May 17, 2025 • 45 mins
If your child is “wonderfully different,” don’t miss this Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman. Author Sally Clarkson has encouraging words for moms and dads who are raising unique children. While parents want to celebrate that uniqueness in each child, there are also particular challenges that need to be addressed. Hear encouragement for every parent on Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman.
Featured resource: UNIQUELY YOU: EXPLORING YOUR CHILD'S EXTRAORDINARILY DISTINCTIVE DESIGN
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:01):
It's more about reaching their heart with the imagination of
being a virtuous person, than it is about some kind
of a ten rules to discipline Your child. Every child
still needs us to respond to their personality with the
training that we do.
S2 (00:18):
Welcome to building relationships with Doctor Gary Chapman, author of
the New York Times bestseller The Five Love Languages. Today,
a mom discusses the joys and challenges of parenting her
unique child. Sally Clarkson will join us straight ahead.
S3 (00:33):
The thesis in the book she and her son Nathan
have written is that each parent is a unique child
of God who is called to raise a unique child
of God. They are encouraging resources featured at building Relationships.
It's titled Uniquely You exploring your Child's extraordinary, distinctive Design. Again,
(00:55):
go to Building Relationships. And Gary, you and Carolyn had
two unique children. We've talked about Shelly and Derek here before.
Do you resonate with our topic today?
S4 (01:06):
Absolutely, Chris. You remember when I wrote my book, things
I Wish I'd Known before we Got married? I think
the first chapter was, I wish I'd known that no
two children are alike. Because our two. Of course she was.
She was the daughter and he was the son. You know,
so they were different biologically, but they also were different
(01:27):
in every other way. So I can identify with this,
and I think our listeners are going to find this
session to be very, very helpful.
S5 (01:35):
I do too.
S3 (01:35):
Let's meet Sally Clarkson. She's a speaker, best selling author
of some 33 books. She hosts the popular At Home
with Sally podcast, which inspires women around the world. She's
been married to her husband, Clay, for more than 40 years.
They home educated all four of their children, and one
of those children is Nathan Clarkson, her co-author of this book.
(01:57):
It's again titled Uniquely You. You can find out more
at Building Relationships.
S4 (02:04):
Well, Sally, welcome to Building Relationships.
S1 (02:07):
Oh. Thank you. I'm so honored to be with you.
You influenced my life many years ago.
S4 (02:11):
Well. That's good. Well, you know, for those who don't know,
you tell us a little bit more about who you
are and some of what God has led you to
do in your life.
S1 (02:23):
I feel like the Lord has been very gracious to me.
I've given him my fish and loaves, and he took
them and made something of them. I, I have four children, uh,
four adult children, uh, from 40 on down. And, um,
I found out, as in the past few years, that
I am a kind of a one percenter sort of person.
(02:44):
So writing uniquely you was a natural to my own life.
But I love drinking tea, very strong tea. And I
consider it a way to disciple and mentor and encourage
other people. I'm a walker. I walk lots of miles
every day, and I've lived over a quarter of my
life in Europe and England, so I'm a little bit
(03:07):
influenced by international things. So that's just a little bit.
I love golden retrievers. How's that?
S4 (03:13):
All right. Well, all of that sounds exciting for sure. Well,
this new book, uniquely you seems to be for parents
who are struggling to understand their children and how to
parent that child. Am I close to what the heart
of the book is all about?
S1 (03:31):
Yes you are. I, I have a couple of children
who are out of the box, way out of the box.
And um, as I mentioned a minute ago, I eventually
realized that I was also and as I was praying
about this and I thought, Lord, I really desire to
meet the hearts of my children to to be a
steward of their gifts, their lives. And yet all four
(03:55):
of them were so different. And as I was praying,
I began to realize that every single human being has
a different DNA, different fingerprints, different backstory, different, you know, facial. And,
I mean, we are all made by God to to
be different. And I thought if if that's really a
part of God's design, how can I cooperate with his
(04:19):
design to release each of my children to be unique,
to not be cookie cutter in such a way that
they will be inspired to use their uniqueness for God's
glory and for his Kingdom purposes.
S4 (04:32):
Yeah, boy, I think a lot of parents would have
profited to have known that and, and, and paid attention
to that, you know, early on. Well, tell us about Nathan.
What are some of the unique ways that he has
stretched you as a mom?
S1 (04:49):
Um, well, Nathan is a verbal processor, which means that
he liked to talk all the time and and had
opinions on everything. But also he is ADHD, OCD, OCD, dyslexic.
Oh my goodness. Um, and so he had a lot of, um,
issues in his life. Sometimes I think some of those letters, though,
(05:13):
mean that a person is brilliant. Um, you know, because
I think that, uh, kids who question things, kids who
think about everything, I look back on my own life and, um,
one time my mom said, I wish you would just
be normal. And of course, that went to the core
of my heart. And she said, why do you ask
(05:33):
so many questions? So I think that in a in
an unusual way, the Lord prepared me through my own
life to understand and and be dedicated to Nathan. Um,
even though I didn't quite know how to harness, I
used to read him the story of the Black Stallion,
and I'd say, you know, Nathan, for the Black Stallion
to win the race, he had to learn to accept
(05:55):
the reins. And so that was my goal to inspire
him to to run fast, but to to accept the
reins of that clay and I needed to provide in
order to be able to really help him to flourish
in his life.
S4 (06:10):
Yeah. Why did you want to write together on this
particular book, and how did your different perspectives influence the message?
S1 (06:20):
Actually, I have to tell you that Nathan, um, he
lives in in New York on the Upper East Side,
and he acts and does all these, uh, very, uh,
he loves words. He has a podcast. And he came
to me and said, first of all, he wanted to
write the book different that that was kind of a
prequel to this book. Uh, the story, the out of
(06:41):
the box kid and the mom who loved him. And
then he came to me again and he said, okay,
we need to write another book together. There. And um,
and so because I wanted to support his desire to
continue to have messages to people, um, I agreed to
it if he would do all of the legwork. So
(07:01):
we we just, um, we're best friends and we understand
each other. And he has such a desire to reach
people who feel like they aren't really seen as they
are people who feel misunderstood.
S4 (07:15):
Yeah.
S3 (07:17):
You know, Nathan was going to be with us today, Sally.
And he had a film that he was called to.
And so I'm sad that we don't get to hear
his voice, but I think it's going to be really
encouraging just to hear your perspective. And for the mom
or dad who's listening to hear you say, uh, you know,
here are the challenges that and to not look for
(07:39):
him to be normal, but to use those challenges and
the struggles that are uniquely his, for God's glory and
for Nathan's good and the. And the dirty little secret
is it's been for your good too, hasn't it?
S1 (07:53):
Oh, yeah. For sure. And I you know, I said
to the Lord early in my life, I'm your girl.
I will love you and serve you. What do you
want me to do? And he said, I want you
to raise these very different children, to reach their hearts,
to send them into the world. And I'm going to
equip you to do that, because I had never changed
a diaper. I only had boys in my family. And, um,
(08:18):
so I feel like I was ill equipped to be, um,
I wasn't a perfect parent, but I was also ill
equipped to know what I was doing. It was little
by little. And I think that people need to know
that you have a lot of years to grow into, to, um,
really learn how to reach your children's hearts. There's so
(08:39):
much pressure on parents today to conform to cultural standards
or to what's on the internet or to social media.
And I think that for me to realize that I
was exactly the mom that my children needed to have,
that God had prepared me to be their mother, really
helped me to realize that I didn't need to compete.
(09:01):
I didn't need to perform. I was free to walk
by faith and to grow over a period of time,
to be the kind of mother my children needed.
S4 (09:11):
Sally, you emphasize that every child is a unique creation
of God. How can parents practically celebrate their children's differences
while still fostering a sense of unity in the family?
S1 (09:24):
We put together my husband and I are both extremely
intuitive in our lives, and we put together a 24
family ways, which was a series of biblical principles around
which our whole family life was built. We love and
obey our Lord Jesus Christ with a respectful attitude and
(09:44):
so on. We talked about work. We talked about how
they treated one another. And I think that the bottom
line for our children and they knew it was that
unconditional love, affirmation, acceptance, and of every single person in
our family was the foundation for our relationships. And if
(10:04):
some people have asked me, well, did you ever apologize
to your other children for the ones that were very
different and caused a little bit of stress? And I said,
If it's God's will for me to have this child,
it's God's will for you, for this to be your sibling.
