Don’t let this overwhelm you! These eight things can be woven into the fabric of your parenting.

The Eight Things Are:

1. Instill a Biblical Worldview
2. Teach Accurate Government and History
3. Help Them Learn Entrepreneurship
4. Teach Some Economics
5. Help Them Understand How to Take Care of Their Own Health Naturally
6. Cultivate Confidence In Their Ability to Communicate
7. Social Awareness
8. Teach Survival Skills

Make sure you have good marriage conversations as you implement these eight things into your education system!

The Homeschooling Blueprint

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Full Transcript:

Note: This is an automated transcript and misspells or grammar errors may be present.

Welcome to Courageous Parenting Podcast, a weekly show to equip parents with biblical truth on raising confident Christian kids in an uncertain world.

Hi, I’m Angie from Courageous Mom, and I’m Isaac from Resolute Man.

We’ve been married for 21 years and have seen the fruit from raising our kids biblically based on the raw truth found in the Bible.

We can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children. Too many children from Christian families are walking away from their faith. By age 18. And it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. Join us as we start an important conversation about effective parenting in a fallen world. Hi, everyone, welcome back to the podcast, I’ve got Angie back. Hey, guys. So good to have you here.

It’s great to be back.

Don’t you just shouldn’t leave, you know?

No, I had a great time at an oils retreat. I know. I it was one of those things that I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to make it because me a new baby. Yeah, of course. Our son is now engaged also if you fallow us on Instagram. But I was like,

No, you need to go. You should go.

Yep. So I took Megan with me, who’s also on my oils team. And so it was like she babysat Zander and helped me with him, but also was able to be there for some of the the talks and just team bonding, which is cool because she’s part of that team, too. Mm hmm. It was great to see one of my leaders was also able to come from Florida. That was cool. Well, I’m

Glad you got to relax and have a good time. So that’s that’s great. Well, today we’re talking about eight things to make sure are a part of your kid’s education. So this is regardless of your method of education, these are eight things to make sure of because we’re living in uncertain times. So the traditional agenda for education must be tweaked.

Yeah. I mean, there’s the reality is, even in the traditional education years ago, there have been we’ve always tweaked it. Well, there have been things that have been missed. Right. And so, like I even remember back to when I was in elementary school, I remember in junior high there was a home economics class, for example. Right. But then that shortly got cut from the junior high curriculum. And so and even within that class, like, to be honest, I everything that was torn there pretty much had already learned from my great grandma.

Yeah. I don’t know how fruitful that class is. Right.

But but they used to have like woodshop and some schools do still have that kind of stuff. But anyway, what we’re going to be talking about today is the things that are not really things that most kids are learning that still should be part of your kid’s education, especially in light of what we’re walking through today.

Yeah. So regardless of how you educate, whether you public school, private school, homeschool or like us, we we homeschool, but I like calling it curated education.

Isaac just likes to be a rebel. Let’s just be honest.

Well, where the kids go to school. Oh, we we we curate their education based on the strengths.

Go to leaving a legacy academy.

Yeah. You know me and I just say we homeschool. But but in my mind, that’s what’s going on in my mind is really, you know, we’re not the only ones educating our kids. We have classical conversations sometimes with tutors. We have mentors. You know, we’re doing it.

Yeah, we’ve done different things. We’re not doing classical conversations now and we’re using other curriculum.

We have guitar lessons. Great guitar teacher. krave maga as well!

So there there’s all kinds of things that we’re going to be working on in the in this next coming year, which is exciting.

So what’s cool is when you’re the principles of your school and you get to decide how your kids are educated, even if you’re sending him to school, because when you send them schools, that all that happens. No, you need to be educating them.

Do right. Well, and part of it that’s important, I always tell parents that even if you are sending your kids somewhere to be educated, the reality is that you need to be aware of what it is they are learning so that you can have conversations with them. The conversation of how a school today fine is actually not good enough. It’s not good enough. We need to ask, as Isaac always says, three questions deep. Sometimes it might take five questions. Sometimes it might take three relationship building, because if your kids are not opening up to you and they’re just like fine, and then they’re not talking to you or they’re not answering your questions, they’re not able to teach anything back then. That’s kind of scary, right? If they’re not able to regurgitate or remember what they learned that day, then, well, we have an ineffective learning process happening.

Well, so so a couple of things before we dive in. First thing is a lot of changes happening potentially in your family that could create worry within your kids. What’s going to happen this fall with Covid restrictions? What’s going to happen? You know, we’re homeschooling for the first time or we’re homeschooling for the ninth time. And, you know, what’s this new year going to be about? And maybe there’s some new things involved with it and so forth. And I would just use this opportunity to use scripture to remind ourselves and our kids not to worry and to trust God and to spend some time developing and further developing the plan. The plan is kind of ongoing, isn’t it, sometimes?

Yeah. I mean, I think a Philippians four where it says do not be anxious for anything, but with prsyer and supplication, bring your requests before the Lord. But sometimes you need to take action to solve that because it’s without knowing what’s happening. You know, kids need to know they thrive in structure and knowing what’s ahead of them, so there is an element of that which is important.

