Not By Chance Podcast

Model Service for Your Kids

March 17, 2022 Dr. Tim Thayne Season 3 Episode 4
Not By Chance Podcast
Model Service for Your Kids
Show Notes Transcript

While it naturally feels good to help someone, it isn’t the most natural thing to remember to serve when we are in the midst of a struggle. So how do we teach our children to be on the lookout for service opportunities? Dr. Thayne shares a story about a mother who felt the thrill of serving a fellow mom in distress. After listening to this woman and then sharing her own experiences, they walked away with lighter hearts and hopeful attitudes. Teach your kids the importance of serving, and when they do it one-on-one, they’ll see the impact and reap the joy for themselves. 

Dr. Tim Thayne:

It was amazing to talk to her today, because this is a person that has tons of means to be able to do whatever she wants to do travel the world have the entertainment she'd want their kids as well. But I could tell from her countenance the joy that she felt this morning, from having this heart to heart conversation with other this other mother who, no doubt she lifted her spirits. It made all of these other things really pale in comparison to producing the meaningfulness and joy. That service to others like she did this morning brings about. 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 success and happiness is not by chance. So welcome to the podcast built especially for intentional families. Let's jump in. Hi, everyone, thank you so much for joining me for this podcast. Today, I'm excited to be able to share with you kind of a second part to the podcast we did on on values inside families. You know, I think it's well established that the values that we want to convey and pass on to the next generation are not going to happen on their own, there needs to be some, some kind of way to transfer those and teach those and embed those inside our children. So just today, I was talking to a wonderful parent that I've known for about four months. And I'm amazed at at her willingness to to make changes that are difficult. She also has a lot of really natural gifts and abilities. And one of those is compassion for other people. Well, she was asking me, what do we do? How do I help my my children learn the value of service to other people. So we were brainstorming about that a little bit. And, and I'd actually thought about maybe this young man, her her son, becoming a mentor at Homeward Bound, where you're really kind of thinking about other people, not yourself. And then she got pretty excited about that. But then she she told me a story. And this, this happened. Literally just a few minutes before we were on our zoom call. She had gone to the school this morning to meet with some of the teachers of her daughter's school, and ended up in a group discussion with a bunch of other mothers there. And they shared some of the challenges they're going through as mothers and then. And then my friend who I work with had recently gone through some challenging things. And she shared more of that with this group. And these women ended up one of them ended up sharing more of what was going on in her family life because she felt comfortable and safe in doing that. And in this discussion, it's clear to me that, that they'd open up their hearts to each other, and that my client had had really shared vulnerably some of the things that she's been going through, but then turned and, and was really trying to share information and love and support to them in ways that she thought might help them. And it sounded like that one of the mothers that she spoke with, was just crying through this conversation. The end result was a feeling of of love support to one another. And, and my client, you know, showed up on the Zoom meeting. And when I saw her I was I was immediately struck by the fact that she was smiling. She was vibrant. She was happy. And it was only later in our conversation that this topic came up and she shared with me that just a few minutes before our conversation she had had this experience. And I was wishing so badly that her children could be actually watching her describe what that felt like to her to be able to lift another person's burdens and how that brought such meaning to her in her life. Because sometimes they have to our children I think have to almost live vicariously and see the joy on our face, as we're forgiving ourselves and seeing that it's bringing love and positivity into our life, by forgiving ourselves, because that seems so paradoxical, right? Because as a teenager, you're, it's sort of, you know, you're still trying to figure out who you are. And there's always this inclination towards what I want and what, what, how I want to spend my time and the foot, our focus as a teenager tends to be pretty self focused. So let me share with you a couple of ways, besides maybe our children watching us serve other people, and doing some of those real overt service activities, there's a lot of little things that we can do that are actually service oriented, there's definitely they're definitely other oriented. And it has the same effect. So imagine, as I describe, or share some of these ideas and tips with you, I want you to picture yourself doing this, and your children watching or are receiving that, that from you, directly or watching you do it for somebody else. So here's one smile at your teenager, when they walk into the room. Now, it's really easy for us to get engrossed in whatever it is that we're doing, and just kind of gloss over the fact that they've been gone all this time. And then they've walked into the room, maybe from school, or from a night out or whatever. But if if they saw that we were happy to see them each time, how does that feel to them, that's certainly we're projecting our love our interest in them to them every single time they come in. I think about a dog by the way, I think I saw on Facebook the other day that this little kid said he knew why dogs only live, you know, just a short amount of time compared to human. And, and this little boy very wisely said it's because they already know how to love. And so they don't have to take all those years to figure out how to do this well. And we we've if we've had a pet or dog, we know that when we walk into the room 100% of the time, they're wagging their tail, if not their whole body, and they are eager and happy to see us. And that that feels