Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / How Dad's Can Overcome Family Chaos

Transcript

How Dad's Can Overcome Family Chaos · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:03
  Hi, welcome to the Family Teams podcast. Our goal here is to help your family become a multi-generational team on mission by providing you with biblically rooted concepts, tools, and rhythms. Your hosts are Jeremy Pryor and Jefferson Bethke, and we can't wait to chat about all things family.
• 0:22
  Hey everybody, welcome back to the Family Teams podcast. We're kind of cruising through a bunch of topics that we talked about at our mastermind called Integrated. And one of the topics we talk frequently about is training kids. And we have a whole module on that that Jeff Bethke and I did in the Skill of Fatherhood course. Yeah.
• 0:41
  And so some of y'all have been exposed to some of our thoughts about what this is all about. And so I've invited some dads on here that are in the thick of it. And so all three of these guys, Caleb, Tyler, and Grant, they're in Family Inc. with us. That's another program that we do that helps coach fathers who are starting businesses. But we're not here to talk about business today. We're here to talk about dads who train. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to read a little essay, and then I'm going to
• 1:08
  have Caleb and Tyler and Grant kind of interact with me and share their different experiences. Because a lot of you guys have younger kids. My kids are older, you know, I've got adult children for the most part and a few teenagers left. And so this was something that was a huge part of my life and is in different ways. But I really want to talk about, you know, the young, kind of the early stages of this. And I think that one of the things I'm so encouraged by is I think some of the dads that I'm around now are really much more intentional about this than I've ever seen than
• 1:38
  I had to learn the hard way in a lot of ways. So I'm excited to kind of interact around this. But first we have to really get our heads around the paradigm. That's why I wrote this little article, which is called Dads Who Train. So if we were to write a job description for the job of a father using only the Bible, one of the first bullets on the list would be training. Every father is built to be a trainer and every child is built to be trained. And the peace and thriving of every family largely depends on the family.
• 2:07
  on the father and the children fulfilling this duty. We are told explicitly in one of the only verses of instruction given to fathers in the whole New Testament, quote, Fathers, do not exasperate your children. Instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
• 2:25
  That's from Ephesians 6.4. Solomon told his son in the book of Proverbs to train up a child in the way he should go. Even when he is old, he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22.6. And in one of the only verses where we get a glimpse of what Abram, Abram means exalted father, was doing day to day as the leader of his family, we read, quote, When Abram heard that his relative had been taken captive, this was when Lot was captured,
• 2:48
  He called out 318 trained men born in his household and went in pursuit as far as Dan. That's from Genesis 14. 318 trained men. That's a lot of training. But today, I rarely meet a father who even knows that this is a basic part of the job description. We expect coaches, teachers, and managers to train, but not fathers.
• 3:08
  Even in the Christian world, there seems to be a larger expectation on youth pastors and mothers to train children than fathers. There's even a growing movement that emphasizes play between fathers and children, but not training. And I can't say that I'm too surprised. Our culture has decided to outsource all essential elements of parenting to the state and other institutions, and too many fathers have been eager to take the free pass and get on doing other things. It's time to reverse this terrible trend. We need to spark a movement of fathers training children. Few elements of fatherhood are more rewarding than the peace and closeness.
• 3:38
  that naturally develop between a father and a well-trained child. And the process should be fun. But even when a father wants to begin training, many don't know how. Most of us have experienced good training in some contexts in our lives. And when it's effective, it always involves at least these three steps, demonstrate, drill, and defend. Demonstrate means you show them exactly what success looks like. Drill,
• 4:02
  You practice repeatedly getting the action right and defend. You provide rewards or corrections and consequences to reinforce what has already been mastered by the child. Need examples? Well, we're going to discuss what this looks like between real dads and kids on this podcast. So if you want to dive deep on how, then check out the master class for dads, the skill of fatherhood. I mentioned that. That's something that we dove into. So...
• 4:26
  That kind of gives people maybe a broad understanding of sort of philosophically, theologically, where we're coming from. This is just a basic part of what fatherhood is all about. But I have a ton of sympathy for dads who are like, okay, that sounds good, but how does that actually work? What do I do day to day? And so I wanted to kind of walk through with each of you guys what your experience is. I want to start with Caleb and go to Tyler and then end up with Grant. So I just want each of you guys to just kind of tell me a little bit about your situation
• 4:56
  what you've tried, kind of where you're at, and then we'll kind of interact around the things you guys have uncovered. But yeah, I love this question. I love this topic. I've got six young kids. So my oldest is nine and a half. My youngest is two. Three boys, three girls. So I think we've got a nice blend of different personalities, different kind of instruction types, what each of our kids responds to.
• 5:18
  The most and one of the things that I think we have seen work really well in our family is training as a whole. So there's definitely times where certain kids need training on a certain thing. But one of the things that has really been a blessing to our family has been picking kind of a collective habit or a collective thing that my wife and I have noticed that we need to focus on. So it could be something like expressing gratitude. It could be something very practical, like getting your kids to stay in bed and.
• 5:47
  could be being kind to one another, which is one we have to come back to a good bit. And so the primary strategy that we've used in training, and I think it's something that you mentioned in the skill of fatherhood, Jeremy, is like the marble system, or we use beads, like beads in a jar. And we essentially kind of call out like, what is our focus? And we try to do it like on a month at a time to really give us time to settle in and make it a focal point for our family.
• 6:12
  And so we have two jars. One's full of beads. One is empty. And the goal is by the end of the month to earn all the beads into the empty jar. And doing that by, you know, following through with the thing that we're trying to train. So if it's gratitude, you know, when we catch you or hear you expressing gratitude, it's it earns, you know, a certain number of beads.
• 6:35
  And when you're ungrateful, you lose beads. You know, you can lose them. And it's something that we try to keep kind of at the forefront. So we have a big, we homeschool. So we've got a huge whiteboard next to our kitchen table. And so we write the habit up there. So it's kind of front and center. We talk about it pretty much every night around dinner, kind of calling out, you know, the things that worked well, the things that didn't.
