Would you allow a stranger to sit on your teen's bed and talk to them for hours a day? Never. Yet this is what's happening and this is how you can put yourself back in the number one influencer position with your teen, through your deliberate, though not perfect, example.
Would you allow a stranger to sit on your teen's bed and talk to them for hours a day? Never. Yet this is what's happening and this is how you can put yourself back in the number one influencer position with your teen, through your deliberate, though not perfect, example.
There are as many ways to parent as there are parents in this world. But there is one way to parent that wins every time. And that's doing it intentionally. This show is about helping things go right before they can go wrong. Each episode is chosen to help parents like you, who may be overwhelmed or uninspired, find the ideas and motivation to give their best efforts to the people and place that matters the most. I'm Dr. Tim, Thayne, author of the book and host of the podcast, not by chance, I believe that a family's success and happiness is not by chance. So welcome to the podcast built especially for intentional families. Let's jump in. A few days ago, a friend of mine told me about an interview that was done, I think, on CBS, by a tech expert. And he was talking about tick tock, he said that there's a different version of tick tock in China, which is a platform that came out of China, versus what the rest of the world gets. And he compared the two to spinach and opium. You know, Chinese youth get the spinach version, very healthy version of Tiktok, where a lot of the contents really limited to things like science experiments and museum visits, and you know, things that will help educate them. But what shipped out to the rest of the world, including the United States is more like opium, which is this addictive, very short form video that you you've you get whatever content you want, and it continues to serve up that thing that's going to hit hit your brain and give you that that feeling of a high. And that's why kids can spend hours and hours and hours a day on this. So here's my question, would we ever as parents allow strangers to walk into our home, go up to our child's bedroom, sit cross legged on the bed and talk to our kids for hours on end? about things that are in direct opposition to our own family values? Obviously, we would never want to do that. So for the next few sessions of this podcast, I want to talk about how do we become the number one influencer in our kids lives. Now, that's quite a tall order when we're competing against things like Tic tock and other social media influencers. The other thing that this interview, said this interviewer said, on CBS that I was mentioning, is that if you they did a survey with the youth in China versus the aspirations of the youth here in the United States, and the number one desire the youth in the United States is that they want to become an influencer. Whereas the Chinese youth, the number one thing they aspire to be is an astronaut. Now you think about that, you think about a society that is raising up children that want to get into the sciences want to learn versus become a social media influencer? Wow. I mean, I can't even imagine the long term ramifications of that in a society and, and what's happening here in the United States versus what could be happening in China. But let's, let's bring that back down to just our home. So here's the big the big question, how do we compete, you know, in a, in a situation like that, where that is so addictive, and that the big influencers in our kids lives might reside outside the very home? I've always said that, that parents are the biggest agents of change. And I still believe that, but I think parents are in a pickle right now. And that is, how do we ultimately replace the influencers in our kids lives that may actually have more influence than we do with ourselves being that primary influencer in their life. So for the next few few podcasts, I really want to focus on this topic, we're going to talk about things like being an example. That's what we're going to cover today. Talking about family values, talk about connecting, talk about repairing relationships, ultimately, to get to that place where we can have the influence that we need in our children's lives experience of watching ourselves, kind of behave in ways that we're we know we're going to be ashamed of later. And it is, it's a weird experience. Maybe the emotion has hijacked us and we are now you know, in the middle of an interaction with one of our kids and we're actually seeing ourselves, you know, say things do things that later we know we're going to regret. So at the end of this, I'm going to talk about how do we repair situations like that. So I just want to put it out there that I know that this is a tough topic, because none of us live up to the values that we espouse 100% of the time. And so there has to be a little grace there, there has to be a way to recover from these mistakes, these blunders, and I'm going to call them blunders, because it's kind of this gross mistake that we that we just really do have to recover from. I think we all know, and the research is really clear that our actions speak louder than our words. In fact, I think it's a huge difference in terms of what our kids pick up. You know, they pick up the things that we do more than the things that we say, they also start to understand the difference between what we say and what we do and and obviously, what we do gives them permission to do a lot of things maybe that they feel like they can do because they've seen seeing us do it. I want to start this series of podcast on how to become the number one influencer in our kids lives with a foundational principle. And that is that we need to be good examples to our kids. And we need our examples to match the things that we are trying to teach them. That's really foundational, because it's all about like integrity and trust. That being said, I know that there's not a single parent out there that lives the values that they espouse every single time. Let me share with you a story about the power of example, that comes from our little two year old granddaughter. She is a sponge, she literally is soaking up not just words that we're saying. But actually the very tone at which we say it. I don't know if it was my wife or her mother or someone but someone said, Oh my gosh, in that tone, instead of oh my gosh, it was Oh my gosh. And she picked up on that and the tone and everything else was the same. It's It's funny how, how much they absorb at that age. Another thing she did the other day is she was sitting on my wife's lap, and they're playing Play Doh, and they're gonna make a little figure, and Roxanne rolled out a ball of clay to to make the head and she kind of smashed it down flat, she created two more little balls for the eyes and all of just reached over and push them down. She knew that it needed to be flat. Nobody taught her that she just watched it. Does our example now as parents continue to have influence beyond that real impressionable period of time when they're young? And the answer is absolutely, absolutely. A few years ago, I was going into the home of a family whose son was coming back from a treatment program. And of course, going into the home, you get to see the culture, you get to see this gap between the values and the behaviors of the parents. There's