12. Lying, part 2. T.I.M.E., not Time-Out. Dealing with the HEART of Your Child through Mercy Seat Parenting.

Episode 12, T.I.M.E., not Time-Out.  Dealing with the HEART of Your Child through Mercy Seat Parenting. Lying, Part 2. (Lying Part 1 is in episode 4).
Quote
"I have got to spend some time praying and evaluating my own self in the situation because this is a big deal. I don't want to handle it wrong. I need God's help. I need God's wisdom and I also need to evaluate what could have I been doing differently..."
Resources
Proverbs for Parenting (affiliate link)
Val's blog post on getting the word of God into our kids
Val's blog post on Root Parenting vs Surface Parenting
Val's blog post on helping littles to not have idle time that makes them bored and clingy
No Room for Emotions - when mom is emotional, walls can go up causing the child not to learn the lesson
Sort of like Time-out Together
SOS to the True Expert
Evaluate YOU and Your child in specific areas before responding
Identify the root cause behind the behavior
Use Mercy Seat Parenting
T.I.M.E.
Talk about the TRUTH
"I" statements from mom When we take the time to share vulnerably from the heart with our kids, even if that means confessing how we have messed up in this area, it helps to keep walls down as we move to the next step in this important character and relationship conservation.
MEND relationship
EQUAL consequences
Contact Val in her Facebook Group: Intentional Mom, Strong Family or thru her website www.PracticallySpeakingMOM.com
If you found this podcast helpful, would you please consider leaving a review and sharing this with other moms who are seeking to be more intentional.

Transcript

Rich Harrison: 0:03

You're listening to the practically speaking mom podcast, the place for an intentional mom to build a strong family. In an earlier episode, part one of dealing with lying in your child, we heard Val talk about really taking stock of what's been going on in your home.

Val Harrison: 0:19

So we've been doing some evaluation of the past. Are they in a habit of this or it hardly ever happens? How am I modeling about this character issue in this case, truth. How have I handled previous responses to my child? Have I given them consequences? Now, the next phase really is to evaluate what's going on right now. What's going on in their heart? Where are they at? If you could take inventory of their heart, what would you start to see today? And this is called root parenting versus surface parenting.

Rich Harrison: 0:57

Keep listening for the conclusion of the series, part two of dealing with lying in your child.

