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502-How to Win an Argument: Interview with Dr. Kevin Downing

Arguments that spiral out of control often leave behind words no one meant and wounds that take time to heal. Escalation may feel like “getting it all out,” but according to our guest today, it is actually poison to a marriage.

Dr. Kevin Downing, founder of Turning Point Counseling in Southern California, has spent decades helping couples, pastors, and families find healthier ways to connect. His insights on escalation, self-control, and parenting bring both biblical grounding and practical tools.

Why Escalation Is “Pure Poison” That Often Leads to Divorce

Research from Dr. John Gottman revealed that the type of conflict in marriage can predict divorce. The number one predictor? Escalation.

When escalation takes over, brain scans show that the logical, rational side of the brain shuts down. That’s why conversations in anger lead to slammed doors, reckless words, or ultimatums. With half the brain offline, no real problem-solving can happen.

We often think that the “truth” does comes out during these heated moments of escalation, and sometimes spouses even push each other to the brink in an attempt to “get the truth out.” But the reality is, this isn’t so. The words spoken at the peak of anger are not reliable and usually bring regret. As Dr. Downing explained, escalation is pure poison for marriage.

The Fruit of the Spirit in Your Marriage

Scripture gives a different path. Galatians 5 teaches that self-control is a fruit of the Spirit.

Self-control means more than biting one’s tongue; it is the Spirit’s power to respond with gentleness when provoked. It is choosing a soft answer when the flesh screams for retaliation. This is what keeps hearts tender and marriages safe.

Practical Tools for De-Escalation

Dr. Downing offered practical tools couples can use immediately:

• Use “I” language. Instead of “You’re losing it,” say, “I need a few minutes to calm down. I promise to return.”

• Pause at night. Words like, “I love you. I’m not going anywhere. I’m sure we can work this out” create security before sleep.

• Reassure often. A 10-second “wedding-vow refresh” can melt deep insecurity: “You’re my one and only—for better or worse, for life.”

• Don’t debate history. Replace “I remember it better than you” with “We have different recollections.” Then drop it.

• Offer a new experience. Arguments rarely change minds, but kindness does. Just as a restaurant replaces a meal instead of defending reviews, a spouse can create change by responding with love instead of debate.

How to Be on the Same Page about Parenting

Conflict in parenting can be just as destructive if spouses are not aligned.

But, Dr. Downing emphasized that parenting plans should not be created in the heat of a crisis. An argument is not the time to create a parenting plan, just like the middle of a storm is not the time to create a rain plan. You want to do these things outside of the state of chaos.

Instead, couples should sit down calmly after the crisis is done and start with the big picture. What goals do you have for your children? You may ask yourselves:

• Do we want our children to be God-loving?

• Self-supporting?

• Respectful?

• Loving toward siblings and connected to church?

Agreeing on these goals allows a united front in daily decisions. One of the greatest gifts for children is seeing parents present a unified approach. Correcting a spouse in front of the kids undermines authority and invites manipulation. Behind closed doors, differences can be discussed and resolved without giving children the leverage to divide.

The Two-Minute Timeout

Dr. Downing also shared a simple, powerful discipline tool for parenting: the two-minute timeout.

When a child disobeys, responds disrespectfully, or hits a sibling, the consequence is two minutes with two questions:

1. Why were you in timeout?

2. Will this behavior happen again today or tonight?

To establish safety and connection, younger children are also given a hug afterward.

This short, consistent approach helps children take ownership while keeping parents calm. It prevents long punishments that discourage, as well as shouting matches that model escalation. In fact, the timeout often benefits the parent just as much—allowing emotions to cool so rational thinking returns.

By the time children reach their teens, the drill is so familiar that a simple question—“Do you need a timeout?”—is usually enough to prompt self-correction.

Final Thoughts

Every couple disagrees sometimes, and every parent has those chaotic moments—but they don’t have to end in distance or regret. Escalation will always push hearts apart, but Spirit-led self-control and kindness can draw them close again.

The beautiful truth is that transformation doesn’t always come through big, complicated steps. Often it’s the small, intentional choices—pausing before speaking, offering reassurance instead of accusation, giving a child two minutes to reset—that shift the entire atmosphere of a home.

Each moment of choosing gentleness over escalation is an invitation for God’s presence to flood your marriage and your family.

You can do this.

God bless you!

 

With love,

The Delight Your Marriage Team

 

PS – For more information on Dr. Kevin Downing and his work, please visit turningpointcounseling.org

PPS – Interested in some free resources? Check out delightyourmarriage.com/downing for a downloadable bundle including resources mentioned in today’s podcast.

PPPS – Did you get a chance to check out the Midlife Summit? They are doing an encore presentation this weekend and it is not too late to catch it! Come check out Belah and other coaches as they share insight on hormones, intimacy, and all things midlife. Click here for more info.

PPPPS – Here is a quote from a recent graduate:
“When we did talk it would often end with blaming each other and an argument.  I believed that if my wife could just be more affectionate and loving our marriage would be much better.  I quickly realized in the first few weeks of MR, that when I take the lead to make her feel safe, cherished, and heard, she responds by being kinder and more loving towards me.”

 

Transcript:

00:01

Belah, welcome to the delight your marriage podcast. You’re joining me, Bela rose, as I dive deep into the beauty, power and truths about intimacy, learn not only the practicals, but the heart behind what making love is all about. Delight your marriage.