nothing like it, you can't really see that. So well, if you're just working with somebody in a normal, you know, therapy office, but going into their home, there's no way over a three day period that they can keep you from seeing some of these gaps that they have. And one of the things I noticed when I first walked in, it was literally in the first 30 minutes or so I saw some joking around going on between the Father and the Son and the dad flipped his son off. I thought, huh, that's that's kind of kind of different, different approach as a parent, over the next three days, I heard him, you know, curse a few times cos, you know, say some words that I wondered if that's really what he wanted to teach his kid. At the end of the visit, we get to this point where we're creating the family rules. And it base is based on sort of the values of the family system. And I had a template that I was reading from and I said, Listen, we can start from this template. I'm going to read down through this and you tell me if you want to keep it or do you want to adjust it in some way. And there was a part in there that says that there would be no cursing in the home. And I said, because I genuinely wanted to know, is this a value you have in your family? I said, Do you want to keep this in there? And he said, Oh, absolutely. I pause for just a second I said, Now keep in mind if you put this in the expectations for your son. It's something you need to live up to as well. Are you ready to do that? Then we had a pretty good luck on pause for a second, he looked at his wife, she looked at him, she smiled. And he said, You know what, leave it in. And what he knew from that is, if I'm going to have this in writing or something I am asking my kids to do, I've got to step up my game. And I was really proud of him. Because what he did is he checked in on their family values at some level. And he ultimately realized that there was a big mismatch between what he had been doing and what he wants and wanted his son to be doing. So we can level this up, but it takes us becoming aware of the family values we have, it takes becoming aware of maybe our own failures in that in that particular area. In fact, you know, in the next few weeks, I'm going to talk about family values, and how important that is in terms of becoming the big biggest influence in your kid's life. But I'd love to hear from you. If you would write to me at Tim at not by chance.com, email me, some of your family values, the things that you're espousing the things you would like to pass on to your kids. I'd love to hear about those so that I can mention those to others on this podcast in the future. Let me give you three tips here, as I wrap up this podcast, I'm sure you've already been doing this during the podcast, you've been probably asking yourself the question, where are my gaps? And what do I need to improve on. But in my book, not by chance, I asked parents to do something that's pretty hard. And I've been so impressed by so many parents over the years, who have actually taken this assignment very seriously. And it's called the resume failure. And I think it'd be great if you would write down some of the values you have as a family, what you're trying to pass on to your kids. And then write down those times that you can remember where you did not live up to it. Let's call that those, those blunders, or those failures that you've had those big mistakes that you've had. And give yourself a little grace here, which is the next tip, balance this out with knowing that a lot of the time you do this well. So keep that in mind as well. We don't want you to, you know, feel like you're a complete failure because I'm no you're not. But But recognize when you have made those blunders, and it's really undermined your moral authority in the home. That's a, that's a really important step that we understand what those are as painful as that can be, it can be hugely helpful to start there. The next thing is, pick the top two or three things that you'd like to close the gap on, and make a commitment to yourself that when you fall into that mistake, again, I want you to recover very, very quickly. You know, there's something relatable about a parent's mistakes, you know, kids are struggling to be consistent themselves. They know they make mistakes. The reality is they know their parents aren't perfect, and they don't expect you to be. But I think the example that you can show is a quick recovery. And what that means is going to your son or daughter where you've you've made these mistakes and say, you know, I hope you'll forgive me, the way I acted around that situation is definitely not the way I want to. And I'd like to try it again, I'm going to try to do better in this way. So your example on the recovery becomes a powerful way to realign and help them see that you really do believe in those values. The last thing is track your progress. Because over time, obviously, if we keep saying hey, I'm sorry, I'd like to do better, but we never actually make progress in that area. We still don't have real credibility with our kids. But if we are making progress over time, I can I can tell you, I know from from experience that my kids can look back on my life and say, you know, their, their interactions with me and say, you know, Dad used to be like this, but he really is better now. And that's that's what we can kind of count on is our kids being able to see improvement over time. Now I share all this with you because I do believe this is one of the biggest foundations to becoming a true influencer in our kids lives. We need to have some values that we are founding our lives on and our family life on. It's this rock solid place that they know that that's really where we want to be. And as they see us grapple with that improve that. hold true to those things over time. You're gonna you're gonna see some really powerful influences as I think about my own parents and what they've done for me. I can tell you that At some of the values that they have espoused, because they lived them so well, I see them in my kids lives. So we're talking about three generations there. And I look above them. And in the generation prior to that my grandparents, I know, for example, hard work. That is a value that was lived by my grandpa, and my grandma, for that matter. It's lived by my dad and my mom. And I believe I've lived that as well. And I'm seeing that in my kids. So there's, there's a value that has been transmitted over time through generations. And I'm very proud of that, that I didn't just ruin this trend that was started my family that something very, very important that that is continuing to happen. The next generation, I hope has it as well. So there's some things we're being successful at. There's others that we need to improve on. And I just invite you to identify what those are. And let's build this foundation that our kids know that they can trust. The last thing I want you to remember, is a quote from Neal A. Maxwell. He said, The only moral authority to which people respond is example. What a powerful thing to think about that is the moral authority. Let's not undermine our moral authority by being a bad example. Parents, your time is valuable and ungrateful. You spent some of it with us. What you're intentionally doing in your home life is inspiring and unmatched in its importance and long term effects. Ask yourself, What am I going to do because of what I've learned today?