Healthy Home Tips During Uncertain Times – Part One

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Episode Summary

It can be hard to distill down what matters when it comes to the health of your family and keeping a clean home. And you do have to pick your battles as a Mom’s plate is full when intentionally raising kids in an uncertain world. Angie knows as she has been raising 8 kids over almost 20 years and she shares some of her tips in this part one of a two-part series. In this episode, we encourage what it looks like to fully embrace the health of your family, discuss the power and importance of nurturing your child’s needs, and how the simplest changes can make a difference.

As parents, it is our responsibility to care for our children, to nurture them, and build them up. Part of caring for our children is understanding what their needs are. It can be so easy to jump to conclusions and react in a way that doesn’t take our child’s needs into consideration. For example, when your child is acting up, the first question should always be, have I set them up for success or failure? Maybe their emotions are triggered because of a lack of self-control, anger, and a defiant will, or disobedient heart attitude, but maybe it is because they haven’t eaten enough, weren’t able to have their nap, and they were provoked?!

The Bible is very clear about parents not provoking their children to wrath (anger) and we must take the responsibility seriously to consider our child as ourself, offer them graces in the appropriate times of need, and make sure that we are doing our best to care for their nurturing needs, as we call it in the Parenting Mentor Program. It is a parent’s responsibility to assess if a child is not feeling well and care for their physical well-being with compassion and kindness, but it is equally important that parents care for their children’s emotional and relationship needs as well and these often go unaddressed. We need to take care of our children but don’t misunderstand the point we are trying to make. We are not advocating caudling. Rather this episode is opening the discussion of the need for parents to embrace their God-given role as nurturer, caregiver, and provider. We will engage in this discussion by covering very practical ways that we have cared for our kids over the past 20 years. I hope this is an encouragement to you all!

In This Episode We Cover:

  1. Embrace the health of your family
  2. The importance of nurturing needs
  3. How to utilize house plants

Key Points In This Two-Part Series:

  1. Embrace the health of your family
  2. The importance of nurturing needs
  3. How to utilize house plants
  4. Preventative health
  5. Clean and healthy homes

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Scripture In This Episode:

Genesis 1:31 – “Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.”

Genesis 9:3 – “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs.”

Genesis 1:12 – “And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.”

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Full Transcript:

Welcome to Courageous Parenting podcast, the 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 20 years and have seen the fruit in raising our eight 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 the 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.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the podcast. Hey, guys. And we’re talking about something a little bit different direction than usual. So it’s exciting.

Yeah, we’re gonna we’re going to talk a little bit about all the things that stay at home moms do and moms do, whether they’re stay at home mom or not. Right. So we hold a lot of roles in Life. Yeah. Whether you call yourself chef or you’re the teacher, the counselor or parent or if you’re working and mom working outside the home and being a mom.

So, healthy home tips during uncertain times. It’s uncertain times. And but it’s even more important right now to really be nourishing the family and keeping everybody healthy.

Yes. So we just thought that we would have a we definitely did prepare some things for this talk for sure. But we thought we would have a little bit of a candid conversation, too, in the sense of just sharing about the importance of of being proactive in being caring for your family and nurturing your family and why that’s so important, because that has been something I’ve been passionate about.

Well, around here, you’re definitely the mom that knows all about health. I mean, if somebody has something wrong, they not only know how to describe it really, really clearly and detailed even if they are very small, but you know exactly what to give them. And you’re not technically a doctor, of course. No. So there’s a disclaimer here that. Yes, you’re not a doctor. Yeah, but you have 20 years of doing this with our eight kids and myself and yourself. Yes. And you’ve done an amazing job. There’s a lot of really cool information. So. I think this is going to be awesome.

Yeah. And you guys, we’re not going to be diving in and giving you, like, specific, you know, things to use for specific ailments or anything like that. That’s not what this conversation is about. But we are going to talk about the importance of being proactive in your health, of your family and the health of your home. Proactive and preventative care is really what I would like to call it. And I really do believe that this is a jurisdiction. And can I just say I enjoy it.

I really enjoy it. I if you’re watching the YouTube video, you notice that there’s this enormous, massive book. It’s like, how would you says five, six inches tall, at least six inches. Okay, you guys, this was written in 1912. This is a book on medicine. My great grandmother gave me. She let me have it. Did you read this? No, I haven’t read the whole thing, but it has a lot of really amazing information in it everywhere. Where do I get it? Oh, you can’t. You can’t get it. This is it. Yeah.

I thought it would be fun just to share with you guys, because my great grandma. She was she helped too. She’s really involved in my life when I was growing up. She was in her 70s and 80s when she was helping to take care of me. She died at 94. Her mom lived to be 104. She was widowed at 32 years old and was faithful to my great grandpa, and died when she was 94. So and she was quite a strong little woman. She was like five foot two or five foot three and just a little spirited spicy woman.

She gave me an ending that she painted. And I think you’re a little jealous about that.

But she gave it to you when you got baptized anyways. Yes. So my great grandma was an inspiration to me. I remember watching her. She would think she’d sit in what she called her thinking chair. And she had her journal and she would have all kinds of books out, whether it was a farmer’s almanac because she had a garden in her backyard or she had medicine books. And this is one that she was always looking at. And I just remember her like I would have an issue, like if I was sick or feeling not so good, she would recognize that and she’d start asking me questions and then she’d try to figure out what would make. We feel good. It was like this. She was just taking care of me. That’s what she had always done for herself. Yeah. And I never really thought about it until I became a mom. And she didn’t really teach me, like, a lot of tricks or tricks of the trade per say, although there were a few things like cutting an onion and sticking it next to your bed when if you’re sick at night. That’s kind of that’s kind of weird. But if you listen, just give it a try. If you have sickness in you in your home, put. Just cut an onion in half and stick it next to the bedside and. And in that next morning, take a look at the onion. It’s not going to be too pretty. Look at them. And if you let it sit there for a couple more days, it really actually absorbs a lot of those things, which is interesting. One of the bad things, a lot of bad things. Yeah.

