Main Thing Podcast
This podcast encourages others to love God and people by leading them to know and follow Jesus’ truth.
Main Thing Podcast
Helping Kids Handle Fear
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We talk honestly about why anxiety and mental pressure are rising in kids and how parents often shape that pressure without meaning to. We connect faith and realistic expectations so families can help kids grow resilient and grounded in how God made them.
• differences between growing up in the 70s and 80s and growing up with devices and constant surveillance
• respect, discipline, and shifting cultural standards for behavior and consequences
• test pressure, fear of failure, and why kids need permission to learn through setbacks
• social media comparison and how curated “perfect” lives fuel anxiety
• teaching coping skills so disappointment does not become a crisis
• helping kids find their gifts, and realistic paths including trades and technical work
• having honest conversations about dreams, desire, ability, and the price of growth
• parents relaxing their expectations so kids can relax and mature over time
Main Thing Mission And Purpose
SPEAKER_00Main Thing Podcast with Pastor Steve, equipping you to respond and thrive in the world we live in today. Keep the main thing the main thing has been a saying that Pastor Steve has told for decades. It means no matter what is happening around us, Jesus is what we need to have front and center in our lives. There couldn't be a more powerful reminder for us to recall in today's divisive and dark culture. From foundational truths and scripture to the hot topics of today's culture, allow this podcast to inspire and motivate you on your faith journey.
Two Years In And Today’s Topic
SPEAKER_03All right, welcome back to the main thing podcast with Pastor Steve. We are on episode 52, and so we have now officially been doing this for two years. Does it feel like two years, Pastor Steve? It's passed quickly. Welcome as always. We've had a few things to do between uh the last two years, huh? Yes, yes, plenty to do. Well, we're we're continuing talking about kids. Um, and today we want to talk about helping kids navigate anxiety, fear, and mental pressure. But I want to start
Growing Up Outside In The 70s
SPEAKER_03first. Uh, let's just do a little brainstorming on what it was like to grow up in the 70s and 80s versus growing up today.
SPEAKER_01Oh boy. Um, well, I think we can all agree it was definitely a different time. Um 70s and 80s doesn't even compare to today. We're such a technological world today. Um, you know, the the truth, it's not an old man story. The truth. Uh, when school's not in session, um, my mother shooed us out of the house, and me and my cousins, who lived down the road, uh, played plastic ball, uh wiffle ball, if you will, or rode our bicycles to anywhere we wanted to go, did anything we wanted to do. Um until lunchtime, we showed back up at the house, and uh she'd fix us a sandwich and run us out of the house again. And so we grew up outside. Uh there was no reason to stay inside. Uh so we were playing ball, riding bikes, swimming in the lake, um, doing something every minute of every day. Um sometimes as simple as seeing who could climb the highest in a tree. Um, but those are the kind of things we did. Um, and then as teenagers, it was really exciting because on the weekends, about all you could do is uh there's a parking lot somewhere in town, and we'd all park and sit on the trunk of our cars and talk. So that was the 70s and 80s. It wasn't real exciting, but it was pretty simple.
SPEAKER_03You know, we were trying to describe uh to my kids the other day uh a game we used to play in the neighborhood. And you probably remember this game, and I'm sure Chet does too. Uh, but you had a group of guys and you'd throw the football up in the air as high as you could. Yep. And one guy caught it and ran for his life. And the whole goal was to tackle him.
SPEAKER_01And we won't talk about what it was called.
SPEAKER_03But I remember I remember my oldest looking at me and goes, Y'all did that deliberately? I said, Oh yeah. Did you try to catch the ball? Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Why would you do that? Yeah. I wanted the ball because I wanted to prove they couldn't take me down. That's right.
SPEAKER_03That's right. But um, so you know, uh thinking back to uh you had a different childhood
Respect Discipline And A Simpler World
SPEAKER_03than I do. I did. I'm I'm 15 years behind you. Uh, but what kind of things got you in trouble when you're growing up?
SPEAKER_01Oh, disrespect, number one. Uh the main thing uh when I was coming along was you were respectful, not just to your parents, but all adults. Um there there were no exemptions. If an adult spoke to you, you spoke. Uh you never smarted off at an adult. You were always respectful to them and and their role as an adult. Uh you respected law enforcement. You respected your teachers. Um the old the old stories people tell really are true. In most homes in the 70s, if you if you got a whipping in school and they still paddled in the 70s, uh, you just prayed your parents didn't find out because you're getting it again. You know?
