We’re so excited to discuss with Dr. Roger Erdvig and Dr. Maggie Pope what it looks like to teach your kids to embody a biblical worldview. It’s not enough for our kids to just know the correct answers; we want them to live it out. The way of Jesus is not only true, it is also good and beautiful. We want our kids to have a holistic faith that includes their head, heart, and habits. We’ve laid the groundwork in previous episodes for raising gender-confident kids; now let’s put that into practice.
Dr. Jeff and Dr. Kathy’s newest book, Raising Gender-Confident Kids, is written to come alongside parents with biblical wisdom, practical guidance, and real-life examples. It isn’t a book just for families in crisis—it’s for every mom and dad who wants their children to embrace God’s good design with joy and courage. Get your free copy at genderconfidentkids.com.
For more practical, biblically based resources for parents, check out Summit.org/parents.
Episode 4: Summary & Transcript
Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
Episode Summary
In this episode, Aaron Atwood and Elizabeth Stubblefield interview Dr. Roger Erdvig and Dr. Maggie Pope. They discuss how parents can navigate gender identity issues with their children with wisdom and grace. The conversation emphasizes the importance of responding without panic or anger when children express gender confusion, focusing instead on open communication and asking thoughtful questions. The guests highlight the distinction between helping children “discover” their God-given identity versus “determining” an identity contrary to biblical teaching. They acknowledge that even homeschooling families aren’t exempt from these cultural challenges and encourage parents to consistently affirm their children’s biological sex as part of God’s intentional design.
Episode Transcript
Aaron Atwood (00:00):
Welcome to the Upside Down Parenting podcast from Summit Ministries. As a parent, I feel like life gets overwhelming and confusing, and I mean even upside down. This podcast is here to help us as we parent our kids to embrace God’s countercultural truth and champion a biblical worldview.
On today’s episode, we’re going to discuss what it looks like to teach our kids to embody a biblical worldview. It’s not enough for them to just have the answers. I know I want my kids to live it out. Do you agree? The way of Jesus is not only true, it’s also good and it’s beautiful, and we want our kids to have a faith that includes their head and their heart and their habits. We’ve laid out groundwork in previous episodes for raising confident kids, and especially in this season, we’re talking about gender confidence. So today we’re going to talk about how to put that into practice.
(01:04):
I’m joined by Dr. Roger Erdvig, the director of the Center for Biblical Worldview Formation here at Summit. Having researched and developed expertise in biblical worldview formation for over 30 years, Roger is a leading voice in the biblical worldview movement. Roger’s the author of a book Beyond Biblical Integration, which all of you should go to summit.org and pick up right now. And this book has been studied by tens of thousands of educators across the globe and has become a standard text for university educational foundation courses.
And we’re joined by Dr. Maggie Pope, associate director of Worldview Education here at Summit. She spent 20 years as a teacher and educational leader, a curriculum developer and trainer. She’s passionate about the educational and spiritual training of our children and young adults recognizing the great importance of intentional efforts to shape the biblical worldview of the next generation. And we’re also joined by my friend Elizabeth Stubblefield. Elizabeth is going to co-host with me today. Elizabeth, tell our listeners a little about yourself.
Elizabeth Stubblefield (02:11):
Great. Thanks for having me with you today, Aaron. We have been around Summit as a family for quite a long time. My husband came to Summit as a student in 1997 and then went on staff for about a decade and left and went into pastoral ministry. And since 2018, our family’s been back with Summit, working with the summer conferences in the summer, and now spearheading the support of our graduates, those who have been through our two week summer conference and have done a lot of myself speaking in those contexts and also women’s ministry and student ministry for about 25 years now.
So I’m excited to be on with y’all today and passionate about these topics. I have four children of my own, two teenagers, a preteen, and a first grader. So I’m spanning all of the ages right now. So this is a very relevant topic for parents.