There is I mean, as we’re thinking about that particular scripture, that wasn’t one that we were going to be teaching on greatly here, because this is we’re still just, you know, in chit chatting with you before we dive into our main topic. But I think that it’s important to recognize that anxiety or being anxious. So God is actually commanding this. Do not be anxious for anything. Right, because it’s we don’t have a reason to be. And when we’re trusting the Lord. But there is actually it’s kind of like fear. I’ve said this about fear before as well. Right. Because God doesn’t want us to fear anything but him. Right. And that’s a different kind of fear. I think it’s important that we acknowledge the why behind. Why are we anxious? Why are we stressed? Why are we having fear? Is it because we haven’t done our part? So I often times, you know, having that perspective of God gives us responsibility. There’s man’s responsibility. But then there’s also the Lord right in many avenues of our life. And, you know, God will take care of us. But if we don’t also steward our bodies well, and we’re we’re we’re taking action, but the action is actually in action. Like if we don’t exercise or we or we take action, but the action is buying bad food and then we become obese. There’s a sowing and reaping principle that’s applied there. And that might lead us to go, oh, I’m struggling with body image or, oh, I’m struggling with health issues. And this is actually repercussion of something I did do. And so we need to look at the why behind our fear, the anxiety and things like that, and ask ourselves, is there anything that God is asking us to change right now? But then also, don’t worry about things that we can’t change.

Absolutely. And why we’re doing this topic is because we’re getting we always get so many questions about education and what do we need to be teaching our kids right now? The world is so uncertain. It’s tragic. Some of the things happening, whether it’s Afghanistan or, you know, all around the world, the lockdowns in Australia, I think are tragic in the way the police state that’s happening there and just all kinds of things is stuff in China anyways. You can just go on, on and on. But we are to have joy in all circumstances. Right. That’s what they were called to do. So the Bible says so we got to exemplify that. So we thought we would talk about these eight things briefly. We’re going to give you a list today so that you yourself can think about them, so you cannot at yourself and go, well, do we talk about this, do teach this, and, you know, or is this something in the future because our kids are really young on a couple of these topics, or, you know, you can have this marriage conversation will end with some some tips about marriage. But super, super important right now, though, that we’re thinking proactively and with a clean slate in a way not based on how we were educated, but really looking at where is the world out today? When will my kids be launching? When will they be 18 or whatever age you think they’re launching from your home? And what year will be that? And how much change is going to happen to me now and then? And what are they going to need to know to provide to be good citizens and take care of their families and potentially protect their families?

Now, some people might be thinking, oh, by Isaac, I just I’m pregnant right now and I don’t know what the world’s going to be like in twenty thirty-nine or 2040. Right. Which is, you know, obviously there’s an element of uncertainty. That’s why courageous parenting is tagline is raising or equipping confident Christian kids for an uncertain world. Right. And the reality is, though, like you can start as simple as this. Like for us, we just had a baby. You guys know, Zander is now 11 weeks old. He’s doing great, by the way. So thank you for your prayers. So we’re almost at that three month stage. But three months ago, when we were picking his name, we were looking at meanings of name, as we do with every single one of our kids. But one of the questions that we asked that we hadn’t asked before was what year is he potentially going to be launching from our home and what is the world going to need? In that year from a man, right, and so his name means defender of mankind, brave protector. So thats what Zander means. And so for us, that kind of was like the clenching. Yes, this is what we’re going to name him. So you can go from that level. You can just starting there with the purposefulness in your parenting and going, OK, this is what he’s going to be launching into, to making the decisions. Whether your kids are little with what influences are in their life, are their peers being parented in a biblical way or there or are their peers not being parented at all, actually? And that’s impacting my kids’ attitude and potential disrespect or respect towards me. Right. And then you go into education stuff, which is what?

And when you think of education. Think about this. Knowledge by itself is almost useless. You’ve heard me say that before. Well, knowledge implemented is helpful. So what we really want to do is equip our kids right versus just stuff their heads full of knowledge. So just a balance of that is really important. Now, there’s certain things that not just knowledge is important, a certain grade levels and so forth, because they get to use it later in life. I get that. But we want to really equip them. So think about what is going to equip now. Let’s handle overwhelm real quick, because you could be trying to figure things out and getting more overwhelmed as you listen, because you’re, you know, like Isaac and Angie, you’re going to add eight more things to my list, to, you know, make sure I educate my kids. I don’t know what the first three things are or I don’t I’m not sure if the five things I’ve already picked are right. And these kinds of things. And that is, by the way, you can look forward to your answer on that. But we also created the homeschool blueprint course for a reason. No matter how experienced you are in educating your kids, that thing is essential because it gives a 45 page workbook and all these things. You can go to courageousparenting.com And hit the menu for that.

Yeah, either that or it’s courageousparenting.com forward slash homeschooling hyphen blueprint. That’s the that’s direct. I have that that URL memorized. Look at that. Isaacs like, wow. So yeah, I mean, the homeschool blueprint I go into more of like the curriculum, like the foundational things that you should be teaching your kids. I even share about curriculums that are good and not good. What do you Think about the overwhelm though?