Val Harrison: 1:06

We're going to begin by telling you a scenario that a listener wrote in. She said she has a young teenage son. He did not tell her the truth about, uh, he had his phone with him when he was supposed to have it put away in his room and he was in bed and uh, he lied about it, which his mom said is rare for him to lie. So that's the scenario she wanted to know how would I deal with that? So what we're going to do, we're going to go through part two of dealing with lying in your child, which includes this acronym TIME. It's a way to deal with your child on tough issues. And then we'll come back around to this scenario at the end and I'll tell you, this is how I would handle it. Let's get started. The next thing you want to think about in situations like this is something I call mercy seat parenting. I learned about mercy seat parenting from the heavenly father at a time that I would call the biggest belly of the whale time in my life. I had several things going on that some of them were not my fault at all, but some of them were in various areas. But one of those areas had to do with parenting. My oldest daughter I had tried really hard and I meant well, but I had been completely overlooking some really, really key aspects that had negatively affected my daughter. Sometimes we can create wounds we don't even know exist and you know, praying and asking God to reveal those to you is hard to pray. But what a blessing it is to find out about them because then you can start healing and correcting. I n this belly of the whale time, do you know what I mean by belly of the whale? So in the, in the old Testament, Jonah was called by God to do some things that he didn't want to do. So he ran off to hide from God and to disobey and he ran onto a boat and the boat went out on the water and the people on the boat threw him overboard. He was swallowed by a whale or a large fish where he was in the belly of that fish for three days. This was darkness and awfulness. But it was a place to think and reflect because you couldn't do anything else. This was a life changing experience for Jonah and when he was spewed onto the shore, he was a changed man and he went and he immediately did what God told him to do. So I had a belly of the well time that was awful, but it was revealing to me and one of the major lessons that God taught me through it was mercy seat parenting. Mercy seat parenting has to do with the mercy seat in the old Testament. God has them build a tabernacle and everything is intricately described in scripture of how God wanted them to build every aspect of this from the size of things, the placement of the furniture in the rooms, it was all very, very detailed. And so in these different rooms, the most important room was the Holy of Holies. Well, in the very center of the most important room, the very central spot was the ark of the covenant and in the very central spot of the ark of the covenant was the mercy seat. So God had them create all of these different things with the showcase spot being the mercy seat, and then he described it as the place where he would meet with his people to discuss his decrees and laws, what he called that the mercy seat, the place where they would talk about the rules. Are you kidding me? That doesn't even make sense to me. Why did he do that? He did that because while he was establishing that I am God and the boundaries don't change. I am also a merciful God, a merciful father who loves my kids and wants to spend time with them and is willing to discuss those boundaries and I want to reveal my heart to you and I want you to reveal your heart to me. This is a place of mercy, a place of welcome, but the boundaries are the boundaries and that mercy seat parenting concept transformed my parenting. It took me from, s ee, I was a b oundaries mom for sure, like follow the rules. If you break the rules too bad for you that you would do that. Now yo u g o t t o l ive with the consequences. It was a very heartless perspective. I shouldn't say heartless because I was doing this out of love. I cared about their future and I wanted their future to be excellent and I wanted them to be strong and capable for the things that would come in their future. So I thought if I handle them strictly harshly, then they will become more strong. Well, my husband was the opposite and he was soft on boundaries, strong on relationship. So he was the loving dad who didn't really get on them about messing up. And so we were two extremes. And I think the more tough I got, the more soft he got, the more soft he got, the more tough I got. So it was not a healthy dynamic at all. And thus with our oldest, we started experiencing the consequences of that. And thus God showed us mercy seat parenting, that we both needed to prioritize the boundaries, but we needed to keep a merciful spirit. It is about an attitude of empathy and loving partnership that we should have with our kids while we maintain the boundaries that do not move. Those boundaries are there because we love them. It's like the fence at the edge of a cliff. The fence is there not to be mean, but because the person who put it there cares about the people who are going to go to the edge of the cliff and wants to protect them. And that's what these boundaries do is they allow us the freedom to grow and experience abundant living but without experiencing harm. And so the boundaries are important and they matter. We have to as parents, balance both the boundaries with a merciful spirits. So that's mercy seat parenting. And after you've done your root parenting and had been digging below the surface to what may be going on with your child, keep in mind mercy seat parenting as you come to having to deal with the consequences with this child. You want to be sure that you're doing it with a certain attitude. I'm still growing in this. I had habits in me that don't change overnight and they still come up at times. But I have grown so much in this area and it is seriously, seriously transformed every relationship with all of my kids. Not all of my kids were born yet at the time of my belly of the whale experience. I'm so thankful that I was able to have a fresh opportunity with the younger ones, but I had repairing to do with the older ones. Uh, and now I'm super thankful for the relationships that I have with each of those kids. That wouldn't be the relationships they are today if it weren't for mercy seat parenting. Okay, let's look at consequences for a minute. Consequences should always match the offense. So if you look at the past, how you dealt with lying, if your consequences were too strong or too weak, then you did them as the disservice and you probably need to apologize for that and let them know God's standard is this. Let's take a look in scripture at it and then I need to apologize because I didn't value it in the way that God valued it. Anytime we're dealing with heart issues with our kids, there's something that you need to know, mom. You need to know that it's going to require some time out of your day to really affect their heart. Heart issues require time and that's pretty hard for us as moms because we're bombarded with all of these half two's every day. All of these responsibilities, obligations that are going on that are bugging us. It's hard to slow down, stop everything and take the time to deal with their character, but mom, it is worth it. Oh my goodness. It is so worth it to take this time with your child. Now sometimes it means that I have to deal with it later that night and take the time then, but ideally take the time. Right then especially the younger they are, the more immediate this stuff needs to be. Now, of course, a lot of things that I talked about to this point are for kids that are old enough to comprehend all of these things that I've said. If you have a child that is not able to comprehend the things that we've said so far, you just need to focus on mercy seat parenting. For now, you need to focus on loving attitude, firm boundaries with consequences. If you're not giving consequences to heart issue sin honestly in their life, you are not helping their future. In fact, the first seven years of your child's life is really when they are establishing their worldview. What is their view of the world and if they do wrong things with no consequences, then they are starting to believe I can do wrong things with no consequences in the world. That is not how the world works. Is it? Not only will that not be the case when they have an employer or when they deal with the laws of the land, but also it is not the system God designed. God designed us to have some consequences for wrong behavior because he loves us too much to live outside of those boundaries and so mom, don't do your child a service. Give them consequences. The consequences are going to depend on that child and they're between you and God as you allow him to be the father of your life and you do the hard things, but what are best for your child? Likewise, God is going to bless you and bless your efforts but do the hard things. And that one thing that is really hard is consistency. And I'm especially talking to moms of l ittles right now. J ust keep in mind mercy seat, parenting, merciful spirit ffirm boundaries, consequences. That combination is what a mom of littles can do because they can't comprehend all of these other things. So what I'm about to tell you is for kids that are a little bit older than that and by a little bit older, you know it's every child is different. But I'm going to say that you gradually bring them to all of this information. So, which can start at, you know, for sure, age three you can start introducing the principles behind why there's consequences and boundaries, b ut still their comprehension is going to be pretty limited at three. But start there and work your way up to more of the p rinciples and more understanding the heart of God and helping them understand their own heart. The older they get. Okay, I told you that dealing with your child's heart is going to take time. Let's look at the four aspects of time. Okay? The first thing to do with, and this is after you're done evaluating, y ou're done, you know, with the root parenting aspect of it, although that never ends. But what I'm saying is t ake the time first to pray, to evaluate the past, to dig deep into what might be going on below the surface and keeping mercy seat parenting in mind. And now we're ready to spend some time with our child on this heart issue.

