417 | From Control to Influence, Eradicating the Child-Centered Home, and the Love Jug (Ted Cunningham)

Marriage
Written By Jeff Zaugg

Episode Description

Parenting is a journey from control to influence—and the fastest way to squander influence is to be controlling. In this episode, Ted Cunningham shares his famous "Love Jug" illustration, explains why your marriage is actually your greatest parenting tool, and unpacks why eradicating the child-centered home is essential for raising kids who are ready to leave. Plus, you'll hear the powerful "princess to queen" conversation he had with his daughter and how honor bombardments can transform your family culture.

  • Ted Cunningham is the founding pastor of Woodland Hills Family Church in Branson, Missouri, and a sought-after speaker and author on marriage and family. He has written multiple books including Trophy Child and has partnered with the late Dr. Gary Smalley on numerous projects. Ted and his wife, Amy, are celebrating 30 years of marriage and have two adult children. He's known for his humor, practical wisdom, and passionate belief that strong marriages create strong families.

    • Parenting is a journey from control to influence—and the fastest way to squander influence is by being controlling.

    • Your marriage is part of your parenting plan. Kids have a front-row seat to how you treat your spouse.

    • Jesus is your source, not your spouse or your kids. Fire them from that role.

    • The child-centered home creates prolonged adolescence: too much privilege, not enough responsibility.

    • Honor bombardments and honor lists create close-knit families by calling out what's valuable in each person.

  • Hey guys, welcome back to DadAwesome. Today, Episode 417, I have Ted Cunningham coming at you. One of the most requested over the past three, four years. He's been requested so many times and it just worked out now for us to connect. He's a pastor, author, family man, and just invests deeply in helping marriages specifically, but also a lot of parenting resources. So excited to have Ted join me for today's conversation.

    Next week, Episode 418, is our eight year birthday for DadAwesome. That'll be the marker moment of us celebrating eight years of this ministry. And I was gonna wait to make this announcement next week, but why wait, right? Why wait?

    So I'm holding in my hands right now the DadAwesome book. The book that I've been working on for four or five years, but specifically this last year has been just a lot of prayer, a lot of work putting together and writing the book titled DadAwesome: Dad Discoveries to Activate Awesomeness. This is a collection of the wisdom, the core discoveries from eight years of DadAwesome. And it's in my hands, it's printed, it's done.

    And I want to offer it to you guys five weeks early. So I'll ship it to you guys in about three weeks if you join the advanced team. And I'm praying for about 200 of our dads in our community to join the advanced team. So I'm gonna send you a free copy about a month before anyone else can get the book. So you'll get it early.

    I'm gonna encourage you to read—you don't have to read the whole book over that month, but would you read seven of the 30 chapters? They're short little seven minute chapters. So you're gonna spend about an hour of reading time. You're gonna commit to that. You'll commit to writing a review on launch day. I'm asking the advanced team to commit to buying a pre-order of the book. So technically, I guess you are gonna buy the book, but you're gonna get two copies—the copy I gift you and the one you order. And then helping to promote the book on launch day with a simple post on one of your platforms.

    So not a huge list of requirements to join the advanced team, but just your heart being with this project and helping more dads learn about what we've discovered in these eight years of the ministry. So simply go to dadawesome.org/book to join the advance team. Like I said, praying for 200. I've ordered 200 books for the purpose of gifting to the advance team. So once that expires, it'll be a digital resource if anyone beyond 200 wants to be on the launch team.

    Praying that you guys check that out—dadawesome.org/book.

    Okay, let's jump in today. Ted Cunningham coming at you with so much wisdom, so much joy. He's a joy-filled father and he's got a lot to share. It's gonna be so helpful. So welcome to Episode 417 with Ted Cunningham.

    Ted, I'm super grateful. I have certain people who keep bubbling up—friends around the country are like, "Hey, have you ever interviewed Ted Cunningham?" It's been multiple times in the last few years. So welcome to DadAwesome.

    Well, thank you for having me. I've been looking forward to this one.

    Well, as a fun way to just dive in, you're headed into a transitional season as a dad. So give us just a little bit—shine the spotlight on the season and chapter of fatherhood you're in.