00:20

Hi there and welcome. My name is Belah, and I’m grateful that you’re joining

00:26

today. I have the honor and privilege of speaking with Dr Kevin Downing, who’s joining us from Southern California, and he runs a counseling center out there, and he directs many, many counseling

00:39

folks out there that are helping people, in the name of Jesus, grow and transform their lives. And so we’re specifically talking about escalation, deescalation. We’re talking about how to get on the same page with your spouse, and how it specifically aligns with scripture that we not accuse and fight and escalate, but also scientifically, how we can calm ourselves down and get back on the same page with our spouse. We even have some conversations around parenting, because that’s often a major area where people disconnect. And I will say that I have implemented what he talks about over the last few weeks, since we talked, and it’s helped. So I will give a little update on that at the end of the podcast, you can hear what we’ve been doing. So let’s get into it. I’m excited for you to learn from Dr downing you

01:44

foreign Well, Dr Downing, I am so thrilled that you’re here and really excited to introduce you to our listeners at delight your marriage. Would you go ahead and introduce yourself a bit so that our listeners know who you are? Yeah, I’d be happy to Yes. So I’m a co founder and director of turning point counseling here in Southern California and and so we started in 1983

02:11

and I tell people we were only 12 years old when we started, certainly, certainly, actually we were in our mid 20s, But we’ve just been after it all this time. Dr Peter Robbins, he’s my partner in crime. There all these, all these many years and and so we’ve trained about 1000 therapists over the years, done about a million sessions with, you know, the whole team that kind of thing. We we got to host a radio show in Los Angeles for almost 10 years, and, you know, just had a really, really wide variety, just a fantastic we started turning point,

02:50

because there was just such a need for Christian counseling. And couldn’t, couldn’t find an internship that was Christ centered. And still, even to this day, we’ll have interns that will come to us and say, Yeah, I was forbidden to talk about scripture or even to pray with people, even if they asked for it. And so we decided, hey, we’ll we’ll create Turning Point counseling. And the therapist is free to pray and share scripture and and minister. Sometimes the therapist say, Well, how do I do that? I said, Well, kind of like you do it at church. You ever pray for people? Yeah, just, just love people in Jesus name. And of course, you got all your your counseling skills along with it as well too. So that’s what we’ve been doing for for all these, these, these many, many years. And still love it, still enjoy it. And, you know, I look at myself and go, Wow, it’s gonna be a good day,

03:47

right? Isn’t that awesome? What an incredible truth. So I loved when we spoke before the model that you all have. I you know, obviously delight. Your marriage goes all over the world by God’s grace, but you guys have such a unique model. And you told me one thing that you are sad about is you can only serve people in California with licensing restrictions. Is that right? Right? Yeah, well, it’s all the laws and and through the licensing boards and that kind of thing. Hopefully that will change. I mean, it went with the advent of a video conferencing like, yes, it, you know, it really, it really, really needs to change. There shouldn’t be any reason that somebody in a remote part of the world shouldn’t be able to access me or therapist. So it’s just, it’s restriction of trade, is what it is. So

04:37

hopefully the bureaucracy will, yeah, yeah, go away. Yeah, yeah, right. Well, you guys have this really cool model in terms of the local church. Would you mind sharing that? Because I think it’s brilliant partner with local churches. And a lot of times you go to church and you go, wow, there’s a lot of empty space here during the week and and we’ve thought, well, what if we.

05:00

Partnered with the churches, and we actually placed counselors on the church location, and

05:08

with the savings for on rent and that, we could pass it along to the people coming for counseling services. And so the Church says, Hey, we have counseling services for our church and for our local community, and we’re helping them develop the reputation that says, when you need help, where do you go? Yeah, your local church where you can get professional counseling at affordable prices. It’s just such a win win all the way around. So our little office here in Fullerton, California, it’s just, I mean, it’s not that big. We’re just kind of spread out all over. And it works. It works. I mean, we have staff meeting all come together, that kind of thing. But yeah, so that’s been doing it all these years, and and the pastors love it. To the pastors say, I’m good for about maybe one or two sessions, and then I just need to pass people on. We say, yeah, that’s, that’s what we’ll do. And then, and then, whether with a therapist on the campus, then there’s also somebody there that can answer some of those tough questions, or take a suicidal call, or, you know, those kinds of things and and answer and address some of the tough stuff that churches face so often. Yeah, exactly. I just love that. It’s such a phenomenal model. So we, we churches will will sponsor someone, and we’ll have an agreement. So, hey, we’re going to pay for 10 sessions, and we’ll pay half, and they’ll pay half, or the therapist will work on their sliding scale. So we really try to make it work for everybody and and the people feel loved. You know, in the church, they Well, my pastor is stood behind me and, and they help help me with some of the fee and, and, and then we also have the ability, if they’re putting some money, to interface with the pastor. Usually they want to know, are they still coming? Are they? Are they making progress? And how can I know those are the three things a pastor will most often ask. So, yeah, I love that over the years, I mean, to go the next levels. We’ve We’ve counseled a lot of pastors over the years, lot of pastors, a lot of missionaries, and we love doing that.

07:18

I got a few right now as a matter of fact, and it’s wonderful to minister to a pastor in his marriage, his children, and just be able to talk so often. They live in a fishbowl, and everybody’s looking at him here. They come here. And I took a pastor out to lunch one time, and he said, let me get this, right? I can tell you whatever I want to tell you, and you’re not going to tell anybody else. I said, Yeah, that’s right, that’s confidentiality. He says, okay,

07:52

yeah. Then he shares it all. Oh, that’s awesome. Unburdened right there on me. So, no, it’s it’s so necessary. People need that so, and I am a big fan of therapy. I’ve had lots of

08:06

experiences of therapy, and I’ve had one particularly amazing therapist, and it was, it was a game changer. At a certain season in my life was a game changer. So I just love that. So I’m curious, because we wanted to really focus this conversation on a couple of things around marriage, specifically and and how we got connected, actually, was somebody that you work with directly, and is also a delight your marriage person and so just super exciting, because I think Therapy is so, so valuable, and I think I’d like to

08:44

really focus in on

08:48

arguments escalations, and how do we

08:53

actually be productive in our communication when we disagree? So how about you just start us off with some of the you mentioned the research being done around marriage. Marriage help? Well, there was a massive, massive research study done good number of years ago. You’re probably familiar with it. Most people are not, but if you’re, if you, if you’re working with marriages every day this, this was the work of John Gottman, who was a researcher and and not a therapist, his wife’s a therapist. But he was asking the question, can we predict divorce? Is that possible to to predict divorce? And after about I don’t know, what was it, 20 years or something, and 1000s of couples, it came the answer came back with a resounding yes, we can. And the best predictor of divorce. And of course, marital unhappiness is conflict. Everybody has conflict, but it’s the type of conflict that you have that best predicts divorce. So four conflict styles rose to the top that were the very best predictors. And lo and behold, the very first one is escalation. Escalation.