(03:03):
And let’s just jump right in. We’ve had some great podcasts with Dr. Jeff and Dr. Kathy talking about just identity and the importance of identity and the five core needs that we have and we share. And probably a lot of parents are listening to this going, yes, that’s great, but what does that mean for me? How do we flesh this out in our homes? How do we help our children really to have a biblical worldview? And specifically in the context of having an identity that is based in who God says they are, how would you say, how can we be intentional to nurture that in our children even from the youngest years?
Dr. Roger Erdvig (03:43):
Yeah, and I love that you’re asking from the youngest years because I think our first point would be, start young, but our disclaimer would be it’s never too late. And so we like to think about this in terms of really helping our kids even before we think they might understand what we’re teaching them, to teach them right from the earliest ages what their God-given identity is all about and what it means to be made in the image of God.
And I love how Dr. Jeff talks about this. He talks about maleness and femaleness really being foundational in terms of the aspects of reality. Like this is the core of who we are as humans. And we get that, of course from Genesis chapter one, so before our kids even understand this idea, we can begin teaching them at a level that they can begin to grasp.
(04:38):
So I just wanted to kind of focus on some of those ideas of starting real young. And this is about really celebrating their unique personality. And you’ll note Elizabeth, we’re not talking about comparing and contrasting with the world. We’re talking about at that young age, really laying a great foundation. And when we talk about gender, there’s so much confusion about that. And our work starts with teaching the truth both through our actions and our words with our kids.
So I just want to tell one quick story. And by the way, I have five kids, 21 and older, so they’re all out of the house. And so I have a lot to draw on when it comes to stories on how we helped our kids to develop a godly and healthy sense of their identity, and particularly with gender. So here’s a real fun one. Whenever I would leave the house, and I have three boys, two girls, particularly when they were super young and by super young, I mean three, four or five years old, I’d look one of my sons square in the eyeball, I’d get down on my hands and knees and I said, remember Kevin, you are the man of the house.
(05:42):
And I would say that to him as I was leaving. Now, I did that really intentionally, and the first time I told my middle son that his eyes got real big and he was so excited, and he said, does that mean I can do whatever I want? And I realized, whoa, wait a minute. Maybe I haven’t done a real good job of explaining godly manhood to Kevin.
So we quickly shifted. I said, no, actually it’s your job to protect and serve the women folk. And so I give that just as an example. Intuitively, our kids think that particularly with manhood, it means, yeah, I can just do whatever I want because look at dad, he just does whatever he wants. But right from those young ages, those young tender ages, we’re making deposits into them. And so that deposit that I sought to make there with my young son Kevin, was no, manhood is not about getting what you want.
(06:35):
It’s about protecting and serving those around you. And so it’s this idea of, and by the way, yes, if you think, well, oh my goodness, my kids are 15, 16, 18 years old, can I go back and do that? And you know what, ironically, you can go back and say, Hey, these are some things that I want you to understand about biblical manhood, biblical womanhood, and you can share those really at any age. And I find that most parents are so caught up in the day-to-day life that they forget that they should actually have sort of what you might call a teaching agenda for our kids, and we can teach it in a very direct way or in those more situational ways I just shared with my son Kevin.
Elizabeth Stubblefield (07:20):
I love that. I feel like so much discipleship really happens in the in-between moments, the driving to and from the going in and out and just talking through and helping them to establish how to think biblically and how to think even like, okay, yeah, I’m going to be the protector, even if I’m five, I’m here to protect my mom from the bad guys. My 6-year-old loves to do that and talk about it already.
Dr. Roger Erdvig (07:48):
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Maggie has a neat thought just about this idea of what do you do when your kids are maybe expressing things that culturally are stereotyped for the other gender?
Dr. Maggie Pope (08:02):
Yeah, I have three kids as well, and our middle child is our only daughter. So she grew up with two brothers, a younger brother and an older brother who liked to do all of the typical boy things. So as she grew up late elementary, early middle school, we started coming up against a lot of questions about her identity based on her hobbies.
She liked to get out on the playground and play football with the boys because she was used to throwing a football with her brothers and doing that at home. And there were times that even in an environment where we would think a biblical worldview would reign supreme, people would suggest to her that she was somebody that God did not intend for her to be, that maybe her tendency in gender or in attraction would lean in a way that is not God honoring.