    So in this year coming up, I will celebrate 30 years of marriage. And in the same year, my daughter will graduate from college a week apart from my son. Along with my son-in-law—my daughter is married. And then about two weeks after my son graduates from college, he will get married. So we will have all of our children married.

    We've been testing out this empty nest phase of parenting, and I'm loving this season as much as all the other stages and seasons of fatherhood. We say at our church all the time, parenting is a journey from control to influence. And with every year of your child's life, you're losing control and hopefully replacing it with influence.

    And I say, at this age, all I really have is influence. Now I still pay that final college bill—there's one more—so I've got a touch of control. But all I have is influence.

    And I told my wife the other night, I said, "Amy, I love this season of life where the kids call with questions and we're in a position of influence." And I remind myself what I've taught parents for years: the fastest way to squander influence is to be controlling. So we have to let them form their own marriages and families and get out there and get after it and go on vacations that they choose and pay for. And choose how the holidays look for them. So it's going to be a fun year the next 12 months.

    Well, congratulations on the triple graduation, the wedding, and the 30 years of marriage. Congrats. So you're talking to a guy who is celebrating 20 years of marriage this summer. So I'm in that celebration window as well. But you touch my heart with my four daughters thinking forward to their weddings. Even the way you described—I think this was when your daughter was young—you're like, "She's a princess that one day will become a queen." Can you explain that context?

    So I hate to say it, but we were a Disney family. My daughter—I can tell you more about Disney princesses than anybody I know. And so one day, she was about five, taking over the home and like exhausting. Like Amy and I, we'd be having a conversation and she would break into the room and it was like, "Hey, you two tall people stop talking. I'm here. It's about me."

    And I don't know, one day I'm like, I gotta fix this. This can't continue. So I put her up on the breakfast bar. I put my hand on her heart. And that I got from my mentor, Gary Smalley. Whenever he wanted his kids to know, "What I'm about to share, I want this to go deep." I mean, his whole passion was the heart. And this is where life flows from. Every word you speak, every action you take, it flows from the heart.

    And so I remember putting her on the breakfast bar. I put my hand on her heart. And I said, "Corinne May, there's only one queen in this house, and you ain't her. You're not her."

    And she looked at me—I mean, just—she's firstborn, right? So she's my strong-willed one. And she looked at me with those eyes that said, "We'll see. We'll see. Good idea, Dad."

    And the next day she told my wife, "There's room enough in this house for two queens."

    And I put her back on the breakfast bar, put my hand on her heart. I said, "Corinne, you'll never be my queen, but you're my princess. And what that means is one day I'm gonna stand at the back of a church with you to walk you down the aisle. And I'm not walking you down the aisle until I know he loves you as much as me, will care for you as I have cared for you."

    I said, "Because it's at that moment, I give you away as my princess to become another man's queen."

    And so my heart and passion for marriage, parenting, family is preparing our children to leave home, eradicating the kids-centered home, preparing them to leave home.

    And I told her, "You're gonna watch mom and I." And I think parents overlook this, right? They overlook their marriage as part of their parenting plan. I said, "Corinne, I wanna show you every day to the best of my ability. I'm not perfect. But I wanna show you to the best of my ability how a queen should be treated. So you will look for a guy who will treat you that way."

    And you get to have a lot of rich conversations with four daughters. Four sets of little twinkling eyes watching from every angle.

    Front row seat to your marriage is what I say.

    Yeah. And I guess even to take a step further from the angle of your son—because there's another story I wanted you to tee up. Your son and there's a jellyfish story. I just think there's a control of like, "Don't swim so far," like, "Hey, control, control." And as you said, to move from control to influence, we have to let go of control, let them kind of make mistakes. Would you kind of tee up that story?

    Yeah, so we're a Midwest family. So we don't even know how to behave at a beach, right? We don't know how to act. And so my kids didn't grow up—I mean, we'd go to the beach every now and then.

    You're talking about when he got stung by the jellyfish and my response to what he needed to do. And he came up out of the water after—you know, he's more of my adventurous one. So he does his own thing and dad's warnings are often suggestions. "I got to kind of stretch this and see if what he's saying is true."

