Parenting: Dr. John Marshall

First Baptist Church Kearney's Minister of Children, Abraham Leonard, interviews Dr. John Marshall on parenting. Dr. Marshall shares his practical, educated, and seasoned insights on parenting in hopes of encouraging parents across the world.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

Hello,

SPEAKER_01: 0:11

welcome to the Kearney Kids Parenting Show. I am your host, Abraham Leonard, Minister of Children at First Baptist Church Kearney. I am so glad that you have joined us.

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Music

SPEAKER_01: 0:37

Well, I am so glad to be joined by Dr. John Marshall for this episode of Kearney Kids Parenting Show. John, would you tell us a little bit about your family, your ministry, and just how you're doing? Sure.

SPEAKER_00: 0:51

It's good to be with you, Abraham. Good to see you. We're so proud of you going to Kearney. I'll be there in February for my eighth consecutive winter Bible study. I'm not sure about Pastor Ken. It has me come back every year, but I'm coming back again, so I'll get to see you in February. Ruthie and I are doing fine. Most of the people there know us. Ruthie does have multiple myeloma cancer, but she's doing okay with the treatments. Fatigue is a real problem, so I appreciate your prayers about that. But she's doing okay. And I had a massive seizure in December. I was already under the no driving restriction last time I was at Kearney. But I'll be able to drive in just a couple of weeks. After six months, I am thrilled. So we're doing okay. We're doing fine. And we're so proud of you, Abraham. You're going to First Kearney, one of my favorite churches in the whole wide world. No kidding. It's an amazing

SPEAKER_01: 1:50

church. I love being here. Rightly so. Would you tell us, would you start by just sharing a good parenting memory that you have?

SPEAKER_00: 2:03

Well, I'm 73 now. I have a son, 51, and a daughter, 49. And they're both serving the Lord. They've raised their kids to serve the Lord. We all live right here together. We're right here in Springfield. Except for I do have one grandson who is at the University of British Columbia earning a doctorate in mathematics. I have a degree in math. My son has a degree in math. Now my grandson's getting a Doctorate of Math. Ruthie and I were talking about this podcast and she said, what are you going to tell? What are you going to say? And I said, well, I don't know. But I do have one memory that stands out. We would go to Southern Baptist Convention every year. We're a typical pastor. You go to the convention. Church pays for your convention expenses. You're grateful to be there. Thank you, Lord. That type of thing. And then we try to have a vacation every And then we pay for it the next year. It wasn't until about 25 years ago, we finally got to where we were going on vacation without increasing our debt. But one thing that always happened on vacation to us, and we find this, this is just so interesting. Wherever we were on vacation, we have pictures of our son being 30 or 40 or 50 feet ahead of us, turning around taking pictures of our daughter being 30, 40 or 50 feet behind us. It was always that way. Son was always way ahead, daughter behind. One of us had to make sure we had our eyes on the son when I had our eyes on the daughter. And I don't know why that sticks out to us, but we always thought that was so funny. It didn't matter where we were, where we went. Son way ahead, daughter way behind. So it's just kind of an interesting little moment for us.

SPEAKER_01: 3:49

Yeah, that's awesome. And I remember going on vacations and having different memories like that with my family as well in my time in my parents' household. Could you tell us about some hard times that you have had as a parent and how you've overcame them? Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 4:13

