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How To Train Your Kids At Every Age (Baby to Teen) · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  That is the essence of what it means to be a really good coach, a really good father who's training his kids. You want to be...
• 0:08
  All right, welcome back to the Family Teams podcast. Today, we are going to be talking about training your kids at the different stages of childhood or development. Obviously, we're not looking for a one-size-fits-all training system. What we want to do is kind of cater that to the maturity level of each kid, right? So today, we got Jeff Bethke, we got Jeremy Pryor, we got April Pryor, and we got me, Blake Allsmith. All right.
• 0:33
  And what's interesting is that I think we've got kids aged one to 25 represented, right? We're various stages of parents here on this call. So I think that we can all kind of come in from a lot of different angles. But before we jump into the first stage, let's talk a little bit about what's at stake here.
• 0:49
  I think that it's very tempting to come up with a simplistic view of training kids. Like here, here's our central philosophy and just say we only do one thing no matter who the kid is or how old the kid is. This is our one system of training, right? And what happens is if you get so rigid on that, a couple of things can happen. One is that you don't have the ability to flex based on, you know, different kids at different stages in your home. And that can be really frustrating, right?
• 1:17
  Two is for a kid who's younger, who's being called up to maybe an older way of training a kid, it can get really overwhelming. Just recently, we were having a dinner table conversation. I've got seven kids, ages 14 down to one. And we were talking about the Myers-Briggs personality test with the older kids. And so I was kind of going through and talking. I'm like, hey, who's an extrovert? Who do you think is an introvert? And like they were kind of typing themselves. It was a fun conversation. And my six-year-old, all of a sudden, like I moved on from extroversion or something like that to intuitiveness.
• 1:46
  And my six-year-old all of a sudden gets overwhelmed and she starts to cry. She goes, I don't know what we're talking about. And I realized that we were just having a fun conversation with the older kids. And she's just like, I haven't answered the question yet. And I feel like this is way over my head. But I think it's a good example of how frustrating it can be if you realize if your level is off. If you're parenting at the tween stage to a three-year-old.
• 2:11
  it can be incredibly overwhelming and frustrating, right? That's a big thing to look out for. So that's what we're going to talk about today is we're going to talk about littles, we're going to talk about tweens, and then we're going to talk about older tweens and even older kids on how we think about training. So why don't we kick it off? April, you want to jump on with littles. You've trained up five littles of your own, and now you've had such a success. You're back to round two. You're training up grand littles, right? So talk to me a little bit about how you think about training up littles.
• 2:39
  Yeah, I do think it's very important to acknowledge the fact that there are different stages to training and it can lead to a bit of whiplash for the mom. Because in your age span of children, like we had nine years between our oldest and our youngest,
• 2:56
  I would be expecting one thing of my nine-year-old and something completely different from my newborn, right? So I had to understand that there is going to be, there is like a gradated process that needs to happen. I'm going to talk to my 11-year-old much different than I'm going to talk to my two-year-old. So in regards to the younger stages, I think a lot of people are, want to know, like, when is it a good time to start some kind of training? And, you
• 3:22
  So I would say there's not necessarily a magic number about age, but I would say two things to look for. One is mobility. When they start to be mobile, they can just start to get into a lot of things, and that's mobility.
• 3:37
  That is potentially dangerous. And sometimes, depending on how early they're mobile, they're not necessarily cognitively as far along. Like a 10-month-old isn't as far along as a 15-month-old or however long. You know, that age range can vary.
• 3:53
  And so I think that the other thing is, this is probably like across the board, no matter mobility or whatever, is that when they give you the look, and I think if you have a child who's older than two, you know what I'm talking about. When they're sitting in their high chair.
• 4:11
  And they all of a sudden realize that it would be fun to throw their sippy cup off of the high chair tray. And you say, oh, no, no. And then you pick it up and you put it back. And then all of a sudden they throw it again because that was fun. And you see in their eyes this look of them going, huh.
