Everyone wants to feel valued and that they provide a positive contribution. So often we as parents don’t believe kids are capable to the level that they actually are, and because of this wrongful thinking, we don’t give our children enough responsibilities. If you are not empowering your kids to take action and responsibility then they may start acting out because they don’t feel important or valued. 

One of the easiest ways to start giving your kids more responsibilities and to help them feel like they are contributing to the family is to incorporate more home economic type chores. Some of which (depending on the nature of the situation) they may be compensated for and others they may be required to do as a way to contribute to the family team. 

Often, subconsciously people are scared of money or talking about money. Because of this a lot of kids grow up with a poverty mentality, scarcity mentality or a belief that making really good money is a bad thing. This is just not the case. Money in itself is neutral. It is a resource. With the right intentions, it can be used for incredible good. What is atrocious in the eyes of God is the love of money. We just wanted to touch on that because it’s absolutely good and okay to teach your children how to make money and the value of money in relation to their work.

Raising Kids Who Are Resourceful & Take Initiative:

1. Start While Young

2. Create Lots of Experiences

3. How To Do It

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Full Transcript

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 twenty 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.

Hey, everyone, welcome to the podcast. Hey, guys, this is a great show. We are so excited to talk to you about a really important topic.

Resourcefulness, entrepreneurship and work ethic. Here we go. Raising your kids so that they grow up and are resourceful.

This idea for this episode came from an experience recently as meeting with a business owner in the community, Christian guy that Austin, our son, got, you know, got the chance to work with recently. And he had such raving reviews about our son, which obviously feels good, as parents. Right. And so but one of the things he specifically said is it’s really rare or unusual today to work with somebody that’s young, that is so proactive and takes initiative the entire time and tries to add value every minute of the day. He said it a little differently than that, but that was the meaning. And of course, I’m feeling great. But as great as you know of a person, our son, is that stuff doesn’t happen by accident.

Right. And so we got thinking about how important it is because to talk about this topic of raising kids, to be resourceful, raising them to be initiative takers, if you will, and how to get to that place, because most people listening would probably go. I want my son to be like that. I want my daughter to be like that right when they’re older and and not really knowing like. Okay. So what did you do to get them to that place?

Because there were things we did at a very, very young age. It’s not just like, oh, they’re started. They’re 12 now. I’m gonna start working with them on these things. Now it’s never too late. I always try no matter what your age, kids. But yeah, even if you have little kids right now, this is relevant.

Yeah. So we’re gonna go through three main points on this podcast and we’re gonna talk about starting while they’re young. Creating lots of experiences where I share some of the experiences that our kids have had. We’re also going to talk about how to do it. And we are gonna share four different passages of scripture.

So yeah, before we do that, we just wanted to take a moment to say thank you for your support. Wow.

Because we have just been so blessed, aren’t we? Like whenever somebody shares, it’s just awesome.

It’s what keeps us going is hearing the feedback and so forth. Because true, you know, here we are in our little studio in our home. And, you know, we’re putting this out there and working hard and all kinds of things with the ministry. And it’s just really encouraging. It keeps us going.

But there’s two things that we get a lot of questions about from people, whereas that date one night, date night questionnaire and how can I go get into the free parenting workshops? So why don’t you tell them where those two things are?

Yeah. So CourageousParenting.com is our home base for the parenting stuff. And so there’s a little menu hamburger icon. They call it with three lines, many in the top left. And you hit that and it says free parenting workshops. You can register for that there. Over a couple thousand parents have gone through it and raving about it, which is pretty good. And then the “Date Night One Sheet” you know, if you go to the podcast episode, there’s a subscribe button to our email list or if you’ve already subscribed, just look below our signature and the emails that go out once a week with the parenting tip. And it says date night one, she and you can get it there if you haven’t yet. Yeah, great.

So that’s really helpful because a lot of people don’t really know how. Now, if you’re having a hard time accessing that date night one sheet, when you go to the Web site, maybe the paper doesn’t happen, right. That’s by going to the blog post and finding that little thing that you can fill out is important. Also, sometimes just refreshing your cash, your computer or doing an incognito window can help it to pop up again. Yeah, because you might have actually closed that little window the first time you came to the web sites. You’re just so excited to listen to the podcast or something. So that’s why we just wanted to just briefly go over that with you so that you can get access to and hey, on i-Tunes just Tap it and it gives us a five star review.