And if you respond in love and respect to this
(10:25):
beautiful human being who is your brother or sister, then
you're going to really grow in ways and in beautiful
ways that will help you the rest of your life.
S4 (10:36):
Yeah. So the differences can blend together with A sense
of unity. Even though we're very, very different. Yeah, absolutely. Right, right, right. Well,
you know, the book talks about understanding a child's personality,
their learning style and their love language. What advice would
you give parents who feel overwhelmed by the complexity of
(10:59):
discovering all these traits?
S1 (11:02):
I think that so many parents are pushed and pulled
by their jobs, by their life, by all sorts of things.
But I would say, uh, you know, if you kind
of just look at creation and say, oh my goodness,
there's zebras with stripes and dalmatians with with dots and
squirrels with curly tails. You know, we see just just
(11:23):
let nature be an encouragement to you. I know that's
a funny thing, but I thought, you know, Lord, you
have made my children different for a purpose. And I
think number one is find a wise person that you
respect and ask them to pray for you. Ask them
to meet with you and say, you know you've raised children.
(11:44):
Can you give me any advice? Because I think that
when parents feel supported and encouraged and affirmed for who
they are, they're much more likely to keep going. Number
two is give yourself time to grow. Realize that when
you look at the life of Jesus, every disciple was different.
Peter was the rock and he talked too much. But
(12:05):
but God made him that way, and he became such
a person for Christ. Thomas was a man in whom
there was no guile. And John said, But I'm the
one he loved. And as we look at the differences
in the disciples lives and how Jesus treated and honored
each of them according to their own drives, I learned
(12:27):
that a couple of my children are extreme introverts, and
they wanted time alone. Uh, they they weren't going to
compete for attention, but they needed me. So I would
make these chocolate chip cookie dough balls. And I have
a little couch in my in every bedroom I ever
lived in, and I would take them in there, whichever
child needed attention at the time. And I would say,
(12:48):
we have 15 minutes, let's be friends and let's eat
this chocolate chip cookie and tea and tell me what's
going on with you. And I realized that my extrovert
or my introverts needed that personal time. My extroverts needed
to talk and to do things and to be loud
and to verbally process. And that that wasn't a negative thing.
(13:09):
That was how God made them. And, um, so just
learning over time to really watch, um, and see who
they were and what they were like. I know Nathan,
he's in New York City, as you said today in
a show, in a television show. And he came to
us when he was 19 and he said, I'm going
to move to New York City and be an actor. And, um,
(13:32):
Clay and I are thinking, no, you're not, you know.
How can anyone trust a 19 year old to go
to New York City? But actually, since he was seven
years old, he had been acting out a little speech
for a class I was teaching, and he was just
my sidekick because I didn't have babysitting for him. And he, um,
(13:54):
acted out. Audie Murphy, who was the most celebrated hero
of World War One for American soldiers. And he was
so dynamic that I had five different people who came
up to me and said, this is a future actor
when he was seven. And so, uh, we tucked that away. And, um,
(14:16):
you know, we thought as long as we can kind
of champion him and walk beside him and be in
touch with him and help him to understand the issues
that he might face in New York City. Um, was
it a trial to us as parents? Yes, most of
our children always were. But, um. But we believed in
(14:37):
setting them free in the power of God's Spirit to say,
what might I dream for your purposes? God. And, um,
it's a yes. It's hard being a parent. And yes,
it takes lots and lots of time for loving and
words of affirmation as you talk about and really meeting their, um,
love languages. But we, in spite of being imperfect, we
(15:00):
see how our children each thrived by becoming their own
unique adult with their own unique calling. And it started
with that unconditional love and words of affirmation.
S4 (15:12):
Yeah.
S3 (15:12):
Sally Clarkson and she's joining us today to talk about
uniquely you. It's our featured resource at Building Relationships. She's
written this along with her son Nathan and I have
to jump in here, Sally, and ask you, because you
just mentioned the love languages. Earlier in the first segment,
you said that Gary's input in your life has made
a difference. Can you tell me more about that? What?
(15:35):
What do you mean? Are you talking about the love languages?
S1 (15:39):
Yes I am. Um, I of course, when I became
a parent, I read every book that was popular at
the time, and his book stood out. And, um, I
had already been kind of working on a Bible study
about unconditional love and words of affirmation, actually, um, but
I didn't have the other three down. And, um, when
(16:02):
I read the book, it was as though something clicked
in my heart and in my mind that, um, these
were the ways that I was going to open the
heart of my children. And, um, that time that they
needed in order for me to listen to them, not
to look at my phone, not to look at my computer,
but to look at their eyes. Uh, for me to
(16:24):
verbally affirm one of my children. I was going on
a trip one time and she was my youngest. I
had three children and three miscarriages and then a child
at 42. And, um, we were going on a trip
and I said, let me pack your suitcase for you.
And she said, really? You're going to do that for me?
And it never dawned on me that she loved to
(16:46):
be helped, that she loved to be served. And I
learned that from you. So it was really funny to me.
I thought, this is not a big deal packing your suitcase.
But if it means a lot to you, then that's
what I'm going to do.
S4 (16:59):
Yeah. That's great. That's great. It's been amazing how God
has used that concept of the love languages in marriages
and parenting, you know, and really all close relationships because
all of us need to feel loved, you know, by
the people that we have a close relationship with. We
hear this whole thing of parenting. Unique children can present
(17:21):
unique challenges. So how can parents balance addressing the struggles.
You know, while they're affirming the beauty of their child's individuality.
S1 (17:31):
I think that finding as much as you can about
the issues that your child had, I read everything I could.
I sought out counselors who understood. And I remember the
day when we finally found a person who did some
testing on Nathan and they said, oh, he exactly fits
(17:51):
clinical OCD. And she said he will always have it.
He will never change, but you can understand it more
and help him to function in a more positive way
in your home. And I think that sometimes when our
children have difficulties in their relationship, we want to discipline
them as though there's some way that we can discipline
(18:13):
it out or whatever. We can't. That's part of who
they are and will always be. I've learned that with
my children, but I think that getting having support systems,
having input, Becoming educated. Understanding more. Your book was an
excellent resource for me. I think the more knowledge you
can gather and and really say to other people, what
(18:35):
did you do with your child who is clinically OCD?
It helped me to have ways, practical ways to go forward.
And the other thing I would say is find some
good friends who really love your children and want to
spend time with them so that you can have a break.
Because I educated my children at home, and just to
(18:56):
have a break by myself as an adult without children
around for a little bit really helped me. And my
husband understood that too. So he would take them away
on Saturday mornings so that I could do absolutely whatever
I wanted to do. So support systems education, people who
understand you and don't just say you need to discipline
(19:16):
them more, because that's not the issue with almost any
child that that we've worked with.
S4 (19:22):
Yeah, I like the idea of reaching out for help,
not just to professionals, you know, though that can be
helpful also, but just to friends and others who are
perhaps a little older than you as parents and have
learned some things along the way.
S1 (19:36):
Yeah, right.
S4 (19:38):
So what if a parent who's listening today and they're
constantly comparing their child and their family with another family?
What advice would you give to them?
S1 (19:50):
I would say, stop doing that now. They're the older
my children have gotten, and even when they were still
at home, the more I realized that in the same
way that God created diversity in nature, he created diversity
in human beings that I had my own story to live.
There's a picture in Scripture of Cup. Jesus said, Lord,
(20:13):
if it's your will, take this cup from me. And
David said, my cup runneth over. Well, a cup is
a picture of your portion throughout Scripture, and every one
of us has our own portion to drink. And we
can we can take that cup and throw it across
the room and, and say, um, I am going to, um,
(20:36):
I hate the portion that I've been given. I don't
understand it. Or we can say, Lord, help me to
drink the portion that you've given to me in such
a way that I can flourish. Help me to drink
it with faithfulness. Don't compare yourself to other people. Your
child is unique to God and needs to be accepted
(20:57):
by you. We don't want to raise a cookie cutter generation.
We want to raise people who can flourish into the
very mold that God made them in the that the
very personality that he created.
S4 (21:12):
I think if we can get that in our minds,
it'll have a tremendous impact on how we relate to
those children. You talk about parenting with God. That him
being a part of the parenting process. What does that
look like practically? Especially, you know, you're facing all the
day to day frustrations and uncertainties and all of that.
(21:32):
How does God and our relationship with him fit into
all of that?
S1 (21:37):
You know, I gathered some wisdom along the way just
by reading the word. And, um, I pictured that God
had a file drawer in heaven that was just for
my family. And I realized that it was it was
a poison to worry or to fear or to get angry.