• 4:32
  That was fun. They did say no. I wonder what that means. And they might look kind of off to the side when they do it and things like that. That's when you know that they're trying out the world, right? And they want to know if this is going to continue to be okay, if you're going to continue to say no to them. And so that's when I think you need to start some form of training slash discipline with your kids. Yeah.
• 5:00
  And then, you know, it's something to, things to remember in those first, like, that could be as early as 15 months, um, 18 months. When, when you, until like about, you know, age three or so is it's really important that that, um, the way you interact with them comes quickly, that you are immediately dealing with that situation, um,
• 5:25
  That young person does not understand if you sit there and talk to them about the logic of why you shouldn't throw your sippy cup off of the high chair tray. And you take some time to just talk about gravity and boundaries and respect for how many times you're going to make me bend down. Like that's not going to work. And so you need to do the swift exercise.
• 5:50
  you know, whatever you're going to choose to do for that, whether it's a little flick on the hand or something, you know, a stern voice that tells them no. And I would really encourage parents to not be afraid of the word no. I know that that's kind of a thing these days, but it's okay to tell your children no, no throwing your sippy cup. So as long as you're kind of immediately responding to them and then being really consistent with it.
• 6:17
  So some kids want to push the boundaries more than others. And they want to maybe say, how about today? It's raining. I wonder if it's still not okay for me to throw my sippy cup off the high chair. How about today? Mom's wearing red. How about today? Dad's wearing blue. I wonder if it's still okay. So they're going to test the boundaries in different ways. So just being consistent. And then the rewards can be very small when they're little.
• 6:42
  when they're 15 months old and they're knocking something off of the coffee table and you're having them put it back up and they do it well and you show them how with their hands and you do it with them and then you clap. It's just a clap. It's a, there's some joy in your voice and you're telling them good job. That's the reward. All the reward needs to be in those years. There's also some good, you know, some ways to train your kids around things like blanket time. If you want to have
• 7:10
  some time where your child is like occupied with something so that you can either like have some time alone with the Lord or maybe make some phone calls or something, training them to sit on a blanket with some toys for, you know, 10 to 20 minutes. I think some kids can go longer than that. Then you are using that opportunity. I think that's something you can do starting at age two, maybe even younger than that.
• 7:36
  so that you can have some time. If you want to have more than one child, your concentration, your focus is going to be split in so many different directions. A lot of times it's hard to create that environment where everyone's occupied at the same time.
• 7:51
  So blanket time is really great for that, to have everyone have their own blanket and their own toys, and they're trained to sit on it for a certain amount of time. Yeah. And then I think around, like, somewhere, again, it's not an exact age, but around, like, four or five is really when you would start to introduce the conversation around what they just did. Like, do you know why it's not okay to hit your brother? Yeah.
• 8:15
  like, let's talk about this for a little bit and talk about other people's feelings. And of course, you can talk about it sooner than that. But for them to actually comprehend what you're saying, and I think it does kind of take some time. And then around age five or so is really like, when timeouts are probably going to be more primarily what you're doing, it can be a little bit of a conversation, and it can be a timeout. And then,
• 8:40
  a conversation to kind of wrap up the time out to remind them what they did. And that kind of thing, too. And then I think that's you kind of get into that. That's the way it is for ages five, six, seven kind of thing.
• 8:53
  Yeah, that's so good. My wife is the oldest of 10 kids, and they have eight boys and two girls in my wife's family of origin. And so I was talking to my mother-in-law, who raised these eight boys and two girls, and I had one kid in particular of ours who, as a two-year-old, just was so difficult. And I would correct him, and he would just defy again. I would correct him, and he'd defy again. And I remember asking her, I said, did you have any boys that were like this? And she's like, I had eight boys that were like that.
• 9:23
  And I said, so do I just keep correcting them? And she's like, yes, that was her solution. I was like, like 50 times I keep doing it? And she goes, yes, 50 times you keep doing it. And I think the difference between boys and girls in our experience, we have four girls, three boys, the difference that I've seen is about maybe...
