Homeschool Coffee Break

What if you could focus on just 7 core areas and know your kids are getting what they truly need? Meredith Curtis discovered the Seven R's during one of the hardest seasons of her life—caring for dying parents while homeschooling five children. This framework helped her "major on the majors and minor on the minors," and it will transform your homeschool too.
In this episode, you'll discover:
✅Why relationships are the foundation that makes all other learning possible—and what happens when they're broken
✅The secret to raising kids who actually love to read (hint: it's not assigning book reports)
✅How to teach writing so your kids can communicate clearly, graciously, and persuasively for any audience
✅Why math mastery matters more than moving through a curriculum—and what to do when kids fall behind
✅The difference between Googling answers and true research skills your kids will need for life
Ready to simplify and focus? The Seven R's will help you cut through curriculum overwhelm and build confident, capable lifelong learners.
Resources Mentioned:
Get your FREE Basic Pass to Life Skills Leadership Summit 2026 to give you confidence that your kids will be ready for adult life:
The Seven R's of Homeschooling by Meredith Curtis - Practical guide to majoring on the majors and minoring on the minors
Who Dun It? Literature & Writing by Meredith Curtis - Teach high schoolers to write their own cozy mystery
HIS Story of the 20th Century by Meredith Curtis
Meredith Curtis, pastor’s wife, mom to 5 homeschool graduates, and Grand-Merey to 8 angels, loves to read cozy mysteries, travel, hit the beach, and meet new people. She is always learning because the world is just full of mysteries and beauty! Meredith loves to encourage families in their homeschooling adventure because her own was such a blessing. She is a curriculum creator and author of Jesus, Fill My Heart & Home Bible Study and Who Dun It Murder Mystery Literature & Writing. Find Meredith at PowerlineProd.com, along with her online store and blog.
You can also follow Meredith on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and on the Finish Well Podcast.
Show Notes:
Kerry: Hey everyone, Kerry Beck here with Life Skills Leadership Summit where we are going to be talking about an extremely important topic that is tools of learning because I think all of you want your kids to be able to learn as an adult and not be dependent on a teacher or on you. And that's what Meredith Curtis is here to talk to us about. So, welcome Meredith. Thanks for being here.
Meredith: Oh, thank you for having me. I'm really excited about this year's conference and I love this topic we're talking about. I either call it tools of learning or the seven Rs and they're just so helpful in staying focused and making the majors the majors and the minors the minors.
Kerry: That's a great way to put it. We're going to dive into her seven Rs and how it can apply to your homeschool. But before we do that, could you just tell our listeners a little bit about you?
Meredith: Yes, I would love to. So, my name is Meredith Curtis and I am a pastor's wife. I'm the mother of five homeschool graduates and I have eight grandchildren that are perfect angels and I feed them too much sugar.
I love spending time with my grandchildren. I love to travel. I love to read. I love Jesus. That's probably the most important thing. And I'm a writer and a speaker.
Kerry, I love creating curriculum. I love teaching. I love creating curriculum. I love writing Bible studies, studying the Bible. Probably one of my favorite things is I wrote a curriculum called Who Done It? It's my most popular book, and it basically is a high school English class that teaches teens how to write their own cozy mystery.
And I actually started writing a cozy mystery series. I have three books in it so far—Tea Time Trouble, Pumpkin Patch Peril, and Old-Fashioned Christmas Murder.
Kerry: Okay, y'all. She has two interviews and we've talked about the cozy mysteries in the last one. So, y'all go listen to that. But I was just fascinated. I knew she taught the kids, but now she's written three of her own mystery books. And so, I just think that is so exciting as well. Plus, her husband, does he have four books out now?
Meredith: He does. Well, he actually has a fifth book that's not fiction. It's called Forging Godly Men, and it's about mentoring godly men.
Kerry: The other ones are novels. So he's got the four novels plus the one on raising our boys to be godly men. Today we're going to talk about writing, but let's back up. I know you either call it the tools of learning or the seven Rs. How did you discover these tools of learning?
How the 7 Rs Were Born from Crisis
Meredith: Okay. So, I was in my early 40s and I had a four-year-old, five-year-old, six-year-old. My oldest was already graduating from high school, starting college. And so I had this wide range of five children.
And my parents got really sick, Kerry. They were so sick and they live four hours away. So I was constantly taking a trip down to South Florida. I live in Central Florida and I would drive that 4 hours and stay with them a few days and then come home.
I had to leave one of the older kids in charge of one or two of the younger ones and bring another older one with me with the younger one. And it was just very challenging. And of course, I was heartbroken because my parents were very sick.
So during that time, I had to just ask the Lord, "What is the most important thing for my kids to get done?" Because they're going to be doing school apart from me. And the other one, we're going to be in the hospital or we're going to be in doctor's offices or we're going to be taking care of my parents. And I need to be able to at a glance know that they're getting it. So I really need help, Lord.
And that is, you know, this is kind of birthed from that. You think about the three Rs, reading, writing, arithmetic. So, this is kind of what I felt like I discovered as a homeschool mom, that these were the tools of learning, the majors, and that if some of the other stuff fell by the wayside, these tools that I kept focusing on were going to allow them to learn anything at all that they needed.
It was a really sad season in my life and my mom ended up passing away. My father moved close to us and then two years later he passed away. So it was a very hard season but out of that the Lord taught me not just life lessons but homeschooling lessons. God always brings good things out of very sad things.
Kerry: I'm so sorry for your loss. And yet I see it because you got to take care of the majors and let go of things. And there are seasons in homeschooling, seasons in our lives that you may not go to every activity or every art lesson or whatever. You've got to just take care of the majors.
Relationships: The Foundation of Everything
Kerry: I know that you and I, there's one thing in particular even beyond academics and that's relationships. So why would you say relationships are so foundational to everything else?
Meredith: Well, I think that life is basically number one thing relationship. God says he wants to have a relationship with us. In Revelation, he stands at the door and knocks and if anyone hears his voice, he comes in and eats with them. And you only eat with people you like. You know what I mean? Like that's relationship.
So I think we have a relational God. He created people to be relational. And learning, I think when learning is birthed out of strong relationships, it is so different because I love Jesus. So I want to learn because I want to glorify him. I want to know what did he create and how does things work.
When I became a Christian at 16, learning was a whole new thing for me. It just fascinated me. What is God doing in history? What is he doing here? And so I think when relationships are strong, that's the vertical relationship, but my relationship with my children, if my children know how much I love them, how much I respect them, how much I want their life to be blessed and fulfilled, they're going to be motivated to learn, not just for me, but with me.
I think we learn as a family. I didn't know everything when I started homeschooling. I loved learning along the way. And every time we went back through US geography, I learned more.
In contrast to that, when relationships are bad and there's yelling, there's always going to be fighting in a home, especially if you have more than one child. But how you resolve it can be resolved in a way that they can be closer afterward.
But if there is constant bickering, if your children don't feel like you're for them, if you don't have a high opinion of your children, you're frustrated with them, learning doesn't really take place well. They might be learning, but so often in those situations, I see kids memorizing facts for a test, but they don't enjoy learning.
I have just had some of my middle school classes that I teach online. These kids, they're not shy yet, you know, like some of the high schoolers are shy, but they're just—I love learning. And I think they have a family, a home that's happy, that they feel loved by their family and it always bears it out when they talk about their parents, they talk about their siblings, it's positive.
So, I think relationships set the atmosphere, but also all the studies I've ever read, the most confident people know that they're loved. And when our children know that they're loved, it gives them a confidence that they can learn anything.
Kerry: So good. And really, relationships are what's going to last forever and ever. I mean, even beyond this earth. And so we want to build those good relationships.
Plus sometimes, you know, later in life, your kids, their siblings, they may need their siblings to be there for them. And we need to build that relationship and that security so that when they take that risk to go learn something that they're not really sure if they know how to go learn it, then they still feel safe in doing that.
The Seven Rs Explained
Kerry: I know you've got these seven Rs. Can you just sort of rattle them off real quickly for us so people sort of have an understanding of what we're talking about?
Meredith: Okay. So it would be relationships, reading, rhetoric—it's really communication and thinking—and then writing, research, arithmetic, and right living.
Kerry: We're going to dive into some of these. And you mentioned rhetoric and that's a term that's sometimes thrown around. I believe that a couple hundred years ago, everyone really understood that because it was just part of education. And in the 20th century, we have really gotten away from that term. So tell us just a little bit about what that is and why that would be a tool of learning for our kids.
Rhetoric: Learning to Think and Communicate
Meredith: Okay. So rhetoric is basically communicating in a way to inform or persuade. Cicero wrote about rhetoric, Aristotle wrote about rhetoric and people still read those. They're not really difficult reading, but some high school kids would enjoy reading those two men. Aristotle was Greek, Cicero was Roman.
And it's basically being able to think through things and being able to communicate.