And so I would pray to God and say, God,
(21:58):
here is my child that you have given to me.
Give me wisdom for this child. Lord, please work in
their life, but I'm going to leave it to you.
I'm not going to allow fear or allow anger to
rule my heart because it's a poison to my heart.
And then I spent daily time in the word and
I would read verses like a gentle answer turns away wrath.
(22:21):
And I thought, oh my goodness, I need to be
gentle with my children. Um, and I would just read Scripture,
and then it became God's vocabulary to me when I
was in the midst of normal life. I learned to
look into their eyes. I learned to use a quieter voice.
I learned to give my teenagers the opportunity to have
(22:45):
hormones and be irrational. Um, you know, it's it's a
lot of practical things, uh, that you kind of gather
in the treasure chest of your heart so that you
can honor them. And my favorite verse about child raising
is do to others what you would have them do
to you. I realized that I wanted my children or
(23:08):
I wanted my children to understand me. Um, and so
I thought, I need to try to understand them. I
wanted to hear, you know, encouraging words and life giving words.
And so I made it a goal to give words
of affirmation to them. So many different things. I thought,
if I want this, then this is probably what is
(23:28):
going to make a healthy relationship with them. And I
don't think you have to feel like doing all the
right things. You just have to do them.
S6 (23:37):
You know, Gary, what I hear.
S3 (23:39):
Sally saying is a lot of this process is letting go. And,
you know, if it's a poison to worry, then really
believing that God is involved in this whole thing. So,
you know, you got to believe in his sovereignty. But
the other thing, Sally, that that you just touched on
is you want your child to be who your child is,
(24:04):
not who you think your child ought to be. And
that's part of the letting go process, isn't it?
S1 (24:11):
Mhm. Well, I have to say that um, because I
wasn't accepted for who I was as a child and
my husband and I were actually working in Vienna, Austria,
where we were pastors at an international chapel and um,
with 40 different countries speaking a variety in our, in
our church. And, um, when we had a lot of
(24:32):
them over for lunch, I realized, oh my goodness, there's
so many different persons, different points of view, different personalities.
And Clay and I talked about the fact that when
we had children, we we thought, I think I'm going
to home educate them. We'd never heard of that in
our lives, but we wanted to give our children a
place where they weren't compared to other people by grades
(24:55):
or test scores, which nobody should ever do where they
weren't under the pressure to perform or to conform. They
worked with us side by side. We had hosted conferences
all over the world and they would be with us.
And so they got to meet lots of people. They
were normal children in that way, but it taught us
that all of our children are very different, have chosen
(25:19):
different professions. Three out of the four live in the
UK and work there and then. Nathan lives in New
York City, but we we kind of really wanted to
give them a life in which they weren't compared. They
weren't cookie cutter people, but they were like all the
unique stories of people we see in Scripture that they
had their own story to live, their own work to
(25:42):
accomplish for God's kingdom, because they didn't have the pressure
of conforming. I think it freed them to say I
we would say to them, I wonder what story you're
going to tell with your life. I think it's going
to be a great story. Maybe you'll be a musician.
You're amazing at piano, or maybe you're going to be
a great writer or whatever, but whatever families can do
(26:05):
to just have freedom in the home. A safe place
for a child to be who God made them to
be is really a great foundation upon which to build.
S2 (26:21):
You're listening to the Building Relationships with Doctor Gary Chapman podcast.
He's the author of the New York Times best seller
The Five Love Languages. Mother and son Sally and Nathan
Clarkson have teamed to write our featured resource at Five
Love Languages. It's titled Uniquely You exploring your child's extraordinary,
distinctive Design. Again, go to five Love Languages.
S4 (26:47):
For Sally, the word discipline can be a very sensitive
topic with different ideas, especially as the children's personalities and
temperaments vary. As we've been talking about, how do you
tailor discipline to fit each child while remaining consistent?
S1 (27:05):
I think that, um, my husband and I over the
years kind of cultivated our own particular biblical view of that,
and that he wrote a book called Heartfelt Discipline. And
he's he went he graduated from seminary years ago. He's
kind of a scholar. And, um, he went through Scripture
(27:25):
and really came up with a conclusion that it's more
about training and habituating our children to our values and
to the virtues that Christ had. It's no, not this, this, no,
not this, this. And, um, so we kind of worked
with our children in high training, high love. And what
(27:47):
that means is, is we said, these are the 24
ways that I mentioned earlier that our family is going
to comply with the truth of God's Word. And if
you can't follow these ways, there will be consequences. So
maybe for the extroverted child, we would say, you have
a choice to make if you if you can choose
(28:08):
to ask for forgiveness or to bring peace in this situation,
then great. Then you can continue to play. But if
you choose to be a person of disharmony, you're going
to have to sit over here with with mommy or
with daddy, or you're going to have to write a
paragraph out about what it means to be a peacemaker
or whatever. We worked with training, filling their brains with
(28:28):
truth and consequences. We just felt like, especially with our
own children, some kind of harsh, I'm going to control
you sort of discipline was just not the way that
we were going to work with our children. Does it
require more time? Yes. It requires more time to train,
to instruct, to correct, to require consequences. But we found
(28:54):
with each of the children they had different ways that
they wanted to be respected and approached and trained. It's
really fun for me because I was recently in Oxford again,
where my daughter with my four grandchildren lives, and it
was like deja vu. She was saying and doing the
exact same things that we did in our house, and
(29:15):
it was so fun to watch these precious little human
beings with their own unique personalities to, at a very
early age, learned to trust Mom and dad to respond
to them, to develop a culture of unconditional love together.
And so it's more about shaping the values in the heart.
(29:37):
Reaching the heart. The heart is mentioned over 800 times
in Scripture. It's more about reaching their heart with the
imagination of being a virtuous person, than it is about
some kind of a ten rules to discipline your child,
which every child still needs us to respond to their
personality with the training that we do.
S4 (29:58):
Yeah, I think that's a powerful area that a lot
of parents miss, you know. We want to. Yes. Let
them suffer consequences. But we want to wrap it all
in love. Because the whole thing we're trying to do
is just to help them become more like Christ and
more like, you know what he wants them to be.
So that's that's great. Well, for parents of multiple children,
(30:21):
what are some strategies for nurturing each child's unique gifts
without unintentionally creating favoritism or competition? What are your thoughts
on that?
S1 (30:32):
You know, as I look back in my own life,
I think that we need to be very careful not
to compare our children, even as adults and as they
are adults. And you need to determine that even as
God loves us equally. I think that he he he
(30:53):
died for each of us equally. He forgives us all.
It's so important to not create a culture of competition
in a home. I don't know how we accomplished that,
but we just knew that each of our children. I
think that love is the oxygen that gives life to
each child. And so with some children, they needed more time,
(31:16):
more personal time. With some children, they needed more encouragement
or affirmation or understanding. But it's so important for us
not to compare our children to one another and to
free them to become exactly the adults that God created
them to be. It's hard and it stretches you, but
(31:38):
it will cause you to understand Christ and how we
reach his world more. With all the people around us.
S4 (31:46):
Yeah. Did you ever notice with Nathan or his other
siblings any sense that they felt like, well, you know,
you're the favorite one. The other person's the favorite one?
Did you ever sense any of that?
S7 (31:58):
You know.
S1 (31:59):
That's not been the our difficulty. Our difficulty would be
more that sometimes a couple of the kids created more
contention and required more time. You know, um, would maybe
sass back or, or, um, or disagree or whatever. And
so then we'd have to take time with more of
(32:19):
the extroverts than the introverts. We would have to take
more time to correct. And and our children knew that
there was always going to be some kind of talk, correction, whatever.
I tried really hard to give each of them individual time,
individual focus for what I thought they needed. But it
was more that, yes, they're nobody's perfect. No family is perfect.
(32:41):
There were characteristics of Clarkson community that were irritating. Um,
and so it was more about settling the conflict and, um,
not allowing one child to take up all the time,
if that makes sense.
S4 (32:57):
Yeah, yeah. Take us back to the time when you
were trying to be Nathan's mom with all of his differences, and, uh,
you really had no idea which way to go or
how to do it. What what led you down the
positive path that you followed?
S1 (33:15):
I think because I felt, um, judged by my own
background and not accepted for who I was, I was
very much like Nathan, uh, in the sense that I
talked a lot. And now I get paid to talk.
