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nextTalk contains content of a mature nature. Parental guidance is advised.
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Are you ready for the nextTalk?
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Today’s show is on self-control.
0:00:36 – Speaker 3
Oh, are we talking about the donut holes?
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that I texted you about the episode. You went right to the donut.
0:00:42 – Speaker 3
Right there, I mean so much self-control with food. It’s the first thing that comes to my mind right now.
0:00:47 – Speaker 1
Yes, I’m thinking. I don’t even want to be a part of this show because I have too many personal examples. I ate like five donut holes right before we began from the same box. What is it? I don’t know.
0:01:01 – Speaker 3
It’s stress, stress, eating. Yes, you know, I’m all kidding aside. I think self-control is literally one of the most important skills we can ever teach our kids.
0:01:14 – Speaker 1
Well, it touches every part of life. I mean from very small issues to big life-changing relationship, changing things From donuts to marriage, you know, from friendship to how I react to people on social media. It’s all the things.
0:01:30 – Speaker 3
I mean, there’s so many things that come to mind when I think about self-control. You know, like the time that I wanted to go off on that person on social media and just rip them a new one. Yes, you know, and you have to like, you have to use self-control to stop yourself. You know the anger, the being mad at someone wanting to, like, set them straight. Those are all real feelings, but I can’t just do everything I feel because I would be a hot mess.
0:01:56 – Speaker 1
I was going to say, well, you can, but we may not be able to be friends.
0:02:00 – Speaker 3
I would have no friends. I would have, yes.
0:02:03 – Speaker 1
And we’ve all met people like that that seem to be so reactive in every part of their life. So we know. We know that it doesn’t feel good and that it’s not right, but it doesn’t mean it’s easy to have self-control.
0:02:15 – Speaker 3
Yeah, I mean, you know, from anger to envy, to bitterness, to hate, to lust, I mean some some things. Yeah, I was just going to say some things we talk a lot about here at nextTalk Pornography and sex. I mean, you know it takes self-control to have sex the way God intended for you to have sex and that’s in between, you know, a marriage between a man and a woman, and waiting until that perfect time. I mean that takes self-control and so it affects like I think about my kids working. Their self-control is going to affect their careers. You know they’re not going to get promoted if they can’t have self-control when their feelings get out of control at work.
0:02:57 – Speaker 1
Well, I think that’s kind of more the path we want to talk about today. Yes, self-control with the little things like the donut holes is ultimately important, and if you have kids you know those conversations are vital also. But we’re going to shift kind of into the realm of the bigger issues today that you just brought up, some of those topics that are life changing, you know, like pornography, addiction, like envy, like bitterness, and give you some examples of how we parent that now so that it affects it well in the long run.
0:03:29 – Speaker 3
Well, I think too, that is the perfect way to say it, because you have to parent the little self-control issues when they’re small and then it automatically will happen with the bigger things as they’re getting older. I mean, I’m seeing that with my you know, my teenager now. Things we’ve parented that have come out, you know. For example, you know I have a 16-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son, and so she gets annoyed with little brother and we’ve worked with her many over the years, being the oldest sibling.
0:03:59 – Speaker 2
Like you cannot just get mad at him and like hit him or, you know, go off on him or whatever.
0:04:04 – Speaker 3
Like you have to control that. Is he annoying you? Yes, that’s real, that’s valid, and you ever write to that feeling. He’s annoying me too. Yes, sometimes, but you know you can’t. And so now when I see her she’s growing up and I see her controlling that. Like I see those moments and I’m like I saw that Like you wanted to do this but you controlled it. It’s amazing, you know, like that positive reinforcement. But we’re seeing the fruits of that labor, I think. But I think it’s so important to start early.
0:04:38 – Speaker 1
Well, that makes our first point Find teachable moments about self-control and create conversation about it. I mean, and that’s really what we do with. nextTalk With Everything is we’re looking for ways to create open communication and conversation in our home about everything important, big and little, and self-control falls into that too. I can give you a really good example. That just happened, and it’s as if my kids were like hey, let me help you prepare for radio, my son, right now we were blessed with a truckload of Legos, basically where the neighbor moved. I mean more Legos than I ever imagined.
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It’s kind of a curse and a blessing.
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It is. No, you’re right. More of a blessing, don’t?