So it would cover everything from greeting people and having casual conversations with them, saying, "Oh, Kerry, how are you today?" things like that. And then it would go all the way to watching the news and saying, "Okay, is this logical? Does this make sense? Does this jive with this over here?"
And then being able to communicate in conversations, even as far as speaking, eventually reading aloud, all those things to communicate clearly and concisely and graciously.
We have some really dynamic speakers in our day, Kerry, that are so ungracious. And sometimes I listen, I'm like, I agree with everything you say, but I wish you would be nicer or you wouldn't use bad language. And so, all of that is involved in rhetoric—the thinking and then what we allow to come through our mouth.
Kerry: That is so good. And we need to teach our kids how to communicate instead of just regurgitate a bunch of facts which tends to be sort of our school system. And I could go off and tell y'all stories but we're not going to.
Reading: From Struggle to Success
Kerry: I sort of jumped straight to rhetoric and I overlooked reading. Because you sort of have to be able to read. I mean, you can communicate like this, but we need to be able to read to then be able to make decisions and think through and think critically to then communicate. So, can you tell us just a little bit about raising our kids to be able to read and not hate it, maybe actually enjoy it a little bit?
Meredith: Yes. Yes. And so, I mean, I could do a whole workshop on this, so I'm going to be really quick, but basically, teach your kids to read. I taught with phonics. I thought it was very simple. But teach them to read and then once they can read, give them everything possible that they can read that's easy and makes them feel successful.
In everything when you're homeschooling, you want to lead children from success to success to success, a challenge, then more success, success, success, so that they're mostly feeling confident and then sometimes challenged.
And so with reading, they read all these easy readers and then you start introducing classic literature like Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little and then you just keep going with classic literature.
The reason I say classic literature is because a lot of the writing even for adults in our culture is at about a third grade level if you went a hundred years ago. So, if we want our children to value freedom, they're going to have to read things by John Locke. They're going to have to read things by Edmund Burke, and they're going to need to be able to read at a stronger level.
So, when you keep giving children classic books, the stories are amazing. It's going to build their vocabulary. It's going to help their reading, and they're eventually going to be interested. They hear about a topic, they'll think, "Oh, I'll pick up that book and read it."
The way I really made sure that my children enjoyed reading, that was my goal for them to enjoy reading. So I never assigned books until they were in high school.
What I did is I had a bookshelf and it had about six shelves and I filled it. They could read anything they wanted from that bookshelf and they just had to tell me the book they read and I would write it down and I would say did you like it or who was your favorite character or what was your favorite thing about it.
I never had them—I taught them how to write a book report and they wrote like two or three but that wasn't my goal because I wanted them to love to read and I wanted them to meet friends in make-believe places, in real places and say I want to go back, I want to read that again. So that was my goal.
My son was my hardest and he just hated to read and he loved math but he didn't like reading. And so I remember he got saved in like middle school and he came to me. He's like, "Mom, I didn't read any of those books I told you that I read." And so this summer I'm going to read them all because now I want to live for God.
But in high school, by the time he graduated from high school, his favorite book was The Count of Monte Cristo, which is like a thousand-page book. So eventually he learned to read. I never gave up on him. But I always tried to find things that he would like, series that he would like. He loved biographies and I got him a lot of biographies. I got him like all these war books about, you know, this bomber, this plane.
My goal the whole time was I want my children to love to read and to be able to read anything they want.
And I just want to add this. If you have a child with a learning disability, don't just limit them to listening to audio books for the rest of their life. Maybe they need to listen to every other book audio because the reading assignments are too much. But if they're going to do audio, have them read along with the book and follow with the book because that is going to help them to become a stronger reader.
There's also a lot of tools for kids with learning disabilities. Don't give up on reading. I've met like 11th graders and they're like, "I don't read. I just listen to audiobooks" and I'm like, "Oh, I'm going to challenge you to read."
I had one student like that. And he said, "Okay, I'm going to read this book." And we were reading Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford. He didn't get the modern translation. He got the one from the 1600s.
And I said, "Honey, this was the worst book that you will ever read in your life. And if you got through that, you can read anything." And he loved to read after that, but his mom had told him he couldn't. He had a learning disability. And so he had a lot of drive to be able to read like the other kids in our homeschool co-op.
I think reading opens the door. You have to read emails, you have to read texts, but reading is just such an open door to adventure. So, I love reading. I'm a very big fan. My parents were both big fans of reading, too.
Kerry: Well, and I think your story plays out. I know for me, you've got to get if you have a child that doesn't like to read, continue to search for something of their interest. And you just have to be patient and give them grace. Give yourself grace.
My son did not—I mean he could read, he could read a book and he would do it but did he enjoy it? No. And now he's 31 years old and once he got out of college, he loves to read. We exchange titles but like that was 15 years of time just waiting and you're thinking oh next month they're going to love to read.
Look, God takes time to work with me so be patient and give yourself years. For my son, it was 12 years.
Kerry: And we're like, okay, our kids are grown. Take it from someone that's already been there, not someone that's in the same level as you are.
Writing: From Speaking to the Page
Kerry: So we have reading, we've got rhetoric. Then the next thing, what do you see as any kind of secret to writing effectively?
Meredith: Well, I think if you can communicate an idea, then it's easier to write it. So if you can speak, it's easier to write.
So what I would often do with my children is—number one, if I was asking them to write a paragraph, we would read paragraphs together. See how this is a topic sentence and how these sentences—or let's read this essay. This is so interesting.
First of all, I think for writing, you have to be able to read the kind of writing that you're going to write. Children just don't naturally know how to write an essay. And if you give them the directions, but you don't give them an example, they still don't know what to do.
I would always have my children talk to me. Tell me what you want to write about. And then we would just talk and oh that's a great idea. And you know, kind of helping them think through. I had a pattern for teaching writing.
I spent a couple of years on sentences because a good sentence makes or breaks a paper. And I still, you know, I teach high school kids and I have some of them who can't write good sentences. So we spent a lot of time writing sentences.
First they were so young they would dictate to me and I would write it and then soon they could write their own and then we wrote paragraphs and we wrote all kinds of different paragraphs and we always enclosed our writing in a letter to grandparents because that teaches children early on.
Okay, so you're writing this paragraph for grandma, then you're going to write it differently than this paragraph that you're writing for Aunt Julie because she's interested in horses whereas grandma is interested in books and knitting. It teaches them to think in terms of an audience which is really important when you write.
So then from paragraphs we would actually move to reports, essays and things like that in middle school. So we did a lot of basic writing and then whenever they wanted to write stories, I'd say, "Oh yeah, write the story." And if they couldn't write well, they could dictate to me and I would type it on the computer.
Then in high school, we did all the analyzing literature, writing a research paper. We wrote a novel one year. And fiction is very different than writing non-fiction. So I think my kids wrote every kind of essay, every kind of report. But I tried to make it really fun.
And one thing I also did in high school was I'd say, "Okay, here's a paper from two years ago. I'd like you to turn it into a blog post." And they really enjoyed that. But blogging is a completely different kind of writing than writing an essay.
We always shared our writing with other people because I wanted them to have in their mind an audience. Whenever I teach homeschool co-op classes, I always have the kids read their papers out loud and that allows them to have an audience.
So I say when you're writing this paper, look around the room. This is your audience and you're going to read it out loud to them and you want to write something they'll enjoy. So when I grade their writing papers, I always look for readability. Is it enjoyable to read? Is it written for the audience?
And three of my children went into writing. So one became an editor at a magazine and she writes—now she has her own business. She writes. My other daughter taught writing and literature at the local university and now she's a stay-at-home mom. And my youngest daughter has written a screenplay and short stories and stuff like that.
Now my daughter Juliana who works for Verizon says she hates writing but she's actually a very good writer. She just doesn't like it.
Kerry: That is so good. You know you said something that I know we did a lot in the beginning years. It is easier for kids to speak sentences than to write their first few sentences. So if they speak it as a sentence, I would type up—Hunter would be talking to me about snakes or whatever we read about and we would type it, then the next day he would copy it or edit it.
The other thing is giving your kids a reason to write and getting a grade is not a real life reason to write. You've got to have an audience. And if there's an audience, that alone can motivate some kids to actually do a better job because they feel like they're writing to a person. And if you're just writing for a grade, that's sort of dull sometimes.
Arithmetic: Consistency and Mastery
Kerry: We've got writing, then we have arithmetic. And I know there's some moms that have some fear. I was a math minor and by the time my kids got in high school I was like what did I learn in my math minor years? I loved math in high school but by then I didn't really care for math as much. So what kind of tips can you give them because we do need our kids to be able to use math skills?
Meredith: I think my number one tip for math would be do math every day and put a time limit on it so it doesn't feel like, oh my goodness, I'm going to be here two hours to finish this lesson. But I think consistency is the most important thing with math.
