How Dads Can Show Support in the Home School
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Summary
In this episode, author, speaker, podcaster, and newspaper writer Jason Weaning joins us to discuss how husbands and dads can be intentional about leading and loving their families, how they can support homeschooling moms, and how fathers can understand their role of being intentional in a homeschool.
Transcript
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well our guest today is author speaker podcaster and newspaper writer jason weaning to discuss
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how husbands and dads can be intentional about leading and loving their families
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how they can support homeschooling moms and how fathers understand their role of being a dad in
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a homeschool jason and his wife ali have been married for 20 years and homeschool their 10
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kids although ali will say jason will say that ali is doing most of the homeschooling
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which is normal he speaks to dads and moms encouraging them to be intentional
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in their most important organization their family he just released a wholesome adventure book for kids
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danger in the jungle he co-hosts the helping men thrive podcast and supervises care of pigs
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hens ducks and cows in their small hobby farm in saskatchewan after spending 15 years in the
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business world he moved into a ministry role at his church and their adventure loving family recently
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returned from living in the dominican republic for six months that's exciting and you can find jason
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at heydads.ca my my family and i spent a couple weeks in the dominican as part of our homeschool too
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so that's awesome jason i'm glad you're here thank you yeah welcome jason tell us why you got started
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in homeschooling what motivated you to do that and when you started and tell us about a little bit
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about your family sure great well thanks doris and laurie for having me here today and everyone
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that's watching you know it's important what you're doing homeschooling and being intentional in your home
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and with your families so important so yes we have 10 kids uh from ages six months to 18 years almost
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19 years and we've been homeschooling from day one basically i grew up being homeschooled for a couple
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years uh like my primary school i think to like grade two or three then i went to like a tiny christian
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school with like 20 students then i went to a bigger christian school with like 400 students and then for
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high school i went to public school and so i've kind of seen the spectrum of educational opportunities
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uh for our families and so my wife uh she went to college we're from ontario we just moved to
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saskatchewan a year ago but she went to college uh to be a ea an educational an ece sorry early childhood
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education and she worked at an ace school for about two years accelerated christian education some of you
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might be familiar with uh their curriculum and things so she did that for a couple years before
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we got married and then we got married and started having kids and talked about the educational
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options that we had and talked to lots of people about what was happening observed what was happening
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and so this was 15 years ago i'm gonna say when we started so our when our oldest was around five
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and we just felt like homeschooling was the right choice for us we read a bunch of books
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it seemed the biblical instruction was parents are responsible for raising their kids
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and we we jumped into that so i say we but yes my wife ali is uh she's out somewhere if you hear
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screaming and yelling that's probably another rip roaring day at homeschool going on in the other
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part of the house here but yes so we've been doing it for about 15 years and yes it's it's full of its
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ups and downs isn't it it certainly is yeah i would if i were to look back i only think of the good
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and uh it's a good thing when you i don't know it's just like that you look back and you go wow that
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was incredible so um how can uh dads show support to the homeschool to their wife to the education of
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the children the role in the home there for fathers yes you know dads uh have a lot on their plates
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moms have a lot on their plates too but often what i found was i would get home from work
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uh working a long day like i'd show up at six some mornings till five at work when i was working in
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our uh our family business was manufacturing equipment and you come home and you're exhausted
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at the end of the day and what you want to do is lie on the couch and our wives really need us to not
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lie on the couch because that is you have ever had a dinner time in your house which we all have
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that is an intense there's a lot of things happening at dinner time and so as dad's boy
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we have to really choose to sacrifice and i say sacrifice but you know i went to my wife and i went
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to a marriage conference here in town a couple weeks ago and the speaker was talking about you know men
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there's there's a verse in the bible that talks about sacrificing for your wife like giving up your
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life for your wife well realistically are any of us going to have to give to like take a bullet for
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our wives probably not you know it might happen but probably not and it's easy to say if i had to
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take a bullet i would but do you know what we do get to do every day like help heal parrots if we want
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to lie on the couch and put the kids to bed when we want to just watch the football game or the hockey
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game or you know do an activity with a four-year-old who wants to color with you you know instead of
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doing something that we want to do so really for dads it's not the big sacrifices that we have to
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make it is the small choices i think every single day that really can help support our wives and support