(08:54):
So we had to talk often about how it’s okay if you’re a girl and you want to throw a football or it’s okay that you like to be outdoors. You don’t have to only do the things that stereotypically girls will do. And so it’s odd because we live in a society that says, hey, we should accept everyone for however they are. Yet if a girl likes to throw a football, we would like to stereotype her. So from an early age, really focusing on language that is not about gender stereotypes, but really about the unique way that our creator created us and the variety in which he did that and is helpful for our kids as they’re starting to hold up who they are, what they like against what culture would say about those things.
Elizabeth Stubblefield (09:46):
Maggie, can you give us some practical examples of that? I’ve talked to friends and they’ll say, oh, my 4-year-old only wants to dress up in his sister’s clothes. She has all these dress up clothes and they’re fun and they seem exciting, and so he wants to play dress up with her and he dresses up in these clothes, or she’s got little girl figurines lying around, and so he’s playing with her. But how do I navigate that? Are there things a parent should or should not say? Can you give us some specific examples of how to coach parents in those situations to respond well in those kinds of situations?
Dr. Maggie Pope (10:24):
Yeah, I think that I would probably suggest to parents first and foremost, to not allow culture to panic them and to pigeonhole their thinking about the subject. I had a young girl that I taught in middle school who we now actually see on a regular basis. She cuts my youngest son’s hair and we were talking about this idea and she said, I feel like if I grew up in schools today that I would’ve had people tell me all the time that I am a lesbian or that I am way too manly because I still like those things. And she’s like, I worry about kids today that would feel that way.
So we had this discussion similar to what you’re talking about, Elizabeth, and I think as parents, we have to remember that many of us grew up in a time where it was okay to be a tomboy. That she was just going to grow out of those things.
Elizabeth Stubblefield (11:19):
Exactly. That’s a normal category.
Dr. Maggie Pope (11:21):
And it didn’t mean that you wanted to be a boy, it just meant that you like to do those things. So I would encourage them, one, to not panic. Two, I would encourage them to acknowledge the things that their children like, but frame it within a biblical worldview and what we know about how God has created us. So in other words, I love that you are confident in who God created you as a young woman to be able to get dressed up, but then also get rough and tumble and go get muddy and dirty and to just articulate those things. Because what happens is the world’s articulating their own version and their own interpretation of those behaviors.
So if you have a young child who is doing something that maybe falls into a category of a typical stereotypical behavior of the opposite gender, I think finding opportunities to both recognize their gender and the things that they do that are maybe what make them a young man that are typical. If they’re dressing up in their sister’s stuff every once in a while or thrown on a pair of high heels, obviously you’re not going to affirm how beautiful they look in high heels and they should wear them all the time.
Elizabeth Stubblefield (12:31):
Right. Exactly.
Dr. Maggie Pope (12:31):
But you could say, I love that you can play with your sister and have fun and still be the young man that God created you to be by doing these other things. By helping me with the trash, by helping your sister and making sure she’s not lonely. So even though their little minds may not be thinking that way, we’re filling that void in their head of that connective tissue before the world does it for them and says, oh, that means you must and then insert something that would not be God honoring.
Elizabeth Stubblefield (13:03):
Yeah, that’s good. So what about for the parents who, their kids might be in a public elementary school, and as we know, a lot of these schools are really starting to, in a lot of ways, do a better job teaching our children about gender than we are, but they’re not teaching it with a biblical worldview. And so, not too long ago, I even heard a story from a friend whose son came home and was like, well, maybe I wonder what it would be like to be a girl. Because they had a friend at school who was saying they had decided they were a boy and they wanted to transition to being a girl. This is elementary age.
(13:42):
And so this little boy was talking to my children saying, what’s it like being a girl? To my daughter. And then to my son, have you ever thought about being a girl? And I’m thinking about changing to being a girl, and this little boy is under 10 years old and he was already hearing this language at school and transitioning. And a lot of times that obviously is alarming if your child comes home from school and you hear that as a parent and it’s easy to panic and not know what to do. And so in those situations, hopefully we’ve already begun laying the groundwork before they even go to school.