And be confident. Don't be afraid to hire a tutor for math or to put your kids in a co-op class for math because if mom hates math then it's hard for kids to like math. And I have a friend named Leanne and she did so much tutoring in our church for co-op kids because their moms just hated math.
I was like you—when my son took calculus I said honey, no idea. I don't know. But so I would say make sure that they're scoring 90% or higher on their tests and they know why they got the problems wrong.
And here's why. The early years they learn so many foundational things. And a lot of times when I'm helping kids who have trouble with pre-algebra, with algebra, with algebra 2 or geometry, it goes all the way back to fractions and decimals and multiplying and dividing.
One child was really struggling with math. So I just repeated a grade. I just repeated a whole grade in a different curriculum. And she ended up joining this engineering club called Math Counts in middle school and went all the way to state. So she wasn't dumb. She just needed more repetition.
I hear people say, "Well, why should they do repetition?" Well, I would say that math is learning to get the problems right over and over and over again until you're solid.
I always started with math because I feel like it kind of gets all the neurons charged and working—like sort of the workout for the brain. But again, I would just do it every day. It's better to do a half hour of math every day than do like a slug session for three hours because you're behind.
If kids get behind in math, they get behind in math and that means we do some math over the summer. That was kind of how I looked at it. But I was a real stickler with math and as a result the kids did well with math. But it wasn't necessarily anyone's favorite except for Jimmy my son.
Kerry: Well you know I think you hit on another good point—mastery. I was a public school teacher and we did have a minimum but nowadays it didn't matter if you know it or not. You just keep moving those kids through the school. What's the point?
If those kids do not understand single-digit division, they're not going to understand long division. So, work on it. And, you know, you can find some fun activities to make it all work. There's lots of hands-on. I do believe mastery in math because it is sequential and it keeps building on it like you said with geometry.
Meredith: That's a good point. Math is one of the few things that is sequential. Everything else you could learn, you know, American Revolution and then ancient history. It doesn't matter. But math is sequential. And so if they don't learn the basics, they're always going to struggle.
Research: Beyond "Hey Google"
Kerry: Okay. So after arithmetic, next we have got research. So how is that a tool? How would you encourage moms?
Meredith: Okay. Well, I think right now if you say research, people just look things up on Google.
Kerry: I know that's true. Or you know what? My grandkids wouldn't look it on Google. I'm not going to do it because I've got a little Google machine. They just go, "Hey, Google." And then they'd ask whatever that question is and let it speak to them and they don't even have to read it. They'll just listen.
Meredith: I always think, what if an enemy of the US just shut down our internet for a week? It would be like, oh my goodness.
But I think it's important for kids to know how to find things in books, like how to read a textbook to find the table of contents and how to go find the subject you're looking for. How to use directories, how to use an atlas, how to use maps. They could use Google Maps, but how did they find stuff on Google Maps?
And then just being able to go to different kinds of research books like a dictionary, a thesaurus, an encyclopedia, and then actually to research—to look things up and to find different books about it and research a topic and especially in research to read about opposing viewpoints.
I think that's very important to read about this viewpoint and this viewpoint that are completely polar opposites. I think that's an important part of research because there's been a main point in our school system for years and it's been like almost brainwashing kids but we don't want to do the same thing.
We want to make sure that our children know both sides of the issue and then where we stand and why we stand where we stand logically, not just based on emotion.
I think that's an important part of research. It kind of ties in with rhetoric. Also everything is research from looking up a recipe and finding the best recipe to researching for a research paper.
And so, you know, one of the things about research is trying out different things until you find what's best. Trying out different exercises till you find the one that works the best or you enjoy the most. So, research is really a lifelong thing.
Kerry: Even if you are saying, "Hey, Google."
Meredith: Yes. They're like, "Oh, Gigi, that's okay. We'll go find—here. Come here." And they take me over to their little machine and ask it a question. Sometimes they understand, the girls, sometimes they don't.
Kerry: That is so good. And I like that idea of research is all different things. It's not just writing a research paper. My kids actually every year in high school had to write one research paper. And we just really—the requirements in ninth grade were different than the 12th grade because hopefully they were growing in their research skills as well. And they do have to write so many research papers in college. So that was probably really helpful for them.
Now we got AI. So y'all go listen to the AI talks that we have in this summit because we're going to show you—no, you can't just go get AI to write your research paper. So we got a few little speakers on that. Y'all probably need to go listen.
Meredith: Oh, I need to listen to it because someone mentioned it and I was like, "My children in my classes would never use AI."
Right Living: The Closing Bookend
Kerry: The last one we started with relationships, which I think is super important. We got a lot of academic things. Right living—and that's the last one. But I don't think it's the least. So, tell us a little bit about that and why you put that there.
Meredith: Well, I put it last because it's kind of a sandwich of the academics. Relationship and then right living because right living is weaving through everything.
And you teach children to be polite, to be obedient, to work hard, not just with their chores, but with their schoolwork. And so it just makes sense.
And also there's something about living right even before children give their hearts to Christ. When you live the right way in a way that's moral, you feel better. You don't have like a lot of guilt. You don't have a lot of shame because you've done the right thing. You've worked hard. You've done what you need to do.
So, I feel like it's a confidence booster as well to have right living be part of a focus, but it makes teaching easier when you're focused on training children to have manners, to have virtue. It makes it easier to get school done because it's just part of their character to—okay, this is kind of my job. I'm going to do it well.
Kerry: That's so good. And I was thinking I didn't mean to steal your thunder by saying what I said, but relationships, right living—that's the most important. And I got the academics in the middle.
Meredith: Exactly. Yeah. It's like a sandwich. And so it's a reminder—I think when you start with right living, you can become legalistic, you can become harsh. But if you start with relationships and sandwich it with right living, I think it helps you have a really good balance between the two.
The 7 Rs Resource
Kerry: That is so good. Hey, I know you've got a really good resource about these seven Rs that could help our homeschoolers. Could you tell people a little bit about that?
Meredith: So, this is called The Seven Rs of Homeschooling. And you can tell all my books have a little Florida flair. A lot of them do. But it goes through each of the seven Rs I mentioned—how to teach them, practical resources.
It was again birthed out of that season where it was a necessity for me to major on the majors and minor on the minors. And so it's not like oh this is my theory from my Ivy League tower but this is where we had to live. And it really helped me kind of refocus.
And it ended up putting writing assignments and speaking, conversational—that's how we ended up putting book clubs in our literature classes and history classes because I found out how important conversation was. We just would have conversations all the way down to my parents' house.
So I really recommend The Seven Rs. It's an easy read and it goes through each one and how it's a benefit and how you can in practical ways—it talks about if you have some issues with reading with your kids and how to go step by step.
It's written for elementary, middle, and high school. So, you can pick it up when they're still in high school and just sort of give an overview of your children. If you pull your kids out of high school, out of a public school, and you bring them home, one of the things you want to do is you want to kind of evaluate where they're at in these—not with a test, but with just observing what are they able to do, what are they confident in, what do they still need more help. So, this is another good tool for that.
Kerry: That is awesome. So, wherever you're listening to this, look below and we will have a link that you can click on and go grab a copy of this excellent resource because I mean this will give you practical tips to be able to implement these seven Rs and evaluate where your kids are.
Meredith, thank you so much for being here. I am going to put a little note on there saying I'm sorry for the darkness on parts of the video, but I know we were in the late of the day and the sun's going down and we couldn't get the light to work. But you know what? The content here is excellent. So, thank y'all for just listening as well. And thank you for being here, Meredith. I appreciate it.
Meredith: Thank you for having me. I always love being here. Thank you.
Kerry: All right. And I'm Kerry Beck with Life Skills Leadership Summit. We'll talk to you next time.
Ready to major on the majors in your homeschool? Grab Meredith Curtis's book The 7 Rs of Homeschooling and discover practical, battle-tested strategies for raising lifelong learners. Visit lifeskillsleadershipsummit.com for the for a free Basic Pass to this year's summit and build confidence in teaching life skills and leadership!

Peter denied Jesus three times, rebuked the Son of God, and walked away weeping bitterly. Yet God used him to start the New Testament Church and lead 3,000 people to salvation. If you've ever felt disqualified by your failures, shame, or mistakes, this powerful message will transform how you see yourself and your calling as a leader.
In this episode, you'll discover:
✅ Why Peter's biggest failures uniquely qualified him to lead the early church with compassion and understanding
✅ The common lies Christian moms believe (I'm not doing enough, my kids won't turn out okay, I'm all alone) and the biblical truths that replace them
✅ How to identify the enemy's attacks in your own thought life and respond with God's truth instead
✅ Why accepting God's forgiveness—and forgiving yourself—is essential to stepping into your leadership calling
✅ The surprising truth about rest, busyness, and why filling every moment doesn't make you enough for God
Ready to replace lies with truth? Leaders aren't born perfect—they're made through failure, forgiveness, and faith. Discover your calling today.