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moms in the work that they're doing those small choices every day i love that yeah i've never even
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thought of it that way that's such a good way to put it did you come up with that yourself like that's
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i feel like your wife might have had some influence in that i don't know it's kind of she probably did i
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guess she's got great influence on me but but that's really what it is and and i've heard a few people
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say it so i don't think i can say i came up with that myself it is the small things yeah absolutely
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yeah yeah now you have something a presentation you want to walk us through right do you want to
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go ahead let's i'll share my screen here we'll take a couple clicks to do that and uh
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see how some ideas on how dads can support moms so you probably have my full powerpoint screen right
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now i'm just going to go to slide presentation and you should have the slide now with the happy
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campers on it that's a beautiful family you have so it is a beautiful family thank you very much
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but let's just look at this picture for a second because as homeschooling moms and dads
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we often feel pressure like to have the perfect family and i i totally stole this from todd wilson so
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our most recent youtube video i think is my interview with todd wilson that i did at the
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saskatchewan homeschool conference earlier this year and he talks about this like we see these families
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like look they're so beautiful they're so happy they're so clean you know they're not picking their
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noses well we have a little baby here that's just screaming her head off not a happy camper number one
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that i'm holding and if we look at her big brother on the other side of the picture he's holding his
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little sister's hands very begrudgingly he did not want to hold her hand he did not want to be in this
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picture he almost has a smile here but this was a this was a difficult thing to get us all together
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so i just want to say to you if you are an imperfect and normal family there's actually a ministry in
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the states called imperfect and normal families only that's what we are we're imperfect and normal
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families and just because you know doris and laurie and i are talking about some ideas and some things
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here maybe doris and laurie have all the answers but i do not have all the answers we are imperfect
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normal literally like an hour before this call i was apologizing to my 17 year old daughter
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for getting angry at her last night so let's just get that off the table first we are imperfect
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normal families and oftentimes we have not happy campers in our family pictures so don't pressure
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yourself to think that everyone else has it all together we'll get into that in a second here
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uh our podcast my friend ryan and i started a podcast youtube channel a few years ago called helping
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men thrive we see we just in our own personal lives saw lots of dads and men that were really
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crushing it at work and not crushing it at home and just seeing our friends getting separated and
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divorced and it's hard don't get me wrong it's hard when you're running a business or you're working
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for a company and and your family as well there are lots of things to consider but we just want
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to encourage wanted to encourage men to be intentional in their most important organization and that's
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not our companies or our ministries or our churches or our work it is i'm in my home office here it is
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in the own under our own roof in our own home so dads and moms be intentional in your most
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important organization okay i will get to some statistics here these are actual stats i did not
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make this up from the national home education research institute no shock probably to any of us but
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who does most of the homeschooling i think laurie said it in her introduction moms do most of the
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homeschooling like 88 dads do about 10 maybe even less maybe some dads do more but my question when i
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saw this was who's doing the other two percent like is that the big sister is that the neighbor down the
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street is that god who's doing the other two percent there's a two percent mix here but the point is
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that yes moms probably lots of moms watching this thank you for all the effort that you put in and
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moms traditionally are doing a lot of the homeschooling on their own so on our podcast
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earlier on one of our earlier episodes we interviewed a dad of 11 and we asked him you know do you have
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any parenting tips for us homeschooling or parenting or whatever and this is what he had to say so i want to
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encourage you it's a little video clip here let's see what this dad of 11 has to say about about
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parenting and homeschooling what was his like top tip probably one of the most important things that
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i would say is and i just did a parenting series would be it has nothing to do with parenting but the
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most important thing that i could convey to any set of parents is to make sure that you pursue your
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relationship with your spouse that is outside of your relationship with the lord that is the most
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important relationship in your house you need to have date nights you need to spend time with each
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other you need to sit on the couch and in the afternoon we used to we've done this series before
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in our past where they emphasize couch time so i come home from work and we normally are overwhelmed
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with kids and we kind of turn out all of our attention there but the most important relationship
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is with your spouse whether it be your wife or your husband i don't know if any of you can relate to
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that i think doris mentioned it when we were before the call like the overwhelm when you get home and