: 13:58

Acronym T, I, M. E, tell them and show them the truth. So step one on dealing with lying with your child when you're going to take time with them, you want to take some time on the truth.

Val Harrison: 14:14

What is the truth about truth? Well, in the word of God, um, of course we've got the 10 commandments where he tells us, don't bear false witness against your neighbor. Um, so don't speak something that's not true about someone else. So that would be one example. So why would God have put that in the Bible? You want to ask that on everything that's in there. You want to ask, why did God put this in here? Why does he have it in scripture? He has it in scripture. Well, everything he has in scripture, he has it in there for a lot of reasons. And I discover a new, there could be one verse that I discover, new reasons all the time, uh, every time I read it. But one reason why he would have that in there is because he is establishing to us his creation, how he feels about lying and deception. Uh, you can just do a quick Google search. You know, Bible verses about lying, uh, Bible verses about deception. And you can pull some up there, talk about those, read it together, and then you can say what you think that verse means. Have them also share what they think it means. Maybe you're going to have them write out and pick one or two of those verses to write out something like that. But don't have t hem write yet because we're, we're taking this time together first. So telling them the truth from God's word is the first step in time and taking time with your kids on a heart issue. So even if the heart issue was something completely else, like maybe they were gotten an argument with their brother and they hit their brother, then that would be a different heart issue. But you would still take the time to show them in scripture what God, our creator, who designed us and designed our relationships, designed our family. This was his heart in how we should live and how he designed us to flourish and live an abundant life. Best is when we follow his design for our lives. So let's look at the truth. So the first T is about truth. Tell them and show them the truth.

: 16:23

Okay, I in time. The next thing is talk about, I have done it wrong plenty of times on this particular issue. So you could say dealing with the issue of lying. I lied multiple times as a kid. Here's a few examples or you know, recently I felt like being deceptive in a situation and this is what I ended up doing. You know, Okay. M is meet with God. You need to teach your child how to confess to God about things that they've done in their life. Moms, this is the most, one of the very, very most important things that you could teach your child is how to restore with God when they have done something wrong. You don't want this. This is what really drives me a lot of times to make sure that I get this right. You don't want to get your child used to harboring sin in their heart. You don't want them to be used to living with guilt.