Resources Mentioned:
Get your FREE Basic Pass to Life Skills Leadership Summit 2026 to give you confidence that your kids will be ready for adult life
Living Fearless by Jamie Winship - Finding your identity and calling in God, identifying lies you believe, and replacing them with truth
Unbound - Fighting Human Trafficking - Learn more about this important ministry and how to keep your students safe
Show Notes:
Hey everyone, Kerry Beck here with Life Skills Leadership Summit. Oh my goodness, it is finally here. It is Sunday night, five o'clock. We are going to have an awesome week.
We get such great response from the Life Skills Leadership Summit. And I think one reason we have many homeschoolers here, but this is not just homeschooling, how to homeschool or homeschool curriculum. This has something that has some purpose and intention and that is to raise our kids to be ready for adult life, to raise our kids to walk in Jesus and lead and influence for Jesus.
We have some people that homeschool, some people that don't. I would say most people do. But tonight, what I want to do is do a few things.
Before I tell you this, I want to introduce my friend Meredith Curtis. She is our prayer coordinator. Let me tell you, we need a lot of prayer for this. I just got home from Dallas. My granddaughter, who's not even two months old, was dedicated. So I drove in and I just bounced right into this.
I was praying on the way over here from Dallas. It's a three-hour drive just that y'all would be blessed. I really hope that God speaks through you. It may not be tonight, but I pray that he speaks to you sometime during the week, gives you encouragement, gives you motivation, helps you to finish strong, gives you wisdom in what you're doing, whether you're homeschooling or whether you're just raising your kids to follow God.
What Is Leadership?
Tonight is our Sunday kickoff. I am going to begin a series on Peter—Peter's leadership journey from failure to faith. And we're going to talk about the failures tonight. And we will expand it through the week.
Let me tell you, sometimes I think Peter a leader. And we'll talk about that because you're like he denied Jesus. How could you be a leader? And yet God works so many things through him. So I'm super excited about that series.
Before we get started, I would love for you to put something in the chat and tell me what is a leader. Let me just talk to you a little bit about a man named John Maxwell. He is a guru in leadership. And here's what he says: Leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less.
Think about that. Leadership is influence. If you are being salt and light as Jesus commanded, then you have begun to obey God's call to leadership. It is influence.
Too often we think my kid's not going to be president of the United States or CEO. But almost all of our kids will lead their families. They will be husbands and wives. They will have sons and daughters that they will need to lead. And so that is what leadership is.
Another quote from John Maxwell is this: Leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less. How do you gain influence from people? You invest in them. How do you invest in them? It starts with giving them time.
Peter: From Bold Declaration to Immediate Failure
We are going to look at Peter today. Yes, we're going to look more at his failures, but then we're going to move forward and look at the way that he influenced people. Again, I said 3,000 people trusted Jesus as their savior when he gave his first sermon.
When we look at Peter and we look at Mark 8, Jesus and his disciples left Galilee and went up to the villages near Caesarea Philippi. As they were walking along, he asked, "Who do people say that I am?" Well, they replied, "Some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say you are one of the other prophets."
Then he asked them, "Who do you say I am?" Peter replied, "You are the Messiah. You are the son of God." He gives this great answer. He tells them truth. Peter grasps and he boldly declares exactly who Jesus is. Jesus commends them for that.
But then immediately after that, Jesus starts talking. Jesus began to tell them that the son of man must suffer many terrible things and be rejected by the elders, the leading priests and the teachers of religious law, that he would be killed. But three days later he would rise from the dead.
As he talked about this openly with his disciples, Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things. He just said he's the son of God. And then he's like, "Oh, let me reprimand you. Let me tell God what's going on."
Jesus turned around and looked at his disciples and he reprimanded Peter, "Get behind me, Satan. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God's."
The Lies We Believe
In the same conversation, Peter is praising him. And then the enemy is saying, "Oh, go tell Jesus this, that you need to rebuke him." Those are lies from the enemy. Peter makes a serious error in judgment. And Jesus corrects him.
Can you relate? I can. I will tell you my personal story. For years, I've been doing this. I will be praying in the morning. I love to prayer walk. And I am praying for our family. And I'm praying to cling to Jesus, to walk in righteousness.
And by the afternoon, I'm sinning and doing something that I shouldn't. I pray every morning that we will abide in Christ and cling to the vine and Jesus' fruit will pour out of us. That we will put on the armor of God, that we will love. And I go through all 1 Corinthians 13, and the other one is that we will forgive because God forgave us.
And then something happens in the middle of my day and then all of a sudden I'm sinning again and I am not trusting God. And that's sort of what Peter did. God exposes that I have wrong thoughts that need to be replaced with truth.
What are some of the lies that you believe? Peter believed a lie. He believed that he needed to tell Jesus that is wrong. Don't say you're going to die and raise up in three days.
One of the things I heard several years ago is that I need to yield my right to be right. I need to be humble. I need to yield my right to be right. I have begun praying that for my family mostly and then all of a sudden I was like Kerry, you're not praying this for yourself very much. You are not always the right person.
I lead the leaders at our Bible study at church. I had one leader say, "Hey, before you divide into groups, could you just give me a call?" So I did. And she gave me some concerns, but she goes, "But Kerry, if you need to do this the way y'all have it planned, that's fine. Maybe God's teaching me."
That was humility. She was admitting that maybe I don't have the right idea about this. I'm just going to share it with you.
Some of you might be thinking, I'm not doing enough. And yet, God says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And he has made you exactly like you are because you are who you need to be for your kids.
I'm not a good mom. Oh, but our identity is in Jesus, not in being a good mom. And again, he has given you everything for life and righteousness.
All other moms are homeschooling better than me. That's not true.
I don't have time to spend with God. Oh, but if you have time for an hour of social media, maybe you do have time to be with God.
I need to fill every moment of my day so I can be enough for God. I want to make sure when I get to heaven, I've done enough. No, that's a works mentality. We need to rely on our faith and grace from Jesus.
I don't have what it takes for my kids to grow up and follow God well or to homeschool. Actually, that's not true. God has given you everything you need for your children. He may not have given you everything you need to homeschool the people down the street. But he made you like you are and your kids like you are. And he supplies all your needs in Christ Jesus.
God calls us to a time of quiet. He calls us to rest in him. And we don't need to fill every second of the day with activity. I personally believe we need rest. We need sleep, but we need to rest in God to trust, but we also need to rest. We need to be quiet.
I'm all alone. That may be the lie that you're listening. You know what? First of all, you're not alone. You can get support. You can get support in our community group.
Speaking Truth Over Ourselves
Several years ago, I was driving home from Dallas and that week I actually sat down and wrote out some truths for me to recite to myself to pour into my soul. So I'm going to read these to you.
Like Jesus, I am chosen by God to be holy. I am chosen by God for great honor. I trust in Jesus. Therefore, I am not put to shame. God loves me and always takes care of me.
I am precious to God because he bought me with his son's blood. I am a daughter of the king, a princess. I live in the light, shining for Jesus all day long.
I control my thoughts, my words, my food, my drink. I receive God's mercy and grace. So I give grace, mercy, and forgiveness to others.
I leave my case in the hands of God who always judges fairly. I speak with pure and reverent behavior and a quiet and gentle spirit.
I wait quietly on God. I am patient. I am kind. I always forgive. I forget offenses against me.
The Holy Spirit renews my mind, my attitudes every day. God never leaves me, abandons me, or fails me. I listen well. I trust in God to fight my battles. He wins my battles.
The one about I listen well, I realized I was interrupting my son on a regular basis. I was like, I changed that. That's a lie to interrupt people. And so I added that.
Those are just some truths and most of them are very biblically based that I have to say to myself. Peter needed truth to replace the lies that he was believing.
Peter's Greatest Failure: Denying Jesus
Let's talk about the biggest thing, the most obvious thing Peter did. He denied Jesus three times.
They arrested him and led him to the high priest's home. And Peter followed from a distance. The guards lit a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat around it. And Peter joined them there.
A servant girl noticed him in the firelight and began staring at him. "This man was one of Jesus's followers." But Peter denied it. "Woman, I don't even know him."
After a while, someone else looked at him and said, "He must be one of them." Peter says, "No, man. I'm not."
About an hour later, someone else insisted, "This must be one of them because he is a Galilean." But Peter said, "Man, I don't know what you're talking about."
And immediately, while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed. At that moment, the Lord turned and looked at Peter. Suddenly, the Lord's words flashed through Peter's mind. "Before the rooster crows tomorrow morning, you will deny me three times."
And Peter left the courtyard weeping bitterly.
There was a time he was like, "Deny you? I would never deny you." And yet he didn't think he would, just like we don't think we're going to deny him, but he did. Can you imagine the shame and the guilt that he was walking with? He walks away weeping bitterly.
I did not do this in my younger years or when my kids were home, but I actually truly feel badly about my sins. And I have wept over them. Some of the things that I will say, some of the things that I will do, and even some of the things that I think.