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just that time of day but the most important thing that we can do i believe as parents and as husbands
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and as wives is to put that time in with our spouse and prioritize that relationship i heard my dad say
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many times over my lifetime you know how important it is to show affection to my mom and he would come
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home from work before he would say hi to us he would give her a kiss and give her a hug and don't get
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me wrong they weren't perfect and their marriage wasn't perfect but he showed he always would tell us
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you know love your kids moms love your wife i love your mom and he just kind of instilled that and that
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idea that one of the most important things we can do for our kids is to love our uh to love our spouse
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and part of that we already kind of touched on it is doing is those small sacrifices so dads if you're
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watching this boy i just want to encourage you to do those small things when you don't want to do it
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the doing the dishes helping fold clothes all those little things around the house um yesterday i was
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done work and i i worked from home but it was around 5 30 i finished up what i was doing and i just wanted
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to go outside and like go for a walk maybe take some kids and fiddle around not really do anything
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that mattered but maybe because i was getting ready for this i was like maybe my wife wants me to do
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something so i just asked her uh hey hon is there anything outside that you want me to do while i'm
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going out we just had a huge windstorm here over the weekend and we had a bunch of trees and branches
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down she's like well you did go play with the chainsaw the other day and chopped up all these
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branches all over the yard so if you can go out and clean up the branches you know that would be
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important to me so that worked for me that's kind of a fun outside thing to do and i roped in some
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kids to help me and some helped and some didn't help so much but we got some branches cleaned up
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so i think it's just like constantly being aware and asking our wives hey what can we do to help you
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and and then when she gives up when she tells us the answer to like go and do that thing so
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just loving our wives and doing that any thoughts on that doris and laurie you know you're homeschool
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moms you've you've gone through things what what are your thoughts on that well i was just thinking
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about the task about getting some kids to go with you out there and um i know not all kids always want
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to just drop everything and go do a chore for mom or dad or with mom or dad um how do you do that with
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your kids to get them to like go with you out of the house it gives mom some space it gives her a bit
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of a break there's less children around so suddenly the day's a little easier how do you get them
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excited to go out with you to to go do something whether it's not just necessarily picking up the
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branches but something else that is a great question as a dad you know because they carry some other way
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of authority that we really really value as as moms and as women yeah don't get me wrong like they
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weren't all gung-ho and wanted some did and some didn't but i think you know making things fun is
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part of it and trying to as a dad i can speak for myself and probably other dads as well but you
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you look at a job like we have 50 branches to clean up so everyone take two branches and let's go
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and let's do this as efficiently as we can and as fast as we can and get it done and i think as dads
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we need to sometimes just take a deep breath and be like okay uh mabel is three years old she was one
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of my helpers yesterday like mabel is not gonna just start grabbing branches out of her own accord and
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start pulling them across the yard and so i literally was like there's a small stick there
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like it's like this big i'm like mabel you can pick up that small stick and bring it along i think we
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need to give our kids age appropriate sort of things and that can be that can still be pushing
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them to do something that i think we've settled for what is age appropriate compared to like what was
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age appropriate a hundred years ago but right so making it fun i think matters and then doing it along
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with them like the the goal it's different than like the work goal where you're trying to stay
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in budget you're trying to stay in the hours for the job that you're doing you're trying to complete
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it on time on budget it's like you're investing in your kids and looking at it not as like a task to
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be accomplished but as a mentoring or discipleship or it's parenting that's what it is like i'm working
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alongside with you we're going to do this together we're going to work together and i'm not here
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sometimes i have to remind myself often i have to remind myself i'm not here just to accomplish the
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task i'm here to teach and train and grow my children as well so if that means like showing
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mabel it's easier to pull the stick this way with all the branches going the same way then pull the stick
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the other way where they're all fighting you you know that matters and then when they want to
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my five-year-old my six-year-old son obviously sticks are spears and swords and whips and all
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sorts of weapons and so maybe just take a deep breath and don't get all bent out of shape when
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he finds a stick and wants to like whack it against a tree instead of carrying it over to the burn pile
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sometimes i think we just put a little bit too much pressure on our kids to do that have fun let them
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do it my my grandfather he was a bricklayer and none of my uncles wanted to work with him ever
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because he was like a perfectionist and if they had like the bricks were not exactly level you know he