• 9:43
  20 to 1 the number of necessary corrections to train where it's like I have to discipline 20 times or correct 20 times with a boy versus the one time with a girl and that doesn't mean that the system's broken doesn't mean that maybe you're doing it wrong if that's the case different dispositions and often sometimes even different genders I think really do react differently to this process and so the the key is to not get reactive to not get
• 10:09
  worked up or bothered to take it personally or to doubt the system. It's just a calm, consistent, kind of differentiated approach to like, I'm going to apply this system with love and with care. That seems to be the key, at least for my mother-in-law. But what does she know? She only raised 10 kids. So...
• 10:25
  Yeah, other thoughts on Littles from y'all's perspective. No, I love that. I think the only thing I would add to that, that April and Jeremy have taught us so well, and then also alludes to everything April said, is that we've noticed that the earlier we start, the better. It just sets the brain chemistry, the tonality, what it helps in the family, like...
• 10:45
  And it's easier. Like, it's just kind of easy to start training when they're younger, and then it just sets a culture that kind of really gets you ahead. It's really harder to go backwards on bad habits, you know, if you don't start, you know, little training around basic household help and things.
• 11:03
  noise and table and all that stuff until they're like seven like that's that you kind of like you got a lot more backwards to go on that so i would just say start earlier than you think and more gentle than you think like it's it actually is easier because it's more gentle than it's like it's actually really funny to like train a little two-year-old it's just like this is not no one's making me mad i'm not upset i'm not angry i'm just like this is hilarious and you're not going to do that again so you know what i mean so i think you're just starting as early as possible as the best is the best route
• 11:29
  I don't know if you felt this at all, Jeff. I remember maybe after having four kids or so, I started to feel a little bad that I was so on the ball training our older kids. The first two, I was on it, early age, like tons of time doing it. I would go to the grocery store, not even to shop, but just to like train a kid, right? And I'd take them around and show them stuff. I wasn't doing that with child number four. And I was starting to feel really bad about it. And I remember talking to Jeremy about it, actually.
• 11:59
  you can either accept the fact that there are limitations that happen with the younger kids and that maybe that's how God designed your family, or you can just stop having kids. And he's like, and that's kind of your choice, right? He was like, or he's like, or I think you said you could either, or you could alter so much of how you're living your life so that everyone gets an equal amount of parenting. Yeah.
• 12:23
  Or you have to say, like, this is just the way that God maybe designed our families, that maybe those older kids got more time. And that results in maybe more order in the home. Yeah, but I think focusing on the earlier kids, like you said, actually serves you later because then the culture of the home starts to train and teach the other kids. There is so much that is caught by younger kids because you, if you do a good job with the older, it's just a trickle down effect. You know, it's just Reaganomics essentially in the home.
• 12:49
  Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. I do think that it's important to understand that when you're introducing a young child into a fully developed family culture, they get sucked into the vortex of that family culture. Now, if they're incredibly strong will, they're going to try to overthrow the vortex. I mean, there are exceptions.
• 13:07
  But we have had situations, even with our kids. I remember one situation where we had all of our kids were a little bit older. Maybe Kelsey was maybe 14, 15. You had a Kyra who was maybe like six, seven. And then somebody came and dropped off their family with like four or five much younger kids than our kids.
• 13:26
  And we just paired them up and it was, it was one of the most peaceful, like 24 hours, um, with, with, we had like 10 kids in the house, but our five kids just sucked the, these, these other, this other family into the vortex of the, our family culture.
• 13:42
  They just knew exactly what we expected. And they were in these these kids were they were pretty well trained so that they were kind of watching our kids to see how to respond. And oh, that's what and it was so was not difficult. It wasn't like complete chaos. But I think that you do have to really help with those older kids are really kind of crucial to that strategy.