It helps the movement because it helps the algorithms get this to more people. And we love the written reviews to so let’s dive in. Vision for the kind of adults we want to raise is an important start to this as we lead into point one. You really have to be thinking about these things now because you need to do the right things when they are younger to instill these things.

Proverbs 13:4 says the soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing. Yeah, we don’t want our kids to get nothing. We don’t want them to be sluggards. Yeah, but then it says While the soul of the diligent is rish richly supplied. OK. And so we wanted to share that little passage of scripture with you to give you a little bit of vision as to why this is our important conversation that we’re having and that it does take actually starting with your kids at a young age, because we don’t want our kids to be sluggards either, actually. This is a biblical principle, right?

Yeah. And and we did a whole episode on, you know, entitlement and how to raise kids that are aren’t entitled. You can go look, I encourage you to look at that because different content than we’re talking about here. But if you don’t want entitled kids, one of the things that exists with a lot of people in general, not everybody, but as some people is this they become. Yes, people. And what I mean by that is they’re not necessarily proactive when they’re in jobs. They’re reactive, meaning they’re always asking for the next thing and get exactly what they want and having you be trained on every single little detail to do things. They may be micromanage, micromanage and what you want to raise them. What people want brings up even more value to the marketplace or whatever they’re going to be doing is people that are proactive in their initiative because training’s a hard thing. And every company, no matter how good the training is, they’re never going to train on every detail. And the people that stand out are the people that are proactive, resourceful, finding a way, taking action, even if sometimes they make a mistake. Usually business owners and bosses, managers, leaders would rather have somebody that takes initiative and sometimes makes an error than is always waiting for direction.

So as you’re talking about this, it’s just like my mind is blowing up right now with little thoughts about how moms during the day and dads have massive impact on whether or not a child grows up to become the type of person that has to be micromanaged, actually. So, for example, helicopter moms always they’re doing everything, catching everything, directing all the time. No, we’re not going to do that. Right. You’ve seen those moms that are like always there to catch their kids. Always, always, always doing everything for them. If you continue doing that, you could potentially be raising a person that absolutely is dependent upon other people constantly telling them what to do. If that’s all they’ve known their whole childhood is people telling them what to do and then just needing to be a good soldier. They’re not going to have it in them to take initiative, to be proactive, to think out of the box.

Right. And it’s actually those kinds of you’ve talked about this other podcasts and we talk about it more in-depth in parenting program, those soft skills that are going to be things that can’t be replaced by robots later in life. Artificial intelligence, creative thinking, like creative thinking that God created us in his energy where creative beings.

And so we train our kids to just be and do like like a robot, actually, because we’re micromanaging them all the time. It’s not the best thing for them long term.

So we’re far removed from the age of the industrial revolution when there were training factory workers, essentially. And there’s nothing. Every job is honorables honorables anybody else’s job. So I’m not dissing any kind of job. It’s just that to be prepared for the world they’re launching into, we should be preparing them to think, to be proactive, resourceful and take action. The other benefit is there’s so many tools now, like if I had YouTube when I was a kid and I could learn how to do things like change oil on a roll, it’d be amazing. Like there’s so many tools. But sometimes when the tools already exist, we take them for granted. And so you want your kids to realize the power of the tools and to understand how to use them as a growing right.

So two things about you mentioned Google. So I know that there’s a lot of moms going weinerman. Are they advocating for people, kids getting on the Internet? So we just have to put a disclaimer out there that certainly kids should not be getting on the Internet and not being supervised, first of all. Secondly, you are responsible for teaching, training your children in Internet safety. And thirdly, you need to have precautions set up. You have filters. You need teach your kids. If this happens, you. This is how you react. You come to me right away. You close your computer, whatever you need to go through and teach your kids those things. But also setting them up for success with specific Web sites that are safer that they can go to. Maybe you go and you sit with them and you help them look up the science experiment about magnets. Yeah. Right. And you learn together. And that way you’re able to kind of filter things if it’s needed.

The other thing is, is that Google is great, but it doesn’t replace real life learning from other people. And one of the things that I just want to encourage you in is you don’t have to teach everything. Right. Like how many guys in our community have taught Austin things about cars.

So and they need to develop a love for learning, pro-active learning versus waiting to be taught.

