Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 337 | How Do I Have Orderly Meals & Meetings with Young Kids?

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Ep. 337 | How Do I Have Orderly Meals & Meetings with Young Kids? · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  I've noticed my kids pay attention if I stand up on the table. I've noticed my kids pay attention if I stand up on my chair. I notice my kids pay attention if I, you know, make a stupid trumpet sound with my hand, you know, like do-do-do-do.
• 0:16
  What's up, guys? Welcome back to 5 Minute Fatherhood. So in the 5 Minute Fatherhood Facebook group, we got a question from Daniel. I love how he phrases this. He says, Is it too much to ask for an orderly dinner with five children, eight and younger? It's like six starts. There is a ton of energy and talking, which is great, but when I attempt to steer the conversation to something productive or educational, I find that I quickly get frustrated at the lack of attention due to everyone eating, serving, passing food, side conversations. I attempt to corral the team, but find it...
• 0:44
  It soon returns to chaos. My wife is helpful to a degree, but she feels I'm expecting too much. I find this translates into our family meetings, too. I think I've had more failures and successes with the weekly family meeting. Many times I get so frustrated that no one seems to be listening or paying attention or that they get bored. That it just ended prematurely in a state of defeat. Am I expecting too much from five kids eight and under, Jeff? What do you think?
• 1:10
  Short answer, I would say yes. I would say yes. But here's what I'll say. But no. So I got to back up. This one's – yeah. I say yes because I think – here's what I'll say. Here's what I'll say.
• 1:23
  strategically as a father trying to build a family team, one of the most important places and spaces that you can cultivate in your home is the table for formation, discipleship, storytelling, fun, you know, et cetera. But what I would say, so one of the things you really don't want to do is you don't want that to be a place that just feels like it's always hitting a wall. Yeah. I mean like we're always like where the, where the, you don't want that to be a place where the kids start associating that with like not enjoyable, um,
• 1:52
  not fun, not the kingdom, not partying, not feasting. So honestly, I mean, if there's disobedience there, you got to take care of that. If there's all these different things, you got to take care of that. But when you say everyone eating, serving, passing food, having side conversations at some level, that's what you want. That's right.
• 2:11
  That's like 90% of the goal, right? Like that's what it is. It's like you guys, here's what I'm trying to say. The magic of the table is that you guys are just together and it's a, and it's a, it's a formational moment for your family day in, day out, day in, day out for years. That alone is like 90% of the battles. Like we eat together. Literally that's it. We eat together. That's powerful. Okay. Then to take it to 10 step, I do think you want to take it to 10% farther of like, okay, how do I use this moment now?
• 2:35
  to kind of pontificate for lack of a better term, to kind of, to kind of be the patriarch, to lead, to teach, to talk story, to, to pull strings on my kids' hearts and, and, and listen to them. So I think you want to cultivate that, but I don't think, I just wonder if there's a different way to do it. So a couple of things I thought of when I was reading this is like, how can you make it almost so ridiculously silly and fun that they pay attention? I've noticed my kids pay attention if I stand up on the table.
• 2:58
  I've noticed my kids pay attention. If I stand up on my chair, I notice my kids pay attention. If I, you know, make a stupid trumpet sound with my hand, you know, like, like just, you kind of want to, you want them, you want to do that stuff though, because it associates this, you know, of like, you know, and, and then thinking really short bursts, not, not treatises. Like when you got five kids under eight, I would say if you can get a solid 45 second silence, you know,
• 3:26
  you know, of listening and like you saying a clean little message or reminder, I mean, 45 seconds, which that's longer than you think with silence and with kids, then that's, and every single day, that's amazing. Right. So I, we try to do that at the beginning of the meal. I kind of, you know, like, and I think that's a really, when you can kind of leverage the food against them of like, Hey, we're not touching our food until I have this moment.
• 3:45
  you'll probably get obedience. And in that moment, it's like we pray out loud. And one fun thing I've been doing with the kids is just we do repeat after me prayers always at meals now. And it's just a really easy way to just like, hey, we do it with our eyes open, I think is a really fun way to say, like, we're in this together. We're looking at each other. We're declaring this truth over our family. And it's just like, you know, I just, I make it up in the spot. Like, you know, thank you, Jesus, for today. You are Lord. You're good. You know, and they just repeat after me. That's it. To me, that feels rich enough and special enough where we're reminded, okay, now just eat. And we just...
• 4:14
  And then and then bring really engaging, fun, stupid games. One really easy game that the kids love is what would you rather be and why? And we pick between two animals and then everyone goes next. Right. Would you rather be a zebra or a lion? Why would you rather be this? This? Why? And the kids just love it and everyone zones in on it. So I would say if you mix all that in. But what, Jeremy, what would you say to that question?
• 4:32
  Yeah, I agree 100%. You know, I think too, yeah, you have to keep it fun, keep it light at the table. I definitely think there needs to be a very hard transition from, we're just having fun, we're passing stuff, we're making jokes. Yeah. You want that to exist. And in order to have this epic moment you want to create, you got to make a very strong transition. So like the way we do it in our family is, I mean, we do this at Shabbat, we got older kids, but like we ding our glass. And a lot of times I'll stand up
• 5:01
  And like, you know, it's a big deal. You gotta like, cause, cause what that says is you have permission to be goofy and have fun during the rest of the meal. But there's a moment where I need your attention. Um, now if you're training your kids to pay attention, then when you do that, I would, I would sort of start short. I really liked the 45 seconds.
• 5:22
  And then if you want to get longer than that, you need to do it in increments. You need to slowly increase. And you need to keep that fun and light as well. I remember I had a professor once who had these little individually wrapped gummy bears. And every time you made a good comment or asked a good question about his lecture, then he would throw you a gummy bear. I love that. Like...
• 5:48
  Like we were college students paying, you know, $5,000 for this class and we still needed gummy bears to pay attention. So how much more does a three year old need? It's like a lot of times we just ask too much. Another thing I would say to one of the things you mentioned, Daniel was in your family meetings. And so I,
• 6:06
  I would say family meetings are a huge privilege and a giant rite of passage. You want to start with you and your wife. Then you want to have your oldest child join you. And when that oldest child joins a family meeting, you want it to be like—and sometimes you probably want to break up into two segments. Even with an eight-year-old, I would maybe only have them do it for the first half or something.
• 6:26
  But you wanna basically train them how to interact in a family meeting setting. And then you talk to the rest of your kids, the other four kids and say, hey, someday you too will get to be part of our family meetings. And then make it a huge rite of passage. And look, if they can't handle it, say, hey, look, it looks like you joined too early. I can't wait for you to be ready for this, but we're gonna need to try when you turn nine or when you turn 10. But I would not, you don't wanna create a culture
• 6:54
  where the younger kids are eroding the experience of the older kids and what they could experience by being a part of adult conversations and adult decisions. So that's just another tip I would say is don't always feel like your three-year-olds have to... If you do everything with the littles present, then it's going to just tend to degrade everything. And there are just certain environments or things that they're just not going to be able to hang with.