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would be really upset about that and so i think that could be a little bit of like the world war ii
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generation which was a little more like rigid and strict my grandparents came here from holland and
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lived through the war so they were different personality um but i think let's make it fun let's engage
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our kids let's have fun with them and if they're not excited about it you know that's okay too and
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maybe they'll be excited about a different kind of task maybe they don't want to pick up sticks but
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maybe they want to help wash the van that sounds like a good time washing the van with all kids
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oh yeah now there's water involved exactly i love that though that you're you're really discipling
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them in how to work and in teamwork and you know like all kinds of things just even from that
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three-year-old stage like even though they're not really helping it's actually making it more work
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right exactly yeah totally but they're teaching them they're getting time with dad they're you know
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like and you're not freaking out about you know things not being done as efficiently as they possibly
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could but but you're teaching them so many things by involving them in these in these menial tasks that
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can be uh really strategic and letting them know that yeah you're part of this family you can do
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this you're capable you know i love that to kind of build on that a little bit like to involve a three-year-old
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is one thing but to involve a 17 year old okay so she was inside last night helping make dinner
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but my 17 year old so this is another uh concept but like what are your kids interested in
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that you can become a part of so my 17 year old loves photography and cameras and videos and stuff
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like that so a couple years ago there was a friend of mine was doing a like learn how to make videos on
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your phone workshop at the local library so i wanted to go for myself because we were getting our youtube
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channel started and i wanted to just learn this but i didn't just go by myself i took florence along with
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me he was interested in this this was not like a kid's thing or like a teen thing this was like for
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business people learning to use social media and stuff but let's include our kids in our business
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conferences in our workshops we're going to i know a dad who did a lot of traveling he was a speaker
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and he would always take one of his kids with him or his wife with him so if you wanted him to come
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and speak you weren't just paying for him to fly in you were paying for his son or his daughter or his
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wife so he was super intentional about even major travel stuff to include his kids in that there was
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a worship conference this weekend at a church in town and i took my 12 year old and my 15 year old
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and my 17 year old again this was not a thing for kids but we were talking about songwriting we were
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talking about how to play music how to use our skills better and i'm like they were the only uh maybe
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they weren't there was there was a couple other ones there but bringing our kids along with us
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into adulty kind of stuff so that they can learn too so i'd encourage you to do that with what your
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kids gifts are talent skills maybe it's not your jam maybe it's not your thing but can you can you
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get involved in what they're interested in and can you bring them into what you're interested in
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and do things together yeah absolutely and i even love that uh like being able to know what
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your kids are geared towards and be able to equip them more for that too like we've got one daughter
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that's fairly mechanically minded she's strong she's you know so she's the one that's often
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helping my husband with things but she just wants to be capable and then my other one is just she you
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know what she's better in the kitchen she's better you know doing some other things but he tries to
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involve both of them from time to time so that they can both be capable in those ways and so do i
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so just being able to to see the potential in your kids and uh and equip them for life some of these
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skills you know like if you're doing a plumbing job we'll get get a few kids in there right because
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it's it's good for them to see these kind of things from a young age absolutely we had like a go ahead
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i was just thinking back to um so i only had daughters and uh my husband would after lunch he'd take the
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kids he was with the um the coast guard auxiliary the search and rescue on the west coast and uh they
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were building a boathouse and um so he said okay girls let's go and his energy so i think that whole
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energy and excitement of either parent of making it adventurous and fun and rewarding he'd say okay
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girls let's go let's go load up the flat deck trailer with wood that he lumbered and then and saw it and
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then it was ready and then um they had to haul it off the trailer down the plank down to the dock and uh
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it took a long time to build he did get help from the other members on the in the auxiliary but uh
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it was really fun to watch them do things that i had didn't know how to do
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and now they're in their 30s and now they know to how they know what tools look like they know what
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the tool does and and how to use it and they're not shy or like i don't know how to do that i can't do that
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you know they know how to do stuff and do you have to be good at everything no because we don't love
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everything um even though i know how to cook do i love it not really i'd rather uh bake that i love
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and so um it's equipping that's the really key thing and uh expecting what they can do because
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sometimes we think well you know they're 17 or they're 16 or they're 13 they don't know how to do