Right. Which is the difference between someone who has been raised, being micromanaged, someone who’s raised, micromanaged is gonna be waiting to be taught something. Yeah. Right. And so there is an opportunity that we as moms have to trust and to realize that there’s growth in letting your kids stumble. Sometimes there’s growth and letting them learn things and that you don’t always have to be the one teaching it, actually.

Absolutely. It’s actually a sign of insecure leadership when you have to be the one always teaching it. And let’s go into and we’ll talk about that more. But let’s go into point one, which is start while they are young. This is so, so important. One of the things I did as a young leader in the business world is I used to want to know all the answers and feel like I had no other answers. And when someone call me then managers all over the place, then I would want to have the answer. And even a family kind of knew the answer. I would just say I have the answer. And that was weak, actually. And it created a dependency on me. And so I worked harder and more, whereas my people felt more equipped. When I started challenging them to be resourceful and find their own answers and say, you know what, I have an idea about that. But tell me what you think first. I think this actually I think you’re right. You should do that. And now what are they building within themselves? A trust and confidence that they don’t always have to go. Ask me for the answer.

Right. And kids need that more than anything, right? Like it. And we’re talking about often one of the taglines for courageous parenting is raising confident Christian kids for an uncertain world. The reality is, is, like you said, every job is honorable. But we are moving into a day and age where certain jobs like factory type stuff is actually automated and going to be replacing people with computers and robots. And so that’s true. But then there’s also this element of like needing to raise up our kids to be confident in their ability to contribute to society.

So how do we do that at a young age Angie? And what are the practical home life skills and how do we do that when the young.

So I think that it starts off really young. I mean, I gave you a perfect example of like just double checking, making sure you’re not being a helicopter mom. One good question would be to go to your spouse and say, hey, do you feel like I’m always micromanaging the kids? Now, I’m not talking about not being consistent. You have to be consistent right with your kids. Maybe teaching, training, discipline and all those things. But there is a place of when kids are really little, you have the opportunity to instill in them a love for learning. And that’s first started with just books like Do you have good books that are fun to read? And do you show an exuberant, enthusiastic attitude toward sitting and reading books with your kids? Do your other kids read books with their younger siblings? Are your kids curious and loving books? Like if if there is a love for learning, there will be a love for books, actually. And I think that in this next generation, actually, in the next 10 years, because of how technology has been moving, I can see that there is a temptation for parents to maybe be going more towards media with their little kids and less with books.

And I just have to say like that could be one of the biggest mistakes ever. But loving learning is enjoying, like taking delight in learning new things. And so sometimes as a parent, even though you may know the answer, it’s actually better to just be like, hey, let’s do it together. Hey, let’s learn together. And oh, that’s really good. Good job. You know, and just been encouraging to your 2 year old 3 year old giving them opportunities to contribute to the family and learning new tasks that are valuable, like letting your kids do the dishes, helping letting the little ones unload that. Maybe the stuff that’s non dangerous to carry like the Tupperware or the bottles or whatever they have. Right. And helping them to know where those go, have a drawer. That’s down low so that they can participate in the putting away of those dishes. It’s those kinds of things too. Here’s your here’s your clothes. We just changed you. Go put this in your laundry. Oh, good job. Like there’s so many very simple aspects that you can do with kids the minute that they’re walking. And some kids are walking at 10 months old. So if they are walking, they can carry their dirty clothes to the laundry and try to throw in the laundry basket. And they will be so happy. You know, it will just be so full of joy.

Everybody wants to feel valued and like they’re contributing. And so often we don’t believe kids are capable to the level they actually are capable and they might be acting out if you’re not empowering them to take action and responsibility.

Totally. Right. So one of the easiest ways for them to feel like they’re being resourceful or giving contribution or bringing value and being appreciated for it is with home economic type chores. And now they can’t do everything. You just have to be like. Aware of where the development of your kid is, you have to be proactive about training, making sure that everything’s safe. There are tons of things you have your kids doing alongside you. But you one of the things that you’ve been really good at with the kids is helping them to find opportunities where they can make their first profit.