But if you’re listening to this today and you’re like, yeah, that’s my story, my eight year old’s coming home and talking about wanting to be a girl if they’re a boy, or vice versa. What are some practical steps that parents can take in conversation with their young child to help them? Whether their child’s thinking about transitioning or whether they just have friends at school who are talking about it and are coming to school saying, oh, my parents told me I could switch genders. And how do they coach their children through that conversation, even if it’s not their child, but their child’s submersed in that world.
Dr. Roger Erdvig (14:53):
Elizabeth, that really is summarizing the challenge of this unique season in which families are raising their kids. It used to be parents that sent their kids off to school were concerned maybe about what music they would be listening to as a result, or what negative things they might hear, the language they might hear, but never before in such an intense way have children’s very identities been challenged by what’s going on outside of the home in many ways.
And I would really echo similar to when your 8-year-old boy comes down the stairs dressed in his sister’s dress, the foundation is not to panic or to respond in a way that shuts down conversation. And so what I mean by that is there’s a way we could respond that says, oh, take that off. That’s bad, or Your friend should not be saying that. And we leave our kids with lots and lots of questions that they need to be asking us and we need to be processing through them with.
(16:00):
So I would say the first thing is no matter how bad that thing is that comes in through the door that our response is not one that would be panic or anger. Secondly, really from a developmental psychology perspective, we develop our identities by experimenting with other identities. That’s why middle school is so hard for kids because they’re trying to figure out who they really are. And the way we do that as human beings is to put on a piece of another identity and see if that fits.
Now here’s where the big difference is. For a Christian family, we’re helping our kids to discover their identity, whereas the world is promoting determining an identity. And there’s a huge difference there. And that’s one of those constant things to come back to with our kids to remind them Psalm 139, you are fearfully and wonderfully made the creator of the universe knit you together as you are on purpose.
(17:05):
And the creator of the universe never does that in contradiction to his revealed plan in scripture. Now I’m using, kind of, adult language, but we want to always be consistently exploring to discover, but within the boundaries of how God has made us. And I think a lot of the work that Dr. Jeff and Dr. Kathy have done really helps us as parents to be armed with some of the information that our kids need.
And I know we’ll probably talk a little bit later that information is not only what our kids need, but really reinforcing some of those really important physiological psychological distinctives between manhood and womanhood so that we can help not only with biblical truth, but with those things in mind to help our kids see that God has made them uniquely but within a certain category that is evidenced first and foremost by how their bodies are made.
(18:01):
So it’s not responding, it’s arming ourselves with some of that information that we can help our students to frame that discovery of their identity within a biblical framework. But honestly, if it’s gone a few steps farther, Elizabeth than what you even said, and I would say I’ve heard some horror stories where it has gone farther.
So just imagine this, your kid comes home, and maybe some people are not imagining it. Not only do they have a friend, but they have teachers that are affirming that they have maybe a special mentor at school who’s pulled them aside and given them very unwise counsel. I think there is a place where parents need to ratchet up a level in terms of the crisis that it could be creating for their kids and maybe take some drastic moves that could be moving their school, but that could also be enlisting the help of a professional Christian counselor who can help the parent particularly walk through how to best support biblical identity shaping in their child.
Dr. Maggie Pope (19:04):
I’m going to piggyback if you don’t mind a little bit on what Roger said. And Elizabeth, you mentioned this. I think conversation is always a good place to start to say, yeah, let’s not panic. Let’s talk about it. It is so important. And I think when parents are faced with something that feels a little scary and big, our tendency is to want to do a lot of the talking instead of kind of plumbing the depths of their minds and their hearts to understand why they are saying they think they are going to be a girl they want to transition to be a girl, or that that would be more fun.