• 14:01
  Like if they're on board, if they're excited to live into that culture, if they feel like they're a part of it and they enjoy it, and then they will really help those younger kids just get acclimated. And you've all experienced this, you know, being the freshman in high school, being the young kid on the coach, you know, on the sports team, going out and, you know, being in an office for the first time and a new work. You're hyper like watching. Okay, what's expected of me? What's going on here? What's the culture here?
• 14:30
  And kids are the same way. They're very curious about that and they can be very impacted by that. And so you want to you want to really win the culture with the older kids. That's really good. All right. Let's let's turn the chapter over. Let's talk about tweens. Suddenly things aren't quite as simple. We can't just say no, no. And things move on. Jeff, take us to the next stage of training. What does that look like? Yeah, we're in the middle of this right now, which is really fun.
• 14:56
  But it is a different stage, and I think I've already started to change and adapt a few things that has started to see some interesting fruit, which is helpful. This phrase I keep coming back to right now is, I'm trying to get louder with our systems, but quieter with the enforcement. And here's what I mean by that. First of all, let's talk about the bad versions of that.
• 15:13
  I'm not saying quiet with the system and loud with the enforcement. I think that's where no one actually even knows what we're accountable to, but then everyone, the hammer's getting brought down on everything, right? So that's what you don't want to do. And I also think toddlers should be loud with the system, loud with the enforcement. It's kind of this like, hey, you broke, you crossed the line, okay? But now as we are getting into a stage of, you know, 10, 11, 12, 13, but not quite
• 15:37
  quite like these full-fledged teenagers, you know, pseudo young adults. What I've noticed is I do have to start nudging them, or here's another way to put it. I think I get even better results. Our home gets better results if I start trying to nudge them towards leading them to the water of self-enforcement. Does that make sense? Meaning it's actually like it goes well for our home, and I consider it the best win ever in any training thing we're trying to do, anything
• 16:06
  when they say something like, oh man, I guess I really lost a point there. Let me go take it off. And I haven't even said a word yet. Like that to me is like, yes, yes, we are like, do it. Because that's the age when you want to start making sure that you're trying to cultivate intrinsic motivation, not extrinsic motivation.
• 16:24
  Because this really matters. You can get results out of your kids until they're 18 and leave the home by just bringing down a hammer and they just simply don't want the consequence. But what the goal is, is to get them to start doing things because either they want to or they see that it's actually a good idea.
• 16:42
  and that they say that it's actually necessary for their life and for the home and for the longevity and the flourishing of their life. And so I do think you have to be really loud with systems as they're older. Like, I've noticed that I feel like even toddlers sometimes can remember stuff than more than a 9 and 10 and 11 year old. And I don't know if it's like there's like a men in black thing with this, like, you know, their memories delete every five seconds, you know, because of puberty and hormones or I don't know what it is, but I'm like, oh, my.
• 17:07
  And so, yeah, so when I say loud, what I've noticed is we are putting up like posters in our home of like, don't do this. This is our rule. And what I've noticed is, again, what that helps with is you're not battling me anymore. You're battling the poster. And what that does is that takes the locking horns away.
• 17:24
  It's like, oh, no, you're actually we we sat down on some random day and we filled that out together. We had to talk about that, meaning like I'm I'm you're accountable to that piece of paper. Like, you know, of course, it's me and of course, it's our home. But what it does, it just kind of it takes away the bulls locking horn situation, which I think you can get into that again is.
• 17:45
  is either a strong-willed kid that is just trying to lock horns, or you're just getting a kid to do something simply because they don't want the consequence. And I think the better thing is to then be loud with the system but quiet with the enforcement. What I mean by that is you're still enforcing. I just mean it's a lower voice. It's gentle. So it's both either a win when they self-enforce, when they're like, oh man, I messed up, I'm going to go take a point away. Yeah.
• 18:08
  Or what I find myself doing a lot in this stage that goes well, meaning I don't do this every time, but when it goes well, I'm usually doing this, is I'm sitting on the side of their bed and I'm actually just asking a few leading questions that get them to basically admit that they were wrong and then for them to say their own answer and discover it on their own. So it's kind of like, rather than me being like, hey, you crossed the line, now go do the thing I told you to do. It's actually like, hey man, what happened there?
