Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 323 | Expose Your Kids to Younger Kids

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Ep. 323 | Expose Your Kids to Younger Kids · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  If a couple comes over with three or four little kids, our kids immediately engage with those little kids. All right guys, welcome back to 5-Minute Fatherhood. So we've talked a lot recently about the importance of exposing your kids to adults. I wanna talk for a minute about the importance of exposing your older kids to younger children or babies.
• 0:25
  Again, creating a culture, an intergenerational culture where your kids feel comfortable and enjoy not just peer relationships, people that are within a year of their age, but they enjoy younger kids. They enjoy older kids. They enjoy adults. They enjoy grandparents. This is such an important thing to cultivate if you're going to build a multigenerational family team.
• 0:50
  And so I got an email this week from a friend of ours named Celine. She grew up in a traditionally Indian household, and she was writing me about a different topic, but then she had this little PS that I thought was really interesting. I wanted to read it out. Just give a shout out to my son, Jackson.
• 1:07
  Um, basically what she wrote was, I remember the first time Jackson met our son who was just a few months old and Jackson immediately came over and wanted to hold him, play with him. I'd never seen a non-Indian teenage boy do that before and I still haven't seen it. I think, um, she said there were, there was another boy there that was his age. Um, and it was not unusual. Um.
• 1:30
  for a teenage boy to give a baby the time of day when his peers are around. So she, he, he said, I was recently, she said I was recently around teenage boys who understandably were focused on themselves and their peers. And I was reminded of how unusual that first encounter between our son and Jackson was. I want to encourage Jackson to continue being countercultural and nurturing his fathering skills, even at a young age. So I sent this to Jackson. This is he, and I would say, yeah, he did. And,
• 1:58
  I've seen this. This is definitely true. And I think that this is, I see this dynamic in other families, but it's definitely in our family. If a couple comes over with three or four little kids, our kids immediately engage with those little kids, especially when they're little, really little and really fun. And we have cousins that are, they have cousins that are really young. And part of this is just like enjoying extended family relationships, valuing children, valuing
• 2:28
  And in not fixating on the modern definition of socialization is, do my kids feel like comfortable with peers? And then we check the box. Not even peers, but like 12-month gap. Yes. Yeah, it's almost exactly their age. If you go one year over, one day over, it's not good. We literally think that's what socialization is, yeah. But we don't understand that our kids need to be socialized intergenerationally, right?
• 2:55
  Like that is so important if family is going to be important because guess how many people in their family your kids are going to be that are almost exactly their age? You know, there might be a cousin somewhere, right? Yeah. But if family is the value, your kids have to value people that are older and younger than them and know how to build relationships and engage with all those different age ranges.
• 3:21
  This is just like a principle that I think our culture has almost no value for. So Jeff, how have you seen this play out?
• 3:30
  I mean, I totally agree. It just comes down to normalization too. Like if you're just constantly around intergenerational relationships when you're encouraging it. I mean, one thing, yeah. I mean, obviously it comes down to the other parent, but we think Kinsley's responsible enough and big enough where we almost encourage and she eats it up. That's part of it too. Like anytime we have a family over with a baby, like can she hold her? And she wants to. Now it's where the point where she like, she asks, like, can I hold the baby? Can I be with the baby? Can I watch the baby? Even the other night it was the best. We had some friends over.
• 3:57
  They brought their one month old over and the – she kind of wanted to like lay her down in a separate room where you could still kind of hear but like not fully to bed, just kind of like laying down just – and one month old, you know, you can't roll over. You can't do anything but just kind of like needed to keep an eye on. So Kinsley would just volunteer like, oh, I'll just go watch it. So she just went and sat with the baby and like pet her hair for like a – you know, something like that.
• 4:15
  That comes down to, I think, just like normalizing those relationships, encouraging those relationships. I don't think babies are as fragile as people think. So I think that's the one that really you really set yourself up to fail, in my opinion, where you're constantly telling your toddler, like, don't touch, don't touch. Watch out. Watch out. Be careful. Be careful. Now, of course, hold the neck appropriately. Of course, like it's a baby.
• 4:36
  Like if you got a crazy kid that just doesn't understand that, then like, you know, we don't want the baby to get hurt. But I think we over crank that one. Like, like just, you know, like that, that literally I think starts that of just like, you know, be with your friend and that's it. Don't touch anyone. See anyone. Talk to anyone else. You know, it's like, no, like let them let them let them talk to the babies and touch the babies and stuff like that.
• 4:55
  Um, uh, and it kind of builds up that, that trust, that desire. And then, yeah, obviously the older relationships, intergenerational relationships, and just giving credence to the fact that like teenagers are so much, they're adults in common culture. And I mean, in college cultures past there, you know? Right. And so this, these lies we believe of like, oh, they're, they're going to hate family, hate kids, hate babies, not want to be around anyone. It's like that, if you're feeding that, then you're not helping it. So try to look for little fun ways to resist that. And that's, that's an easy one right there. Hmm.