Guest Cast: Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk with guest Rhonda Stoppe

On today’s Guest Cast episode we honor the memory of the late Dr. James Dobson. Please join Dr. Dobson's edition of Family Talk, with guest: Rhonda Stoppe, author of Moms Raising Sons to Be Men, where Rhonda offers help and hope for women to build a no regrets life. Listen as Rhonda shares practical and hope-filled encouragement for anyone who feels stuck in regret. 

Mother's of adolescent sons, Rhonda warns “it is possible for a mother to deny a boy his manhood as he grows up.” And if she does, Stoppe says he’ll become a mama’s boy, and will still be sitting on the couch when he’s 40 years old. Especially as a boy enters puberty, he needs to answer to his father, or, if a dad is not in the picture, then a godly man who will affirm him in his masculinity.

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"This podcast is for the purpose of mentoring only and is not a replacement for therapy. We suggest you seek out the help of a trained biblical counselor for help with your specific situation.”

Transcript

Broadcast Transcript

Broadcast: Moms Raising Sons to be Men- Part 1

Guest(s): Rhonda Stoppe

Air Date: July 7, 2021

Listen to the broadcast

Dr. James Dobson: Roger Marsh: Dr. James Dobson: Welcome everyone to Family Talk. It's a ministry of the James Dobson Family Institute supported by listeners just like you. 

I'm Dr. James Dobson, and I'm

thrilled that you've joined us.

Every mother knows that parenting isn't all Pinterest crafts, and Instagram

worthy photo ops. In fact, motherhood can be filled with long days, messy cars,

and mac and cheese for dinner three nights in a row, and being a mom to boys

brings its own unique set of trials and challenges. But mothers of boys have a

special calling to shape future men of God. Our guest today here on Family Talk

is Rhonda Stoppe and she knows firsthand how this privilege can be a challenge,

a joy, and probably the most important work of a woman's life. I'm Roger

Marsh, and you're listening to Family Talk, the listener supported broadcast

division of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.

Today here on the program, you're going to hear a classic conversation between

author and speaker, Rhonda Stoppe and our own Dr. James Dobson. Rhonda is

the founder of No Regrets Woman, a ministry dedicated to helping women live

life with no regrets. She connects biblical principles to everyday decisions and

shows how to influence that next generation by raising children with integrity.

She is the author of several books, including Moms Raising Sons to be Men. And

that book is the one that she'll be discussing with Dr. Dobson today. Drawing

from years of experience ministering to youth women and her two sons,

Rhonda Stoppe is a treasure trove of biblical wisdom and advice. So let's listen

in right now.

Today, we're going to be discussing a topic that I also think will be of great

interest to moms in particular, having to do with the important role godly

mothers have in raising godly sons. It's a vitally important topic, and it is

expressed most beautifully and a book written by the guest for today. Her name

is Rhonda Stoppe and the title of her book is Moms Raising Sons to be Men.

That's a topic I care about because I've written about it too. And we're going to

have fun talking about this subject today, but there is a time for moms and dads

to let go of their boys and let them become men. And our guest today writes

that if you fail to grant that manhood to your sons, they'll fight you for it. And

we're going to talk about that. And we're going to talk about a lot of other

things too.

1Our guest is the founder of No Regrets Ministry, and I'm going to ask her what

that is in a minute. And she speaks across the country, she is very well known by

the moms' organization, Mothers Of Preschoolers. And I love those folks and

played a role in helping to get it started many years ago. And she speaks at a

ministers' wives conferences. Her husband, Steve, is the head pastor of the First

Baptist Church Patterson in California. And the two of them have four children

and eight grandchildren. And Rhonda you've written four books now, is that

correct?

Rhonda Stoppe: Yes.

Dr. James Dobson: You had to stop. They're coming so fast. I think your first one was in 2013.

Rhonda Stoppe: Yes, yeah.

Dr. James Dobson: Well, you've got quite a career going here because you're speaking to, what do

they say? You're, you're scratching where people itch.

