Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
FF 007 - Do you shelter your kids? Why or Why not?
17 Plays20 days ago
In this episode our fathers discuss the sheltering they provide to their children, and the thinking that goes behind it. They discuss whether "Helicopter Parenting" is actually a problem, and how they approach the balance between protection and preparation. Listen and enjoy!
Check out PreacherDad.com
Email us your questions or comments to Jarod@PreacherDad.com
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Topic Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Preacher Dad podcast. My name is Jared and I'm the Preacher Dad. And on this episode of Fatherhood Friday, we discuss sheltering our children. what is the What is the line there? Can you shelter too much?
00:00:16
Speaker
What's the purpose? And we just discuss the things that we do or don't do in sheltering our children from the influence and the temptations of the world. So I hope this is encouraging and helpful in some way to you on your fatherhood or parenting journey.
00:00:32
Speaker
But before we get started, I just want to remind you that this podcast is brought to you in part by Cornerstone Fellowship. Cornerstone Fellowship is the little church with a big heart just a little north of Tombsboro, Georgia.
00:00:45
Speaker
And we would love to love you. And we love Jesus Christ and want to share him with you. So if you'd like to come on over and experience the love of Christ with us, we would love that.
00:00:56
Speaker
So come on over to Cornerstone Fellowship or you can check us out online That's cornerstonefellowship-ga.org.
00:01:11
Speaker
dot o r g All right, without further ado, let's start
00:01:27
Speaker
All right, everybody, welcome to Fatherhood Friday.
Sheltering Children: Perspectives and Practices
00:01:30
Speaker
We're glad to have you here. Hope your Friday is starting well. Maybe it's early in the morning for you. Maybe it's late at night, whatever it is, I hope it's going good.
00:01:40
Speaker
ah This is Fatherhood Friday and I'm here with my fatherhood panel, Mr. Tony Russell and Mr. Nate Eisner and Mr. Matt Stewart. And I am Jared Hinton and I am the Preacher Dad. And that's probably how you found this little episode of the Preacher Dad podcast. Tonight, we are going to discuss sheltering our kids.
00:02:03
Speaker
And should we or shouldn't we? How much is too much? There's certainly a lot of ah lot of discussion in parenting groups these days about how to shelter your kids or how not to. It's a bad thing. It's a good thing.
00:02:19
Speaker
We figured we'd kind of throw our opinion out there and maybe have some discussion about it. So, Tony, why don't you start us off? Yeah. i Just to begin with the idea that like I'm to assign this pejorative to your parenting style.
00:02:37
Speaker
I'm going to call it vigorous protection against evil for your children. That doesn't strike me as you know a bad thing. you call you Sheltering, that's kind of your prerogative as a parent.
00:02:50
Speaker
No, we're going to label you as a helicopter parent. That's a negative pejorative. That's usually how it gets modified because you know if you say you're sheltering your kids, it's like, well, yeah, I love them. What are you doing?
00:03:01
Speaker
You stick them outside in the rain? what are you doing to your kids? It's the... I think that where it can go astray is whenever you, um when you start to to take away things that need to be natural challenges for children to overcome.
00:03:17
Speaker
um and And that slips into my my my moral protection compass of some in some kind of a way. And I don't have a clue what is the right standard to necessarily prescribe to everybody in every case and every scenario.
00:03:34
Speaker
You got to know your kids. Your kids are are obviously going to be unique to your own family culture, to that yourre their own spiritual progression and their own sensitivity. Some things are going to be a lot closer to their heart and bigger struggle.
00:03:49
Speaker
Some things, they might have been struggles you've had your whole life and they're going to identify with them at all. So there's there's different ways that you you got to be responsive to who your kids are. But the general idea of You know, this world is a heinous, evil place.
00:04:06
Speaker
And most of the systems of power currently in our culture are seeking my kids to destroy and corrupt them, to turn them first and foremost against God and then secondly against me and and their mom.
00:04:19
Speaker
the The pressure to reject family, to reject paternity, to reject ah the hierarchy of of godliness is extraordinarily high in the culture. And so I do feel like the things that I do to be able to try to protect my kids from that kind of an onslaught would probably be perceived as sheltering ah in
Dangers of Overprotection: Preparing for Reality
00:04:39
Speaker
some capacity. to others It's one of the reasons why we homeschool. as there's We can't really afford a good private Christian school because I don't and'll make $400,000 a year, whatever the minimum base requirement salary is to be able to do something like that, especially if you have a lot of kids.
00:04:55
Speaker
ah That tuition can can kind of go up pretty quickly. But um I definitely, you know, my wife and I, when we first got married, we set out that we we felt like having her stay at home to have the capacity to educate our children was the absolute highest thing that we could put in our family structure under Christ's lordship.
00:05:17
Speaker
That we we needed to have that set up to protect who our kids grow into and become. And but i I praise God that he's given us the opportunity to do that.
00:05:30
Speaker
ah we We didn't always, throughout the majority of our marriage, ah have the financial wherewithal to do stuff like that. But we did in time for my kids once they started going to school. So um that was kind of ah a huge aspect of the way that we wanted our family to work.
00:05:48
Speaker
The biggest reason why is we wanted to throttle on what kind of cultural interjections they were going to get. they It seems like every mechanism you have in public school systems, especially, are meant to be, um you know, subversive vectors to be able to start getting your kids to question everything, um to be exposed to way more things than you want to. You know, math classes turn into LGBT lessons.
00:06:17
Speaker
ah there's There's all kinds of sidestepping that goes in there. And i didn't want to contend with that for the entirety of my kids' careers. yeah We wanted to be the ones to let our kids be introduced you know to sexual education in a biblical context, in a Christian context, and not in the fourth grade.
