite, simplistic, and possibly even erroneous! So, let’s look more closely.

If you truly desire to bring up your children “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord”, you must do more than rule them.

It’s necessary to do more than educate them, manage them, teach them.

You must do more than feed, clothe, and house them. You must even do more than pray for and with them.

Frankly, you must do more than love them.

You Must Like Your Kids!

I’m not talking about a trite, simplistic, surface form of “like.”

No, I’m referring to what the Apostle Paul experienced toward the Thessalonican Christians when he said that he was “gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children” and “affectionally desirous” of them and they were “dear unto us” so much so that he and his co-laborers “imparted not the gospel of God only, but our own souls…” (1 Thessalonians 2:7-8)

These “unbelievers-turned-new-believers-turned-dynamic-church” were the beneficiaries of more than ritual ministry or Apostolic authority. They were blessed to experience an authentic, passionate, personal, sacrificial relationship with the Apostle Paul.

There’s a powerful parenting principle in this passage.

In a few words, I want to try to describe what I believe to be the single most important parenting principle in scripture—influence trumps authority.

You see, no parent ever truly won the heart of a child that they did not like—a child that they did not truly develop a close relationship with.

The logic in a kid’s mind goes like this: “If you don’t like me, then I don’t like you. Which means I’d rather hole up in my room, leave you to your career, and hope to keep you off my back until I’m 18 when I can finally break free to go find relationships where I am valued and liked.” 

Ouch!

Many parents try to find the answers to their parenting struggle in “AUTHORITY.” But most of the long-term answers that matter are found in “INFLUENCE!”

Authority is merely the foundation from which to build influence—not the end in itself.

That’s not to say that authority isn’t absolutely essential—it is. But successful parenting takes more than just authority.

For instance, if you want to control me, leverage your authority.  

If you want to change me, then develop a relationship of influence.

If you actually want me to adopt your belief system, your values—if you desire to change my heart, then you must have influence with me—profound influence!

It sounds simple, but it’s actually pretty complex. Let’s break it down…

How do you let your kids know you like them?

Authenticity Produces Credibility

If you read 1 Thessalonians 2:1-12 you will see that the Apostle Paul didn’t charge into this city of unbelievers leveraging his apostolic authority. I imagine he could have. But it wouldn’t have worked.

He chose another route—a more sincere humble path. And twice in the passage, he compares what he did to exactly what a mother or a father should do with their children.

He entered the city and first expressed authentic love and compassion. His authenticity—his consistent, risky, sacrificial, courageous, pure, selfless ministry gave him something very valuable in the eyes of these “soon to be” Christians.

His authenticity gained him credibility.

The Apostle—as a spiritual father—entered into ministry in this city with absolute authenticity. And so in parenting—inconsistency (or duplicity) produces uncertainty and skepticism (or even cynicism.)

In other words, if you’re playing a game and not sacrificially developing a real relationship with your kids, they will see through you, and then you lose credibility.

Your faith becomes silly in their minds, and your authority becomes invalid. (Practically, that is… at least to them.)

All of our kids have a subconscious radar detecting pretense and fakery. Through it, they are building a case, like little attorneys, to either invalidate our faith and authority or validate it. (Hold that thought.)

Credibility Produced Influence

In verses 7-12, the Holy Spirit through Paul describes how these new Christians were influenced. Because of the Apostle’s credibility, he was able, in a very short time to exert profound influence in this city!

Paul was doing more than his duty, or his obligation. He was “affectionately desirous” of these people.

They knew he truly liked them, loved them, invested his whole soul into them. And they responded!

They were drawn to Him and to the work of the Holy Spirit through him.

They opened their hearts to his influence.

Paul says he was gentle (kind), he cherished them, he was affectionately desirous of them, he gave them his own soul, he labored and travailed for them night and day (he lost sleep investing into them!), he told them the truth (the gospel), he exhorted, comforted, charged them.

In other words, he pleaded with them, he consoled or empathized with them, and he challenged them with facts and true evidence. This man absolutely expended himself for the transformation of these people!

And then he says something very powerful about all of this activity—“…even as a father doth his children…” Whoa! That’s where every parent gets smacked right in the face with this passage.

Are you expending yourself in that way for your children?

Is your focus building such a close relationship as that?

Are you pursuing their hearts at such a personal, sacrificial level—laboring and travailing night and day? Exhorting, comforting, charging? Gentle, cherishing, desiring?

That’s a really tall order!

Most parents would play the victim and say, “I don’t have time do to all that!”—ah, but you do. You are merely choosing to give that time to things you value—like a career, or a credit card bill, or a car payment.

And yet, this is the sacrifice required to truly build incredible influence!

Influence Validates Authority

This is where the whole formula lands back on the strong foundation of biblical authority!

What happened when these unbelievers came into contact with authenticity? It gave the Apostle credibility.

What did he do with it? He used it to influence! And what did his powerful, biblical influence lead to? Validated authority!

Look at the results—“For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.” 1 Thessalonians 2:13

His influence validated not only his authority, but also the final authority—Jesus Christ, and His living Word!