Val Harrison: 18:05

You don't want them to be used to, Oh, I know I've done wrong, but I'm just going to go on with life anyway. That is not where you want your child to live. So you definitely want to deal with them, restoring their heart to God after wrong behavior. And so that means admitting to God that they've done wrong. Asking him to forgive them and clean their hearts and asking him to help them in the future and committing to God that you will listen when he has a reminder for you about that. So in the early years, I would say, okay, you repeat after me. That's when the early years, I'm literally helping them pray for them because we've got to teach them how to do these things. No one is born with all of this kind of right living stuff built inside of them. The Bible says the heart is deceptive above all things. When they're born, they're sweet and beautiful and wonderful, and we love them so much. But you can be guaranteed that they're gonna do some wrong things before too long. Give them a year and and you'll start hearing no and things like that from them because they're human. So here would be an example. Dear Jesus, I'm sorry that I lied to mommy. Please forgive me. Please clean my heart. Please help me to listen to your voice next time when I feel like lying helped me to listen to your voice and be strong and not lie, but tell the truth. Thank you for helping me. I love you. Amen. So that'd be an example of a prayer that I would have them repeat little, you know, each little part, because I want them to be in good relationship with God and value that. So they have spent this time with God. They also need to make it right with me. So you're going to meet with God and meet with whoever they offended and make it right with them also so that they restore relationship with everyone and now their heart is clean and they can experience making things right in a relationship feels better than avoiding making it right and you really want them to experience that feeling.

: 20:33

And then finally equal consequences. So you've done all that and now it's time for the consequences. And just remember you want equal consequences. Don't make it worse than than the wrongdoing that they did, but also don't make it lighter than the wrong doing they did. Your consequence is teaching them how to value the issue. So if you want them to value truth, your consequence needs to match the failure to honor truth. Let's get back to that scenario that I brought up at the beginning of the podcast of the young teenager that had lied about having his phone in bed. And you know, I realize whenever one of you intentional moms writes into me or contacts me in some way, I recognize from the beginning of it that you are an intentional mom. You are already a mom who's involved and deeply cares and is committed to the heart of your child, the future for their strength. So therefore, I know this is one great mom that had this situation that came up and it could have been just as easily me. None of my kids had been perfect and I have handled all of them in perfectly. So anytime you have a situation come up to, I want you to feel like you can not be embarrassed to mention it to me because probably it happened at my house already. So we've got this teenager who lied but rarely lies. What do we do? The first thing that I would do is, because this is a big, big issue at my house, lying is right up there at the top of things that I make a very big deal out of because relationship matters so much to me that we have a trustworthy relationship with one another or we don't have grounds for anything reliable.

Val Harrison: 22:25

So my kids know lying is right up there at the top of big deal. So the first thing that I would do, well first I would ask him several questions and try to just understand where his head was at. You know, try to understand the situation, get the facts, because sometimes there really are good facts. I remember this one time my college age son had slept super late and I was getting really frustrated because it was a rare time that he could be home and there were important things that needed to happen and I was feeling really frustrated. And then he finally gets up and I wanted to just kind of light into him, but instead he said, man, I was having real trouble with allergies last night. So I took some Benadryl and it made me so tired I could not get up. And so see having that information helped me go, well, I need to keep my boss shut. That makes total sense. I've had nights like that too. I've had mornings like that too. I can understand. So starting with just questions is always helpful. Another thing that's really helpful is to keep my emotions out of it. And that is super, super hard to do. Something I've felt out many times, but all of those fails taught me over and over again. T he importance of keeping emotions low, especially with teenagers. If mom has emotions, walls go up, you can just count on it. Our goal is to reach their heart in this situation and if the walls go up, then we're not going to reach their heart. So that's the second thing. So listen, ask questions and listen and keep your emotions out. Okay. Next thing that I would do is say, you know what? This is all a very big deal issue. So I think you need to get up out of bed and you go sit in the living room. I want you to be thinking about and praying about what exactly was going on in your heart and head that caused this. And I also want you to be thinking about what are some tools that you can put in place to help you be stronger than this next time. Okay, so you think about that. I have got to go into my room and spend some time praying and evaluating my own self in the situation because this is a big deal. I don't want to handle it wrong. I need God's help. I need God's wisdom and I also need to evaluate what could have I been doing differently that might have prevented this from happening. That is what I do next. I would go in my room and I'd focus on three things. One, how has his attitude and heart and actions been before this event happened, regarding lying? Like is this common or rarely happens? And so I asked the mom this already. I contacted her back and asked her that question because it makes a difference in how we handle it. And so she said it hardly ever happens. He is a really trustworthy kid. So that's the first thing to know because if there's a lot of symptoms in him of lying, being deceitful, withholding information, other times, then we know we got a big heart issue that we need to deal with. But in this case it was a little and that's awesome.

