Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
103. What Story Do You Want Your Kids to Tell About Love?
In this episode of Dates, Mates, and Babies with the Vallottons, Lauren and Jason dive into one of the most profound questions parents face: What story do we want our kids to tell about love? Together, they unpack the meaning of true love, exploring how it can be demonstrated in everyday life and in relationships within the home.
Topics Covered
What is love and what is it not?
- We have love because it was given to us. It doesn’t start with us, it starts with God.
- Love is a powerful choice.
- Love is patient, kind, etc. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)
What does authentic love look like in relationships and in marriage?
- Real love requires a strong sense of self… we enjoy true love when we come fully ourselves into a relationship.
- It’s not the absence of conflict.
- Love looks like boundaries.
- Love looks like having the hard conversations, not abandoning yourself.
Love requires us to sacrifice and grow in areas that are costing the people we care for the most. Love says I lay things down that cause harm to those I care for the most.
Why This Matters
Our children’s perception of love starts with us. Through our words, actions, and how we treat those closest to us, we’re crafting a narrative that can either help or hinder their relationships in the future. Let’s make it a story worth telling!
Takeaway Thought
The story of love we live today becomes the legacy our children carry into tomorrow.
Patreon
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For information on the Marriage Intensive and other resources, go to jasonandlaurenvallotton.com !
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We're the valetins and we are passionate about people.
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Speaker 1:Welcome back everyone to Dates, mates and Babies with the Ballotons. It's great to be with you guys.
Speaker 2:It sure is Good to be back here in the studio and excited to unpack kind of a cool little topic. We're posing a question today. We are posing a question that requires you to think a little bit into the future and, honestly, if we lived our present lives more with our future in mind, with our kids' futures in mind, I think we would live better. So the question that we're posing today is what story do you want your children to tell about love? That's a good question. That's a good question.
Speaker 1:It really is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a couple quotes that I think are awesome when we're talking about this.
Speaker 1:The first one is the greatest thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother, and when we're talking about this story or doing this podcast, the first place that I think about is how do I create an ecosystem where my kids are learning the right things about love and kind of.
Speaker 1:The first way that I think about this is growing up in my own home. I watched my dad do a great job at loving and caring and nurturing my mom, and it was really apparent in my home growing up that my dad's first priority was my mom, and it was really apparent in my home growing up that my dad's first priority was my mom and their first priority was us together and just do things constantly. My dad did a lot of things to make, to sacrifice for my mom and then for us kids together, and so I mean I just think a lot about our family and how are our kids practically seeing me serve you? Because when I think about love, I really do think about love as this giant act of service. It's Jesus's model, right when he came and he laid down his life. There's no greater love than someone who gives his life for his brother or for his friend, and so I really do.
Speaker 1:I think I want Edie and Liam and our other kids to say love is where you really wanted to do this thing, but it wasn't really the best for everybody and so we pivoted. Or love is where you really had the right to be angry or the right to be frustrated, but you calmed down and you talked it through. Love is where one of the kids didn't like a certain thing and so we talked it through as a family, like love is all those pieces and things. Love is really patient. Like I watch. I want the kids to say I watch my dad be so nurturing with my mom and still not lose his identity and who he was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. You know, if, when I think about it, I think, okay, what story do I want my kids to tell? About love, you know, sometimes the thought crosses my mind, like I'll be in town or walking around or whatever, and you see, um, you see somebody on the street, you know, dressed a certain way, maybe, I don't know you. You look at them and you, you, you wonder about their life story, right, and I think that question um, dress a certain way, behaving a certain way, talking a certain way to somebody, um, and you, like, I actually wonder, I wonder what their home was like growing up.
Speaker 2:Like what did they? What were they taught about love? What definition?
Speaker 2:of love were they given? Because, ultimately, they're living out of whatever definition of love. Were they given because, ultimately, they're living out of whatever definition of truth and love they were given as a child. And so when I think about our kids and I I wonder, like what's the story that I want for them? By the way we live our life, we're defining for them what is love, and they will live out of that in their adulthood. Riley's already an adult, but but still making choices about love.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll continue to, and I think for me, I mean obviously it starts with, like I want our lives as parents to define what true love really is and then also importantly, what it is not. I think, like we want to be clear right with our kids about what love is and what it is not, and so it's probably worth stating Well, the Bible has like a very beautiful picture of what love is.