SPEAKER_03In my growing up, so I I went to a Catholic school first four years of my schooling because my dad uh was the the dean there, coached every sport and taught history. And I got sent to his office one day as a third grader. Uh, in a moment of sheer insanity, I told the nun to be quiet. And that didn't work out well for me. Yeah. And so, you know, for our home of people, you understand what that must have been like. Yeah. And so my dad paddles me at school, and we get home, and on the principle of the thing, he paddles me again at home because I would have gotten would have had gone to another school. You know, and and I say all that to say, what how's it so different today? What's it look like uh, you know, for a child today growing up that was so different from how we would have grown up?
SPEAKER_01Well, it it's a whole different world. Number one, their parents are not teaching them to respect anybody. Uh we have a generation of young parents who are oblivious, I think, to how to raise a decent human being. There's some getting it right. I'm not painting with a broad brush. Uh, but for example, if if my child walks by an adult and they're six years old and that adult speaks, and that child doesn't respond, we we're gonna stop and have a discussion right now. Uh parents today would be like, well, why should he have to speak to you? You know, uh the standard by which we measure uh decency in our society has totally shifted. Devices have become babysitters. You know, when I was a small child, TV was only good to babysit for a little while. Because cartoons came on for like 30 minutes after school, you know, and and and they'd let you watch cartoons for 30 minutes and then you had to get out of the house or whatever. Um and there were there were TV programs everybody enjoyed just like today, but the whole family sat around the television and watched Bonanza or Father Knows Best or Leave It to Beaver or those kind of shows. Uh but you didn't sit there for hours and hours and hours. You know, maybe an hour or two max in the evening after dinner. Um, my generation ushered in what we all affectionately know as the TV dinner. So you could sit in the living room and eat your dinner watching television, you know. So our generation is the cause, I think, of a lot of the problems we have today. Um likewise things were not as serious then. I I tell our kids at Covenant sometimes I feel so sorry for them. Uh every little thing is a major deal. There are cameras everywhere. Every little thing they do, somebody knows already. Um and their best friends will bust them because they, you know, they videoed it on their phone if the school camera or the church camera didn't catch you. Uh you could actually get away with some things as a kid. You know, you didn't have to be perfect. And now today, um, you know, and it's this may be a bad example, but two kids get in a scuffle. I I remember this as plain as yesterday. If you elementary kids, they might paddle you, uh, chew you out, send you back to class. That was the end of it. Today, somebody's mama's calling the sheriff's department filing charges. You know, we're gonna make a felon out of a fifth grader because he got in a fight at school. Um, so it the two worlds don't even compare in my mind.
SPEAKER_03You know, I was gonna ask you, in some ways, kids have more freedom today because of a host of reasons, but in a lot of ways they have way less freedom today. Yeah, you know. And so saying that, it kind of brings me to the verse I wanted to go over today.
Why Kids Feel More Anxiety Now
SPEAKER_03It's it's 1 Peter 5 7, and it says, Having cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Why in the world do you think kids today have anxiety and fear and mental pressure? Because let's be honest, when we were growing up, that I'm sure it happened, but it was incredibly rare. You know, for for a child to say, I have anxiety or I have you know mental pressure. Why are we at this place?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, anxiety is not new, but the level of anxiety, the percentage of anxiety in children is has got to be off the charts. You know, I remember as a child giving a speech in a 4-H competition, fifth or sixth grade. And I had serious anxiety. I'd never done that. Nobody taught me how. All they're doing is teaching for a test. Um, and so these poor kids, it's been made very clear to them uh I got to do good on the test, or I'm a failure. Uh, and we all know some kids don't test well. We know that some of these tests and what they test has very little real-world application. Um, and we there are books written about this. The average entrepreneur in America that starts and runs great companies were C students. And so you've got the A students who will eventually work for the C students. That's the that's the big joke on the whole education system. Um, you know, you got guys like Smith, who founded FedEx, who got a C on his master's thesis because his professor, tongue in cheek intended, wrote on his paper, it'll never fly. Right? Uh Todd Graves, right here in Louisiana, had the same response. He submitted his plan as part of his uh thesis and was told the same thing. A restaurant with one product, there's no way it'll ever survive, right? Those men were both C-level students and founded great companies. Um so I mean, um we have set kids up. And and I think a lot of this is this thing we talked about in the last episode. We all want our kids to do great things. And so I think as parents, we're pushing and expecting um so much out of them, and we don't always do a good job of saying it's okay to fail. It's okay to fail. Um because failure teaches you way more than succeeding does, but we we don't ever want them to fail. So you've got all these parents trying to protect their children from failure. And so when the child does fail, there's major anxiety because they don't know how to cope with it. And uh, we need to let our kids fail, you know, so they can learn to deal with adversity. Because adversity brings anxiety, and the good part of that is anxiety can be a good thing. It can drive you to accomplish good things at times also.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. Do you
Social Media And The Comparison Trap
SPEAKER_03think uh social media has its place in there? Because one of the things I noticed, at least on Facebook, is we present such a airbrushed picture, I'll say, of our families. And you could never imagine looking at some families on Facebook. This family must be a cream of the crop, the the best family you've ever seen. Does that play into it, do you think?