We can sit back as parents, try to silence the panic and remember who the author of panic is, and to just begin asking questions. Why do you think that? What do you mean by fun? How would you not be able to do the things that you’re talking about as who God designed you to be? So there’s some preliminary questions that we can, or language we can just start with. When we are faced with something like that, instead of feeling like we have to fill the air, we can ask really good questions and allow an opportunity to hear what’s in our child’s heart.
Elizabeth Stubblefield (20:18):
That’s good. I think asking questions is so important, and a lot of times it will come up that they actually, that may not really be what they’re thinking, but they were really good at football. And so someone said, you know what? You would make a great boy. And they just were trying to find that identity in people, which is what we do, especially as we’re growing up and forming. And so those questions can help reveal what’s at the bottom of their statement and their curiosity.
We see this, I mean, we are kind of going from the younger years to the older years, but there’s a spectrum here in parenting. And when they’re young, it might be easier to stop and say, Hey, why are you thinking that? And it’s probably like, well, so-and-so said this on the playground, and I thought this, but what about for the parent who’s listening to this now?
(21:16):
And recently there’s been several stories that I’ve heard from parents who have come to me and just said, yeah, my child or my grandchild was in high school, and the school just kind of snatched them up and behind our backs, gave them poor counsel like you mentioned, Roger, and convinced them that they would be happier as a different gender.
And so they’re at school, been going by different pronouns and even a different name and having a really a whole alternate life. And the parents didn’t know about it until one day they found out and the school actually threatened, we’re going to take your child away. If you don’t affirm this, we’re going to report you and that you, you’re going to lose custody if you don’t start calling your child by this other name and affirming their new identity. And so the parents felt very, very threatened.
(22:10):
And what do we do in this situation? Obviously that’s different from state to state, but this was even a conservative state where you may not have expected that. And so that does feel panicky at that point. If you’re thinking, well, what do I do? My kid’s going to get taken from me, but I don’t want to affirm this. Do I affirm it? How do I not lose my child? And so what would you say to that parent who’s listening today and they’re already far down that road, but they want to help their child? What are some practical things that they can do to love their child and to help them to still reclaim a biblical identity in a worldview?
Dr. Roger Erdvig (22:49):
Yeah. Now you’re getting to the real stuff for hopefully what is a really small population of parents, meaning that that’s actually happened. But I do think there’s an underlying fear for parents that might happen or that could happen. One of the things that’s important to keep in mind is that this really is a worldview issue. All of this comes out of an alternate view of God and his design for mankind.
It doesn’t come out of, kind of, let me put it this way. It doesn’t start with, kind of, the weird sexual attractions or odd ways of considering girlhood and boyhood from a cultural level. It really starts even in our kids with an erosion of understanding trust and desire for God in his ways. And so the reason I say that is because that really evidences a long-term process that’s not going to be fixed by a particular thing that mom and dad might be able to say.
(23:52):
And I know that’s a challenge. In every area of parenting, we see a challenge and we say, well, if I would just say the right thing to my child, I could fix this. And I think anyone that’s done that, maybe you’ve had a 10% success rate in information actually at the time changing a person, it’s much longer term. So if your child has come home and it’s that level of engagement with this alternate worldview, it is not going to be fixed by one marathon talk at home on Thursday night before Friday. So I think framing expectations is really important.
Secondly, you’ve brought up some very critical legal issues that parents can very easily feel bullied into a corner. And that’s just not necessarily helpful. Certainly it’s not helpful, but it’s also not necessarily true. And there are Christian legal sources of counsel that can really help think through what you actually can and cannot do because I know what it’s like vicariously because I’ve heard these stories, not myself, but where a school makes very threatening legal demands on you. And as a parent you can be like, yeah, what am I going to do? I can’t afford an attorney. I can’t afford to get legal counsel now.
(25:08):
But there are groups such as First Liberty Institute and Alliance Defending Freedom. You may have heard about them in the news. They are Christian legal societies and organizations that can actually inform how to respond. And so I would say if it is at that point, Elizabeth, you’re talking about, it would be really essential to have that kind of conversation before any deep engagement either with the school or with your older child that is wrestling and kind of let that help inform how you respond.