• 18:31
  Uh, hey, what did you do there? You know, hey man, what did we, did we talk about something that something should happen when we do do that and we cross that line? Okay, well, what is that? Like it just, it's, it's something about that question leading is just then all of a sudden it's a little bit of actually teaching that self enforcement because it's coming out of their mouth.
• 18:47
  I'm not saying anything. They have to say the discipline. They have to say what the consequence was. They have to say that, oh man, we, hey, did we ever agree to that? Did we ever make an agreement about we would work on that? Oh yeah, we did. Okay, well, how are you doing at that? I'm not doing great. Like, you know, and that's the kind of culture that you're trying to create in a kid's heart that you're not gonna see a ton of fruit on, by the way, 7 to 12. But I think that is what we're, that's how you really get into that teenage phase, in my opinion, with real serious health.
• 19:12
  is that they're intrinsically motivated to start honoring, obeying, not just because they don't want to get in trouble, but because they think it will go well for them, which is the biblical mandate. And so that's one thing I've noticed big time and that we're trying to do that really, really matters. And so that's the one thing I would say. I don't know what you guys would jump in and say, because we all here have kids in that age or have in the past. What would you guys say?
• 19:36
  Well, I have another question for you, Jeff, because one of the systems you are allowed with is sleeping at the Bethany home is very important. And I'm imagining somebody listening to this. That's like, you're like, what's the best payoff I can quickly get from this whole training idea? And for some people, it's like they just may need to get a good night's sleep like more often with their family. So, yeah. What are some things you guys have done to be kind of loud with your system in that area?
• 20:06
  That's a very good question. Let me try to think about that for a second. But that is huge to us. I mean, we, and again, you have to reverse engineer what you need bare minimum. And I'm just like, man, if me and Alyssa are not sleeping well, then like we're not going to be great parents and we're not going to be able to serve well. And so that is one of the highest things we train at, both nap times when the kids are younger and still quiet times. Our kids still have to do quiet times at 11 years old. It's just like, go read a book, go do whatever, let your nervous system chill out from the day.
• 20:30
  And that is transformative and life-changing. And then same with bedtimes and sleep so that we can get sleep. And so, I mean, one of my favorites I've done recently is I tend to have to take a nap 20 minutes, 30 minutes every, you know, every single day. Just a quick little cat nap here and there. And I've literally, it got so, the kids just became so disruptive. It was a very simple rule where it's like, if you come into a room and my eyes are closed and I wake up because of you, you will run 10 laps. It was just that simple.
• 20:56
  It was just like, and like, don't, I don't even care if you're in it. That means if you're coming in the room to tiptoe around me to grab something in the room, that's a gamble you can take. That's a gamble you can take, but if I open my eyes, that's 10 laps. Because, you know? And so, and all of a sudden, what do you know? They stopped tapping on my shoulder. They stopped coming in and needing something. And I'm just like, and they, and I just, and they know they can wait 20 minutes. And so, yeah, having just a basic like, you know, X equals Y with that one has served us really well, for sure.
• 21:25
  Have you guys noticed that at the tween stage of parenting, you start reading the Levitical laws with a little bit more respect? I read these laws that God made and he'll say, hey, do not sleep with this person. This person is your uncle. And they'll explain, and do not sleep with this person because this person is your cousin. And you're like, that's a good rule. That's a solid rule. Like he explained it really clear.
• 21:49
  He talked about the edge cases. He defined the boundary. Like, I feel like as a young millennial, I thought the law, just throw it out of there, completely useless. But now, as a 40-year-old parent of tweens, I'm like, that's a solid rulemaking skill that the Lord has. I respect that for sure. Yes. And the tweens are addicted to pushing the edge cases. That is a true thing. Yes. The tweens want to say, well, what about, what about, what about? And I'm like, stop.