Rhonda Stoppe: Yes.

Dr. James Dobson: Rhonda Stoppe: Dr. James Dobson: Rhonda Stoppe: Dr. James Dobson: Rhonda Stoppe: I think that is true and you have quite a ministry with women primarily don't

you, but men and women.

Yes, my heart. My ministry is the No Regrets Woman. I help women break free

from regrets that hold them back.

That's an organization. Is that a nonprofit organization?

No, it's just my brand. Noregretswoman.com is my website. And I just come

alongside of women with truth. I meet women all the time that feel like they've

built a regretful life and they don't know how to break free of that. So I want to

pour truth into them to help them break free from those regrets that are

holding them back.

When you go to speak and you're talking to 500 women, what are the regrets

that you hear at break time?

When you go speak at an event, people connect with you and they connect with

your message, but you're that anonymous person that they can tell you that

thing that they've been wrestling with. And if you've been teaching sound

doctrine, they can trust that you're going to direct them, not just your opinion,

but you're going to give them a biblical worldview. Jesus said the "Wise man

builds his house on the rock, foolish on the house on the sand." And a lot of us

it's like, "Man, I just want that shack on the beach. It's so pretty." And that's

what women do because it's fast and it's easy and it's beautiful. But when the

rains came and the floods come, the house crashes. And so when women can

look at the life they've built and they are stuck with shame or guilt or regret,

2oftentimes they don't realize that God will set them free from that he has a plan

for them.

Rhonda Stoppe: Dr. James Dobson: Rhonda Stoppe: Dr. James Dobson: Rhonda Stoppe: Dr. James Dobson...: Rhonda Stoppe: I think of David and Bathsheba. You know, when, when Nathan finally said you

are the man to David over his sin. And I think they hid it for about a year, which I

can't even imagine him pretending to be a godly king, knowing all of the sin that

he and Bathsheba were hiding. But when he finally repented, he says, “Then I

will teach sinners your way.” Once God let him come to Christ, repent of his sin,

and then he could now be effective for the kingdom. And I love that story

because right after he repents, he goes in to Bathsheba and God gives her the

next king of Israel. She gets to be the mom of the next king of Israel. David had

other wives, there were other sons, but I think that picture shows us that when

God forgives, he forgives to the utmost and he's got a plan for anyone wherever

you are in your season of life.

Let's be honest. I'm 56 years old. And in the '70s, abortion had just become legal

and there were women getting abortions. I think last I heard, I believe the

statistic was about 45% of women that were my age had had an abortion at

some time in their life. And in the Christian community, it wasn't talked about.

The youth pastors weren't talking to the kids about it. The parents weren't

addressing it. I think there was just a real belief that our kids won't go there.

And so a lot of Christian kids, or raised in Christian homes, had abortions and

our tax dollars paid for it. And they didn't have to ask anybody for money. They

just snuck in and took care of it.

They didn't have to tell their parents.

Did not have to tell their parents. And they didn't. And those women that are

holding onto that secret, to that regret, that feel like if anyone ever knew about

this thing.

I thought that might be the regret you hear most often.

It is very common, that one and parenting. It's interesting how many women,

my age will pick up Moms Raising Sons to be Men or even my book If My

Husband Would Change, I'd Be Happy, and Other Myths Wives Believe. They'll

pick up a book. And they'll say, I wish I had this book.

Say that little slower because that's a wonderful title. Explain it.

If My Husband Would Change, I'd Be Happy, And Other Myths Wives Believe.

And because my husband and I do marriage counseling and most women, when

they can actually get their husband into my husband's office, they're thinking,

"Oh good, we're going to fix him and I'm going to be happy," but women will

pick up those books and they'll say, "I wish I'd had this book when I was a young

mom. I wish I had this book when I was a young wife. I wish someone would

3Dr. James Dobson: Rhonda Stoppe: Dr. James Dobson: Rhonda Stoppe: Dr. James Dobson: have told me that." And you know, Titus 2 calls the older women to teach the

younger, how to love their husbands and love their children.