These unbelievers were brought to a point where they voluntarily chose to receive and submit to the authority of the Word of God. This is really big!

Why is it so important that your kids know you like them?

What does your child need more than anything else? A relationship with God! A life built upon God’s Word, God’s authority, God’s guidance. That’s the goal!

The goal isn’t to merely control them, manage them, and leverage your authority.

The goal is to influence them into a life-long relationship under God’s authority.

So parent, what’s your role in that process?

Yes, you are an authority.

Yes, you must protect your children by using and expressing your God-given authority.

You must set boundaries, explain consequences, meet out punishment.

Yes, you must exert biblical leadership and authority. 

But if you want your kids to know you like them, you cannot stop there! 

Your kids will not know you like them. You cannot win the heart by leveraging authority. You win the heart by influence.

And you don’t have influence unless your child extends it to you!

You can demand submission to your authority. But you cannot demand influence in their hearts. That is something you must earn—through a close relationship.

Influence is something they extend to you by a subconscious act of their will—a reaction of trust and unconditional acceptance.

It happens when you are real, and when you are safe—when you really accept them in God’s grace just as they are. Influence is something they will grant you as you live and love credibly before them.

Think of it for a moment. Hollywood and secular culture will spend billions and billions to influence your child.

Satan doesn’t need authority to wreck your kid’s life. He just needs influence. And through the lies of secular culture, Satan is completely rewriting the value and belief system of Christian kids—through INFLUENCE!

And he’s effectively negating the influence of parents and pastors, often because those adults are grasping for authority and are blind to the fact that they have lost all influence.

Dozens of times, I’ve sat in a room with a rebellious teenager and desperate parents. The teen is doing everything he can to fight and rebel. And we could blame a lot of things.

We could blame the sin nature of the teen, the wicked influences of culture, the pressure of peers, the power of temptation. Or, we could blame a neglectful father, a messed up priority structure, a broken home life, an abusive past.

The blame could be pointed in lots of directions—but when the relationship is broken, the reason is often irrelevant to the solution.

In these moments desperate parents want their child to submit to their authority. But even if he or she does—there’s a much bigger problem!

Winning the authority struggle is only a temporary victory usually lulling parents back into relational sleep, while influence (or the total loss of it) goes entirely unnoticed.

In other words, the teen learns how to appease—how to play the game, to conform to keep the adults “off his back.”

Meanwhile, they still have no influence! And usually, no one sees it. It’s like a silent, invisible gorilla in the room.

In nearly every case, these parents have not only lost authority. They have lost influence! And retaining or regaining authority won’t fix the total and complete loss of influence.

The question is not “How can we regain authority? How can we get our kid to do what we say?”

The question is, “Where and when did we lose influence with our child? How have we failed to transfer our beliefs and values? At what point did our authority and belief system become in-credible?”

In other words, “Where and when did this relationship break to the point that this kid totally dismisses us?—we have no credibility, no viability, and therefore no influence!”

How often we miss this question!

If you have no influence, your authority is probably broken too. And if you have no influence, you cannot win the war for your child.

The question to winning the heart is, “How can I go back to the place where we lost influence, and how can we regain trust, re-establish credibility, and rebuild influence?”

And just as with the Apostle Paul, biblical influence will always validate and strengthen your authority.

You kids will welcome, love, appreciate, and value your authority—because they TRUST you, and you have a profound influence with their heart!

So yes, influence trumps authority. And here’s one more reason why.

Your children will soon outgrow your authority, but they will never outgrow your influence!

Not far beyond 18 or 20, you will no longer have authority. It’s coming. Deal with it.

You won’t always be able to call the shots. But that’s ok! 

If you live authentically, and love passionately, you will gain credibility—you will establish influence (through a close relationship), and you can have that for as long as you live—and even beyond!

Pursue the heart of your child! Like the Apostle Paul, be “affectionately desirous” of them. Expend yourself in an authentic relationship. In so doing, you will build influence.

When it comes to protecting your child—think “authority.” But when it comes to directing your child—think “influence!”

**Cary Schmidt is the author of the book I mention often:  Passionate Parenting.  This book is a great resource with practical teaching on pursuing the heart of your child!

So I would love to know Mom, have you made sure that your child knows you like them? How do you do it? Let us know in the comments below.

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I often mention singing together as a family because it’s one of my favorite memories of when our kids were all home. We sang with them from the time they were very little, all the way through the teen years. 

Also, we also played good Christian music when we were in the car when they were playing, or even at nap time. We taught them lots of worship songs for children. They learned scripture songs, kids choruses, and hymns.

Today I want to share a list of 25  hymns that I think our kids should know because they are foundational to our faith.

I was brought up in a home where hymns played a big part. 

We sang them at church, my mom listened to them on Christian radio and often sang hymns throughout the day as she worked.

I learned to love hymns and the message of them.  Today they still speak to my heart. I want to pass that on to my kids!

Music does something for your spirit, and it can also bring comfort during times of hurt.

Singing together is a great way to bond with your kids, and spend time together in a profitable, enjoyable way.

If you start when the kids are young, they will develop a love for music, and as they get older the music will minister to them. 

Teach your children these hymns that every child should know!

