When Kids Say, 'It’s Not Fun' – Shaping Hearts and Attitudes

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In this episode, we address how to respond when children complain that something “isn’t fun” or resist tasks with “I don’t want to.” Explore practical ways to cultivate gratitude and purpose in your kids, focusing on biblical teachings that help them understand life’s true goal—loving God and growing in Christlikeness.

Transcript

Note: The following is an auto-transcript of the podcast recording.

Hello friends. Today's question says, "how do we address the issue when kids complain that something is not fun and the constant - 'I don't want to'". Such a good question, and I'm pretty sure that when many of you heard this, you kind of like sighed just thinking about how many times your children say, this isn't fun, or I don't want to. It is so challenging when we think about this because this is a heart issue and this is what we're going to talk about today on the Foundation Worldview Podcast, where we seek to answer your questions so that you can equip the children that God has placed in your care to carefully evaluate every idea they encounter and understand the truth of the biblical worldview. I'm your host, Elizabeth Urbanowicz. I'm thrilled that you've joined me today as we look at this somewhat challenging issue that is a heart issue.

Now, I would first recommend that if you have not yet checked out our Parenting series at Foundation Worldview, highly recommend that you check out the free sample for that because the whole first session that you can get for free, it has to do with discipleship of the head, the heart, and the hands, and we go into discipleship of the heart in much more detail in that free episode that you can get from that series than I will be able to go through in this short podcast. So highly recommend you check out that series. And now as we think about this attitude of that's not fun, and I don't want to, I think there are two main issues that we see when our children have this attitude and maybe sometimes when we have this attitude because it's very easy for us in this cultural moment to think, oh, that's no fun. I don't want to do that, or do I really have to do this? It's easy for us to buy into that as well. And the two main issues I think are incorrectly understanding the goal or purpose of life and then in gratitude. So first, it's incorrectly understanding the goal of life, and then second, it's in gratitude.

So when we think about the goal of our lives, everything in the world around us right now is telling us the goal is your personal fulfillment, your personal happiness - to have fun. That life is primarily about you doing you. I was just thinking last night, I was watching an episode of Little House in the Prairie on Amazon Prime, which if you haven't checked that out, it's a great show from the seventies and eighties and it is available for free with commercials on Amazon Prime. But as I was watching it, there was a commercial for Tide Laundry detergent, and the woman who was acting in the commercial, she was a mom and she's like, Tide laundry detergent is the first step in my self-care. And I was like, really? Laundry detergent is now being sold by saying it's about self-care. But that's what everything in our world is just screaming about us. Like you take care of you, you make sure that your dreams are actualized and your dreams are fulfilled and your desires are met and you follow your heart and it's all about having fun where that's not what we get biblically at all. Biblically, the purpose of our life is to love God and to be conformed more into the image of Jesus. That that's what the goal is. So even for us as adults, when we don't feel like doing something, we can remind ourselves this life is not about my fulfillment or my fun. It's about loving God and being conformed more into the image of Jesus and doing this thing that I need to do is loving God through being responsible with what he's given me, and it's conforming me more into the image of Jesus by being obedient to God.

And then the second issue, which is in gratitude, this is what complaining is. Anytime we complain, we are not being grateful. We are somehow saying that what we have is not what we deserve. That God is short-changing us, that we deserve better than what we have. Now, I will be the first to admit that this is something that I struggle with, that my natural bent is to go and look at the three things that are wrong with the situation rather than the 152 things that are right with it. But that's my natural bent. And so I have not mastered this. I still struggle to this day with the sin of and gratitude, but God has worked on my heart a lot over the past two decades and I am much more grateful than I used to be, but I still have a long way to go in this.

So these are the two issues - incorrectly understanding the goal of life and a heart of gratitude. So what do we do? What do we do to try to correct these things specifically in our children? First, we need to pray for God to change our children's hearts because again, as I've mentioned on multiple podcasts, only God can take a heart of stone and turn it into a heart of flesh. We cannot do that. So we need to pray that God will change our children's hearts, that he will help them to see clearly that his plan for them is good, and that their complaining hearts need to be transformed into hearts of gratitude. So pray, pray, pray, pray, pray for our children's hearts.

Then I think it's really important to take them directly to Scripture because if the goal in life is not personal fulfillment, if it's not to have fun, if it's not to have our dreams realized, but if it's to love God and be conformed more into the image of Jesus, we need to help them see this through Scripture. And so I recommend you take them to the passage of Scripture that I close every single Foundation Worldview podcast with, which is Romans chapter eight verses 28 through 29, and that passage reads, "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he fore knew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers." So we can read that passage with our children and ask, okay, so what is God's ultimate plan for Christians? That's right. His ultimate plan is to conform us more into the image of Jesus. And so then discuss how this goal is different than our typical goals. Be honest with your children about how you struggle with this. I struggle with this too. That's one of the reasons why I close every podcast with this passage of Scripture to remind not only you, but to remind myself that this is the goal that God is conforming me more into the image of His Son. Now, we never want to use Scripture as a weapon against our children. The Bible says do this, but we do want to make sure that we are immersing our children in Scripture and we're using Scripture to guide them. So highly recommend that you memorize this passage. It'd be great if you could memorize even more, maybe even all of Romans 8 together. Post this passage on the fridge and then in those moments when your children are like, "Ugh, this isn't fun, I don't want to do this", just say, "you're right. I know this is not the most fun thing. Taking out the trash is never fun, but it's your job. And remind me what is the goal? What is the goal? That's right. The goal is to be conformed more into the image of Jesus. And as you are obedient to me, your parent, you are being conformed more into the image of Jesus. So I know it's not fun, but you need to go take out the trash now." So that's how we can address this first issue.

