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Intentional Parenting
73 Plays2 years ago
Homeschool, public school, to let kids watch tv or not..There are so many opinions on how to successfully raise Godly children in today's climate
In this episode we'll dig into some practical tips on how you can make a lasting impact on your children, for FREE. Take the strategies i implement with my children that have shown to be fruitful on my parenting journey
JOZI LINN INSTAGRAM PAGE
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Transcript
The Art of Intentional Parenting
00:00:01
Speaker
Let's stop falling in love with the results and let's start falling in love and being intentional with the process. Have fun with it. And let's be intentional and not passive, intentionally parenting our children, intentionally tuning into them.
00:00:24
Speaker
Listen sis, if you're not on fire for your life right now, then I am not okay with that. Better is possible. I'm Josie Soriano, a mindset coach and I'll be your big sister, boldly speaking life, wisdom, challenge and truth into you so you can get better 1% at a time. Together we'll ditch perfectionism for progress and dismiss complacency with fearless finesse.
00:00:49
Speaker
We'll be talking about mindset, motherhood, femininity, and faith with practical tips and tricks to help you follow through. If you're not in love with your life right now, tune into today's episode and I promise you'll know how to take it from there.
00:01:04
Speaker
In today's episode, I want to talk about parenting in this crazy, crazy climate. I mean, we are just in a time where up is down, left is right. Everybody wants to argue everything, truth, like what the heck is truth even more. And if you are a parent raising children in today's social economic climate, I just want to tell you my heart goes out to you. I am also a mother raising children in the same environment.
00:01:30
Speaker
And it can be incredibly confusing, difficult. There are so many gurus. There are so many teachings. Do we discipline our children? Do we not discipline our children? Is it gentle parenting? What is it? What the heck are we doing? You know, my goal is always going to be to bring light
00:01:48
Speaker
to bring hope to a situation. And so I don't want to sit here and talk too much about how difficult it is. What I want to do is I want to go straight to the solution. And another thing before I get into this episode,
00:02:04
Speaker
I just want to say there is no one way to parent a child. All children are different, parents are different, families are different, beliefs are different, finances are different. There are so many different varying circumstances and there is no one way to parent a child. There are many ways.
00:02:26
Speaker
And so this is just one way, a way that I have found in my very short, might I add, parenting journey that is working for me and my husband. I really just felt called to speak this episode because I don't want us to take lightly raising the next generation.
00:02:45
Speaker
If you look around and you don't like the generation that you see, let's take radical ownership. Let's take decisive action and let's not passively parent our children so that we can raise up the next generation, a generation that we can be proud of, a generation that we can say, wow, I did that. Okay, so if you don't like the results that you have in your life, change it. It's always going to be like the foundation to what I'm saying.
Navigating External Influences on Children
00:03:12
Speaker
So what prompted me to want to write today's episode was I was riding down the road with my son, my five-year-old. I was taking him to school and this car pulls up beside us and the music was like bumping and it was just rap music and just saying all kinds of cuss words that were flowing out of the car right into my five-year-old's mouth that I did not.
00:03:36
Speaker
want him to hear. And he was like, mom, turn Lion on. And Lion is this worship song that we listen to. And no, we are not prudish. We listen to fun music. We listen, et cetera, right? But at the end of the day, I don't want my kid listening to F&Hoes and et cetera. Like, it's not what I want him listening to. So he wanted to listen to this song, Lion, which is this worship song that we love. And so as I am trying to turn it on to get it pulled up in the car,
00:04:04
Speaker
This carbicitis is just bumping and thumping and cursing. And as I'm pulling it up, I just felt the Lord say, Josie, I don't want you to worry.
00:04:17
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about what the world is doing and how it is going to influence your son. Because if the music, if the words, if the actions coming out of your house are louder than the noise coming out of the world, you are going to raise a powerful, a wonderful, a mighty, a thinker, a mighty warrior. That's what my son's name means.
00:04:44
Speaker
The kind of sign you want to raise, you are going to raise him, but you need to make sure that your influence is the loudest voice he hears. So loud that when he does hear something that is contradicting what you are teaching in your house, he knows so who he is and he is so rooted in who he is and whose he is that he doesn't even bat an eye.
00:05:16
Speaker
the anecdote. That's the remedy to raising children in this world right now. And so if you are just feeling fear, if you're feeling confusion, if you're just like, man, I have school aged children, I have to send them out into the world. I don't even want to send them out into the world. Like I just want to keep them under my wing and protect them. First of all, I just want to say that's okay for you to feel that way. Secondly, I want to tell you that we are not able to shelter our children from everything. We have to send them out.
