Podcast: Teach Your Kids About Their Anchored Identity (Christina Fox)

October 14, 2024 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Help Your Kids Cling to an Anchored Identity in an Unanchored World

In this episode, Christina Fox talks about kids’ need for a strong sense of identity that is rooted in an understanding of God as our creator, sustainer, and redeemer.

Who Are You?

Who Are You?

Christina Fox

Designed for children ages 3–5, this engaging and lyrical picture book encourages kids to ask important questions about their identity while presenting a more stable and fulfilling perspective rooted in their relationship with God. 

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:21 - An Unanchored World

Matt Tully
Christina, thanks so much for joining me on The Crossway Podcast today.

Christina Fox
Thanks for having me.

Matt Tully
A while back you wrote an article for Crossway where you noted that today kids are growing up and trying to develop their identities in an “unanchored world.” I wonder if you could just unpack that a little bit. What do you mean by an unanchored world?

Christina Fox
I think our culture really just isn’t rooted in the gospel, obviously, and when you aren’t rooted in anything like that, you’re just following the trends or what other people are saying or what everyone is doing. And I think we see that a lot in what’s happening in our culture, where people hear something, whether on television or on social media, and they just instantly believe it. They don’t have any foundation to filter that through. And so I think our children are growing up in that kind of culture where there isn’t any “this is what is right and this is what is wrong.”

Matt Tully
There’s not even a message of “this is who you are.” The push of our culture today is this individualism where you have to define yourself.

Christina Fox
Yeah. You be you, I guess.

Matt Tully
It makes me think of Carl Truman’s book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, where he talks about that expressive individualism that is just the air in which we all live and breathe today.

Christina Fox
Definitely. A post-truth culture is another way to talk about it. I think whenever you are anchorless like that, anything goes, anything is okay, anything is right. And that varies from person to person, and I think that’s why so many people are just confused.

Matt Tully
So what do you think are some of the emotional or psychological impacts on kids of trying to form their identities? Because that’s so much of what childhood is is kids figuring out answers to the questions, Who am I? What’s my place in the world? What am I going to do with my life? What impact does it have on them to then grow up in this culture where there are no anchors and there’s no set way of thinking about themselves?

Christina Fox
I think one of the anchors that we’re hearing, though, is you are how you feel. So however you feel today is who you are. I think a lot of the anchors they do here are flimsy and shifting and constantly changing, but people are really trying to build their lives on it—like that proverbial building a house on sand. And so I think that those are things that they’re hearing, and that causes a lot of confusion. I think it can cause a lot of anxiety and even depression in all of us, not just children.

Matt Tully
We do read those stats about young people today with the rates of anxiety and depression really skyrocketing in scary ways. And so you can see that maybe there’s a connection there with this unanchored world in which we are growing up.

Christina Fox
Yeah, definitely.

04:40 - When Do I Begin Talking with My Kids About Identity?

Matt Tully
This new book that you’ve written is a picture book. It’s aimed at kids ages 3–5. I think one question we might have as a parent is, Do I really need to be talking to my kids about these questions of identity at that age? Are they really asking those questions yet? Are we introducing concepts that aren’t helpful yet for them? How would you respond to that?

Christina Fox
I think we need to start as soon as possible. With a lot of our struggles with our own identity, we can trace them back to even our childhoods. I know that even for myself. Not that long ago, we were moving and I was going through all these boxes of papers my parents had saved for me. It included all of my report cards from Kindergarten and all the way through. And every single one the teacher had written at the bottom, “She is quiet and shy.” “She’s too quiet.” “She never says anything.” And so I grew up with that as part of my identity.

Matt Tully
That was who you were. “I’m the quiet kid.”

Christina Fox
“That’s just who I am. I’m the quiet kid.” And I think that had a big impact on the things I pursued in life, because I thought, “Well, if that’s who I am, that means I can’t do these other things.”

Matt Tully
It’s amazing how some of those things can, even things that from our early days of childhood, we hear something described about us or we think of ourselves in a certain way and it can only almost become a self-fulfilling prophecy. “Oh yeah, I’m the shy kid, so that means I’m going to almost be more shy now in the future.” Do you think that can happen for kids?

Christina Fox
Oh, definitely. And so I think, as adults, our development of identity really does start when we’re young, and that’s why it’s so important to, as parents, teach our children from the very beginning who they are in order to give them that foundation so they are anchored in the truth when they go out into the world and they hear conflicting things and they know, No, that’s not who I am.