• 22:14
  I know. Like the Lord really preempts those by putting some boundaries around them. Like, that's a good rule. Pretty good. All right. We've talked about littles. We've talked about tweens. Jeremy, bring us home. Papa Jeremy, please tell us what do we have coming forward with teenagers and young adults? How do we train these people?
• 22:31
  Oh, yeah. Well, this is definitely an incredibly important season to be thinking about training. I think that fathers with sons and mothers with daughters become critical in terms of this stage in particular. And my favorite verse about training and parenting in this way in the whole Bible is, I think it's John 1.14 that says, The law came through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
• 22:57
  And that is that if you did a great job of giving your kids law-based intuitions at a very early age, like if you do this, this is the consequence. Then you've set them up really well to experience grace and truth in this older stage of their life. You can give grace, and they'll experience it as grace, not as entitlement. If you didn't do a good job setting up the law and you're gracious towards your teen, they'll be like, of course you're gracious towards me. I'm awesome. And you should be even more gracious.
• 23:26
  It's like that doesn't work very well. So that's why we want to start with a really strong foundation. And then we want to move on to grace and truth. And what you want to do in this stage is I think that as soon as your kids turn 13, 14, you want to begin a process of finding these arenas for mastery. And this is where so much is going to happen in terms of their own character development. Yeah.
• 23:51
  And the way that we started doing this, we did this with our younger kids. I wish we had done that. I'm going to go back, I think, April and let Kelsey and Jackson, you know, now that they're in their mid-20s, like, you know, now we figured this out. We can offer this to them. But we began to make contracts with our kids, mastery contracts. And so for Elisa, it was about the harp. Like, you can play the harp. The harp is an extremely expensive instrument.
• 24:15
  I absolutely love having the harp played in my house, but you have to commit to two years of becoming a harpist. Like, I want you to experience what it's like to actually master something. And I will, now I can't help you. I'm not a harpist. I'm not going to be able to like train you, but I will help you. I'll help find...
• 24:35
  a great harpist and then your mom and i will will make sure that you get to a place of mastery over two years so take take a good month or two to find a mastery arena and then let's really figure it out because because what happens is when you with any new thing you're trying to learn how to do you just go into the dip pretty quickly right you have the honeymoon period where it's like oh my god the harp is beautiful
• 24:58
  And like two months later, you're like, I hate this thing. Like, you know, it's like it's hurting my fingers. And like, I've had to practice over and over again. And it's really getting through that dip towards mastery and experiencing what that's like. And that is some of the best training you'll ever have with your kids. One of my friends is signed a master contract on chess with one of his sons.
• 25:19
  I'm so excited to see that happen. You know, Kyra, we're working with her in pickleball. Like, I want you to become really, really good at this. You know, study a language could be this way. We've done this with our kids with like the Hebrew language. You're going to learn a language. Like, let's actually spend a couple of years and really, really train in it. So I love that. And then you let that...
• 25:38
  bring up all the character issues, right? That are going to naturally come out when they hit those dips, when they become really arrogant about how awesome they are. Like whatever is happening within that arena, you can coach both to the mastery of that thing. So they learn how to do hard things and you can coach to the character issues that are naturally coming out.
• 25:58
  making sure that, and you can do this not just as individuals, but as a family, you know, there, there could be something you decide to master, like multiple people in the family, which is awesome if you can pull this off. But I would say that that, that's just one sort of major tip that we've learned. Um, this is part of why, why too, what, you know, Jeff and, uh, John Tyson are doing with primal path or these different rites of passage, I think is another arena for this age where actually like sitting down and designing something is,
• 26:26
  That's immersive. That's intense. And that involves the dad with the son or the mom with the daughter. And you can do something with the dad and the daughter and the mom and the son as well. But I think those actually training them in that, like by that sort of same gender parent is really, really critical at this stage. That's excellent.
• 26:48
  Yeah, I love that so much. I feel like the intentionality of increasing challenge as they get to that kind of adult level of wanting to bring on more. I've heard people talk about, especially with maybe kids who are a little bit more privileged or families that have more economic privilege, that it really is important to inflict challenge under your children and say, hey, you're going to sign this thing up so that you have this.