Parenting. First of all, let me tell you, Abraham, exactly what I feel the goal of parenting ought to be. There's two goals. Number one, to raise your children to love Jesus. And number two, to make sure that when they become adults, they're your best friends in the whole world. That's two things right there. And by God's grace, my daddy raised three of us kids for the Lord, and he would say, how did you do it? And he would He never said anything with this. He never said grace, grace, all of grace. I feel the same way about my two children. Grace, grace, all of grace. We did have, by the anointing of the Lord, by his power upon us, we were able to accomplish those two things. We were able to raise our children for Jesus. And number two, they are our best friends in the whole world. They are close to us and we're close to them. The problem in parenting is, How do you move from being disciplinarian to friend? This is the dilemma of the whole raising of children. First of all, you have to decide how much disciplining you're going to do. I feel, this is just my observation, just anecdotal for me. I feel that right now, too many parents want to start out being their child's really close friend. too early. You always want to be friendly. You always want to be a friend to your children. But I feel that too many parents, they're trying to accomplish when their children are 3, 4, and 5 what they need to accomplish when they're 12, 13, and 14. So I think parenting starts with God in His great mercy, Abraham, God in His infinite mercy ordained that children be disciplined by the people that love them more than anyone else in the whole world. The Marine Corps will discipline you. A school principal will discipline you. Police will discipline you. You will be disciplined somewhere. But God ordained that children be disciplined by the two people in the world who love them more than they love anybody else in the world. What a great gift this is from God. And I think too many parents are missing that. They're not disciplining their children well when they're young. They're waiting, hoping to become, hoping to be their best friend when they're three years old, four years, five years old. And once again, we loved our children. They loved us. We were always hanging out and having fun. But we also made sure our children understood the limits, there were boundaries. And then they start to school and we put both of our children in the public schools. They start to school and now you're seeing them live in a world where the boundaries aren't as narrow as yours were, and now comes the conflict, and we're working through it, is in this time period that you have to become friend. You gotta talk, you gotta say, now, do you understand why I don't let you do that? And then by the time they get a driver's license, essentially, you have to, by that point, almost be non-disciplinary and totally a friend. So that's what Ruthie and I tried to do. We try to teach our children the ways of the Lord. We disciplined them. They knew the boundaries. Both of them, they got one swing at their mother. Neither of my children ever took a second swing at their mother. One time. We took care of that. Those are the kind of things I see in stores and restaurants. I see kids hitting their parents. Holy cow. What's going on here? This is wrong. So you have to start with discipline. But then... Then I see parents, their kids turn 14, 15, 16, and they see their kids are going wild. Their kids are doing things they shouldn't do. Then they try to become the strict disciplinarian. It's almost too late. It's almost too late. By then, you're releasing, you're lifting the burden, and now you're moving toward friendship. So I would say that has been the philosophy. Now, I will tell you something else that happened to me that helped me incredibly, Abraham. I was a typical workaholic when my children were preschoolers. I worked all the time. That's just what I did. I worked. You go to work, you work, work, work, work, work, work. Okay, that's what I did. And I knew I had not done a good job, so I thought I had failed. But I was listening to James Dobson one day. And James Dobson said, if you messed up as a parent while your children were little, well, he got my attention immediately. He said, you have one more opportunity. He said, that is the preteen years, when like 10, 11, and 12, you get another chance. And there was something about that little piece of advice that rescued me. I started taking my children to and from school every day. I mean, it was like an appointment on my calendar. I mean, I took them to school. When they came out, I talked about their day. I took them home, and most days I had to go back to work. But it was like an appointment. I got them to school in the morning. I picked them up. I talked about how their day was. I engaged them in conversation. That little piece, that little word from James Dobson, I look back on it and say that may have done as much to help me as anything else that happened to me.

SPEAKER_01: 10:07

That's good. That's good. Well, if you're going to go back in time and give yourself a new parenting advice, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00: 10:19

I would say do the disciplining early. I would say to myself, don't overwork. I worked too hard back in those days. Prioritize your children almost like something on your calendar. I have a dear friend, Abraham, whose daddy was a pastor of a huge church. He wanted to talk to his dad about graduation from high school. He called his dad's secretary and set up an appointment so he could talk to his own dad. I think I would say to myself, don't be so busy and neglect your family. But now I have to temper that because now, Abraham, we have parents that take their children out of church every Sunday for the whole summer. They're spending lots of time, and they don't realize. They're making a statement that their children's church is not important. That's just dollars to it. That's the statement they're making. They're going to pay dearly for that.

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So

SPEAKER_00: 11:34

I feel like I don't want to make the family an idol. Family can become your God. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying for me, as a workaholic, I would say to myself, John, put it on your calendar. Set aside the time. Be the parent you need to be. That's what I would say to myself if I had to do again.

SPEAKER_01: 12:00

That's really good advice. Now, I want to end on a little bit lighter note. I'd like to end by asking if you have any, you know, just one, maybe your favorite funny parenting story.

SPEAKER_00: 12:15

Okay. My favorite parenting story is actually my grandson. My son lost his first wife to diabetes. So Ruthie and I, for a couple years, helped him until he married. He married two years later. Oh, my, I married the most wonderful lady, thank you, Lord. But anyway, all right. Well, my grandson had bought a new pair of pajamas, Scooby-Doo pajamas. And I had him between my legs in front of me. I was leaning over him, and I was trying to get to Scooby-Doo. Pajamas on my grandson. And he was squirming, of course. And I said, stand still. I can't figure out what's the front and the back. And he stopped immediately and he said, Grandpa. He pointed to his stomach and said, this is the front. He pointed to his backside and said, this is the back. To me, I still think that's one of the funniest things. I'm trying to figure out the front and back of the pajamas. I said, my poor grandson thinks I don't know what's the front part of the body and the back part of the body. But that's one of my favorites. I've been telling that story for years, and my grandson still hates it. I tell that story, but I just love that story. Well, that's

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a good note to end on. We're so blessed that you were able to join us on the podcast today. Thank you on behalf of myself and all the listeners for joining us today. Thank you for joining me. I hope this was an encouragement to you. Please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with the people around you.