If I were Peter and I denied Jesus three times, I would feel shame and guilt. Shame is a powerful thing. It can just bury us. And we don't want that to happen. And we need to get over that.
God's Bigger Plans for Peter
We do that by accepting God's forgiveness. Most people that live in shame cannot truly believe that God will forgive them. There are times I have walked in shame. And yet if I pray in the morning and I'm sinning in the afternoon, I have to realize God forgives me and I just need to move on and say, "Okay, God, you are faithful. You are forgiving. I'm going to accept that and I'm going to move on because you have greater things for me. You want me to live a life of influence and a life of leadership."
God had bigger plans for Peter. He used his sin to actually grow him, eventually to lead the New Testament church.
Don't you think that as Peter was leading all these people, he could relate to man's shortcomings? He was dealing with people that were maybe walking in shame themselves. And he could understand that.
Just like Paul, Paul persecuted the church. I mean like kill people because they trusted Jesus. And God uses those experiences for us to relate. In second Corinthians 1, God talks about our sufferings and our trials and he takes us through those things so one, we can grow closer to him, but also so we can encourage others that are walking through something similar as well.
Leaders will make mistakes. Peter did. I do. You will, and your kids will. And we need to all accept God's forgiveness. We need to forgive ourselves or teach our kids to accept God's forgiveness and forgive ourselves and forgive those around us, but also learn from our mistakes.
Finding Your Calling
The biggest thing I really want you to think about is we make mistakes. God forgives. Are we going to learn from that? But God has a calling for Peter. He has a calling for Peter to lead the New Testament church. He has a calling for you and he has a calling for your children.
More than likely if you're here, God's calling is to homeschool your kids, to raise them to influence and to follow Jesus. But your children may have a different calling than you.
Maybe your child is called to go be a missionary in Africa. We had some friends. I could not imagine now as a parent letting your kids go off to Africa or South America or wherever to be a missionary. And yet God calls us to do things like that.
We need to look at our kids as they are growing up and pray for them and help them discern what God's calling for their life is. And we want to raise them to be a leader.
What's a leader? It's an influencer. Peter did influence others. He started as a fisherman, but he turned into a fisher of men. 3,000 people were saved on the day of Pentecost.
That is a great calling. God took his failures, put them into faith, and then continues to use them.
Ready to dive deeper into raising leaders who influence for Jesus? Join us at the Life Skills Leadership Summit where we equip parents to raise kids with purpose, intention, and eternal impact. Visit lifeskillsleadershipsummit.com to learn more!

What do you do when you're walking with God but your spouse isn't? Erin Cox shares her powerful testimony of marriage restoration that started in a living room encounter with Jesus and led to a complete transformation of her family.
✅ Why "Christianese" was actually pushing her atheist husband further away
✅The 1 book that changed how she loved her unbelieving spouse
✅ How 1 Peter 3 became her daily prayer strategy
✅The moment the Holy Spirit told her exactly what to say after years of silence
✅ Why God can save anyone—even in a living room with no one else around
Ready to discover hope for your marriage?
Grab the resources mentioned in this episode below!
Resources Mentioned
Get your FREE Basic Pass to Life Skills Leadership Summit 2026 to give you confidence that your kids will be ready for adult life: https://HowToHomeschoolMyChild.com/lsls26
I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, by Norman Geisler
Sacred Influence, by Gary Thomas
Erin Cox is a seasoned homeschooling mom of four, ranging from elementary age to young adult. Alongside her husband Danny, she serves over 100,000 homeschool families through publishing Charlotte Mason and Classical education curricula, all from their homestead in central Alabama. When Erin isn’t wrangling sheep, Australian shepherds, two rambunctious boys, or her energetic grandbaby, she enjoys audiobooks, podcasts, and the occasional quiet moment with embroidery.
Connect with her at ShopGentleClassical.com and LifeAbundantlyBlog.com. You can find her on Instagram and Facebook.

Is your child's screen time affecting their developing brain more than you realize? Join Kerry Beck as she sits down with Mandee Hamann, from Screen Strong, to uncover the surprising brain science behind screens and why even educational apps might be causing harm.
✅Why the frontal cortex doesn't develop until age 25 and what that means for smartphone use
✅The shocking truth about dopamine levels in gaming vs. nature play
✅ How to tell the difference between passive and interactive screens
✅The 30-day detox that's reversing ADHD-like symptoms in kids
✅ Practical ways to replace screens with activities that build strong brain pathways
Ready to protect your child's developing brain?
Grab the resources mentioned in this episode below!
Resources Mentioned:
Get your FREE Basic Pass to Life Skills Leadership Summit 2026 to give you confidence that your kids will be ready for adult life
Screen Strong Chart for Families
Mandee Hamann, businesswoman and former earlychildhood/children’s pastor is mom to 2 young adults and 1 teenager. After her own family struggled with toxic screen issues, she was introduced to ScreenStrong. The ScreenStrong lifestyle changed everything for her family. Mandee became a ScreenStrong Ambassador and is committed to spreading this powerful message. She occasionally guest hosts on the ScreenStrong Families Podcast and is a member of the ScreenStrong team as the Ambassador Liaison. She enjoys training & equipping Ambassadors from all over the globe to spread the ScreenStrong Solution to screen conflicts in the home.
Follow ScreenStrong on Facebook and Instagram

Thirty years ago, we never imagined we'd be navigating conversations about gender identity and sexuality with our children, but here we are. In this powerful conversation, Dannah Gresh from Pure Freedom Ministries shares biblical wisdom and practical tools to help you confidently guide your kids through today's confusing culture.
In this episode, you'll discover:
✅Three key Bible passages every child needs to understand about their body and identity before the world tells them lies
✅How to have age-appropriate conversations about gender and sexuality without robbing your children of their innocence
✅The critical difference between accepting and affirming when someone you love is walking through gender confusion
✅Why your child's maleness or femaleness is directly connected to reflecting God's image in the world
✅Practical strategies for responding with both truth and compassion when your kids encounter gender ideology at school or online
Ready to equip yourself with biblical truth? Grab the resources Dannah mentions in this episode to start these important conversations with confidence.
Get your FREE Basic Pass to Life Skills Leadership Summit 2026 to give you confidence that your kids will be ready for adult life: https://HowToHomeschoolMyChild.com/lsls26
Resources Mentioned:
It’s Great to Be a Girl
Lies Girls Believe
Lies Girls Believe Mom’s Guide
Lies Young Women Believe
Lies Women Believe
It’s Great to Be a Boy
Lies Boys Believe
Lies Men Believe
Dannah Gresh is the founder of True Girl, a ministry dedicated to providing tools to help moms and grandmas disciple their 7–12-year-old girls. She is the co-host of Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth’s Revive Our Hearts podcast and Revive Our Hearts Weekend. She has authored over twenty-eight books, including a Bible study for adult women based on the book of Habakkuk. Dannah and her husband, Bob, have just released a new book and limited-series podcast called Happily Even After which tells their marriage redemption story. They live on a hobby farm in central Pennsylvania.
Show Notes:
Introduction: A Topic We Never Imagined Facing
Kerry: Well hey everyone, Kerry back here with Life Skills Leadership Summit. Today I'm excited—not because of the topic, because it's a really difficult topic on sexuality and gender—but Dannah Gresh, I've just gotten to know her from a distance through podcasts and Revive Our Hearts and reading one of her books as well. But I do know that she has got a lot to say on this issue. So Dannah, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it.
Dannah: Oh, I am so honored and delighted. Thank you for having me.
Kerry: So before we get started, let me just pray for us and we'll let God guide this conversation.
Father in Heaven, thank you. Thank you for today. Thank you for Zoom. Thank you that we can have a conversation and we can share it with many, many people. We thank you that you are sovereign, that you're the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and we can rest in that no matter what's going on around us. And there's a lot of mess going on around us, but we can have our hope in Jesus.
We just thank you for Jesus and the bond that we have in Him through the blood that He shed for us. I thank you for Dannah being here. I pray that the things that you want said will be spoken through this conversation, that you will be glorified, and that the ones that are listening, you will just really touch their hearts and show them what types of practical steps or spending more time in the Word—whatever you want them to do—and just to be led by the Holy Spirit. We pray all these things in Jesus' powerful name, amen.
Dannah: Amen.
About Pure Freedom Ministries and Partnership
Kerry: Okay, for those of you that don't know, Dannah has Pure Freedom Ministries and this has two parts: True Girl and Born to Be Brave. By the time y'all listen to this, you probably already heard one of my kickoffs because we do one on Sunday night before the whole week and I'll explain it.
But they are our organization that we are supporting through this Summit. So we'll take the profits that we make on anyone that upgrades from free to VIP. If you upgrade to VIP, 5% of our profits will go to this organization. And then some of our speakers—you've probably heard about the ones that have chosen to—if they decide to donate 5% of their commissions, then I will match that 5% as well.