And so just be careful eating onions when you’re out.

Yeah. So anyway, just growing up with Grandma, was it. Now, looking back, I really wish I was more intentional in asking her questions. Yeah. So if you are someone who has someone older in your life that has a lot of wisdom gleaned it, do not take them for granted. Glean Glean. Glean.

Well, we’re talking about healthy home tips during uncertain times. You know, really how to give remedies that are natural to your family and so forth. But we are firm believers in medicine, too, and doctors and so forth. But we always have believed and you really encourage this. And me too, is that well, let’s try first a natural method. And if it’s not working, then and then we’ll go to the doctors. The doctors are good and so forth. But we don’t want to just run to the doctor right at first glance of something if there’s a natural way we can handle it.

Yeah. It’s interesting that you bring that up because I did a podcast actually with Dr. Megan Bert on a topic of not making your health an idol, but making it a priority and finding that balance, which is what you’re actually kind of talking about. I don’t know if you realize that, but a lot of times people are. It’s easy to make something an idol. And I think that a lot of times we don’t ask the hard questions. To really find out if we have made things an idol whether that be the natural remedies or or the doctors. Right. And really, the the truest, I guess, test would be who do you go to first? What do you go to first? Mm hmm. And so for us, one of the things that I always do, this set, this was actually a great conversation. One of the things I would encourage every mom to do is, you know, if your kid has a weird rash or something. Right. Well, what does the Bible say to take first to take everything to the Lord in Prayer? Yeah. So that should actually be our first response. And in doing that, now, it’s of course, sometimes there’s an emergency. Right? Like there was a car accident or maybe someone has a heart attack. You’re going to be Praying right away, but you’re also going to call 911. Right. And so you’re going to get help. Exactly. And you know what, though? God is always there for help to help us.

And so we need to be going to him first. And if we aren’t, it actually reveals that we’ve kind of made an idol out of other things, too. Now, I’m not talking about taking an hour to pray before you call 911. That’s not what I mean here. Right. You do both. You know, you’re on the phone waiting for someone to pick up and you’re like, Lord, please help them to pick up. You know, you’re praying. You’re giving it to God first. And then the next thing you do is you. If you if it’s not an emergency. Right. Like most things are not emergencies, you’re gonna do what the Bible says, which is to seek knowledge, seek understanding, seek wisdom. Now, how are you going to do that? You’re going to be through prayer. You’re asking God to lead you to the right thing and he’ll prompt you if you’re paying attention, Right. So seeking understanding, let’s say you have a kid that’s not feeling well. You’re going to seek understanding. You’re not just going to automatically assume you know what it is necessarily unless you see the sliver. Right. You’re going to ask questions. You’re going to be patient. You’re listen, you’re in it to get it diagnose. Right, in a sense of like going, hey, what’s going on? Is it your tummy that’s not feeling good? Or do you have a headache or do you.

Did you get your feelings hurt or like I’ve seen you do this so many times with the kids in literally you’re educating them on how to respond and you’re helping them with the words to say, by troubleshooting. And then over time, I’ve noticed this with our kids, that they very descriptively know how to tell you what’s wrong with them. But that doesn’t just happen happens because of these conversations.

Yeah, it’s interesting they brought that up. I was going to talk a little bit more about that. And one of our points coming up, and that’s one of the purposes is to teach your kids how to know what’s going on inside their body. That’s an important thing that I think is just not really taught anymore, is to know thyself. Right. And. And to. He to be confident in trusting your own assessment of like, you know what, my gut is really off. What did I eat earlier? Right. Yeah. Versus like, you know, is it an appendix appendicitis attack? You know, jumping to the worst conclusion. But I think that a lot of times if if people are not brought up in a way where they’re validated when they do feel something, they can second guess themselves. Right. And not really know. And then, of course, there’s that very dangerous option that a lot of people are now leaning on, which is self-diagnosis through Google, which can be a scary thing to be doing, too. Now, I’m not saying don’t use them is pretty cool. Yeah. I mean, there you can do research. Yes. Just you have to be careful and be wise. Again, it’s understanding yourself, though, like, am I the type of person that tends to borrow troubles? Do I jump to conclusions? And am I going to scare myself?

Yeah. Going to the worst possible denominator of what’s happened.

Yeah. Yeah. So you just. But you have to take your thoughts. Captive’s point there. So I think that, you know, as we’re digging in and we’re talking about these things, we just were mentioning health versus like natural, you know, having natural remedies or doctors. And really our stance, we try our hardest to have a balanced perspective of. Absolutely. Like you were saying, let’s try all we can to have understanding, do research and and do it naturally. Treat it naturally if we can. Yeah. And, hey, if that doesn’t work, then let’s go to the doctors and see if they can help us.

What’s cool about this? This is really about an aspect of the legacy you’re leaving in continuing to which is helping future generations to have these same kind of I would say it’s part of the culture of the family. When you instill this when you’re good at this and you’re educating your kids, then what’s going to happen when their moms and dads.

Right. That’s really cool. Yeah. And I, I, yeah, I would hope so. I mean, that’s really my dream. I think that when I first became a stay at home mom, I was like, okay, well, this is going to be my job. And I took it on seriously. Like, this is a vocation and I actually don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to cook. I don’t know how to clean. And, you know, anybody can pick up a sponge in it and a Windex. Right. Or whatever you grew up using.

