0:00:00 – Speaker 1
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0:00:30 – Speaker 3
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0:00:34 – Speaker 2
Today’s show is about three healthy habits for our homes.
0:00:39 – Speaker 1
I was thinking there yeah, there’s three, 25 to start with.
0:00:44 – Speaker 2
Well, there probably are, you know, but we don’t want to overwhelm anyone, and I don’t want to be overwhelmed, so we try to break it down into three general categories. that we feel like is really important.
0:00:58 – Speaker 1
Well, and everybody’s house is going to look different and how you implement these things are going to look different, but these are general ideas that we think are good across the board for everyone’s home, and I think we’d all say we want a healthy home, no matter what that looks like. We want to get their healthy mind, spirit, body, all of that.
0:01:15 – Speaker 2
Well, and as we’re defining what’s called healthy you know what I mean, i’m thinking about that I feel like we’ve been out of whack for several months and I think a lot of it is the pandemic and school Yes or no, and what do we have to do at home to prepare for that? Like so much stuff going on And I just feel like, okay, what are like three foundational things that we need to keep up on here? You know that we need to keep going and that keep us have some organization and you know, just that healthy foundation.
0:01:45 – Speaker 1
Well, and as I was thinking about it, i kind of went backwards with the out of whack thing and I was like what happens in our house that makes me realize that I’m out of whack, or our family is, and I know as a believer, satan just loves it. He loves it when things under my roof feel crazy, because that’s my safe place. You know, that’s where I need peace and calm and togetherness. And so then I feel like we’re unhealthy and then things start to spiral And so it’s hard to do anything else. Well, so I know, for us it’s illness a lot. That’s something that plagues our family a lot, especially me. And just something simple, like when the house is messy, i don’t function well, like and I know you when your island, your kitchen island, is cluttered.
0:02:28 – Speaker 2
I mean it’s weird but it’s my thing. Like I need the. I used to be my whole house. Like I wanted to have clean, but then I had kids and so then I had to give on some things And so now it’s just my island. Like I need my island clear. You need to space. Don’t put your phones and your chargers and your backpack. Don’t do all that on my island.
0:02:46 – Speaker 1
Yeah, no, i’m with you. And I will tell you one that I realized with having kids when we started school. And then summer would come and you’re so excited for summer And you’re like we finally just get to go with the flow. But then there comes a point where you’ve been going with the flow for too long And then it’s like, oh my gosh, like things just feel completely crazy and there’s no system or structure And it just feels how to whack. There’s that term again. Some others, like when stress is high and our patients gets low with each other, when we don’t have community like you mentioned with the pandemic thing there’s been a lack of community When our communication breaks down, when there’s a lot of unknowns, when expectations aren’t met I mean, these are the kinds of things under our roof that makes us feel a little bit crazy And when we need to kind of revisit. How can we get back to being healthy again?
0:03:36 – Speaker 2
And that’s kind of what led to the show. Because, you know, as Kim and I, you know we confide in each other, we’re in each other’s inner circle and we’re like we’re feeling this way. We’re just, you know, like I’m not communicating with my spouse and you know the kids are. You know why is there so much more attitude and anger coming out? And you know we’re processing all this stuff behind the scenes with our own families And we’re like, okay, what are like three basic things we can do to help bring some just like more peace to our home? you know, to keep our kids you know we talk a lot about right now, especially in the season, keeping everyone mentally healthy in our home Like, and so what are three simple things we can do to contribute to that stability? And that’s kind of what got the ball rolling on the show and the idea for it.
0:04:26 – Speaker 1
First one I want to bring up is just huge and it’s recognizing the importance of structure, routine like expectations that we pair with an action. And you know, as I was thinking about this, i was laughing because my mother-in-law was sitting by me and I said the word structure and I felt like she was cringing just beneath the word because sometimes for people when you say structure they think like rigid and no fun and no freedom. But I find that structure and expectation in our home, at least some level of it, brings a lot of peace and the ability to be creative and the ability to have freedom. And when we’re lacking structure, that isn’t clear Man, it is not good. That’s where we have to start.