• 6:54
  Kind of sticking with like the team analogy, you think about like a coach doing a film session with his players, going back, reviewing the film, saying, hey, this is what you did well. This is what we need to keep doing. This is what didn't work. This is what hurt us. This is what we need to change for our next game. And so we really take that approach with our kids. And then to take it a step further, I think one of the things that has worked well for us by doing it together as a team is that –
• 7:17
  it helps to really emphasize that team mentality that we want to approach with our family. Right. So, again, sticking with the analogy of football there, if a running back breaks a tackle and runs for a touchdown, the entire team gets seven or six points. Right. And if a linebacker hits a wide receiver after the whistle and gets a 15-yard unsportsmanlike penalty, it hurts the whole team. Mm-hmm.
• 7:39
  And a good coach is going to call out the individual player for the ways they helped and hurt the team respectively. But in the end, individual players' actions have consequences for the entire team. And so we want our kids to feel that. When one of them falls short and they lose beads, we want them to understand that it impacts not only them, but it impacts their siblings. It impacts their siblings.
• 7:58
  me and their mom. And then the same way when they do something well, it benefits them. It benefits our whole team. And so at the end of the month, if they've successfully gotten all the beads, we throw a big ice cream party and watch a movie and celebrate. And that's kind of like the end of the line incentive that we offer up is kind of our go-to.
• 8:15
  Nice. That is really cool. I think one of the things that is really tough about, or one of the decisions you have to make is, is how individual or how family oriented, like how are we going to, are we going to train or coach as a full team with six kids? That's a really, I really like that approach, like, especially because yeah, you want, so even if, even if fathers are,
• 8:39
  zeroing in on individual elements that they're going to try to train one of their children in. I think there does come a time where you want to start doing full team training, and that's certainly more the way we do it now. What's one thing that we can really focus on? I'm sure we'll get into this a little bit, but I know that sometimes when people hear about
• 8:56
  the Marvel system or beads or any kind of rewards. I've heard that so many people react, you know, like, like if you do that, that's going to basically change the whole incentive where they only are going to want to do good things for rewards. And we talk a lot about that in skill of fatherhood, like how, how to think about the whole idea of rewards and, you know,
• 9:14
  And that I think that people tend to have like way too, I would say black and white opinions about this. We are constantly providing incentives in every other area of our lives. In the Bible, it's very common. You know, God talks about this all the time. Do this and you will live, you know, promises of eternal life. I mean, so much. But you don't want that to ever be the ultimate. Like there's a...
• 9:36
  There's a season of incentive incentivization to get somebody's focus on what they need to think about. And you're really opening space for that focus to start to shape the underlying character. And there does come a time where I think incentives can backfire on you. But I think that they're really important to be used as a tool in certain seasons. So I love what you guys are doing. That's really helpful. Cool. Caleb, you're back. I know you're dealing with the storm. So yeah, let us know what, how is this working out for you guys? What are you working on? Yeah.
• 10:05
  So I think, I think the issue that I've had for so long as I'm delineating between discipline and training, that should be a good thing to maybe hear you talk about some Jeremy, but I felt like I understand conceptually the idea that I should be the trainer. But most of the training, I feel like I've been doing up to this point, we have a three year old and a one year old. I was very reactive and.
• 10:24
  correcting bad behaviors. So we just, I just started a very simple system where we have, so you earn a star, like y'all were just talking about, you get five stars, you get a treat. And that has been like magic. So the other thing that's been really cool is so our oldest, he's very strong-willed, he's three. And when I told him, Hey, you're going to help me train river, his, his younger sister that really engaged him. Yes. And got him to even bind even more to it. And I know you've talked a lot about how important the first born is.
• 10:53
  But what the crazy thing about all this is it's become a awesome tool for discipline too, because we remove a star when there is behavior that I know they shouldn't do too. So we've been doing this for about three weeks, just training on some of the basic stuff, reinforcing it with Mason. And it's been like this morning, literally, like I'm not the first thing Mason said to me this morning. His dad is training day. And it is, it is training day. I don't even know how he, I think it was a coincidence, but it's become something they're excited about and really love.
• 11:20
  Very cool. And I love, so Caleb's situation where you have a three-year-old and about a one and a half year old. Is that how old River is? Yeah. Yeah. So it's so cool because you could start this so early and, you know, a lot of, I think a lot of us wait, but I think that there is a, I think an increasing sort of intuition in the culture that, you know,
• 11:44
  Anything that could challenge a child should be put off as long as possible. And so I love that you guys are not only doing this at the very young age, but that it's actually being experienced as pleasurable. And I think a lot of people don't think like, again, you framed it really well, which is I think the problem that a lot of us have is...
• 12:03
  You think about training in almost exclusively the discipline and consequences area as opposed to the proactive instruction. And that's what kids oftentimes find very pleasurable. To have a father who's actually coming down and thinking about how to train them and they turn it into a game, they make it fun, and they begin by...
• 12:24
  by showing them what success looks like. Consequences, corrections, those are things you can do to reinforce once the child has been trained. But oftentimes when I hear people talk about this topic, either they think it's 100% consequences and discipline or 100%, you know, zero training, you know, untraining. So those are, that's how it's often framed and we're really trying to frame it in a very different way. So that's a great kind of glimpse into the D's life.
• 12:54
  Yeah, I'll add too. I think one, so I crushed the skill of fatherhood in like one night. I put my AirPods in and listened to every one of them. And one of the things that you said that really made everything click for me was we talked about how intentional we get when it comes to potty training. But like after that, it's like everything else, you don't have quite as much of a plan. So that was the thing that kind of snapped something in my mind to think, okay, I can train on more than just...
• 13:20
  the very, very essentials. We can get creative and do just about anything we want to.
