Don’t let ageism destroy the potential for your family. We are all naturally selfish and tend to take for granted the people around us. These both contribute to a home where kids fight only to be compounded by continuous age segregation perhaps starting in Sunday school, grade levels at school, activities, and sports.

In addition, kids naturally, form a powerful peer pressure with each other to only hang out with people their age or a little older causing harm to sibling relationships and a lack of effectiveness as they launch into the world.

This isn’t what you want right? Well, it takes a proactive deliberate ongoing effort to parent your kids in a way that prevents ageism and leads to amazing sibling relationships and frankly, a peaceful and productive home.

This is exactly what we cover in this episode.

Build what you want tomorrow, today!

Key Takeaways From This Episode

As Christians, we are called not to fear this world. We serve a mighty God who is in complete control. We must fear Him only, but also must be as wise as serpents and gentle as doves.

Everyone wants to have siblings that love and respect each other and every parent desires their children to have a great sense of teamwork.

Because we worked on teamwork early on in our family we immediately saw the benefits which encouraged us more toward being open to having a larger family.

If you just take one thing away from this podcast and implement it daily, you will see change.

Our prayer is that you would be cultivating strong sibling relationships regardless of what your experiences were in your childhood; to create a new legacy.

Work hard, but play hard together too.

• When people work hard together they have to learn how to be together in a more dynamic way.
• Signature experiences are important in raising your kids. It calls for everyone to use their gifts and play a role to accomplish something together.
• One of our families signature experiences was cultivating a vineyard.
• Celebrate accomplishing things together to cultivate teamwork.
• Great experiences let you anchor the right behaviors moving forward.
• We’ve found that RV trips are great because they are close quarter experiences, revealing the relational and behavioral opportunities for improvement.

Build Relationship Vision

• Sharing warnings or regrets from your sibling experiences with your children to help them see the costs of not doing it right and help them see a vision for doing it better. (if that’s relevant)
• Describe the future relationship dynamics they will want and help them see that today’s nurturing of that relationship matters; that they need to be close NOW and wanting to support each other in the future.
• Remind them that they are responsible for building relationships with their siblings.
• It’s not just going to happen in the future, you have to build it today.
• You have to start visioneering for what they want when they are older and to build that closeness today.
• Whatever you take for granted will disappear.  
• Get them outside of their immaturity, the moment, and their familiarity (the present) to think about the future and how their actions today are impacting that, and really how their siblings should be their closest friends.
• Familiarity breeds contempt.
• We don’t encourage our kids to have best friends because it’s exclusive by title. We encourage close friends but not using the words BEST friends.
• If they can’t get it right at home first then they won’t do it well outside the home with others.
• “If you can’t get it right here, then you can’t go to that birthday party”, you’ve gotta share the consequences.
• Teach them how to allow each other to grow up; they have an impoverished image of their younger siblings and need you to remind them how much they’ve grown up so the older ones shift their view.
• Proactively get them sharing positive things about each other at the dinner table.
• If you see selfishness, call it out and give a consequence for it. We say “The first shall be last” and make the selfish person who wants to get their dinner first, go last, for example.

Teamwork

• If you establish and continue to influence a great sense of teamwork then everything is easier.
• We (all parents) tend to nurture our kids being part of teams outside of the home with sports and activities but fail to nurture that team atmosphere at home. You are the coach of your home.
• To cultivate a team atmosphere we go and support anyone who’s doing something outside of the home.
• Put kids together that have the highest potential for conflict which is the opposite of normal parenting. Unfortunately, parents separate kids that have a hard time getting along. We make them work it out and purposefully put them together.
• Do you want your kids to be able to work with all different personalities? Then train them to do so in your home.
• The easy choice is usually not the best choice as a parent.
• Naturally, your kids will develop more loyalty to their similarly aged friends but it shouldn’t be that way. They should be more loyal to their siblings.
• Raise our kids up to be loyal, faithful, and protect each other no matter who’s around them.
• Cultivate friendships despite age otherwise, ageism will develop. Wherever your kids are age-segregated, it massively contributes to this unhealthy behavior if unchecked whether it’s public schools, Sunday school, activities, sports, and activities like these. You have to combat against this proactively.
• It can negatively influence a kid for the rest of their life if they get stuck subconsciously in ageism only being good at having relationships with kids their own age. This is why we see a lack of young people seeking out older generations to mentor and disciple them, which was God’s Design.
• We are not called to be like this world, don’t allow your kids to be.
• A root that needs to be pulled is selfishness.
• Family life, specifically sibling relationships, is the training ground to learn how to deal effectively with conflict. Do this right and it will benefit their marriage. 
• As parents, we often want the conflict to be fixed too quickly, missing the opportunity to guide them in appropriate reconciliation with each other.
• Start as young as you can, but remember it’s never too late. Tell your kids where you’ve blown it by saying things like, “I should have been talking to you about this a long time ago, but I want to start now.”

Scriptures From This Episode

Ephesians 5:1-2 “Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.”

John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”

Mark 9:35 “And He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “If anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.”

Ecclesiastes 4:9-11 “Two are better than one, Because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, For he has no one to help him up. Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm; But how can one be warm alone?

Proverbs 17:17 “A friend loves at all times, And a brother is born for adversity.”

1 Thessalonians 5:11 “Therefore comfort each other and edify one another, just as you also are doing.”

Resources

A great resource for Dad’s mentioned in this episode is Dadtired.com, you can also follow him on Instagram for Godly wisdom and inspiration.

Here’s our family vlog that highlights our three month RV trip around the US. That’s right! Last Spring and Summer our family of 9 (at the time) drove over 13,000 miles and saw over 34 States, while Angie was 6-8 months pregnant with our 8th baby! Fun adventures all over the place.

If The Spirit Prompts You to Financially Support (We are a for-profit, for social good organization.)