0:05:11 – Speaker 2
I agree with you. I understand how some people can be turned off from it. You know, lots of people are very free spirited and I don’t want to plan and I just want to go with the flow. You know kind of thing which I have a hard time relating to because I’m an Enneagram one and I’m like a planner and I need to know what’s going on right. But I understand that different personalities react to this word differently and I think this is why we said at the beginning of the show this can look very different in your home.
Any kind of structure like it can be minimal. It can just be everybody’s in bed by 11 o’clock, you know, during the summer. You know that’s setting up some structure in your home that can help maintain a balance. So kids aren’t playing screens till 3am, you know. So it could just be as simple as that. But what helps your family thrive Like? if you notice your kids are staying up late on screens and then they’re irritable and fighting the next day, then maybe if you address that structure issue, then the behavioral stuff that you’re witnessing will fix itself. Yeah, I think that’s kind of what we’re getting at, absolutely.
0:06:19 – Speaker 1
I know in our house like I feel if I can start the day with some kind of semblance of organization, it makes the rest of the day seem more peaceful, like I can handle it. And so I do something for years called the morning for where I get up in the morning and I put in one load of laundry, i read my Bible, i make my bed and I take five minutes just to tidy up a little bit. The whole thing maybe takes me 30 minutes, but when I do that every day there is just a sense of like I got this for the rest of the day And that is structure for me personally. That helps my whole home. Does that make sense?
0:06:55 – Speaker 2
So, absolutely, I feel like, because there have been days you’ve shared with me your four things and there are some days like that make the bed thing. That is something that I don’t always do right, which is weird as a one, but it’s just not something I always do right.
But I have noticed, the more I do it, the more I feel like, yeah, i’m accomplishing things today. Yes, you know what I mean. And so it’s that empowerment of okay, i’m tackling the day, i’m moving forward, i’m getting things done. Okay, let’s go, you know, let’s march on. And so I totally understand that. What about screen time? Because you have little kids and I think we probably do screen time differently in our home than you do in your home. I know we do, so tell me about screen time.
0:07:39 – Speaker 1
So we do a set amount of screen time for each kid Now. Within that they have two hours a day. Within that they can do whatever they want with that. They can be on a tablet, they can play on the switch, they can, you know, whatever kind of device they want to use they can do that. Or they can separate it 30 minutes in the morning, an hour and a half in the afternoon, but total is two hours.
And the reason we do that is because if we just said, you know, make a good decision at this age, they would play all day, like they literally would want to watch something and play on something all day long. And so we’re at the point now where I’m trying to teach them how to manage the time that they have for screen time. So they’ve gotten really creative with it And they set apart separate times of day when they know it’s really hot or when they’re really tired, and that’s when they have certain types of screen time and they know they like to play certain games together. So they schedule 30 minutes together at a certain time of day. So it’s teaching them some responsibility and how to create structure for themselves within the bigger structure that I’ve created for them as the parent.
0:08:43 – Speaker 2
Well, and I think that’s so good as as they’re little, because you have to help teach them how to do it. I remember when my kids were little, we had screen limits for them as well. Now they’re older And so it is a more of a self-managed type thing, but I continually have conversations with them about reminding them okay, right now is your screen time versus when is your exercise time versus when is your, you know, reading time versus your, you know, going outside? this one do be being active, right. And so I asked them to group them in those categories and kind of manage how much they’re doing. Now, there are some days that my older kids don’t make the wisest choices, and then we’ll have a conversation about that. Like you know, if their behavior is bad, if they’re snippish, if they’re, you know, not tuned into things, i’ll be like Hey, do you think that being on the screen, like I noticed today, do you think that impacted this behavior? Right, sure, the other thing is catch them, like with older kids, when they’re managing it. Well, tell them. Tell them, like I’ve watched my son, he’s a big gamer, but I’ve watched him this summer And I’ve watched him shut it off when he realizes it’s time to step away And he’ll find something else to do. Now that finding something else to do, maybe watching YouTube, but it’s shutting off the game because he’s realizing, okay, wait, this is getting out of control, you know, and jumping to something. So it may still be on a screen, but I’m seeing him manage the different categories of screens way better, and so I’m telling him that I’ll see him grab a book, you know, and spend some time reading, and so he’s trying to manage that.