    Well, he got stung by a jellyfish on the back. And he came screaming out of the water, which I didn't see any blood. So I knew it wasn't like a shark or anything, but he came screaming out of the water. I mean, pain, pain, pain, blood-curdling scream.

    And you know, you've experienced it. I know what cries, what screams I should get up out of the recliner for and which I can stay seated for. Cause they're not the end of the world. This was jump up out of the recliner.

    And he's looking at me like, "What do I do? What do you do?"

    And I just looked at him and said, "I don't think you're prepared for what I need to do to make this sting better."

    And he goes, "What's that?"

    I go, "We've got to pee on it."

    And he stopped dead in his tracks. And again, I'm a Midwest guy, probably heard that in a movie somewhere. And he stopped crying and looked at me and you could see he got the idea like, "Let's do it. If that's what it's going to take."

    I'm like, "Of course that's what you're going to take." So he learned the hard way. We did not do that though, but I know he wanted to.

    Amazing. Well, it's just a fun moment of father, son, and going beyond maybe the normal experience, the adventure, and the potential consequences. You mentioned earlier, "eradicate the child-centered home." And your book back 12, 13 years ago—I mean, that was a lot of the focus, I believe. It's called "Trophy Child." Is that the title, right? So I guess your heart—share a little bit your heart for that movement of like, "Let's not make them the center." But then also any new threads, new discoveries in the last 12, 13 years since you launched the book. I can point to the book—is there anything new that you've discovered?

    Yeah. So my passion for Genesis 2:24—we often think that's just a marriage verse because we hear it at weddings and, you know, Jesus repeats it and quotes it in Matthew 19 and Paul in Ephesians 5. And so we go to marriage immediately, husband and wife becoming one. But the very first part of that verse, the leave part is, "For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother."

    And that, I think, is where we're struggling. Most research points to this. It didn't start in the boomer generation. It started with Gen X kids, meaning Boomers heard from their parents, "I didn't have it, you don't need it." And so Boomers then took that to my generation, Gen X, and said, "I didn't have it, so I'm gonna make sure you get it."

    Disney, instead of being a once in a lifetime trip, became the annual vacation. Technology changed a lot too, so any time new technology came out, the kids needed it. We over-praised our kids. We over-involved them in every activity that was offered at the school or in the community. And we just started gearing all the resources and time and energy of the home around the children.

    And the struggle is—I think that started in the 80s—the struggle is they're supposed to leave home. And we know what it means to leave home. The physically leaving home is easy. My daughter three years ago left home and moved into another home with her husband.

    Relationally, my relationship with my daughter and my son coming up in May is gonna be different. Not bad, not horrible or distant, just different. And that leads to the emotional leaving.

    As I told my daughter at her wedding, I said, "You're no longer going to call me at the end of a good day or a bad day. I'm no longer your first phone call. When something breaks around the house, I'm no longer your first phone call. You have to call Kayden. He ain't going to be able to fix it, but you got to give him a shot, right? You have to give him a try at this."

    But that's emotionally. You leave financially. So all of these ways of leaving—and I think when you spend 18 years telling your children, "This family is all about you," we don't know how to do the leaving part.

    So I've prepared my kids since they were very young with Genesis 2:24. You know, we love you. We're committed to you. You're a welcome addition to this home. We want deep joy and connection as a family. We want to be a close-knit family. But Genesis 2:24 says the bond between a husband and wife is stronger than the bond between a parent and a child.

    The bond between a parent and a child is supposed to change—not so with a husband and a wife. And if the bond doesn't change between a parent and a child, they will have a very difficult time creating a healthy, thriving bond with their new spouse.

    And that, as a pastor, I see it all the time in counseling. Young people who didn't leave home, they're now part of enmeshed families, and they're struggling in early and new marriages because they're still tied to home.

    So we told our kids, "We love you, you're a welcome addition to this home, but you're not the center of it."

    And this is why I say eradicating the kids-centered home and prioritizing marriage go hand in glove. When you prioritize your marriage, it's a gift obviously for your marriage, but it's also setting your children up to leave home with a healthy model of what marriage looks like and with the tools needed to go to college and deal with a resident assistant, a resident director, and a professor or their first job and realize, "Wow, the world really doesn't revolve around me. There's other people to consider."