I just, I ask questions, and I thought all the time,
I'm always thinking about words. I thought, this is what
(33:38):
I wish that my parents had done for me. I
wish they had liked who I was. I wish they
had affirmed what I did when I was an adult.
I wish that they had talked well of me to
the other kids. So my story, everybody's story is different.
The one thing I did want to say is that
(34:00):
sometimes I found it hard to find other friends who
understood the difficulties of my children. And you know that
they would, that Nathan would sometimes get in trouble because
he talked a lot. And so I would say, I
think there's something different going on. These are things I've
noticed with my child. He's very different than the other
ones in these ways. And some of my friends would go, oh,
(34:24):
he's just a normal teenager. And I thought, no, he's not.
And they would say, um, aw, you're just having a
hormonal day. And I thought, no, I'm not. You know,
this is definitely something different. And I need support here.
So not everybody understands children who are different. Yeah. And
we talked a lot about that in the book. And, um,
(34:46):
so I kind of want to say to people who
maybe their children are easily compliant. I don't know if
that exists, but, um, to give your friends who struggle
with an out of the box child sympathy and an
ear and support because it was hard for me. We
ran a ministry and we had a lot of people
(35:07):
that we worked with, and it was hard for me
to not have some of the time people who understood.
S4 (35:14):
Yeah. What's one key takeaway that you hope parents will
hold on to after reading your book? Uniquely you, and
how can it transform their relationships with their children?
S1 (35:27):
I think every human being, every child, longs for love, acceptance,
a safe place, a good friend, and I would say,
if nothing else, ask God and and pray about it.
What are some ways I can individually show my child
(35:48):
that I am thrilled to be their parent, that I
love them. That I am committed to helping them their
whole life, that I. I will be there if they
need someone to talk to. I think that one of
the most profound things that we will answer to God
for someday is as I was holding my little baby
in my arms when she was first born. How are
you going to so love that child so that they
(36:10):
will believe in my love? How are you going to
represent Christ in such a way that they'll see Jesus
through the moments of your life, so they'll believe in
Jesus when they are teenagers? Understand that one of the
most profound things we will answer to God for is
that he entrusted human beings into our hands to shape
(36:32):
and to grow, and to love in such a way
that he'll be glorified through our behavior and our actions.
S4 (36:39):
Yeah.
S3 (36:40):
So this is really interesting. You brought up in that
last segment how the wound in your own life, the
the love that you didn't feel from your own parents
that you have allowed God to use that for good,
not only in your own family and your own heart
and life, but also now for other people. So the
wound becomes a place of healing. I want to know,
what was it like for you to hear Nathan? Actually,
(37:03):
you read his words. He says this in his introduction.
I was a unique kid who felt the daily pain
of a world trying to fit me inside a box
that I was never going to fit, but I had
parents who listened to God, appreciated his unique design for me,
and created a space in our home where I could
grow freely into the person God created me to be,
(37:26):
to tell the story he had created me to tell.
What went on inside. When you read those words.
S1 (37:33):
I was very grateful. Obviously I thought, phew, we made it. Um,
you know, it was just wonderful because I think there
are many times in parents lives where they don't know
if they if they're doing the right thing. But, um,
as I looked back, I realized over a period of
time that your story becomes your platform for reaching other people.
(37:57):
Whatever your story is, if you trust God with it
and says, Lord and say, Lord, how can I turn
my story, my background, my family into a way that
I might minister to other people? Because we all have
a different story. But I think that what you learn
in the wisdom that you acquire through that story becomes
(38:18):
your platform of influence. Yeah, it was thrilling, actually. Just thrilling.
And Nathan and I are best friends today.
S4 (38:25):
Yeah, I would think I could imagine reading those words,
you know. Well, talk to the mom or dad listening
who sees themselves in your story, but has been trying
to change their child to fit them or into some
mold that they have. What would you say to that parent?
S1 (38:43):
Well, I would say that, number one, you need to
accept your child right now as they are, in case
they never change, because I originally learned that a couple
of my children are clinically OCD and that it was
never going to change, their brains were never going to
magically change theirs. I think sometimes we look for the
right formula, the right book. Just give me the right
(39:05):
rule to make this easier. Sometimes things are not going
to become easier in this broken, chaotic world, but we
can learn how to give it grace. We can learn
how to cover our relationships with grace, to make progress,
to move forward and learn more about love. God sees
you as you are, who you are, as exactly the
(39:26):
person that God wants to use to live your story well.
And he loves you. He forgives you, he supports you,
and he understands.
S4 (39:37):
Sarah, what would you say to the parent who feels
like you know, I didn't sign up for a life
to be this hard. And they're just right now they're
just down there trying to figure out why, why, why?
What would you say to them?
S1 (39:50):
You know, I think that's a great question. I actually
am a little bit Pollyanna at heart. I would, you know,
have these feelings of God. I, you know, I'm giving
you everything. Can you make it a little bit easier
for me, please? And I think that most of us
were not in this in the last generation and in
this generation, prepared for the sacrifices that God requires from
(40:14):
us to be parents. You know, he puts babies into
our hands who need to be fed, need to be protected.
I mean, there is no choice. We are the ones
that they look to for all of the work that
it will take to be a parent. But I also
think that the more I submitted to the hardness, the
more I grew in my understanding of God's love, the
(40:36):
more I became humble, which I needed to be. Um,
the more I thought, my goodness, I am learning more
about life and what really matters than I ever could
have lived if I had an easy life. And I
just think that I wish I had understood that to
be in a fallen world means that there will be chaos,
there will be brokenness, but that God will hold my
(40:59):
hand every day as I walk through these difficult times.
S4 (41:02):
Yeah, and we can talk to him, right? Oh, God,
this is hard. Oh, yeah. Help me, help me.
S1 (41:08):
Yeah. And I say, please, do you understand this person? Yes.
For sure.
S4 (41:15):
You really believe that Psalm 139 is true where it
says God knit me in my mother's womb? Mhm. How
does that idea of your child being fearfully and wonderfully
made change you as a mom?
S1 (41:34):
Well, I had to totally change my expectations of what
it meant to be a parent. I thought my first
two children were introverts and they were much easier. My
second two children were not. I thought I was a
perfect parent the first time around, and I realized that
that I didn't have the formulas. I didn't know everything,
(41:57):
but I did have this deep desire to love my children.
So it required both Clay and me to change, to grow,
to learn. And, um, you know, I think that most
of us are not prepared. We're prepared to have a
job or to accomplish things or to go into the world.
(42:18):
But most of us haven't been in a culture that
is family centered, that is children centered, that sees children
as real, live human beings with great potential. And so
we're having to learn a whole new area of life
that we were never prepared to do. And that's just
the reality.
S3 (42:39):
Sally, one question before we end here today. Talk to
the parent who's listening to you and who says that
I wish I had this 20 years ago, 30 years ago.
But my opportunity is gone because my child now is
an adult. What do you say to that parent?
S1 (42:56):
You know, I get letters all the time from people
who say, I just wish that my parents and I
could be close now. And I think it's never too
late to. Jesus was a servant leader. He washed toes and, um, uh,
120 dirty man toes, and he took children in his
arms and he put up with people. And it requires
(43:18):
us to be a servant to our children. It may
take a while, but Jesus told the story of the
prodigal because the father was waiting there to love and
bless the child who wasn't as close to him as
he hoped. And so I think that, um, it's never
too late to love well, to serve well, to be humble,
(43:38):
to ask for forgiveness, knowing that your adult child still
wants and longs for your affirmation.
S4 (43:45):
You know, I've often said that I wish there had
been parenting books back when we were raising our children,
and maybe there were. I just didn't know where they were.
S1 (43:57):
That's so true.
S4 (43:59):
Yeah. But I'd like to say to our listeners today,
you are hearing today about a book on parenting that
will really, really help you wherever you are in the journey.
So I just want to encourage our listeners to get
this book uniquely you, because I think this message will really,
really give a lot of practical help and will also
(44:21):
point you to God for his help. And after all,
all of us need his wisdom. So I really appreciate
you being on today. And thanks for you and Nathan
and your investment in this book?
S1 (44:33):
Well, thank you so much for having me. What an
honor to talk with you after I read your book
so many years ago. Thank you. Thank you.
S3 (44:40):
Again. The title of today's resource Uniquely You Exploring Your
Child's Extraordinary Distinctive Design by Sally and Nathan Clarkson. And
you can find out more at Building Relationships. Again. Look
for that featured resource there, Building Relationships.
S4 (44:58):
And next week finding hope and purpose as a military wife.