Well, that’s the point, though, is that when you’re going through curriculums and trying to determine what you’re going to be teaching your kids, that alone is overwhelming. Mm hmm. Right. Then there’s you add in all the things that’s happening in society today. Maybe you have your kids in a private school or a public school and you’re going, OK, but I need to find a Bible curriculum or I need to teach my kids survival skills. That’s one of the things that’s on our list. Right? What kinds of classes or curriculum can you do either outside the home or inside the home? Now, all of that can become overwhelming very easily because parents are going, I don’t have time for this. I’m just trying to manage my home. I know that there are times just with cooking meals or or managing who’s cooking meals for our family of 10 because Zander doesn’t eat. But, you know, just that can be overwhelming in and of itself. And so the one word that I have for you is prioritize. Prioritize the second word I have for you is communicate, which is why we’re going to talk about marriage communication, marriage conversations at the end of this podcast regarding this topic, because you guys have to do this as a team. Mom’s going to have different intel that dad’s going to have as far as what are the skill sets that God has given each of your kids, because that’s part of this conversation. Then there’s also insights that maybe he has about things that he wishes he would have been prepared for as a man. You’re going to have those as a woman. You’re going to come together, collaborate and communicate about what are the most essential top two things that every kid, regardless of gender, they need to know. What’s the things that we for sure are daughters and, you know, what are the things that for sure our sons need to know. Right. And and then you come up with your unique to your family skill set list that you’re like, OK, we can work on this thing like fishing. Yeah, right. You know, you come up.

So what’s really encouraging when you hear these is all of them can be woven into the fabric of your everyday life versus a classroom setting. That’s what’s beautiful. They can be you can just intentionally make this part of your free time, too. And things you’re doing, you can intentionally just during dinner, talk about some of these things on a regular basis and have it start to be woven into part of their education. So I don’t want you to get overwhelmed and thinking we’re adding eight things to the curriculum every day or anything like that. These are eight things to be considering and going, I need to instill these in as I’m living out life with my kids in conjunction with other education topics.

Yeah. No, that’s a really good point. So summing up what Isaac just said, we’re not going to say, hey, go buy four hours worth of curriculum that you’re going to add to their already busy day of doing schoolwork. That’s not what this is. So.

So, hey, thanks for being part of the one million legacy’s movement. We are so appreciative. Every time you share every time we write a comment, it’s really encouraging. And when you tell us topics to talk about, we usually do it. So we do our best to do that when we hear topics that we feel the most people would need. And so you’re we’re doing this together. One million families and their legacies makes a big difference. By the way on iTunes it’s so cool seeing courageous parenting rated in the top 200. That happens because you’re sharing it. That happens because you give us a five star review that’s the written reviews. That happens because people are listening to old episodes. Pretty convinced.

So pretty I mean, hardcore, you guys like we have some episodes on how to overcome anger in your parenting. We have one on why your kids won’t respect you. Yeah. Why your kids disobey you like those are three of our top favorite

Is for God’s glory and not our glory. It’s something we’re doing. The other bit more people find the episode when it’s listed in there and your help is great. So we appreciate that. Let’s go through the list. We’re going to talk briefly. We have some scriptures for you on each of these, and we’ll go one by one so you can be anticipating what the next one might be. Ok, because that’s fun. Yeah. The first one is a biblical worldview. Some of you like I’m doing that and some of you like, oh, I need to shore that up a little bit. What is biblical world view mean? Well, you could take any topic and you can have a worldly viewpoint on it or you can have a biblical viewpoint on it. Mm hmm. Right.

It’s your perspective. It’s the lens that you’re looking at it through.

So superimportant. Things like gender. What are you training your kids to have a view on that? Right. Is it a biblical view or is it a worldview or marriage or, you know, family

Or equal roles? Right. Or even like you may as an adult, like last. I’m just thinking the last election, there were certain things that were on the ballot. We at the time voted in Oregon, even though we had just moved to Idaho because there wasn’t enough time. But we drove back to Oregon because it was that important to us to cast their vote. And on that ballot, they were trying to legalize all kinds of crazy drugs. Right. So looking at that through a biblical worldview, talking to your kids about that, depending on what age they are. Right. And preparing them so that they don’t just get caught up in that agenda, that potentially being taught to them, maybe not even through schools like I’m talking about media here, like social media. If you have teenagers, if you have young kids that are access to this or they hear grandma and grandpa, the neighbors talking about it.

So why do kids get led astray? Because they hear from peers down the road, maybe kids younger right now, but they’re going to hear from their peers at some point about arguing against that. The Bible stands for certain things. They’re going to try and shoot holes in the Bible, frankly, about certain issues. So the enemy gets in people’s heads about a certain issue and it weakens their belief about the Bible. And over time, their belief in the entire Bible continues to decrease.

And that’s how you lead little ones astray. The Bible’s very clear about it would be better for a man to have so millstone.

So you want to be proactive and making sure they have a biblical view about all kinds of topics. Just look at anything in the news, anything that people are talking about, what’s happening in the world. Different issues. Those are things they’re going to be confronted with. And they don’t have a biblical view. If they don’t know what the Bible says about it and have a conviction in that they will develop a conviction in the worldly version. So that’s really

Important. I think that another thing that comes to mind when it comes to biblical worldview, I think of even just topics that you’re going to have conversations with your five year old about. Right. Like putting your things away. Right. So if your kids get out toys and they have a hard time putting them away, the world might say, hey, let kids be kids. You just clean it up. Mm hmm. Right. How many parents have done that where they’re like, oh, they’re playing with something right now? They moved on to the next toy. I’ll just clean it up for them. But what is a biblical worldview of work ethic and stewarding our things properly? Right. And sowing and reaping what are we sowing into our kids right now? Do we even talk to our kids about natural consequences, about the spiritual of sowing and reaping?