A lot of times in the afternoon we carve out time where we go do something and activity. You know it’s either walk, swim, play basketball or something. He’s always like Hey, at this time, are you gonna be ready? I’ll be ready, you know. Until I applaud that, i’m like Yay, you’re managing your time, you’re not just like Mom, go in your office and I’ll take care of me today, you know.
So finding those teachable moments with with older kids, i think are really important because, let’s face it, my sixth year is leaving for college in two years. She’s she has to regulate her time on her own in two years, like I’m not going to be there to say turn it off. Yeah, she has to learn how to manage that. So I think, as you’re seeing with Kim and I, this progression of when to be very more strict, i think, and help them figure it out and then kind of take your hands off the wheel a little bit and see if they can manage it And then if they get out of whack, you know, you jump back in there, get back on track, and I think we can all relate to that as adults too.
0:11:32 – Speaker 1
We all thrive much better when we have some structure and an understanding of what to expect, and so of course, we want to teach that to our kids. It doesn’t feel good when everything is spiraling out of control and you’ve kind of stopped doing the things that you know make you feel grounded, and so that’s what this whole first point is about bringing back some structure into your life and into your home equals peace, and then we get to model that for our kids, so when they are getting ready to go to college, they know how to do it, and it’s not such a hard transition.
0:12:02 – Speaker 2
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0:12:26 – Speaker 3
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0:12:51 – Speaker 2
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0:12:56 – Speaker 1
Today we’re talking about three healthy habits for your home, and we kicked it off with sharing. One of the first ones that we think is so vital is having some sort of structure, whatever that looks like in your home It’ll look different from home to home but an expectation that is paired with an action. You know, here’s what I expect and here’s what that looks like for yourself and for your family, and that often brings a lot of peace under your roof. But I’ll be honest with you when you want structure and present structure, that’s great, but sometimes it’s hard to stick to it when you are exhausted, which brings us to our point. Number two is realize the importance of sleep.
0:13:37 – Speaker 2
I’m tired.
0:13:38 – Speaker 1
I know Well all the moms of little.
0:13:41 – Speaker 2
All the moms of littles are like oh yeah, like I remember when my kids were babies, i was a hot mess every day because I didn’t have sleep. Yeah, i mean, it really throws you off.
0:13:54 – Speaker 1
It does as an adult, and I think sometimes we forget how much it does with our kids And sometimes we don’t realize until they’re like irritable, like we mentioned earlier irritable and not doing the things that they normally do, are not acting like themselves, and I’m like, oh wait, maybe you’re lacking in some sleep. That can often be the solution. But what made us think about this one for the show is one of my dear friends. She had a friend that posted on social media that she came downstairs in the morning and her six year old was gaming online early in the morning And she’s like what are you doing? He’s like I just couldn’t sleep.
I’ve been gaming all night And she was like anybody else And there was message after message after message from other moms like, oh yeah, that’s happened many times in my house. Like, oh yeah, my five year old, you know, often will game through the night when they can’t sleep. And her and I both were shocked. We had not heard of that, and when I mentioned it to you too, we were like, wow, that’s, that’s not really something that we’ve addressed before.
0:14:51 – Speaker 2
Well, for older kids, i see that all the time. But for young little kids, i mean this is, you know, that’s a that’s a concern, and even older kids it’s a concern, but that’s a common thread with, you know, older kids staying up late. But this goes back to that structure and implementing that and making sure. I mean one of the foundational healthy habits that we should be teaching our kids is that they need to get sleep. I mean doctors say that we need sleep. I mean this is scientifically proven. You know that we need sleep to function And so teaching them that it’s their responsibility and it’s a healthy habit that they need to have for the rest of their life. It sounds so basic But because of screens and especially because of the pandemic and nobody knows what day it is and nobody knows what time it is, it’s kind of gotten out of whack.