00:05:40
Speaker
And so that's our job.
00:05:46
Speaker
So what do we do to build them up to equip them so that we can send them out? Well, number one, like I said, the music, the words, the actions that come out of our home have to be louder than that that is coming out of the world.
00:06:06
Speaker
So how can we practically be louder than the world? So I want to read a verse to you. First Peter 5.8, it says, be alert and sober minded. Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. And this is not a sermon. I told you in the beginning, these are my beliefs. And you don't have to believe what I believe to take value away, but there is going to be value in what I'm reading you.
00:06:36
Speaker
I want to read another one to you. This is kind of like the premise of what we believe. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness in this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Whether you want to believe it or not, there is a fight for you going on for your soul and your children.
00:06:58
Speaker
And if you believe, we hear so much now, God is love. Okay. Yeah, God is love. And guess what? There's a force opposite that. So if you're going to believe that gravity is real, then we need to believe in the opposite. What goes up must come down, right? So the truth is there is a fight going on for your soul. There is a fight going on for your children's soul.
00:07:26
Speaker
And that's why, in 1 Peter, it says to be alert and be sober-minded, which brings me to my first point. We do not need to be passively parenting our children. We do not need to be just handing them over to whoever, letting the screen raise them, letting the schools raise them, letting whoever
00:07:50
Speaker
Johnny's parents down the street raise him. We need to be in charge of raising our children. We need to be very strategic and very intentional about what they are hearing, what they are watching. I'll always say more is caught than taught. If you take anything away from this episode, please do not passively parent your children. These are your
00:08:16
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precious little gems to raise up and you need to take this job very seriously. It is actually the most serious job that you will ever do. So number one, pay attention to what they are watching. YouTube is literally, I feel like my worst enemy sometimes. I cannot stand that platform and I love it all at the same time.
00:08:38
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It is so crazy to me how these platforms are programming our children. And yeah, some will argue it's intentional. Some will argue it's not going to get into that. The truth is, is they're being programmed. What are they being programmed with?
00:08:55
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Are your children being programmed with the things that they're seeing on television or are they being programmed with the values and the morals and the ways of being that you are teaching in your home? And I'm not saying TV is bad. TV can be a great thing. It can be a learning tool.
00:09:13
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However, we need to be highly monitoring what our children are watching. I'm going to give you a story. My five-year-old son, we, not going to lie, we helicopter parent him and some people are like, that's not good. Other people are like, that's great. Like I said, there are so many different ways to parent, but
00:09:34
Speaker
During these formative years when children are so young, they believe everything they see as truth, as reality. And so my son had gotten on YouTube. I don't know where it wasn't here. We do let him watch YouTube, but it's very selective shows, teaching shows, almost baby shows. But he was somewhere where he was able to scroll on Instagram, maybe grandma's house or whatever. I'm sorry, on YouTube.
00:10:01
Speaker
And he came up on the show huggy wuggy fair parent you probably know what this is if you don't it's this super creepy character that i think actually made news because children were like.
00:10:17
Speaker
picking up knives and trying to attack their parents because they had gotten influenced off this show. So demonic. Why are we even allowing stuff like this to be published, first of all? It's just incredible to me that that's a question in and of itself right there. Why would any adult with common sense allow this to be published on television for little children, little baby eyes to be watching?
00:10:45
Speaker
Like please question these things. It's not right. So he had gotten a hold of the show. He had watched it since then. I kid you not. He is five years old. I have a seven month old that sleeps with him because he is so fear driven.
00:11:03
Speaker
because of the show that he got a hold of, he watched it. And I couldn't, we couldn't figure out like, why is he not sleeping? Like we were doing magnesium baths, like we were, you know, melatonin, getting adjusted, like all the things, right? Like, why is he not sleeping well? One night, as I was walking out of his room, he said, mom, can you please shut my closet door all the way? He has like the sliding glass door. And I said, yeah, sure, my love, why? He's like, because huggy wuggies in there.
00:11:30
Speaker
And I was like, oh, heck no. At this point in time, I didn't even know he was watching it or had seen it. But it all made sense to me. I'm like, okay, that's why we're getting up every single... I mean, I feel like the mother of a toddler. That's how much he gets up. Not a toddler, like a newborn.
00:11:49
Speaker
That is the reason that has kept my son up at night because it absolutely terrified him as it should. He's a little boy and this is a very creepy television show. And when he saw that on TV, it doesn't just go into their eyes and then out.