10:00

Yoshi, oh, she owes he is. Boo, boom, it explodes. And let me ask the people in the in the research study, does the truth come out when you poke and get somebody really mad? And many of the persons said yes, the research said no, no, the truth doesn’t come out we deeply regret what we have to say at the height of our anger, it, and indeed, the research showed that escalation is pure poison for your marriage. There. No, no, wait a minute, I just got to blow off some steam. I just, I just need to get this off my chest for a moment. No, no, you don’t close your mouth. Don’t say it. Do not say it. Police officers hate going on domestic dispute calls. And why do they hate those calls?

10:52

Because people are nuts. They’re irrational. They’re killing their grandmother. You you can’t talk sense to them. I’m gonna, I’m gonna show you a brain scan really quick here what happens? What happens in the brain is when we get highly escalated, when we get into more of a trauma state, the left side of our brain begins to shut off and shut down. I mean, you can literally see it in the scan that there’s less activity in the left side of the brain. And so people who are escalated will say things like, we’re going to solve this and we’re going to solve this thing right now. And I say to them, No, you’re not going to solve anything, because you only have half a brain, right? And we even have, even have legal terms for crimes of passion, momentary insanity. Judge, I was just on my mind for a few moments, right? And so this is actually the worst time to try to work things out and to try to do problem solving. Not a good time.

11:56

That is so, so helpful. I love that you said that people think at the height of escalation, that’s when they finally get the truth out of their spouse. But it’s actually the opposite, that really what we should see when we see our spouse getting escalated, or ourselves getting escalated, is that’s the moment that, okay, bright light. We’re about to regret whatever comes out of our mouth. They’re about to regret whatever comes out of their mouth. Is that what I’m hearing you say, That’s That’s right. And you’ll even hear married people say this. I need to stop now, because I’m going to say things that I’m going to regret. Perfect, that’s right. Listen to that still, small voice inside and see And listen, listen to it and, and, yeah, stop and

12:40

spiritual character quality, cut you off there. Go ahead. Yeah. Well, that’s exactly what I was going to ask you. Biblically speaking, how would, how would you support that?

12:50

What is the, what is the spiritual quality that is needed to overcome escalation? Well, we find it in Galatians five, the fruit of the Spirit, love choices. What’s the last one? Self control? You have to have self control when your mate says the most outrageous, unbelievable, untruthful thing in the entire world, do you have self control to be able to say, Okay, I hear what you’re saying. Yeah? Yeah. A soft, A soft answer, right? You have, you have to be able to exercise that self control.

13:30

That’s fantastic. And so that left side of the brain, which kind of goes offline when we’re escalated, that’s the side of the brain that is more of the logical side. Is that right exactly? Yeah, that’s our that’s our rational side, our rational thinking side, the left brain. Yeah, okay, wow.

13:50

Okay, so the escalation is poison to our marriage.

13:55

And is it relevant to go through the other conflict styles? Would that be good to quickly go through. And we can,

14:04

let me say one more thing about how we get roped into this and FBI agents. When they want to get information out of people, they have a technique that they use, and it’s called elicitation, elicitation. And in

14:23

an aspect of that is giving people false information, they give people false information. So if you’re an FBI agent, and you go to somebody and you say, Gee, what year did you graduate from high school? And what high school did you graduate from? I’m asking a question. I go,

14:44

What are you up to? You know, I I don’t know if I want to answer you at all, but if you go to that same person and you give them false information and say, Hey, we know that you went to ABC high school and you graduated in 2000

15:00

Two,

15:01

there is just a driving need to correct that, that information, that this is what they find, and say, What are you talking about? No, no, I didn’t go. I went to, I went to this other school, and it was 2002

15:17

right?

15:19

And so, boom, you know, the FBI agent got the information. This happens in marriage all the time, because we have different recollections, and we’re so sure that our recollection is correct, and actually human recall is extremely poor. We hate to admit that,

15:38

but, but it is, and so we end up debating history. This is part of escalation. The little yellow card turned left, no, it turned right, left, right. I remember better than you. No, you don’t. Did too, did not. Did to, oh, my goodness, right? And what is, what is the healthy thing to say in a healthy, functional, Christ centered marriage, we have a different recollection. We have a different record. There’s no video camera. There’s there’s no audio recording. We just we have a different recollection. We need to drop it right? I had a I had a man that I worked with one time years ago. He’d been married for 40 years. That’s 4040

16:21

years. And I said, Your 40 years of marriage. Have you ever got? Have you ever, have you ever through debating and education? Have you ever got your wife to think differently? 40 years of marriage? You’ve been debating her and educating her? He says, No. I said to him, let’s not make it 50 years. Mm, years,

16:43

right? With 40 years of doing something, debating and educating that does not get her to change her mind, are we going to make this 50 years? And he might just, I mean, already done for 40 right? So why do we do that? Right? We, we, he, he’s trying to use arguing to get her to change her mind, and it just does not work. So this, this drives us back to the question, how do we get how do we change our mate’s mind? How do we get them to think differently? If we can at all? Well, the answer is, by giving them a different experience, we give a different experience. This is where husbands get won over by a wife who doesn’t even say a word right, talks about, it’s through her actions and and it’s, it’s through her behavior, it’s through her witness that she so I have to tell, I have to tell the the waitress story.

17:44

If you go to the restaurant and you get the menu and you select your meal and you order it

17:51

little while they bring it out, they serve you

17:55

well about 10 minutes into about 10 minutes into the meal, the waitress is trained to come back around and ask a very important question that she’s been trained to ask. And the question is, does everything taste okay? Does everything taste okay?

