Thank you for downloading the Focus on the Family Parenting Podcast. You can find more helpful advice at

Focus on the Family.com.

slash Parenting Podcast.

In the Gospel of Luke in the Bible, Jesus said the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.

Now your child's words and behavior often reveal what's going on under the surface in the heart like what they believe and

who they trust. I'm John Fuller joined by Danny Werther who's the head of our

parenting and youth department here at Focus on the family and Danny let's just play out a scenario here. If your child is older

and consistently acting out and they're not showing any real spiritual fruit if you will what should a Christian parent do in response?

The key word is respond in your question what should a parent respond what should we do in response?

And it's really about what is it that we can control as parents?

Because sometimes we take it as a threat.

And we react when we feel you.

Yeah, we just react and we start to show our emotions and throw our emotions into the mix.

And what you want to put are firm boundaries, very clear boundaries on your adult child.

If they're living with you and they're making poor decisions like drugs, alcohol,

maybe it's promiscuous behavior, maybe it's sex and they're inviting people over,

you have to put boundaries in place and the way that you can

word that with your adult child is I'm not going to be an investor in

your self-destruction. I want to invest in the building of who you are and so I'm going to have to

distance myself that means you cannot stay in our home any longer and you give a

timeline for that. Those are the extreme cases now let's say a child is saying,

I'm stepping away from the faith,

...