    And I just think one of the greatest mistakes we tend to make as parents is treating our children like children right up until the very day we expect them to be an adult.

    Yeah, so it takes time. And that leaving should start earlier than the day they walk out the door.

    I'm interrupting today's conversation with a fun announcement. My dad wrote a book. It's releasing on March 10th, and it's called DadAwesome. My sisters and I will be sharing what some early readers said about the book. Today, I'm reading what Pablo Cerrone said about my dad's book:

    "If you've ever longed for a wiser mentor beside you on the journey of fatherhood, this book is your answer. Drawing from more than 400 conversations with fathers, Jeff has walked the Jeremiah 6:16 path—seeking the ancient wisdom of those ahead of him, living it, and becoming the kind of dad he was created to be. In these pages, he offers the same path to us, inviting every father to walk as a true son of God and become the awesome dad God intended us to be."

    My dad is sending out 200 books early. Would you want one? All you have to do is join the advanced team, and there's a few simple things you can do to help. Go to dadawesome.org/book to get the book a month early. Now, let's get back to the conversation.

    And I've heard you express that we accelerate childhood milestones and then we delay these adult milestones. What do you mean by that?

    So the milestones of adulthood and romantic relationship formation that obviously leads to marriage—they've been the same for every generation. My great grandparents, grandparents, parents, and now the kids I'm raising. You know, it's leave home, finish school, get a job, get married, start a family.

    Now, please hear me. If someone's listening right now saying, "Well, I left home and I've got a job, but I'm not married, I don't have kids," I'm not saying you're not an adult. I'm just saying that's the progression of adulthood, the normative progression. Been the same in every generation.

    The difference between my grandparents' generation and my generation, Gen X, is they completed these milestones in a very short period of time, if not in the same week. Like, I mean, it was fast. You may have gotten a little parcel of land as part of the family farm or such, but you left home, you started working immediately, you got a job, you got married, started a family. I mean, it was just all real fast.

    We now, because of prolonged adolescence—and what is prolonged adolescence? Prolonged adolescence defined as too much privilege, not enough responsibility. And that's because of the kids-centered home. Prolonged adolescence is the fires of that are stoked by the kids-centered home, making it all about the children. And so they leave home not prepared.

    So the childhood milestones, zero to 10, we tell our kids "Go, go, go, go, go. Run, run, run. Faster, faster, faster." How fast can we get this kid potty trained? How fast can we get this kid reading? Let's start their professional sports career at age five or six, lock them in for the rest of their schooling.

    I mean, you know this, you've experienced this. You put your daughter in dance. I don't know what your sport or activity is with your daughters, but you put them in dance and you're like, "This is expensive. You're in this now for a long time to come."

    I've worked with parents who just struggle when their junior in high school decides, "I don't want to do football anymore. I'm not going to be pro. I'm not going to get a scholarship. I'd like to try this." I'm like, "No," because they've locked them so into this. That's zero to 10.

    But then when they start becoming little adults, 12, 13 years old—and by the way, the Bible really only has two seasons of life mentioned: childhood and adulthood. It was in 1904 we created the term "adolescence" and put a gap between childhood and adulthood. I don't argue against that too much because my counselor friends come at my throat, but it's the gap that's growing larger and larger that I'm concerned with—that we're waiting till our 30s and 40s now to complete these milestones because we think we can only do one at a time.

    We need to save some money and get established. Instead, I believe you can get married and build something together. Obviously, my kids have followed my message, getting married in their early 20s.

    So, I think what happens is when engines placed in our children by Almighty God—individualization and separation—when you feel your child pulling away from you, it's not rebellion when they're wanting to make their own friends and choose the clothes they wear and they're starting to make adult decisions. But that's when we freak out as parents. That's when we start to say, "Hey, whoa, I know I said 'go, go, go, go, go' for 10 years, but now I'm saying, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow this down.'"

    Ownership versus blaming, deflecting—kids who take ownership. I think this topic ties so closely to what you're talking about with child-centered and who's responsible for me, for my heart, for my decisions, for my actions.