good, doesn't it? Even from a pet, Pat. So imagine what a teenager would feel when maybe we have to do that correction at times. But then if we can turn around and be happy to see them every time they come in the room. Here's one be open minded when listening to ideas that seem to conflict with yours. That could be directly to the teen who might have a different idea than you do or they think differently and you don't necessarily agree but you're listening. One of the important lessons I think we want to teach our teens or the values we want to teach them is that we can be courteous and kind to other people, even if we don't agree with them. And listening is the ultimate way to be courteous to another person. So if we can do it with them, you know this person that probably is challenging at times to listen to and and demonstrate that you can actually do both we're gonna want them to be able to do that for us in the future. So these these things I'm sharing can be done either directly to them or they might oversee these are over here these things happening. Listen, when tempted to lecture Now wouldn't that be great if that would pop into our mind every time we feel this inclination to lecture and teach and correct if we would flip into listening mode. Again, I I've seen the power of listening but the it's not the necessarily the first step that I go to all the time and I think that that is something that I can definitely learn from is go into listening. Sometimes I think as parents we don't listen because we're afraid if we listen our team will think we agree so it goes back to that point I made a minute ago is if they can see us being courteous and listening and actually being changed in some ways but ultimately maybe not agreeing with them. They can see how that those two things can exist at the very same time. I wanted to bring up today again the yearbook This is the not by chance your book that came out just just a few months ago. And every time I open this up I am just blown away again by the positivity the the love the warmth the you know happiness that that you know that's inside this these pages but Both in terms of the pictures themselves, but also the content. And I want to share with you just a few things that pertain to this topic we're talking about right now. So on page 79, or 70, I don't have my reading glasses. Yes, 70. It says 100 ways to promote love and positivity in life. Now, don't we all want to have that as part of our values that we want to promote love, we want to promote positivity in life. And so it's the same kind of thing that I was reading a second ago. So what if our kids see us say hello to strangers and project that smile and that eye contact and that friendliness to a stranger, they're going to they're going to see that as their values or a value that we have pay for the person behind you at a drive thru or toil. Tollbooth, I haven't done that one, I think that would be a lot of fun to do that. And then just feel good as you're driving away, knowing that you'd made somebody else's day. And especially if your kids are with you, I mean, we should do this all the time. It should be normal and natural for us to do this. And, and yet, we do hope that our kids can oversee this, we don't do it to be seen of the world. But hopefully, our kids will see it and want to emulate that. Hold the door open for someone you know if that is if we have an opportunity to do that. Then again, another great lesson to our kids give a warm hug. I think we've all experienced what that means a warm hug. It's it's like this feeling like you're trying to that person hugging you is trying to try and help you feel that they love you. It's it's not just some quick, you know, obligatory hug that they give us give your full attention when listening. Again, I think it keeps coming back to principles like that, where we are setting ourselves aside in that moment, and really looking to attune to the needs of another person. And as we do that, talk about a value that will dramatically affect every part of their life. And both their their social life, but their personal life as they feel good about themselves because they're able to actually go out and make a difference in other people's lives. I shared with this mother earlier today, and experience I had over the years in in a role that I played in our church community. So we were in our in our church or our congregation. All the members of that congregation have people assigned to them, essentially, to look after their needs to make sure that they're, they're taken care of, and that they know that other people are aware. And, and I would often be assigned to one of my boys and I've got I've got four sons. And over the years, I was able to go with him into the homes of these people or doing service or hanging lights up or helping them with with moving or whatever it might be. And I remember doing the very same thing with my dad when I was young. And I remember not feeling like I wanted to do it. And it was it was kind of a monthly thing we made sure we make contact on a regular basis. And, and I remember not really wanting to go with my dad. But every time at the end of our visits, I remember smiling I remember feeling good. And I saw the same thing happened with my son's as we would walk out of a house that usually look at him say that was awesome, wasn't it. And you know, the big smiles back and forth. And our love for the people that we just visited was so apparent. And so to recap here, I would say the best way to convey values to our kids is to live those values day in and day out, be very clear about what your values are in regards to other people in regards to service. And then involve your kids in those opportunities. It's great to give to charities, it's great to have have opportunities to maybe, you know, earn some money and donate to causes and things like that. But I don't think that we can get the same effect as we can is when we're doing some one on one service to someone else. Whether it be through just a simple smile, or a listening ear or if it be some kind of service project to really lift their burdens. So that's my hope is that we can convey the values of spreading love and positivity in our lives and the lives of other people around us and involve our kids in that so they can see and feel that same joy. Parents, your time is valuable. And I'm grateful 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