I really believe learning how to make profit or commission basically earning money from the quality of the work they do versus earning money for an amount of time they work. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I just think it’s it’s actually a good experience both, but really understand it. So one of the things when they’re very young is, for example, we had them earn a penny per weed. So the more weeds they pulled, the more money they made, the longer they took the, the less money and they made. It was unlimited to the rate that they could do it. And that was really powerful because then they know, OK. Based on my proactive effort, I make more money. Now, let’s talk about money for a second. In the Christian world, a lot of times people are subconsciously scared of money or talking about money. And so a lot of kids grow up with a poverty mentality or a scarcity mentality or a belief that making really good money is a bad thing. And that’s not the case, actually. Money in itself is neutral. It’s a resource. It can be used for incredible good. You know, if you’re generous, you can give it to things that help people. Right. But the love of money, is what’s wrong. And I think most people know that. But we don’t want to make money in idle. And so I just want to say that real quick, because it’s absolutely good and okay to teach them how to make money and then understand the value of money in relation to their work. And let me give you an example of a quick, because they need to understand the value of a dollar. A lot of people grow up not understanding that and they getting themselves into trouble. And so let’s say they’re in five dollars. Let’s say a five year old earns five dollars for pulling weeds.

How long would it take a day or days? Yeah, a couple days for you to take a few days.

And they’re they’re not working.

They’re not working all day long, obviously. But it takes some some effort. Now, let’s say you’re at the store with mom or dad and they get they want to buy something for $4. And now you can simply in the moment they don’t think about the work because they just want the thing. Right. And part of teaching kids is teaching them how to think longer term, because the longer term, someone thinks the more delayed gratification exists. And the person that done studies with adults, the more actually successful they are, the more they contribute to society and that the longer they think. And so it can have delayed gratification for a bigger reward later. And so one of the things you can do is you go, well, okay, let’s think about this for a second. So I want you to remember how long it took you to earn the five dollars you have. And that’s the five dollars you have. And so now I want you to think about, OK. $4 is like 90 percent of your net worth when net worth means the total amount of money you have. And so now what you think, is that thing worth all of that effort?

Right. It gives them perspective, which is a really important thing. But the reality is, is parents can’t teach proper biblical perspective on money if they don’t have it themselves. So where you have to start on this conversation is you and your wife or husband on a date having the conversation of what you truly believe about money and making sure that your perspective is biblical. And the reason why I’m bringing this up is because I actually struggled with a poverty mentality for a really long time. And. And there I’ve known people who have the opposite. Right. Who are prosperity gospel. Right. And both are two extremes of the spectrum. Right. There’s a pendulum. And as Bible believing believers, we want to have balance. And we don’t want to make an idol lot of money. We also don’t want to attribute like success, financial success with thinking that we deserve it and that it’s because we’re doing good with God and all this. Now, God is the one who gives the blessing.

But it’s not indicative of our relationship, meaning like you can still have a lot of money and be in sin. Yeah. And so it’s important, though, that you actually teach your kids these things and that we have a responsibility not to sin with our money and to do what God calls us to with our money, which we talk about that in a different podcast. I think we’re talking about tithing on this stuff.

So so that’s super important. So the value of hard work and the value of money is really important. You have to give all opportunities to do that. Now, point two is you want to create lots of experiences. I’m going to give you another story really quick. When the kids were a little bit older, Austin was running the RV business with me and part of running that is cleaning the RV, prepping it for the next renter. And so we would get a cleaning fee of several hundred dollars. And I would tell Austin, OK, that that three dollars is yours. But I want you to empower the other your younger brothers and sisters if they want to work with you to clean it, and then you’re going to decide how much money they get based on effort. Everybody does not get the equal pay.

So you absolutely experience project management as well.

So in this is you must have been when he started doing that. Thirteen. Yeah. Yeah. 12 or 13 and he had a relationship. Lead them, keep them all working. I was not out there having work well and then assess how much money they get of the money that’s available while also thinking about how much money he’s going to get to keep and not be greedy about it. Right.

And be generous but then give according to the amount of productivity that was created in addition to attitude in doing it and actually had something that was an effect also because we also know that in the real world someone could be a really good worker. But if they have a stinky attitude and they’re grumbling, combining their pain, not going to get to keep that job very long. Yeah. And so we have always had that as like a side note thing, too.

And what’s amazing is nobody complained. They got different amounts of money. They all understood it. Never had to deal with it. And it was really, really a cool experience. That’s an example. But you want to create lots of experiences and different kinds of experiences because this when they’re young, you need to help them discover what they like versus following the things you like.