S2 (45:04):
Don't miss a practical discussion in one week. Our thanks
to Janice backing and Steve Wick for their work behind
the scenes. Building relationships with Doctor Gary Chapman is a
production of Moody Radio in association with Moody Publishers, a
ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening.
It's more about reaching their heart with the imagination of
being a virtuous person, than it is about some kind
of a ten rules to discipline Your child. Every child
still needs us to respond to their personality with the
training that we do.
S2 (00:18):
Welcome to building relationships with Doctor Gary Chapman, author of
the New York Times bestseller The Five Love Languages. Today,
a mom discusses the joys and challenges of parenting her
unique child. Sally Clarkson will join us straight ahead.
S3 (00:33):
The thesis in the book she and her son Nathan
have written is that each parent is a unique child
of God who is called to raise a unique child
of God. They are encouraging resources featured at building Relationships.
It's titled Uniquely You exploring your Child's extraordinary, distinctive Design. Again,
(00:55):
go to Building Relationships. And Gary, you and Carolyn had
two unique children. We've talked about Shelly and Derek here before.
Do you resonate with our topic today?
S4 (01:06):
Absolutely, Chris. You remember when I wrote my book, things
I Wish I'd Known before we Got married? I think
the first chapter was, I wish I'd known that no
two children are alike. Because our two. Of course she was.
She was the daughter and he was the son. You know,
so they were different biologically, but they also were different
(01:27):
in every other way. So I can identify with this,
and I think our listeners are going to find this
session to be very, very helpful.
S5 (01:35):
I do too.
S3 (01:35):
Let's meet Sally Clarkson. She's a speaker, best selling author
of some 33 books. She hosts the popular At Home
with Sally podcast, which inspires women around the world. She's
been married to her husband, Clay, for more than 40 years.
They home educated all four of their children, and one
of those children is Nathan Clarkson, her co-author of this book.
(01:57):
It's again titled Uniquely You. You can find out more
at Building Relationships.
S4 (02:04):
Well, Sally, welcome to Building Relationships.
S1 (02:07):
Oh. Thank you. I'm so honored to be with you.
You influenced my life many years ago.
S4 (02:11):
Well. That's good. Well, you know, for those who don't know,
you tell us a little bit more about who you
are and some of what God has led you to
do in your life.
S1 (02:23):
I feel like the Lord has been very gracious to me.
I've given him my fish and loaves, and he took
them and made something of them. I, I have four children, uh,
four adult children, uh, from 40 on down. And, um,
I found out, as in the past few years, that
I am a kind of a one percenter sort of person.
(02:44):
So writing uniquely you was a natural to my own life.
But I love drinking tea, very strong tea. And I
consider it a way to disciple and mentor and encourage
other people. I'm a walker. I walk lots of miles
every day, and I've lived over a quarter of my
life in Europe and England, so I'm a little bit
(03:07):
influenced by international things. So that's just a little bit.
I love golden retrievers. How's that?
S4 (03:13):
All right. Well, all of that sounds exciting for sure. Well,
this new book, uniquely you seems to be for parents
who are struggling to understand their children and how to
parent that child. Am I close to what the heart
of the book is all about?
S1 (03:31):
Yes you are. I, I have a couple of children
who are out of the box, way out of the box.
And um, as I mentioned a minute ago, I eventually
realized that I was also and as I was praying
about this and I thought, Lord, I really desire to
meet the hearts of my children to to be a
steward of their gifts, their lives. And yet all four
(03:55):
of them were so different. And as I was praying,
I began to realize that every single human being has
a different DNA, different fingerprints, different backstory, different, you know, facial. And,
I mean, we are all made by God to to
be different. And I thought if if that's really a
part of God's design, how can I cooperate with his
(04:19):
design to release each of my children to be unique,
to not be cookie cutter in such a way that
they will be inspired to use their uniqueness for God's
glory and for his Kingdom purposes.
S4 (04:32):
Yeah, boy, I think a lot of parents would have
profited to have known that and, and, and paid attention
to that, you know, early on. Well, tell us about Nathan.
What are some of the unique ways that he has
stretched you as a mom?
S1 (04:49):
Um, well, Nathan is a verbal processor, which means that
he liked to talk all the time and and had
opinions on everything. But also he is ADHD, OCD, OCD, dyslexic.
Oh my goodness. Um, and so he had a lot of, um,
issues in his life. Sometimes I think some of those letters, though,
(05:13):
mean that a person is brilliant. Um, you know, because
I think that, uh, kids who question things, kids who
think about everything, I look back on my own life and, um,
one time my mom said, I wish you would just
be normal. And of course, that went to the core
of my heart. And she said, why do you ask
(05:33):
so many questions? So I think that in a in
an unusual way, the Lord prepared me through my own
life to understand and and be dedicated to Nathan. Um,
even though I didn't quite know how to harness, I
used to read him the story of the Black Stallion,
and I'd say, you know, Nathan, for the Black Stallion
to win the race, he had to learn to accept
(05:55):
the reins. And so that was my goal to inspire
him to to run fast, but to to accept the
reins of that clay and I needed to provide in
order to be able to really help him to flourish
in his life.
S4 (06:10):
Yeah. Why did you want to write together on this
particular book, and how did your different perspectives influence the message?
S1 (06:20):
Actually, I have to tell you that Nathan, um, he
lives in in New York on the Upper East Side,
and he acts and does all these, uh, very, uh,
he loves words. He has a podcast. And he came
to me and said, first of all, he wanted to
write the book different that that was kind of a
prequel to this book. Uh, the story, the out of
(06:41):
the box kid and the mom who loved him. And
then he came to me again and he said, okay,
we need to write another book together. There. And um,
and so because I wanted to support his desire to
continue to have messages to people, um, I agreed to
it if he would do all of the legwork. So
(07:01):
we we just, um, we're best friends and we understand
each other. And he has such a desire to reach
people who feel like they aren't really seen as they
are people who feel misunderstood.
S4 (07:15):
Yeah.
S3 (07:17):
You know, Nathan was going to be with us today, Sally.
And he had a film that he was called to.
And so I'm sad that we don't get to hear
his voice, but I think it's going to be really
encouraging just to hear your perspective. And for the mom
or dad who's listening to hear you say, uh, you know,
here are the challenges that and to not look for
(07:39):
him to be normal, but to use those challenges and
the struggles that are uniquely his, for God's glory and
for Nathan's good and the. And the dirty little secret
is it's been for your good too, hasn't it?
S1 (07:53):
Oh, yeah. For sure. And I you know, I said
to the Lord early in my life, I'm your girl.
I will love you and serve you. What do you
want me to do? And he said, I want you
to raise these very different children, to reach their hearts,
to send them into the world. And I'm going to
equip you to do that, because I had never changed
a diaper. I only had boys in my family. And, um,
(08:18):
so I feel like I was ill equipped to be, um,
I wasn't a perfect parent, but I was also ill
equipped to know what I was doing. It was little
by little. And I think that people need to know
that you have a lot of years to grow into, to, um,
really learn how to reach your children's hearts. There's so
(08:39):
much pressure on parents today to conform to cultural standards
or to what's on the internet or to social media.
And I think that for me to realize that I
was exactly the mom that my children needed to have,
that God had prepared me to be their mother, really
helped me to realize that I didn't need to compete.
(09:01):
I didn't need to perform. I was free to walk
by faith and to grow over a period of time,
to be the kind of mother my children needed.
S4 (09:11):
Sally, you emphasize that every child is a unique creation
of God. How can parents practically celebrate their children's differences
while still fostering a sense of unity in the family?
S1 (09:24):
We put together my husband and I are both extremely
intuitive in our lives, and we put together a 24
family ways, which was a series of biblical principles around
which our whole family life was built. We love and
obey our Lord Jesus Christ with a respectful attitude and
(09:44):
so on. We talked about work. We talked about how
they treated one another. And I think that the bottom
line for our children and they knew it was that
unconditional love, affirmation, acceptance, and of every single person in
our family was the foundation for our relationships. And if
(10:04):
some people have asked me, well, did you ever apologize
to your other children for the ones that were very
different and caused a little bit of stress? And I said,
If it's God's will for me to have this child,
it's God's will for you, for this to be your sibling.
And if you respond in love and respect to this
(10:25):
beautiful human being who is your brother or sister, then
you're going to really grow in ways and in beautiful
ways that will help you the rest of your life.
