Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 11 | Creating Your Own Family Night

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Ep. 11 | Creating Your Own Family Night · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:06
  Hey guys, welcome to the 5-Minute Fatherhood Podcast. I'm your co-host, Jeff Beth Key, 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.
• 0:27
  What's up, guys? Welcome back to the 5-Minute Fatherhood Podcast. Jeff and Jeremy here. Now, this episode I'm really excited about because I think me and Jeremy both have big nerds inside of us in regards to fantasy or novels or whatever it is. And this is a really, really, really great tip to build family culture, to build a family team. And that is create your own unique family night. So, Jeremy, talk about how you guys do this and what that is when you do do it.
• 0:53
  Yeah. So it's so cool, you guys, that when God's given us families, and I think one of the things that we can do is make them really, really unique. And I think that one of the things that you can dive into to figure out what could be super fun and unique that when your kids are older and telling stories of their grandchildren, what they're going to talk about is probably more than anything, whatever was really interesting and different about your family team. And so one way to really solidify some kind of unique element of your family is,
• 1:22
  is to pick a night of the week, and this could be a night of the month, but we like to do it once a week, and dive into some really fun, epic story or some kind of interesting theme. Some people like to make music. Some people like to make art. Some people like to do other different creative things or sports or whatever. I know in our family, one of our favorite theme nights that's kind of totally geeky and very unique to us is our Tolkien night. And so we have a night where I like to read Lord of the Rings or some version of Tolkien or some...
• 1:51
  that he wrote in The Silmarillion or some other crazy thing. To the kids, we talk about it. We have music around it. It's kind of a part of that. You've got to tell them your bumper sticker real quick. You've got to tell them your bumper sticker. Yeah, I have a bumper sticker that says, I'd rather be reading The Silmarillion. That's the actual kind of Old Testament of what Tolkien wrote. The crazy story about that, Jeff, I don't think you know this, but that bumper sticker came from a friend of mine, said, oh my gosh, look what I found. And he had a picture on Facebook of that bumper sticker. And so I went out and bought it
• 2:21
  not knowing that he created that bumper sticker on Cafe Press just to get me to buy it so that he could get the 43 cents. Yeah, it was nuts. And he was like, I need fall for that, Jeremy. Anyway, I'm a total sucker for anything really geeky Tolkien.
• 2:36
  But I have great stories about how people have literally stalked me because of that bumper sticker. So it's worth it. That's our theme night. And we've got lots of details we can share around it. We have a cool song that goes with it, a bunch of books that we display and that we get to get into together. But I think it's really fun just to have really unique things that your kids can look back on and enjoy.
• 2:55
  Jeff, do you guys have something in your family you're going to geek out around? We do. We do. There's a couple different things. And I want to hear – I know you guys are football people too, so I want to kind of segue there with one of our nights too or one of the things we do. And our kids are a lot younger, so it's not like a full-blown night of the week yet. But I definitely think we're big Narnia fans almost exactly the way you're Tolkien fans. And so, yeah, it's very – like to us, I know for sure one of the plans when we're just – when they're just a little bit older will be a Narnia night, meaning like, yeah, we will – there's seven books in the –
• 3:22
  series. And it's very easy and a great, great book for conversation starter, imagination, the gospel, et cetera. But yeah, we might just make Tuesday night, like, you know, read Narnia night every week in the Bethke house. But for now, there's kind of two things that stand out to me of like ways we kind of do this because guys, fathers out there, or even if it's a mom listening right now is don't be afraid to let what you like impact a culture of your family. Like I actually think that's actually really the fun parts about unifying a family is you get to, you get to do that. And when a mom and a dad are both doing that, it's really, really cool.
• 3:52
  Yeah. So for us, I would say the two things that we do is I'm just I freak out about Back to the Future. Like I quote the lines. I memorize the lines. I love the movie. I've seen it hundreds of times. Me and Alyssa watch it on date nights. So that's one right there where it's not fully in the sense of like, you know, we're watching it every week yet as a family, but it certainly will be later. But you will probably.
• 4:13
  Exactly, exactly. That's coming. And then on top of that, I think, yeah, just whether it's quoting the lines or for now I've noticed it impact our culture of like our kids know Marty and Doc. They're four and two, by the way. They know Marty and Doc by first name basis. Like they refer to them. They're all over the house with posters and Lego figurines and, you know, little like memorabilia I have, et cetera. So that's a big one that we let impact our family. I have the book. So I have the movie in book form for kids and our kids love it. They talked about the DeLorean. They talk about time travel.
• 4:42
  It's incredible. So that's that one. And then the next one is basketball. So we love, it's funny. I didn't play, I played basketball growing up, but I was a baseball guy, um, a lot longer, but baseball is kind of boring to watch. And so I'll totally admit that. And so we watch basketball sometimes as a family with games and we love the warriors cause they're fun to watch. So yeah. So like we, I rally the kids around just, I mean, we only get like two games a year, but when it happens, it's really fun. And so we watched the game together. We, we, we,
• 5:07
  I think there's, and I want to hear you talk about this. There's kind of two ways where you can kind of bring sports into families. It's either like, oh, that's dad's thing. And he's actually removing himself from us to go watch sports. Or it's like, oh, let's do this. Let's watch this as a family and make it an event. And we like to look at it like that. If like dad likes the Warriors. So we're all going to watch the Warriors and we're going to make popcorn. It's a special treat. I want the kids to feel like it's a really fun thing. And then we mimic it later in the backyard, et cetera. But what would you, how would you end that with how you guys do sports too? I know your football family a little bit.
• 5:36
  Yeah, yeah. We love watching football. We're big Seahawks fans like the Bethke's. We grew up in that area as well, so we're always cheering them on in the Bengals. We'd love to cheer them on if they could win a little bit more. That'd be great. But yeah, I agree with what you said. I think one of the things that's really important for a dad to do when you're trying to draw your kids in is pay close attention to whichever child is the least drawn in instead of the ones that are the most drawn in. So you don't want to cause that one to be a little bit more resentful. Yeah.
• 6:03
  You know, go over and really, like, sort of connect with the kids that might not be, like, as excited. Sometimes you're watching sports. Some of the kids just get it. Other kids are like, I have no idea what's going on. I don't care what's going on because I don't know what's going on. Sit down and just, like, you know, talk to that child and really engage with them and talk to them about what's happening.
• 6:20
  When they're into it, when they know that you're into it, that really triggers something in them. So I would say theme nights are awesome. Make sure that all the kids are having fun, particularly the ones that are feeling the most left out. And you will have something that your children as siblings will share for the rest of their lives. They'll roll their eyes when they talk about dad's crazy obsession with this or that. And, of course, you'll infect them for the rest of their lives with that passion as well, which is awesome. So go infect your children. That's the message for today. Yeah.
• 6:48
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