But not knowing what I was doing, I had a very humble heart attitude of like, I have to learn. And so I was constantly asking people what they were doing. If I noticed that somebody was making their own cleaner, I was like, what? Wait, what is that? That’s an email made bottle. What’s in it? Does it work? Can I try it? And like, you know, asking a lot of questions and having a teachable heart is I really believe that’s part of why I’m where I am now, 20 years later. And I’m still learning. I still love learning.

You know, what? Do you give us an example? Everybody’s like, well, what what are the things when you just run down a list for us of the things that we’ve done that you’ve done? And I’d say it’s more you.

It’s true. We have our strengths and weaknesses. We’re a good team.

I embrace my strengths. And I don’t try to my weakness. That’s what you’re there for.

You really appreciate me. And I love these things, you guys. So I’m realizing that being a stay at home mom was a vocation. I decided, like, I’m going to learn. So I homeschooled myself and all these things. Right. And I. I got books kind of like how great grandma had her book. Right. And I started learning how to cook. And I started new recipes. And then I started learning about the gut.

And I started learning about healthy, eating healthy and trying to have the balanced diet. Trying not to have my kids eat too much sugar, things like that. We’re not going to dive too much into eating stuff today. We’ll do that in another podcast. But those were definitely part of the list. Yeah. Exercise was a huge part. When I met you, I was lifeguarding and teaching aqua aerobics as well. And so I continued doing that in the first like five, six years of being mom was teaching Aquarobics a few days a week, and I.

You’re a go getter. I went before school started. Didn’t you go do lifeguard training and stuff?

Yeah. Well, and I was on the swim team from like 6th grade through high school and I swam. Like 5:00 in the morning to seven, 15 in the morning before school and then after school, 3:15 – 5:15.

That really is what I remember when I was in school, I was like. Trying to wake up as late as possible. I just remember being so tired as a teenager. I can’t believe you got up at five in the morning.

Yeah. And then I had to work after after swim team. But, you know, it was. Yeah. It was fun, though. I really loved swimming and I loved exercising and it felt good. But I can’t take all the credit. You know, it’s definitely a dedication of my parents to drive me. Yeah. Because they drove me a long ways. That’s pretty. Every. Yeah. A lot of things. So eating healthy exercise, vitamins and supplements. That’s a whole nother thing. Herbal tinctures, homoeopathy, essential oils, natural cleaners. Because we are. Now I can honestly say we’re we’re probably like 80 to 85 percent toxin free home.

We got to get into a little bit.

I know you have a few more on your list, but 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 have some key questions on it for your date night. 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 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 CourageousParenting.com.

Steve and I realized that we were getting too comfortable with the world’s vision of how to raise our children. What 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 biblically, like how our kids are behaving or what we’re doing with discipline, but also the things of heart.

We now have a game plan to how we want to raise our children who 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 or no longer fearing dark days ahead.

But we’re so excited to raise lights to be leaders for the next generation.

I remember believing that nothing can clean as good as Windex, for example.

Well, yeah. I mean, the first five years of our marriage, we were using really harsh chemicals.

Yeah, I used to believe that if you don’t have the really good chemical, you’re not going to be clean. So we’ll get to that. But yeah. And also we’ll have to dive into being a Christian and homopathy and things like that.

So, you know, gardening and so getting over myself in the control like I am a first born tend to have more of a type A personality. And I used to be when I was younger, mom, But being organized was a really big deal to me. Like if you guys saw the room that we’re sitting in right now, it looks all nice and pretty right here. But I have literally stacks of home school books and curriculums for this next year that I’m trying to go through. And it it like years ago that would’ve driven me crazy, would no way be able to be sitting here doing a podcast, having chaos of any sort in the room. Right. And so I used to be a lot more OCD about those things. And I laugh about it because I, I really, truly believe that having a lot of kids has been my boot camp. Okay. Yes, but I would say though that I didn’t know anything about gardening and dirt, but I used to be controlling about the dirt. Right. Like sanitising the kids, wiping them down all the time and not now. I realized like my grandma at different grandma actually visited us and was like, no playing in the dirt is the best thing for them.

And even your mom used to say that, right? And I was like, OK, yeah. I don’t know about this you’re a super clean.

I was really clean, though. We moved to the farm and we got chickens and we had and Kelsey is putting mud on her cheeks like she’s a warrior. She would literally sit in the creek and cover her body and mud. And then she’d like make war paint.

It was so funny, those kids. But, you know, realizing those were like the healthiest years we had six years straight where the kids never got sick. And we had six kids, 10 and under.

You’re saying dirt is good medicine.

I am I think that there’s good bacteria. There’s immunities having them around that kind of stuff. Obviously, though, they took they took baths, too. So we were clean for sure. Gardening, getting your hands in the dirt and gardening and picking your own food. Fruit and vegetables that doesn’t have chemicals on it. Right. And I remember we planted a garden to get Kelsey to eat carrots. Do you remember this? She grew her own carrots. I have a picture of her is and four and a half. Well, but the first year we did it. I did know what I was doing.

So the carrots were like an inch and a half and they would be like two growing off one and she’d pull them out.

She just she ate them she loved them with the dirt on them with the dirt. Yeah. Which is so funny because she was little miss clean, you know, when she was little and but that started the love for gardening is doing that with her. And then it just became that thing that we did with our kids for a decade. We don’t do it now that we’re in central organ. It’s hard to grow things here, although we do have herbs and we have some strawberries.

So what you’re saying is like, let’s not. Let’s be okay with them jumping in a mud puddle once in a while. Yeah, I’m okay with them playing. And let’s not be so concerned about constantly cleaning dirt off there. Right. We do want to clean their hands. Yes.