S4 (10:36):
Yeah. So the differences can blend together with A sense
of unity. Even though we're very, very different. Yeah, absolutely. Right, right, right. Well,
you know, the book talks about understanding a child's personality,
their learning style and their love language. What advice would
you give parents who feel overwhelmed by the complexity of
(10:59):
discovering all these traits?
S1 (11:02):
I think that so many parents are pushed and pulled
by their jobs, by their life, by all sorts of things.
But I would say, uh, you know, if you kind
of just look at creation and say, oh my goodness,
there's zebras with stripes and dalmatians with with dots and
squirrels with curly tails. You know, we see just just
(11:23):
let nature be an encouragement to you. I know that's
a funny thing, but I thought, you know, Lord, you
have made my children different for a purpose. And I
think number one is find a wise person that you
respect and ask them to pray for you. Ask them
to meet with you and say, you know you've raised children.
(11:44):
Can you give me any advice? Because I think that
when parents feel supported and encouraged and affirmed for who
they are, they're much more likely to keep going. Number
two is give yourself time to grow. Realize that when
you look at the life of Jesus, every disciple was different.
Peter was the rock and he talked too much. But
(12:05):
but God made him that way, and he became such
a person for Christ. Thomas was a man in whom
there was no guile. And John said, But I'm the
one he loved. And as we look at the differences
in the disciples lives and how Jesus treated and honored
each of them according to their own drives, I learned
(12:27):
that a couple of my children are extreme introverts, and
they wanted time alone. Uh, they they weren't going to
compete for attention, but they needed me. So I would
make these chocolate chip cookie dough balls. And I have
a little couch in my in every bedroom I ever
lived in, and I would take them in there, whichever
child needed attention at the time. And I would say,
(12:48):
we have 15 minutes, let's be friends and let's eat
this chocolate chip cookie and tea and tell me what's
going on with you. And I realized that my extrovert
or my introverts needed that personal time. My extroverts needed
to talk and to do things and to be loud
and to verbally process. And that that wasn't a negative thing.
(13:09):
That was how God made them. And, um, so just
learning over time to really watch, um, and see who
they were and what they were like. I know Nathan,
he's in New York City, as you said today in
a show, in a television show. And he came to
us when he was 19 and he said, I'm going
to move to New York City and be an actor. And, um,
(13:32):
Clay and I are thinking, no, you're not, you know.
How can anyone trust a 19 year old to go
to New York City? But actually, since he was seven
years old, he had been acting out a little speech
for a class I was teaching, and he was just
my sidekick because I didn't have babysitting for him. And he, um,
(13:54):
acted out. Audie Murphy, who was the most celebrated hero
of World War One for American soldiers. And he was
so dynamic that I had five different people who came
up to me and said, this is a future actor
when he was seven. And so, uh, we tucked that away. And, um,
(14:16):
you know, we thought as long as we can kind
of champion him and walk beside him and be in
touch with him and help him to understand the issues
that he might face in New York City. Um, was
it a trial to us as parents? Yes, most of
our children always were. But, um. But we believed in
(14:37):
setting them free in the power of God's Spirit to say,
what might I dream for your purposes? God. And, um,
it's a yes. It's hard being a parent. And yes,
it takes lots and lots of time for loving and
words of affirmation as you talk about and really meeting their, um,
love languages. But we, in spite of being imperfect, we
(15:00):
see how our children each thrived by becoming their own
unique adult with their own unique calling. And it started
with that unconditional love and words of affirmation.
S4 (15:12):
Yeah.
S3 (15:12):
Sally Clarkson and she's joining us today to talk about
uniquely you. It's our featured resource at Building Relationships. She's
written this along with her son Nathan and I have
to jump in here, Sally, and ask you, because you
just mentioned the love languages. Earlier in the first segment,
you said that Gary's input in your life has made
a difference. Can you tell me more about that? What?
(15:35):
What do you mean? Are you talking about the love languages?
S1 (15:39):
Yes I am. Um, I of course, when I became
a parent, I read every book that was popular at
the time, and his book stood out. And, um, I
had already been kind of working on a Bible study
about unconditional love and words of affirmation, actually, um, but
I didn't have the other three down. And, um, when
(16:02):
I read the book, it was as though something clicked
in my heart and in my mind that, um, these
were the ways that I was going to open the
heart of my children. And, um, that time that they
needed in order for me to listen to them, not
to look at my phone, not to look at my computer,
but to look at their eyes. Uh, for me to
(16:24):
verbally affirm one of my children. I was going on
a trip one time and she was my youngest. I
had three children and three miscarriages and then a child
at 42. And, um, we were going on a trip
and I said, let me pack your suitcase for you.
And she said, really? You're going to do that for me?
And it never dawned on me that she loved to
(16:46):
be helped, that she loved to be served. And I
learned that from you. So it was really funny to me.
I thought, this is not a big deal packing your suitcase.
But if it means a lot to you, then that's
what I'm going to do.
S4 (16:59):
Yeah. That's great. That's great. It's been amazing how God
has used that concept of the love languages in marriages
and parenting, you know, and really all close relationships because
all of us need to feel loved, you know, by
the people that we have a close relationship with. We
hear this whole thing of parenting. Unique children can present
(17:21):
unique challenges. So how can parents balance addressing the struggles.
You know, while they're affirming the beauty of their child's individuality.
S1 (17:31):
I think that finding as much as you can about
the issues that your child had, I read everything I could.
I sought out counselors who understood. And I remember the
day when we finally found a person who did some
testing on Nathan and they said, oh, he exactly fits
(17:51):
clinical OCD. And she said he will always have it.
He will never change, but you can understand it more
and help him to function in a more positive way
in your home. And I think that sometimes when our
children have difficulties in their relationship, we want to discipline
them as though there's some way that we can discipline
(18:13):
it out or whatever. We can't. That's part of who
they are and will always be. I've learned that with
my children, but I think that getting having support systems,
having input, Becoming educated. Understanding more. Your book was an
excellent resource for me. I think the more knowledge you
can gather and and really say to other people, what
(18:35):
did you do with your child who is clinically OCD?
It helped me to have ways, practical ways to go forward.
And the other thing I would say is find some
good friends who really love your children and want to
spend time with them so that you can have a break.
Because I educated my children at home, and just to
(18:56):
have a break by myself as an adult without children
around for a little bit really helped me. And my
husband understood that too. So he would take them away
on Saturday mornings so that I could do absolutely whatever
I wanted to do. So support systems education, people who
understand you and don't just say you need to discipline
(19:16):
them more, because that's not the issue with almost any
child that that we've worked with.
S4 (19:22):
Yeah, I like the idea of reaching out for help,
not just to professionals, you know, though that can be
helpful also, but just to friends and others who are
perhaps a little older than you as parents and have
learned some things along the way.
S1 (19:36):
Yeah, right.
S4 (19:38):
So what if a parent who's listening today and they're
constantly comparing their child and their family with another family?
What advice would you give to them?
S1 (19:50):
I would say, stop doing that now. They're the older
my children have gotten, and even when they were still
at home, the more I realized that in the same
way that God created diversity in nature, he created diversity
in human beings that I had my own story to live.
There's a picture in Scripture of Cup. Jesus said, Lord,
(20:13):
if it's your will, take this cup from me. And
David said, my cup runneth over. Well, a cup is
a picture of your portion throughout Scripture, and every one
of us has our own portion to drink. And we
can we can take that cup and throw it across
the room and, and say, um, I am going to, um,
(20:36):
I hate the portion that I've been given. I don't
understand it. Or we can say, Lord, help me to
drink the portion that you've given to me in such
a way that I can flourish. Help me to drink
it with faithfulness. Don't compare yourself to other people. Your
child is unique to God and needs to be accepted
(20:57):
by you. We don't want to raise a cookie cutter generation.
We want to raise people who can flourish into the
very mold that God made them in the that the
very personality that he created.
S4 (21:12):
I think if we can get that in our minds,
it'll have a tremendous impact on how we relate to
those children. You talk about parenting with God. That him
being a part of the parenting process. What does that
look like practically? Especially, you know, you're facing all the
day to day frustrations and uncertainties and all of that.
(21:32):
How does God and our relationship with him fit into
all of that?
S1 (21:37):
You know, I gathered some wisdom along the way just
by reading the word. And, um, I pictured that God
had a file drawer in heaven that was just for
my family. And I realized that it was it was
a poison to worry or to fear or to get angry.
And so I would pray to God and say, God,
(21:58):
here is my child that you have given to me.
Give me wisdom for this child. Lord, please work in
their life, but I'm going to leave it to you.