Oh, that’s really big. But what that takes, though, is a humble parent realizing that it’s actually stealing from their child. Right. To try to live vicariously through them or relive if you. Well, yeah. Right. Something that maybe they didn’t get to do or whatnot. And that takes really being honest as a parent and re-evaluating constantly like why am I doing this? Why am I pushing them to do this. Yeah. And I think that that’s important regarding everything. Sports, jobs, all the things. Music, whatever it is.

Yeah, I was. Now, this is an a great example. Probably wouldn’t use this example with your kids anymore because Tiger Woods had some fallout, some things. But you can’t deny he’s a great golfer. I’m not a golfer myself. I just know the story because I know the story of him and his dad reading about it. And one of the things his dad did when he was young is he had him try lots of different things. And when he found something that was really challenging for Tiger, he would encourage doing that even more. And I thought that was good, because a lot of times a weakness I’ve seen. I used to work with thousands of young adults in a previous thing I did. And I would always see these really smart. A lot of times. Well, mostly, well, parenting kids. But if something became challenging and they didn’t know for sure if they would be good at it, they would quit.

Right. It’s like I can go do the thing I know I’m good at.

And so that is how they been parents. Not a good thing. Right. OK. So that narrows what they do. And they only tend to do things they they can think in their mind are going to look good because the probability of success is really high because that’s where my experience is.

So therefore, when they’re young, you want to have lots of experiences. And you want them to experience, challenge, failure. All of these things while they’re young. Right. So that they’re one, learning, discovering what they like, learning how to overcome obstacles in following through and finishing things even when they’re hard and exploring all of that stuff and then developing thick skin. So when they’re older, they don’t just do things they know they’re going to get at. They’re willing to do all kinds of things.

Yeah, that can be a really hard thing to learn. And some kids are more prone to being more risk-taking in that regard than others. And so there’s different personalities that are actually impacted by that as well. But it is important, though, that we help our kids to discover what they like and that they own that, too. Right. And so. And I think that it can be really empowering. However, one of the key things, as a biblical parent, you always have to make sure that your kids do not do two things. They do not allow the things that they’re good at to attach themselves to their identity because our identity is in Christ, not in what we do or don’t do. And the second thing you need to be on the lookout for when you’re teaching them the value of money is that their identity is not affected by how much money they make or not. Yeah. Right. And so that’s those are two very key trigger things for me is that my kids recognize their value and who they are in Christ, not because of what they do, not because of what they have earned. Any of that.

Now, it’s also this day and age where nobody tends to keep a career for very long, like the old days where someone would get a career and keep it forever. Most likely your kids are going to do a whole bunch of different things over the years to provide for their families. And so what you want then is multiple rock solid skills to fall back on. But if they’re not trying lots of things when they’re younger on a micro-level, then when the middle school and as again, the teenagers can be resistant to trying lots of things in school, be harder and they’re going to launch into adulthood with less skills. You want to do experience and develop a lot of things like recently, we encourage one of our sons to go do construction with somebody that we trust. And he’s also learning all these other things, using his mind with video editing and creative activity side of things. So. So that’s really cool. He’s trying lots of different things and we encourage that. I would. We’re gonna give you some examples of how to create lots of experiences for me. Lots of examples. And just a second. But first, hey, join us for the Parenting Mentor program. It is so awesome to engage with people that are part of the program. And we have an new one coming up soon. So let’s listen to people who’ve been through it.

Stephen 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 are trying to raise our kids physically, like how our kids are behaving or what we’re doing with discipline, but also the things of the heart.

We now have a game trend 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. We are no longer fearing dark days ahead.

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

Awesome. So let’s go through those examples. You want to start?

Sure. So selling different things. Oh, okay. So our kids, we’ve had multiple different little side businesses. I wouldn’t call em like big businesses, but that’s why this is such a perfect example. So our oldest daughter, when she was really young, she loved sewing. She learned how to sew on the sewing machine. Both grandmas gave her a little lessons and she started making these little wallets. You remember the little wallets that Kelsey used to make and she would sell them. And then just to people in family and church and things like that.