Matt Tully
One of the things that struck me as I read through your book is just how common some of the identity markers that we often think about and refer to with our kids can be things that we’re not really even trying to define them in a certain limited way; they’re just the way that we often speak to kids. One of those big ways, and maybe one of the most common questions that we’d like to ask young kids as parents and as adults, is, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I wonder if you could reflect on that a little bit. First, what did you want to be? How did you answer that question as a kid? I think you have a fun answer.

Christina Fox
Yes.

Matt Tully
And then just speak a little bit about how even a question like that can, at times, maybe be unhelpful.

Christina Fox
Well, I wanted to be Nancy Drew.

Matt Tully
Who wouldn’t want to be a detective?

Christina Fox
Yeah! I just thought it was super fun, especially when you have George and Bess to go along with you, and you get to ride in a cool car. So yeah, that’s what I wanted to be. But of course, she was a fictional character.

Matt Tully
Hard to pull that one off.

Christina Fox
As adults, when we meet someone for the first time, we often respond with the job that we do and say things like, “I am a teacher. I am an accountant. I am a graphic designer.” And that just becomes part of our identity. But I think we see that struggle especially when someone loses their job, for example. What happens when you’re no longer that teacher or an accountant or a graphic designer? What does that do? You feel unanchored because that’s who you thought you were.

Matt Tully
And we maybe even subtly teach kids to start to do that. Even at a young age before they ever have a job, we’re kind of already saying, “This is going to be a foundational part of who you are.” So how do you think about that? Because it is true that what we do for work is important. For me, I work full time and a big part of my life is what I’m doing for my job. So how do you think about that? And the same with kids—there are things that they’re doing or involved with that do end up taking a lot of their time and energy and thought. How do we teach kids how to think about that?

Christina Fox
For me, having learned the Westminster Confession growing up, that first question just always prompts me to remember who I am. And for me, that’s that foundation of, “What is the chief end of man? It’s to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” And the Bible says that no matter what you’re doing—whether you eat, whether you drink—do it all for the glory of God. And so I think that whatever job we may have, because it changes a lot throughout our life, whatever skill we have, whether we’re an athlete or a scientist or whatever is our gifting that God has given us, our goal should be to glorify God in whatever that is. And that’s really our ultimate purpose. And so when we teach children at a young age, “Wow! You’re great at running! You’re really fast.” Or, “You’re excellent at math.”

Matt Tully
“You’re so smart.”

Christina Fox
“But no matter what, you do it for the glory of God. Even if one day you can’t run as fast as you used to.”

Matt Tully
That’s kind of the freeing, amazing thing for us as Christians is that if our greatest, highest purpose as creatures is to glorify God with all that we have, even if what we have changes—God might remove an ability for us or remove a job—and yet that doesn’t actually change our ability to glorify him with whatever we have. And so we can keep fulfilling our highest purpose even if the situations change.

Christina Fox
Right.

10:30 - Pop Culture Influences

Matt Tully
One thing that you note is that our children are being raised in a world in which identity and purpose are integrally connected to the pursuit of happiness. That kind of defines the world in which we live today. And you actually reference in this article a couple different examples from some popular kids movies where we see this message taught. I wonder if you could share any of those examples. What are some of the pop culture influences that our kids are experiencing that reinforce this idea that ultimately your identity should be wrapped up in whatever makes you most happy?

Christina Fox
I think there are certain words and phrases that we hear a lot of. I think I even mentioned one like “you be you” or “What does your heart tell you to do?”

Matt Tully
“Follow your heart.” That’s a classic Disney theme.

Christina Fox
Yeah, definitely. And when you hear things so often, it just becomes part of the background noise of your life, and it really does influence the way that you live life. And so the pursuit of individual happiness seems to be what everyone is chasing after. As I mentioned before, a lot of those things change. How we feel about things changes from day to day, moment to moment for some of us. I’ve often written about how the world defines our heart is different from how the Bible defines our heart. And so that makes a big impact in how we interpret what the world is telling us.

Matt Tully
How would you describe that contrast between the world’s understanding of our heart and Scripture’s?

