Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 07 | How to Introduce Books and the Importance of Reading to Your Kids

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Ep. 07 | How to Introduce Books and the Importance of Reading to Your Kids · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:06
  Hey guys, welcome to the 5-Minute Fatherhood Podcast. I'm your co-host, Jeff Beth Key, along with my friend and mentor, Jeremy Pryor. Join us Monday through Friday as we chat about quick tips, skills, and ways to help equip you on your journey as a father to build your multi-generational family team on mission. Stay tuned.
• 0:27
  Hey guys, Jeremy and Jeff here at the 5-Minute Fatherhood Podcast, and we want to talk about books. If you guys have been listening, you know that Jeff and I are really into books and how they can not only shape our hearts and heads as men and as fathers, but also how to introduce those to our kids. Jeff and I have talked about this framework that he's really thought through for his kids as he introduces books to them. I thought it would be really helpful for you guys to hear. So Jeff, what are some ways that you guys think about how to categorize books and how to introduce books to your kids at the ages that they're at?
• 0:57
  Yeah, so we have toddlers right now. And I think it's deeply important to kind of another way to put it is, first of all, read books, read them all the time, read out loud, put audiobooks in the car, read at the couch after dinner, just read, read, read, you should read yourself, read out loud to the kids, let give them books, but there's nothing else to do. Even when they can't read, they can point at the pictures, etc. There's so many immense benefits that research, research has shown. On top of that, though, yeah, we kind of like to
• 1:24
  have what we like to call like a well-balanced diet of things we're putting in front of our kids because parents are in control especially at the toddler age of what's in front of their eyeballs and so we kind of put a well-balanced like food pyramid in front of them even though actually there's research that the food pyramid is terrible and crap and pretty much got bought by the yeah dairy industry but that's a whole nother talk that's a whole nother conspiracy it's not conspiracy it's just terrible the food pyramid anyways um so what
• 1:47
  Oh, yeah. So then the three kind of frameworks that we try to think of is we try to keep it simple because we have toddlers. And so what we try to do is we try to only bring books. And this is guys. This does not mean that we don't have exceptions, etc. It's just helpful of like, oh, yeah, we'll do that. Or, oh, we need some more of this. And the well-balanced diet we do is what I like to call liturgical story and funny. And so the liturgical one for those who are not kind of in a high church tradition, maybe of the Catholic tradition, whatever it is.
• 2:11
  Essentially, that just kind of means repeatable religious things, doing something over and over again. And so basically what that means is like I think it's very important, especially at the toddler age. And we do this very poorly in the evangelical church, I think, to our detriment because we're so afraid of legalism since the 1500s of the Reformation. We hate religion. Exactly, exactly.
• 2:31
  Is, you know, creeds, is prayers, is... I mean, by the way, when the disciples asked Jesus how to pray, he gave them a liturgical prayer. It's like, do this. Like, he spilled it out. He didn't just say, let the Spirit lead. You know, he said, no, like, say this.
• 2:50
  Okay, you're done, right? And so I think actually, because here's the thing, guys, you might not think, like you might be kind of scared of that and think it's kind of overly religious or it's overly legalistic. Well, at the end of the day, you are liturgical because we're liturgical animals. You just do it with Apple and Steve Jobs and your phone, maybe not with Christian stuff, right? Like you pull out your phone in a very liturgical way, right? You pull it out every single morning at a certain time. You know, Jews, you know, pray three times a day and you pull out your phone 722 times a day. You're both liturgical.
• 3:19
  And so there's a big, it's the same thing. And so I just say, why not? And here's another way to put it too. You know, try to tell the government that liturgy is not powerful and they'll just say, oh yeah, by the way, that's why we actually do the Pledge of Allegiance every single day in every single school all the time. Right? Even though no one really cares about it, but yet it deeply, deeply forms. I mean, I'm saying like a third grader doesn't really know what they're doing, but it, yeah.
• 3:42
  deeply forms you, deeply forms you. And so do that kind of stuff with Christian things. So we do that in our family. We have books that are prayers, that are repeatable, that are memorizable. We have books that are the creeds, et cetera. The second one is... What's an example of a book like that? So the Book of Common Prayer is a really good one. If you guys don't know that book, that's the Anglican... It's kind of like an Anglican prayer manual. And you read it with your kids? Like you read a section and... Yeah, it's kind of intense and kind of...
• 4:08
  What's the best way? Intimidating, but Google can help you. There's like how to do Book of Common Prayer with a family, and there's only a couple pages in there. And yeah, it's like an 800-page book, but we only read from like four pages, and it's a repeat after me thing. The kids say it. We do it at breakfast. We also do this creed called the Beloved Creed from Bobby Shuler, who I've told you guys about. You can Google that. There's a bunch of different examples. But there's a lot of books like prayers and stuff like that. If you just kind of search Christian prayers for kids, the Book of Common Prayer has a whole section on families, a bunch of stuff.
• 4:38
  The second one is story. This one's really easy and I'll keep it short. Just imagination's huge and creativity's huge. Get stories in front of your kids that talk about the hero's journey, talk about good and evil, talk about redemption, talk about renewal of all things, all these things. The Bible's a great place to start with that, by the way.
• 4:56
  And then the last one is funny. Like we just want books to be hilarious. We want them to be entertaining. Dragons Love Tacos is our kid's favorite because it's hilarious and because we hate spicy food. But yeah, so I don't know if anything stands out there, but anything you think of ways you kind of thought through this either now with older kids or earlier?
• 5:13
  No, I love that. I love that you think about what are those liturgies. I just heard one the other day, a guy named Marty Sullivan mentioned that every Shabbat or every Sabbath day, his little kids, they recite this little liturgy that says, we rest, we play, no work because God loves us. We rest, we play.
• 5:32
  no work because God loves us. I love that. But that's exactly it. Super simple. Repeat it, repeat it. Repeat it. Repeat it. So yeah, I think that's really good. Yeah, stories were huge into like Dr. Seuss, other really interesting books. So yeah, I would have them around the house, have your kids pick them up, figure out what their favorite is, let them choose different books, see what they're attached to. This is such a powerful way to sort of shape the culture of your home and
• 5:57
  and get to engage with what your kids are starting to really get into and what themes they're really resonating with. So yeah, good, powerful, awesome stories, liturgies. That's an awesome way to engage your kids and definitely recommend you guys have kind of a framework. I love liturgy, story, funny. Yeah, pick up books in each category. That's great.
• 6:16
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