00:12:08
Speaker
When we watch things, even as adults, it goes into our body, into our spirit. It sinks down so deep and it registers. It connects with us. And it is not just a TV show. And once you understand the spiritual and the emotional side of what's going on when you're watching television, you'll understand why I'm sitting here saying, please pay attention to what your children are watching.
00:12:36
Speaker
And just him watching some little TV show like that has put so much fear in him that it is affecting his sleep. And that is not something that can just easily be undone. And this is why, super side note, porn is so just rampant and ruining lives because what is it? All it is, it's visual imaging.
00:13:01
Speaker
but that's how potent it is. If you've ever seen a pornographic image, me and John were actually watching a show the other night and this dang near close to pornographic image came up and I just was like, what did I just see? It's still in my mind. And I'm not somebody who's ever watched porn, but I can only imagine that me looking at something for two seconds on a Netflix show that we're not even watching anymore because I was so turned off by it,
00:13:27
Speaker
I still have it in my mind. Can you imagine what people who watch porn every single day are subjected to? They never get some of those images out of their mind. And then just to drive the point home further, what our children are watching? What do you think it's doing to them? These creepy cartoons. I'm going to give you another story.
00:13:46
Speaker
My son was watching a show, a movie, and I mean, we're not total prudes. We do let him watch stuff, but he was watching the show or this movie, and one character said to the other, shut up.
00:13:59
Speaker
And then he, because here's something else you may not realize about children, they do not have the part of their brain that tells them like, okay, this is a television show and then here's the real world. Children's minds can't conceptualize that yet.
00:14:16
Speaker
So when they see Buzz Lightyear hitting Woody on the TV screen, they then think they can go out into the real world and hit their friends because that's what they see on TV. They don't understand the difference between make believe and reality. So my son was watching the show and one kid said to another, shut up. And then what does he do? He comes out into the real world. He tells mom or dad or somebody to shut up. And then what happens? He gets in trouble for it.
00:14:44
Speaker
And so I sat him down and he had made a comment to me. He goes, oh, you don't let me watch anything. And I sat him down and I said, let me ask you a question. Do you remember when you told mom and dad to shut up? Yes. What happened? I got in trouble. Okay. When you watch that on the movie, did those people get in trouble?
00:15:06
Speaker
No. Uh-huh. No, they didn't. So Bailin, do you know what it means to be deceived? No. Do you know what it means to be tricked? Yes. Yeah, baby. You got tricked. The TV tricked you. The TV said, shut up. You saw it. Now you think it's okay to come say it to me. It's not okay to say it to me. Now you got in trouble for it. You got tricked, dude.
00:15:29
Speaker
And because I'm your mother and I love you and it's my job to guide you through this life, I don't want you to get tricked. I don't want you to stop. I don't want you to get in trouble. So it's my job to not allow you to watch stuff like this because mama doesn't want you to be tricked. Do you think that sounds like a good mom? Yes, mom. Thank you. And I don't.
00:15:51
Speaker
I don't want him to trip. I don't want him to stumble. I'm gonna read you another verse from the Bible. It says, if anyone causes one of these little ones, and the Bible's referring to one of these little ones as children, to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Wow, drama. Wait, okay. So you're telling me it would be better for me to have a rope around my neck
00:16:20
Speaker
tied to a rock and thrown into the sea than to allow my children to be led astray. That is exactly what the Bible says. And like I said, that's the foundation of what me and my husband base our family on and base our beliefs on. And that is how important and detrimental it is.
00:16:47
Speaker
that we are leading and guiding our children, not passively, but very intentionally. I went way too hard on that point, but I really just wanted to drive it home.
00:17:01
Speaker
Number two, watch the music that your children are listening to. My son, we would listen to Poker Face. I don't know if you guys have ever listened to the lyrics of it, but honestly, I just think it has a really awesome beat.
Positive Content Selection for Kids
00:17:17
Speaker
And so I would play it, we would listen to it until he started singing the lyrics to it.