So hopefully, you know, that will be just a little way that y'all can support what Dannah and her team are doing. So I just want to make sure everyone understands that before we get going.
Dannah: What a blessing. Thank you so much.
Dannah's Story: From Teenager to Ministry Leader
Kerry: Well, let's before we start this topic, can you just tell people a little bit about yourself?
Dannah: Sure. Well, I love Jesus first and foremost, and He is the best part of everything about my life. I came to know Him when I was a really little girl through Child Evangelism Fellowship five-day clubs. I just love Child Evangelism Fellowship to this day because I remember that moment when I surrendered my heart and my life to Jesus. So precious.
But fast forward—at the age of 15, I was a teacher for Child Evangelism Fellowship. I was teaching Sunday school in my church to three-year-olds, and I loved the Lord like crazy. But I was in a Christian dating relationship and was blindsided by sexual temptation.
I just thought that was not possible in my life because I loved the Lord so much. And it became this great shame and this great heartache of my life until I was about 26. I just really understood that even though it had been so long since I'd experienced that sin and chosen that sin, I hadn't really received the redemption and the freedom that Christ died to give me.
When I did, my life changed. And I had to get out my megaphone—my proverbial megaphone—and tell teenage girls. And then as I was doing that, ministry just kind of exploded.
I was praying, "Lord, let me graduate to college girls and adult women." And the Lord said, "What about my little women? What about my 10-year-olds and what about my 9-year-olds and what about my 8-year-olds?"
I was like, "Lord, that's really great. Somebody needs to do children's ministry, but what about me graduating from high school girls to the older women?" And He was persistent. The Lord just kept opening doors.
Before we knew it, we really are one of the largest ministries that takes biblical truth to 8 to 12-year-old girls. And now we have boys—we just added them in the last few years—through live events, box subscriptions, Bible studies, online Bible studies, at-home Bible studies with mom. We want to put mom in the driver's seat. We believe that's what God's Word says—that mom and dad belong in the driver's seat of a child's moral development.
Now we fast forward to this year. We live in a time and a day and age when the government and a lot of different political entities believe that parents aren't equipped to make moral decisions about their children. Well, we still believe they are.
And now I understand why the Lord has put us in this critical position. One of the things we've done really well through the years is take whatever the difficult issues of the day are—when we started, that was AIDS—and we look at it through a biblical lens.
Today, that biblical lens that we look through, we're looking at the issue mostly of gender and identity. And when you think about how do we talk to an 8-year-old about that biblically without robbing them of their innocence, and also just the depression and anxiety these kids are at the tip of the spear...
Teens have long been at the tip of the spear, but the enemy has moved the line backward. And now it's those 8 to 12-year-olds that really are having to grapple with things that their little hearts and minds aren't ready for. But we know how to do that in a way that's safe and biblical and most importantly keeps mom and dad in the driver's seat.
The Trends We're Seeing in Gender Identity
Kerry: That is so good. And I know I'm on y'all's True Girl mailing list, and so they have things and I have downloaded a few things just to find out exactly what they are. I'm giving my daughter some of y'all's books as well. I think it's the Lies Young Girls Believe, something like that. I'm not quite sure what it was.
But I do have to tell you, all of a sudden I have one more connection with you because I grew up with Child Evangelism Fellowship and I became a believer at a Good News Club. I started, went to their CEF training as a teenager, and then we did the five-day clubs in Houston. So I was like, oh wow, that's so interesting. Small world.
Dannah: They are a fruitful ministry. Look at us—we're passing, we're the fruit, we're passing on fruit. We're the fruit of their fruit.
Kerry: My parents, they're in their 70s and 80s, and a while back they would lead Good News Clubs in the public school for like five years. They're still going on with it and all. So I love it. It does work.
So okay, so we are in a just a strange time. And if you had asked us 30 years ago, we'd be going, "No way, we wouldn't be dealing with these issues." So what kind of trends are you seeing right now when it comes to gender identity and sexuality?
Dannah: Well, you know, I would say heterosexual is definitely not in style. And what we see is a lot of teens claiming to be pansexual, where they're just willing to erase anything that has a baseline of truth to it and embrace everything. Basically, is what pansexuality is.
A lot of teens in terms of gender are saying they're non-binary. That's just what's in style right now. And you might say, "Well, but there really is a problem. There are some kids that definitely struggle with gender dysphoria."
Absolutely, that's true. Historically, we've known for decades that children—a very, very small percentage of them—are born with things like Klinefelter syndrome, fragile X syndrome. These are syndromes like Down syndrome where there are chromosomal abnormalities in that child's body.
And the parents and the physicians have to work together to decide, how are we going to raise this child? Most cases, they can take a blood test and they can determine this child is clearly male or clearly female. But we have some issues that we're going to have to deal with because of these syndromes.
But in most cases, they can really figure out what's happening there. And so that's the good news. But I think it's an important thing for us that we have to be compassionate because for some people that you meet on the street that you're not quite sure—are they male or female?—that's not a choice. It was something that they were born with. That's very difficult and painful. So we have to be careful.
But on the other end of the spectrum, what we're seeing right now is—well, let me explain it this way. In about the year 2011, there was a shift from transgenderism being predominantly a male problem to now, it is today predominantly female. You see more teenage females transitioning than males.
So the intellectually honest sociologists will say, "What happened to make that really dramatic shift happen?"
And I think probably the person that's been bravest about it is a woman named Abigail Shrier. She's a journalist, not a believer as far as I know, conservative though, and yet very intellectually honest. Some parents kept writing to her and saying, "We need somebody to research this."
And she brought together some of the bravest sociologists, some of the bravest intellectually honest ones. And what they found was clusters of girls transitioning. So in other words, a school district or a school or a city was seeing a lot of girls transitioning, and there were pops of this all over the United States.
Now if this were a more intellectually honest occurrence, you would have seen it happening more evenly over the culture. But that's not the case. What's happening is cluster contagion. And that's what we're calling it now, which basically is peer pressure causing girls to say, "I don't feel comfortable in my body."
Now let me remind you, there aren't very many of us that felt super comfortable in our body in seventh grade. But we weren't having somebody sit there next to us and telling us that might be because you're not really a girl.
So I guess what we're seeing is a lot of confusion. Majority of what we're seeing is mass confusion that we need to prepare our children for and that we need to speak into truthfully. But we can't forget the compassion because there's a sliver of people struggling right now where this really is a deeply painful thing and not something that they chose.
Why This Topic Is Critical Right Now
Kerry: That is something. So I mean, to me it seems pretty obvious, but why do you think this topic is so important right now?
Dannah: Well, it's—let me say, take that from two angles. One reason it's important is because your children are being lied to, and we need to speak truth into their hearts and into their minds. We have to put so much truth into them that there's not room for the world's lies.
When they see or hear a counterfeit, they immediately know, "That's not what I learned from God's Word. That's not what I learned from my parents whom I trust to be true." And they come to you and they say, "Hey, I just heard this." And you help—might not know the answers, but you help them figure out.
But here's why I think it's really important, and this is why it's been important since the beginning of time. In Genesis 1:26 and 27-28, in that chapter we see God saying that He's made us in His image. And then He could have listed almost anything about us that would have made us like Him—our language proficiency, our ability to compose sonnets, our creativity, the fact that we would figure out how to defy gravity and fly to the moon. All these things about us are so God-like. Our even our emotions—animals are emotive, but not to the degree that we are.
And yet God says one thing: "In the image of God He created them, male and female He created them."
Our maleness and our femaleness is a distinct part of representing the image of God on this lost world. That's why it matters more than anything. And that's what our children need to know more than anything.
How Parents Can Communicate God's Truth
Kerry: That is so good. I mean, it really is. We need to—and I love what y'all do is always going back to the Bible, you know. And this is a Christian conference. There's plenty of things out there for parents, but we want to make sure we're always going back to the Bible.
So what are some things that parents could do? Like you want them to—one of the things that I know I've heard you say many times, we need to speak truth to our soul, but first we have to teach our kids what the truth is. How can parents communicate God's truth in regards to gender and sexuality and identity?
Dannah: Well, I obviously encourage them to get them in the Word and some of these key passages that talk about our bodies. And I basically have three key passages that I think our kids need to study about this. I write about them in It's Great to Be a Girl. My husband and one of his co-authors writes about them in It's Great to Be a Guy. That's for kids aged 8 to 12, somewhere in that range.
First one is in the book of 1 Corinthians. It says that our bodies exist to glorify God. That the purpose of our body is to glorify God. You know, we get really sidetracked and we think our bodies are for us to feel good, for us to feel pleasure, for us to look good and be this just vision of beauty or handsomeness, whatever it is.
Our bodies were created to glorify God. That's why they exist—to showcase Him, to give honor to Him. That's why we dress carefully and tastefully and modestly. That's why we use language that's becoming and careful. That's why we don't get into the dark.