18:16

No, I got the bad tasting food after the bad tasting section. Oh, there’s no bad food on the menu. Nobody, no restaurant put bad tasting food. So why is she asking? Because she cares about your perception. She cares about your perception. And when you say, it’s cold, it’s lumpy, it’s not what I expected, she doesn’t argue like we do often in marriage. No, no. She says, Would you realize that over 300 people gave this plate of food a five star review? No,

18:48

no. She She says, I’m so sorry. Is there anything else on the menu that we could get you? We’ll throw this food away. We’ll get you a new plate. We want to give you a different experience to see if it’ll change your mind. Right?

19:02

That’s kind of what we do in a healthy, Christ centered, wisdom driven marriage is, I’m not going to argue with my maid. It’s so fruitless. Takes two to the bad news is it’s total destruction. It’s pure poison. The good news is it takes two people to do it, and I’m one of the two, and I can stop, right? I don’t have to argue with my mate. I really don’t. So, yeah, so I stopped arguing, and I give them a different experience. First one is, I don’t argue with them. The second is, I might give them kindness.

19:38

We’ll probably talk about about a lot of things that we’re going to do to give our mate a different experience? Well, that’s actually a great a great moment here to to ask you for some practical so let’s say you find yourself in the middle of a conversation with your spouse and you suddenly realize voices are becoming raised. Both of you are becoming upset. What’s the next step?

20:00

Yeah, well,

20:02

it really depends on what you’ve agreed to. Let’s, let’s just say that you haven’t agreed to anything. When it comes to escalation and arguing, you could simply say,

20:15

You know what, I think I need a little bit of time here, and notice that I’m using the I message, not the you message. I’m not saying, you know you’re getting heated and you’re about ready to blow your lid and you, you, you, you, you, oh no, no, right? Puts our meat on the defense. Right? No, I’m gonna, I’m gonna own it. It’s me. It’s I’m the one who’s feeling. So I’m gonna say, You know what, I would like just a little bit of time here. What did I take five or 10 minutes? I promise. I promise, promise, promise to come back and make sure you do and let me just think, let me pray, let me reflect, and we can come back and revisit this, or maybe it’s late at night. I’ve trained many a husband to say to their wife late at night, I love you. I’m not going anywhere. And I’m sure we can work this out, and then they go to sleep, right? So that’s that’s it for you, yeah? Because that’s such a big misunderstanding of the scripture says that do not let the sun go down on your anger. I think so many couples think that means you got to fight it out before, or there has to be some level of resolution before you go to sleep. But the anger piece is all about your heart. Don’t let your heart be angry when you go to sleep. That that’s an internal issue. That’s not an external thing. The anger should not be getting down on your you. The sun should not be going down on your anger. So if you can give that to God before you go to sleep, that’s peace. That’s right, that’s right. And you made a little bit of that emotional connection.

21:44

I love you. I’m not going anywhere. I’m sure we can work this out. There’s confidence that, you know, when there’s insecurity, why don’t we give reassurance? Right? Reassurance is a really powerful tool in healthy marriage, yeah, and I love that to your point, some reassurance is certainly ideal to do something like that, but also that it doesn’t, I’m sure we can work it out. That’s such a great comment to to to give a future hope, as in, it doesn’t have to happen right now. We’re both tired. We’re miserable. It’s time, it’s bedtime. No one thinks clearly at night when it’s too late. So I’m sure we can work this out. I love it.

22:25

Maybe we should talk just a bit about what many Christian women called they say, they say, wedding vow stuff, wedding vow stuff.

22:35

I would I would call this person. I would call this improvisations on your wedding vow. But there’s so many married women that have said, No, I want the wedding vow stuff. And so what is that, this improvisation on the wedding vow? It’s when a husband turns to his wife, she’s been feeling very insecure, very kind of on thin ice, whatnot, and he says to her, You know what, dear, I love you with all my heart. You’re my one and only you’re the only woman I want in this world. No matter how bad it gets, no matter how good it gets, I will always love you in sickness or health, rich or poor. The only thing that is ever going to take us apart is death itself. I love you for the rest of my life.

23:20

Beautiful. And with that, she melts, you know, Yep, definitely. So you just and to the to the guys, to the men, I say, now put your watch on that. How long did it take for you to say that? Yeah, I, I didn’t put my watch on those, you know, maybe 10 or 12 seconds, something like that, right? So,

23:41

so I, you know, I, I train couples and and sometimes together, sometimes just working with individual.

23:49

It’s the skill you have to be very skillful at marriage.

23:54

And if you if we as married people, if we can connect quickly and deeply, I say that real often. If we can connect quickly and deeply, then we can do it often. Can we take a negative situation and turn it around quickly? Wow, that’s really powerful. If it takes us two hours or two days or two months to reconnect, that’s a lot of stress on a marriage, right? So to be able to come to your your maid and say, Can we have a good evening tonight? Can we turn this thing around? Can we have a good day today?

24:28

A lot of times, your maid will say, yes, yeah,

24:32

yeah, connect quickly and deeply. Take if we can get the stress off of our marriage. People love each other, it’s going to grow. It’s going to blossom. We have to be skillful at removing the stress, getting the stress off of our marriage.

24:51

Yeah, yeah. And so I like that kind of mutual like that. I would love to have a great night together.

25:00

Something like that, right? I think it’s a really, really good one to kind of future cast what we’re what we’re aiming for. We both want that and and having that connection ahead of time.

25:13

You know one thing, when things go sour in our in our house, with our kids, actually, we’re going to talk about kids soon, so I’m really excited to shift over there pretty soon, but when things head south as a result of big, big emotions from the little people and the big people. Listen, we all have big emotions sometimes, but

25:33

we can. We often. Can say, let’s pray that God rescues the day, and we do. And golly, if he doesn’t rescue the day, over and over and over again, we go, yeah, every time we need it, he rescues it. So can we? Can we talk a little bit about that? Because I want to not get into parenting education as much as I’m sure you. I’m sure you could help us with that too, but more so about how does a husband and wife get on the same page about parenting? Because there’s going to be obviously, there are things that escalation cannot you can’t work through disagreements when you’re all escalated, right? But sometimes there is an issue that needs to be addressed, and time is of the essence, because kids need redirection or discipline or correction or whatever. And I’m just curious if you can give us some guidance on how to get on the same page with your spouse. And I say this just quickly saying that, yeah, I’m, I’m excited to learn. I’ve got my notebook out. But also, this is a big thing that comes up over and over and over again in my work with couples, is that, you know, kids are an ever present need, and if we’re not on the same page, how do we, how do we make sure that we can work together in this most important, yeah, great question. And so, so very, very important.