• 13:26
  Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It always shocks me sometimes when I'm around a family who was very adamantly saying, we don't believe in training, you know, in the way they're parenting or even in, even the books they're reading or the things they're saying, but then all of a sudden they engage in potty training. Or I've seen multiple examples where they will take their child to the doctor and they find out that he has a peanut allergy or has diabetes. And then all of a sudden they become like expert master trainers overnight. And I'm like, yeah.
• 13:55
  Wait, what, like, why is it that the doctor gets to tell you like, hey, you know, here's something that's good for his health. Why can't the Bible tell you here's something that's good for their character. And you also would use the same methods, and the same intensity and the same intentionality to do those things.
• 14:11
  And, and so I, I think that, that that's a great reminder that yeah, everybody trains their kids and everybody even intentionally pretty almost everybody intentionally trains their kids, especially if there's a medical issue, but man, yeah, there for some reason. Yeah. With that connection of like, Hey, this is just a part of fatherhood. All right, Grant. I know that you've thought about this real deeply. So I want to, I want to do a deep dive on the Grant Stein experience of, of the training in your, in your household. So talk, walk us through what, what is it you guys have, have done in this area? Yeah.
• 14:41
  Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the invite. I'm excited to talk about this. So I feel like I have a picture that can kind of, like an analogy, that can help me understand where we are or where we were, kind of where we are and where we're going. So the picture I feel like I have is a leaking boat. So when we started this journey, our family was a leaking boat. And Kelly and I were basically just bailing out water, trying to stay afloat. And, you know, so we would do that together. And then, you know, for eight hours a day, I'd say,
• 15:10
  good luck keeping things afloat. I'm going to go to work. And she'd be bailing on her own. And then I'd get back and she would say, I'm out. I've been bailing all day. I'm exhausted. And I'd be bailing on my own. And so the lack of training is what I'm getting at was actually, it was causing disconnection in marriage. It was causing our boat to sink if our family's the boat, right? And so that was kind of where we were when we started. And the way I view training is we realized that we have, so we have five kids.
• 15:40
  from nine down to one, two girls, three boys. And we realized that we have an entire team here that can help us bail water out of this boat. But not only that, once they start doing that, we can actually see what's leaking and fix it. And so that's kind of the framework. I think maybe that'll help you understand where we were as a family. And so the very first thing we trained was staying in bed till 7 a.m. You have to stay in your room, stay in your room until 7 a.m.
• 16:07
  And it might sound so simple or silly, but it created so much peace in our home. And it created space. Honestly, the first two weeks, we just kind of like, once we got it done, we just kind of slept to try to keep up, catch up. But after that, it creates margin to connect. It creates margin to think about the systemic issues that are causing the boat to leak. So the way I think about this is like you train behaviors to restore baseline and peace in the home to restore right order.
• 16:34
  And then once you have right order, you can see what's not working from a more rhythm perspective and you can start to train on rhythm and fix rhythm. And then as you begin to do that, you can start to see where the values issues are. And, and then you can start to train towards values. And so that's how it's developed for us. And I can kind of walk you through what that looks like practically. Okay.
• 16:55
  Need a blueprint to revise your family to be a multi-generational team on mission? The book Family Revision by Jeremy Pryor is the book that summarizes all the big picture ideas you hear on this podcast. Available on Amazon or familyteams.com. Like what you hear? Be sure to leave a rating and review for this podcast wherever you use streaming.
• 17:23
  Yes. Well, let me just highlight what you just said, because that's really interesting. Train behaviors. And then that exposes rhythms that you need to develop as a family, which then allows you to address the values of the family, like actually reinforce behaviors.
• 17:40
  Because I think sometimes people start with values. And I love that you started with a very basic behavior, like staying. And I a hundred percent agree. I think sometimes we over moralize or, or we're overly idealistic in terms of like, okay, I'm going to treat, treat my, I'm going to train my three-year-old how to have perfect integrity. So what's the, what's the training method?
• 18:00
  You know, it's like, that's, that's not exactly how characters developed, but you can, you start up. So that that's kind of the progression that you guys have. Yeah. Yeah. Cause you know, my concern was that we would, we would train a bunch of behaviors and we would lose their heart and we would just have, you know, kids who obey, but who don't actually embody anything that we really care about and value. And so, but we also knew we got to train some behaviors to get the margin to actually
• 18:25
  patch this leak and then we need to repaint the ship. We need to repair the sail and get going in the right direction. I'm using this analogy all the way here. But now, now we're actually have a destination. We have a way to get there and we're, we're just kind of tweaking along the way to make sure that works. So yeah, so very practically, you know, we had to train behavior. So the way we did it, we did use the marble system as well. This kind of demonstrate, drill, defend. The way I like to think about it is.
• 18:53
  So when it comes to rewards, I wanted to comment very briefly, this was God's method with his son. So in Hebrews, Hebrews 11, sorry, Hebrews 12, it says that for the joy set before him, Jesus endured the cross. So that's literally the method was, was reward for what was set before him you're able to endure. So there's no illusions that training isn't painful and that it's not hard, but it's for the joy set before you. So we really focused in a lot on,
• 19:20
  on what the reward is. So we actually created the reward before we implemented the system. And we have small kids. So very practically, it was like five marbles, you get a balloon, 10 marbles, you get a sucker, 15 marbles, you get wrestling with dad, right? So we started very simple and we went through a lot of suckers and we went through a lot of balloons, but kind of the way we do it is so reward. So we demonstrate something, stay in your room till 7.00 AM. When you do it, great job, go put a marble in.
• 19:49
  We have a marble jar for each kid. We've tried it collectively and haven't been super successful there yet, but marble jar for each kid. If you didn't, if you didn't stay in your room, that's a marble out. If we had to take you back to your room three or four times, we actually have a way to escalate that. So when it's a repeated training behavior, that's not happening.