You want to wash your hands before you eat. You want to wash. You know, you want to wash your hands. Your building up your immunities your building up your immune system from a young age.

Yeah. And I think that the reason why this is a good conversation is because of everything that’s been going on with Covid and sanitize everything and use these chemicals in this. Can’t you know all the stuff? I think that there can be a lot of fear that’s instilled. And if we are being preventative and proactive in our homes and having healthy homes where we’re cleaning, we are cleaning. Yeah. And but we’re also like taking care of our kids and realizing that part of taking care of them is letting them garden, for example, and be kids and be in the dirt. And that’s a good thing. Other things we’ve done is being frugal and choosing glass over plastic. That’s a whole nother story. I’ll get into that in the next part of their next podcast. I’m learning about alkalinity and acidity in your body and how that affects different things as well. Minerals learning about minerals, which is different than like home apathy and different things.

Like I might be exhausting some people. That’s a big list.

It is. We’re not going to talk about all of them today. But the exciting thing is that you can pick like one thing and learn about it. And that’s that’s what I did. I picked one thing at a time and then something, you know, honestly, we would have I would have a health issue or something would come up. I go to naturopathy, doctor. They’d start teaching me. I’d start getting books and learning and practicing and doing these things. And it I there’s something very satisfying about nurturing your family in that way. And so anyway, I would just encourage you guys to adopt it for your own self in a way and embrace it.

And your attitude becomes positive about it because you’re problem solved. Totally. Everything’s out versus it being a burden and having anxiety about it.

Well, and I think a lot of the reasons why moms like if they struggle with anxiety when their kids get sick is because they actually don’t know how to treat it. And so they are co-dependent on the doctors or dependent on the doctors. They don’t actually know what they’re doing. And they they you know, some of them, I would say, really need encouragement. They need to be encouraged that they can actually take back the health of their home, which. But by the way, I just that reminds me, we actually did a free, healthy home mom Hack’s workshop.

Oh, people are raving about it. Yeah. Herbs, oils, supplements and clean homes. Yeah. Is what it’s about. And hundreds. I mean maybe maybe about a thousand now. People really. That many. Yeah, totally. And we just launched it. Absolutely. Raving about. It’s completely free. You know what’s cool is it will have some of the things you’re talking about in here in the next episode. But it’ll have even more. And we have. And what’s cool about it is you get this twenty five page free workbook download that has it all written. Oh that’s right. It’s a PDF download. So anyway, that’ll be in the show notes a CourageousParenting.com. Yeah. You can click that, share that and enjoy it.

Yeah. That’s right. And so we’re. Yeah. I’m actually not going to dive into herbs as much in the same sense that I do in the Healthy Mom Home Hack’s workshop. We are going to talk about a different aspect of herbs that I don’t talk about in that workshop today. So the first thing that I think if we can dive in, I think that one of the things that was really motivating for me that might be inspiring for people is to realize that there’s really two main jurisdictions slash like missions or visions that we as parents, whether you’re the dad, maybe the dads, the one that’s super interested in medicine. who knows? Right. Oh, I would say that we should have these motivations to nurture our kids and teach our kids, you know, that those are like the two. If I was to say the two most important missions. Yes. To nurture our kids and teach them so that they can take care of themselves and take care of their kids.

That reminds me of the the hierarchy of nurture. What do we call it in the parenting mentor program?

Well, again. So you guys, I’m sure you’ve heard of like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. That’s defintily. It’s like a very classic model of needs. But in our courageous parenting mentor program, we created it, created our own and we can’t remember exactly what really different.

But it’s about how to nurture that. its about the nurture stages that they need. And you can have this one until this one is done. And yeah, it’s it was really powerful. And I believe this spirit of God helped us figure that out as we were building that program. But there’s a lot of good stuff in the parent. You referred him, too.

Yeah. And so I think that a lot of parents kind of this isn’t something that’s really taught on very often this concept of like you are the main nurturer. Yeah. What does that actually mean? So I think that the list that I went through that you asked me about. Yeah. You don’t have to have all those things to be nurturing. Can I just say that? Yeah.

But to nurture means there are going to be some aspects that you feel the prompting to really embrace. Like you. I love that word. Embrace some promptings of the Holy Spirit is going to say, hey, to nurture your kids, you need to make sure that they’re getting enough sleep. You know. Right. That you’re going to be consistent with their nap times or whatever it is. Right. Or maybe you have a kid that has low blood sugar issues. So to nurture them means to make sure that they have food in them so that they don’t struggle with a lack of emotional self-control and having meltdowns. Right. Yeah.

Like, it’s really but you can’t nurture your kids unless you know your kids. And so that’s the first point, is that in order to nurture and teach, you actually have to know them. So you need to study them. You need to recognize that God made them different than probably your other children then. Different than you. Different than your husband.

They may have different health problems. Things may be more painful than they are for you.

Right. Cause you may have a different pain tolerance. Yeah. Right. And also on that topic of pain tolerance. But it’s definitely important that we as parents recognize this is really important now. Stick with me here. It’s important that we recognize that we have had different experiences than our kids have had. And pain is actually one of those things that we grow in our capacity to handle different kinds of pain based upon the experiences that we’ve had, because perspective changes our experience changes our perspective on pain. And this is what I mean if you have gone through childbirth, for example.

Right. And let’s say you experienced a traumatic experience or maybe it was just painful childbirth. Right. Because there is pain in childbirth. Right. But then later, you let’s say you you cut your hand with a knife. But it’s not like you’re chopping carrots and you accidentally nick the tip of your finger. It’s super, super painful. But your reaction to that can be way different than the six year old that hasn’t experienced any kind of physical pain before. Yeah. Right. Why is that? It’s because you’ve actually experienced life you’ve experienced pain. So your perspective is different. You’re not going to cry over spilled milk in innocence.