Speaker 1:I mean patient. It's kind it's love doesn't boast right, it's not judgmental, all those things that.
Speaker 2:I think are, yeah, clear descriptions of what is true love.
Speaker 1:But then breaking it down into real action is beautiful. I think one thing to start with is love is something that is taught. It's not something that you just have.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's a really important thing for us to remember as parents, because when I was a kid when I think back to okay, what are other places where I learned what love was? My parents had a very high value on us serving the church. Not just going to church, but we are the church, so we are going to serve every single week at church and showing up on time and thinking about other people, and then we also would go on mission trips to Mexico.
Speaker 1:And I was telling a friend recently, like with his kids. I said, man, his kids are starting to get in that like teenage years uh, once one's pre-teen, next the others are teenage years. And I said, man, the best thing that you can do for your kids is to start taking them to places like mexico, totally, or you know these places where they see not just how other people are living. Like I remember the first time I went to the dump in Tijuana and watching people walk out of literal garbage houses and my heart breaking for them and realizing like my normal everyday life at home didn't really matter if it just served me. Like I wanted to give everything up to help that person, right, and I remember that feeling for the first time and crying like leaving the dump crying.
Speaker 1:It smelled so bad in there. It was gross, you lose your appetite. And then I see these little kids walking out of their trash houses.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And my gosh, like what it means to love. You just start to go like okay, love, I thought love was indulgence. I thought love was about give me stuff.
Speaker 1:I thought love, if you really love me, you'll. But as a kid I'm starting to. My parents built this story and this culture in this and then. So then we go and we would help build the orphanage. So we saw the other side of the orphan. The orphanage was rescuing these kids and watching them pour out effort and energy, and so we'd all get blisters from making cement by hand you know, mixing it by hand and doing all this stuff and, like love, was very sacrificial but also really fulfilling.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So that was the other side of it. Was this delay gratification? I work really hard on this mission strip, or really hard helping, and then I get to see the fruit of that and year after year, nine years in a row, we went and so you'd see like, oh, this did this and we built this house and they're using it for this, and look at all these kids. And it really shaped this beautiful picture at a young age of like, oh my gosh, when God says it's better to give than to receive, like there truly is so much joy in that, and so being able to set up something like that, it was really helpful.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think I mean what you're describing. I mean there's a couple of truths in it and I would want our kids to be able to tell this story about love. Love is not a feeling.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's a choice and it's an action and um, and actually, you know, although I think that when we're young we can be inspired from the outside, it's easier sometimes to consider as a young person, it's to uh to consider love. To consider as a young person, it's to uh to consider love as an action is easier to understand, um, when you're looking at it from an outside perspective like you taking the time to practically love on a community of people or on um, you know the orphan on, you know a nation, whatever.
Speaker 2:I think as you get older, you realize too that, just as importantly, we have to understand what it means to love others from a place of authenticity, in that you know we, we are to love our neighbor as ourself, and so actually learning to love yourself is an important aspect in being able to offer somebody true love right.
Speaker 2:So, like when we're talking about finding love in a marriage or in a future a partner or something like that, I think that our kids have to go through the process of learning like, okay, loving true love is doesn't start with me.
Speaker 2:Like I, actually, I am not the source of love, I don't actually decide what is lovable or what is lovely.
Speaker 2:Like God himself, we have love because he first gave us love, and so, understanding that God is the one that defines love, that it's a choice, that it's not just merely a feeling, and he gives us lots of descriptions about what love, that it's a choice, that it's, it's not just merely a feeling, and he gives us lots of descriptions about what love, what love looks like, but then ultimately, if we're going to enjoy that authentic love inside of a relationship, then it requires a few things, like to really offer true love means that you have a really strong sense of self, that, um, that you know we enjoy love when we fully love ourselves and can be authentically us inside of a relationship. Because I do think like this, and this is just getting really practical I think people confuse often people confuse love for other things and so they find themselves feeling that is a desire for connection and mistaking that for passion and love, or passion and love or different things.