I have noticed that music continues to be important to my kids, even though they are older. It is comforting and encouraging to them.

I’ve seen a couple of the kids, as teens,  take their Bible and a hymn book to a quiet place to worship and spend time with God.

They use the hymns to worship and prepare their heart for what God has to say to them from His word.

We sing hymns about our salvation,  the power of God’s Word, what Christ suffered for us, and His greatness; we sing some hymns to bring comfort when we have heartaches.

Hymns are powerful and strong.

Teaching our kids great hymns of our faith should be part of their education, as these hymns reinforce the Biblical beliefs we teach them daily.

I have chosen 25 foundational hymns that I think our kids should learn. 

There are many, many others that are good, but this list will get you started.

Why not start singing these 25 hymns as a family?

1. When the Roll is Called Up Yonder

2. I Know Whom I Have Believed

3. Jesus Saves

4. It is Well With My Soul

5. Victory in Jesus

6. Great is Thy Faithfulness

7. The Solid Rock

8. Amazing Grace

9. Nothing But the Blood of Jesus

10. Leaning On the Everlasting Arms

11. The Bible Stands

12. Blessed Assurance

13. The Old Rugged Cross

14. Standing On the Promises of God

15. How Great Thou Art

16. And Can it Be That I Should Gain?

17. To God Be the Glory

18. At Calvary

19. He Lives

20. Rock of Ages

21. Trust and Obey

22. Power In the Blood

23. A Mighty Fortress

24. Wonderful Grace of Jesus

25. My Savior’s Love

What are some of your favorite hymns?

Learn about 10 great hymns of the faith in this study for all ages:  Great Hymns of The Faith. 

Be sure to check it out!

In my last post How Do You Live With A Prickly Person, we looked at what prickly means and I shared six ways to deal with strong personalities without getting angry or letting them pull your spirit down. My last point was: Recognize what triggers their prickly responses.

Here are 6 Of The Most Common Triggers For Prickly People

1. Unexpected changes in routines or plans

Usually, the prickly person thrives in a set routine and is easily thrown when the normal order of things changes, or you do things in a different way.

When you know something is going to change, try to prepare them for it ahead of time. 

Expect them to sput and fume about it until they get used to the idea, or comfortable with the change.

2. Prickly people are triggered when they feel like they are being attacked

Be careful how you word things with this sensitive person.

If it can be taken as critical or attacking, they WILL take it that way!

How you words things is so important!

Make sure you sandwich criticism with positive words and think carefully about what the best way is to approach it.

3. Fatigue and stress are triggers for prickly people

All of us tend to be more easily irritated when we are tired or feeling stressed. 

Be aware that this growly person struggles with that a little more than normal! 

If they are tired or stressed about something be extra encouraging and kind with your words.

4. Feeling misunderstood

It is common to want people to listen to us, and understand what we are trying to convey or communicate.

With the prickly person, be sure to listen carefully and understand not only their words but the emotions they are trying to convey. 

Are they feeling mad, scared, excited, etc?

Saying back to them what they are feeling or saying makes the feel understood, and helps them to stay calmer.

5. Being grumpy to them or complaining about what they need from you

It’s really rather amusing that the prickly person can be all grouchy, but if you respond to them with the least sign of grumpiness they respond with, “Wow, what are YOU so grumpy about?!” not knowing that they are acting the same or worse.

Complaining about having to help them or do something for them will also trigger bad responses.

I understand that! If you love someone you should be willing to help them without complaining.

The challenge is that often the prickly person DEMANDS rather than asks, and it’s then hard to willingly help without resentment or complaining.

6. Not being thankful when they pitch in and help.

I can remember it well because it has happened more than once. I came home after running errands, and my kitchen had been cleaned.

Maybe I didn’t notice right away, or maybe I just didn’t say anything.

That brought the prickly person to shoot out the words “You’re welcome!” in a bit of a loud, irritated tone.

The prickly person probably senses that they are often treated differently than others in the home who are more pleasant. 

Therefore, it is important to them to be recognized when they do something to help.

It’s important to watch for opportunities to express your thanks to them whenever they willingly pitch in.

Living with a prickly person presents challenges.  Make it easier by being aware of what sets them off, and try to avoid these triggers for prickly people! It will make for a more peaceful and happy home.

For more help on this topic, read How Do You Live With A Prickly Person. You’ll also find encouragement and tips in How To Respond To A Prickly Person!

If the prickly person in your home happens to be a child, you will be encouraged and get lots of practical tips to help you deal with that child in my ebook:  Dealing With a Difficult Child.

Do you struggle with a child who is difficult or challenging? A child that often causes you exasperation? One who takes more time and energy than all your other children put together? This is the child who is different from your other children, and what works for others doesn’t work for him? 

There IS hope and help!!

Get answers to these questions in this ebook, as I share 12 different ways to respond to that difficult child, and handle the challenges that he brings with a loving, kind spirit.

You will be encouraged and helped by the practical points from my own personal experience in dealing with two of my children.

I share honestly in talking about the guilt I struggled with, and the realization that God wanted me to depend on HIM.

Get your copy for just $8.97 today!

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