And here’s the scripture on it. Questions to beware, lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. I like him when he talks about principles of the world, basic, like compared to of Christ.

Right. And this is Colossians chapter two, verse eight, if you guys want that.

So awesome. I want to take a moment and give you something for free if you haven’t got it already is the date night one sheet. It is a beautiful document you can download that will has some key questions on it for your date. And I did just get in alignment about what’s most important for your family, no matter what time of year. It’s always important to recalibrate. You can get that by going to CourageousParenting.com And subscribing to our mailing list. Also, you can get all of our show notes and everything, at CourageousParenting.com. And I also just want to share real quick about the parenting mentor program. So many families are being transformed by going through this. It’s the six week self-paced program with live engagement from us and even direct interaction. So if you want to join us, here’s a little bit more about it. You can find out more at courageous parenting dot com.

Steven, I realized that we were getting too comfortable with the world’s vision of how to raise our children. But Angie and Isaac have done in creating this is literally phenomenal. This program

Provided awesome

Scripture based teachings and just some really great practical applications.

This class has just really rocked my world. It has given me a vision for not just the different things that we might focus on as parents who are trying to raise our kids vertically, like how our kids are behaving or what we’re doing with discipline, but also the things that part we now have a game plan to how we want to raise our children. We have so many answers to the questions that have been in our mind. It’s not just these hypothetical situations or it’s not just this. Here’s what I think you should do. It’s let me show you where in scripture this is. Do your legacy a favor and yourself a favor and just do it. One of the best things that we’ve done this year, one of the best investments we’ve made this year, and I could not recommend it more. We’re no longer fearing dark days

Ahead, but we’re so excited to raise lights to be leaders for the next generation. So the next one is government and accurate history.

So I would even say accurate government in history, because there is like an intentional pursuit to teach falsity when it comes to history and government. So when we say governments, you may be listening from Australia, you may be listening from Canada, or maybe you’re in America. Doesn’t really matter where you’re listening to. I think that the aspect that Isaac and I have tried to teach our kids is we want them to be aware of and knowledgeable about the differences and governments around the world and the consequences that those different types of governing authorities have upon the people that live in those countries. This is a huge point of purposefulness that parents need to be proactive about, because the reality is, is if we literally knew the history of how different countries were ran, let’s just take communism. For example, if we were teaching the the millennial generation and Generation Z. Right. If they had actually been taught the real truth about what communism has done in countries like China, in other countries, then maybe there would be less of a push to have communism today. Right. But instead, what do you see? You see more of an acceptance of it today. Then you’ve ever seen before. And I think that a large part of that is ignoring the true testimonies and stories of the people who’ve grown up in countries where that was taking place in those governments. Yeah. So it’s not just your country’s government in this point. This is like, are you teaching your kids? Are do they know what has happened in the past? Do they know what happened with Hitler and the Nazis in Germany? Do they know what has happened in Austria? Do they know what has happened in all around the world? What about biblical times? Do they know about Nero and how he was persecuting Christians? The reality is, is that most of us, even adults, don’t necessarily know. And so this is an opportunity for you to redeem your education alongside your kids, to read a book together.

Right. Yeah. So just make sure you’re getting books that are giving accurate history. How do you do that? You’re going to have to do research. We can’t, in a quick podcast go into all that right now. But you have to do research and you have to vet it out and make sure the resources you’re using or that your kids are using if they’re in school somewhere, are accurate. I would not. You just trust whatever school you’re sending in or whether it has Christian in the name or not. I would not trust it at all, meaning I would vet everything they’re giving to them and make sure that it’s accurate.

So one of the points that we’ve talked about this I think it was probably a year ago almost because it was during the election time, you guys need to look up wall builders and David Barton, he is a historian, a U.S. historian, especially if you’re in the U.S., you for sure need to look him up. But if you’re international, I think there’s just ways to to learn about it. But he even was pleading with parents this year, as were we, because the 20, 21 year fiscal year is the year that school districts started revising curriculums and potentially taking out things such as the Civil War, the American Revolution, World War One and World War Two, the Holocaust. Why would they want those removed from curriculums in public school settings in a like all over the country? This was in different states. You can look at the revised curriculum. And so if you haven’t done that, if you’re listening because you’re a parent and you don’t know what’s being taught in your state, you’ve got to find out what’s being taught. You’ve got to find out what revisions were being made this year that are going to potentially impact 2020 to you. You need to know what have they eliminated. And then either you make a stink and you actually aggressively go after that and try to get it put back in and or you need to find good curriculum that you can supplement with so that your kids, you

Know, at home. And if you’re homeschooling, it’s much simpler. Just pick the books that you believe in. Ok, so Romans 15:4 for whatever things were written before, were written for our learning that we threw the patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. Now, I don’t want to extrapolate the scripture out of context, because talking about scripture here, OK, but I still think we can learn from that. Right. What for whatever things were written before or written for our learning, if what we’re reading from before isn’t accurate, then we’re learning what’s not accurate. It’s so important that when we read from the past is accurate, because otherwise you can’t learn from the mistakes. You can’t learn from those things. And it’s incredibly important that we do so we don’t repeat history. Why are the problems in the world? If you look at the cycles, because people keep repeating the same mistakes, they’re trying to repeat the same mistake again with socialism. So, oh, no, we can do it better this time scale. Are you kidding me? How arrogant are you? That goes against how God made human beings in the first place. Ok, so point three is entrepreneurship or the third thing?