• 20:10
  We have a chore jar. Hence, you go pull a chore, and it's something anybody can do, something my three-year-old can do. And it's kind of funny you have to train them on the chore. On the chore. On the chore. Yeah, on the chore. And then they actually become really helpful and practical to running home. And then the ultimate kind of like the ability to escalate is we do spank. We believe in that. We see that scripturally. And when something is just going out of control and too far, then we have that as kind of a
• 20:39
  a way to escalate and options to get there. One other thing that we do is sometimes before spanking is we'll do what's called a reset. And so you're off by yourself having a reset, but we feel like God's given a strategy of like specific song for training our kids on what they're being trained on. So we, we take time to hear God and say, okay, we're training you on X or here's something we see that's a pattern with you. Maybe you're acting like a victim or maybe your,
• 21:10
  And so we've actually found songs that reinforce the truth. So one thing I love about worship songs is they're a really simple way to declare the truth about who God is or about who you are. And so a lot of our resets come with the song and you go listen to the song and reset and it's like realigning to the truth of God. So simple song, like an example song was I am no victim. So for our kids who struggles with acting like a victim, part of their reset is they go and they listen to that song.
• 21:39
  And they're reminded they're not a victim. And so I don't know. We feel like God's given us a lot of different strategies here. Another thing to note, we have different times where kids don't have any marbles to take out. And so practically, you know, the chore jar is there for that as well. If you don't have any marbles, you pull a chore. So that's kind of how we've worked through behavioral things. And so we have visual training boards. They're simple. It's a small poster board. We use the tiny post-it notes.
• 22:07
  demonstrate, drill, defend. And things move through that progression. Demonstrate, we're showing you what to do. Drill, we're hammering it. And one of the ways we do it, I like what you said, Tyler, they're in our dining room. We had them at a different part of the house and we weren't seeing them enough and weren't reinforcing it enough. And so, you know, a lot of times at dinner, it's, hey, what are you being trained on right now? How did that go today? What can you do different tomorrow? Did you love your mom by the way you did that today? You know, real practical, like,
• 22:35
  debrief reflection type question. And then once they, one of the things we do, once you're fully trained on something, that's what we call it. You move to defend and we do a five marble bonus. So it's a big deal when you become trained on something, you get this reward. Right. Yeah. And it, it reinforces, like I worked hard on this and I'm getting rewarded for it. Um.
• 22:55
  And so we have a reward chart that goes all the way up to a hundred marbles now. And so we have kind of these different sections and you know, like my six year old Noah, uh, one of the, there's this place near our house is called the Skadium and it's an indoor skating rink and you had to get 75 marbles to go to the Skadium and this week he turned in 75 marbles and you're like, incredible. Right. So it works and it took him, it took him like two months to do it. So it encourages, there's a lot of other stewardship type principles. You can delay gratification. Delay gratification.
• 23:24
  And so we do a graduation type thing when you, when you defend something. And then once something's in the defend column. So today, if my kid comes out of the room before seven, you can only lose marbles once you're defending, you can't earn any more. Yeah. So that's kind of very practically what it's looked like from a behavior standpoint. Now, when we go wider and talk about rhythm, for us, the way we do it is we've started training routine. So you give one command.
• 23:50
  And the cascade of actions happen in a routine. Start your bedtime routine. Do your school routine. Do your wake up routine. Do your out the door routine. You know, there are the touch points. We realized my wife and I, we were debriefing. Like what parts of the day does everything just break down? Yes. And it's bedtime. It's mealtime. It's when you're trying to get out the door.
• 24:11
  Or even when you're coming in, coming in the door, it's kind of these transitionary phases that seem to be another really big one is like meal prep times like four to 5pm is the hardest hour in our house, or used to be. And so we had to work through like, hey, all the kids fall apart at the same time. Why? And we start recognizing it's a rhythm issue. And it's actually a training issue of we need to train a routine.
• 24:36
  And so a lot of times these days, instead of training a specific behavior, we're training a routine. So when I say bedtime routine, you know, that's pajamas, brush your teeth, get your water, get in bed. Right. And so we're training routines, which then train rhythm, which bring peace and life to the home. Right. Cause I don't know about you guys, but bedtime can be sweet or it can be absolute, an absolute nightmare and really frustrated. Tired at the end of the day,
• 25:03
  And so by training the routine, it brings a ton of peace to the whole scenario. And it actually brings intimacy back into the family of, this is a time when we read, this is a time when we pray, this is a time when we connect. Helps us build in other rhythms that we can do begrudgingly and they're not super effective when you're really frustrated every night at bedtime. And so kind of working through those rhythm issues. And then the other thing that we've started doing is,
• 25:29
  training values. So this is a simple one and I love it because it was passed on to me from my grandfather. It's leave it better than you found it. And so the other day we were on a walk as a family. My daughter, Stela, saw a piece of trash. She picked it up and carried it like half a mile home and threw it in the trash can. And I so appreciated the value she embodied of I'm aware of my surroundings. I'm leaving things better than I found them. I'm taking action initiative. It was like
• 25:57
  Amazing job. Go put in three marbles, right? And we also have these pillars in our family that we want to reinforce as well, such as stewardship and honor and obedient faith. And there's these prayer, these different pillars that our family is built on. And when we see those being embodied, we reward them pretty intensely. And we call them out and we encourage and we really call things up to a higher standard.
• 26:26
  And so now we're not training a behavior, we're training a value. And we're reinforcing, you know, kind of here's our mission as a family here, where we're going. Here's the pillars that we have, these values that are going to get us there. And this is how you embody that. This is how you embody that. This is how we embody it. And we take these simple behaviors and we attach them to value, which gives them meaning. And so now we're no longer training obedience to a behavior. We're training a mission and a value system that,
• 26:56
  that brings meaning to it. Yeah. That makes sense. That's awesome. That's kind of big overview. That was a lot, but yeah, no, that's great. That's what I want. I want, I want the details because I know that, you know, really what I want this podcast to, to focus on is helping going, you know, the layers deeper into the how. So I've got questions for each of you guys as we kind of like,
• 27:14
  try to make sure that this is as practical and helpful as possible. So Tyler, in your situation, since you're doing a lot of team coaching, I'm curious what kind of take me into your household and how do you coach your family? Like you have six kids, you're working on something collectively, either give me example or what's the vibe of how, how do you, how do you pull this off?