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this yet and i'll just do it myself well we're not enabling them to become well-rounded adults
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later by not giving them the opportunity to at least be around you and to try or to hold something
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while you're screwing something attaching something all these little things they all add up for later
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and um it's pretty cool to see the fruit later on and in all the effort that's happened in the
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earliest years yeah and doris you're seeing that now with your now that your daughters are grown up
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and they're using some of those skills and and what you said about you know we don't have to be an
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expert at everything but they could hold the board while you're screwing or whatever and and laurie what
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you said about um your your one daughter's a little more mechanically inclined i think is what you said
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and fiddling around we had to tie in those two thoughts together uh we are out in the country
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here so we have a starlink internet satellite out in the yard and so if my internet dies you know maybe
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one of the kids was out in the yard and knocked it over but my internet died the other day and i'm like
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oh did something get unplugged so i did some searching around to see what had happened and my 10 year
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old son like your daughter laurie he's mechanical anything with like a button or like a lever or a
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gear on it like he wants to take it there's all kinds of disassembled bikes all over our yard that
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he's just taken apart anyways our internet died i'm like what happened i found out our brand new puppy
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had chewed through my internet cable out in the yard so this was more than just a unplug and fix
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but i said i said to my tech crew okay boys do you think we can fix this cable so the boys are they're
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10 and 12 they scattered to the shop to get pliers and wire strippers and and like i forget which one
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of you said it but instead of doing it yourself i could have probably done it myself but i gave the
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boys the tools and they stripped the wires there's eight tiny little wires in this internet cable and
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they put them apart and then stripped them and then duct tape or electrical tape them back together
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and and we got our internet working and i ordered a spare cable so that if it happens again you know
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it will be a quick fix but that's a great example i think that ties in what you both were saying there
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you don't have to be an expert at stuff but put things in their hands and try it and i didn't know
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if we'd be able to fix it or not and the boys basically boys literally did all the work they took it
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apart they put it together they spliced it together and yeah we got to give our kids those chances to
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help in real life situations in in areas of their strength and sometimes even not in areas of their
00:26:19.960
strength yeah that's good before we uh move on to talking about your book which i do want to bring up
00:26:26.880
um how uh what are the some of the small things we're just going to go back to supporting your wife
00:26:33.540
when you were talking at the beginning about how you support your wife for the small things could
00:26:38.260
you give us some examples of some small things that you've done that have been noticeable by your
00:26:45.060
wife um and that sometimes we just need ideas you know sometimes men just need to know what it is
00:26:53.340
um we're very opposite we try our whole lives to figure each other out
00:26:57.720
it's it's an ongoing thing i think the lord knows all about that and so yeah what have you done to
00:27:09.200
to make the changes all right well i have done some of these things i literally have a list of like 25
00:27:14.920
small things that we can do to help our wives so i will just go through the list like i already said
00:27:22.220
like peeling carrots like helping with meal prep kind of jobs setting a table washing dishes that's
00:27:29.740
super practical you know helping clean the bathroom cleaning a toilet that is super practical
00:27:35.160
this is something that i didn't even know was a thing i think when i came up this list i would
00:27:41.020
literally like googled like some chores to help with around the house and this came up removing white
00:27:46.500
spots from the mirror like is that that's a thing there's white spots that show up
00:27:50.360
yeah i've seen that so that you know white when you're dying washing your face and brushing your
00:27:58.660
teeth in the morning you know wipe down the mirror have i ever done that i don't i don't think that i
00:28:04.440
have but there it's there's something that's on the list taking out the garbage that is something
00:28:08.880
that i have done usually though it's when i'm asked to do it so not only are there things to do but
00:28:14.600
can we as husbands take the initiative and see the things that have to be done
00:28:19.620
in our old house it was a two-story house and i would walk up the stairs and sometimes there would
00:28:24.920
be like a pile of folded clothes just sitting at the bottom of the stairs and i was like how did
00:28:30.900
these get here and what are they doing here and one day my wife said to me you know all those piles
00:28:36.980
of clothes at the bottom stairs like they're there so that when a person goes up the stairs they could
00:28:42.220
easily just pick up those clothes and bring them upstairs and put them in the correct room
00:28:47.320
and i was like oh yes dear yes dear i hear that so if you see things around the house
00:28:54.000
take the initiative to help with those little things changing a baby's diaper sometimes maybe
00:28:59.480
just holding a baby when there's lots of things to do around the house can you just hold the baby
00:29:04.420
for a little while and walk around with the baby taking the kids for a walk this is one that i've done
00:29:09.200
a lot like like you just said doris a few minutes ago to give her a little bit of a break
00:29:14.180
go outside walk down the road it's free you don't have to prepare anything you have to help a few
00:29:20.280
kids get their shoes on probably and find their shoes and find their socks so yeah it becomes a
00:29:25.040
bit of a task but take your kids out for a walk like such a simple thing but something that will
00:29:30.020
give your wife a little bit of time to herself hopefully and and just to rest and relax painting
00:29:35.900
dusting a bookcase this is something that has to be done you dust things to get the dust off
00:29:40.420
i think i have done that on occasion um well vacuuming out the car if your car or minivan is
00:29:47.520
anything like ours it's got goldfish and like apple cores and like orange peels and french fries all
00:29:54.860
on the floor how about taking the initiative and just like vacuuming out the van sometime uh that is
00:30:00.700
something i've done to help with doing things like uh dusting the blinds i i've got that on my list
00:30:07.580
here changing the cat's litter box like little like pet things that can be done kids have fish
00:30:12.820