That's really how you perceive yourself.

I'm a mentor. The Bible talks about our adequacy comes from the Lord. My

adequacy for my ministry is that God's called me as an older woman in this

generation to mentor the younger generation. And if you can just imagine the

books that I write, I write the way that I talk, because I meet a lot of young

women, women of all ages actually. And they'll say, "I'm not a reader. I don't

read." And I'm like, "Time out. You read Facebook all day long. You are a reader.

We've established that, but let's write a book that you'll read." Let's write in a

conversational manner, where imagine if you had your own personal mentor

that just sat with you and talked with you about what women in history, women

in scripture, women present day have learned about guiding their sons toward a

no regrets life. With the marriage book, let me just teach you from what God

has taught me in my marriage, what other women have been able to share.

Actually, Steve and I have a book coming out with Harvest House in 2018 and

it's called The Marriage Mentor. And I'm super excited. It's a couples book.

Hardest part about writing that book is getting time to have Steve sit down to

write the book because he's a pastor and he's super busy.

That concept of the Titus 2 woman is a great biblical principle that the women

who have lived long enough and made the mistake, have the regrets, but have

overcome them and the Lord has given them knowledge and wisdom, and they

really need to pass that on to the younger women who are struggling.

And it's God's journeymen teach the apprentice program. It's not optional. God,

didn't say "Some of y'all." He said, "All y'all." Older women teach the younger

how to love their husbands and love their children. And everywhere I go, I meet

women that say, "I don't have any godly mentors in my life. Will you be my

mentor?" And I hand them a book and say, "Here, I'll walk with you through

these pages." I mentor the young women in my life. I have two adult daughters

raising my grandchildren. I have two daughters-in-law that are married to my

sons. I have women in our church that I mentor and come alongside of. It's

important that women find real life, flesh and bone, godly mentors.

And I'll speak to the older women. We’re dropping the ball. The older women

are saying "I'm too busy, or I didn't do it the way I should have. And I have

shame about the way I" fill in the blank, but I'll tell you this. I teach more

passionately from my failures than I do from my successes. And I think that's

why God called the older women to teach the younger. "I've walked this path

ahead of you. Man, if I had to do over I to do it differently this way." So that's

really my heart and my ministry.

Well, the title of this book is Moms Raising Sons to be Men. Now you've got two

sons of your own. They're grown. They're both very successful. You're proud of

4Rhonda Stoppe: both of them, but there are a lot of pitfalls on the way from early childhood to

adulthood, and that's what you want to talk about in this book.

Yes. And let me just time out and say, when you said my sons are successful and

my daughters are successful, my sons-in-law are successful. What I see as

success is that each one of them love the Lord and are desiring to follow him

and serve them with their life. My husband has said, he was a youth pastor for

18 years. He's been a pastor for almost 18 years in Patterson, but he has said to

so many of our youth, "I don't care if you grew up in dig ditches for a living. If

you're serving the Lord and loving him with all of your heart, then you are a

success."

Dr. James Dobson: Rhonda Stoppe: And I think that's important that we teach that to our kids. Especially in this

culture of shoving kids out there, they're playing every sport out there. I mean,

kids are having elbow replacement surgeries when they're in high school. I

mean, they're just playing sports 24/7, which I'm not against sports, but we are

pushing our kids. And we're captivated. The captivity of activity keeps us so busy

doing good things, raising, quote, good kids, but we're forgetting that the

priority of life is to know Christ and make Christ known in this generation.

Go back to that quote that you express. That it is possible for a mother to deny a

boy his manhood as he grows up. Explain what the threat is here.