• 27:33
  Yeah. So, so good example would be like kindness among siblings. So we have, we've noticed at one point that there was a lot of sibling conflict. And so we decided this was something that needed to be trained and we start off. Typically we'll do it over a meal, breakfast or dinner. And we'll, we'll kind of lay out like, what is the thing that we're focusing on for a period of time? It could be a week. It could be a month. It could be, you know, however long we feel like we need to train that particular thing.
• 28:01
  And so we kind of set the stage, which I think falls into like the demonstrate category where we really talk about, OK, this is the thing. Kindness amongst your siblings. Here's what it looks like. We'll go around and we'll ask the kids, what's a way that you think you've been kind to your to your brothers and sisters this week? What's a way that you've been unkind, helping them to kind of fully, fully understand and think about what it is that we're we're talking about? How does it practically impact their day to day?
• 28:26
  And so then we then we set out to essentially say, you know, over the course of the next couple of weeks, this is going to be the focus for our family.
• 28:34
  We set out the beads. They know what that means. And, you know, we again, we talk about what are those examples that are going to earn them beads? What are the examples that are going to lose them beads? Because we do it collectively as a team, we do we still do try to differentiate amongst the ages. So, for example, my eight, nine year old, I expect a different level of kindness from them than I do my younger.
• 28:58
  four-year-old. And so we help them to understand that, that, you know, they're going to be responsible for carrying more weight as, as part of our team. And then I think that helps them going back to what Caleb was mentioning earlier. It takes the full burden of the training off of
• 29:13
  Bree and I, and it helps to share it amongst the team, right? Because my kids start to recognize, hey, when my five-year-old is being unkind to his little sister, he's got three older siblings that can come in and sometimes not graciously, sometimes graciously help to remind him, hey, you're not being very kind. We're going to lose beads if you keep doing this. Choose a different path.
• 29:36
  Yeah, that's such a great moment when you start seeing your older kids, like by the vision, and then coach the younger kids. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And like you said, there's, there's times and we notice it pretty much every time we start one of these, you know, it comes down to the incentive and, you know,
• 29:52
  And we typically try to be pretty generous with the beads like early on those first few days because we want it to settle in. We want it to be fun. We want them to see those quick wins. And so there's times where, you know, they're coaching their little brother and they're like looking at us to make sure we're watching them so they get credit for it and that kind of thing. But the goal is that habit development, right? The forming kind of those neural pathways of, hey, if being kind to my brother or sister earns me some beads...
• 30:21
  Maybe that's the only reason I'm doing it to begin with. But then over time, we see that it becomes less about the bees. They kind of lose the focus on that. And it just becomes a habit that they're doing, which is the ultimate goal, is that it would become something that becomes normative that then you begin to defend, as Grant said before. Yeah.
• 30:39
  Yeah. Well, it seems like to Tyler, in your case, since you guys are kind of focusing on one thing for maybe a month or so, you can kind of in real time, see what happens when you shift focus, you know? And so you can, you can tell if it's, if it really sunk in as a habit or people were just, you know, the kids were just doing it because they were trying to
• 30:55
  Yeah, they were they were focused on the incentive only and so you calibrate that properly and because a lot of people are so worried about that but it's like, you can see that just if you right once it's hit that defend like in the system grant described or once for you guys you've moved on to another, another thing to focus on you can just see.
• 31:12
  Yeah. The results. Yep. And then there's times we have to come back to it. Like this past two weeks ago around around Christmas, we were just noticing that our kids are being really ungrateful. And and it was one of the things that we had focused on for a long time. And like we we brought it back for a few days or maybe a week at most.
• 31:30
  where it's saying, hey, we're going to kind of refocus on this, right? We're going to go back to this for a quick hit to remind everybody like what it is that we do. And because I think it's because we got out of our normal rhythms with the holidays, kids are getting a ton of gifts, they're excited. And they're like, you know, it just needed to be something that we went back to. And so we've done that fairly often where there's, we just recognize that, hey, this is something we've done. We need to come back to it, revisit it. It's much shorter than the first time just to kind of refresh it. And then we move on to the next thing.
• 31:59
  Yeah. It seems like your system too would work really well for whining. Like I get a lot of people, that's probably the number one question that people that don't want to train or haven't really been exposed to this will say, how do you stop your kids from whining? And you can imagine like in Tyler's situation or anybody, any of you guys who are doing this system, you train, you talk about it, you, you give rewards based on it. You can see your kids start to like, don't like, you know, we've had situations where our kids are, I don't even have to talk about it anymore because if it's a collective situation,
• 32:29
  you know, goal, they're going to, they're going to police each other properly about that kind of thing. I want to get kids out of that. That's a terrible habit. That's awful. In terms of like, just what it does to the culture of the family, like everyone's just constantly frustrated. A kid, you know, multiple kids are whining all the time. So yeah, a hundred percent.
• 32:45
  And I think one of the things that you've said to Jeremy that I think is such a good, good place to get started, like I would imagine, you know, whining or maybe bedtime or some of the more common ones for people with younger kids. But just that idea of like, I know you've talked about you and April doing this during your family meetings, especially when your kids were younger, right? Where you're like, what's what's the biggest pain point? What's the one thing we want to focus on and start there? Like it could like, I love your example, Grant, of.
• 33:11
  Like staying in bed being the first thing to me, that's like such a huge win to be able to say, hey, we're going to start here. We're going to start with something very practical, very tangible with very clear cut results and just start there. Right. And get a feel for it and then build on it. Like it's it's easy to feel like you've got the whole there's a million different things you could train your kids on.
• 33:32
  But to be able to pick some of those like one, two, three top pain points and start there, man, it's amazing what solving those few things will do to open up more time, energy, just like a sense of peace, like you've said, to tackle some of those future things. So I love the way you did that, Grant. That's awesome.