And she sold them for about $9. She made about a $5 profit on them after all of her expenses, but she had to learn what it meant to go and purchase and make an investment in something, which is what you have to do in your starting a business. Right. You have to putting your initial money back. You’re going to invest in your business. So she had to do this. She had saved money and she did this. And then she got her fabric. She. And her times kept track of how much time she spent. And then she sold the end product, took out the expenses she had, and then she was able to divide what was left to see how much money she was making per hour. Yeah. And to see what it was worth, it was a really great math problem. It showed her the importance of understanding why we learn math. But it also was something that she really loved. She loved sewing. So it was like a fun thing for her selling eggs. That’s another thing she started doing when she was five years old. She was in charge of all the chickens profit, you know.

And that was remarkable that she was actually doing that at such a young age. I look at that. I go, whoa!

But she fully took care of the chickens. She even nursed a few back to health because we had a puppy that got a hold of them at one point. Even in the rain and it was way in the back of the property.

So she had to run, a little ways to get out there.

We called her the chicken dancer because she would dance with the chickens on her arms, which was hilarious. The chicken whisper. But. So they’re there. Those are just some examples that we did with her when she was like five years old to eight or nine years old. We’ve also done things like growing herbs, drying them, making teas. And then her selling those. Right. Yeah. We’ve also done different projects with the boys. Yeah. And so Isaac gave you an example of Austen doing the RV business, which has now been passed down to Drew, and he’s going to be taking that over. Other skills, too, like soft skills like Austin does our video podcast editing. Does the transcript. He does the blog. He does so much. He’s learned so many different skills doing those things. Kelsey used to edit for us. Regarding book editing and blog post editing.

Obviously, there’s kind of some of these traditional things like mowing yards kids can do when they get older.

But those are kind of obvious. I’m not bringing those things. Just because those are kind of more traditional.

There’s babysitting. Yeah. You know, all kinds of stuff. There’s hard labor. yard work.

You know, like with our that’s tends to be one of the easiest things for kids to do, especially in summer months and being paid to help elderly people too, you know, and not to be paid to help them.

Just so just be creative, thinking about ways they can do that. Whether you’re providing low commission jobs, as simple as we’d be doing. Right over. Yes. And in those kinds of things. So super, super important point three is how to do this. OK. First of all, a lot of times people will go, wait a minute. I don’t know enough or have enough things going on for my kids to do. Well, that’s where community comes in.

Right. And what we mean by that is in your community and we’re not just talking about your family, but your friends. Do you even know what your friends do for work? Right. And if you do, do you feel comfortable and trust them to have a child when they’re a teenager, be an apprentice for a day, go to work with them, you know, or even just interviewing them and learning from them. And there can be some really huge benefits to that. You know, we’ve had friends that had skills like being a photographer where our kids would actually learn from them by going and watching them do photography. Austin does that with Jackson now, he’s done it with Aaron in the past. And, you know, so there’s so many different skills out there that are really different from each other. That can be super interesting. I also think about like just even Austin because I gave a bunch of girl examples before. But now, like Austin has his first car. Right. And a lot of the guys at church have been like, hey, Austin, come on over. You can help us change the oil on our old 4Runner and we’ll teach you how to do it, you know?

And so he goes over and he hangs out with the two Jordans or whatever, and they teach him how to do this. Or Cody, I’ll bring them over and teach him how to change out. I don’t know, a transfer case. I mean, I don’t even know, they do all kinds of things. Right. And that’s a lot of those things are not necessarily things that you knew or you grew up. Right. And so a lot of dads out there might be thinking why I didn’t learn that, because I maybe I didn’t have a dad around or I wasn’t into cars.

You don’t need to know everything, but you can find ways to help your kids get equipped in different ways. So there’s really no excuses and excuses. Just give you acceptance of a reality. It doesn’t need to be a certain way. And so what you want to do is find ways. What can you do? You don’t want to argue for reasons why can’t you want to argue for reasons where you can? Because that frame of mind then helps you find things to do and help your kids with. But you want to equip them to be safe when they’re doing whatever they’re doing. Safety is super important. Totally. Which is key. Couple other things came to my mind that the girls did. I remember Kelsey got commissioned to make cupcakes once for a party. Right. And then I also Megan got commissioned to create art for products to the art world. To products. Right. For a blogger. Yeah. So that’s yeah. That’s pretty cool. And just. Watching their self-esteem and confidence about themselves that, wow, I created something that didn’t exist and somebody valued it enough to give me a real and good money for it.

