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Antidote for Busy, Stressed Kids: Savor the Moments · Raising Daughters

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  Speaker 1: Hello friends, Doctor Tim Jordan's back with you here another
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  Speaker 1: brand new episode of Raising Daughters, and I've got I
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  Speaker 1: think an important topic today. The topic is savoring the moments.
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  Speaker 1: I finished my first week of summer camp a couple
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  Speaker 1: of days ago. I was struck once again by how
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  Speaker 1: busy and stressed our girls are today. And these are
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  Speaker 1: girls in grade school and middle school. That's this first
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  Speaker 1: week of camp. So stressed, so busy, always rushing around,
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  Speaker 1: so many activities, full schedules. There's so little time for
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  Speaker 1: them to breathe, so little time because of all these activities.
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  Speaker 1: And then if you add on to that, for girls
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  Speaker 1: who are old enough i e. Maybe Middle school or
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  Speaker 1: high school or beyond, there's also that thing called iPhone, smartphone,
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  Speaker 1: social media that keeps people zoned out. I see people
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  Speaker 1: walking around everywhere with their noses and their phones, even
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  Speaker 1: when they're outside walking, They're missing so much. I think
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  Speaker 1: our girls are part of that. I don't think girls
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  Speaker 1: feel very grounded today. There's so many prescribed activities, adult
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  Speaker 1: driven activities, supervised activities, and I think when things are
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  Speaker 1: done with adult supervision, if I can say this to
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  Speaker 1: you without you screaming at me, I think they're less fun,
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  Speaker 1: they're less fulfilling for the kids because it wasn't their choice.
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  Speaker 1: Are are. You know, adults are involved, which means that
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  Speaker 1: they're kind of running the show. So I think girls
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  Speaker 1: don't feel very grounded. I think we're sucking the joy
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  Speaker 1: of living out of them. So I noticed a camp
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  Speaker 1: this week. You know how stressed these girls were and
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  Speaker 1: when they were talking about how busy their schedules were.
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  Speaker 1: So we found lots of opportunities this week. And you
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  Speaker 1: can do the same. That's why I'm doing this podcast today.
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  Speaker 1: You can do the same, and you can teach your
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  Speaker 1: girls and boys for that matter, to look for and
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  Speaker 1: notice experiences that are all around them, not just to
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  Speaker 1: notice them, but to feel them, to really take them in,
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  Speaker 1: to bring mindful awareness to those moments. People call that
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  Speaker 1: savoring the moment. You make it last more than just
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  Speaker 1: a glance. You make it last for twenty seconds, a minute,
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  Speaker 1: five minutes, an hour, as opposed to being distracted and
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  Speaker 1: moving right on quickly and not really internalizing it. Or
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  Speaker 1: something is held in our conscious awareness, the more emotionally
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  Speaker 1: fulfilling it is, and the more emotionally stimulating it is,
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  Speaker 1: it causes more neurons to fire in our brains. More wires,
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  Speaker 1: more memories are wired in together, and it makes the
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  Speaker 1: memories stronger. Let me give you some examples, so I
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  Speaker 1: think it will make it clear. On the first or
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  Speaker 1: second night of camp last week, we had story time
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  Speaker 1: at night, which is before they go to bed. Delk
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  Speaker 1: sit around this pavilion on the floor and I tell
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  Speaker 1: them stories. And I was telling them a story that
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  Speaker 1: night about how the Big Dipper came to be. And
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  Speaker 1: it's not a very long story, but anyway, but I
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  Speaker 1: taught them like this story about how it came to be,
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  Speaker 1: and then it was time for them to then go
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  Speaker 1: to their cabins. As we were walking out of the pavilion,
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  Speaker 1: we looked up in the sky. It was one of
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  Speaker 1: those beautiful clear nights, dark sky and amazing stars. Plus
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  Speaker 1: we're out in the country, you know, we're away from
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  Speaker 1: the city. So we stopped to savor the moment, and
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  Speaker 1: sure enough, right above us was this brilliant big Dipper.
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  Speaker 1: So we had just talked about the story about how
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  Speaker 1: the Big Dipper came to be, so we all just
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  Speaker 1: stood there and we looked at the sky for several moments.