Right. And so I think that it’s important that we as parents remember this. This is really important because if we don’t remember that, if we don’t remind ourselves, we can potentially fall into a trap of being unsympathetic for our kids because we can just we can be like, oh, come on, toughen up. I mean, we’ve seen that with parents where they don’t really have any compassion or sympathy.

Now, I’m not talking about being a helicopter mom and babying your kids.

Oh, can you let me kiss your boo boo. Definitely. I would say brush it off.

Right. Exactly. That’s not what I’m saying. But if you’ve taken it too far to where you are lacking compassion, you’re lacking sympathy, you’re really lacking grace with your kids and a lack of understanding that they have not lived the life that you’ve lived.

And they may not be you can be a little erosion of winning the heart when you do. Right over and over. Yep.

Yep. In fact, I actually have a blog posts on this about being an unsympathetic and uncompassionate mom.

So teach us about the scale of one to 10. Something just happened to you. With our little guy.

Yes. So. Well, you know how well, if you’ve ever been in the hospital yourself, you know that they use like a smiley face scale or the scale of one to 10. And I and I’ve always kind of had that in the back of my head because I’ve been in the hospital enough times to see that and been asked that. You’ll want to 10. How’s the Pain feel in your back? Or, you know, the other day. Soloman was doing Nerf war with his big brothers and he wasn’t wearing his goggles and they were outside and a bullet hit his eye and He fell on the ground and was having this big like it was a real. He was definitely in pain for sure, but I needed to find out how serious it was. And so, as you know, like if a four year old is having a meltdown or they’re in a lot of pain, they can be irrational. Yeah. And they’re not really exercising any emotional self-control, if you know what I mean. And so trying to have that conversation with a kid of like, let me look at it. Let me see. Are you hurting? That can be really frustrating. It can be hard to get answers and to be able to evaluate. So I just in that moment said, hey, Solman, let’s let me talk to you. I have some questions for you. And I just started asking him about scale one to ten and what his pain was essentially. I mean, I definitely like kind of talk to him through that. So if you are a one, it would be like, oh, nope, I don’t hurt. And you jump up and start jump and trampling. Do you feel like doing that?

No. I mean. OK, well, a 10 is gonna be like, oh, mom, my eyes broken. I need to go the hospital, have surgery. They need to take it out. Do you feel that way? No, I don’t want them to dig, you know.

No, I’m not in that much pain. OK. So if you’re. Is it one or is it two or three or four. And I got kind of more intense with each of the letters. And he was like, I’m I’m a four or five. And it kind of started calm down. I said, all right. And it was just it was it was a good understanding, communication that I was able to have with him.

And then, you know, like you said something like, was that an appropriate response for it.

And so and then he kind of went in kind of calm down.

You know. And so but that’s the point. I think we need to remember, especially with our youngest kids, that they don’t know how to react to pain. They haven’t been taught they’ve been taught emotional self-control. Like, we’re not just born with this ability to have that. We actually have to be taught. And so having Grace as a parent is having patients with them and actually teaching them and teaching them is so different than correcting. Right. Yeah.

So how do you teach them how to know their own bodies better?

So I think that part of it is having those conversations that, like you were mentioning before, having the conversations where you’re saying does how’s your tummy feel right now? Do you think that the tummy ache is because you did you get it right after you eight or did you wake up with the tummy ache or, you know, and just doing certain questions like that to help them evaluate, oh, you got it right after you eat eight. Well, what did you eat? So you’re teaching them how to ask questions to investigate themselves, which is really what we all should be doing to ourselves. But we need to teach that to our kids so that they can also ask themselves the same question. Right. And then the next thing that you do is you teach them what to do when they figured out. Right. So that was a tummy ache. I would probably first offer essential oil like tummyjize to be topically applied on on the little guy. And our kids even know that now. So they’re going to go in there, grab the tummyjize Young living oil and it has little roller bottle on it and they know how to put it just a little bit on in and I’ll massage it for them or they will.

And so there, there are basic things that you can teach your kids. But when it comes to emotional self-control, it’s an important thing that parents recognize that this is part of what they’re called to nurture in their child is emotional health as well. And that’s a whole nother aspect that we could get into in this topic, in this podcast as well. But I think that it’s important that we teach them to recognize that, you know, they need they they have skin, right. So they might get a cut on their on their skin or bruise that they see. Right. So there’s skin health. There’s gut health, there’s head health, there’s heart health. And then there’s spirit and soul health. And I those are just the ways, the biblical ways or the conversations that I’ve had with our little littles for them to know all your tummy, your heart, your head, your skin.

Right. So that they see or their muscle or your bone. Right. Do you have aches in your bones? And for them to know that there’s a physical side of their body, but then there’s also their thoughts and their memories and their feelings which are in their head and in their heart.

And then there’s their soul. Right.

And as parents, we need to be nurturing all of those things and teaching our kids along the way. And this is really a beautiful thing because we were created by an intelligent. Designer. Yes. God was intelligent and I’m gonna to some of the nerdy homeschool mom’s gonna come out on me. Here are just a second. But when it comes to teaching your kids, like when you’re studying biology and you’re talking about the epidermis and you’re teaching your kids about their skin. Right. You can teach them really cool things like your skin is your largest organ in your body. Right. It’s 16 percent of your overall body mass. 16 percent of your overall body mass. And it absorbs things. Right. A lot of people don’t realize this, but your skin has four main functions. It’s to protect your body and your organs from germs, pollution, radiation, the sun, heat, things like that. The second main function is that it regulates your body temperature.