Well, I scanned over your book about raising boys last night and I loved the

scientific, technical, brain part that you talked about testosterone and it goes

across this, the brains of our kids. My husband always calls junior highers pre-

humans because they're great. And then they're not. And then they come back

if you hang in there long enough. But what I have found in 18 years of watching

youth ministry, and there's a cool thing about being in ministry is that you get to

see firsthand the effects of the choices that people make in life. And you get to

learn from other people's mistakes, successes, or failures, which is an awesome,

awesome opportunity.

But what I have found is when boys hit that adolescent age and it's 10, 11, 12

years old, you'll know when it happens, they start smelling kind of funky. And all

of a sudden they have that attitude that you don't know what happened. You'll

know that they are turning into men. Well, men crave respect. So I always tell

moms for the first decade of your little boy's life, you love the snot out of them.

“Mommy will step in front of a moving train for you. Mommy loves you, loves

you, loves you.” And you just gush all over them. And yet when they hit junior

high and they start pushing you away, which Brandon was 10, my youngest, you

have a decision to make because they want to be a man. And most of our young

men ... There is no coming of man culture, ritual in our culture. I wish there was.

Go kill a fatted calf, walk on some hot coals and we'll call you a man. No, there

isn't. The only ritual is don't be a momma's boy and they get it. So they start

pushing mom away and mom freaks out and I speak it a lot.

5Dr. James Dobson: This is really, really important, Rhonda, for mothers to understand that because

when they feel that, that they're being pushed away, it's threatening.

Rhonda Stoppe: It hurts.

Dr. James Dobson: And it hurts like crazy. And their tendency is to grab and hold. You must not do

that.

Rhonda Stoppe: Dr. James Dobson: Exactly. And so when that happens, do you have a choice to make you either

hand them their manhood or they will fight you for it or they'll become a

momma's boy and they'll be on your couch when they're 40, and that's a whole

nother issue that you're going to have to deal with. But when that happens, you

have to understand, okay, men crave respect. So now I need to show this little

boy. I respect you. The things that I see, the kind of man you're going to be, and

I'm here to help you get there. When our youngest son, Brandon, when he

started doing that and he and I were super close and he started pushing me

away. And I remember just being like, "Dude, it's you and me, what's going on?"

And as he pushed me away, I tried to control it.

He didn't want to sweep the porch and the kitchen floor, it's like it was beneath

him. Well, he'd done it for so many years, but all of a sudden, a mom can look at

that as rebellion or you can go, "Men want to take pride in the work that they

do. Now, I'm going to sweep that floor tomorrow and I'm going to do it again

the next day. And I'm going to do it again the next day and I'm going to do it."

But if I want my son to go where he's trying to go as a man, I have to be willing

to say he needs to do something, number one, that he answers to a man that's

going to affirm him. And if you're a single mom, don't shut me out because

single moms right away go, "I don't have that." And you do, in the community

and the family of God. And we can talk about single moms in a moment.

But what we did with Brandon ...Steve came home and I was crying one day.

And here's the thing. Brandon's like, "If Dad wasn't a pastor, I could go do this

and this." Like, "No. If your dad was still swinging a hammer, you wouldn't be

skateboarding with those kids across town because that's not going to happen."

You know, "If you cared, you'd let me ..." They say whatever they get to make

you cry. And I remember what Brandon said later, he's 29 years old now. But he

said, "When you stopped crying, I knew I had lost control." And it's like, "Okay."

But he didn't tell me that when he was a teenager, but Steve stepped in and he

said, "Okay, you answer to me now, you don't answer your mom anymore. You

answer to me and you work for me and you do what I tell you to do." And then

Steve told me, "Now you don't step in. You don't give him a chore. If he doesn't

do what I told him to do, you don't remind him. You let me deal with him." Well,

every mom in here knows you're like, "Buddy, do it or you're going to get in

trouble." We try to rescue them, right?

Rhonda, let me give you a story.

6Rhonda Stoppe: Okay, good.