Right. So this is the third point so far. We cover a biblical worldview. Accurate government, accurate history.

And entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship so important now doesn’t mean for sure they’re going to be an entrepreneur. Although you’ve probably heard me say I do believe all our kids should be entrepreneurs at this point. I used to not believe that, even though I’m pro entrepreneurship.

But tell them why. Yeah. The main reason.

Well, it’s absolutely because it’s really difficult these days to be controlled by a company, because companies are increasingly being controlled by the government, and increasingly governments are doing tyrannical things around the world. And so that trickles down into the employers and whether they want to or not. Then pretty soon you have to get vaccinated or you lose your job, or every week you have to do a test, a swab test. And that DNA is getting tracked him database and all that stuff. Right. Who knows what it’s going to be used for. So it’s really important, I think, that our kids are at least learning when they’re young how to make something, sell something, how to create value and see people enjoy that value and trade money for that experience. Is pivotal, and there’s lots ways to do that, we’ve given other podcast episodes about that, but I think that’s really, really important these days.

It’s important. So with entrepreneurship, something that comes to my mind is that you’re teaching your kids skills that solve problems in today’s world. Right. But you also want to, like, look at how your kids are wired. Look, look at their fifteens. What do they love? What are they passionate about? Is there something in those questions that you could potentially cultivate in them, grow in them, encouraging them over the years so that when they are older, it’s an exciting thing that they’re moving into versus like a drudgery. Another thing that is really important, something that we’ve been noticing lately, is the different skill sets within different kids in your family or even not just in your family, but like or immediate family. But think extended family, maybe your kids have cousins. Right. And maybe one of them is like a true capitalist at heart. And the other is really good at skills. And they work good together as a team. But this one’s just he’s got such a generous heart that he’s never going to charge anybody for anything ever. Now, there’s but this one over here that’s trainable is right. But this one over here is really good at counting numbers and fairness and justice. Working together might be an awesome thing that makes a business actually thrive where it’s one without the other would not.

And you can take your kids through the exercises I did in the last episode, which colleagues exercise skills, exercise if they’re older rice. Or you can wait and do that when they’re older. In Proverbs 12 11, it says he who tills his land will be satisfied with bread, but he who follows frivolity is devoid of understanding. So I like that. Tilse is farming entrepreneurship? Absolutely. It’s working with resources to create something that other people need or value

Or something that your family needs and values. Right. That you’re providing for your family and so that you don’t necessarily have to go buy food because you’re growing it yourself, right? Yeah. So that in my mind, that’s entrepreneurship, because you’re not spending money on something like you’re paying yourself.

Yeah, absolutely. So for home economics.

So the fourth one was one that like Isaac and I went back and forth on the naming it because there are many things that could go underneath this category. Right. So with home economics, some some of it could even get mixed in with entrepreneurship as well. But like the skills of how to cook from scratch, the skills of how to mend something like a pillow busts open, can they can your kids so it back together, reusing things. We recently took our son to a reuseum. Right. And so there was an element of like repurposing things for a different purpose when they when something breaks. Right. Using a motor out of an old car to get a lawnmower going or something like that. And so there’s there’s all kinds of things that you can do with your kids on a small scale to teach them. But this is something that’s often overlooked because parents again, there’s this message out there that’s like, oh, let kids be kids. So I’m going to do their laundry. I’m going to cook all their food. And then what happens when they’re older? They don’t know how to do laundry. They don’t know how clean the house and they don’t know how to cook. That was totally me when I grew up. I didn’t know the first thing about homemaking. Right. And so teaching your kids home economics, this is a huge deal. Like we’ve known families where they get married and they’re older and they’re eating out all the time because they don’t know how to cook. They’re not a grocery shop. Right.

How to do 70 to go grocery shopping. How to how to make less and a man’s how to manage money. You could say that good options can also go into that. So financial is definitely a big thing. Financial can fit into many of these, like entrepreneurship, home economics. Financial is definitely important. But it’s right here like budgets. Mom using a budget and kids seeing that and going, well, that doesn’t fit into the budget.

Even like coupons and finding sales like that is a skill to be able to thrift and to be able to get stuff at a cheaper price like that goes under home economics. Right. And so I just. And again, this is maybe something where you’re literally driving to garage sales in the summer with a kiddo, because it’s a fun thing to do. And you’re talking to them about the importance of stewarding your money and not having to spend full price for something and teaching them how much money you saved when you actually got like, I don’t know, a pie plate for two dollars when they normally sell for 20 dollars. Brand new. And it’s the exact same thing. So, you know, giving your kids perspective and teaching them these different skills are really just call them skills because they’re not taught today. They can literally prepare them for a much easier transition into adulthood later.