Now is our child immediately going to be like, you are right, father, the goal is to be conformed more into the image of Jesus. Thank you for having me take out the trash. No, there's probably still going to be some complaining. There's still going to be some eye rolling. It's going to take a long time to train our children to recognize what this goal is. They might never appreciate it when they're in our home. They might not appreciate it in their college years or in their post-college years, but we can be praying that God would use this, use what we're doing now to conform them more into the image of Son and His Son and that he would bring these things back to their remembrance in their teenage years, their young adult years and their adult lives.

The second thing that we want to do is work to establish hearts of gratitude in our children. Now again, we can't change our children's hearts. Only God can do that. But what we can do is we can make sure that the elements for growth are in place so that our children are much more likely to have a sensitive heart, a heart that is sensitive to God. Now, before we work on gratitude with our children, we need to make sure that we're working on it in ourselves because we are hypocritical if we are requiring our children to do something that we are not requiring of ourselves. Now, this doesn't mean that we say, oh, well, you know what? I actually struggle with complaining and in gratitude. So clearly I don't need to work on this with my children. No, we need to work on it with ourselves and with our children. So what we can do is we can just ask that God's Holy Spirit would convict us of our own gratitude, that when we are being ungrateful, when we are having a complaining, murmuring spirit, that the Holy Spirit would convict us quickly.

Then another thing that I have found really helpful in my own fight against gratitude is just going in my Bible and marking every time I see the word thanks or Thanksgiving. So whenever I'm reading a passage of Scripture, if it has the word thanks or Thanksgiving, I just circle it. So that way as I'm going through Scripture, I am recognizing all of the times where we are commanded to give thanks or to be thankful. So I think marking that in Scripture is also helpful. Then another resource that I have found incredibly helpful is the book, Choosing Gratitude by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemu. This is just a biblical book that explains why gratitude is a distinctly Christian virtue and why any other Christian virtue divorced from gratitude is not distinctly biblical. So I highly recommend you check out the book, Choosing Gratitude by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemu. And then just get in the habit of regularly telling your children things that you are thankful for because as you get in this habit and just say, I'm so grateful that today when I went to the grocery store, there wasn't any traffic. There's usually traffic, but today there wasn't. Or you know what? I am so grateful that our car is working well, sometimes our car's in the shop, but it hasn't been in recently. I'm so grateful for that. As we get into this habit, it really is going to become that just a habit. I was actually thinking of that last night. That last night I actually had a good deal of trouble sleeping and I woke up a number of times in the middle of the night, which isn't unusual for me, but because God has been working so much for the past few decades in my heart on gratitude and getting rid of in gratitude that when I make up wake up in the middle of the night, I don't even notice it, but my natural reaction is to give thanks. That last night, the first time I woke up, I had to use the bathroom. So I got up and I found myself. As I was walking to the bathroom, I was just saying out loud, God, thank you for your love and your mercy. Thank you for reconciling me to yourself. And here it is like 2:00 AM. My mind isn't even computing accurately, but because God has been so faithful at working on this sin issue in my heart, he has brought me to a place in his sanctifying work in my life where my first reaction in that situation is just to say, thank you, God, thank you for these things.

So then how do we develop gratitude in our children or in our family unit as a whole? I think a great habit to establish is as you have dinner together each night, share one or two things that you are grateful for. Just go around the dinner table and get in the habit of sharing what are one or two things you're so grateful for today, and you can even model showing gratitude for difficult things. In Ephesians chapter five, we are commanded to give thanks always and for everything, and why is it that we can and should give thanks always and for everything well because of Romans 8:29 that God is using all things to conform us more into the image of His son. As you're having family prayer times before meals or before bed or at family worship, include times of gratitude, things to thank God for. You can even have a dedicated gratitude wall where you just write on sticky notes, things you're thankful for, and just read through those once a week, all of these things that you're thankful for.

And then get in the habit of writing thank you letters. When I was first working on gratitude, when the Lord really convicted me of what an ungrateful complaining spirit I had one habit that I established that I'm not always faithful with now, but I had this habit established for about five years is every Thursday I would write at least one thank you note, and it wasn't like I wasn't having to rack my brain for somebody who bought me something. If it was my birthday, it would be really easy to write at least one thank you note a week. But I would just write thank you notes for ways that people were serving in our church. Seeing the person who came early every week to set up the Lord's Supper and just writing a thank you note, they were there every week and they were faithfully doing that or writing notes to people who had influenced me in childhood. So if we just get in this habit once a week, we sit down, everyone in our family writes a thank you note, just thinking through who can we be thankful for? What friend is a good faithful friend? What Sunday school teacher? Or you can even write letters, the police officers in your town or the firefighters, things like that. Just writing letters of gratitude I think is a really helpful step in developing a heart of gratitude.

So I hope that in what I've gone through here, that it's really helpful in addressing, okay, what are the root parts of this issue? It's incorrectly understanding the goal in life and it's having a heart in gratitude. So if we can address these two things, does it mean that our children are going to stop complaining or saying that they don't want to do things? No, but what we are doing is we are setting them on the trajectory for understanding what the goal in life is. It's to be conformed more into the image of Jesus and that we are to have hearts of gratitude.

Well, that's a wrap for this episode, but if you have a question that you would like for me to answer on a future Foundation Worldview podcast, you can submit that by going to FoundationWorldview.com/podcast. Also, ask as always that you would invest the few seconds that it takes to rate this content. We still have less than 20% of our faithful listeners who have rated our content, so getting those ratings in just really helps us as we continue to develop this podcast. And I'm going to close today with what I usually close with, which is Romans 8:28 through 29, that my prayer for you is that no matter the situation in which you and the children God has placed in your care, find yourselves that you would trust that God is working all things together for your good. By using all things to conform you more into the image of His Son. I'll see you next time.