• 33:51
  Yeah. Getting that water out of the bottom of the boat. Yeah. Yeah. Start with that. Whatever is causing the most issues. Well, I want to go back, Caleb, to... So I think a lot of dads are in the situation you're in where it's just like, I've got little kids. I'm just starting this. Give me a couple of examples. What did you start with, with Mason? And then, because a lot of guys have never even tried this. How was that those first kind of drill or exercises? How did it go? Kind of bring us into what that was like. Yeah. Well, what caused me to do it was...
• 34:22
  We were talking about having a large, you know, 30,000 foot view conversation on rhythms and schedule. And so we're kind of rebuilding our week. So I said, hey, let's start doing training blocks. So I did put an hour on the calendar for training for the kids and it was the next day. And so it was like I put this pressure on myself that tomorrow at 9 a.m. was training day. Yeah. And that it's weird just because it was out there.
• 34:46
  there was like this pressure to come up with something. So that was the night I crushed Skill of Fatherhood. I was like, I got to figure this out. And so, yeah, the next day, you know, again, they're three in one. So I'm kind of warming them up to it all morning over breakfast. Hey guys, today's training day, you know, and they didn't really know what I was talking about, but I just kept talking about it in an excited tone. And then there's also, by the way, a time of day where,
• 35:06
  Taylor, the mom, our mom, sorry, the kid's mom, my wife, can kind of have some time to herself. And yeah, so basically what I did was I explained first to Mason, hey, here's what we're going to do this morning. He already knows what cum means. And that was a pain point that we had identified. But we've never really trained it and drilled it. And I actually said, hey, buddy, we're going to train on how to cum this morning.
• 35:27
  And I need your help because River is going to have to learn it too. Okay. So let's go ahead and talk about what we're going to do. Explained it. I had them go to a different part of the room and I said, Mason, come. And he says, coming and runs over to me. High five. Good job, buddy. Okay.
• 35:40
  You know, River, your turn. It was like the first time. She's 18 months. She immediately started doing it. It was so easy. But the hour I put on the calendar, by the way, it's more like 15 or 20 minutes. The first couple of times I was a little overambitious. But then we just extended that longer to kind of be something we did throughout the day. So when we got done with that, I said, hey, guys, today, I'm going to give you a start. Every time when I say come, you come to me.
• 36:04
  And once you get the six stars, you're going to get a treat. And so just be listening all day today. And so we did that all throughout the day. And then they get a very simple little treat. And this really terrible looking piece of construction paper and a Sharpie and just wrote across it, one, two, three, four, five, TREAT in all caps. And let them pick me up. The stars are all different colors. They pick it out, they put it on there.
• 36:27
  And so far, that's what we began doing. We've done that, the arm on the shoulder for interruptions. And then we've started doing a little bit of blanket time. But those were all just from talking to Taylor, her telling me some of the pain points. And that's how we got started. Awesome. Man, that's great. I love this very simple action item of put like even 15 minutes on your calendar. Pick a day of the week.
• 36:50
  So make Tuesday training day or whatever day you want to do when, when works for you, right? When you get home from work or in the morning, or, you know, if there's a weekend day that you want to try and just, and yeah, just, if you have that, that set aside, then, then do whatever little prep you need to do to like, get ready for, for that training and, you
• 37:11
  I just, when I picture, when I picture a dad, if every dad would train for 15 minutes a week for, you know, the first several years of each of their kids' lives or, you know, however, as they, when they have kids in the house, the amount of peace, the amount of like time you would save, the amount of emotional energy.
• 37:30
  the amount of blessing, the amount of character development for your children, it's just like the 100 times return you're going to get for that is so mind-blowing to me. And this is why I'm such a huge champion of this and why I'm like, guys, the Bible, it was really clear. It said very specifically what we were supposed to do. And we literally don't have any time to do it. When the Bible says, do this, then just throw it on your calendar and do it. It's not that hard. And
• 37:57
  So I love that as an action step, you guys listening to this. So that's awesome.
• 38:01
  That's so good. And I'll just, I want to jump in on that real quick, Jeremy, because this is my own like personal fatherhood soapboxes that dads I think are too busy and they get so easily overburdened with like commitments and obligations that aren't actually serving their family's mission or their values. And so like when that happens, it's like all of the things that can't be rushed or hurried are the things that get cut out and like training your kids cannot be rushed and it cannot be hurried.
• 38:31
  And so we like dads, I think so become so over reliant on just using their voice to control their kids. And I've been guilty of that so many times where it's just like, I haven't trained my kid. They don't know what to expect. I just want to be able to speak loudly and get them to stop doing whatever they are doing or get them to stop doing whatever they are doing. And so yeah.
• 38:54
  I think that you nailed it there. And I love that you did that, Caleb, of putting it on your calendar to prioritize this and to say this is something worth setting aside. This is something worth saying no to other less important things to train my kids. Because like you said, Jeremy, the payoff on this is just exponential for the time that we give to training our kids. I love that.
• 39:20
  Awesome. And I'll add in like, I don't think dads like dads will do this in a heartbeat when it's just when their kids start playing a sport. Yeah. Basketball, baseball, they're going to put aside time and start training them in their front yard, whatever. I think that, I mean, it shows that you can, you do have time for it. I think it's just, you got things out of order a little bit sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. So true. Yeah. I would love to comment on that. I think inconvenience is the biggest enemy of training.
• 39:48
  If you're not willing to be inconvenient, training is going to be really hard because it does not happen when you want it to. It doesn't happen on my Tuesday night. We have training Tuesday built into the rhythm where we focus on it. But most of it happens, I mean, it's as you go, right? As you're going down the road, as you're coming in, as you're going out. It happens usually when you don't want it to, when you have somewhere to be, when you've made a commitment, even if you keep your schedule really tight.
• 40:13
  Like, well, the willingness to say, you know, training is more important than X, Y, or Z. And the willingness to be inconvenient is just probably, I would say it's the key. It's the key to actually seeing follow through in the training that you want.