But I would go back to a lot of what Maggie said. It’s likely if a child has gotten that far down the gender identity slippery slope, that they are also have been told that mom and dad are the oppressors and they are the ones that we’re fighting here. So that’s a hard thing because they’ve probably been at home acting like everything’s fine and not living an altered ego. So it is important to remember that the way in which you respond will either feed into their narrative about how you’re going to view it or it can disrupt their narrative.
(26:13):
And that’s part of what we want to do. You see, when a student embraces, and when I’m talking student, I’m talking about a teenager, and I think that’s who you’re talking about, someone who’s kind of gone through this. When they embrace an alternate gender identity, they are believing a very different story about how things work. And so from a worldview formation perspective or a worldview damage control perspective, really that conversational posture, having a background of help from a legal perspective is really the first posture to have with our students so that we don’t end up playing the role that their narrative suggests we’re going to play.
And that is, how could you do this? This is terrible. You’re forsaken God and us and all those kinds of things as the first. And I know that can be a very emotional time that we would tend to maybe respond in an emotional way. What that does is, it can further cement that narrative in our child’s mind that says, yeah, mom and dad are actually the oppressors. They’ve been keeping me from the good life all along. We do need to be very careful there.
Elizabeth Stubblefield (27:19):
For sure. I talked to a student not long ago who shared that with me that when she did tell her parents, they just from her perspective, yelled at her and then never talked about it again.
Dr. Roger Erdvig (27:30):
Yes.
Elizabeth Stubblefield (27:30):
And so she just said, just the conversation went away. And I felt for those parents because I knew from what I could have gathered from what I heard about them, they just don’t know what to say and are concerned for their daughter. And so hopefully that’s not a lot of parents listening today, but I know that there probably are parents listening today who are in that place and they need just some practical resources like you gave and some knowing it’s going to be a long haul. It’s not a quick conversation, but pray for your children and recognize it’s a deeper issue.
Dr. Roger Erdvig (28:07):
And Elizabeth, I just want to comment on something you said. I think we would all like to think that if that kind of message came home to us from our kids, we’d be, oh, let’s talk about this. Let’s rush.
Elizabeth Stubblefield (28:15):
Right?
Dr. Roger Erdvig (28:16):
But you know what, even the most reasonable parents blow up. Just think about the times when your kid didn’t make their bed and they were supposed to and how you responded. And I’m saying, you, me, Maggie, all of us.
Elizabeth Stubblefield (28:28):
Oh yeah, I’m right there.
Dr. Roger Erdvig (28:29):
We’re all apt to create conflict around something and it’s much less damaging to create some conflict around the bed not being made or the room not being picked up. And that’s where I think it’s easy to think, yeah, I would never fly off the handle, but be real self-aware there.
Elizabeth Stubblefield (28:47):
For sure. And that’s when I heard that I felt for the parents. I found myself there like, oh, I understand that. And so I think even having this podcast is helpful if you’re in that place to pause and to kind of just take a deep breath and think about how do I love my child going forward if they’re in that situation, which probably isn’t most people, but it certainly is increasing in numbers. And so kind of stepping back to the rest of the culture who doesn’t have self in that situation but doesn’t want to be there or fears being there, and even the homeschool family.
I think sometimes as a homeschool family, you might think that you are exempt from these kinds of conversations or that in some way it’s like, oh, my kids aren’t going to have to deal with that. But that’s really not the case anymore. And so are there some practical, you mentioned before even things like telling your son, Hey, you’re the man of the house right now while I’m gone, and what that means. Are there any other practical rhythms in raising your children that you would encourage parents to have just starting at the beginning and all through the years to help shape them into who they will become and are becoming?
Dr. Roger Erdvig (30:04):
Yeah, I know Maggie has some good ideas on that. Let me hand off to her for sure.