Speaker 2:And I want our kids to know the difference. And I want my daughters I'm thinking of my girls right now, but of course my sons too Like I want my daughters, to come authentically and powerfully into relationship with friends and with you. Know future spouses able to it had having a strong sense of self and actually caring for you is what empowers you to offer a true and authentic love to somebody else. So we raise self-confident kids. We raise kids that know their value.
Speaker 2:We raise kids that understand who they are and why they are lovable.
Speaker 1:To me, going with that love is something that has to be cultivated Right and this weekend. Edie's had some really, really good months recently, just with her regulation and all that and stuff, and this last week was a bit harder she's had some some harder times yeah and last night I was brushing her teeth and she always stands on the counter when I brush her teeth so that I'm at like eye level with her.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we had had a particularly hard day yesterday, and so last night I'm brushing her teeth and I say to her, because she was calm, I said, oh, we had a bit of a hard day today, baby, and she goes, yeah, and I said but you know what, I love you when you have good days, and I love you when you have hard days, and I love you when you have grumpy days and I love you when you have good days and I love you when you have hard days, and I love you when you have grumpy days and I love you when you have sad days.
Speaker 1:And I went through like five or six of those and she looked at me and she said, dad, I want to squeeze you so hard. And so she gave me the biggest hug, the biggest hardest squeeze ever. And it's fun because, like the Holy, I feel like the Holy spirit dropped into my spirit last night, like this is the time to reinforce her, to reinforce that love isn't about her great performance, love isn't about her holding it all together.
Speaker 1:Love is is a the the in love she could, that she can trust my love for her yeah she doesn't have to be perfect for me yeah and that's a message that we've been sending our kids a lot in this season, but also mirrored with we've been telling edie a lot like it's okay to be angry but it's not okay to be rude.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And when you, when you use words that are painful, like it hurts people's hearts you know, and teaching the concept of uh of self-control and making sure that you're caring and nurturing the people around you. So I want her to say about love that I don't have to get it all right. I can be grumpy, I can have a really hard time, and my parents' love never changes for me. That's the standard.
Speaker 2:Well, you're defining for her what is unconditional love. So that's the thing Everybody wonders if people's love is conditional, whether can I be my authentic self and have you love me even still and I think that's what we want our kids to be able to say, yeah, like I know what unconditional love is. Love is not dependent on my perfection.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 2:Because when people feel free to not be perfect, they actually um it is. The freedom to not be perfect is what sets people up to be able to live in true love.
Speaker 1:It's true. Yeah, that's right. It's why God says come to me as you are, yeah, and because that baseline of you're not the one that cleaned your, cleaned you up, you're not the one that made you lovable, you're not the one that's going to keep you from making mistakes Like. All of that has to be driven from God.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And when we mess that up, gosh, it's so messy.
Speaker 2:Totally, I think, a couple of practicals too, like and this is just getting really practical, um, it's, it's so important to me that that, like one day my kids would be, would be very aware Like love does not equal the absence of conflict.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Love looks like having great boundaries, and love looks like having hard conversations, not abandoning yourself in them.
Speaker 2:And I I've been so reminded of this lately, like I have found I'm not happy about this necessarily, but, gosh, it's a reminder to me. I have found myself, you know, as a nearly 40 year old woman, in a handful of hard conversations lately with friends, with family members, where I have chosen to lean into hard conversation for the sake of love, or I am going to set a boundary in order to protect my connection with you and we teach about it, we talk about it. It's one thing to like work that out in your home, Like we, you know, with with us, as I don't have to have a lot of like crazy boundaries with you.
Speaker 2:You're not over here trying to like blow over my fences. You're. You're protecting us, like we have a healthy, strong marriage. So it luckily right for me. It's actually quite uncommon for me to have to have really tough conversations with the people closest to me, but I have had the opportunity a few times lately. Let me tell you and it's good to be reminded like this is what love is. Love is not the absence of conflict. Love is not the absence of disagreement. Love is not the absence of disagreement. Love is not keeping the peace, having boundaries, communicating well, not avoiding conflict.
Speaker 1:That is all's part of. What it says is that love requires us to sacrifice in a way that we grow the areas of us that are harming other people.
Speaker 2:Can you say that again?