0:15:45 – Speaker 1
It really has, And one of the things that I keep thinking about and that has come to mind as we were writing this is because we’ve been at home a lot, I think. I know especially one of my kiddos who’s super active. He is not getting out as much energy as he normally would because it’s summer and it’s blazing hot And sports were all canceled. That exertion that naturally happens, that allows his body to sleep easier, isn’t happening, And so I’m imagining all these young kids who are bouncing off the wall and full of energy And if we don’t set that standard and say you cannot get up in the middle of the night and jump on a screen to do video games like they don’t know that naturally, Well, i love that, this point that you just made, because a lot of the video games like I’m thinking of Fortnite and my son it like gets some energy out of him.
0:16:36 – Speaker 2
I mean, he’s up, he’s moving, it’s exhilarating, and so, just like you said, they’re missing out on that physical exertion piece.
And it’s hot it’s hot right now in South Texas, so to the outside and you know, play during the day, it’s hot, and so they’re cooped up in the house And so that’s kind of the way they’re coping right now, and I think we need to have our guard up because we’re setting unhealthy habits in the process.
One of the things we do is we’re we talk a lot about not jumping on a screen before you say hi to a human face, and I’m just as guilty that I would roll over and grab my phone to make sure nobody’s texting me in the middle of the night. Like I’m just as guilty And I share that with my kids, right, my kids phones, like we do have a rule that has not changed even with my daughter getting older Phones are not allowed in your bedroom at night, like your bedroom is for sleeping and your brain needs that, your body needs that rest, and so you know they have to come to the mud bench in the morning to get those And we’ve talked a lot about coming in to say good morning. Let’s start our morning. Let’s have a routine before we jump on all of that and ingest, start ingesting all that’s on social media.
0:17:52 – Speaker 1
Yeah, and you know we’ve talked so many times about other subjects where parents will say, well, i just thought they knew that that just seems like common sense And this one can really fall in that category because it just is a part of life sleeping. So you assume your kid would know how important it is. But we’ve had some conversations with our kids because you know, all kids want to stay up late. All kids want to, you know, avoid sleeping. I’m the same way, like I wish I could go with less sleep. But when you have that conversation with them and outline for them exactly what happens to their body, their health, their weight, their energy, their ability to process and understand what’s happening in school and education, all of that is so highly affected. If you can explain that to them. It’s not just that mom and dad need a break from you and we just want you to go lay your head down. It really is vital for these reasons You let them into the why of why they need to go to sleep.
0:18:50 – Speaker 2
Well, I know. One time I asked my teen daughter, like what guidelines of ours do you like and what guidelines do you not like? And it actually surprised me because my teenage daughter said I’m so glad you don’t let me have my phone at night. Like I’m so glad because she said I think I would have the temptation. And so my hope is that when she goes off to college, she is now in a habit of putting her phone away from her bed, where she can allow herself to detach from that and rest. Like give your, give your mind a rest from it all, Because I mean, honestly, logging on to Twitter and Facebook recently it feels like I have to inhale because I’m like jumping into crazy. That’s what it feels like for me, True?
0:19:37 – Speaker 1
The pool of insanity.
0:19:39 – Speaker 2
Yes, so can you imagine a 16 year old like we need, they need rest from that. They you know it’s and so it’s just a healthy habit that we want to and, like you said, it sounds so simple but it’s so important. And these are the things that I think sometimes we do miss the conversations because we’re like, well, they should just know.
0:19:59 – Speaker 1
But they don’t. They don’t. And I’m thinking about how hard it is for us to navigate social media And I’m thinking about, like you said, a 16 year old who is now exhausted, trying to manage their emotions and what they’re seeing online and dealing with with their friends, like that’s just unreasonable And so no wonder kids are struggling so much.
0:20:16 – Speaker 2
We just did a show on attitude and body changes And then can you imagine in, like, we talked about the prefrontal cortex, we talked about the puberty, the you know the physical changes they’re going through all of that And then maybe getting two hours of rest, like, of course you’re going to be a crazy person. You know, of course they’re going to have attitude, of course they’re not going to be responding badly or they are going to be responding badly to things because they’re short, they’re out of whack, and so I think you know these simple things that we’re covering and we didn’t really intend to do this, but they ended up being three S’s structure, sleep, and then we got another one. But these three things, they’re simple things but they make life easier if we can do it.
