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How To Win Your Kids' Hearts With Easy 1 on 1s · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  there's some mom or dad listening to this right now. And you're like, I've been in diaper stage for 10 years. And I just want to say, as I've been in diapers for 14 years, not me personally, but children have been diapers for 14 years. What a visual.
• 0:15
  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.
• 0:32
  Welcome back to the Family Teams podcast. We are currently in a series where we're talking about winning our kids hearts. And so this is our third episode on this and it's been an awesome conversation. If you haven't heard it so far, definitely go back there and listen. But today we're talking about a really important topic and when it comes to winning our kids hearts, which is setting aside time for one-on-one connection, either with your kids or even your kids with each other. Right? So it's this idea of setting up one-on-ones, right? We have these kind of dynamics where sometimes we're parenting
• 1:01
  And it's, you know, one to many. And it's like the group dynamic. But then we also do have these individual relationships. And as your family grows, it can get more and more exponential, the number of relationships in a family. And so today we got Jeremy, we got Jeff, we got April, and we're going to be talking all about how to do that. Jeremy, set up a framework here. How do we think about one-on-one relationships and proactively setting up those conversations?
• 1:24
  Yeah, guys, this is the one tool that you're going to use to make sure none of your kids fall through the cracks. It's sometimes not obvious, especially if you have a larger family. If some kid is slowly drifting away from the family, especially at a heart level. And so we need to have a proactive tool to lean into that. Sometimes if you don't do this, you can go for weeks or months and not realize I haven't deeply connected to one of my kids. And so we need to have a tool to make sure that does not happen.
• 1:50
  That's so good. And I know there's some mom or dad listening to this right now, and you're like, I've been in diaper stage for 10 years. And I just want to say, I've been in diapers for 14 years. Not me personally. My children have been in diapers for 14 years.
• 2:06
  Yes. And Jeff, what are you? You're probably what, 12 years in to being at diaper stage? 11, yeah. When you've got a young family, and now let's just throw one more meeting at you. I know there's someone who's like, next, turn it on to the next podcast. They're just going to listen to something else. Jeff, before they switch away, talk to me about practically how can you do this when you're leading a large young family?
• 2:26
  Yeah, I would say a couple things. One, take the pressure off. It's not another thing to do, but I would say it's something to piggyback off of what you already do. And so one really low-hanging fruit way that we've done this, that actually the kids even find more meaningful, is integrating it into a life we already live. And so kind of what is your work? What is your job? What are your rhythms? For me, I travel a ton. I'm at coffee shops a ton. And I do podcast things like this a ton.
• 2:51
  And so a kid is usually coming with me on all of these. And this isn't the actual one-on-one connection, but it always is very easy when we're driving home after an hour podcast to go get a coffee for 45 minutes, to go play a card game for 45 minutes, to come with me on a speaking trip for 24 hours. And then we got plane rides. We got hotel time. We got time, all these things. And really all of those connections that now I almost make me would probably make me tear up thinking about the last 11 years of having those is because it was just like, oh, why don't you just come with me?
• 3:17
  Oh, why don't you just come with me? And it's not them just hanging out in the background. It's always like, hey, I got to do some work. But then it's an intentional focus time where we piggyback on top of that. And it's also great training for the kids as well because then they're able to sit in these environments because they know they're earning something that they want to do. And then last thing I would say is maybe until the kids are probably 13 or 14, maybe even older than that.
• 3:38
  A lot of kids, I would say, consider what their parents do for work is like magical. Like it's really awesome. When they see it, they're like, wow, this is unique. This is interesting. This is not what I thought you did. This is really cool. It comes with a lot of benefits. Like for me, the kids just getting candy in a green room, they would say is probably the best thing that has ever happened in their entire life. The fact that they just get like free lifesavers. Do you know what I mean? But to them, it feels so alluring and so magical and so awesome. And so I think kind of like take a step back.
• 4:05
  Look at your life rhythms that you already have in your life, whether you're a firefighter, whether you're a speaker, whether you're a podcaster, whether you're this, and be like, man, how can I kind of piggyback off some of these rhythms to kind of build some connection time rhythmically with each one of my kids in a normal fashion? And I think that's a really easy way to take the pressure off.