    There's this quote that I read and you said, "Fire your spouse and your kids as your source of life." When I read "fire your spouse and your kids," I was like, "Whoa." But this extreme posture around "I am in charge of," and "my wife is not my source," and "my kids are not my source." Would you expound on this idea of ownership?

    Now this part I've really—you said what's changed in maybe the last 10 or 12 years. What's really been a part now of almost every counseling or coaching session that I do, I start with: Jesus is your source, Satan is your enemy, your spouse is your companion. And if you want to experience high levels of marital satisfaction, never treat your spouse like the source or the enemy.

    And most couples I work with—it starts with them seeing each other as the enemy. "This person, he's working against me, she's working against me." And I try to help them become side-by-side companions through the grind of life.

    And so I use an illustration with a water jug and glasses to demonstrate this because, you know, we pour into our spouse and codependency is sitting around with an empty heart—or what we call in our family the "love jug"—waiting for them to pour back into us.

    We've also made the mistake with our kids through vanity parenting and companion parenting and perfection parenting, thinking, "I pour into my child and my job is to connect my child to me as the source of life."

    And no, no, no, your job every day as a parent, according to Deuteronomy 6:4-7, is to point your child to the true and only source of life. We've fallen for this faulty input-output theory of parenting that says, "Whatever I pour into my child is what I will get out of my child."

    And I always love to joke with our church—the Hebrew term for that is, "It's not true."

    You're gonna learn that the hard way if you don't quickly begin to teach your kids, "My job is to every single day, from the moment you get up to the time you go to sleep at night, as we're sitting around the house, as we're driving down the road, I'm to point you to the true and only source of life."

    And so whenever we feel the blame game creep into our home or codependency, we just simply say, "My source is Jesus, not you."

    And this lesson—I even read that your son was like, "I'd rather have a spanking than hear this lesson one more time."

    So the love jug—so I have this right—is like that source. My source is God. My enemy who wants to steal this away is Satan. But I still as dad, after pouring it out into my wife, I do pour out into my kids. We're guiding them to know that their source is not dad. Is that right?

    Yeah, so I keep that empty. I obviously don't do this anymore. I don't set my 20-somethings down for lectures. But when we used to do this in restaurants too, when we'd be traveling—I would keep a clear plastic jug under the sink and pull it out and put it on the table and ask the kids, "What is this?"

    And they'd go, "It's the love jug."

    "What does it represent?"

    "It represents my heart."

    "Who's responsible for your heart?"

    "I am responsible for my heart."

    "How much are you responsible for your heart?"

    "I am 100% responsible for my heart."

    "How much is your sister responsible for your heart?"

    "She is 0% responsible."

    And this is why Carson would go, "Please give us a spanking instead."

    And then I would take the hose from the sink and fill this up to the very top. "What is this?"

    And they'd go, "It represents God's love."

    "Yeah, because we know and rely on the love God has for us. He is our source. And this is why we do devotions. This is why we pray. This is why we read scripture after meal time. It's why we talk about the Lord throughout the day. I want to make sure you're leaving the house as full of God's love as possible."

    And then where the illustration really got fun is you just go over to the cupboard and get all different shapes and sizes of glasses and you start pouring. And they represent people in your life—grandma, grandpa, mom, dad, brother, sister. And these are all the people you're going to be pouring into. And I would have a talk for each one of them.

    And the point would be to end up with very little left in the love jug, meaning I've drained myself out. I said codependency is sitting around waiting for all these people to pour back into you. And that's where it all goes wrong because Jesus is unlimited free refills. Stay connected to the source, and He gives you everything you need to pour into other people.

    I work with a lot of pastors who don't get this. They come in, they're depleted, they're exhausted, they're mad at their church. Well, your church is not your source of life, right? Jesus is your source.

    And then I have to remind our congregation of this all the time. I may be the senior pastor, but I am not your source of life. If you think I'm the only one that can help you or encourage you or disciple you, you are mistaken, my friend. I'm here to point you to the true and only source. I don't have to be around all the time for you to get everything you need to pour into your most important relationships.