26:52

And I’ll say this at the time when intervention is needed, that is not the time to figure out your parenting plan,

27:02

right? Good point, good point. It’s like

27:06

we’re gonna we should have been out the door 15 minutes ago. We’re late, and now we’re going to argue about, no,

27:14

no, you need, you need to recognize, hey, we have a problem here, and we need to sit down, and we need to work it through when we’re not under a time pressure. And we got a gun under him, so to speak, right? So how do we come together? This is, this is where we establish the common goal. We establish the common we got to get the 30,000 foot view out and really talk about big picture, what we’re trying to accomplish. I was working recently with a fairly young executive, and, and his the founder of the company, is coming in and, and, and, man, we’re gonna, we’re gonna, it’s loggerheads, man, we’re gonna have big conflict. And I told him, I said, make sure you guys find the common goal, right? Company be successful. You know, make X amount of dollars, you want to have X impact on the people that you serve, right? He says, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s right. That’s right. I forgot that, right? This is the same thing in parenting. You sit down with your with your spouse, and say, Listen, let’s talk about what we want to create, what how we want to influence our children. I know you like the word influence. I like that word too. We’ll talk maybe about that and and, boy, we would love to have kids that are God loving. Well, it usually by the end you’re doing God loving and self supporting. Those are two big ones that most groups of parents have God, loving and self supporting are huge and in the younger years, that are that are respectful,

28:48

that where we help them find their their passion, or passions in life,

28:54

that are well adjusted, that can have self discipline and self control, that’s a whole lot of parenting growing up

29:04

that love their siblings so that after they’re they’re raised and they’re gone,

29:11

they love each other and they have a relationship with each other, right? You know those that are drug free and and who love the church and and, you know, all of that. So, so husband and wife just said, Hey, let’s make a list.

29:27

Yes, we can agree. These are things that we all, we both absolutely want to have for goals for our children. Okay, now you become a united front in terms of the big pick, how you’re going to do that, you have to work that out, but, but that’s the starting point. These are the character qualities that we want to develop and instill in our children. And so now the big question is, how do we do that? So I was sharing with you my little my little handout on the should i.

30:00

Go into that or, or do we want to talk a little bit more about that? Yeah, I would say before, if you don’t mind, what’s the lead up, because there’s a lot of times it’s funny, because, you know, I work a lot with men on on intimacy, specifically and generally, men are very motivated to work on their intimacy, and women are generally very motivated to work on child rearing. So what I have found is men are

30:25

essentially a wife will have to get her husband to have this conversation. Is kind of what I’m where my head is going, not always, but I would say my experience is that the wife really wants a conversation like this, and the husband is not thinking about this at all. And that’s, how do we how do we get this to be a conversation in the family? What would you say?

30:49

Well, the wife could say to her husband, I know that parenting is really important to you because you want to raise kids that you’re really proud of,

31:00

right? Yeah, that’s my boy

31:07

and and dear husband. We got a lot of horsepower under the hood here. We got a lot of opportunity here.

31:17

Let’s go for it. Let’s go for the best. Let’s, let’s, let’s not do second right here.

31:25

Yeah, yeah. And I even go ahead, I’m sorry, but it doesn’t take long to say, you know, you look at the kid across the street and, you know, oh, man, that was a disaster. And, and, and, how do we prevent from from all of these? When you’re a parent, it’s kind of like you got this, this nest, and the wolves are trying to come in and grab your kid, you know. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s, yeah, awful feeling sometimes I don’t with my kids. I, I mean, yeah, there were some very negative influences that were going after him, yeah, the protective side of me really came out. It’s like, no, no, don’t do that with my child. Is that okay? Yeah, I wonder if it has to do with almost, I guess, to continue to develop this

32:16

similarity is a lot of times women, when the topic of intimacy is broached by their husband, she feels not good enough. And I think it’s a very similar thing that women not even meaning to make their husbands feel around parenting, because a lot of times a wife is with the kids far more than the husband is, and so when he, you know, tries to interject in whatever she can, this has happened plenty in my house, sadly, but it’s happened in plenty of my clients houses too. Of where she kind of gets in the No, no, no, I know what I’m doing with the kids, because I’m around them more or what have you, and that can kind of be her perspective. So then the husband just naturally, if parenting comes up, he just feels like, Oh, she’s going to criticize me. This is going to turn into a big session of complaining and critical, and we’re, you know, I’m not going to feel good enough by the end of it. So I’m just wondering if there’s not coming into it. Go ahead, very, very common and and what she does is she she criticizes or directs the husband in front of the children, and doing so, she undermines his parental authority. And so then he says, okay, all right, you’re not respecting me, and I can’t do it right? And so I’m just gonna withdraw. That’s our second conflict style, by the way. I’m just going, I’m just gonna withdraw, and I’ll pull away. And so the so the more he pulls away, the more she criticizes, the more she she criticizes, the more he pulls away, and and round and round it goes. So, yeah, that’s a great point. So we want to have a ground rule, and that is no we, we don’t correct each other’s parenting in front of the children. We go behind closed doors, out of earshot from the kids. We work out our differences, and we come out a united front, a united front. That’s one of the greatest things you could ever give to your child. When parents are not a united front, the child was able to put a crowbar between mom and dad, talk to dad, mom and they in in we’re really training them to be manipulators. We give the child way too much power and and we often see that, of course, in divorce situations, and it’s, it’s, it’s really, really difficult. But you, if you have a spouse, that’s, that’s, that’s willing to work with you, even, even a little bit, a wife can say, Listen, I want to respect your parent. There’s things that you can do that I can’t do. And yes, and, and so, you know, even, even with with dads who will take their their toddlers and and throw them up in the air and fling them around and grab them by the feet and throw them on the bed, right? I did lots of that. And.