Christina Fox
It seems like, especially when you’re watching things on TV or watching movies, the world seems to differentiate between thoughts and feelings. Our heart is our feelings, our head is our thoughts, and they’re at war with each other and you need to follow what your heart is telling you to do or what you’re feeling in the moment. That’s the true voice that you want to follow, according to the world. But the way the Bible defines the heart is different. It encompasses everything about us. It’s like our core self, including our thoughts, our feelings, our will, and our motivations—all of that.

Matt Tully
I was also thinking that it seems like, in the broader world when people say follow your heart, it’s often in contrast to living up to certain expectations that other people might have for you or desires that they have for you. The encouragement is, “You do what you yourself, in your own heart, know to be right and true for you, and don’t listen to all these outside voices that want to make you be who they want you to be.” And it just feels like the assumption is that the human heart is this reliable guide to ultimately knowing who I should be. Whereas I think Scripture would say, “Your heart is not that reliable. Our hearts are deceitful, actually.” Is that a factor that you think is at play here, too?

Christina Fox
Oh, definitely. The Bible tells us that what we need is a new heart. We need a surgical procedure done to remove our heart of stone so we can have a heart of flesh—a heart that knows God and loves him.

13:52 - What Makes You, You?

Matt Tully
So let’s talk about the book a little bit. It’s really fun to read. It’s really easy to read. The illustrations are beautiful and just whimsical and just fun to look at. You hit on a lot of different ways and a lot of different categories in which kids might be tempted to define themselves or identify themselves. And as I read through it, though, I noticed that it seems like there’s a few different broad categories or groupings of these traits, perhaps, that you were trying to hit on. So I wonder if you could walk us through that. What were those broad categories?

Christina Fox
I tried to point out different things that I know kids can be drawn to in finding their identity. One is in the things that they do, the things that they’re good at, the things that we say, “Oh, wow! Look at you! You’re amazing! You can run faster than your friends!” Or, “You’re a star athlete.”

Matt Tully
“You’re in advanced math.”

Christina Fox
Yeah. “You win all the spelling bees”—those kinds of things.

Matt Tully
And as parents, we’re on the lookout for those. We’re on the lookout for ways in which our kids are performing above average. I know for me, I want to call that out for them.

Christina Fox
And there’s nothing wrong with encouraging our kids in the gifts that God has given them. But just like so many good things in life, they’re quick to become inordinate things. And so it is important that we temper or just be on the lookout for the ways that those things become idols in our own hearts about our children or for them as well. So I talk about the things that they do and the things that people say about them. I mentioned my report cards, but children sometimes hear from all the teachers in their life, “You never sit still. You’re so squirmy”—those kinds of things. Maybe that is something that they take on as their identity. “I’m the troublemaker in the classroom,” for example.

Matt Tully
I’m sure even what peers say can be so influential. As my kids get older, they’re becoming more and more aware of what other kids are thinking and saying about them, and those interpersonal relationships and reputation issues become such a big deal for kids.

Christina Fox
Yeah. Kids point out to each other the ways that they dress or the way their hair looks. They point out all sorts of things and start to make fun of each other about it. And that hurts us. It hurts our kids.

Matt Tully
Going back to the issue of what kids can do, whether it’s academics or sports, how should we, as parents, think about mentioning those things and talking about those things? On the one hand, we don’t want to encourage our kids to root their identities in those things, but if our kid works really hard and studies and does a great job on that science test, I want to be able to call that out and say, “Good job with that! You did good work.” Any advice for how we talk about that in a helpful way?

Christina Fox
I think the important thing is wanting our children to have the right heart posture toward those things. And so teaching them from the book of Genesis about how God created us. And he gave everyone different gifts, and that’s wonderful and amazing, but we use those gifts not for our glory but for his. And I think that as we constantly root in that and that their excellent math skills are to be used for God’s glory, when they do well on a test, say, “Let’s pray and thank God for that. Thank him for giving you the knowledge to do well on your math quiz.” Or, “Thank God that you do so well on the soccer team and that you helped your team win the game. That’s awesome! But it was for God’s glory, and we need to honor him for that.”

Matt Tully
That’s such a simple suggestion, to just lead our kids in prayer to God and acknowledge his role in that and acknowledge that he’s ultimately the one that we’re seeking to honor and glorify in all of this.

Christina Fox
Yes, because I think that over time, the more that becomes like a habit, then they don’t think, Oh, that was me. I did that. Well, no. God did that through you.