I'm not going to allow fear or allow anger to
rule my heart because it's a poison to my heart.
And then I spent daily time in the word and
I would read verses like a gentle answer turns away wrath.
(22:21):
And I thought, oh my goodness, I need to be
gentle with my children. Um, and I would just read Scripture,
and then it became God's vocabulary to me when I
was in the midst of normal life. I learned to
look into their eyes. I learned to use a quieter voice.
I learned to give my teenagers the opportunity to have
(22:45):
hormones and be irrational. Um, you know, it's it's a
lot of practical things, uh, that you kind of gather
in the treasure chest of your heart so that you
can honor them. And my favorite verse about child raising
is do to others what you would have them do
to you. I realized that I wanted my children or
(23:08):
I wanted my children to understand me. Um, and so
I thought, I need to try to understand them. I
wanted to hear, you know, encouraging words and life giving words.
And so I made it a goal to give words
of affirmation to them. So many different things. I thought,
if I want this, then this is probably what is
(23:28):
going to make a healthy relationship with them. And I
don't think you have to feel like doing all the
right things. You just have to do them.
S6 (23:37):
You know, Gary, what I hear.
S3 (23:39):
Sally saying is a lot of this process is letting go. And,
you know, if it's a poison to worry, then really
believing that God is involved in this whole thing. So,
you know, you got to believe in his sovereignty. But
the other thing, Sally, that that you just touched on
is you want your child to be who your child is,
(24:04):
not who you think your child ought to be. And
that's part of the letting go process, isn't it?
S1 (24:11):
Mhm. Well, I have to say that um, because I
wasn't accepted for who I was as a child and
my husband and I were actually working in Vienna, Austria,
where we were pastors at an international chapel and um,
with 40 different countries speaking a variety in our, in
our church. And, um, when we had a lot of
(24:32):
them over for lunch, I realized, oh my goodness, there's
so many different persons, different points of view, different personalities.
And Clay and I talked about the fact that when
we had children, we we thought, I think I'm going
to home educate them. We'd never heard of that in
our lives, but we wanted to give our children a
place where they weren't compared to other people by grades
(24:55):
or test scores, which nobody should ever do where they
weren't under the pressure to perform or to conform. They
worked with us side by side. We had hosted conferences
all over the world and they would be with us.
And so they got to meet lots of people. They
were normal children in that way, but it taught us
that all of our children are very different, have chosen
(25:19):
different professions. Three out of the four live in the
UK and work there and then. Nathan lives in New
York City, but we we kind of really wanted to
give them a life in which they weren't compared. They
weren't cookie cutter people, but they were like all the
unique stories of people we see in Scripture that they
had their own story to live, their own work to
(25:42):
accomplish for God's kingdom, because they didn't have the pressure
of conforming. I think it freed them to say I
we would say to them, I wonder what story you're
going to tell with your life. I think it's going
to be a great story. Maybe you'll be a musician.
You're amazing at piano, or maybe you're going to be
a great writer or whatever, but whatever families can do
(26:05):
to just have freedom in the home. A safe place
for a child to be who God made them to
be is really a great foundation upon which to build.
S2 (26:21):
You're listening to the Building Relationships with Doctor Gary Chapman podcast.
He's the author of the New York Times best seller
The Five Love Languages. Mother and son Sally and Nathan
Clarkson have teamed to write our featured resource at Five
Love Languages. It's titled Uniquely You exploring your child's extraordinary,
distinctive Design. Again, go to five Love Languages.
S4 (26:47):
For Sally, the word discipline can be a very sensitive
topic with different ideas, especially as the children's personalities and
temperaments vary. As we've been talking about, how do you
tailor discipline to fit each child while remaining consistent?
S1 (27:05):
I think that, um, my husband and I over the
years kind of cultivated our own particular biblical view of that,
and that he wrote a book called Heartfelt Discipline. And
he's he went he graduated from seminary years ago. He's
kind of a scholar. And, um, he went through Scripture
(27:25):
and really came up with a conclusion that it's more
about training and habituating our children to our values and
to the virtues that Christ had. It's no, not this, this, no,
not this, this. And, um, so we kind of worked
with our children in high training, high love. And what
(27:47):
that means is, is we said, these are the 24
ways that I mentioned earlier that our family is going
to comply with the truth of God's Word. And if
you can't follow these ways, there will be consequences. So
maybe for the extroverted child, we would say, you have
a choice to make if you if you can choose
(28:08):
to ask for forgiveness or to bring peace in this situation,
then great. Then you can continue to play. But if
you choose to be a person of disharmony, you're going
to have to sit over here with with mommy or
with daddy, or you're going to have to write a
paragraph out about what it means to be a peacemaker
or whatever. We worked with training, filling their brains with
(28:28):
truth and consequences. We just felt like, especially with our
own children, some kind of harsh, I'm going to control
you sort of discipline was just not the way that
we were going to work with our children. Does it
require more time? Yes. It requires more time to train,
to instruct, to correct, to require consequences. But we found
(28:54):
with each of the children they had different ways that
they wanted to be respected and approached and trained. It's
really fun for me because I was recently in Oxford again,
where my daughter with my four grandchildren lives, and it
was like deja vu. She was saying and doing the
exact same things that we did in our house, and
(29:15):
it was so fun to watch these precious little human
beings with their own unique personalities to, at a very
early age, learned to trust Mom and dad to respond
to them, to develop a culture of unconditional love together.
And so it's more about shaping the values in the heart.
(29:37):
Reaching the heart. The heart is mentioned over 800 times
in Scripture. It's more about reaching their heart with the
imagination of being a virtuous person, than it is about
some kind of a ten rules to discipline your child,
which every child still needs us to respond to their
personality with the training that we do.
S4 (29:58):
Yeah, I think that's a powerful area that a lot
of parents miss, you know. We want to. Yes. Let
them suffer consequences. But we want to wrap it all
in love. Because the whole thing we're trying to do
is just to help them become more like Christ and
more like, you know what he wants them to be.
So that's that's great. Well, for parents of multiple children,
(30:21):
what are some strategies for nurturing each child's unique gifts
without unintentionally creating favoritism or competition? What are your thoughts
on that?
S1 (30:32):
You know, as I look back in my own life,
I think that we need to be very careful not
to compare our children, even as adults and as they
are adults. And you need to determine that even as
God loves us equally. I think that he he he
(30:53):
died for each of us equally. He forgives us all.
It's so important to not create a culture of competition
in a home. I don't know how we accomplished that,
but we just knew that each of our children. I
think that love is the oxygen that gives life to
each child. And so with some children, they needed more time,
(31:16):
more personal time. With some children, they needed more encouragement
or affirmation or understanding. But it's so important for us
not to compare our children to one another and to
free them to become exactly the adults that God created
them to be. It's hard and it stretches you, but
(31:38):
it will cause you to understand Christ and how we
reach his world more. With all the people around us.
S4 (31:46):
Yeah. Did you ever notice with Nathan or his other
siblings any sense that they felt like, well, you know,
you're the favorite one. The other person's the favorite one?
Did you ever sense any of that?
S7 (31:58):
You know.
S1 (31:59):
That's not been the our difficulty. Our difficulty would be
more that sometimes a couple of the kids created more
contention and required more time. You know, um, would maybe
sass back or, or, um, or disagree or whatever. And
so then we'd have to take time with more of
(32:19):
the extroverts than the introverts. We would have to take
more time to correct. And and our children knew that
there was always going to be some kind of talk, correction, whatever.
I tried really hard to give each of them individual time,
individual focus for what I thought they needed. But it
was more that, yes, they're nobody's perfect. No family is perfect.
(32:41):
There were characteristics of Clarkson community that were irritating. Um,
and so it was more about settling the conflict and, um,
not allowing one child to take up all the time,
if that makes sense.
S4 (32:57):
Yeah, yeah. Take us back to the time when you
were trying to be Nathan's mom with all of his differences, and, uh,
you really had no idea which way to go or
how to do it. What what led you down the
positive path that you followed?
S1 (33:15):
I think because I felt, um, judged by my own
background and not accepted for who I was, I was
very much like Nathan, uh, in the sense that I
talked a lot. And now I get paid to talk.
I just, I ask questions, and I thought all the time,
I'm always thinking about words. I thought, this is what
(33:38):
I wish that my parents had done for me. I
wish they had liked who I was. I wish they
had affirmed what I did when I was an adult.
I wish that they had talked well of me to
the other kids. So my story, everybody's story is different.