Yeah, it’s so empowering for young people to experience that because then they can start to dream and have vision and they get interested in things and they start trying harder now. And it’s exciting for them. Right. And isn’t that what we all like want for our kids? We want them to experience those kinds of experiences while they’re living with us. Yeah, right. But we also want them to experience what it means to have a job too at times, because having that contrast can actually really be powerful for them. I remember when Kelsey got a job and she was like, I am working this many hours and I’m making this much money like too. I mean, it was very eye-opening. Even though we had told her many times, all right. Sometimes kids need to feel the pain actually in that regard. And it can be a very positive experience for them.

So we talked a little about learning before, but I think it’s such a heavy point under how to do it, which is teaching them how to learn. I think even people, you know, we homeschool and not everyone needs to homeschool necessarily. But part of the way this has worked so well for us is you’ve been so good at teaching them how to learn. So you do do a lot of work. But as they get older, they’re starting to become more and more.

Automated and independent is the word I like to use.

This is actually a really important key part because in the biblical sense, we don’t want our kids to have an independent spirit, a rebellious spirit. That is not what we’re talking about here. What we’re talking about is when they take value in their own education to where they realize it’s their responsibility.

So they’re no longer codependent upon mom or dad for their education, but they are independent, realizing that they need take initiative and that grows more and more. in a child, as they get older, you start giving them more responsibility. You start trusting them to do things. That doesn’t mean you’re not checking it you for sure checking their work. You’re grading their work. You’re helping them with new things. You’re teaching them things. However, there comes a point where the kids are becoming more independent, but you can’t trust them if you don’t see them actually doing that. Right. And so there’s an element of integrity and character there that has to be developed. But it’s when you start them at a young age with these little things like trusting them with chores, that makes such a huge difference for kids when they’re in high school and knowing that they’re going to have integrity with finishing their pre-algebra.

Yeah, I like it. They actually coincide with each other because it’s an integrity with themselves, which we’ve talked about a lot on the podcast with in regards to other things. Right. Like having integrity with yourself, not telling a half truth, telling a full truth, because a half truth is actually a lie. Things like that. So when you ask your kids, hey, did you get your school work done? I know that I can trust my kids. Yeah, actually, because they have developed a track record of telling me the truth and telling me before I even come, ask them if they aren’t getting it done.

Here’s a scripture in Exodus, Exodus 4:10. I like this because if you ever feel doubtful they know what to do or whatever. You can also ask God and God gives to those who ask if it’s in his will and why wouldn’t it be in his will to help you with parenting. But Moses said to the Lord to. To the Lord. Oh, my Lord. I’m not eloquent either in the past or since you’ve spoken to your servant, but I am slow speech in tone. So Moses had tons of excuses and was sharing them with God. And then the Lord said to him, who has made man’s mouth? Who makes a mute or deaf or seeing or blind, basically God saying, I am powerful. I can do what I want with you. Is it? Is it not I? The Lord. Now, therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak. But he said, oh, my lord, please send someone else. Make sure, though. Yeah. Send someone else. When? Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses.

And he said, is there not Aaron your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you. And when he sees you, he’ll be glad in his heart you shall speak to him. But the words in his mouth, and I’ll be with you, with you, with your mouth and with his mouth. And we’ll teach you both what to do. He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth. And you shall be as God to him. And take in your hand, this staff, which I shall do it, which you shall do the signs. So you know what? God wants to use us.

Let’s not make excuses. Let’s not walk in the flesh. Rely on the Holy Spirit to help us in our parenting. And to do that which is super, super important in a last few thoughts, are you’ve got to value their ideas. So really important to get your kids to be thinking about things and to value the ideas you have to teach them to be proactive with their effort. And so notice when they’re being reactive and talk to them just point blank about this. It’s super, super important.

And I’m going to leave you with Colossians 3:23 here, which is a great by the way, these scriptures you can use with your kids, too. They’re not just for you. We always put scriptures in, but they’re also for you to use with your kids, too. So says whatever you do work hardily. As for the Lord and not for men knowing that from the Lord you receive inheritance as your reward.

So as they’re doing these small jobs, it’s also an opportunity to help equip them and realize who they’re actually doing it for. They’re doing it for God. And what does that look like? Maybe you pray before it. If their challenged was something you pray with them to so that they’re not relying on their own strength, but relying on the strength of God and then praise God when they get paid and they do well. And maybe you praise God for that. But work unto the Lord. And we should be doing that, too, and showing that by example. So, hey, thanks so much for joining us. See you next time.

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