This is cool scripture. I just stumbled upon it. Proverbs 27 23. Be diligent to know the state of. Phlox and attend to your herds for riches are not forever, nor does a crown endure to all generations. When the hay is removed in the tender grass shows itself in the herbs of the mountains are gathered in the lambs, will provide your clothing and the goats the price of a field. You shall have enough goat’s milk for your food, for the food of your household, and the nourishment of your maid servants, maids, servants.

Interesting. Well, and it’s similar to that. In Proverbs 28, you write, what verses was that?

That’s 27, 23 through 27.

Awesome. And I mean, again, I just as you’re reading, I was thinking in Proverbs 30 or Proverbs 31, woman is she laughs at the days to come. Why does she laugh in the days to come? If you go through the entire verse chapter, you’ll realize that she’s like preparing. She’s being active. She’s doing things that are going to be wise for her household in the future so she can laugh at the days to come. Why? Because she already made their garments. She’s already planted a vineyard and now it’s dormant season and they’ve already harvested. And so but the woman who fears the Lord, it all comes back again to glorifying God. She fears the Lord. She knows he’s going to take care of her because she’s doing what he has called her to do to be prepared. And it’s the same thing for men as well. Right. Like when they are preparing their minds. Like I remember there was that year, Isaac, a few years where you one year you have made a goal and you were reading 50 books in one year and somebody asked you why you’re doing this. Oh, yes, 30 books. And so someone asked you, well, why are you reading these?

While I was preparing because God prompted me that I’m going to be doing something different in the future and I need to be preparing, but God will not tell me what it was going to be.

That’s right. So you were preparing by reading books that he had kind of led you to that he put on your heart?

I made the list ahead of time, and I read the three books and journal them from during the year.

Right. But so this is the thing, though. You had a vision that God was wanting you to prepare, but you didn’t know what for. Yeah, but you still trusted him and you did the work. And then later it was obvious even now, because you still even quote some of the books, like the ones oftentimes the tyranny of the And. Yeah. So there are many times where he’s teaching these things to our kids, to you guys, to the podcasts in our parenting mentor program. Just even in business, you still do business work outside the home. Yeah.

And another little point to this is that the Just-In-Time method is no longer working, meaning chains, supply chains are broken. All these things where you used to be able to go grocery shopping and get things, that’s not always going to be the case. There’s a challenge in getting things shipped to you, I’m sure you’ve noticed. So where we grew up used to that. And your kids were all used to it. Oh, just buying an Amazon of the year tomorrow. That might not be accurate in the future. And so we just need to realize that the comforts and the ease at which we live might not always be true. Let’s move on. Number five is health. This is pretty simple for what we’re going to talk about right now. But your kids need to be highly educated in experientially used to taking care of themselves.

Right. And part of that is how you react when they start getting sick or what are you doing preventative? Like, do your kids know to take vitamins every day if they don’t know how to take vitamins every day? I mean, this is depending on age, too. I just realized, like some of you have toddlers, you definitely don’t want them going in and getting their vitamins, OK, because they might go, oh, those little gummies, those are so yummy and eat a ton. But the reality is, you can teach your kids by having good habits on a daily basis. You’re modeling health. Right. But then as they get older, you start having them join you in helping with the other kids or you go, hey, can you go get this oil? Hey, can you go get that vitamin? Oh, you have a you bonked your head. Why don’t you go get the arnica and bring it to me? And then you teach them how many Ditech? You literally are equipping them. And so this there’s both the preventative health, but then also how do I deal with things

When they occur and how to work out and how to work out without a gym? I’m sure a lot of people have had to learn that if they didn’t already know. Right, because gyms were closed for a while and some places they still are. What are we reliant on that might not be there in the future? So do they know how to use their body weight to do workouts? Do they know how to use dumbbells? Simple things.

Well, and I also think, too, like there is a category of people that have become dependent upon doing a sport to be able to be fit where they don’t necessarily have like a rhythm of exercise and maybe even like even just getting up and moving your bones every day and stretching and and having some regular exercise as a habit. And so I know that for myself, I grew up playing sports. Maybe your kids are doing this to one of the things that was best for me when I was in high school was actually going to the gym and having a gym membership, because that taught me to take care of my body so I could do the sport. The sport was not necessarily just the exercise. And now with Covid. Sports have been canceled in the past, they may be canceled in the future. Do you have a habit of actually taking care of yourself on a daily basis, and are your kids able to do that or are they dependent upon sports only because it’s not a good habit?

I mean, we’re not fear mongers. We don’t believe in fearing things. But the likelihood of a worse or maybe a real pandemic, if I should say, in the future, is highly probable. And so, you know what might not be available? And are your kids training to be able to do all these things without a gym and all these things? Ok, so superimportant. Now, these last three, by the way, are my favorite, some of my favorite. So let’s go into them.

Surprised.