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  Speaker 1: No flashlights, we just looked at the sky. We noticed
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  Speaker 1: some planets, we've noticed some other constellations. We savored the moment,
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  Speaker 1: and they walked back to their cabins, not with their
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  Speaker 1: with their faces and a phone, but when their faces
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  Speaker 1: up to the sky this time. And by the way,
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  Speaker 1: there's no phones of camp, so they would have had
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  Speaker 1: a phone anyway. But I thought, that's one example, just
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  Speaker 1: looking up at the night sky and stargazing. When's the
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  Speaker 1: last time you stargazed with your kids. I'm not talking
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  Speaker 1: about glancing up and walking in the house. I'm talking
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  Speaker 1: about sitting outside in some lawn chairs and just spending
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  Speaker 1: five or ten minutes are longer really noticing the night sky.
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  Speaker 1: One day, we went on a creek hike. There's a
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  Speaker 1: creek which is I wouldn't say it's a small river,
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  Speaker 1: but it's a big creek. It's probably, oh, maybe fifteen
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  Speaker 1: twenty feet across. And you know, I should know, we've
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  Speaker 1: been having some rains at least around this area in Missouri,
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  Speaker 1: and so we had a hike down this little cliff
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  Speaker 1: thing to get down to the river. It was really
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  Speaker 1: thick mud and then we walked up the creek. In
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  Speaker 1: the water, it was maybe most places ankle deep, but
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  Speaker 1: there were other places where it was like knee deep
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  Speaker 1: or a little bit higher. And then we came to
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  Speaker 1: some little quote unquote rapids. There were some area that
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  Speaker 1: was just you know, maybe six inches deep, and the
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  Speaker 1: water was going over these rocks. So we all just
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  Speaker 1: sat in the water, right in the middle of the
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  Speaker 1: creek and we just sat there and we talked and
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  Speaker 1: we we At one point we told them to cut
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  Speaker 1: their hands behind their ears and just listened to the
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  Speaker 1: water as it was streaming by us. It's a beautiful sound,
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  Speaker 1: like a bad brooked if you will. When was the
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  Speaker 1: last time you sat down and listened to something like that,
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  Speaker 1: a nature thing with your kids. We listened to the sound,
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  Speaker 1: not just to the water, which was great, but also
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  Speaker 1: there was birds chirping overhead. There was a little bees
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  Speaker 1: and insects buzzing by, and it was a great moment.
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  Speaker 1: It was one of my favorite moments in the whole
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  Speaker 1: weay of camp was that creek walk. Another time we
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  Speaker 1: saw a storm was approaching. This is in the early evening,
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  Speaker 1: and so the wind was picking up and we just
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  Speaker 1: stood there. I was with a group of kids. We
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  Speaker 1: were walking up from walking up from the mess hall
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  Speaker 1: and we just sat, I'm sorry. We stood there and
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  Speaker 1: watched the wind blowing through the trees, and these trees
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  Speaker 1: were like blowing back and forth there. We're obviously safe.
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  Speaker 1: I wouldn't be out there if there's a tornado or something,
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  Speaker 1: but just looking at this, there was a beautiful kind
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  Speaker 1: of cloudy sky behind the trees, and the trees were
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  Speaker 1: swaying and making a really nice noise with the wind
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  Speaker 1: rustling through the leaves, and we just stood there and
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  Speaker 1: savored that moment. The next morning, some more rain came in.
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  Speaker 1: We were in our little learning time inside in a
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  Speaker 1: meeting room, so we opened up all the windows and
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  Speaker 1: just listened to the rain for a while. I love that.
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  Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite nature sounds, is you know,
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  Speaker 1: a nice rainstorm. We just listened. We said no talking,
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  Speaker 1: just listen, and we didn't do it for ten seconds.
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  Speaker 1: We did it for a couple of minutes, and they
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  Speaker 1: enjoyed it. We used it as ourself quieting for that morning.
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  Speaker 1: One afternoon, we walked, oh about fifteen to twenty minute
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  Speaker 1: hike to some fields that had some corn but also
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  Speaker 1: some huge amount of sunflowers. The people who own this
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  Speaker 1: property grow sunflowers every summer and we always hike up
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  Speaker 1: to them, and this year they were in full balloom
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  Speaker 1: and they were amazing. You can imagine acres and acres
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  Speaker 1: of sunflowers, you know, kind of these curving, curving fields
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  Speaker 1: of them, And so we walked in between them, noticed
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  Speaker 1: the flowers, lots of bees, you know, buzzing around. Took
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  Speaker 1: lots of pictures, but we also at one point just
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  Speaker 1: stood there in the flowers and just looked, just used
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  Speaker 1: our sense of vision to really take in our sunflower field.
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  Speaker 1: We did the same thing several of the evenings. We
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  Speaker 1: get a couple of evenings with beautiful sunsets off in
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  Speaker 1: the distance. We could see him above the trees and
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  Speaker 1: through the trees, you know that that really beautiful kind
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  Speaker 1: of deep orange yellow colored with some red in it.