: 25:35

The second thing I would evaluate is how have I parented to this point on the issue of lying or withholding information? Am I a good role model in that? Am I truthful no matter what or do I lie to my kids? That would really make a huge difference in how I would parent them next because one of the early things I'm going to do and you know in the acronym of time is I'm going to talk to them about me and how I've been at this.

Val Harrison: 26:04

So I need to think through how have I been at the issue of lying because I'm going to need to apologize or you know, we're going to need to discuss it. The other aspect of this though is internet. While he disobeyed my, I'm saying it like it's my kid, while he disobeyed my rule of having his phone at the same time, did I make my rule very clear? Had I been clear about the rules with internet? If I hadn't been crystal clear, then I have some more blame to be thinking about and to be speaking about in a minute with him. So these are the things that you're looking at. How has he been before this? What kind of symptoms do I see they regarding his heart on the issue of lying to how have I parented regarding lying? What kind of role model have I been, but also have I been consistent to give consequences or have I ignored it when my child has lied? What kind of parent have I been regarding? Lying? Thirdly, how clear have I been about internet usage? Okay, so these are the things that we're going to evaluate, pray about. And then I'm ready to go in and talk to my son. And so I go in and I'm going to start first with the T in the acronym of time, which the T is truth. So let's talk about the truth about lying and the truth about internet. So you could handle the internet conversation separately and just focus on the truth side or both. It's your call. But anyway, what's the truth about lying and at his age, if it was a child a mind than I've already been talking to them about the truth about lying for all of these years, then I ought to be able to just ask him and he ought to be able to tell me now, if you haven't been one who has been, you know, speaking about the importance of truth up till now, then they of course he doesn't know you're going to have to teach him. So a book like Proverbs for parenting is a favorite book of mine and I will put a link to it in the show notes. This book, you can look up any topic, it could be anger in this case, lying, look up a topic and it's going to tell you several Bible verses about that topic. And the reason why I like to have this in a book instead of just on the internet is I want to be able to then hand them the book. Sometimes I've handed it to him and said, you pick out five of these and you write them out or pick out two to memorize. Or you know, there's lots of ways that I've used it, but Proverbs for parenting, super handy resource for you in this situation. But anyway, the first thing you're doing is talking about the truth about in this case truth or the truth about lying. The next thing I that stands for I as mom, what do I need to confess or repent or you know, what do I need to bring up? Or maybe it's just an example of how I've been tempted in the past regarding truthfulness. So I might need to say something like, son, I really have to apologize here because I haven't been a very good role model to you about telling the truth. Or maybe I would need to say, son, I am really sorry. I have been very committed to always telling you guys the truth. But I have been weak in being consistent about consequences when you guys don't tell the truth. So I have some blame in this too. I'm sorry for that. That is something that I need to commit to you guys that I'm going to be consistent about from Allen. So that could be what I need to tell him or it could be that I need to say, you know, I can remember when I was a kid, one time my mom told me to, to sweep the porch. I remember this. And instead of just sweeping the porch like I was supposed to, I swept the dirt all underneath the front porch rug. And somehow my mom knew, because moms always end up knowing, and I got in a lot of trouble and I'll never forget that, but it did teach me a good lesson and I instead did, you know, did the hard thing but the right thing more after that. Anyway, so an example of a time that you've learned from or else some things you need to confess to them, whatever the case may be. But that is the I in the acronym time.

: 30:29

Now we're ready for M. and. M. you could look at it as meeting with the people that you've offended or the relationships you've hurt. In this case, God lying is a sin as well as I'm meeting with mom because I lied to mom.

Val Harrison: 30:47

Or another way you could look at the M is mending. It's time to mend the relationships that have been hurt. So mending my relationship with God, mending my relationship with mom. So taking the time to pray about that. Now when they're little, I help them with their prayer. But when they're older like this, they should already know how to do that. And if they're old enough, I'm just going to be not involved in that unless they're a kid that that would like me to be involved in it. I'm just going to ask them to take some time praying about this and then come back and talk to me again. Okay. But that's only after I've really taught them what a repentant prayer sounds like and what it sounds like to ask God to help us make better decisions next time. And, and to commit to God that I'm going to listen to your voice when you remind me, Hey, this is not a good idea. Tell your mom, you know, so if you have spent the time in the years teaching them that, then you can say, okay, I want you to know to go spend some time praying and mending your relationship with God and then come back to me and let's talk again. So let's say he goes and he does that and then he comes back to me again. And by now it might be 1130 at night or whatever. Yes, I am taking time. That messes up our schedule. It messes up our sleep plans, but it's worth it. Heart issues. They're not things that can be scheduled, but it is worth it to show them the significance to you, the importance of this topic, that you're willing to give up your sleep and all of that. Okay? So anyway, he had his time away.