Ok, confident communicator’s number. That is so important. And that doesn’t just happen. And that is irrespective of personality. It doesn’t matter what the personality is. All personalities need to be confident communicators. I believe everybody should have some experience. You know, even doing some public speaking and that’s just in front of their family, even though not everybody’s wired to be able to do that. But confident communicators, lots of different forms, it’s able to share your opinion, confident looking people in the eye. This happens when they’re young age. If you heard one of the kids did something or said something good at dinner, you could say, hey, hey, Janice, why don’t you tell everybody about what you told me earlier about this? And then, you know, make sure you protect her space and everybody’s listening and everybody intently listens to her. So she expects people to listen to her. See, it’s a lot of times people don’t share things, especially young people and all ages, because they don’t expect people to hear them and to listen to them to. And people sense that negative expectancy. And so they don’t listen to them.

Well, then I would say even in large families, there’s just a little side note for those of you who have like more than two kids. The reality is, is sometimes the younger ones or just the person that might have the more reserved personality are less likely to talk. If there’s someone that’s domineering in the family or someone who is kind of an intention spotlight grabber, if you will. And so it’s important that you give space and you protect space like Isaac was just talking about when he said that, like protect the space so that they can feel heard, can be so important for the kids that are maybe less confident. But also it’s important for those that maybe are the younger ones in the family that get talked over or the one that has a more reserved personality that doesn’t always get their opinion heard. Right. And I think that, you know, valuing them teaches other kids how to draw in those type of people and conversations, too, because it can be helpful for them as well.

And what if at the end of the week they gave a little summary of what they learned for the week in their education and wouldn’t talk about, like remembering what you learn and and then teaching every teacher?

I mean, and then

They experience the experience of doing that in front of people in a safe environment of your home while they’re growing up. I mean, find creative ways to get them speaking confidently in front of other people and encourage them in that. All right. Seven Social Awareness.

I think that this is a huge one. This is one of the ones that I was like, this is a big deal today because more now than ever, kids are potentially going to struggle with being socially awkward, specifically because of this mask wearing that is happening everywhere. Yeah, I

Just I thought there used to be a thought. Sorry to interrupt, but it has to do with what you’re doing is used to be thought that public school was where you developed social skills and homeschooling would make you socially awkward. It’s actually not true. It can be true in either case. But now if you’re masking in schools, where’s the social awkwardness?

It’s not just masking. It’s that there’s social distancing like six feet apart. And in some cases, there’s even like glass barriers between people and stuff.

And so and then scaring people against unvaccinated. Well, and

It’s it’s happening everywhere. It’s not just in schools. Right? It’s at the grocery store. They have these big glass or plastic dividers between people. Literally. That’s what they are. They’re dividers. And so it creates an isolation. And when kids are growing up where they’re constantly in different isolation systems, then how in the world do they develop like the ability to shake a hand firmly? Like that’s the other thing. Like, are people going to be scared to shake hands because of the transfer of germs, only to where kids don’t know how to like, how firm they should shake a hand, that they should actually lead in with their dominant the right hand, because most people are right handed or like, you know what I mean? Like teaching kids those basic things that used to be so easy. So common among people when greeting one another. Hugging is not happening right in the same kind of way for a. Lot of people handshaking isn’t mask wearing is preventing, like people are not necessarily smiling, you can’t see the smile behind the mask. And then there’s a lack of eye contact that’s even happening. I know that in places that are more likely, we are just in Oregon on this oil’s retreat. And we went to Fred Meyers and everyone there was wearing a mask except us. Like I was like, I am not doing this. I’m not going to do this with my baby. I’m not doing this with my kid. We have nothing to fear. We walked in and Megan and I were like, we are going to be missionaries where we’re at. And sure enough, you guys. People were scared to talk to one another, but they were not scared to talk to us. And they were nice to us. And people were pulling down their mask to ask about our baby. And like, I just think people need to be reminded how to be kind and how to socialize. And it clearly the mask has created a divider that prevents that.

So you have to be proactive to teach your kids social awareness skills, to understand when they need to listen, when they need talk, when they’re talking too much, how to an eye contact all the things Angie was talking about. It’s more important than ever, regardless of the method of education choice, we all have to be more proactive than ever and into the future. This is what it is today. What’s going to be in two years.

And so there’s a you know, I just want to tag on this last aspect of social awareness that I think is just so critical that if you’re listening right now, there is an element of stranger danger that, you know, people used to teach. They even taught it in schools for a long time. And kids and like innately, even our two year old taking them to the grocery store. I’ve told the story a million times. He’s like a bad guy or bad guy. And I’m literally thinking to myself in that moment, do I say, no, he’s not a bad guy, so I don’t make that person feel bad? No, I’m not going to say that I ended up answering my two year old. I don’t know. I don’t know. Because you don’t know, actually. And there’s a safety. Our kids need to be taught who is safe, who is not safe, and they literally can’t when they can’t see a person’s face. So there’s a social awareness that our little ones need to learn for their safety. And we have to take them out to actually be around people, to be challenged, to grow in that if they’re not ever around people, that’s going to be a problem. So when we’re talking about social awareness, yes, there’s that like, hey, are you socially comfortable around people? Can you make eye contact? Can you carry a confident conversation and not be socially awkward? But then there’s also this element of like, who is safe, who is not safe? We need to teach the young children this that they’re aware of who’s around them. Right. So this is this is a really big conversation that we could have in the future, for sure.

And the final one is number eight, survival skills.

This was kind of fun.