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  Speaker 1: Just beautiful. So we stopped and and just savored the moment,
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  Speaker 1: savored those sunsets. There were several of us who sat
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  Speaker 1: down on the on these benches that were nearby, and
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  Speaker 1: we just watched it for a while, didn't talk, just
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  Speaker 1: took it in. Nature provides lots of different kinds of
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  Speaker 1: opportunities to savor the moments. In my office here I'm
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  Speaker 1: a window looks out onto our property. There's lots of
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  Speaker 1: trees out there, and I also have three bird feeders,
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  Speaker 1: two bird feeders and one hummingbird feeder. And when my
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  Speaker 1: grandsons come over, I love to take them downstairs and
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  Speaker 1: look out the window so they can see the birds
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  Speaker 1: flying in and out. They fly in, they fly out.
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  Speaker 1: They notice it when they start talking the birds go away,
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  Speaker 1: so they learn to the kind of stay quiet. They
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  Speaker 1: love it, and I do too. When the hummingbirds will
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  Speaker 1: come in, swoop in, you know, take a little bit
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  Speaker 1: of the nectar, and then you know, fly off. So
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  Speaker 1: fine ways to slow down to notice what's around you
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  Speaker 1: and really take in the sights and the sounds and
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  Speaker 1: the colors. It's it's very grounding, very relaxing, and those
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  Speaker 1: men memories of seeing that won't be imprinted in you
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  Speaker 1: if you really take a few moments to really let
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  Speaker 1: it in, consciously enrich those memories by calling up similar
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  Speaker 1: feelings you've had from previous experiences. Oxytocin gets released in
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  Speaker 1: our brains. It deepens our sense of connection. If you
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  Speaker 1: want your kids to have an antidote to this busy
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  Speaker 1: rush world with all the noises, and the sounds and
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  Speaker 1: the gadgets. Then take them outside and savor the moments
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  Speaker 1: that are all around them, whether it's sunrises or sunsets,
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  Speaker 1: whether it's wind blowing through the trees, whether it's the
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  Speaker 1: water rustling on a creek, whether it's a campfire we
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  Speaker 1: did last week at Camp two. There's so many ways
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  Speaker 1: that we can see it. Looking up in the sky stargazing.
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  Speaker 1: Most camp weeks will take some tarps out onto a
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  Speaker 1: few where there's no lights anywhere around and lay down
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  Speaker 1: the tarps and we just lay down for a while
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  Speaker 1: and just look at the stars. Find those times, savor
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  Speaker 1: the moments. Help your kids become grounded out in nature
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  Speaker 1: to sort of balance out all the ungrounded times that
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  Speaker 1: they're experiencing in their day to day lives. Savor the moments,
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  Speaker 1: and you can do that anywhere. You can do it
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  Speaker 1: with people, you can do it with experiences. I purpose,
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  Speaker 1: I individually, I like the ones out of nature. To me,
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  Speaker 1: those are the ones that are the most telling, the
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  Speaker 1: ones that are most grounding for me. I think that's
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  Speaker 1: one of the best things that nature does for us.
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  Speaker 1: So you got to slow down you personally, mom and Dad,
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  Speaker 1: in order to help your kids to slow down and
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  Speaker 1: to notice those things. Teach them to do that you'll
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  Speaker 1: never forget that they won't forget those moments. We have
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  Speaker 1: several moments from our camps from last week that I
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  Speaker 1: know are on those girls' hearts and they won't forget those.
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  Speaker 1: Savor the moments and enjoy each one with your children.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for stopping by here each week.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for passing these on to other people.
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  Speaker 1: This might be a good one to pass on to
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  Speaker 1: your friends and maybe the ones who live in your neighborhood,
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  Speaker 1: So you guys can find some ways in the neighborhood
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  Speaker 1: where you live to savor the moments out of nature.
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  Speaker 1: I'll be back here in a week with a brand
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  Speaker 1: new topic and a brand new podcast. Pass us on
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  Speaker 1: to your friends. Check out my website at www dot
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  Speaker 1: Dr Tim Jordan dot com for information about my books
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  Speaker 1: and my previous podcast articles that I write, summer camp weeks,
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  Speaker 1: all the things that I do. Just check it out
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  Speaker 1: www dot Dr Tim Jordan dot com. I'll be back
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  Speaker 1: here with a brand new topic a brand new podcast
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  Speaker 1: in a week. Thank you so much as always for
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  Speaker 1: stopping by