SPEAKER_01Um I think um, you know, before social media, it was women's magazines. All the women were always judging themselves according to the airbrushed model on the magazines that weighed 83 pounds and you know, had the perfect cheekbones. And so uh the the marketing industry selling products to women, uh, I think were the original culprits of causing anxiety in our society because they were trying to tell women you got to look like these people. Um and then you roll it into today where we are, you're exactly right. I think social media is one of the most destructive things that has happened in the history of this planet because everybody has the perfect birthday party, everybody has the perfect job, everybody has the perfect vacation, and you're sitting there going, wow, my life stinks. You know, my kids are really dumb. I don't, you know, their kid. I mean, and so we're judging ourselves by these made-up anomalies that that the their pipe dreams. You know?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. You know, in the in the last episode,
Teaching Coping Skills And Trust
SPEAKER_03you you and Chet talked about uh that you know our kids don't really belong to us. Right. God gives them to us for a season to help him raise them. And we're stewards really, you know, just like we're stewards of money, we're stewards of talent, and we're also stewards uh of the children God has has blessed us with, you know. So what does that look like, do you think, as far as with the things our kids face, you know, anxiety, the the pressures, the feel of failure, loneliness, all those things that the kids face. How do we steward wealth for God here on earth?
SPEAKER_01Well, in in light of the things you mentioned, anxiety, and uh we've got an epidemic of mental illness in America, especially among young people. Uh I my humble opinion is the number one problem is we don't teach our children how to cope. We don't teach them coping skills. Okay, they elected class officer and you didn't win. Your life's not over. Okay, so let's let's talk about this. You're gonna be okay. It's not the end of your world because you didn't become a class officer. Or I got a C on my test, and my teacher, when she handed me my test, said you could have done better than that, Steve. And so she embarrassed me in front of all the students. Look, man, when I went to school, teachers would call you out in front of the class in a heartbeat. It was routine. Today, uh, kids have total meltdowns over the smallest little things. So I believe we have an epidemic of mental illness because we don't teach coping skills. Children are fragile. And uh and and I don't know what the answer is, because it appears the average parent is more interested in defending their child than they are in developing their child.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Well, and and I think we've come to a place that our society will say we can't trust that God made us the way he made us. You know, I I think back to Psalm uh, you know, one 135, I believe, you know, we were made in the image of God. Yes. You know, we don't know what that means. You know, so I I think part of it is we don't help our children understand that this is the way God made you. And if I give you an example real quick, you know, of all my children, we have you know kids doing well academically, we have kids that are are average academically, but I have one child in particular. We know he will probably not go on and get his PhD. Right. But we also know he's probably gonna do better financially than most all of us because he has uh that brain that knows how to fix things. Even even at the age he's at, yeah, he he already has that intuitive how to fix things. So I'm assuming when all the PhDs have nowhere to make money anymore, they'll have to go to him. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01Well, you can count on it.
SPEAKER_03Well, and and and my point is it's it's not, you know, have anxiety because you're not like what we expect. Be grateful for the way God made you, the the brain he gave you. You know, and I and I think we don't embrace that.
SPEAKER_01Well, this the era of the education system in America, again, we we educate children with college in mind. Everybody ought to go to college. And what we're learning now is that that's no longer the great answer for everybody. Uh, we've got tons of people out there with college degrees, you know, and they they can't hardly pay for their $7 coffee in the morning uh because it's it's not a guaranteed route for success. Now, you still have routes for success, what I call technical degrees. You're going to be a nurse, a doctor, an engineer. Uh, these kind of fields people still have great success in. But you got the education system, which has been marketed to America as the route to success with people getting a uh degree in African American studies, sociology, psychology, women's studies, my my favorite, uh independent studies. Uh, you know, and these degrees have no purpose. Um, they're a philosophy. And so nobody's gonna pay you. You've got to go on and get your master's in sociology or psychology to hope to get one of the few government jobs that thousands like you are competing for. Um and and so uh we we've got a ton of people that have been told this lie. Go to college, you'll be a success. And so if you ever watch um uh is it Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe, uh, you know, well, what we know right now in America, we are 300,000 people short of service jobs right now, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, and if you're paying attention, uh these people now make a great living uh because the average person don't want to work physically, they don't want to do it. And so a person like your son, who may have a pot propensity to fix things with that analytical mind, uh, is gonna be like the Chester cat down the road.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because the PhD won't know how to change his air condition filter in his house, you know, and and somebody's gonna have to go do it for him. Yeah.