our kids had goldfish for a little while change the goldfish uh water whatever so those are all
00:30:18.060
like chore sorts of things that we could do as men but what about this you know take your wife out on a
00:30:24.280
date take her out for dinner go to a marriage conference with with your wife you know your
00:30:29.480
marriage doesn't have to be like on the rocks or like collapsing to go to a marriage conference
00:30:33.680
it's great just to go learn learn how to communicate with your wife take her to a marriage conference
00:30:39.060
there's churches all over the place doing marriage conferences all the time um go for a walk with her
00:30:45.260
there's another thing just to talk about what's going on men men like to fix things you know men are
00:30:51.140
fixers if the sink's broken we want to fix the sink we don't want to talk about how we feel about the
00:30:56.040
sink or talk about our feelings you're probably familiar with the five love languages dr gary chapman's book
00:31:02.800
it's 20 or 30 years old now but he talks in there about empathy and like feeling what our wife feels
00:31:09.760
and for most men that probably doesn't come naturally to you but just take a minute to listen
00:31:15.460
to your wife how she's feeling ask her you know is this what you just said communicate like so i think
00:31:21.420
you're feeling this way and kind of repeat back to her this is some of the marriage conference tips
00:31:26.080
coming back here that i heard a couple weeks ago but listen to our wives how they're feeling and
00:31:30.520
understand our wives i think that's really important like i love that yeah no i love that
00:31:36.840
because um you're starting to touch on those love languages and that's exactly what i was thinking
00:31:41.660
like acts of service are great and honestly that probably needs to be done for every wife
00:31:47.460
but also realizing you know what maybe she needs encouragement maybe she's discouraged
00:31:52.840
or maybe there's you know a family conflict or something so when coming into the home
00:31:58.100
to be able to you know contribute to the positive atmosphere and you know not not bringing work
00:32:04.900
home not bringing you know all those things home my husband was was pretty good about like just
00:32:09.740
leaving work at work as much as possible and then coming home and being present and and realizing that
00:32:17.120
um uh i i've heard the saying happy wife happy life but i've also think that happy happy happy home
00:32:26.980
like it really does affect the atmosphere of the home so you know seeing what ways can i you know love my
00:32:34.960
wife in the five different areas you know and and what does she most need today
00:32:40.240
yeah and i think that's part of understanding and empathy like is your wife's love language is it acts
00:32:48.340
of service or is it physical touch or is it quality time or is it words of affirmation and what i don't
00:32:55.820
remember what's the last one uh gifts gifts right yeah so under part of empathy and encouraging our
00:33:01.560
wives is what is the language she speaks her love language and it might be different from yours
00:33:06.780
so learn what it is you can ask her how she feels love and get those answers on walk or on a date night
00:33:14.200
start that conversation because sometimes how we think how i would receive love is not how my wife
00:33:19.680
received love and so i need to learn as husbands we've got to learn a lifetime of learning all about
00:33:25.100
our wives but yes i agree that every wife probably needs acts of service at some point and every wife
00:33:32.920
probably needs some encouragement at some point or you know time with them so yeah just understanding
00:33:38.700
their primary love language as well as okay what's what's needed in this moment what about um teaching
00:33:47.460
a subject to half the kids three of the kids depending on what it is and passing on a skill
00:33:56.660
as a dad to the kids um have you found any of those that you're that makes sense and that happening
00:34:06.180
in your family that you really like resonate with and and you want to be a part of yes it can be school
00:34:13.680
without there being a workbook yes uh something that comes to mind you know there's lots of curriculum
00:34:19.560
companies that have like mini units or like mini topics or mini subjects and so we got beehives a
00:34:26.940
couple years ago and one of these mini units that my wife found in the curriculum was about beekeeping
00:34:32.880
so in that case it did have like a workbook to go along with it and we went through the lessons and
00:34:38.340
learned about bees but then we also could go out to the yard and we built the beehives and we
00:34:44.080
harvested the we pulled the i forget what they're all called now it was a couple years but we took care
00:34:49.620
of the bees so there was some activity involved in that it wasn't just the book things so helping them
00:34:55.340
learn uh about bees so lots of actual curriculum and small unit studies uh can be used as that
00:35:01.560
they did one uh i think it was from gather round curriculum it was about canadian government
00:35:07.180
uh and learning about the government so we talked a little bit about that
00:35:10.860
i took my kids i take one kid to um city hall for like the town council meetings i've done that a few
00:35:18.540
times bring my 10 year old or my 12 year old to town council and learning about government and
00:35:22.940
learning about how things operate and trying to be intentional about those sort of teaching moments
00:35:28.140
so when we went into the meeting i said to my 10 year old son i said just watch this meeting like who
00:35:33.540
has the influence here who's running the meeting who's asking questions to give him some things to
00:35:38.840
kind of think about while we're in the meeting not just sit at a boring city council meeting and see
00:35:43.780
what's going on but kind of prep the you know prep the his brain to start thinking and observing
00:35:49.860
and looking for some things in that meeting another thing we've done like practically hold
00:35:54.440
this board while i put the screws in uh we built bunk beds for for four or five six of our kids so
00:36:00.900
the boys were helping the girls were helping they were using saws they were using drills they were
00:36:06.660
measuring they were sanding they were staining so they were getting super practical not professional
00:36:13.600
but dad hack tips on how to how to make bunk beds and just involving them in tree pruning and lawn mowing
00:36:22.020
like there's so many things that you need to do around a house plumbing one of you mentioned plumbing you
00:36:25.800
know using the plunger in the toilet or with we have seven girls in our house so drains in our bathroom
00:36:33.680
sinks seem to fill up with hair on a regular basis and my boys have been able to like okay
00:36:40.920
unscrew the thing in the trap at the bottom and pull out all your sister's hair out of the traps
00:36:49.160
yeah so just looking for practical little things around the house to learn about and have them sit
00:36:55.760
beside you when you do it we've fixed washing machines or dryers and the boys are there and the girls
00:37:01.680
taking screws out putting parts on there's so many opportunities to learn if we're you got to look
00:37:08.060
for it because naturally like i think you said doris i would want to do all the stuff myself
00:37:11.940
but we can leverage it by pulling them in to help with all those sorts of things you're making them
00:37:17.780
become capable and i think that's a really key thing in today's generation um i remember a friend of my
00:37:26.460
one of my daughters uh she was going to the public school and an amazing kid and we were making cookies
00:37:33.280
this girl was in grade 11 and she said to me i've never made cookies and to me that's something
00:37:39.560
you do like in grade two and three already with your kid or even earlier like they can start mixing
00:37:44.640
or something right and i realized then and that was a while ago and i see it even now a lot of kids are
00:37:51.300
not very capable um for their very basic things and it's so important to have them come alongside us and
00:38:00.040
work with us show us show us show them how to do things and um you know i think what you're doing
00:38:07.820