Ok. That’s the third thing, is that it receives sensory information. So we have this sense of touch, sense of smell. We have all these senses. Right. And so it receives sensory information that then is communicated through your body. Right. Yeah. And then the fourth thing would be to store water, to store fat and to store vitamin D. That’s why they say like going outside and getting sun for vitamin D is really good for you because it’s absorbed into your skin and your skin stores. Vitamin D. Right. And so it is there’s the body is just so incredible.

So sometimes kids are acting out in certain ways. And we sometimes it’s disobedience, but sometimes it’s diet. Sometimes it’s they needed more sleep than we realize. Sometimes it’s maybe they haven’t been outside. Sometimes they haven’t been allowed to have the activity.

Right. So I you know, we’ve talked about this in some previous podcasts. I feel like. But it’s important that we, when we’re nurturing, were aware of this fact that Isaac’s mentioning right now, which is that our kids are different than us. And all of these aspects like feeding them while helping them to have good sleep, having emotional self-control, that they’re they’re healthy. Right. That their immune system is strong. That they’re not fighting a cold. And then having patience and grace and caring for nurturing. These are all under the nurturing category for all of those elements of our kids. That’s actually one of our responsibilities as parents, is to be nurturing those aspects. And having that understanding, living with our kids and understanding when they are going through something like this. So, for example, teenagers, just bring teenagers into this, their hormones are growing, changing, moving like there’s just so much going on during the teenage years. Right. So parents could easily be like, why are you having that emotional breakdown?

What why are you doing this? But if you understand that those teenagers, they’re OK.

They’re growing six inches in a matter of six months. Right. Maybe for the 13 year old boy. We have that going on with one of our kids right now.

So he has leg cramps. Right. And he’s more tired and he needs to nap more. Any needs eat more. Like not going. No. You already eat. You don’t need to eat. Well, why would you say that to a growing teenage boy?

That is just growing, say, or if he’s tired, like. Let him take a nap. Teenagers actually need much more sleep. They need almost as much sleep as as babies do, which is crazy.

So they’re not always being lazy?

Actually, no, they’re not. I need to sleep. Yeah. And so there’s it’s it takes understanding is my point.

And if you just research your kids, if you study them and you go, hmm, I wonder why. And then you research it, oftentimes there’s a really beautiful design answer.

Right. And so the cool thing is, is that what we we want to we want to teach our kids that God made them the way they are. And it’s a good thing. Mm hmm. Right. Which reminds me of Genesis one. And in Genesis one twelve. It says right here. Oh, actually, can we go to a different passage here? One thirty one. It says, then God saw everything that he had made. And indeed, it was very good. Very good. It was very good. And this was he made Adam and Eve. And it was very good. Mm hmm. Right. And so to remind our kids, like they need to have that kind of confidence that God didn’t make a mistake when he made them, even if they’re intolerant to dairy. Yeah. Like that. We live in a world where. Yeah. We’re in the fallen world and and things are not perfect. And there is sickness and there’s disease and there’s there are intolerances and there are allergies. And guess what? Our food is also deficient of some of the things that it needs. It’s not perfect. Yeah, right. You’re always asking for kelsey to come up with a way to make God’s bread. Yeah, right. But the reality is that we need to teach our kids this, but to do their best, just to do their best in stewarding their bodies, stewarding their homes, stewarding the nurturing of their children one day.

And that we’re there’s these biblical principles that we’re teaching our kids. Right. Stewardship. It’s a biblical principle. And we want to teach them that the body is the holy temple. And to steward that, well, I’m part of that is understanding that God. God made our bodies and we can take care of these things. We need to communicate about how we’re feeling. When you communicate about, you know, oh, I got a sunburn, what can I do to take care of that? So that heals and doesn’t get a burn on top of it. And then mom gets the Alevera and maybe that after sun spray that has some oils that are soothing and she sprays it on there and it helps heal it. Right. Somebody make right. Oh yeah. This is that’s just something that I make and I teach that my courageous mom, Central’s team, those DIY hacks and stuff like that. But learning how to do those things. And then your kids are like, hey, mom, where’s that spray?

It feels good. I’m gonna say it does as a mom to know your kids are like, Hey, Mom, Where’s the arnica? Hey, Mom where the vitamins. Where’s the oregano oil? Where’s that?

Because they actually experience it, helping them.

That’s right. And so for them, if they’re going to actually use natural remedies, they have to have experienced it and gotten a conviction that these things actually work. Right. And so you’re not just doing to your kids. We have to actually. Oh, we’re going to use this on you right now. And this is how we’re going to do it. Do you want to try it? And won’t you rub these oils and you feel like hydrotherapy? Ah, kids love hydrotherapy. We do it on our feet. If somebody has a fever or they’re struggling with a respiratory cold where you put your feet in a bowl of hot water. Right. And while they’re in the Epsom salt hot water and sometimes I’ll put feeds in it or eucalyptus, lavender, lemon, things that are going to be helping. And they’ll be absorbing into their feet because your pores open in your skin. Right. And these things absorb into your skin, which is important to understand. And while you’re doing that, you have a cold, ice cold bottle of water and you have some socks in there. And then they get their feet up, dry em off, and you rub in some other essential oils and then you put the cold socks on and it shocks their body. It’s hydrotherapy and they put wool socks on top, stickum in bed, put the covers a room. And it it’s it works so well. This is something that I learned from our natural pathic doctor, but my grandma used to grow up doing this on farm.