• 40:31
  Yeah. So good. Well, one of the things that verse says, you know, it starts by saying, fathers do not exasperate your children. And I actually think the reason why it starts by saying that is, is that in that culture, I think every father was so into training. I mean, I mentioned that Abraham had 318 trained men in his household before he even had a son.
• 40:51
  These are his household servants, but he was training, training all the time. The problem that first century fathers had was sometimes being overly zealous about what they thought their kids were capable of doing. And then they would burn their kids out or exasperate them.
• 41:05
  But he said, don't exasperate your kids, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. So, you know, that there is a limit. And so some people hearing this are like, well, what if it, you know, crushes the kid or whatever? Yes, that's why it starts with that. Like, it's the job of the father to really watch the spirit of the child to make sure that they're not getting discouraged by the training process. That's why we're talking about, like, that's why rewards are important. When people come out swinging against rewards, my concern is that they're going to exasperate their kids immediately.
• 41:35
  By expecting them to do things without rewards. And I, I don't do anything in my life without rewards. This is something that if you all, if you're all honest with yourselves, like I get dopamine, I get paid for things. I mean, I get rewards all over the place for what I do. And so I think, I think that that's just sort of not really being honest about the big picture.
• 41:54
  I wanted to get into a couple of things, Grant, and your system that were new to me that I'm really fascinated by. So I really like the framing that you have made about routines. And that makes a lot of sense. We had so much peace in our family about bedtime because we were, this is one of the areas where we, and we had like a checklist of like, bam, bam, you know, like a little April made these things.
• 42:14
  She laminated like, and it didn't have, it wasn't written. It was like a little picture of like picking out your, your outfit for the next day. And like, there was like eight things that they had to do every night. And so we would train each of our kids to do that. And literally we'd be just sitting on the couch, you know, and I'd be, I was, both April and I were, we were kind of like those.
• 42:32
  You know, we get into that zombie mode, like, you know, eight, 30, nine o'clock at night. We're like, I don't, I really don't want to, you know, go through an hour long. Bedtime routine. So anyway, in our family, it was very similar. Like we just said, kids, you're ready for bed. And it was like, poof, they were gone, you know, eight things they would do. And they'd be in their beds and they'd be sleeping and.
• 42:49
  I mean, I, this made, this made having kids so much and so enjoyable for us. So I love, I love that you're calling that out as a specific pattern. I'm really curious about like the meal one though. I've not heard it. Like, what do you guys do for that? Like what, what is, you're right. That's like witching hour. Like, like you're getting ready for, for a meal. And, and, and so, yeah, I'm curious about a couple of these routines, that one, and probably the one of like, like getting out the door. Those are both ones that I don't, we trained in some behaviors around those things, but as a routine, what does that look like for your family?
• 43:19
  Yeah, great question. So the meal hour, you call it the witching hour, 4 to 5 p.m. It doesn't matter how great the day went. That could derail an entire day. Yeah. That time. And so what we did for a season was very simple. Our kids, we were super like, what's the word for it? I want to say restrictive, conservative on technology and media and everything like that. And for that time, we did a whole season where we would do audio books from 4 to 5 p.m. every single day. And with our kids,
• 43:49
  They would sit still, they would listen and they would be kind of engrossed in it, honestly. And it, it's interesting cause we don't have to do that anymore. Sometimes we still do, you know, maybe it's a hard day and you can get audio books for free from the library. We can, you can literally, you download an app on your phone. It's all free. You get library books. It's awesome. I'm talking hundreds of thousands of titles. Yeah. There's tons. It's not like a high expense thing. And so we did that for a time and it brought just a ton of peace. My wife could really make dinner.
• 44:18
  in peace. And at the end of that, you know, there's different routines, you know, our kids, you know, they can help set the table, they can bring their water to the table, we do water bottles that they refill and they're responsible for different things there. I mean, most of the cooking meal time type stuff is my wife, she loves it, she's really great at it, really gifted at it. And so it was more about getting them to not be wreaking havoc on the house or each other during that time, or whining that I'm hungry, or I mean, all the things that you guys know.
• 44:48
  about and so for a season we were very intensely like four to five to him like every day with audiobooks that's so cool yeah and it works super well and now it's not necessary most of the time i don't necessarily understand how it kind of corrected itself but it's like that time was redeemed in some ways and so yeah it sounds like they learned to like hang with that ride the wave of that that feeling and and the audiobooks yeah kind of created that space for them that's
• 45:18
  Yeah, which is awesome. It's still a challenge sometimes, you know, like when you have a three-year-old who doesn't know about the story or care about the story, but you know, there's other strategies, you know, inviting them into dinner and to helping with it is challenging or slowing down as that might be. Giving them jobs, especially my son, he's three. And so it's a more, it's probably one of the most challenging seasons with the kid is
• 45:42
  three, four years old in my opinion. And so it's the highest training ground. So that's, that's meal very simply that four to 5 PM hour. And then from a getting out the door standpoint, we actually do, this is the one place where we're, we're training like team is there's a, you have a buddy. So our son who's one, he doesn't have a buddy. You know, Kelly or I take care of him and get him ready. But you know, my nine year old is with my three year old and my seven year old was my six year old and neither of you are ready until both of you are ready.
• 46:10
  And, and that can be rewarded, right? But you're not going to get a reward if your buddy's not ready. And so you're, one thing we've had to fight with that is them trying to parent each other or kind of be bossy. And so we've had to define what does encouragement look like? Encouraging somebody to obey, being helpful rather than being bossy is how I would put it and not trying to be their parent, but being their sibling. We really hammer that. Like you get to be siblings. You don't have to be their parent, but you are an encourager and you get to encourage them and what we're asking them to obey. And, you know, so.