Dr. James Dobson: Rhonda Stoppe: Dr. James Dobson: Rhonda Stoppe: Of my own childhood and my own adolescence, because we experienced this,

my mom and me. But by this point I was 16 years of age. I had been offered a

job, temporary job, summer job as a deck hand on a shrimp boat. There's

dangers on shrimp boats. You can fall in and drown is what you can do. And it's

also a tough, tough men's world. The other people who were working there

were hardly Christian church people and I was offered this job and I wanted to

do it. And my mother was afraid I'd get hurt. And she didn't want me to go. And

she argued with me about going. And I finally turned to her and she referred to

this many times in years to come. I turned to her and said, "How long are you

going to make me a little boy? When are you going to let me become a man?"

Exactly what you're talking about. I was 16 and I was feeling it that my mother

was trying to protect me from this and she had a reason for doing that, because

that was a dangerous world that I was going into. And with that, she said, "You

can go." And she gave up and she allowed me to do that.

And you verbalized it.

And she felt good about it. And I did too, especially because I came back alive.

And you verbalized it. See, most boys don't know how to put it into words. And I

heard this a lot. "Just let me live my own life." Moms telling us that teenage

boys were saying those words to them. And the moms are trying to keep them

safe from everything around them. And it causes them to rebel against that. So

Steve had come home and he gave Brandon the job of digging a ditch. We live

on a ranch and he wanted him to dig a ditch from our house to over where our

barn was, about the length of a football field maybe, I'm not exactly sure. Pick

and shovel, hard ground. And Steve told me, now in the morning, when Steve

left for work, he said, "Don't you remind him. And if he doesn't do it, you don't

remind him. You let him answer to me."

Dr. James Dobson: So, I didn't say anything. And Brandon who was thinking, "Yay, I don't have to

answer to crazy lady anymore. I don't have to sweep that floor." He comes out,

eats breakfast, doesn't talk to me. And then he goes out and he starts digging

with this pick and shovel and it's hard work. And when he came in that night, I

fully expected him to be upset that he had to work so hard, mad that I had

thrown him under the bus, told his dad what a hard time he'd been given me

and now he had this manual labor. Instead. He was like, "I can't wait for dad to

get home so I can show him how far I got." And Steve came home and he's like,

"Dad, look, do you have any gloves?"

He felt like a man.

Rhonda Stoppe: "Do you have any gloves I can wear?" Because he's a musician, plays guitar. He

was going to play worship that weekend. And he was getting blisters from the

pick and shovel. Steve gave him gloves. He dug until he got to ... took, I don't

7even know how many days to get to it. And then they ran wire and they put

power in the barn. So there was a purpose in digging the ditch. It was to bring

electricity to the barn. You would have thought they were lighting the Taj Mahal

the day that that was accomplished. But I learned something about men that

day, that they want a job they can take pride, see something at the end of the

day that they did.

Dr. James Dobson: That I'll give you another example of it. Two years later, my mother had learned

something. My dad was an evangelist and he was leaving for a revival service

and wanted to take my mother with him. Do you know this story?

Rhonda Stoppe: I know this story. Go.

Dr. James Dobson: It's in one of my books. And he wanted my mother to go with him. She did. And

she left me at home with the car in a house with nobody there, but friends, you

know what teenagers are like. And every night I could invite different friends to

come and we have slumber parties, one after another. And she was gone for 10

days. And without my having any supervision whatsoever and having a car and

the house at my disposal. And I remember thinking that was pretty risky. I

wondered why she did that. And years later I asked her, I said, "Mom, for you to

turn me loose with the car and, and the house, kids can get into a lot of

trouble." Matter of fact, we wrecked the house and then we took a day to repair

everything before she got home.

Rhonda Stoppe: Smart man.

Dr. James Dobson: But I asked her why she did that. And she said, "Because I knew one year later,

you were going to be in college. You were going to be completely out of my

reach. And you would be off doing anything you wanted to, you would have no

accountability except whatever the college would provide, which wasn't much."

And she said, "I wanted to give you some experience doing that." She thought

that through. My mother was a wise woman.