35:00

Yeah, and the same that the children who have a dad like that, and it just it develops their vestibular system, they have a greater sense of balance and that kind of thing. Because

35:12

was I, I’d always both my kids, we have a son and a daughter. I’d throw them up in the air, I’d put their little feet in the palm of my hand, and I’d stand them up, you know,

35:22

run and say, oh my gosh, you’re gonna drop the kid. No, no, I got the kid. So,

35:27

you know, all that, all that, all that, that fun stuff, but you make a great point, I think, starting out with really noting the good that the husband is doing for the family and for the kids. Because often, like I said, it’s the wife that thinks that parenting needs to change, or there’s, you know, they’re not syncing up somehow, some way. But then to start it out with how good this man is and how grateful

35:55

you are that he is the father that he is. Because we live in a society where it’s few and far, it’s not few and far between, exactly. But there are so many single moms. There are so many single moms. We need fathers, and we need fathers to feel like winners around their kids, not like, Oh, you have to do it like the wife says to do it. So I think starting out with describing how grateful she is and the good things that he does, and how he can parent in a different way than she can, and that’s valuable for the kids, and one of the greatest areas that he can excel in. It sounds kind of flaky, but it’s not. It’s in the area of play, right? He can be with his children. And why I worked with so many people who never had play in their childhood, it was life was always a really serious, you know thing, or life or death or whatever, they never got to play. And play is where children get to experience unlimited power and unlimited creativity. With their imaginations, they rule the world, and they’re a knight in shining armor, and they’re this, I mean, it’s just, and sometimes they’ll tell me, I’ll say having a child is just an excuse to live a second childhood.

37:15

Get out there and play, man, right? Yeah,

37:20

in our family, we always had lots of plate and we had lots of throw toys. So we got these flying orbs and little football with the back of them and and this, there’s some crazy toys out there that are that are really fun to play with. I know so good. Go ahead. I have a nephew, and his dad was just really not a part of his life, at least very, very, very minimally. And so he was probably, he was probably five years old, just a little bit younger than my son. So I took them both up to the mountains here in Southern California, and

38:00

we got a lot of big boulders and streams and all this stuff. So, so I took him out, and I set him, I stood him up on a boulder, all right, you know, probably, you know, three, four feet tall, something like that. And, and then I realized he’d never been on anything other than a flat surface his entire life. So, oh, my and my son and I were hopping all over the boulders and all this, he breaks out into tears, like, oh my gosh, what have you done to be?

38:29

Where am I standing on this rock? And it’s not flat,

38:34

and it’s so, you know, I just kind of took him and and kind of walked him around, and it was some support, and, you know, within an hour or two, he’s hopping all over the boulders, too

38:48

great,

38:51

isn’t that great? Yeah. I mean, I think the play is such a vital aspect, and you’re right. I mean, gosh, men are so good at that, and that’s what kids crave. I remember craving play with my dad. I remember that so so let me ask you about moving forward from the goals. Let’s say you really can encourage your spouse, husbands or wives, encourage your spouse, help them to understand, help remind them of how important this is and how much you want this awesome success as a family. And map that out. What does it look like? What does success look like as a family? You write out this list, and then Dr Downey, you’re going to give us some specific keys on how to get how to get there,

39:39

and I’m going to give this to you now, before I do that, I think I want to say one more thing, and that is,

39:46

I, my wife and I worked really hard at finding activities that inspired our children and as a parent, it, you know, it doesn’t happen with just.

40:00

Is the first thing you know. Sometimes a parent will say, go to your own kid and figure out what you’re going to do with your life. And don’t come out and tell you, well,

40:08

there’s nothing in the room that’s going to they need more information. You know, child needs more information, and so

40:16

we, we, I always say experiences. Some experiences, not all, but some experiences lead to inspiration, which leads to motivation, right? So experience, some experiences lead to inspiration, which leads to motive, motivation. And then you’re parenting in such a way where you’re really having to pull on the reins and say, Hey, slow down kiddo. This is your

40:41

I’m glad, you’re happy and you’re motivated about this, but, and that’s so much more fun than using the boot and keep pushing the kid. We didn’t have to push our kids around. They were highly motivated, and they were motivated in with activities that we were unfamiliar with. Of course, they don’t pick what you’re what you’re into.

41:03

My daughter did play the saxophone for a little bit. I’m a saxophone

41:08

player, but, but my son eventually got into competitive bicycle racing, and my daughter did musical theater and and they just they loved it. And one time, my wife and I were up in Yosemite, and our daughter calls, so she’s probably, she’s probably 15 at the time, and she says, I made it. I made it to the final four. And my wife and I said, the Final Four. What?

41:33

So? So she tried out one of the plays and and she was,

41:38

she, she was thoroughly modern, Billy. So that was, Oh, that’s awesome. That was the movie after the sound of music that Julie Andrews was in set in the 20s. And so she,

41:49

and she’s got this, this, this script for for the play. And, you know, it’s almost like a ream of paper. I mean, it’s and so I’m fanning through it, and I said to her, Callie, you’re on every page. You Ooh. She has she has lines that she has to memorize just on scores about hundreds of pages. And not to mention she’s got to sing all these solos, and she’s got to learn how to tap. She didn’t know how to tap dancing. She’s the lead tap dancer. So funny. And I looked and I said, How do you feel about this? And she looks at me and she says, Dad, I love it.

42:33

Oh, that’s so cool. So our blonde haired daughter put on a red headed wig, and she was thoroughly bothered. Billy, oh my gosh. Did she get shot out of a cannon? No, no, she didn’t have that part. And this is all at Belah Youth Theater. Isn’t isn’t that the isn’t that the movie? I feel like I remember that part. I might be wrong.