I'm always concerned when we get into really dark-looking countenance and clothings and styles because Jesus is light and He is love and He is joy, and we want our countenance to reflect that. But my body doesn't exist for Dannah. My body exists for God.
Then the second thing is the one I just mentioned earlier: Genesis 1:26 and 27, that the purpose of my body—how I glorify God—is as a female or male image-bearer. Because glorifying Him—I like to say that the moon glorifies the sun, okay? The moon doesn't have any light of its own, but it reflects the light of the sun, and that's why we have a full moon. They're so beautiful.
Well, in the same way, we have to look like God. That's what glorifying Him means. And Genesis 1:26-27 says we do that best in the defined roles, the binary roles of maleness and femaleness. So they matter. They're important.
And then the other verse that I think is really important is in Romans 12:1 and 2. It says, "I beg you brothers, by the mercy of God, that you present your body as a living sacrifice."
So when my body, which was created to glorify God, doesn't feel like glorifying God as a female image-bearer of God, it becomes a sacrifice to God because I choose to live sacrificially according to the purpose of my body as a female image-bearer.
Now I don't know that those are the only passages that your children need to get into, but those are three of the big ones that they need to memorize, dissect, be familiar with, understand. And that's going to give them more than studying all the counterfeits. That's going to give them the fuel they need for the conversations that are going to come up in their lives at one point or another.
Age-Appropriate Conversations About Truth
Kerry: That's so good. Because we don't know what's going to happen in 20 years, you know, and what things they're going to need to know.
When you think about even these three passages or talking about truth at different ages, because you've talked about 8 to 12 and then we've got teenagers, would you approach them differently or do you have any suggestions about that?
Dannah: Well, with teens, of course, I'm going to be a lot more forthright. Although more and more—we just had a mom communicate with us that her child is attending a private school, not a Christian school but a private school. And just this year, the daughter came home and said, "Hey, we have Teacher X teaching at our school." And I'm not going to say the name. And it's not Mr. X or Mrs. X, it's Teacher X.
And of course this mom said, "Well, do you know if Teacher X is male or female?" And she kind of said, "Well, this is what I think, but that's probably—they're trying not to look that way." So there's obviously some gender confusion there.
What was really interesting is that when they have a student teacher, this parent had previously gotten a letter that said, "This is the teacher, this is what you need to know about them, I want to introduce them to you, they'll be starting on this date, they'll be ending on this date." In this case, that didn't happen.
So that child is in about fifth grade. So we're not—and I've heard in my own school district of kindergarteners who are being told, "You get to pick your pronoun in my class. Maybe you weren't allowed that opportunity at home, but in my class you get to choose what you are, who you are."
And so more and more we are having to have more of a conversation that we want, especially if we've chosen for our children not to be homeschooled or not to be in a space where their teaching is governed by truth. And that's not you, but it may be your friends, and it may be someone you're conversing with or having coffee with, you know, needs to know—hey, some crazy stuff is happening in some of these schools.
And they don't believe it until it hits them. And then that's how this mom was. She's like, "I heard about it in California and I heard about it in this state and that state, but my state?" Yes, your state.
So I think it's really important that we let them drive the questions though. So at high school we maybe are being, you know, we're talking about transgenderism, we're talking about all the different language that is used—the LGBTQ+, non-binary, binary, pansexuality.
Mom, dad, you got to do some vocabulary work on this one. You've got to know the words, and that's going to help build your credibility. If you have a child who has been exposed, if you don't know a word, just say, "I'm not really sure what pansexuality is. Let's look it up and learn together, and then we're going to go to God's Word and figure out what He says about it."
But when you're under, I would say 12 years old, I would just stick to God's truth. And what you're going to find, and what we have found as we have taken moms and daughters through It's Great to Be a Girl online Bible study or It's Great to Be a Guy online Bible study, is that studying it in the Bible and having mom and dad sitting there talking with you about it brings up the questions.
They'll say, "I heard that so-and-so down the street has two dads," or "I heard that this friend at church has a brother who's becoming a sister." And you have the opportunity then to talk to them about that stuff.
But I really like to let them drive that rather than us introducing things. And there's such a fine line there. And what I want to say is we don't—we have to be very careful about being afraid of the topic of sex because God isn't. He's not afraid of the topic, and we don't need to be afraid of it.
But there are developmental phases where our children are more ready for some of these things than others. And if you can delay some of these conversations until they are developmentally ready, I think that's wise.
The Importance of Reclaiming Biblical Sexuality
Kerry: I think that's really good. And I appreciate you saying that we need to talk to them about sexuality more than just what sex is or how do we have kids, that type of thing. Because I know I heard on one of y'all's podcasts, you know, if we don't reclaim the sexuality and what's going on, the world is going to take over, which is what it's doing. And the church really does need to understand it. And if moms and dads don't, they need to do some research and stuff.
Dannah: Well, and Ephesians 5:31 and 32 says, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." And then it's almost like the Apostle Paul has ADHD or something. Because it's like he changes the subject. He says, "I'm really talking about Christ and the church."
And this verse probably more than any other in Scripture tells us that marriage is meant to be a picture of the love Christ has for His bride, the church. But you can see that taught from Genesis to Revelation. It's a very important picture in the body of Christ.
And if we do not wake up to really protect and defend that picture, we're going to wake up one day to see the gospel completely marginalized—not just marriage, but the gospel.
And I guess my question for all of us is: if sex and marriage really does represent the love of Christ, the gospel, how motivated is Satan to see that picture destroyed in our lives, in the lives of our children? We have to be vigilant. We have to be informed. And we have to be so full of grace for those moments when we mess up or our kids mess up.
Navigating With Grace and Compassion
Kerry: Yeah. And I think you just said that—I was coughing—grace and patience. Because you're talking about having compassion for these people that are really dealing with issues. And I think sometimes the church gets so, "Oh my goodness, look at them, they have children that are homosexuals or whatever."
And yet we—I mean, no, we don't tolerate—I mean there's a blend between tolerating, but we also need to show grace at times because the compassion of God is what draws people back. The kindness and stuff. Would you have anything to say about sort of where you draw the line? And not that we want to judge people, but we do want to come alongside.
So we've got moms here that want to help with their kids, but then they may have people in their family or in their church or something. What are maybe some practical things that they could do to handle these situations?
Dannah: Well, some practical things are teaching our kids grace. Teaching them a gracious response.
Bob and I, my husband and I, discipled a young man for many years who is non-binary now. Young adult man. And we still will have lunch with him. He doesn't live locally, but when he's coming through, he still wants to visit with us and talk with us.
I got a birthday text from him that said, "You're like my second mom," because we have blessed him with our love and our presence, which is genuine. It's not fake. We adore him. He is easy to talk to, intelligent. We had so many high hopes for how he would—and still do—influence people for Christ.
But we do not—we accept, but we do not affirm. We accept, but we do not affirm.
So he knows—one of the last big conversations we had about his journey into homosexuality and a non-binary lifestyle was very pointed where my husband said, "I believe you've been set apart, and I believe that you have different desires, and that you have to obey the Lord with Romans 12:1 and 2. You need to sacrifice your desires for the purpose of your body glorifying Christ."
And it was a very pointed conversation. And we haven't talked about that since then, but he knows where we stand.
So we're honest, you know. One of the things that's really a challenge right now is the question of pronouns, right? Do we use the pronouns or do we not use the pronouns?
And with this individual, I avoid using pronouns because the pronouns he wants are "they" and "them." I will not do that because God's Word commands me not to lie, and it's not truthful. However, I'm not going to rub salt in a wound of all the struggles that he's walking through.
So I do my best to navigate through just not using either his new name that he wants or the pronouns. He knows that's what I'm doing.
I know another woman who—she did transition for nine years. She had her breasts cut off, she had hormones, she was bearded, she was talking like a guy, she lived as Jake for nine years. Her name was Laura.
Her mom stayed on her knees, stayed in a prodigal prayer group. And when it came to the name—she wanted to be called Jake—her mom said, "I can't call you that, but I know it's going to offend you. Can I call you honey? I'll do that."
And it was a compromise they made together. So you see, accepting but not affirming is a really important line we have to make.
Because this is the question that Rosaria Butterfield asked in a recent book that she's written. I believe the title is Five Lies of Our Post-Christian Culture. But she says, "Is your church, is your home, is your family a safe place for someone to repent of their sin of homosexuality or gender—" I'm not going to call it confusion, but rebellion. Okay?
Because gender confusion, I would say, is probably going back to some of those syndromes I'm talking about, right? You're going to feel some confusion when you're not quite sure how your body is showing up, right?
But gender rebellion, I would say, is what my friend Laura went through. She knew she was a girl, but she wanted to stick it to her mom and stick it to God. And she did for nine years. And then the Lord got a hold of her heart.
But partly, I think the Lord got a hold of her heart because her mom never accepted Jake, never accepted the lie, never used the pronouns. And yet she still loved and accepted the child.