Helping Kids Find Their Bend
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So how do how do we model trust in God for our kids when they when they face all these things? Because of things we probably uh led them to, you know?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think what you said is very important. The best way to raise your children is to step back and ask yourself, how did God wire them? What gifts did he give them? What uh what are they, you know? Um, I mean, I remember saying to my own boys, all of them, on many of occasions, yeah, that's a good idea. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to be an astronaut, but do you really think you have the skills to be an astronaut? Uh you had trouble with algebra one, you know. So uh let's be honest. That's probably not in your future. Yeah. So what what do you think you might want to do with the skills you have? Um and uh, you know, try James Dobson wrote some great books on these topics. Um try to lovingly guide and direct the child in a general direction, not exact, a general direction uh for where their strengths are. You know? Um and I mean, if I'm sitting, I had lunch with a young man today who's taking advanced calculus in high school, and he wants to be an engineer. And I said to him, How are you doing in advanced calculus? Oh, I got an A. I love it. I'm doing great. Then engineering may work very well for you, you know. Um, but if you had trouble with algebra one, engineering's not your reality, it's not gonna happen. So I I think you, and Dobson talked a lot about their bend and their personality, how God wired them, and and you try to lovingly um almost like shoeing a little chicken. You don't push it or kick it or you just kind of shoe it in a direction, if you will.
SPEAKER_03You know, you and I think you may be talking about his life on the edge series back in the day. So I remember him talking about helping them find how the want-to and the able to can meet. Yes, yes, you gotta have both.
SPEAKER_01Yes. I'd forgotten that. You're exactly right. Yeah. You gotta have both. And this is where a lot of parents make a terrible mistake. It doesn't matter how bad you want it as a parent, they gotta want it. And that's the hardest thing for a parent is when they don't want what you want. That's that that destroys a lot of parents.
SPEAKER_03You know, if I could if I could put being made in the image of God in more of a you know, a a today way to say it, maybe, or maybe when we grew up the way you'd say it is to be comfortable in your own skin. Yeah. You know, somebody who who is happy with the way they are, you know. And I think we don't do that anymore. I'm thinking we help our kids be comfortable in their own skin.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, it's okay. It's okay. Um I had a seventh, eighth grader ask me the other day. You know, our school just built a new gym, and this year they added some new electives. I had an eighth grader ask me why we couldn't start a support group for middle school. Now, that's hard for me to wrap my brain around that sixth, seventh, and eighth graders need a support group. Um and I I realize I'm another generation, but it goes back to they don't know how to cope. Why you need a support group? Just deal with it. You know, and I know the average counselor would say, Oh, you just can't tell them, just deal with it. Well, you can. My mama was a master at saying, spit in one hand, wish in the other, see which one fills up. You got your answer. You know, it didn't break me at all. Well, some people would disagree with that, but you know, uh, yeah, we we're so afraid to tell them no, or that they can't have something, yeah, or that if they didn't achieve something, it's all right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Well, and and I think as parents, we have to learn how to have honest conversations with our kids. Yes. I I I think a lot of us don't have that skill yet.
SPEAKER_01Well, and the desire. Because um all of my boys at one time or another, I sat them down and I said, no, you want to do so-and-so. Okay, I want you to reach your dreams, but I'm telling you because I love you, if you want to accomplish this dream, here's the boxes you're gonna have to check to even have an opportunity to achieve that dream. And I'd be lying if I if I told you different. They were furious with me. But as a parent, I'm not gonna lie to my kid. That's the biggest problem in travel sports in America today. Some guy walks up to a coach, his kid's got one leg, and and uh, you know, he'd have to hop around the baseball field. But you think my kid can play college ball? Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, we we just need to be honest with children. Hey, buddy, you can play ball, you can have fun, but no, college ball's not in your future. You, you know, I mean, I do know one guy in the pros that pitched with one arm, I forget his name. And I mean, he he he was a rarity. You know, uh, you don't see a whole lot of one-arm
Failure Forward And Parent Pressure
SPEAKER_01pitchers. Uh, and so it's not a horrible thing to tell your kid, yeah, buddy, that's probably not your path. Now, if you want to go that route, I'm your biggest fan. But here are the things you're gonna have to do to have a chance. Be honest with them. Um, I think a lot of parents fall under this trap is if if you believe you can do it, it can happen. Well, you gotta add to that and are willing to pay the price for what it's gonna take, yeah, then maybe you can do it.