It’s fun. And we just do quick. It’s do they know how to, you know, farm? Do they know how to fish? Do they know how to hunt? Do they know how to as the proper age and with the proper guidance, fire a weapon? Do they know how to use a knife for cooking, cooking or creating a stick to cook a hot dog or, you know, all these little do they know how to do mechanical things? Do they know how to repair do like repairs to more extensive things? Do they know how to work with wood

Or what about like first aid and CPR? Like that’s a huge thing to like. If you’re near water, do your kids know how to swim? Like that’s a survival skill. Yeah, but then there’s also elements of like cooking off the land. Right. That could be a fun thing to teach. But when I think of survivor skills, I also think of self-defense, especially as a woman, to you know, and it’s super important for guys to be able to protect themselves also, but to protect their families. Right. And so like for us, we have our kids doing Krav Maga right now. And part of that is their self-defense stuff. Like if someone grabs your neck, how do you get out of that using your body in turn?

And just because there might be a question about Krav Maga, why did you pick Krav Maga versus all the other things? Well, it’s because it’s practical. It’s it’s it’s not just competitive, competitive. They’re not going to tournaments and things like that, although that can be fun. We don’t want to go in lots of different directions. We just want our kids to learn how to protect themselves. And they are learning the fastest, most effective ways to deter people or to fight back if they need to.

Right. And I know that there’s probably stuff online as well that you could look into for self-defense as well. The point is, is like, are you proactively teaching your kids this stuff? Are you teaching them your phone number? That’s for the four year old. That’s an important thing for them. That’s something that I’m literally like thinking of the school year with my littles and going, they need to know our address. They need to know how to spell their last name. They need to know what our phone numbers are like. The emergency nine one one is something that I have to teach. And now, you know, so.

Yeah. And like I said at the beginning, all of these things can be taught within the normal method of your daily lives. Right. Doesn’t have to be a classroom setting. You can do some of it that way. But these things look for ways, prey for ways that God can reveal to you to weave these into your daily lives and so forth. And what I learned, a couple marriage tips. It’s so important that usually. One person is listening to this, and then they try and convey to the to their spouse. And that’s fine, but just make sure you have a marriage conversation about any big changes or any initiatives or anything like that. Otherwise, sometimes the other spouse just gets defensive because they weren’t part of the process. And so you should be part of the process together, the best you can be of discovering and deciding these things, because then you’re more supportive towards that thing.

The initiative here’s a good example. I mean, if if Isaac was just to like jump in and start doing something that was like home school type stuff, like let’s just say he was like, you know what, guys? We’re going to start reading this book and then we’re going to read this and then we’re going to read that. And let’s say it was history. And here I am, the homeschool mom, and I’ve already planned a homeschool curriculum. I might be going, well, should I just not do my history curriculum like we didn’t communicate about this and I might potentially feel like my toes are getting stepped on. That would be an antagonistic like. And he might just be thinking like, oh, I just really am passionate about wanting to teach my kids this thing. And if we haven’t communicated, then that could become offensive to me when it doesn’t need to be. It can be a conversation where it’s like, hey, what are you planning on doing for history this year? I was thinking about adding in something like this. What do you think? How could we do that

As a team? And husbands need to be supportive and back up their wives. If they’re the one driving something forward like health, it really needs it’s I can’t tell you how many times I have to sometimes back up. Angie, you know, now this is a big deal. Thank you, Angie, for taking care of us and teaching us what we should take and when we have this ailment or whatever, because in the moment it can to kids, it can feel like a nuisance. And you don’t want to let your kids treat it that way because it needs to mean equipping thing. Not only they’re getting helped, but they should be learning and receive that information. So we got to back each other up and we got to make decisions together and and be united front. And all those things are really important. So this can be overwhelming great things there. You got other things to think about, too, so don’t let it be overwhelming. Just decide it’s not going to be maybe right down the list and then talk about it as a married couple and go out. Let’s how can we just start adding him more biblical worldview? Why don’t you just start there? Because that seems like the most important one. And if you’re already doing that, then pick one other one to start and you could gradually implement these things.

Yeah. I mean, even if your kids are younger, I know we have so many younger listeners, as you can probably tell, because they keep going back. If your kids are younger, like even think of home economics and it starts out with them having a good attitude, I because I just know that people are going to come back with questions to as Isaac saying, hey, but what if our kids are having a really hard time having a good attitude about learning these things from us? Well, that’s because you didn’t start young enough, you know, to start young enough with giving the the little the three year old maybe like get a plastic knife from IKEA or a table knife where they can cut olives and be helping in the kitchen so that later on in life they want to help you with making dinner. It starts a making it a fun thing that they can accomplish. And then you’re affirming them saying good job and letting them help you, even if it does take a little extra time.

Thanks for joining us.

See you next time. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to CourageousParenting.com and CourageousMom.com For free online workshops, blog posts and best selling courses. Also, we wanted to quickly tell you about our six week online parenting mentor program. Isaac and I created a powerful biblical curriculum. Here’s how it works. Each week we release a video with a downloadable parenting packet to make it easy for you to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

This is an incredible self-paced program where we cover everything from obedience training to overcoming mistakes most Christians are making. But more than that, it’s a supportive community. You’ll have access to our private online group, Live Webcasts and the courageous parenting text message line where Angie and I can send you weekly encouragement straight to your phone.

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