42:56

Did they get shot out of a cannon in that movie? I don’t, I don’t recall that. Do I have the wrong one? I don’t know. I Yeah. It’s been many, many years since I saw the movie. I of course, I saw the play with her in it, and and that kind of thing. But, oh yes, they are launched out of a cannon. Yes. Okay, very good. You got it right?

43:17

I feel good about that. See how I corrected you, and if you weren’t so good at arguing, this would have been bad.

43:27

Well, okay, so Dr Downey, I feel like you were going to also go into maybe that two minute timeout rule. What was it? Yes, two minutes so kind of a ground level in parenting is you have to have to have a parental authority, not authoritarianism, where you’re crushing a child’s spirit, but you have to have authority where somebody’s driving the bus, and it better be the parents and not the children, right? So you, you have to have some some direction and and with that, yes, you need to have some kind of

44:01

ground rules and so forth. And then you come to the consequences. The consequence, what do you do about it? Right? If, if your child says a bad word or hits their sibling

44:16

or forgets real or pretend or sassing back

44:21

and complaining or provoking their sibling, or is just flat out denying is No, I won’t they defy you. What are you going to do about it? And so many parents really don’t know what to do about it, and they get frustrated, and then they escalate, and they demonstrate for their child the very behavior that they wouldn’t want their child to do, right?

44:46

So my wife and I, early on, and I’m going to talk as a parent now, not as a psychologist. My wife and I, we started using a very simple, little two minute timeout, and I guess I do have a handout on it. I.

45:00

Trying to pair, to God, two pages, right? And,

45:04

and this is how we did it with our children, and how I have parents with it. You sit down with your child. This is these are children that are verbal. Gets really, really challenging when they’re, like, two years old and, or maybe a little younger, and,

45:20

but these are verbal children, and we announce we have some bad news and we have some good news. And the bad news is, if you commit one of these behaviors, these infractions, like I mentioned, there, sassing back, forgetting whining, there’s going to be a consequence. It’s going to be explain what that is. They don’t know what the word consequence means. The good news. The good news is that it’s only for two minutes with two questions, two minutes with two questions. The questions are, why were you in timeout? I want my child to take ownership for what they did. I don’t want to raise a child that has cheap excuses and never takes ownership. We have adults in their 40s, 50s and 60s that still won’t take ownership, right? Not my job. And will I see this behavior anymore, today or tonight, and if they are not teenagers, then I also say, give me a hug,

46:17

teenagers. I mean, I get I’ll try to get a hug, but I might not get a hug. And so we found this we like I said, we raised our kids on it. I have videotape of my son, and he’s probably four years old at my grandmother’s house when she was still alive. And I’m rolling the video. He’s on the chair with I said, What are you doing here? He says, with a big grin on his face, I’m in time,

46:45

happy as could be.

46:48

So that’s

46:51

no no, not that we often tease our daughter. We still teasers, even to this day, she would say, not two minutes, one minute

47:02

and it,

47:04

you’re cute. You’re just so darn cute. So, um, so like we’re saying in in marriage, we also want to do this in parenting. Can we take a negative situation and can we turn it around quickly, around quickly? Wow. And we have found that. We found that with the two if you met my children today, who are now young adults,

47:28

and you said, Hey, what do you think about the two minute timeout? They would say, yep, do that again. Yep, do that again. And why is that? Well, because they didn’t have yelling parents. Sometimes they’d yell his kids, and they’d fuss and scream and melt down and stuff, but, but my wife and I, we didn’t know. So let’s tell you one more story. Real quick. About two minute timeout, my son’s at church. He’s about 10 years old, and he runs into his his good buddy, Josh, and he says to his friend, Josh, Josh, what’s the matter? You’re not looking so good, you’re looking down. He says, Yeah, yeah, I got grounded for for two months, for the whole summer. And my son says, Oh my gosh. What happened? He says, Well, I got in trouble with my dad, and I got grounded for the day, then I got grounded for the weekend, then I got grounded for the week a month, and I got grounded for two months. And my son Jared, he says, Oh, wow, man, that is that’s the whole summer. You got grounded for the whole summer. And little Josh turns to my son, and he’s he says, do you get grounded? He says, Yeah. How long do you get grounded for two minutes. Two minutes I want your dad?

48:49

Oh, yeah. I mean, it makes, I think for kids, especially, you can’t they can’t figure out time time. You know it, an hour seems like an eternity. Two minutes seems like all day. Yep, exactly. It makes sense. If they, if they did the internal processing of figuring out why they’re there and what are they going to not do in the future? I think it’s brilliant. Okay, so what you’re telling me, and unfortunately, we’ve got to wrap pretty soon, but what you’re telling me is that you know, almost like the system of how,

49:23

how escalation. This was brilliant. Let me just reiterate something you said, when you escalate to your own children, you’re actually demonstrating the very behavior that you don’t want your children to do. And I think that’s very, very, very good. So it’s almost like what you’ve then described is giving your children a timeout, a two minute but that also gives you a two minute timeout. You don’t have to deal with this behavior for two minutes. This is excellent. Both of you can calm before, Belah, you got it exactly right as a parent using this myself, I after two minutes.

50:00

It’s the left side of my brain begin to kick back in, and I approach the situation in a totally different way. Yeah, that the timeout was for me. And with older kids, will say, when you’re in timeout, who’s in timeout? They go, I am. No, your parent is. Ah, okay. So

50:18

even if they’re wrong, even if they’re even if they’re wrong about putting YouTube give your parents a break, that is very interesting. So Huh, I’m gonna have to spend some time thinking about that one.

50:31

Do we really want our kids to say you’re in timeout? Mom?

50:35

No, we

50:36

know, especially

50:39

with younger children, we don’t. But what I will do sometimes with with older teens is, mid teens, older teens, they can politely ask for a two minute. They they for whatever reason. You don’t have to have a reason, but just for whatever they want. And say, Mom, could I have a two minute timeout?

50:59

And and then and I tell the parents, hey, 99% of the time, grant it to them. They might know something that’s going on that you don’t know, right? So so know that the parent, the parents, the the children are not putting their parents in time out.