SPEAKER_03Well, and unfortunately, that's been the message for years. Now, if if if you ever went to Disney World back in the 80s and 90s, at least when I was a kid, I don't know if it's still there today. Uh, but at Epcot, they had a place called uh the Imagination Pavilion or something. And I remember walking in and you'd hear this phrase over and over. If you can dream it, you can do it. Well, you know what? You can. Just because you can dream something doesn't mean you can do it. And I think that's why we have so much anxiety now, because our children have been told, if you can dream it, you can do it. And some at some point, you you bump up on the wall of reality.
SPEAKER_01Well, and and that's what I'm saying. You couple that with the the ability to learn how to fail forward. John Maxwell coined that phrase, failing forward. It's okay to fail, but what do you do in the failure? You analyze it and figure out how to fail forward. You make something good come out of the failure. Um, you learn from it, you build foundation upon it, you back up and reorganize and come at something from a different position, but you don't just waller in the failure and go get some medication. You you you get better from it, if you will. Stronger from it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, failure's not the end. It's not the end of the step. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yes, exactly. Uh that's why I tell you guys here all the time at the church, everything we do is an experiment. It's not a failure. Because for the first half of my ministry, I lived in fear. You know, if you do something at church and it don't work, oh, look what you did, man. You messed up the world. And and and listening to people like Rick Warren and John Maxwell, it finally dawned on me. It's okay to fail. It's not the end of the world. It's okay. And so um, everything we do here is an experiment. If it don't work, it's not a failure. We need to reanalyze it, back up, look at it. What do we need to do different? Maybe we don't need to do it at all. That's okay too.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh, but we tried, you know.
Practical Steps To Calm Anxiety
SPEAKER_03So, so just bottom line advice, what would you tell a parent whose kid is so caught up in things, has anxiety, has this, you know, fear that they're going through life and it's really crippling them. How would how would you tell a parent to to walk their child through that, I guess?
SPEAKER_01Well, you're the key to that, because most children have anxiety because of their parents, um, because of their expectations. Um, you know, I used to try to avoid this. I'm not gonna tell a lie. I didn't always avoid it. Um, but you know, your kids playing in a ball game, and uh, you know, the game's over, they get in the car, kid just wants to where we're gonna eat. They want ice cream. That's all they care about. But dad's gotta rehash the game. Dad's gotta tell them where where they went wrong. Dad's gotta tell them how we're gonna work on it in the yard to fix it. I was guilty of some of those things. So then uh the next time the kid goes to play ball, all that's in the kid's head. Uh kids scared to death make a play uh because they're afraid of the discussion afterwards. And so I think parents are the key to this. Uh parents have got to relax if they want their kids to relax. There's nothing wrong with having high expectations. I think that's a good thing. But you you you don't you don't make every little failure the end of the world. And so parents need to step back and ask themselves, what's the message my child's getting when I'm having these conversations with them? You know, they they make us see on a spelling test in the second grade, and we're worried if they're gonna get into LSU or not. I mean, uh one of my favorite phrases that I tell parents over at our school is that trust me when I tell you your child's academic future will not be determined by the third grade. It won't be settled this year, you know. And why do I know that? I was a terrible student until about the seventh or eighth grade in my own life. And the light bulb came on. I was dyslexic. And they didn't know what that was back then. I was just one of the dumb kids, you know. You could call kids dumb when I was in school. I was just one of the dumb kids. I went to the special reading classes and all these things. And when the light came on, I began to figure out how to study how I could get it to stick in my brain. Uh I became a 180 degrees different student than I'd been all the way through elementary school. So kids mature at different rates, they handle things differently. And the light, quite honestly, the light comes on at different stages for every kid. And so uh when your kid's in kindergarten, if they're a discipline problem, that doesn't mean they're going to juvie by the time they're 12. Uh, you know, so parents, I think, need to take a step back, relax, everything's not the end of the world, and ask yourself, what's the message my child's getting from me? Because
Final Thoughts And Wrap Up
SPEAKER_01if the message is, however you word it, you're a failure, then you're creating the anxiety.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03All right. Well, any last thoughts before we wrap it up today?
SPEAKER_01We probably said too much.
SPEAKER_03Probably so. That's always the most fun podcast when you say a little too much. Well, guys, thanks for joining us for episode 52. We'll catch you next time.