Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 347 | Keeping Kids Focused During Devotionals

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Ep. 347 | Keeping Kids Focused During Devotionals · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:04
  What's up guys? Welcome back to the five minute father's segment of family teams podcast. I'm here with Jeff and one of the things that we just got back from a awesome couple of days, this thing called integrated, which is a group of business owning fathers. If you are interested, check it out on the website, family teams.com slash integrated. We get together twice a year, but one of the things that Jeff shared that I wanted him to share with you guys in this segment is that he's a family team.
• 0:26
  I love this, is that you've ever been in that situation where you really want to teach your kids something, some truth has hit you, you just got your quiet time, you want to share that at a meal, or you want to talk to your wife, you want your kids to be there, and your kids are kind of young, and they have a hard time paying attention. What do you do? How do you keep your kids focused? Or do you have to dance and jump up and down? Or can you read the Bible? I don't know.
• 0:51
  Like, is it okay for them to get a little bored? What happens if they completely disconnect and always disconnect, get in the habit of disconnecting? These are real problems as we as dads try to share spiritual truth with our family. Anyway, Jeff and Alyssa have a practice that they've been working on that I thought was super helpful and practical.
• 1:08
  Yeah, so this one was totally from Alyssa, but this one was basically... She had this cool idea, as we do the devotional time in the morning, to just get... She bought each kid a little three-by-five notebook. And basically just... And Kinsley specifically does it the best because she's the oldest and loves it, but we can see the other kids growing into it. She just says, hey, draw what you're feeling while I'm talking or whatever. And it does two different things, which is crazy. I think the first thing it did is it...
• 1:33
  uh is is it does exactly that it absolutely zoned them in it kind of kind of gave a task you know and i've actually read you know even separately like you know not even just drawing specifically to what she's saying but i've even read research uh before that that even suggests that just doing something kind of with your hands while you listen to something even if they're disconnected allows you to focus more so it's actually like research backed but then on top of that it's focus and then the third thing that is kind of like a byproduct is that it um
• 1:59
  the drawings are just transformative in how much more it opens up conversation. Like, you know what I mean? Like I've already had talked to Kinsley about her drawings a couple of times and it's, it's way better than like, oh, hey, what'd you get out of that? And they're kind of like, I don't know. I don't know. You just be like, oh, I love this. Tell me more about this. And this person's doing that. Like, it's kind of like you get a peek into how they actually interpret it. And it gives you like, you're kind of like 10 steps ahead when the conversation now comes up. And I just, yeah, super, super one of those 10 out of 10 practices that you feel like you kind of stumbled upon and got golden.
• 2:27
  Very cool. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it allows them to enter into the conversation in this visual, kind of slower way where they're hearing, and you can find out what are they hearing, how are they interpreting it. Yeah, it's a beautiful way to keep that conversation going. And sometimes you guys, when your kids are really young and you bring up spiritual truths, a really dynamic conversation can really emerge between you and your spouse.
• 2:54
  And your kids are just sitting there and you want them to be there just sort of soaking it in and listening. But, um, but either we feel like it has to be targeted at the kids or, you know, we can't have those longer conversations as spouses. But I love this idea of letting your kids draw, because I think that, that, that, that allows them to enter into that. And at the same time allows you to potentially go deeper into, you know, a little bit more adult conversation about the, about the word or about spiritual things. So yeah, that's a great, great idea.