Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 106 | Should Kids Behave and Stay Still during Live Events?

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Ep. 106 | Should Kids Behave and Stay Still during Live Events? · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  We refuse to believe that like a kid can't do that, that a toddler can't do that, and that they need to be entertained every two seconds.
• 0:12
  Hey guys, welcome to the 5-Minute Fatherhood Podcast. I'm your co-host, Jeff Bethke, 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.
• 0:33
  What's up, guys? Jeff and Jeremy here. Another episode of Five Minute Fatherhood. We have a fun discussion for you today. We actually pulled a little prompt from Reddit, which me and Jeremy enjoy from time to time. And actually, I pulled a couple if you didn't know that. There's a little trivia because there's some fun discussions there on what people like, what people are talking about. And one of them was on kids and teaching them to kind of sit still at public events, live events, performances. But Jeremy, yeah, tell us a little bit more than what you kind of think the bullseye of it is.
• 0:59
  Yeah, so when you think about little kids and live events, a lot of people have sort of one of three reactions, it seems like. One is you totally avoid live events, right? Like, ah, these aren't for kids. Keep our kids away. Certainly there are seasons where that's probably a really good idea, right? A second way you do that is you actually attend a live event and sort of just let your kids be kids. And you're like, yep, see? Yeah.
• 1:21
  You know, like, and you just keep your kids in the live event while they're creating disruptions. Some people have the stomach for that, right? And then the third way is that you take your kids, but you really train them how to behave inside of a live event.
• 1:38
  And so in this conversation, I'm just always fascinated by kind of these conversations in the wild happening around parenting and kids. And it was really interesting. There was a lot of consensus in this forum discussion that parents need to train their kids how to sit well through live events at a young age.
• 1:56
  And I think that's a really good idea. And every single kid's different, and there's no judgment or heaping some kind of expectation that's really tough for your particular situation. The idea here is I think it's just a good idea to know that kids need to be trained
• 2:11
  to sit through live events. And the reason why it's so good is because it's really important that you get all the enjoyment from those live events. We want kids to be with us. This is a huge part of what we really encourage you guys to be together as a family. But one of the things that pulls families apart is when you have to get childcare for every single live event.
• 2:32
  that you might want to attend, whether that's at the church or something else. And so we always really tried to push into this as a family. We loved, you know, we would go to concerts and bring all of our little toddlers. And like, you know, we would... There was a lot of training that we tried to do to help our kids learn how to be... Because we just wanted them to be with us. It wasn't just like...
• 2:50
  And I think that a lot of times when—this discussion really got interesting because what a lot of the people were getting really upset about was sort of that second option, which was a lot of people—and I agree with this. If you just say, well, kids will be kids, and I think this is a really common thing today, is that we're like, hey, if this is a kid-friendly event, if we ever say kid-friendly on any live event, then what—
• 3:12
  inevitably happens is that people come to the live event with their kids and then they allow their kids to kind of, uh, uh, sort of get really crazy and chaotic and disruptive of the event. And so of course then you have to, you have to stop saying it's a kid friendly event and that's such an unfortunate problem because what I want to say is bring your kids, but not your chaos, you know, like bring your trained kids or use this event to train your kids. Well, you know, but, but there's some line in our culture is really at a, uh,
• 3:39
  weird place where I think a lot of us, we can't quite figure out where that line is. And so I wanted to have this conversation a little bit. I know this can be a bit intense and I know there's a lot of details to specific situations. But what do you what do you what are your thoughts about that, Jeff? Yeah, well, I think there's so many layers to this one and we think about it intentionally a couple of different ways. But first, I'll say.
• 3:55
  Yeah, there's this inherent belief, again, that we're always butting up against in culture that you shouldn't have to train your kids. They just let kids be kids. That is such a bad, corrosive idea. So that's first thing is don't. That's not true. Like, they need to be trained. Maybe you don't think they need to be trained at live events or maybe you think they're too young. That's fine. But I'm just saying, do you in general think they need to be trained? That's like the kids be kids.
• 4:17
  Kids be kids does not mean let's just have absolutely unruly, hedonistic monsters, right? Like that's, that's not like, that's what people are saying when they say that. And that is like so detrimental to our society. Like then when, when that's the underlying tone of what people are saying, when they say, let kids be kids.