Dr. Maggie Pope (30:09):
Yeah. Well, I think we kind of talked about one rhythm already, which was to just build relationships of trust where conversation is essential to that relationship and do that at an early age, but start it at any age. If you haven’t done that, then revisit that and look at that as a family. We have a friend that we’ve talked to in the education world who decided to sit down with his family and essentially create some core values as a family to sit down and say, who are we? And of course, that definition of who we are was rooted in Christ.
But what they started with before they got to that definition was to just begin asking their children, who do you admire? I think it’s worth noting that role models are a big deal to kids. And to be intentional for parents to be intentional at any age, but especially from a young age, to put positive role models in front of them is just a practice, a rhythm that is going to bear really great fruit throughout your life.
(31:18):
Because what happens is when they get to those middle school and high school age where they’re trying to figure out who they are and who they want to be and where they fit, if you have done some work to connect them and to also show them individuals who embody godly principles, those role models, they are more likely to fall back on that idea because we’ve celebrated them over and over again. And so in this example with our friend who did these kind of core values for their family, they ask questions of their kids, who do you admire? Why do you admire them?
And they just wrote down everything their kids said, and then they kind of collected that information and said, okay, you mentioned that you really admire grandpa because he just makes you smile as soon as you come in the room and makes you feel special. And so they collected all of these things and made sure that they aligned with biblical principles and so that they could say, at the end of the day, as a Stubblefield and an image bearer of Christ, we do this. We respect and honor others, we build up others. And although that may not initially sound like it’s directly related to gender rhythms and practices, don’t discount it because it’s really that foundational behavior.
(32:38):
It’s shaping their thinking very early on. And it’s allowing you to insert some really wise counsel throughout their life by recalling what they told you anyway. So it takes you out of that I’m the dictator and I’m telling my kids how to be raised to remind them, hey, remember how you told me that this is who you wanted to be? How is what you’re doing right now aligning with that? And so I think that for parents who are the homeschool family who may be saying, yeah, I do that already, or I’m going to be immune to this problem because I don’t send my kids to a public school.
We have to remember that media and society has figured out role models and figured out how to exploit that. Because as soon as they jump on Instagram, as soon as they are on YouTube, they see models, influencers is what we call them, right? That’s what we’re talking about, role models. So how can we be intentional about putting positive role models and then having discussions that just continually revisit these biblical ideas instead of just saying, don’t do this, don’t do that.
And then when the time is right, have a discussion about the individuals that they see in their lives or they see when they’re at the grocery store or when they’re driving through the drive-through, who obviously look different than what we think. And to be able to have a conversation that’s built on what we know, what we value, and how we can show compassion and love instead of speaking hate. And creating this divide that often is then just flipped. That narrative is flipped when they’re going to colleges or where they’re out in the world. So just a basic starting place is just to really have those conversations.
Dr. Roger Erdvig (34:29):
Another habit I would offer is, take your kids to Christian weddings. Now that may sound kind of like, well, of course. Well, I’ve found over the years, there’s so few children attending weddings, and I don’t know when weddings became the thing that mom and dad go and get to do while the kids stay home with grandma or something like that. And I’m using this in a broader sense, take kids where it’s healthy, take kids into environments where it’s being done in a shalom like way.
And in doing that, and when you do that consistently, I don’t know how many weddings I have on your calendar that you can actually take your kids to, but when you take your students, your kids, I’m sorry, into environments that are healthy, shalom like environments, in other words, going back to the Genesis one and two picture of how things ought to be, particularly with gender.
(35:22):
As you take them into those, realistically, or telling them about them practically, or actually telling them about them, you’re actually helping to shape their expectations for what is right, good, true, and beautiful. So take your kids to weddings and then talk about on the way home, why was that such a beautiful thing? Wasn’t the bride beautiful? Why was she beautiful? Was it just because of what she was wearing or was there something about who she was that made her even more beautiful than the way she looked on the outside? Why did the groom cry? Was that appropriate? Should he have cried? Why do you think he was crying? Those kinds of things.
And then the second thing I would say as far as taking your kids into those environments is as a parent, and Maggie and I were kind of chatting about this particularly with men, is to demonstrate godly manliness in the relationships that you have and let your kids know about what you’re doing.