Speaker 1:Yeah, love requires us. I mean, love requires us to grow, to sacrifice and to grow in the areas that are costing the people that we love the most. So when we talk about love being a sacrifice, I just read an email from a really beautiful lady. When I say beautiful, I don't know what she looks like, kind lady. She wrote me a really beautiful lady, a really beautiful email about her husband.
Speaker 1:that's really struggling in an area of his life and the kids are starting to see it and he's he wants to do the right thing. I mean, he wants a great life, but he's he's having a hard time controlling himself. Yeah, and love says I give everything, I need to sacrifice everything in my life, I need to lay everything down in my life that is causing harm, that is causing pain. That is everything besides what love really is. So for some people, love means going to a rehab.
Speaker 1:For some people, love means learning communication. For some people, love looks like a lot of things that we don't often think about. And again it's back to when we're thinking about. What do we want our kids to say about love? There's very few people that we know that want to replicate their parents' marriage, and I think, as parents, we have this opportunity to really buckle down and go like no, if we do the hard work, then our kids' narrative on love is it's the most fulfilling thing that you could possibly ever have, it's the safest place that you could ever be in. It's the most bonding thing that you could relationship, that you could ever be a part of. And there's a quote I don't know if I already said it, but that says your kids won't remember what you say to them, but they'll always remember how you made them feel.
Speaker 2:It's Maya Angelou. She says at the end of the day, people won't remember what you said or did. They'll remember how you made them feel, and that's true about our kids, I mean for sure. Now they'll remember things we said.
Speaker 1:I can remember things.
Speaker 2:My mom said you know, but we always remember how people make us feel. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so you know, in kind of in, in concluding this, I I think our kids picture of love was built by us. Their picture of marriage is built by us. Their picture of friendship and what friendship is their blueprint for? All of that is built by us adults and we really do have the opportunity to sew into them to create this incredible blueprint and then to give them the tools and the experiences, and I mean they create this massive ecosystem right where they go.
Speaker 1:Man, what I want in life is I want to sacrifice everything I have. I want to give of myself. I want to be available. I want to work on my issues, because this is the most fulfilling place. I watch my parents cultivate that. I watch their friends cultivate that. I watch how they treated other people's kids. This is the best way to live life and I think I was 100% convinced of that watching how my parents lived.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:They took in orphans, they adopted my brother, they did all kinds of things that were just incredible, and growing up I could not wait to get married. I got married young, because that was what you do. It was fulfilling. That's where all the joy comes from in life, and I would just really think, man, we actually get to decide what our kids think about. Love, yeah, yeah, more than we think For sure, for sure.
Speaker 2:Ultimately, the story of love we live today becomes the legacy our kids carry to tomorrow.
Speaker 1:Right, it's real.
Speaker 2:So maybe our challenge for those of you listening is like Ooh, pose this question for yourself, like what do you want your kids to say about love and how is you know, your current life helping develop that story, that narrative, for them?
Speaker 1:It'd be a great couple's question to say you know, go on a date and talk to your spouse about it.
Speaker 1:Listen, if you are at a spot where you go, man, the way that our marriage is running right now, the way that we navigate conflict, there's some pain in our marriage that's creating an ecosystem that isn't super healthy. We have our marriage intensive coming up February 10th. It's six weeks. We do it all over zoom and our intensive we really do. We tackle. We tackle so many of the of the big issues of how to do conflict Well, how to meet each other's needs emotionally and mentally, physically and spiritually, how to grow a bond and a marriage that you'll actually really love. We know that a lot of people weren't. It wasn't modeled for them. Healthy marriage.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And so there's a lot of pain in there. We teach you how to make amends, how to work through pain from the past, and so if you guys are interested in getting some new tools and growing, we had that the course available. You can go to Jason and Lauren valetoncom and check it out there. If you're interested in the course but you're not sure that it's totally a great fit for you, you can just go on to our website, scroll down to the bottom.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And there's a place where you can sign up for a free 10 minute conversation with myself.
Speaker 2:You know what I'll do is in the show notes. I will include that link. If you would like to learn more about the marriage intensive and book a call. We'll put that link in the show notes for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, we just are so passionate about helping people build a really healthy family and to me, the number one predictor of a healthy family is a healthy marriage.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:So, guys, thank you so much for listening today. Yeah, we just really hope that you enjoyed it. Have an incredible week.