    This is so helpful, Ted. I'm thinking about your hand on the heart of your kids. And now I'm picturing the jug, the pitcher, and all these other cups that we pour out to. Are there any other—like that—and it could be a while back in fatherhood when you were using object lessons to bring things to life. Any other for dads, any other fatherhood tips like, "This is maybe one of them that we used as a family"?

    Okay, so one of the best things we ever—and there's so many tools on all this, but this one is so simple. You don't need a prop, but we still practice it today. And I think I have a moment. I don't know how the Lord's going to call me home, but I've always dreamed that it would be in a hospital bed so I could gather the family around one more time for what I'm about to explain to you.

    My mentor was Dr. Gary Smalley. We did a lot of books and speaking together. He was the first elder at our church that we started 24 years ago here in Branson. His word was honor. Esteeming people as highly valuable.

    And one of the best tools he ever gave me was the honor bombardment. And a second tool to follow up with that is the honor list.

    Start with the honor bombardment because you don't need anything. You know, at the end of the day, you're always trying to find out something creative to do with the kids around the table. And so most people I know and talk to have at some point done the "best part of the day, worst part of the day." Okay, the high/low.

    But an honor bombardment—so you've got a family of six—pick the oldest tonight and say, "Tonight we are bombarding [name]." And we are going to go around this table, however many laps we want to take, just speaking words of high value over your sister, over our daughter. And you go round and round.

    Listen, the world's throwing plenty of nonsense at us every day. I told our kids, "When you step into this home, we point out and esteem one another with our words—that we are image bearers of Almighty God. And we're going to call that out."

    The honor list takes it to another level because now you're actually writing it down. I keep a list and have for years. Amy's list is five pages long. My kids' list is a couple of pages long.

    But what we started doing with them is for every birthday, I would share—you know, if they're 13 years old—13 reasons why I love you, why it's fun loving you, why you're highly valuable.

    And that list has just grown and grown and grown. We do this with the grandparents.

    Listen, I'm telling you, you do this—quit going and buying greeting cards. Just create an honor list, gift it, take it to another level, read it out loud in front of that person, in front of family and friends.

    I mean, my mom—I don't even have to start reading anything. You pull out a list and she knows people are going to be speaking honor over her, right? And my parents are in their late 70s. They don't need any more stuff. Every time I leave their house, I leave with a box of stuff. They're clearing it out. They don't want any more stuff.

    But when you honor—what does the scripture say? You can't buy honor. It's way better than silver and gold. To be esteemed is better than silver or gold.

    So I pull that list out. She knows it's coming. And my mom, her only response is, "Mm, mm, it's going to get the waterworks started."

    I think you start that practice—one of those two tools. Because we used to do flash card devotions that we created with our kids. I love doing those. I'm not going to do flash cards with my 20-somethings. Honor bombardments, honor lists will be until the day I die.

    And my plan is—if the Lord allows this to be the case—to bring in, to send everybody out of the room, bring them in one at a time and read one last honor list to them.

    And when Gary Smalley was dying in Houston, Texas, I told our church I was flying down to say goodbye. "Anybody want to send me an honor list?"

    And I went down and sat by his bed and read for two and a half hours honor lists that people prepared for him, just to say, "Thank you for all the ways you invested in my life."

    And I'm just telling you, you bring this into your family—this is what truly creates a close-knit family.

    Wow. Ted, I had only read—and he impacted me enough that he's in the book. He's in the book that I'm releasing this year.

    That's awesome.

    And the honor principle of how our eyes light up when we enter a room and how we honor like a famous person. Like that principle has made its way into the Zogg family. But you just added as far as some other practical ways to bring it to life. Priceless.

    I want to clarify though—it's like there's a difference between speaking high value and saying, "I'm thankful for this" or an affirmation, sort of a clever affirming. Can you add just a little more texture to the types of things that would be on a list like that? How is it different than an affirmation?

    Yeah, so I call out personality traits as a big one. I call out spiritual gifts.

    I started using this more because I have a buddy that started using this with me a few years ago and I used it at a church we're both familiar with a couple months ago, and you can just see people stop. Like in a meeting, I'll do this with a group of guys sometimes and go, "You know, I've known you for a few years now. When it comes to leadership, do you know what your superpower is?"