00:17:23
Speaker
And then it hit me, I'm like, I'm actually programming these lyrics into his mind. And in today's world, we very much like to talk about law of attraction. And okay, cool, let's take the law of attraction and let's use it in this scenario. If I am constantly speaking a lyric of a song that is not life-giving,
00:17:50
Speaker
but instead it's saying things like suicidal suicidal when you say it's over you remember when we were listening to that if you're part of my generation what are you attracting into your life by saying stuff like that
00:18:08
Speaker
That's a whole point in and of itself. When your children listen to music, just like the images, it's going so deep in their soul. They will repeat it. They will repeat it. They will live it. How many times have you been scrolling through TikTok or Instagram and you heard a particular real or a particular sound and you literally sing it for the next 72 hours? It is so just ingrained in your mind, especially if you like it and you keep listening to it, or if you're like me, if you're a content creator,
00:18:36
Speaker
and you're making a real and it takes you like two or three hours to make a real and you've heard the sound like 200 times and it's just so embedded in your spirit and you just sing it for the next like 72 hours. Okay, well anybody who has children like we definitely let our kids listen to the same songs over and over and over and over again because that's what they want to do. They're creatures of repetition and we are burning those song lyrics into their soul, into their spirit.
00:19:06
Speaker
And then they're going to go out into the world and they're going to sing those songs and then they're going to attract those lyrics into their life. So let me ask you a question, parents. What do you want your children attracting into their life?
00:19:18
Speaker
And I don't say this to shame you. I don't say this to guilt you. I have honestly just fairly recently taken a more intentional approach to what my son is listening to and watching. I mean, I really had to like sit down and reflect and be like, okay, what do I want to create here in my parenting? What kind of man am I raising?
00:19:45
Speaker
And this is not to say that if you do everything, quote unquote, right, that your children are never going to go into trouble. They are never going to be led astray. That's not what I'm saying here. We cannot control outcomes. We can only control processes. But what I can tell you is that the more intentional we are with our parenting,
00:20:09
Speaker
the less trauma work they're gonna have to do as adults because we are just setting them up so much better than our parents set us up. That's the goal, right? The goal is to give them better than what we had. So when we say things like, oh, we watched it, it's fine. Yeah, you are fine, but are you fine? I mean, you guys wanna know how much money I've spent on coaching thousands.
00:20:37
Speaker
Why? Because I'm not fine. There's a lot of stuff that I had to work through. And my parents are absolutely amazing and they did the best job that they can with me. But I want better for my kids. And so if you want something different, we have to create something different. Another thing that we do in our house is we read books.
00:21:01
Speaker
I have bought books on kindness, on helping your teacher out, on giving, just more intentional. I think I even bought one that was like how to breathe or on peace, just more intentional books. And of course we have all of our little Dr. Seuss books and The Stinky Cheese Man and all the fun books that we had growing up the nursery rhymes.
00:21:30
Speaker
it's really just about paying attention day in day out the things that the kids are doing over and over again the kids are always watching tv the kids are always you know we're playing music we're reading them books
00:21:46
Speaker
And it's really focusing on those things and being intentional with those things and really taking a look at it and saying, hmm, what am I creating in my child by allowing them to be exposed to this? And honestly, I think one of the best things that we can do is
00:22:08
Speaker
watch the words that are coming out of our mouths i mean me and my husband we had to create a role like hey no arguing around the kids. And because we would just have like you know we would get into arguments around our kids and i honestly think that that is healthy i don't think it's healthy to grow up in a house where people are always arguing.
00:22:27
Speaker
By the same token, I don't think it's healthy for us to grow up in an environment where we never see disagreement because if we grew up in that household and my husband grew up in that household, he never saw his parents argue. That is what you think is normal. And then when your children grow up and they get into a marriage,
00:22:45
Speaker
They're going to be like, oh my gosh, this is so bad. I never saw my parents argue. When in reality, arguing means that your marriage is actually healthy. It means you're working through stuff. And something else that we do in our home, and I really just can't stress how important this is.
Gratitude and Mindset Shaping
00:23:03
Speaker
no matter what faith you are, if you are spiritual, not spiritual, this is important. And that's showing gratitude. We do this really cute thing where me and my husband and my son, we all go around and we say three things that we're grateful for. Gratitude is how you create the life that you want. Why? Because if you cannot be grateful,
00:23:31
Speaker
If you cannot be in love with you and what you have, you're never gonna have more. And I just think it's so cute. We'll go around and I'll say...
00:23:41
Speaker
Okay, tell me one thing that you love about daddy. And then everybody will tell one thing they love about daddy. And then we'll say, okay, everybody tell us one thing you love about mama or three things or whatever we're doing that day. We are programming him to be familiar with gratitude. We're programming him to look around and say, yes, I love what I see.
00:24:08
Speaker
Even if I don't like something, I'm going to find the good in it. Because for every negative thought that we have, we can find one thing to be grateful for. And I love that we are instilling this in Him.
