Jonathan McKee: If I Had a Parenting Do-Over (Part 5)

John Farrell: In your book, If I Had a Parenting Do-Over, you talk about tools that will help parents better notice their kids. What are some of those?

Jonathan McKee: The thing for me, when I talk to parents about the principles of duct tape is we tend to blah, blah, blah, blah … you know, talk before we listen. And one of the things I tell parents is … and this goes back to bonding and boundaries. I think sometimes we tend to go to boundaries to fix situations. To give an example, maybe today a common situation would be my kid plays video games all the time and I can’t get them to stop playing video games. So, we have a boundary of you can only play video games an hour a day. What ends up happening is we walk in the room and see a kid playing video games, and the first thing we do is we go to our boundaries where we’re like, “Hey, have you hit your hour today? … 48 minutes? Okay, you only got 12 more minutes.” And because of that, we tend to become the boundary person, and we don’t become the bonding person.

The whole reason I give the duct tape example—and I talk about this in the book—is a boundary fast, which as a parent, if every time you walk in the room, you’re like, “How many minutes is that?” then all you are is the boundary person. I talk about how you might need to go on a boundary fast. And the reason is, wouldn’t it be better if you walked into the room and said, “Hey, what’s your plan? Can I play?” And you sit down and play with them? Instead of talking right away, instead of throwing out that rule, wouldn’t it be cool if when we walked into our daughter’s room and she was scrolling through social media, and just dropped down on her carpet and be like, “Hey, tell me about your day.”

A lot of parents think they do that. “I talk to my kids all the time. How was your day?” And the kid goes, “Fine.” “Do you have any homework?” “Yeah.” “Alright, you better get to it.” See, I asked them how their day was. That’s not a question. That’s small talk. But to go upstairs and drop on your kid’s floor and your kid looks at you and goes, “What? What mom? What do you want?” And you’re like, “Tell me about your day.”

It might take some digging, but you go in there not as a parole officer looking for malfeasance, but you go in there going, “I just want to notice my kid.” If your kid loves French fries go, “Hey, let’s go get some French fries.” Like my youngest, she loves frozen yogurt and I knew I could get her anytime with it. I could be like, “You know what I’m thinking about right now? I’m thinking about froyo.” She’d be like, “Dad, I can’t. … Well, okay.” Sixteen, seventeen years old, and I could still get her with froyo. We would go out and have fun. We’d sit there and laugh and talk for an hour.

We need to find those ways to be able to just go in with absolutely no agenda of I’m going to find this out, but more of I want to get to know my kid and understand their world because that might be the conversation where you realize, “Wow, the pressure is on right now from every one of their friends … to have sex, to have a phone, to watch porn, to be something I don’t want to be or that I know is wrong.” And by noticing them and talking with them and listening, but not looking for malfeasance, looking for a sin, that’s where we’re going to notice our kids and bond with them and be able to have these incredible conversations instead of being a parole officer or a drill sergeant.

JF: What is your testimony or your journey with Christ been like?

Jonathan: I grew up in a Christian home as a pastor’s kid. I accepted Christ at seven years old with my dad right there in the living room. But I rebelled through the high school and college years. It wasn’t really till I met my wife at 20 in our college group at our church. She had done her own thing and gone her own way. I’d gone my own way, and we met each other when all we knew was, “Man, my way doesn’t work. Let’s give God’s way a try.”

We both decided we were going to try it, and as flawed as we were we got married and we were like, “We’re going to make God first.” It’s been a journey. It was fun for me because we ended up getting into ministry and ministering to others and even ministering with kids.

There were times, a couple of years in the ministry, where I realized, “This very thing I’m sharing with kids, you put your faith in Jesus. Some I’m still even wrestling with. It was a dream. It wasn’t like this transformation, night and day, 180-degree transformation. Yes, it was 180 degrees, but it was allowing Him to be the master carpenter and He had to start fixing up a very old beat up house one room at a time. It’s been a journey.

JF: How does faith affect or impact a parent’s parenting style?

Jonathan: I think the more we get to know Jesus and the more we study Him, the more we see how He responded to flawed people like us because we’re all flawed. I think when we see how Jesus responded to Zacchaeus, how Jesus responded to the woman at the well, how Jesus responded to the woman caught in adultery, how Jesus responded to the woman who washed His feet with her hair, how Jesus responded to the crowds, He constantly got one on one with people. He went out and He dialogued with people. He accepted them for who they were, but yet then wasn’t afraid to talk to them about truth.

I think as we get to know Jesus, that’s going to change how we treat everybody, from the person we disagree with politically at work to our kids to our spouse. It’s who we are. The more we have Christ and become that new creation that old is going to slowly slip away and we’re going to hopefully become more like Him, and as loving and as accepting and as gracious as He is.

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Order your copy of If I Had a Parenting Do-Over: 7 Vital Changes I’d Make by Jonathan McKee