with your kids is is just fantastic um i'm gonna switch here a little bit about how or what are some
00:38:15.240
of the things for dads what what does a dad need when he comes home from work and i know it's you can
00:38:24.420
have two kids or 10 um it's the high needs hour as my brother of eight says and uh it's all hands on
00:38:33.260
deck and the kids are starting to they're falling down at the end of their day and so there's all of
00:38:40.060
that intense busyness but you know let's say from whenever the the time dad wakes up to the time he
00:38:46.120
lays his head down at night what are two or three of his core basic needs that have that need to be met
00:38:54.100
in a homeschool family we just watched mary poppins uh on the weekend and i i have never noticed this
00:39:04.220
in mary poppins but have you guys have seen mary poppins i'm assuming yeah so in mary poppins you
00:39:09.880
have mr banks mr banks he works at the bank and he works hard all day and his kids go to the bank with
00:39:15.640
him and pause a run on the bank and it creates a big disaster but then burt the chimney sweep says to
00:39:23.560
his kid says to the kids about their dad he's like you know your dad works hard all day long and
00:39:29.720
he doesn't have someone to give him a hug or help him out and you kids can do that when he gets home
00:39:35.640
from work and love your dad and burt the chimney sweep gives this motivational talk to these two kids
00:39:41.340
about how to help their uptight dad who is the banker and i just thought that was so great i've seen
00:39:47.220
that movie 20 times and i never noticed that burt gave this motivational speech to the kids but
00:39:52.080
to to the point in there is that yeah dads are carrying lots of stuff too and dads can be
00:39:59.680
guilty of being distracted because you're thinking of this invoice that hasn't been paid and this
00:40:04.760
customer owes you money and you've got this project due and it's behind and the suppliers aren't coming
00:40:09.560
through and on and on and on so a lot of dads are like looking out in space me included when you're
00:40:14.680
with your family because you're thinking about all these things that have to happen and so what dads need
00:40:20.500
i believe in what is is support and love from their family and one of my kids my my son my 10-year-old
00:40:28.460
son justice he's good at the end of the day he asked me yesterday like dad what was the best part
00:40:33.260
of your day today and i was like i said nothing it wasn't a very good day it wasn't very good but
00:40:38.900
but to ask your get involved if you're if your kids ask your dad you know how did your day go dad is
00:40:45.080
there anything i can help you with how many kids ask their dad hey is there anything i can help you
00:40:48.320
with uh from a mom and a wife perspective you know physical touch is very important to many men
00:40:56.560
and in the bedroom and love and all that kind of stuff like it doesn't get talked about too often
00:41:02.000
well depending what circles you're in but men need love from their wives and i it's very important and
00:41:08.780
very women like to talk and men like to go to the bedroom and have a good time so that is very
00:41:15.360
important and i think some homeschooling moms don't or not only homeschooling moms but women
00:41:20.160
and mothers and wives don't realize how important that is to their husbands and um sometimes you know
00:41:26.320
we have 10 kids and there's lots to do and my wife is tired at the end of the day and i totally get that
00:41:32.000
but just to show affection and show love to your husband and even like give him a hug when he gets
00:41:36.960
home a long hug love him just tell him that you love him ask him how his day was ask if there's
00:41:42.880
anything you can do to help you know i think there's some practical stuff in there that that
00:41:47.680
i mentioned that you can do to support and love your husbands because dads need love as well yeah
00:41:53.040
even just even in that moment of when your wife or a wife embraces her husband after work that's only
00:42:01.460
like three minutes that's not going to take up hours every day you know and it goes so far
00:42:07.460
you know yeah even i like it when somebody says what can i do to help you at the house you know
00:42:13.900
because i always need help with something that's broken here and if somebody asks me i'm like i'll
00:42:19.260
take you i'll take you on that one yeah i've i found that just even helping like i always think of
00:42:27.300
the men's brains are like waffles and the women's are like spaghetti but being able to just break them
00:42:32.420
out of maybe their work mindset and so when my husband comes home from work i always greet him
00:42:38.160
hey handsome and it just breaks him out of that you know work mode into you know like oh she likes me
00:42:45.660
she's being affectionate you know that kind of thing so i find that that's you know just just helping
00:42:50.920
them kind of get in the the mode of okay i'm home i'm not you know whatever at work i'm i'm here i'm a
00:42:59.980
husband i'm a father here and i need to just kind of switch and i'm i'm loved here i'm accepted you
00:43:06.700
know that kind of thing yes yeah that's great and all those little kind of playful love things are or
00:43:14.320
texts or whatever you know those are all good things to remind your husband who you are and that
00:43:19.920
you love him and calling him handsome or cutie or hot lips or whatever you know all this kind of
00:43:25.100
little fun jokey things who can switch his brain from work to home pretty quickly yeah yeah for sure
00:43:32.740
and tone of voice um facial expression you know if there's that scornful look like i've had the kids
00:43:41.360
all day and where have you been look you know doesn't work very well
00:43:45.480
you know it all comes back it all circles around to kind of where we started it's those small things
00:43:52.380
and they don't always they i'm going to say they don't come natural to us you know our natural
00:43:57.280
tendency is to be selfish so we husbands and wives like we need to just be doing our best to look at
00:44:04.080
how we can serve our spouse and love them and sacrifice for them and constantly have to remind
00:44:10.940
ourselves don't be selfish don't be selfish don't be selfish love ally love ally love ally love ally
00:44:16.440
my wife's so i think us women same we we constantly have to remind ourselves of our roles
00:44:23.320
and how to support husbands as well um i want to switch over to your fantastic book here
00:44:30.600
there it is dangers in the jungle and it's a trilogy first of the trilogy riders of the lost reptiles
00:44:39.180
correct yes ma'am so i've got to get my reading glasses on here i just read in the back of the
00:44:46.420
book um why are arrows parents tied up why are quinn and his brothers being attacked who is the
00:44:54.420
strange man running from the tyrannosaurus rex imagine you could leap on your dinosaur and ride
00:45:01.340
away on adventures through the jungle that one really caught my eye so tell us why you wrote the
00:45:09.120
book and yeah who it's geared for yes thank you let me talk about my propaganda here you know what
00:45:18.120
we have a lot of kids and they love reading we are always looking for new and good books for our kids
00:45:24.680
to read and they've read like focus on the family has the imagination station books they've read a bunch
00:45:29.380
of those and they've read the old hardy boys books and there's all they've read lots of books but we're
00:45:34.400
always looking for new books and if you've ever walked through like chapters indigo or the bookstore
00:45:39.180
looking at like this eight to twelve year old kind of age group books boy you see a lot of vampires and
00:45:46.540
you see a lot of witches and you see a lot like horror teddy bears is the latest thing you know and
00:45:52.760
it's just like i think we can do better for our kids and so about two years ago i started writing this
00:45:58.740
book i knew my kids my i wrote it with my boys in mind and i looked at it like my competition is not
00:46:05.060
other books but my competition is like xbox and playstation and all these like high activity like
00:46:12.200
adventuresome things technology phone youtube so i needed something that was going to keep their
00:46:17.860