    And I mean, like everybody—they've never heard it described that way. And I had a friend that did that to me and he still will listen to my sermon and go, "Ted, with speaking, your superpower is..."

    I actually did this to a young guy on our staff a couple months ago. We were in a debrief. So after someone preaches in our first service, we do a debrief for the next two. You've been a part of these.

    And I go, I said, "Hey, you know what your superpower is?" And he kind of went like this. And I called out two things that I saw being his superpower that, "I don't see anybody else around here. This is what you're known for and what you're really good at."

    Well, he was caught up in the moment and forgot what they were and went home and was trying to tell his wife. I should read the text. He texts me, he goes, "This is super awkward, but would you tell me what those two things were again?"

    But that's the power of honor, right? And so spiritual gifts, personality traits. If you were created in Christ Jesus to do good works, this is what I love being as a dad—my job as a parent is not to push any sort of agenda on you.

    I told my kids—this is really the heart of the Trophy Child message. I'd come out of the parent-teacher conferences at school. And you know, what's the goal of school? That you get high marks in everything.

    I'm grateful that I had parents that didn't want me to have high marks in everything. And I would always get in the car and tell my kids, "Hey, I just want to remind you guys, I know report cards are important, but I don't want you to be awesome at everything. God didn't create you to be awesome at everything." And obviously, you know by that, I'm talking competency, not character. Because if you're not studying and failing, that's character. But if you're studying and not doing that great, that's competency.

    So if you—I studied the hardest for math growing up and got terrible math grades and my parents, both engineers, decided early on, "Well, I don't think Ted's going to be an engineer or an accountant." But how grateful am I for that?

    And so call that out. What you see, what have they been created to do? And I am going to walk alongside you as your dad leveraging all of my influence, authority, resources, time, and energy to help you become that.

    And so I think those honor lists can blur into gratitude lists and what I call the "fun loving you" list. But when you keep track of it—it's in counseling, we call it confirmation bias, right? Once you make a decision, you then spend your days looking for the evidence to back it up.

    And I would encourage the dad right now that's struggling with a child at home—write a list. Just come up with five. Five things. And guess what? You'll start looking for those rather than the behavior you're not liking right now.

    And what's celebrated, what's spoken out loud gets multiplied. And that's the beauty—when we speak even a few things to start with, it will get multiplied, more of it, and then other things will flourish.

    We're working on our grass seed, our lawn down here in Florida and reseeding. I know this is just a winter plug to come visit.

    So I guess as a landing question, Ted—the idea of for your family, if you can kind of look over the last decade, over the last 15 years, kind of that chapter of areas that you would just want to emphasize: "Hey, more seed here, more watering." These are things that are not gonna be expected to be dad hacks that you just implement as a fix. But if there's anything we haven't talked about yet that you would just kind of want to land on: "Hey, put a little more attention here." Like "laugh every day" was one that I read about your family. It's like that's something—it's a goal, it's something that's gonna bring into your family. Is there anything else like that that you'd say, "A little more seed, a little more watering in this area as a dad"?

    Oh, what a great—that's a great question. It just reminds me. Last year, I had a fire built in the backyard and both of our kids were there. My son-in-law was there and my son's now fiancée was there.

    I have no idea why I said this, Jeff. I have no idea why this came out of my mouth. But I said, "As I look back on my parenting years, I have no regrets. No regrets. I nailed it."

    For about the next hour, my kids gave me some real solid examples that I could hang my hat on. They brought up things they wish were different.

    "Dad, what about the time you went and put that cat at the Humane Society that I thought was going to be ours?"

    I'm like, "Yeah, mom told me to do that. That's her regret. Mom told me to do that."

    But that started a great conversation.

    You know, I can put this in. I probably think about—I mean, we did devotions when our kids were very small. And I put a lot of time and energy into age-appropriate, you know, in that season and stage of life.

    When they became teenagers, especially once they got their own car, I really saw them with the car as being an adult. And I'm not taking them places anymore. And that kind of snuck up on me because we had a lot of conversation in the car—going to school, coming back from school.

    We prayed with our kids before they left the car every time. And that kind of snuck up on me and got away from me when I look back.

    I say I have no regrets. And I do want to tell the dad listening that has regrets—delete the narrative that says it's too late. Delete the narrative that says it's my fault.