• 27:13
  Yes. This is the only way to get a character out of someone, especially if they aren't going to have, you know, economic difficulty or the limitations that other kids might have. Yeah. If you want some resources around this, watch the movie King Richard.
• 27:28
  It's amazing movie. I've also read his biography. Um, it's, it's incredible story. I've never heard a story quite like it where a father wanted to bring his kids out of poverty and ended up, um, training his daughters to be world tennis champions.
• 27:45
  absolutely extreme edge case of what we're talking about. I don't think any of us are necessarily going to do that to our kids or, but I was like, like if you can handle the incredibly extreme examples, you know, and Richard Williams was an extreme example, but I have an enormous amount of respect for that man.
• 28:03
  What he was able to do for his kids and for his whole family team through training his daughters in that way. And then it was very team oriented. He did it with two of his girls. He worked with them together. So anyway, that's a great resource if you're looking for some inspiration for this space.
• 28:19
  Absolutely. Yeah, I think also looking at that movie Whiplash is a really great example where you have these two characters in that movie where you've got essentially a father who kind of has no challenge for his son. Whatever you do, I'll be proud of you. And then you have this drum training instructor who...
• 28:39
  is 100% challenge, zero love, right? And abusive even in his challenge. And what it kind of presents to the audience of like, I don't, it's not a good father who has zero challenge for his child, but it's also not a good coach who has zero affection for his pupil. And it kind of, it's through the void of like, oh, what everyone wants, especially in the teen years, is someone who has really high expectations and then also cares about you as an individual.
• 29:07
  Right. And that's, that's the dream. Yeah. And the perfect verse for that, you guys, is Paul had one thing to say to fathers in the book of Ephesians, and he tells them, do not exasperate your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. And so just to kind of like put a bow on this entire, you know, series.
• 29:25
  This mandate is you know the hearts of your kids well enough to be able to train them, help them hone those skills, but also know where that line is where you're discouraging them and do not cross that line. That is the essence of what it means to be a really good coach or a really good father who's training his kids. You want to be...
• 29:46
  very proactive, high expectations, really pushing your kids to go further and further and further. But you also want to be watching them, stay very close to their heart, watching their expressions, watching their moods, watching if they're becoming more
• 30:01
  overly discouraged or exasperated, like Paul said. And Paul's just like, that's the line. And that is such the perfect verse. If you had one thing to say to fathers, that's what he said. He said, learn to do that. And that is the skill we all need. And that's what we're talking about. This entire thing has been about how do you train your kids, but not cross that line to discourage them.
• 30:23
  Excellent. Dude, that's great. If you're looking for more of this, go to familyteams.com slash train. We have even more tips. If you can imagine, we just covered a bunch of tips. We got even more that you can get for free at familyteams.com slash train. Also, for the whole month of March, the theme of our accelerator, which is we have...
• 30:39
  300 families who are going together through the same sort of cadence of, hey, let's focus on this one thing for a month. For all of March, we're going to focus on training. We're going to have assignments we're going to try to do for ourselves. We're going to bring in experts to talk about it. I think this is an incredibly productive and helpful thing for your family. It could be really an inflection point for your family where this is when we finally really got our handle on how to train our kids. Yeah. Jeremy, any other resources or anything else to add about Accelerator?
• 31:06
  Yeah, we'd love to have you guys in there. We're going to do a town hall. So if you want to ask our kids how we screwed them up in this area, feel free to jump on there. And they were more than willing to tell you what their experiences, the various iterations and experiments we attempted. And so we'd love to have you on there and talk about any of these phases and any of your specific questions. So yeah, jump on there, go to family teams, jump on the accelerator. We'd love to see you guys there.
• 31:33
  Excellent. Great. All right. Well, next week we have Grant and Kelly Stein. They're going to be our experts for that month and they're going to be sharing some of their wisdom. So we'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody. 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.