Kerry: Fine line.
Dannah: So good.
The Reality of Dealing With These Issues
Kerry: Yeah, we've got to love. And I, for one, I mean, these aren't just teenagers. You know, I had friends whose kids have transitioned, and the parents, the mom and the dad don't even agree on the pronoun issue, you know. And that's a really hard thing.
What I really like about what you just said is she communicated with her daughter and they talked about it instead of just doing this and then, you know, that child getting angry and then blocking them out of your life kind of thing. And so communication just seems to be vital as well, even if they're going down that path.
Dannah: Yeah, so communication before and after is key. And it's not easy. It's hard. And there'll be tears on both sides and disagreements. But you want to walk through it in such a way that you maintain a place where they know what the truth is and they know where to come when they finally do understand what the truth is.
Kerry: Yeah, I always tell—because I host a prodigal prayer group too—and the two things I'm always like, we can always love and we can always pray. You know, we cannot change them, but we can pray and we can never give up. You know, God's not giving up on us, so we shouldn't be giving up on our kids or other family.
Dannah: Yeah. And you know, when it comes to praying, I find that people that I love that aren't walking with the Lord—they might be offended if I start asking them, "Who do you think Jesus is?" But they're never offended when I say, "How can I pray for you?"
They might define it differently, but it keeps that door open of them knowing, "I care about your spirit. I care about your spiritual life. I care about you." They know that praying is important to me.
And when I just say, "How can I pray for you?" their hearts often just flood open with things that they want prayer for.
How Did We Get Here?
Kerry: That's a really good point too. Okay, let's—how have we talked about all this? How do we get where we are today? Because, you know, like we said, 30 years ago we would have never thought—yeah, you know, there was homosexuality back then, but that was pretty much it. How do we get here?
Dannah: Oh, I think that it's how we got here is, you know, we were an Augustinian worldview. The United States of America had this worldview that was predominantly established by Augustine, St. Augustine of Hippo. He believed that love was the highest good in humanity and that that love should be reflective of the truth of the Bible.
And that really was the worldview of our culture. And that meant that there was one man and one woman marriage.
And then when it really started to break down, honestly, was Freud, who felt that the highest good was sex. He thought that that was the highest need in a human body. And so the conversation started to change as Freud, who did bring us some decent diagnostic tools in terms of understanding and being more aware of our emotions and our mental health—but psychology doesn't do anything, really, if you look at the stats of recovery from psychological methods. Hardly anything outside of Jesus.
I mean, single-digit recovery. In my mind, if I'm having some mental health problems, I don't want to go to a place that can give me a single-digit percentage chance of getting better.
But then enter Alfred Kinsey. Alfred Kinsey came into the scene, and he was a very unwell man emotionally and mentally. And so he was really excited about the things that Freud taught and believed that he could prove that not only was his theory correct—that our highest need was sex—but that most of the sexual things that these prudish Americans thought were, quote-unquote, sinful were actually very normal behavior. Things like homosexuality and even pedophilia.
And he said, "I'm going to prove that those are okay." So he did the Human Sexuality Volume 1 and Volume 2 reports. And his research was really horrific. He hired pedophiles who had been jailed for pedophilia to conduct experiments on children.
And it was really child sexual abuse that was recorded in those volumes. But nobody talked about that. Nobody said who did the research and how did you get it done. At that time, it just became the playbook for the sexual revolution of the '60s.
But they said, "Look, look, we do want sex. We do need sex." And then the sexual revolution—during that time, a virgin in college named Hugh Hefner read those volumes that Kinsey wrote and said—and this is a quote—"I'm going to be Kinsey's pamphleteer."
And as you know, then he went on to create his pamphlet, which was Playboy, normalizing objectifying women. I'm not going to call it anything other than what it is.
And so it was this—it was a lie we all wanted to believe. Not me, not you, but the culture wanted to believe because it justified their sin and their desires instead of controlling them. They could justify those sins and desires.
And I think when we had about a 30-year climb to making gay marriage legal, but that was kind of a floodgate moment. You know, I feel like from the night that the White House was covered in rainbow colors until today, it's just been a floodgate of Sodom and Gomorrah-esque sin.
And whereas it was this slow, steady climb for decades, now it's just a playground.
Signs of Hope and Backlash
Dannah: Now, I am thankful that we're seeing some—I guess what I would call backlash against some of this. In Canada, this year—last year, rather—we saw the first case where a patient who underwent transgender gender reassignment surgery is suing the physician for what happened to her body.
Because she said, "I came to you with a mental health problem, and when I was very mentally unwell, you told me the solution was to cut up my body." And she's suing that doctor.
Tavistock, which is a gender assignment clinic in the UK, has been shut down because so many of the doctors and nurses are saying, "You only saw these patients two or three times before you let them self-diagnose that they were gender-confused and began treating them." And the doctors and nurses said, "That's not okay. We didn't adequately find out if they really did have gender dysphoria. We're just letting them self-assign."
And that's still happening in the United States. But because Canada and the UK are ahead of us, I'm encouraged that we're going to start to see backlash very soon.
So don't stop using the correct pronouns. Don't stop calling girls "she" and "her," and don't stop calling boys "him" and "his." Like, we are not crazy. We just feel crazy because the conversation happening in our culture is a little mad.
But we are going to start to see a backlash in the next five to 10 years.
Kerry: It sounds depressing, but it is encouraging.
Dannah: And our hope is in Jesus, who we know can—always, just like I didn't think the education system could ever get fixed, and then COVID hit. And I was like, "Oh my goodness, look, God can do something when it looks like everything's falling apart."
He can do the same thing with the gender and sexuality issues. And—excuse me—and even our hope isn't even in this world. I just have to say that. Like, more and more, as it gets crazier and crazier, it makes me hungrier for heaven and the new heaven and earth that we will know after Jesus' return.
And for anybody, you know, who maybe you're listening to this and you're the one that cut up your body, you allowed that to happen—you know, when Jesus returns, the new heaven and the new earth, He's going to perfect you and receive you as He created you and fix everything that this world can't fix. And there is such hope in that.
Kerry: That is so good. Thank you so much. And yes, He can. And He redeems ashes to beauty all the time. So amen.
So I know y'all have some resources that I think would be helpful. Could you share a little bit about that?
Resources to Help Families
Dannah: Sure. Well, I mentioned It's Great to Be a Girl and It's Great to Be a Guy. Those are two books that we take parents and kids through an online study on, but you could do it at home. You can do it as part of a homeschool curriculum.
Another book that I have is Lies Girls Believe and A Mom's Guide to Lies Girls Believe. Those go together because I think this extends beyond gender. It's a battle for truth.
And the interesting thing about truth is that we know Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." He was truth. So this whole conversation is an assault on Him.
And so that book, and Lies Young Women Believe, introduced teen girls and tween girls to really studying: What is truth? What does it mean? And how do I figure out when I'm believing a lie? And what God's Word says about it, and what is true?
So I would say those are really important books. We're working on Lies Young Men Believe, but we also—my friend Aaron Davis just wrote Lies Boys Believe. So good tools.
We've had lots of friends tell us they've used them as homeschool curriculum. And I would love to see you explore them. They are great. They really are.
Kerry: I have—well, I've done Lies Women Believe. And then I will say, too, for those of you—this probably doesn't pertain to a lot of you—but they have them in Spanish. I used to work in El Salvador and go down there once a month and work with a school down there. And we started with Lies Women Believe, but they had a teen girl Bible study, so then they did the Lies Young Women Believe.
I don't know if they've done the girl, but when I was looking at your site, I was like, "Oh, they have Spanish books too." So if y'all are in another country, just know that there are resources for you there as well.
Dannah: So wonderful.
Closing Encouragement
Kerry: Well, as we close, is there anything you would like to say just in closing?
Dannah: Just I think it's so important right now that we are just so deeply in love with Jesus. It's one thing to know all these things in our head, right? But until it gets here...
The reason we have prodigals prodigalizing and the reason we have deconstructors deconstructing is because there was a lot here, but we didn't quite maybe get it here. And so what I'm learning is that I can't push it here in the kids I'm teaching, but I can do what I need to do to sit at the feet of Jesus and minister to Him in worship, in prayer, and opening the Word.
I don't want to just know the facts of what I read in my Bible this morning. I want to know that I had an encounter with Jesus.
So my prayer for you is not just that you would know the facts about all these hard conversations that we're having to have right now, but that more than anything else, you would be so in love with Jesus that your heart beats to reflect His image.
And so I pray that for you, and I pray that for your children too.
Kerry: Oh, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thanks for just taking a little time out of your day to be with us. I really appreciate it.
Dannah: Oh, it was so good to be here, Kerry. Thank you. God bless you. I pray that you're so blessed by this conference.
Kerry: Very good. Well, I am Kerry Beck with Life Skills Leadership Summit. We'll talk to you next time.