• 4:22
  Dude, that's so good. Every Friday I do our Amazon returns and that is a standing date with my eight-year-old boy, right? And so he comes with me for Amazon returns and we'll stop and maybe we'll get a candy bar on the way back. It's a 45-minute date, but it's great and it also makes sure that I do my returns every week. So, yeah.
• 4:40
  Keeping that pile in the closet too long, which I think we must have done. Dude, first, I want to pause real fast. If this is of interest to you as you're listening to this, I want you to go to familyteams.com slash connect. We've actually got some tools that we put together specifically for one-on-ones. And I think it's Jeremy's kind of top 10 list of questions that he likes to talk through. And so, Jeremy, maybe you can tease us a little bit with a couple of those. But if you want the full thing, go to familyteams.com slash connect. Yeah, Jeremy, what are the...
• 5:09
  What's the nature of the conversations that you like to have with your kids? Yeah, oftentimes it's difficult when you have like a five, six, seven year old. You're like, OK, am I supposed to be having a deep conversation right now? And the key to every conversation is just questions, like having good questions. And so oftentimes you're like, oh, I can't think of a good question. And so I think just having in your back pocket some basic questions to get the conversation going at whatever level they're at. This can be really helpful. And so doing an activity, there's other ways. But an example is what's been on your mind? What have you been thinking about?
• 5:37
  Um, another one is who feels in the family, who do you feel closest to right now? Like in the family, who do you feel most distant from right now?
• 5:47
  What's your favorite story right now? Movie, there's a book, something that you've been reading or enjoying. That's a good one. What's something that makes you feel sad? One of my favorite one-on-ones I ever had with Kyra was I asked her, do you remember any of your dreams lately? She started unpacking this incredible dream. I was like, whoa, I'm so glad I had that question. And then what is something that makes you feel happy whenever you think of it?
• 6:09
  So these are things that sort of like they're little threads that go into the heart, like help you just kind of connect. OK, something's going on there in this relationship and something's going on in our heart right now or, you know, something he's really kind of frustrated with something. So sometimes those questions kind of go nowhere and that's no big deal. You're just connecting, spending time together. But man, I would say like more than 50 percent of the time, the right question will unlock that.
• 6:31
  the heart in some kind of way that you didn't see coming. And so yeah, have some of these in your back pocket, be ready to go to make that one-on-one really more meaningful. That's super good. Yeah, I'll say one thing to age of kids. This has been something for me. So my wife, Chambl and I, we've got seven kids, ages 14, 12, 10, eight, six, four, and I guess what now, six months. So we're pretty much every other year all the way down.
• 6:57
  And so this has looked different for us through the years where pretty much under age five, it means play a game for 20 minutes once a week. And so literally I've got games in my office here and it's like, cool, we're going to maybe I'll play Calico Critters for 20 minutes. It's so boring.
• 7:13
  but I will do it for 20 minutes with my four-year-old daughter. But then we can play a game or something like that. I'd say five to 10 years old is a lot of what Jeff is describing, which is going on errands, going on, just kind of following along in life. And then I would say right now for a 14-year-old and a 12-year-old, it's like a meeting. It's a little bit more of like, hey, I'm observing how you're living your life. I'm very curious. How are you thinking about this? Where are you putting your energy? All those types of things. And it becomes a little bit more proactive,
• 7:41
  of me coaching them through. And so I'd say it doesn't have to be a meeting when they're five years old, right? It's okay for us to kind of increase the intensity over time as we do it. All right, we've talked a lot. April, talk to us a little bit about, is this like an every week thing? Is this like a scheduled thing? Is it the same people at the same time? What's your system for thinking through this?
• 7:59
  Yeah, well, it's looked different throughout the years, for sure, mostly based on ages of kids and, you know, the stage that our family's in. So when we first started, it was really geared towards Jeremy getting a one-on-one with a kid every week. And same for me.
• 8:15
  And then it kind of morphed into like, oh, this would be kind of cool if the kids were doing one-on-ones with each other. And so it kind of, it did become part of our rhythm. I think there are definitely times and seasons that's worked for us to do what Jeff was talking about, kind of like piling it into something we were already doing. But then at some point it switched into like, okay, Sunday afternoon we're going to do, it's going to be like one-on-one time. So for this one hour, everybody's doing a one-on-one with their buddy.