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step on them. Oh my gosh, it hurts so bad.
0:05:20 – Speaker 1
Yes, and it’s. You know, it’s more of a blessing now that there’s stores that will buy them. Yeah, because now it’s like a whole little business for my kids. Um, anyway, one of my kiddos is really, really into all the little characters and all the things, and he had sat for quite a long time and found some really cool little characters and lined them up on my desk, which is super awesome for my productivity. Um, but he, he paired them with each of their weapons or their like little gadgets and gizmos, and it probably took a lot of time.
Oh, dates Digging through a whole stack.
0:05:55 – Speaker 3
It’s like needle in a haystack, kind of thing.
0:05:56 – Speaker 1
You’re exactly right. It’s the smallest of pieces and you have like about 20 little characters or all their matching things and he was kind of did like a fashion show of them and he had them lined up and he was showing little sister and she leaned on the table where he had them all set up and it jiggled them in fall, just jiggled them, and he gave her a warning, while she felt like he was too harsh in his warning. So instead of you know, calmly and in an adult way, saying I feel like your tone is harsh, she jiggled the table even.
0:06:26 – Speaker 3
Oh no, oh no, I’m getting nervous right now Just thinking about what’s happening.
0:06:30 – Speaker 1
Yes, and so he’s like getting hot and he’s like oh no, you didn’t. He’s going from a two to 10 in six seconds.
0:06:38 – Speaker 3
Yes.
0:06:38 – Speaker 1
Which, honestly, the worst thing that could happen is the character could fall over. I mean, it’s not going to.
0:06:44 – Speaker 3
But still in his little mind he’s thinking about the hours and hours of trying to put it all together.
0:06:50 – Speaker 1
And he had lined them up in a certain way to show his grandmas who were coming over later. You know, it was a whole thing in his head. So I’m downstairs and I can hear it escalate and I don’t stop it. I let them go back and forth, let them go back and forth until they’re yelling and it’s like a whole thing.
0:07:06 – Speaker 3
You’re like mom stalker on the other side of the door. Yeah, I was like, let me just see what happens here.
0:07:11 – Speaker 1
If it gets violent I might step in. So I let it happen and then I walked in and I calmly sat down with them. What I wanted to do was not have self-control and be like y’all are crazy, but stop, but I tried to be the adult and you’re trying to model it.
0:07:27 – Speaker 3
I’m trying really hard.
0:07:28 – Speaker 1
I’m really am and I looked at them both and I said I understand that you both feel out of control right now.
You both feel like you’re right in this situation, but I want you to step aside, go to your own corners and, as long as it takes, even if it’s the rest of the day, I want you to think about how your reaction could have been different and how that would have changed the outcome.
I want you to think, if you had responded differently, if you had taken a breath, if you had listened better, how that could have changed things. And I will tell you it took the whole day for both of them to calm down and actually circle back and be willing to talk about it. But the conversation came down to self-control that one word or one movement different by either one of them. It could have been a positive outcome where they could have respected each other and she could have celebrated his little accomplishment and he could have taught his sister to be careful, but instead it ended up in a yelling match that hurt the relationship, and so that little moment turned into great conversations individually and the three of us together later that evening, and it all boiled down to self-control.
0:08:40 – Speaker 3
I love how you always talk about teaching your littles because this lesson that they just learned over Legos they’re going to remember that when they’re on social media I hope so girl Post and bully and just spout off at somebody, they’re going to remember this moment. I mean, that’s our hope and prayer, right? And I love how you’re finding the little moment in the everyday to talk to them about controlling those emotions. Yes, they’re real. Yes, you have a right to be upset, but escalating the situation is not going to fix anything and we can also hurt our relationships, hurt the people that we love the most and that’s my number one goal, because I’ve done it myself.
0:09:21 – Speaker 1
I think we all have, and I think that’s one of the things I hope we can always take away from these shows and that you can take away from these shows is that we’re living this in real time, trying to find practical ways to fix what we have done and do better for our kids. Amen.
0:09:38 – Speaker 3
One thing I always tell my kids and it goes right along with this I can’t do anything, I feel I can’t. I can’t say everything I think, because I’m human and I’m flawed, and sometimes I do have reactions and thoughts that are mostly not Godly. You know I have to put them through the filter of Jesus before they’re even presentable. Yeah, that’s so true. Everybody writes that.