• 46:40
  There's any number of things. It's shoes, it's water, it's go to the bathroom. It's depending on where you're going. If you need, you know, materials, you know, like if you're going to a small group, maybe they need something to help them stay busy. If they're, you know, if they're in that group that day, or, you know, if we're going to soccer practice, you have your, you have your ball, that kind of thing. But, you know, you pair them up and buddy them up and they help each other get out the door. And then, you know, the ultimate part of that routine is, Hey, the only thing you need to do when you get in the car is getting your seat and buckle in.
• 47:10
  That was a whole – what I like about this routine thing is you can train each individual piece.
• 47:15
  and then put them together and then train the togetherness of it. Yeah. That's why I like breaking it down for really, you know, pretty young children. You know, this is that whole demonstrate thing that I think one of the main things that we oftentimes just were surprised that kids need to be trained how to brush their teeth exactly, or how to, how to put a shoe on, how to tie a shoe. Like we have a larger family and,
• 47:40
  Each of your kids needs needs trained in each of these areas. And then again, why would they focus on that? Like, why not just like whine and kick and scream while you're, you know, trying to push their shoes on, you know, but so to, to say, look, no, these are routines here. And I love having like four or five of these that are just these repeat things.
• 47:58
  They, we can, this can either be an amazing, easy, simple experience where we're just out the door and everyone's happy, or we've started a meal or going to bed or getting up in the morning, staying in a room like, or this, you know, this could be just repeated. And the things which you really have to pay attention to is, is in a family, the rhythms that repeat. And, and you can't imagine that.
• 48:19
  how different a household becomes. When you take something that was like, let's say a repeated 20 minutes of frustration every single day, imagine suddenly turning that into 20 minutes of bliss.
• 48:34
  where it's orderly and everyone's doing the right thing. It's crazy the amount that little shift, if it's repeating every day, that amount of chaos replaced by that amount of peace is the difference between often for a lot of times people deciding to have another child. It makes huge difference to your mental health, your marriage, your ability to connect with your wife, your ability to...
• 48:59
  like want to be a father or mother, your ability to dial into the hearts of your kids. All of these things are interrelated to the amount of peace that you, you, you experience in your house. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I think when you think about it too, like there's nothing more exhausting than saying the same thing over and over and over every day. Yeah. And you don't feel heard and you don't feel understood and you don't feel respected and you don't feel honored.
• 49:22
  And, and it's just absolutely exhausting. Right. And so, yeah, what 20 minutes is actually multiplied. Yes. You know, that 20 minutes to peace actually goes a lot further because it's, it's 20 minutes of serious depletion or an hour of serious depletion versus, you know, the, the not having to do that output is crazy. It's different. One last thing I'll say, and this is just kind of the overarching, like goal of all our training for us is we want our kids to know God, to love God, to be able to hear his voice and to obey. And.
• 49:52
  At the end of the day, values, mission, all of it, behaviors. If you can do that, we've succeeded. Yes. I love that. And we trust God to do the rest, right? Like if nothing else, if we can train that, then we've done what we're supposed to do. Yeah. And that really makes it simple. This is ultimately relational. That's right. And if I can't be relational in this, I mean, I think that was probably the biggest win for me with going to a training system of,
• 50:20
  I didn't have realistic expectations, realistic consequences, realistic disciplines. I mean, we had tried little pom-poms in a jar years before, and the day would be going terrible, and we'd dump it out. And it just totally undermined the whole system and ruined the whole thing, and nobody bought in. Or just a consequence that if you have the same one for everything, it's just not proportionate. It doesn't make sense. And so it brought so much peace and –
• 50:50
  just helpfulness of like expectation, not just for the kids, but for us. We know what we're going to say when you're disobeying. I can't tell you how many times I'm like, you have to, didn't know what to say. You say something, you don't mean it. You have to repent. You have to apologize. Or you have to follow through and hate every second of it. And so just that's such helpful expectation, even for us as a parent of how to interact and how to do it well and how to love and how to, how to maintain relationships.
• 51:15
  Yes. And I think that's often overlooked part of training. I would think that training is all about building relationship. It actually is. It is. Well, yeah, you, you painted it really well, Grant, because you know, the, the amount of people when they hear us advocate to have a training system, and this is what I tell, I think, I think every single father should have a training system. They think that that is anti-relational and it's just the opposite. Yeah.
• 51:38
  you're constantly violating relationships with your kids because you haven't thought through the training system. You know, you're the coach who showed up for the football team just yelling at your players. And, you know, when the coach shows up with a really amazing system, it gives him all kinds of freedom to dial into the hearts of his kids.
• 51:55
  his players. And I think that's what happens for us as, as fathers. It's that whole idea of your, your, your, your system is designed to perfectly get the results that it's getting. Right. And it's like, you have a system one way or the other. And if your system is to ignore the pain points, they're just going to get worse. Right. And, and you're, you're, you're training your kids that if they do whine enough, or if they just keep coming out of their room, eventually you're going to break dad down and, and,
• 52:22
  He'll just do whatever you want him to do to get what you want, you know?
• 52:27
  Yes. Yeah. Well, yeah. And that breaks trust and it shows confusion. And the reality is I feel from Jocko here. Discipline will set you free. Discipline equals freedom. Yes. It really does. Yeah. So I like make my kids do 500 pushups every morning. That's right. Yeah. Train those kids. Well, guys, thank you so much for, for being on here today. For these guys listening, we encourage you guys to, to really invest in the system. You can jump into skill of fatherhood. These guys are in family Inc, which it comes as part of the package. If you join family Inc, you can get skill of fatherhood and.
• 52:55
  all of our other courses too at family team. So, but yeah, I just encourage you at Fathers to really take seriously this amazing opportunity to, to train your kids and to make fatherhood fun and, and rewarding. It really requires figuring this out. So thank you guys so much for joining me today on this call. Thanks, Jimmy.
• 53:16
  Thank you for listening to the Family Teams podcast. If you're enjoying this content or have learned something new, please make sure to leave a rating and review and share with a friend. To stay up to date with our events, new content, and products, you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Family Teams.