The one thing I did want to say is that
(34:00):
sometimes I found it hard to find other friends who
understood the difficulties of my children. And you know that
they would, that Nathan would sometimes get in trouble because
he talked a lot. And so I would say, I
think there's something different going on. These are things I've
noticed with my child. He's very different than the other
ones in these ways. And some of my friends would go, oh,
(34:24):
he's just a normal teenager. And I thought, no, he's not.
And they would say, um, aw, you're just having a
hormonal day. And I thought, no, I'm not. You know,
this is definitely something different. And I need support here.
So not everybody understands children who are different. Yeah. And
we talked a lot about that in the book. And, um,
(34:46):
so I kind of want to say to people who
maybe their children are easily compliant. I don't know if
that exists, but, um, to give your friends who struggle
with an out of the box child sympathy and an
ear and support because it was hard for me. We
ran a ministry and we had a lot of people
(35:07):
that we worked with, and it was hard for me
to not have some of the time people who understood.
S4 (35:14):
Yeah. What's one key takeaway that you hope parents will
hold on to after reading your book? Uniquely you, and
how can it transform their relationships with their children?
S1 (35:27):
I think every human being, every child, longs for love, acceptance,
a safe place, a good friend, and I would say,
if nothing else, ask God and and pray about it.
What are some ways I can individually show my child
(35:48):
that I am thrilled to be their parent, that I
love them. That I am committed to helping them their
whole life, that I. I will be there if they
need someone to talk to. I think that one of
the most profound things that we will answer to God
for someday is as I was holding my little baby
in my arms when she was first born. How are
you going to so love that child so that they
(36:10):
will believe in my love? How are you going to
represent Christ in such a way that they'll see Jesus
through the moments of your life, so they'll believe in
Jesus when they are teenagers? Understand that one of the
most profound things we will answer to God for is
that he entrusted human beings into our hands to shape
(36:32):
and to grow, and to love in such a way
that he'll be glorified through our behavior and our actions.
S4 (36:39):
Yeah.
S3 (36:40):
So this is really interesting. You brought up in that
last segment how the wound in your own life, the
the love that you didn't feel from your own parents
that you have allowed God to use that for good,
not only in your own family and your own heart
and life, but also now for other people. So the
wound becomes a place of healing. I want to know,
what was it like for you to hear Nathan? Actually,
(37:03):
you read his words. He says this in his introduction.
I was a unique kid who felt the daily pain
of a world trying to fit me inside a box
that I was never going to fit, but I had
parents who listened to God, appreciated his unique design for me,
and created a space in our home where I could
grow freely into the person God created me to be,
(37:26):
to tell the story he had created me to tell.
What went on inside. When you read those words.
S1 (37:33):
I was very grateful. Obviously I thought, phew, we made it. Um,
you know, it was just wonderful because I think there
are many times in parents lives where they don't know
if they if they're doing the right thing. But, um,
as I looked back, I realized over a period of
time that your story becomes your platform for reaching other people.
(37:57):
Whatever your story is, if you trust God with it
and says, Lord and say, Lord, how can I turn
my story, my background, my family into a way that
I might minister to other people? Because we all have
a different story. But I think that what you learn
in the wisdom that you acquire through that story becomes
(38:18):
your platform of influence. Yeah, it was thrilling, actually. Just thrilling.
And Nathan and I are best friends today.
S4 (38:25):
Yeah, I would think I could imagine reading those words,
you know. Well, talk to the mom or dad listening
who sees themselves in your story, but has been trying
to change their child to fit them or into some
mold that they have. What would you say to that parent?
S1 (38:43):
Well, I would say that, number one, you need to
accept your child right now as they are, in case
they never change, because I originally learned that a couple
of my children are clinically OCD and that it was
never going to change, their brains were never going to
magically change theirs. I think sometimes we look for the
right formula, the right book. Just give me the right
(39:05):
rule to make this easier. Sometimes things are not going
to become easier in this broken, chaotic world, but we
can learn how to give it grace. We can learn
how to cover our relationships with grace, to make progress,
to move forward and learn more about love. God sees
you as you are, who you are, as exactly the
(39:26):
person that God wants to use to live your story well.
And he loves you. He forgives you, he supports you,
and he understands.
S4 (39:37):
Sarah, what would you say to the parent who feels
like you know, I didn't sign up for a life
to be this hard. And they're just right now they're
just down there trying to figure out why, why, why?
What would you say to them?
S1 (39:50):
You know, I think that's a great question. I actually
am a little bit Pollyanna at heart. I would, you know,
have these feelings of God. I, you know, I'm giving
you everything. Can you make it a little bit easier
for me, please? And I think that most of us
were not in this in the last generation and in
this generation, prepared for the sacrifices that God requires from
(40:14):
us to be parents. You know, he puts babies into
our hands who need to be fed, need to be protected.
I mean, there is no choice. We are the ones
that they look to for all of the work that
it will take to be a parent. But I also
think that the more I submitted to the hardness, the
more I grew in my understanding of God's love, the
(40:36):
more I became humble, which I needed to be. Um,
the more I thought, my goodness, I am learning more
about life and what really matters than I ever could
have lived if I had an easy life. And I
just think that I wish I had understood that to
be in a fallen world means that there will be chaos,
there will be brokenness, but that God will hold my
(40:59):
hand every day as I walk through these difficult times.
S4 (41:02):
Yeah, and we can talk to him, right? Oh, God,
this is hard. Oh, yeah. Help me, help me.
S1 (41:08):
Yeah. And I say, please, do you understand this person? Yes.
For sure.
S4 (41:15):
You really believe that Psalm 139 is true where it
says God knit me in my mother's womb? Mhm. How
does that idea of your child being fearfully and wonderfully
made change you as a mom?
S1 (41:34):
Well, I had to totally change my expectations of what
it meant to be a parent. I thought my first
two children were introverts and they were much easier. My
second two children were not. I thought I was a
perfect parent the first time around, and I realized that
that I didn't have the formulas. I didn't know everything,
(41:57):
but I did have this deep desire to love my children.
So it required both Clay and me to change, to grow,
to learn. And, um, you know, I think that most
of us are not prepared. We're prepared to have a
job or to accomplish things or to go into the world.
(42:18):
But most of us haven't been in a culture that
is family centered, that is children centered, that sees children
as real, live human beings with great potential. And so
we're having to learn a whole new area of life
that we were never prepared to do. And that's just
the reality.
S3 (42:39):
Sally, one question before we end here today. Talk to
the parent who's listening to you and who says that
I wish I had this 20 years ago, 30 years ago.
But my opportunity is gone because my child now is
an adult. What do you say to that parent?
S1 (42:56):
You know, I get letters all the time from people
who say, I just wish that my parents and I
could be close now. And I think it's never too
late to. Jesus was a servant leader. He washed toes and, um, uh,
120 dirty man toes, and he took children in his
arms and he put up with people. And it requires
(43:18):
us to be a servant to our children. It may
take a while, but Jesus told the story of the
prodigal because the father was waiting there to love and
bless the child who wasn't as close to him as
he hoped. And so I think that, um, it's never
too late to love well, to serve well, to be humble,
(43:38):
to ask for forgiveness, knowing that your adult child still
wants and longs for your affirmation.
S4 (43:45):
You know, I've often said that I wish there had
been parenting books back when we were raising our children,
and maybe there were. I just didn't know where they were.
S1 (43:57):
That's so true.
S4 (43:59):
Yeah. But I'd like to say to our listeners today,
you are hearing today about a book on parenting that
will really, really help you wherever you are in the journey.
So I just want to encourage our listeners to get
this book uniquely you, because I think this message will really,
really give a lot of practical help and will also
(44:21):
point you to God for his help. And after all,
all of us need his wisdom. So I really appreciate
you being on today. And thanks for you and Nathan
and your investment in this book?
S1 (44:33):
Well, thank you so much for having me. What an
honor to talk with you after I read your book
so many years ago. Thank you. Thank you.
S3 (44:40):
Again. The title of today's resource Uniquely You Exploring Your
Child's Extraordinary Distinctive Design by Sally and Nathan Clarkson. And
you can find out more at Building Relationships. Again. Look
for that featured resource there, Building Relationships.
S4 (44:58):
And next week finding hope and purpose as a military wife.
S2 (45:04):
Don't miss a practical discussion in one week. Our thanks
to Janice backing and Steve Wick for their work behind
the scenes. Building relationships with Doctor Gary Chapman is a
production of Moody Radio in association with Moody Publishers, a
ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening.
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