• 8:43
  So, um, it would be like, you know, depending on where we were living at the time, because we did, we were doing a lot of traveling. So it would be like, okay, you get to go to the market and buy, you know, some candy or whatever. Usually it's something kind of special because you're the older one and you're the younger one. And, you know, together you guys could go do this fun thing together. So that became a very important part of their relational, um, relationship.
• 9:09
  Like there's a relational map in your family. We've been kind of alluding to that all this time about we each have a relationship with each other, you know, there's the whole collective, but then there's also like me with kid number one, me with kid number two, me with kid number three, and then kid number three with kid number one and like.
• 9:25
  There's a lot of different connections there. And so wanting to foster each of those. And so we would kind of set, I was the one that was kind of in charge of this for our family. And I would set up, I would choose who went with who. And I usually did it based on who was getting along the least.
• 9:44
  Like, ooh, you two need to get over whatever burr you have under your saddle this last week, and we're going to, you know, you're going to do something fun. So they each figured out ways to do stuff with each other that would, there was things that they would like. So it's like, yes, I know you're 11 and she's three. So she's probably going to want to like play a game or do jump rope or have you pull her around in the wagon or whatever. And so they, the older ones would have to learn how to play.
• 10:10
  play with a younger kid. And then the younger ones will learn how they would think it's so cool to have the attention of the older sibling. And then ones that maybe were closer in age, they learned how to like overlap and do things that they enjoy together. Like, you know, our kids liked to read to each other. So there was like a book series that this one was reading to this one. And
• 10:30
  No one else could listen because it was just their thing. And so then they started spending more time one-on-one with that sibling just so they could finish this book in a non-one-on-one sanctioned time or whatever. So it ended up being really cool to watch what it did with their relationships.
• 10:45
  And then they got to know, as they got older, we had questions that they should ask each other. Like, you can't just hang out and watch something. Or, you know, you need to also be asking each other these questions. Like, what was the hardest part of your week this week? Or it's a version of, like, what's a high and a low? Like, that kind of thing. But helping them be able to articulate that with each other was super helpful. Even just saying, like, what's a way I can pray for you this week? Yeah.
• 11:09
  Because they like bringing the spiritual component into their relationship with each other instead of just like fun and games has become really important. So now they kind of know each other's weaknesses, even their spiritual weaknesses. And so they can kind of cover each other in those instead of like laughing at them or making fun of them. They are like, oh, I know she's really sensitive about that. I'm going to try to like.
• 11:31
  you know, not point that out or cover her over. And they're used to like praying for each other now. So I think that that's, those are just some ways we've done one-on-ones throughout the years. And if we have an odd number, like we have an odd number. So I would kind of, honestly, sometimes I would be the one that would sit out because I'm going to automatically make a point of connecting with each one of my kids throughout the week. And so I would leave myself out and make sure that the
• 11:58
  Other six got paired up. That's super good. That's really interesting. The last part you said, this is something that Chandler's talked about, which is that she often feels like as the mother, she needs the one-on-ones the least. She's like, I have these one-on-ones kind of throughout the day, their pockets where she connects with each kid one-on-one repeatedly. Right. Yeah. But she's like, it's almost, I love the idea that you've kind of become the facilitator and the owner of that to ensure that that happens across the family. And it's because of your unique position that you can do that.
• 12:26
  Yeah, it's a little different now because of having married daughters. They're kind of in their own space and everything. And so I have to be like, oh, I feel distant. So I will, you know, reach out and one-on-ones have changed drastically. But we have the language. We can say like, oh, I feel like I need a one-on-one with you. I don't really know what's going on. Or it's been a while since we connected. And they're always receptive to that. Like, oh,
• 12:50
  Oh, yeah, yeah, that'd be cool. So and sometimes now it's like, can so and so watch the kids so that she and I can go get coffee? And it's more of a deal, an ordeal to kind of figure it out. But it also isn't happening as frequently as it did when they were younger.
• 13:04
  Sounds like way less candy land at your stage than is in my stage. Yes. Very true. Great. That's great. Awesome. Guys, this has been a great conversation. I want to keep on continuing it. We're going to be continuing it in January during the accelerator. If you're interested in that, go to familyteams.com slash accelerator. Also, if you want those list of questions, you go to familyteams.com slash connect. We are really pumped to keep on helping families capture.
• 13:28
  the hearts of their children. This is the most important work that we can be about doing. And so we're really excited to kind of do that with you in Accelerator during the month of January. So thank you, everybody. And we'll chat again soon. 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.