    And even now—I love when my son comes in the family room struggling with something and just simply says, "Dad, can we pray about this?"

    I wish in their later teen years when I thought, "I've done the job now, I've prepared them to be adults, they're out there." I think I would have watered more initiation. I would have—even though we prayed together at night, and still do with my son, he'll come in and we'll pray with him.

    It's just, because when you move from control to influence, you're not really in charge of the time and stuff anymore. And I think that's one thing if I look back on, I'd go—walk into your 18 year old's room. But they're still with you at 19 and 20—walk into their room. Don't wait for them to ask and say, "Let's open a Bible and share stories and stuff around holidays and gatherings."

    And I wish I would have done that more as they were racing home to grab a quick bite. It just changes and I get that. And I know every family is gonna be different, but I would have leaned more into being intentional with the family devotions and the spiritual disciplines that we practice daily in our home when they were small and under our thumb.

    Yeah, yeah. I receive that as just a—I can bring—there's like, I have just kind of a casual approach sometimes. It's intent, but to actually take that initiative that you're talking about. Just take it when I can actually—there is a level of control in this season of the moments at dinner and the moments in the car. So, yeah, I'm grateful.

    And let me just add one thing to that that I keep coming back to, because my wife was really good at this, and I think this is true. Remember, Satan hates your family. He hates you, he hates your marriage, he hates your family.

    And every time I opened the Bible at the table, all hell broke loose. I mean, it's like you felt it. Like they don't—this is not—and my son would get up, the dog would go nuts over something in the backyard. Carson would start doing laps and there were several times I can still picture it. My wife would look at me and say, "Keep going. They're getting it. They're getting it."

    When you're like, "He's doing laps" or "He's not hearing"—he's hearing it. He's hearing it. Keep going. Don't quit. Don't give up.

    Wow. Ted, I just received that as kind of a parting challenge, encouragement of—keep going, dads.

    I would love to invite you, Ted—would you pray over all the dads listening?

    Yeah. Father, what a great responsibility to have the influence of a father. And I do, I pray for the dad first and foremost that is living with some regrets as he thinks about adult children, that he would not feed his regrets, but ask Jesus to redeem his remaining days.

    And he can still be a great influence in his home and at family gatherings and at family outings as he thinks through what it looks like to lead from a position of influence his children and his grandchildren.

    And I pray he gains the courage to take the initiation in that.

    For the dad right now with small children who feels, "Yes, I'm in the control phase moving toward influence, but I'm not in the control phase, I'm in the out-of-control phase"—that they would just have resilience and stay steady, realizing there's no such thing as a perfect parent and they need to give themselves permission to learn and grow in each and every season and stage of life.

    And we have the perfect model and the perfect father in you. And for that, we're grateful that we would know that You are the true and only source of life and that we would stay connected to you and realize that people, places, and things will never be the source.

    May we not move toward codependency in that.

    I pray for every dad right now that you would cover them in the blood of Jesus, protect them from evil, and fulfill your purpose in their lives and in their families.

    We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

    Thank you for joining us for Episode 417. All the show notes and the links to Ted Cunningham and the resources he's created—that's all gonna be found at dadawesome.org/podcast, and then look for Episode 417.

    As a reminder, the book launch, the advanced team—you can find out more information at dadawesome.org/book.

    I'm praying for you guys. There's a lot that was shared in today's conversation, and I'm praying that God would give you—He would illuminate to you—is there one or two areas that you can calibrate, change, be a dad of action? Press in with more intentionality. Maybe it is the love jug. Maybe it's grabbing a pitcher of water and using that analogy. There's so much practical out of today's conversation.

    So praying for you guys, cheering for you. Thanks for being DadAwesome.

    • "Parenting is a journey from control to influence. With every year, you're losing control and hopefully replacing it with influence."

    • "The fastest way to squander influence is to be controlling."

    • "Jesus is your source, Satan is your enemy, your spouse is your companion."

    • "What's celebrated, what's spoken out loud gets multiplied."

    • "Delete the narrative that says it's too late. Delete the narrative that says it's my fault."

 

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Jeff Zaugg
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