: 32:33

Then he comes back to you and you can ask him, okay, tell me about that time. You know the time that you spent with God. How did that go? What, what was your focus? What did you talk about? So that you can, if he knows that you're really going to follow up with him like that, that also helps to make sure that he really did spend that time and didn't just go off and you know, goof off and okay, it's been about five minutes, so I'll go talk to mom. No, you want to be training your kids to really do this. So this is part of that following up with things and so you're following up with his prayer time and now if he's old enough and has been through this before, then he already knows the next step is mending his relationship with you. And you probably won't even have to ask him to do anything regarding that. But if it's, if you have not been a parent who has taught them to take the time to mend that relationship, then that would be the next step is to say, I want to restore this relationship with you.

Val Harrison: 33:33

And honestly I feel like you need to apologize to me for not being honest with me. And then letting me know your commitment to truth from now on. Can I count on you about that? So anyway, you would spend some time mending that relationship and then you would, the E is equal consequences. So you know it's going to depend on the kid and the scenario. Um, how often they been doing this and all kinds of things will go into play for determining what is equal consequences. It might be no phone for a week, it might be no phone for a day, it might be them paying the phone bill that month. It could be different things like that. It's just going to depend. But also ultimately remember mercy seat parenting, you want to have a gentle spirit about all of this with firm boundaries. Okay, so keep that in mind, especially during the consequences part. And then I also want to say with this, this TIME acronym can work with any scenario. Let's say it was that your child, your son hit his brother. Well the T would be, would be the truth about hitting what is wrong with hitting someone. And then the, I would be, I have let you get by with that for months now. And I'm really sorry, I said a really bad example in not caring enough or stopping you from picking on your brother all this time or bullying your brother or whatever. And so I need to step up to the plate and I need to be consistent and have a backbone and care enough about this to get it right. And I'm sorry that I set a bad example in that. So that's the I. Okay. So T truth, I, that's I as in mom, what I could have been doing differently or reminding of an example. You know, when I was a kid, I remember I had this cat and I was frustrated one day at somebody else, but I took it out on my cat and I dunno, I pulled its tail, we'll say. And that didn't solve the problem with the other person, but it sure made the cat not like me anymore. So anyway, you can be vulnerable and tell them a scenario you've experienced in the past and then mend. So in this case, he needs to to mend his heart. The reason behind why he hit his brother, you know, really digging deep and looking at that heart issue and figuring that out together. And then he needs to go mend relationship with his brother and then he equal consequences. What is an appropriate consequence for what he did was brother. And maybe it needs to be both my consequence with you and something that he does for his brother. So anyway, those are just some examples of ways to use the acronym time in dealing with these different character issues that come up with our kids. And I know it takes time and that's something we are very in short supply of and it's, it feels complicated and it's just kind of messy to dig into this stuff. But moms, this is what it takes to build a strong kid who is going to be able to withstand the crazy things in his future. It is worth it. So keep it up. Mom. I know you're doing your best and you're doing a great job and I just want to commend you for spending time with this podcast to grow some new ways and some, some new ideas for and some new motivation for being more intentional in strengthening your kids and their character in their hearts. It is worth it. Keep it up and thanks for spending this time with me. Moms.

Rich Harrison: 37:32

You can find today's show notes and transcript at practically speaking, mom.com there you'll find valves, blog books, and the six rooms of the intentional moms home. If you found this podcast to be helpful, we would be honored if you would share it with others. Subscribe to the podcast, follow her blog, and join in the practically speaking moms online community through Instagram and Facebook. At practically speaking, mom, you can also join the intentional mom, strong family private Facebook group to interact regularly with vow and lots of other intentional moms. Again, that's the private Facebook group, intentional mom, strong family. Val is looking forward to spending time with you again next week. Right here on the practically speaking mom podcast. The place for an intentional mom to build a strong family.