And so when they hear me, say that I think then they don’t feel as much shame and guilt when they have their reaction or the response, because in their little minds they’re thinking okay, I’m human, I felt that way, but do I need to act on it? Do I need to do this? You may want to hit the kid at school, that’s being mean, but should you do that, right, you know, thinking about the consequences, the fallout, all of that, and then talk to them about self-control. I mean it’s such a valuable lesson. Hormones, like you said, hormones, hormones is a big one. Yes, you know, all kids, their bodies are changing, especially that middle school. Yeah, that middle school, early high school. I mean it is just, it’s rough, trust me.
0:10:44 – Speaker 1
No.
0:10:45 – Speaker 3
I know I’ve got a seventh grader and gone to the junior.
So I know and you know we’ve had a lot of conversations about how I will say to them listen, I know your body’s changing and you’ve got all these hormones that it isn’t even. You don’t even know that you have those hormones, but I see that coming out in you and you have to learn how to control it. You can’t just give people attitude because you’re not having a good day, like life doesn’t work that way. Well, you can, you can’t, but again you’re not going to have any friends.
0:11:16 – Speaker 1
But the consequences are not worth it. Yeah, I tell my kids that all the time. I’m like, yeah, you want to do that. Okay, let’s talk about what those consequences might feel like. It’s not worth it and that’s not modeling Jesus for the rest of the people on this planet.
0:11:29 – Speaker 3
Yeah, as they get older, to talk to them about urges. Urges and I mean urges to look at pornography, urges to Google that thing on Instagram, urges when they have boyfriends or girlfriend or whatever, when they have or in that relationship. You need to talk to them about that, like what that looks like when they start kissing and how far is too far. Like all of that is about self control and if you start early, the conversation just naturally flows into that kind of thing because you talk to them forever about controlling their emotions and feelings. I love Pastor Michael Todd. He says I think that’s his name, pastor Todd, I don’t know, I think that’s his name. He’s out of like Tulsa, I think.
0:12:16 – Speaker 1
Our next show is on all cybers.
0:12:19 – Speaker 3
I love it. I love it because he says feelings are real, but they’re a bad manager, like they shouldn’t dictate your response and your reactions. Jennifer Rothschild has a good one. She says feelings are real, but they don’t always represent truth. You know they don’t always represent exactly what’s real in the world. You know truth.
0:12:43 – Speaker 1
I love the fact that we can talk with our kids about things like that too early on, because then we avoid going into the shame that sometimes we revert to when we feel desperate because we waited too long to bring up these topics. So if you can tell your kids it’s normal to have urges and feelings and want to be close to someone or feel this way, and without adding in that shame factor, man, you’re in such a great space as they get older and they start actually feeling them, and then you move into that self-control piece and so it all goes together so beautifully if we make the time and space for it.
0:13:19 – Speaker 3
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0:13:42 – Speaker 2
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0:14:08 – Speaker 3
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0:14:13 – Speaker 1
Before the break we were talking about finding teachable moments to talk to your kids about self-control. Create conversations around everyday things that happen. We all know there’s tons of opportunity to talk about self-control.
0:14:25 – Speaker 3
Legos, donut holes, all those practical little things that can translate into huge topics like sex and porn and screen addiction and all those things. As they get older, you know, one of the things that we want to point out is self-control isn’t something for you to master, it’s actually a product of our surrendering. I love that Because oftentimes when we see something and we need to like fix it you know what I mean Like if we’re on our screens too much, like we have to fix that. But if we start looking at it more, like it’s a heart thing and it’s a self-controlled thing and it’s like who are we surrendering to? Kind of thing, it kind of shifts our perspective. We don’t feel like we have to do better. We just have to surrender to Jesus so that he could help us do better. Right, like he’s the strength.
0:15:19 – Speaker 1
Yeah, that’s one of the things that I tell my kids a lot to encourage them, because it feels overwhelming sometimes and super hard for me as an adult, so I imagine for them too it can feel discouraging. I let them know that self-control is a fruit of the spirit. I say that all the time and I’m like listen, guys, it’s really a heart issue. When we feel like we’re out of control, the best thing we can do is dial it back and do some of those things that get us in line with the heart of Jesus.