Rhonda Stoppe: She was. And we need older women that are going to speak those kinds of

truths into the lives of the younger women. We need them that are going to

say, "This is what I did." There's a quote in Moms Raising Sons to be Men, and it

says, "We're not trying to raise perfect children. We're trying to raise children

that know how to recover from their mistakes." And if we keep them in a

bubble where they don't have any opportunities to make poor choices, when

they move out of our house and they make those poor choices, they don't know

how to come back. They don't know how to repent to the Lord. They don't know

how we're going to handle it, because they've been the perfect golden child or

whatever.

Instead, giving them opportunities, giving them like what your mom did for you.

Your son stays up all night, playing video games. Guess what? Get up, go to

school. You don't make it easy on them. But I know, my son-in-law was an RD at

8the Master's College. And he said there was a lot of times that these kids would

come from these very protected homes and they would come to school and

they had never been exposed to the internet or video games or a lot of other

things. And these kids would spend their first semester playing the roommate's

video games all night long and not going to class. They had never learned how

to discipline themselves with that kind of entertainment. Now I'm not saying,

and I think everybody has to be convicted in your own home, how you're going

to allow internet or you're going to allow video games. But I do think it is a way

to teach self-discipline. It's a way to say “it's out there.”

Dr. James Dobson: What you're saying in essence, is that if they make mistakes, you allow the

consequences to impinge on them.

Rhonda Stoppe: Yes. Let them feel it.

Dr. James Dobson: We're out of time, Rhonda. We've got, there's so much to talk about in your

book of course. Let's go right onto tomorrow to another discussion of this topic

and the name of the book is Moms Raising Sons to be Men. And you've raised

two of them. And I want to talk to you more about how you did it. As a matter

of fact, let me tell you where I want to start. Now, you're a loving mom. You're

very committed to your family and your children, the Christian mom, and these

issues were running around in your head. It's why you wrote the book, but I

want to know how the empty nest hit you. Will you tell me?

Rhonda Stoppe: Yes.

Dr. James Dobson: We'll start right there on the next program.

Rhonda Stoppe: Okay. Okay.

Dr. James Dobson: Be with us again.

Rhonda Stoppe: Okay.

Roger Marsh: Encouraging words from Rhonda Stoppe author, speaker and founder of No

Regrets Woman. To learn more about Rhonda, her ministry, or her books visit

our broadcast page at drjamesdobson.org. Again, that web address is

drjamesdobson.org/broadcast. Ronda's book Moms Raising Sons to be Men,

which is the topic of today's and will be tomorrow's broadcast as well, is now

available in audio book format. So if you're an auditory learner, you'll definitely

want to give it a listen. And while you're on our website at drjamesdobson.org,

be sure to check out our other resources for parents as well. We aim to

encourage Christian parents with biblical truths and principles for raising godly

children. Again, our web address is drjamesdobson.org.

Now, before we leave for today, I want to fill you in on some exciting news

thanks to some special friends of our ministry. We currently have a matching

9Announcer: grant, $300,000 matching grant, set aside for the Dr. James Dobson Family

Institute. Now this means that right now, any gift that we received from

listeners will be matched and your tax deductible donation to our ministry will

be doubled. So if you give $100, that becomes 200, 1,000 becomes 2,000, you

get the idea. Until we meet our goal of $300,000 this match is in place. It means

twice as many parents will be encouraged, twice as many families provided with

the resources they need to make a tax deductible donation. It's really easy. Visit

drjamesdobson.org or call us at (877) 732-6825 that's (877) 732-6825.

Make sure you join us again tomorrow and you'll hear the conclusion of Dr.

Dobson's conversation with Rhonda Stoppe. They'll be talking about becoming

an empty nester and how to use that season of life to better serve God and

others. You'll hear all that and more right here on the next edition of Dr. James

Dobson's Family Talk. I'm Roger Marsh. Thanks for listening.

This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.

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