attention so i wrote this book with short short chapters lots of adventure boys doing exciting things
00:46:25.220
and then i also wanted to have dads and family as part of this and so kind of in my head i pictured
00:46:32.560
hardy boys and jurassic park and indiana jones those were the three kind of things i was trying to put
00:46:38.780
together for my book here and so it is about yes it's about two teenage boys and they ride dinosaurs
00:46:44.880
one of them rides a triceratops and the other one rides a lambiosaurus there's lots of dinosaurs and so
00:46:50.720
kids love dinosaurs wanted to put that in my book make it exciting full of adventure but also to inspire
00:46:56.760
kids towards mentorship towards relationship with older men to learn from them and so that's a big
00:47:03.380
theme in the book is young men and older men doing things together and learning and growing together
00:47:09.100
that's wonderful um yeah i just started reading it and i i actually ordered a couple of books and gave
00:47:15.780
one to my daughter last night to start reading to her kids and um i noticed your chapters are nice and
00:47:23.460
easy to read they're not long so that keeps their i guess the attention span of somebody who
00:47:30.760
isn't you know sitting still perhaps or yeah did you have that in mind when you wrote it
00:47:37.700
absolutely so when i was kind of testing reading it to my own kids my six-year-old boy you know the
00:47:44.900
the key for me was when i would finish a chapter when i was putting to bed and be like no no no
00:47:48.880
keep reading dad keep reading dad i was like okay i think i'm on the right track if he keeps asking me
00:47:54.360
to read more and i've heard that same feedback from some other parents who have read it they're like i
00:47:58.840
tried to read it to my kids at night and they want me to keep reading the next chapter and the next
00:48:02.600
chapter so so it's working i think it's keeping their attention i've got some great feedback from moms
00:48:08.360
and dads that are reading this to their kids or the kids are reading it and uh i saw a boy at church
00:48:13.180
reading it the other day during church i don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing but
00:48:16.660
oh that's awesome well i hope it goes you do well with that and have you started on your
00:48:23.520
the next book already i have started on the next book uh it's probably about a third of the way done
00:48:29.540
but currently i'm working on a spanish version so we made some contacts when we were in dominican
00:48:34.540
republic and we just did a missions trip to guatemala so i have some kind of contacts in latin america
00:48:39.680
so i'm working on spanish version right now and i'm working on like a book study that
00:48:43.580
i had some homeschooling moms ask me like do you have a study that goes along with this with your
00:48:47.900
book so i've got that kind of first draft working on and then book two will come at some point in the
00:48:53.960
future oh that's exciting i'm really happy for you and this is really great content and i'll make sure
00:49:00.880
we get it out and promote this book awesome and where do we find that book is that on your website or
00:49:07.420
where can people find it you can find it on amazon uh so i published through amazon so it's uh it was
00:49:13.120
a simple and quick system but yeah you can go to heydads.ca and it will take you to all the links
00:49:17.800
for the book whether you're in the states or in canada uh but danger in the jungle is the name of the book
00:49:23.480
part of the riders of the lost reptiles series there we go awesome thank you for that and um tell us
00:49:33.040
before we close and before you uh make some final comments tell us about your uh helping men thrive
00:49:39.720
podcast yes uh so my friend brian and i uh we started this i'm gonna say about two years ago
00:49:47.420
and um i touched a little bit about this on the beginning but basically we were just rhyming off
00:49:52.900
names of friends and acquaintances that these are guys from our church these are small group leaders
00:49:59.500
these are bible study leaders uh guys that have from our opinion look like they had it all together
00:50:05.740
and all of a sudden they start getting separated they start getting divorced and we're like can we
00:50:12.380
do anything to help these guys they're our friends they're our brothers they're guys in our communities
00:50:17.120
in our churches at our work could we do anything to help them we said well there's lots of free tools
00:50:22.220
youtube podcasting tons of free things to get content out there so we decided to start a youtube channel
00:50:27.360
really to encourage the work-life balance is kind of what our focus is and so we interview um men
00:50:34.460
we've got interviews coming up with dr rob reno from visionary family ministries some of your viewers
00:50:39.840
might be familiar with him i interviewed todd wilson that that's up on our youtube channel right now
00:50:44.840
at helping men thrive but just to encourage men again i maybe sound like a broken record but to be
00:50:50.760
intentional in our most important organization in our marriages in our families because at the end of the day
00:50:56.740
that's what's going to last and that what that's what is the most important so helping men thrive is
00:51:01.800
the podcast and youtube channel and is it uh like something that you can just um are they like pre-recorded
00:51:10.440
and you play them in the car kind of thing or are they live or both yeah no they're pre-recorded
00:51:16.120
they're on any podcast service you know itunes and spotify and all that it's all the podcast audio is
00:51:21.520
in all those formats pretty much wherever you get podcasts and then the videos are also on youtube
00:51:27.040
we're just getting ready to release our next batch of interviews so just to encourage dads you know
00:51:32.480
dads you're not in this by yourself moms and dads there's other others of us out there and and you've
00:51:38.380
got what it takes to to do what you need to do in your homes thank you no that's very encouraging
00:51:44.120
very very much so thank you so much jason weaning for for joining us this morning or at least it's
00:51:51.140
still morning or i am it's probably afternoon on the other side of canada and um so yeah before we
00:51:58.260
wrap up do you have any you know closing comments or encouragement you can pass on maybe one for mom
00:52:06.280
and one for dad yeah absolutely um todd wilson said this when when i was talking to him he's like you
00:52:14.500
know it's hard let's just acknowledge that there are hard things in life and there are other stressors
00:52:21.560
in life i think maybe laurie you mentioned this but like other relationship things and family things
00:52:27.240
and in-law things there are other things in life outside of your home that influence you know how your
00:52:33.140
husband is feeling or how your wife is feeling and financial worries and so there's all kinds of
00:52:37.640
things happening in our ecosystems and in our in our world so i just want to encourage you that hey
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it is hard but you can do it you can do it you've got what it takes and just know that you don't need
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to compare yourself to the other homeschooling families that have it all together you know no one's
00:52:54.240
got it all together and so todd wilson says this too don't despair don't compare you've got what it
00:53:01.660
takes you can do it it matters what you're doing it matters even if there's laundry on the floor even
00:53:07.220
if there's dishes piled on the counter even if you know if i move my camera around you'd see books on
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the floor and toys and dinosaur things all around me you know it matters what you're doing you've got
00:53:18.540
what it takes thank you that's awesome advice and encouragement so we're going to wrap it up and
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again folks here is the book danger in the jungle by jason weaning and we are just thrilled that you've
00:53:33.340
spent time with us here today and all this information will be uploaded um hopefully by the
00:53:40.940
weekend and you can find uh more of the links there and if you can't remember it's heydads.ca you can find