And so there are so many little tricks of the trade that you can learn to help your kids so that they don’t have to take all the Tylenol. Now, sometimes tylenol is necessary, but it’s not always necessary. Right. And sometimes I think that parents just go to that drug because they grew up. Doing it and they just don’t know the other things. And so I really do think that there’s a need for people who do have the sorts to start sharing more of what they’re doing in their homes, because that’s how I learned.

And, you know, that’s part of why we did the Healthy Home Mom Hack’s workshop. But as far as the skin goes in the limbic system and essential oils, I just have to share this other cool, really intelligent design thing.

God actually made our our senses connected to our brain.

And we know this. Right. So the limbic system is in the middle of your brain. It’s part of the nervous system and the old factory bulb recognizes smells.

And so parts of your brain that deal with memory and emotions and feelings. Those are all in the olfactory bulb in the limbic system. OK. And so when you smell something so let’s say you go to the ocean and you have that like you smell the sea salt in the air. It has its own unique smell, doesn’t it? Yeah. Every each. And you breathe in deep. It’s refreshing. People crave to go to the beach.

I want to go to the beach. I know. Or hiking. And you’re surrounded by pine trees or. Or juniper trees. Hopefully you’re not allergic to those. And, you know, your your hiking, your breathing and deep. And you just calm. You just relaxed. Right. Why is that?

It’s because there’s actually oils in the trees that you’re smelling in and they’re they’re getting into your limbic system because it’s connected to your sense of smell. And it’s triggering certain memories. It’s impacting emotions and feelings because those are in the limbic system.

So instead of scrolling through Instagram or throwing TV show or something like that, instead of escapism, go for a hike in the woods. We could actually go for a hike or you could diffuse oils, piles or ignore lights, black spruce. Grab your state to change your environment. Yes. Get more productive. Thinking better.

Yes. Yes. And so that actually brings me to the second point that we are going to talk about in this podcast. And the last point we were talked about, which has to do with the limbic system because God designed our body so you can teach your kids this really cool information. Right. That when you are smelling things, it goes into your limbic system, its smell. You remember things. That’s why, like real estate agents will oftentimes have cookies baking in the oven, because that sense of smell actually triggers memories, good memories of kids’ childhood. Is that interesting? And so there they may not. Most real estate agents don’t realize that. That’s actually why they. But they if they are cooking cookies, they recognize that people who come in are much happier. Why is that? Right. everybody likes chocolate. The sense of taste. Right.

So, God, God made us incredible beings that have these amazing senses that are all triggered and they connect to our different portions of our brain.

And it’s just the coolest thing ever to study with your kids. He made all these different plants that are good for us. Right. In different ways. Right.

So in Genesis nine three, it says every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all the things even as the green as the green herbs. I’ve given you all things even as the green herbs. And then it goes on.

And then if you read in Genesis one twelve, it also says and the earth brought forth grass and the herb that yields seed according to its kind. And the tree that yields fruit. And whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And so the evening. And the morning. And that was the third day. And God gave us these things right to be used wisely. Were to steward the land. And what’s interesting about herbs like this is the other cool thing. And I didn’t teach this in the healthy mom home hack’s, but I just dropped off all of our herbs at a friend’s house before we go on this RV trip. And I’m paying their daughter fifty cents a day to water my my peas and my Erb’s at my house plants because I don’t want them to die.

And she’s so excited. Of we make fifteen dollars. I promise, Miss Angie, I’m going to do it every day. It is the sweetest thing ever.

But I was teaching her now saying, hey, hey, Olive, I’m going to need you to pinch off the herbs. And you guys, you’re gonna get to cook these and you can give them to people, too, that you want if you want to. Because if you pinch them off, then they won’t go to seed and they’ll keep producing more. Mm hmm. And so, like with dill and cilantro and peppermint, you don’t want them to go to seed because it actually changes the taste of the herb and the chemicals in the herb. So what you want to do is use them. So God created these herbs for us to use so that they’re useful, so that they don’t go bad. So they don’t. And I’m going to say it isn’t bad. It’s just you don’t want him to go to seed right away. Let him go to seed at the end of the season, harvest the seeds and plant more herbs.

So I know herbs like you can use it for cooking and things like that. Yeah. Which we do there. There’s the oil version of herbs which have kind of been alluding to in some things during this episode. Right. Which is so there’s the actual plant. And there’s the distilled oil from the plants.

Right. Which are all part of the plant. Right. I mean, we take aloe vera plants and we use the aloe vera lotion to cool burns. Right. It’s the exact same kind of concept. Actually, it’s just not distilled. You can literally cut the aloe plant and just put it on, which we do. And I think that this is the coolest part. This is what’s so neat to teach your kids. You guys. Is that. Yes. Herbs we cook with them. Right. And so I teach in the healthy mom home hack’s how we do some different things about making teas and and and using herbal textures and things like that, which can be really good for your kids to know about. And I mean, teas especially are so good for your gut and for your respiratory system anyways. But using the oils in conjunction with what we’re talking about with the skin and the purposes of the skin. Right. This is a cool, little interesting fact that topically applied in essential oil will. It only takes two to three minutes to get into your bloodstream, two to three minutes.

That’s how fast it absorbs into your skin. And then into your bloodstream. And then 20 minutes later, it can be found to affect every cell in your body. Wow. In just 20 minutes. But it metabolizes in two and a half hours.

Ok.

And so if that’s what an essential oil can do, think about like harsh chemicals that you’re potentially exposed to and those are also absorbing into your skin. Or, you know, it’s interesting, I was doing research just to share about this. And there’s a whole there’s a whole lot of Web sites out there for like companies that have gases in the air. And there are workers like those gases actually can absorb into their skin. And they never even see them like they isn’t a liquid that touches their skin, but it can absorb into their skin.