00:24:26
Speaker
When I was growing up, my parents were so loving and kind to me, but I never necessarily sat around the dinner table and we never said, oh, I'm grateful for this or I'm grateful for that. And as an adult, since I have started to practice gratitude, life is just so much more beautiful because you can look at life two ways. You either have a victor perspective or you have a victim perspective.
00:24:51
Speaker
and going back to the law of attraction, going back to what are you drawing into your life? If you have a victim mentality, woe is me. The world is against me. I don't have enough. Everything is against me. What are you bringing into your life? Your thoughts create your words, your words create your reality.
00:25:12
Speaker
in the same way, if you have a victor mentality, a winner mentality, life is happening for me. Not life is happening to me. Life is happening for me. That's the mindset that we really, really want to drive home into our five-year-old son because
00:25:34
Speaker
I know that if he can grasp this concept as a child, even as a young adult, he is going to be so much further along on his journey at such a younger age than me or my husband were when we came into what gratitude is. So teach your children to be grateful. I study a lot of different parenting blogs and
00:25:59
Speaker
you know, theories. And when I saw gentle parenting, they have this concept of like, your children don't have to share if they don't want to. And I just think that's so silly. Like, what do you mean? As an adult, if somebody needs something for me, I'm going to be generous. I'm going to give it to them. I want to be kind. I want to be grateful for those things in my life. And I want to give back to people generosity, gratitude, kindness,
00:26:29
Speaker
These are things that our children are picking up on. So not only do we need to show them how to be these things, we need to make sure that we are being these things. And so gratitude, generosity, and just being good people, like that's really what we're just trying to focus on, but it doesn't happen passively. We have to be very intentional and we have to think about what we're doing when we're doing this.
00:26:56
Speaker
So I, like I said before, really believe that more is caught than taught. And we're always going to be our children's best teachers. They spend hopefully the most time at home watching, you know, watching us, like watching how we communicate with each other, watching our body language, watching how we speak, watching the words that we speak.
00:27:23
Speaker
and our tonality, the way that we treat each other, the way that we treat them, the way that we treat our spouses, that's really where they're learning how to be upstanding citizens as it starts in the home. And so I don't know where you're at in this journey,
00:27:43
Speaker
Maybe you're hearing this and you're like, yes, sis, I hear you. That's how we parent. Or maybe you're hearing this and you're like, okay, I'm so far from that. It's not even funny. It doesn't matter where you are. The point that I want to drive home is be intentional. You were given children and children are a blessing.
00:28:09
Speaker
And one of the first rules in wealth creation is learning how to steward what you have. If you can't be faithful with a penny, why is God going to give you a million dollars or two million or a billion or whatever it is?
00:28:25
Speaker
We need to learn how to steward these that we have been given and not look at them as inconveniences, which I know can be very easy to do when you have your own goals and wishes and needs and self-care things that you need to do. Sometimes it can just feel very daunting raising children, but I just want to remind you, have fun in the process.
00:28:50
Speaker
That is like a lesson that I have learned lately that has truly been a life game changer for me. Let's stop falling in love with the results and let's start falling in love and being intentional with the process. Have fun with it.
00:29:10
Speaker
and let's be intentional and not passive. Intentionally parenting our children, intentionally tuning into them, what they're watching, what they're listening to, and asking ourselves the questions because so much of parenting is learning how to self-coach. I mean, some of the deepest work I've done started after I had kids because they're just such a reflection of you and you really just
00:29:40
Speaker
see all your shortcomings when you have them because they test us in every way.
Active vs. Passive Parenting
00:29:47
Speaker
And so I really just want you to walk away with this episode asking yourself the question, what areas am I passively parenting? What areas have I just pushed to the wayside?
00:30:00
Speaker
and I have just let society take the wheel or let the school take the wheel. What areas do I really need to take back and do I need to stand in my power and parent these children that I have been given? How can I be the best steward of these precious little gifts? And I want you to know that I am here
00:30:25
Speaker
championing you through the parenting process. I am doing it with you. There's no such thing as perfect parenting. Perfection is a lie. All we can do is get 1% better. And that is my goal with this episode is not to give you a big list of things that you should or should not be doing, but just some things that we're doing in our home that we have just really seen some fruit from, things that have really helped us.
00:30:53
Speaker
And I hope that you can take something away and that this can help you too. Class dismissed, sis. I hope you feel fueled and inspired to start taking messy action starting now. By the way, what would you like me to talk about on the show? I'd love to hear from you over on my Instagram. You can find me at Josie Lynn, J-O-Z-I-L-I-N-N. And let me know. Till next time.