• 4:32
  That really bothers me. So that's the first thing. But I'll say this is how we think about it intentionally. We have two kind of opposite poles that I think actually help us try to get into a really good space for this. The first one is we refuse to believe that like a kid can't do that, that a toddler can't do that and that they need to be entertained every two seconds or that they need to be okay, like yelling and screaming and dancing around.
• 4:52
  And we have outgoing rambunctious Jefferson Bethke Jr. Kids. Right. So like, like we, we know like this is difficult for us. Like I've seen kids, kids where it's like, oh man, they're, they could have done this out of the womb easily. Right. And it's a little unfair, but you know, you get your lot. Um, but so that's our first one is, is like you kind of, I think parents need to actually expect more of their kids. That's what I'm trying to say. And we do, we just like naturally there's kind of this imposing of like, not even like
• 5:18
  having that conversation on that level that at least for us has been helpful. We're like, oh no, no, no, that's ridiculous. Like, don't do like you're, I know you don't, you don't need to do that. You're four, you're five, like that's unnecessary. And you're way beyond this. It's kind of a weird way. It's like reverse psychology or something, but it's worked for us of like, yeah, we expect way more of you than that. That's just not okay. Right. Because I think we actually expect kids to be more crazy and ADHD and whatever.
• 5:40
  So it's like, no, I know you can control yourself. I know you can be obedient. Just do it. I know that's maybe not the ideal thing, but it's worked for us. And I think that's essentially what I'm saying is expect more of your kids than you think they can actually give you. They're amazing and they're blessings and they can be ridiculously obedient and focused and motivated for certain things.
• 5:59
  So expect that. But then the second one too, is I think specifically with like church setting, um, is being well for that first one, for example, I think we love that because then like, for example, we want, like you said, we want to be together. So we want to make that a high value where we just expect them to be able to do it with training and teaching and focus.
• 6:14
  because we want to be together. And like church worship is a huge one for us where when we go to church, we don't want to just split the minute we walk in the door and then just come back together the minute we leave. So realistically we worship together, we sit in there. And a lot of times Kinsley will even want to hear a little bit of the sermon. They watch some of the announcements and the dances and stuff like Aloha dances and stuff, or hula dances, excuse me. And so that's, which I don't know if every church has that, but we do. We don't do that here in Kentucky.
• 6:40
  Yeah, exactly. But we love that. And so realistically, when we take the kids to Sunday school, we're almost out. They almost there's been plenty of times when I take them to Sunday school and the check in is already closed down. So we actually can't go in because I take them so late. And then I pick them up even early. So they're only there for like 20 minutes. But that's because we want to be together.
• 6:57
  And that's just the way we figured it out where they also love Sunday school and they want to be in there. So that's just how we do it. And so we want to be together. So to do that, we want to be in there. Then the second thing I was going to say, which we can end on is we also need to have the tension or the balance, I think, especially in church of like not believing that kids don't exist. Right.
• 7:13
  Right. Like, I think that's another tension that I think is like, we want our worship experience to be so purified and aesthetically pleasing and so consumer oriented. That's what we don't realize. We want it to serve us so much for 90 minutes that how dare a baby be crying. Right. Right. Like how dare that actually be happening? Like I paid for this. Well, no, I really didn't, but it's kind of like a movie theater. So I think I did. Right. And it's a very similar setting. So I need to get my product and you're disrupting my product.
• 7:40
  That is a really bad spirit that I think is actually in a lot of churches. Yeah. That like kind of this is a fake environment. No, no, this is not a fake environment. This is a real environment with real life. And it's not like we treat it almost like the surgery room, right? Where it's like you got all these different things and mechanisms of like it's so purified and perfect and there's nothing wrong. And it's like, no, no, that's not what it is. And so that is another thing that I would actually encourage the adults with. And we can end on that is make sure, though.
• 8:06
  that you're not believing that kids don't exist and that there is a messiness at the level of children being trained in environments and around. And I think actually specifically in the church experience, that is actually the conviction and the goodness of God that he wants to give us, that there is laughter, there is joy, there is running around. And the way that they enjoy the worship experience is actually how all of us should be at some level.
• 8:30
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