It’s the same thing with harsh chemicals that you would spray to clean your home. There are always synthetic residues that’s leftover. In fact, it can take two weeks to get rid of that in your home if you’re not continuing to use it in your area, in your home now and you’re trying to, like, go toxin free.

That’s right. True for shampoos and certain soaps. So.

Oh, yeah. No, I’m glad that you brought that up, because as far as, like, nurturing your your family goes like just learning about the toothpaste, the deodorant, the makeup, the shampoo, laundry soap. There’s literally every kind of thing that you would use to clean or just on your body lotion, sunscreen, insect repellent. I mean, we all know that DEET is not good for you. Right.

So, you know, being a believer, Christians, they’re listening sometimes. Some people have had a weird sense about oils or. Oh, yeah. Happy or a place of their own. But you know what? How do you address that? Like, why why are you so confident in using wills when some people feel a little strange about it?

Well, it’s interesting. When I first started using them, it was over a decade ago now and not for me. People I knew were using either of those things, actually, or herbal tinctures even. And they were kind of hard to find, to be honest. But doing research and realizing like these are the plants that God gave us, why aren’t we using them properly? But instead, what are we doing? Instead, we’re going and getting chemicals that are being concocted in a lab by humans that aren’t even for their chemicals. And we’re putting chemicals like antibiotics in our body. And so it just didn’t make sense to me. Like logically, I went. OK. So if that is supposed to kill it, but it’s not 100 percent sure that it’s going to kill it. And this could potentially help it. Why wouldn’t I tried this natural thing first and then if that doesn’t work, then go over there. Right. And so that was kind of our approach once we started having a lot of different issues with the kids, with health and with me and different things. But you guys, it was a journey and everybody’s on their own journey, and that’s totally cool. But I think that being proactive and learning about it is a huge process. I think that, you know, as far as you ask me the biblical perspective on this, and the first thing I have to say is that all of these things are amoral. They are not good or bad. They’re amoral and they can be used for good or bad. And it’s our responsibility to use them the way God intended. Right.

Not an abusive kind of manner. And it’s the same thing with social media or technology. It’s an amoral thing that can be used for good or used for bad. It’s our responsibility to use it for God’s glory. And the same thing, we can use these tools. That’s all they are, is just tools for stewardship and for helping our families. Right. And so and it’s so for me, like essential oils or something that we use every day, just like how I have houseplants in my house everyday. They’re not any more important. Like just on a side note, plants alone, like if you guys don’t have house plants, you’re missing out. Like, I just would encourage you to go get some. Yeah. I mean. Well, actually some. Yes, they do. Certain plants especially purify the air more than others. In fact, two of the best house plants to get that do purify the air better than others are called snake plants and spider plants.

And the cool thing about spider plants is that they actually like send off shoots with other babies and then you can cut those off and plant those in another pot and have another spider plant. And you can even gift them to people. They’re one of my favorite plants. But there are here I can give you like five plants since I got down this.

The best plants for producing oxygen because most plants will absorb toxins and pollutants in the air into their leaf. Actually, they absorb the particles in their leaf. Right. And then and this this is a proven study that NASA did. It was called the Clean Air Study. OK. Is the removal of organic chemicals. The plants absorb the particles at the same time as taking in carbon dioxide, which is then processed into oxygen. So this is the process of photosynthesis. You guys like this is just awesome biology, right? So absorbing gases through the pores in their leaves. This is how they purify the air. And then they put off oxygen, which is what we breathe. Right. So having a lot of plants in your home can be really helpful. There have been other studies as well. I talk about this on my courageous Mom essentials Instagram page. I have like a post on the benefits of House. You can go look that up. But there have been some studies and I’m not exactly sure what the percentages or statistics are now. So, such a while ago that I made this post.

But it is proven that kids taking a test and having at least three plants in the room will score better on their tests. Whoa. Which is kind of cool. And so they’re like breathing and better oxygen. But there’s also that element of, like, the senses. That’s right. And so that’s another like.

This is another thing to be aware of this in addition to like maybe having some oils that are going to be helping to stimulate alertness when kids are studying or focus. Right. Because we’re talking about have a limbic system, how God created our limbic system to be able to do that.

So you see how it’s like some people get wary of oils specifically or Homeopathy becausHomeopathye they’re like, oh, they’re making an idol out of that thing. Right. And yes, some people do take it too far. But it’s our responsibility to keep it in its rightful place, which is it is a tool.

Right. That can be used and in conjunction with understanding how God the Almighty created these tools. Thank you, Lord. And he created our bodies to work with them. That is awesome.

So go to CourageousParenting.com if you want the free workshop and any other resources we mentioned on any of the episodes. But maybe to wrap up, you can talk about what’s coming in the next episode.

So on next episode, we’re going to talk a little bit about we’re going to talk about clean homes. We’ll talk about healthy diets and some other things you can do to have healthy lifestyle.

Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. 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, Isaac and I release a video with a downloadable parenting packet to make it easy for you and your spouse to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

It’s an incredible program where we cover everything from obedience training to overcoming mistakes. Most Christians are making more than that. It’s an incredible community. You’ll have access to a private online group live webcast and the courageous parents who text message line where Angie and I can send you weekly encouragements straight to your phone.

If you’re interested in joining our next online parenting mentorship program, secure your spot now at CourageousParenting.com.

That’s CourageousParenting.com.

Written By Angie Tolpin
Angie has been married to Isaac for 19 years and together they have eight children, whom she homeschools. She is the Founder of CourageousMom.com, a doula, the author of the best-selling book Redeeming Childbirth, and the creator of the first ever Christian Postpartum Course. Angie loves ministering to Women and has created a few online Bible Studies on Biblical Friendship and Motherhood.

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