0:20:57 – Speaker 1
Yeah. So number three, acknowledge the importance of scripture. I got to tell this this like this is the foundation. It is, It really is the foundation of everything, And I don’t know when this was and I don’t know if this is just a theater thing that people do, but I like theater.
I was always in theater in high school and even before that just grew up in that And I often wondered what it’d be like to walk out on the stage and try to navigate the storyline with their actors and actresses and try to just kind of like improv. Walk out there and never having a copy of the script, I would probably run off the stage crying because I wouldn’t know what to say, I wouldn’t know how to act, I wouldn’t know how to be a part of what was happening on the stage. And to me that’s what life is like without Jesus, Like without the living word of God directing my path, telling me here’s what to say to your kids, Here’s why you say it, Here’s how to treat your husband. I’m a crazy person And the only way to get into that place is spend time in scripture.
0:21:58 – Speaker 2
Well, yeah, i love that analogy, kim. I love it And I’m so glad that you love theater, because my daughter loves theater and you guys can talk about it, because I’m dramatic, i have grown to love theater but I don’t know much about it. You guys are more educated about it, right, and so you can have great conversations. But for me, determining like every kid needs some sort of moral compass. They need to know what’s right and wrong. Right, and as parents, we get to decide what that is for our kids, like we do For me. It makes it super simple, because scripture decides what’s right and wrong. Like I don’t have to decide, like if my kid comes to me and says, you know, i’m in this relationship and I really do want to explore physically, you know I don’t have to decide to tell them yes or no. Like I don’t have to decide, i can just go to the scripture and it’s right there, and so it keeps me very centered, it keeps me very And you know, let’s not overlook the scripture, because everywhere we see in scripture it points to loving people, right And so, and I think that kids thrive when they feel loved. So even when they make a mistake, even when they go against something scriptural. You know, jesus is there still loving them, just like we are there still loving them, and so a kid is going to thrive in a home built on that love, built on that scripture from Jesus, and so that’s why it’s just so important to be ingrained in that.
One other thing that I want to say you know, a lot of churches right now are not meeting in person because we’re being careful, right, we don’t want to spread anything, we want to make sure everybody stays healthy. One of the things that I want to remind parents of look, discipleship starts at home. So right now is not the time for you to say in your head, hey, i’ll just put my kid’s spiritual growth on hold because the church has shut down. Like, this falls on us, this falls on us. And so we’ve been using our free time to be in the scripture more When we really had a good structure going.
Now, this summer, we have not been as good, i will tell you, but in the spring, when we were really good about having our structure for that emergency online school stuff, what we were doing, we would get up every morning and read a chapter together, and it was amazing, right. And we’ve all talked about how we’ve missed it right And we’ve done some, but we haven’t been as structure oriented as we were in the spring, and so that’s one of the goals. We’ve sat down as a family and said, hey, what is important? What do we need to get back into routine going into the school year? What do we need to do to kind of shift it again and get organized and more healthy in our home? Scripture.
0:24:52 – Speaker 1
It’s important Scripture, girl, it is. Our kids are watching us, so when they see us meditating on scripture and making it a priority, when they see us going to the word for wisdom and answers, they too will follow, hopefully. And so, again, the three S’s really good stuff, really simple, will look different in your home versus mine, but it’s one of those things we just thought. Let’s go back to the basics of when things feel out of whack. What are the three things that we can go back to or revisit with our family that just make things feel right? Number one recognize the importance of structure. Number two realize the importance of sleep. And number three acknowledge the importance of scripture.
0:25:34 – Speaker 3
Thanks for joining us on nextTalk Radio with Mandy and Kim on AM630, the Word. You are not alone trying to figure out how to parent in this digital world. We are here with practical solutions to help you. Follow us on Facebook, instagram and Twitter. Find our video series and podcast at nexttalkorg. Are you ready for the nextTalk?
Transcribed by https://podium.page