(36:14):
So by this I mean, every father of sons still at home should for his own reasons, but also for his sons, have a band of brothers that he’s deeply and intimately connected with so that our sons can see us relating on a very deep level with other men. Just those kinds of simple habits of life have a way of shaping their desires towards what is right, good, true, and beautiful. So the catchphrase I would use is bring them anywhere there is shalom or the way things ought to be related to gender and marriage and identity.
Elizabeth Stubblefield (36:53):
I love that. And in all the studies that have been done as far as students who leave the church later, a holding pattern is the students who are still connected in the body. And so they would say, what brought you back? Or what kept you in the church? And it’s most commonly like, well, I have relationship and it’s easy right now, just like we leave kids home for weddings to say, okay, well, we get to church, we drop them off in their class, we pick them up at the end of it, and church for them is just a class or a youth group or something, a peer group, almost like another school, but with a Bible story.
And our kids need those mentors and relationships and seeing like you’re saying, Roger with dad, with other men, and mom with other women, and being invited into the family of God and seeing the people of God, even if they haven’t joined in themselves yet.
(37:51):
But when you see those healthy relationships, whether intergenerational, and that can be whether it’s in your own family or if your family doesn’t have a healthy dynamic or aren’t believers, it can be with the broader family of God. But I think seeing that is so powerful and helps to anchor them back and to remember, I remember my mom used to say how she would pray for us to have other godly mentors because my parents, they loved the Lord and they discipled this, but she recognized even from a young age, my children need to see other people who are following Jesus and who will invest in them.
And now I’ve done that with my kids, and I’m so thankful for the people who come alongside of them, and it reinforces what we’re teaching at home. And that’s important. I think we’re about out of time, and I hate that so much more to unpack. But in closing, what would you give as some just encouragement to parents kind of expanding the ages? What’s some encouragement for them as they’re feeling like they’re fighting the fight of faith and parenting, and it does feel like a war some days. So what would you tell them to just encourage them to press on and how to do that?
Dr. Roger Erdvig (39:03):
Yeah, I would just say in real simple is keep your parenting goals much more long-term than today. In other words, sometimes we can be so consumed with today whether our kids are going to behave at church or not and embarrass us or whether they’re going to get a good grade on that next project. And I always really encourage parents to think in terms of 10 to 15 years from today. So if you have a five-year-old, think about how you want them to be when they’re 15 or 20 years old. If you have a 15-year-old, think about what you want them to come home and talk about when they’re 25 and 30.
And the idea is just helping parents get out of the incredible pressure that I so get having five young kids at home at once, we homeschool them for 11 years. I get all of that challenge. It’s so easy to be consumed with today. So whether it’s gender identity and what their ultimate marriage is going to look like, think long term, and that just takes off some of that immediacy of pressure.
Elizabeth Stubblefield (40:03):
That’s really good.
Dr. Maggie Pope (40:04):
And I would say, Elizabeth, this is probably true for males too, but for females, we have a struggle with mom guilt. We can get in our heads and feel like once we’ve messed up, we want to throw everything out. We’ve just done a terrible job. So I would say to show yourself some grace and mercy and to remember that imagery that you reminded us of earlier about the body, right? That it is not all on our shoulders, that we should connect with other moms, that we should connect with our pastors, with our church members, connect with Christian counselors and professionals.
And to remember as you’re walking through whatever season that you’re walking through, whether you’re just raising two year olds and you’re thinking gender identity is so far off from a problem that’s on my list, or whether you are just living with heartbreak right now to give yourself some grace and to lean into your community because we’re designed to function as a body.
Aaron Atwood (41:01):
Thanks Maggie and Roger, it’s great to have you with us today. Elizabeth, thank you for co-hosting and bringing us through this conversation. So well, if you’re listening, I just would ask you, would you like this podcast on your platform? Subscribe to it, share it with others. Really, the best way for this information to get out into the world is for you to share this with the people that you know need it. So thank you for that. Thank you for joining us today. It’s been a pleasure to be with you. Until next time.