51:15

The parents are driving the bus. They are in charge. Yeah, well, the children can ask, but they don’t get to tell. So the older kids, so pre teens, teens, later teens. Do they have the same two questions? Why were you in time out?

51:32

However, I will say this, by the time our kids got to be 12, 1314, certainly by the time they’re 15, I rarely gave them time out. I mean, almost never gave them time out, because we’ve been through the drill so many times, and when they would cross lines and act up, I would just simply say to them, Do you need a timeout?

51:53

Their head, they’d drop their head, they’d look down, and they’d say no. And I said, Okay, we’ll do what you need to do. And of course, they knew I was serious about it, because we’ve been through it so many times before, so rarely did we use timeout with teenagers. We were well prepared. We were we were well practiced. This is so cool. This is so cool. Okay, so getting your your spouse, kind of on board with that. You start it with the goals. You say, gosh, I just heard this amazing podcast episode with Dr Downing. Can we listen to it together? And what do you think, babe? And that’s, that’s the end of the story, happily ever after. Not another escalation in the house from anyone ever

52:38

No, no, there’s, there’s going to be a lot of escalations and and

52:43

you think about it as a parent, you know, really, it’s about, you know, the first 18 years, there’s a primarily, or at least a huge task that you have as a parent is to help your child have self control. That’s beautiful.

53:00

Yeah, isn’t that the case? And that’s exactly what we want them to have in marriage, and that’s what we want to be having in marriage and both. And it’s, it’s really this beautiful opportunity to grow in the fruits of spirit every single day. So powerful. This is wonderful. Dr Downing, well, yeah, I mean, there’s so much more we could talk about, and unfortunately, we’ve got a wrap. But is there, would you be willing to do this actually? Would you pray for the listeners who may be struggling with escalation in their own selves, with their spouse, or in the way they interact with their kids or dealing with their kids escalations? Could you absolutely Heavenly Father, we come before you, and we’re praying over this important issue, this important spiritual character, quality of self control. Paul wrote about it, not just in the Galatians five there the fruit of the Spirit, but in other passages as well. Jesus exercised it in a huge way, a huge way. And Lord, we need this. And we pray for the pray over every person listening to this podcast that they would have a spirit of self control, and that they would be able to pour out and influence in a very powerful way their children and their spouse with self control. And we pray that this good, godly characteristic would grow strong and large and be a just a harvest of blessing for every person and every family listening. And I just pray over Belah. I just so grateful for her and all that she’s doing.

54:38

Bless her mightily. Bless the ministry delight your marriage. We’re asking it in Jesus name,

54:44

Amen, amen, amen. Thank you so much. Dr Downing, and where can folks find out more about you? Get connected to your counseling services. What would you like to direct them towards? Yes, you can come to turning point. Cal.

55:00

Counseling.org

55:02

turning point, counseling.org

55:05

and there we’ve got, we got some marriage videos too, and

55:10

just little short ones for church services, little little snippets here. And I have the four conflict styles. I do a little little two three minute video for each of the four conflict styles, and then I add a fifth one, which is kindness, the great fog cutter of marital conflict. Kindness, two kind people, you’re going to have a hard time having a bad marriage. So those are there, and some of our handouts and all that. So TurningPoint counseling.org you can email me directly at Kevin, k, e, v, I N at TurningPoint counseling.org or you can give us a call the phone numbers on there as well. So, beautiful, beautiful. Dr Downing, this has just been wonderful. I’m, I’m really thrilled I’m going to be talking to my husband about some of these tools. I’m really, really grateful. Thank you. Yeah, they’re super great. And we’re, we’re pushing you 110%

55:59

with our local churches, my own home church, the cause in Southern California, we’re hoping to get the light your marriage in our church to our people, and where your folks are talking to our pastors right now, and I’m supporting you all the way. And I think there’s going to be just a wave of revival as a result of what you’re going to be doing in the churches with your videos. So really excited about it.

56:27

Oh, thank you. Oh, I so appreciate that. Praise the Lord.

56:42

So good. Thank you. Dr Downing, so good. All right, so I promised you that I would share what we’ve been doing parenting wise and how we’ve utilized Dr downing materials for that. So we’ve had, you know, parenting is such a journey, isn’t it? And for us, we decided to, couple couple months back, we’ve implemented a family meeting every Sunday

57:12

at a time right before they they get some special time that they’re on Minecraft. They do,

57:20

they we do this family meeting. So they’re excited. They do it. They engage. And so we we talk about where we want to head as a family, and like, what do we want our family to be about? And so couple months ago, we we wrote these lists of how we want to feel in our family, and what do we want it to be in terms of school, what do we want school to look like? So we were preparing for school in the summer. And so so we have that all written up, and they I just wrote down what they said. So they had things like welcoming and warm and friendly and not mad and not angry, and kind and and so we read that out as a family. We pick our goal for the week. Of those values that we have, what’s your goal. And then we have a reward. If you earn a certain amount of points based on right behavior with right attitude, you will get this cool reward. And so we’ve done different things, like we if they earn 50 points, they’d go to a water park. And so that was one thing they wanted to do, or they wanted to go to the movies, or they wanted to go on this trip. And so we have some big ones, or they get an extra hour of video games. So different things. We were very strict about video game time. But anyway, so they get it, you know, they they earn it again. It’s right, right behavior, right attitude, in order to get a point. And so

58:40

anyway, the benefit here is now we’ve got Dr downing because they they hate losing points because they’ve had to earn them. Dr downing has now added a wonderful layer here, to say,

58:55

two minute timeout before you lose a point. So if they don’t go straight to their two minute timeout and do it properly.

59:04

They might get another time out, as Dr downing says, or like, if they don’t go do it, they they lose a point, and then that is one point less than you know, to get their rewards. So anyway, that’s been a really cool shift in our family, and I’ve got pre teens, and it’s been really, really good. So grateful for Dr Downing and the resources you recommended. Thank you, all right. Thank you so much for listening. God bless you, and we’ll talk soon. Bye,

59:40

you.

1:00:00

I think.