0:15:45 – Speaker 3
Well, and I love how you often say to your kids too we’ve talked about it like, look at the fruit of people of like, picking their friends, and that fruit is the result of self-control, of not just reacting with everything, Like we said in the first half.
you know, you could be that person where you have no filter and you just do whatever you want to do. But those people normally don’t have good friends. They struggle. I mean you have to be careful with this. It’s going to touch every, every aspect of your life. It is and.
0:16:14 – Speaker 1
I’m not saying this is the right thing to do, because I’m certainly not perfect, but I’ve actually said that before. I’m like guys. You know, we’ve been around people like that before, where you feel uncomfortable and you feel like they’re difficult to be around or hurtful to be around.
They say hurtful things and do bad things. You don’t want to be that person, and that makes it really real for them, because we’ve all experienced that. They all have people in their classroom or on the playground that they’ve encountered like that. That’s a great way for them to have a tangible understanding of what it looks like when the heart’s not right and their fruit is not good.
0:16:47 – Speaker 3
Yeah, and the only thing that separates us, who are really the self-control to maintain it? Because we all have negative things that pop up. We all want to respond badly sometimes we all struggle with that we’re all going to mess up.
We may struggle with different things, you know, somebody may struggle with anger, where another person may struggle with sex addiction or whatever, but it all boils down to that self-control. You know, when we were looking at this, one of my favorite verses is Galatians 5.17, and it says the sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the spirit wants. And the spirit gives us desires that are opposite of what the sinful nature desires. Those two forces are constantly fighting each other. That’s in Galatians and it’s you know, it’s the difference.
It’s the battle between flesh and the spirit, and we’re all human and we’re all flesh and we all have the urges. And then there’s that battle of but God, would God want me to do this? Should I do this? Is this like Jesus? And it’s that constant friction. I love how the Bible talks about the desires and you know, when you look up the word self-control in the dictionary, this is what it says restrain exercised over one’s own impulses, emotions or desires. You know, it’s that desire of what you want, to who you want to please. Do you want to please yourself and just have no self-control and no filter and you just go through? Or you want wanting to please the spirit. So that’s why it’s really like a surrender issue.
0:18:20 – Speaker 1
And it’s something that, like we’ve said over and over, touches every part of your life and it’s something we will all struggle with for our entire life, because we are human One, and it’s something we can pray for. Help for which, I think, is that hope piece is that, because it’s something we will all struggle with in different areas praying for help is something you can teach your kids, a practical thing you can teach your kids to do at any age. Pray for God to give you a desire to have healthy desires to not struggle in that area. Pray for the help of the Holy Spirit.
0:18:57 – Speaker 3
Romans 8 also says those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the spirit. So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death, but letting the spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. That’s a totally different scripture than Galatians and we’re seeing the same thing, that battle between flesh and spirit. And again, that’s where that surrendering comes in. You know, and Sometimes, like if you see your kids struggle, like sometimes my kids have said to me I just get tired of doing the right thing, like I get tired of not being able to tell the bully off, or I get tired of not just Breaming that girl out on social media I just want to say it.
Yes, you know.
0:19:44 – Speaker 1
I feel that way sometimes.
0:19:45 – Speaker 3
Yeah, I feel that way right and so we have a lot of conversations about that’s actually a good thing. If you have that constant Battle going on in your mind, like I like you write a tweet and then you delete it, and then you write it and then you delete it, that’s actually a good thing, because that is showing that you’re letting the spirit control you. Like you, that battle is Is going on in your heart and God said it would. Yes, we want the spirit to win, but if you struggle with this often and if you see your kids struggling with it, that’s actually a good thing.
0:20:18 – Speaker 1
Well, if you’ve been a Christian for a minute, you know that the more that you are walking in the spirit, satan, like, amps it up. Oh yeah, you know.
0:20:26 – Speaker 3
You know, that’s a word.
0:20:28 – Speaker 1
If you’re doing your own thing. But when you really start to make waves for Jesus, he’s like oh, oh, you got to get back in the battle. So sometimes I feel like when I’m struggling, more means I’m actually doing the right thing. You know what I’m saying, yeah, and I think another you know just real practical thing with kids and I know you do something similar to is when I see my kids struggling, I’m like listen, you don’t have to figure this out in this moment. Sometimes you need to step away and take a break. You know you need to step away and have a moment, and so a lot of times we’ll send our kids up into their rooms, but just be still for a minute. Or maybe you need to be angry for a minute. Maybe you need to punch your pillow, maybe you need to go hit the punching bag or take a lap get it and get the anger out in productive ways in productive ways.