18:13 - When Engineering and Bible Translation Collide

Matt Tully
Maybe one other area or category that you hit on in the book is issues of how we feel—our emotions. I think for kids, but also for us as adults, so often our emotions tend to drive and dictate our actions and our words and how we even think about ourselves. And I think culturally, as we’ve already said, letting our emotions and our feelings drive how we view ourselves is such a big thing right now. It’s so encouraged in a lot of ways, even in very extreme ways when it comes to gender and sexuality. So how do we teach our kids how to rightly assess their own emotions and let those inform how they view themselves?

Christina Fox
It’s a great question. I think a lot of times it has to do with how we respond to their emotional expressions. If our kid is angry and has a tantrum about something, or if that seems to be something they do a lot, it’s easy for us to respond and say, “Why are you always so angry?” We can say that kind of a thing where we are kind of lumping them into this category of being the angry kid, or being the kid who always cries at everything. “Why can’t you just stop crying?” Those kinds of responses I think do play a big role in that. So how we respond to our children and what we say to them when they’re in that moment I think plays an important role in teaching them that. And then in that moment also, just helping them to learn to cry out to God with that and bring those emotions to the Lord and tell him, “God, I’m really mad right now because my friend didn’t invite me to the birthday party.” Or, “My sister stole my toy from me.” Just being able to voice that to the Lord is a good habit for them to learn.

Matt Tully
At the end of each of these sections in your book, where you’re addressing different traits or characteristics that, again, kids can identify themselves with, there’s this recurring refrain. It’s a question: “Is that what makes you, you?” You ask that over and over again. “Is that what makes you, you?” And the answer is always no. “No, that’s not what makes you, you.” What were you getting at with that recurring question?

Christina Fox
I wanted them to really think through how these might be true statements or true things—

Matt Tully
You are good at math.

Christina Fox
You’re good at math. Or yes, you might feel a certain way today, or you might love to wear hats. You’re a collector of hats. That’s something you enjoy doing. But that’s not really who you are. Repetition is one of the ways that we teach things, and so I wanted them to really get that.

21:07 - Advice for Parents

Matt Tully
I think for kids and for us as adults, we might think of ourselves through those lenses. “I always wear hats,” or whatever that might be. “I’m a manager at my job, and I have people who report to me.” We think those things about ourselves, but we don’t often explicitly think, Oh, that is my identity, but it is operating in that way. So that’s one thing I loved about that refrain is you’re bringing to the surface, “Is that what makes you, you?” That will help kids, and probably their parents as well, really ask that question of, “Is this how I think about myself, first and foremost?” And then you’re teaching that’s not how we should root our identities. That leads into a big area that I wanted to hit on briefly here. So often our kids pick up these habits of thought, even these habits of identity formation, from us as their parents. And this topic of where you are rooting your identity is just as relevant for us as parents as it is for our kids. What word of advice would you offer to parents as we think about questions of identity?

Christina Fox
I struggle with it myself. I’m a mom, I’m a writer, and whatever it may be, but those things change a lot. I’m soon entering an empty nest stage of life, where my role as a mom changes significantly. I guess that’s revealed different idols in my heart of showing how I have found my identity in motherhood, in my purpose, and feeling a bit unanchored as my kids don’t need me as they once did. One kid I almost hardly ever see because he’s just gone doing all his things. He doesn’t need a chauffeur anymore. And so that can leave me feeling floundering. What is my purpose today if I’m not doing this thing? And so for me, it certainly has revealed idols of my heart. And I think that’s where our hearts naturally go is to take those things that we find our identity in and exalting them and in an inordinate way.

Matt Tully
I think the best children’s books are books that you can read with your kid, but you’re also getting that same message. You’re also being challenged and prompted in similar ways. That’s what makes a good Disney movie, as we referenced. They work on multiple levels. And I think that’s true for kids books, and I think that’s something that your book does so well. My guess is that as parents read this to their kids and help to shape how their kids think about themselves, they too will be challenged and pushed towards questioning, How am I rooting my identity right now? What am I putting too much weight on, in terms of what I can do?

Christina Fox
Yeah. Because I think that as we as parents find our identity in who we are in Christ, that makes it easier for us to train our children in that way, certainly.

Matt Tully
Christina, thank you so much for taking the time today to walk us through what you’re doing in this new book and maybe help all of us think a little bit more carefully about how we view ourselves and then as parents how we’re teaching our kids to do that as well.

Christina Fox
Thanks for having me.

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