Hitting your sister or hitting yeah, because those emotions are real and when you’re in the middle of that struggle of Trying to do the right thing, sometimes you need to get that anger or that feeling out so that you can process and you can work through and and be able to make a good choice about how you’re gonna respond. Yeah, and so we say step away, go go to your bedroom, take a walk, do something to separate yourself so you can get to a good place where you can make a good choice and not respond.
0:21:40 – Speaker 3
That is self-control we call that reset. Yeah, you need a reset. And they know when I say that that oh, they gotta check themselves.
0:21:46 – Speaker 1
Yeah they’re.
0:21:47 – Speaker 3
You know they need to reel in the self-control and really think about what they’re doing right now. You know, as we think about these desires and this definition and this battle between flesh and spirit, if we dive into the Bible more, there’s so much in the Bible about this topic. James 1, 14 and 15 is pretty cool. It says this each one is tempted when he, when we, are dragged away and enticed by our own Evil desires. There’s that word again desires, desire leads to sin and sin leads to death. So we see a cycle here continually. It starts with our evil desires and they lead to sin and then sin leads to death. Right, and so what I tell my kids is okay.
Let’s take a step back. How do we stop the evil desires from becoming sin? Right, and that is about self-control and taking those thoughts captive. Yes, being able to. When you spot something in your mind, a thought, a lust you know, I want to go Google this, whatever that may be that’s a moment where you need to say to yourself Okay, my flesh is wanting me to do that and that’s a natural, human, fleshly thing to want to do. But I have to take those thoughts captive. The Bible says that we have to take those thoughts captive and then actually think logically yes, is this okay? Does this line up with God? Is this spirit?
0:23:17 – Speaker 1
will this lead me?
0:23:18 – Speaker 3
Is this spirit? Yes, and so, taking those thoughts captive, I have found myself talking to my kids over and over about that concept.
0:23:27 – Speaker 1
What I tell my kids about taking their thoughts captive is that not only is an important thing to know in their head, but just like if they want to have big muscles, like on their arms, they have to work at that. They have to work those muscles for those to grow. You have to work at taking your thoughts captive. The only way to do that is practice. It has to be something that you do all the time, regularly, ongoing. It just exercise that muscle basically. And so that has helped my little ones when I’ll say if you want that to become something that happens, naturally you gotta exercise it. And so we come up with different things for them to think about in places for their mind to go, and that becomes a repetitive thing and I say exercise that muscle, exercise taking that thought captive, because that’s a hard concept for young kids, but that seems to help and it helps me too, and it becomes just the normal part of my life.
0:24:19 – Speaker 3
Well, on the other thing, just going right along with that muscle, like if you don’t know the truth, the flesh is always gonna win out.
So, you have to stay grounded in the word and you have to teach your kids about that. So when there’s a battle between flesh and spirit and they’re not sure what to do, point them to the Bible. Always Point them to scripture and make sure the more they read the scripture, the more the spirit wins out. You know what you fill your mind with is how you’re gonna think, absolutely so. That is another way to control those desires that are coming into our thoughts and helping take those thoughts captive, absolutely.
0:24:51 – Speaker 1
You know you’ve heard us say here before don’t just boon feed scripture to your kids. Yeah, it’s a good question. From a young age, teach them to go and find out what God says on their own, so that becomes again a habit, a muscle. They’re exercising, that it becomes second nature for them and they know not only where to go but how to go there.
0:25:09 – Speaker 3
I feel like we could talk about this subject forever. There’s so many conversations that we could have about this. Number one find teachable moments about self-control and create conversation, even when your kids are little. Start this early. Two self-control is not for me to master. It’s a product of my surrendering. And three commit to taking your thoughts captive.
0:25:34 – Speaker 2
Thanks for joining us on nextTalk Radio with Mandy and Kim on AM 630, the Word. You are not alone trying to figure out how to parent in this digital world. We are here with practical solutions to help you. Follow us on Facebook, instagram and Twitter. Find our video series and podcast at nexttalkorg. Are you ready for the nextTalk? We’ll see you in the next video.
Transcribed by https://podium.page