00:06:33
Speaker
We wanted that to happen when they were actually old enough and ready for it. And i have an 11-year-old son. I still don't think you're there. I hear your heart here, Tony, and I i love it.
00:06:45
Speaker
And many many it very much reflects what is in my heart. Here's the problem that I see that develops. And I've i've seen a lot of homeschooling families, especially um but you know plenty of other Christian families.
00:07:01
Speaker
But they get in this situation where they are they are protecting their kids from everything. they are yeah And and you know ah on the on the surface, you'd say, well, why would you not want to protect your kids from everything?
00:07:16
Speaker
But you get to this point where... And I think we've probably all met this this family somewhere where it's like, my kids don't go to the grocery store because they might hear rock music played over the loudspeaker.
00:07:30
Speaker
And they might you know they might see a bikini on on a magazine that's at the grocery store. And you know that's a problem. I remember going to the grocery store and going, this is battle time.
00:07:41
Speaker
This is battle time. I've got to guard my eyes. And I can remember things like that. But, you know, how much of that is, are we going overboard? Are we weakening our kids by never exposing them to any kind of, you know, they they're, they're, they're going to be in the world.
00:08:03
Speaker
They can't help it, but we don't want them to be over the world, but are we handicapping them? I'm not saying we go sit them down in in front of a, you know, let's go watch a rated R movie, son. So you can get a little, you know,
00:08:16
Speaker
There's ton of ways for watching movies, but you know we got to be, like you were saying, we have to tailor it to the needs of our children. But I think there's danger that we could potentially take that idea of protecting them too far because the goal of parenting, ah biblically speaking, is to shoot the arrow.
00:08:38
Speaker
It's not just to forever sharpen it. And so there's a time for sharpening that arrow, for keeping it safe in the quiver, and there's a time for shooting it. And if we are not preparing them to go out into the world and interact with people who use bad language, who don't dress the way they ought to, you know, are we handicapping them by not, by, by ah i hate the term overprotecting them because I'm not sure
00:09:11
Speaker
if I want to say that overprotection can exist, but right I think a danger there. And, you know, i think we've probably all experienced that at least, you know, observing other families. That's like, man, you're, you're really keeping your son from being able to function in the world because he can't see a woman who's got an open button on her collar, you know? So you bring up an incredibly important distinction there. Like,
00:09:37
Speaker
There's a difference between your son and your daughter when it comes to this kind of a threshold.
Monitoring Exposure: Media and Environment
00:09:42
Speaker
Men generally are not valuable until they have experience. The way you get experience, unfortunately, is through going through hardship 90% of the time. i My son, when it comes to, is he going to be in environment where he's going to hear curse words? I'm not as fearful.
00:10:04
Speaker
about that? Is he going to be in a situation where I would personally struggle to try to hold my thoughts in check because of what's visually there to be able to tempt him? I don't have any right, I don't think, as a parent, to try to put him into a situation like that when I know myself as someone who has years and years and years of practice failing in this area and struggling against this area and trying to win in this area to try to put him a fairly Now, he's still a little young for this, but i'm I'm speaking kind of whenever he gets a little bit older and starts to actually notice um the the threshold of lust that's out there. I want to make sure that I'm guarding him very vigorously in that regard. yeah When I say guarding, I mean like controlling the environments I can control.
00:10:53
Speaker
If I'm at a gas station and you know somebody else is in that car next to us doing you know whatever, being whatever level of exposure, I don't feel any moral obligation to go over to that car, make a scene about how bad or inappropriate they are and make sure that they know that my my kid is in the other car and needs to be protected against them.
00:11:14
Speaker
I think that's foolishness. I don't think that prepares my son well, and I don't think that's a witness to them that's of any value or meaningfulness at all. I think that's more and important in those moments to help demonstrate how to properly handle that myself to my son so he can see this doesn't have to cause a neurological breakdown.
00:11:34
Speaker
It can just be ignored and and walked past and you don't have to let this into your life. That doesn't mean that that's going to be the same thing that I allow into my home. My home is going to be well guarded against those types of influences and what I'm allowed, what's allowed to be participated with or watched or listened to or what video games are going to played. All of that is going to be very, very filtered from my perspective. And just, you know For an example of Threshold, there was a season Fortnite, which is an incredibly innocuous game that came on. But the the way they were posing all their figures was extraordinarily suggestive.
00:12:14
Speaker
And it actually hit my wife's radar before it hit mine because, don't know, cartoons are really below my radar on a lot of that kind of stuff. But she was concerned about it.
00:12:24
Speaker
And my thought was, well, if your red flag went off, then that's all I need to know. I need to step in and guard. And so we shut down Fortnite for a little while until that season had passed. And i didn't I didn't sit down with my son and explain to him the ins and outs of what everything was going on because he's still got a level of innocence I don't wish to yet destroy.
00:12:43
Speaker
But at the same time, it was ah it was an opportunity for us to set the expectation with him that, hey, just because it's available doesn't mean it's for us. Not everything that's out there needs to be consumed.
00:12:55
Speaker
You have to have some weight and to to filter and regulate what you're going to allow ah to come in and entertain you. And these types of things, there are things there that we don't want to be entertained by.
00:13:09
Speaker
And we have the ability to choose those things.
00:13:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:15
Speaker
But going back to like, well ah like okay, do I take them to a theme park or something like that? Well, I don't know. As a kid, I would, as a kid, I say, as a teenager growing up, I always had a hard time at theme parks.
00:13:28
Speaker
i I did not ever experience a theme park that didn't feel like a freaking war. um And that's just because of the way that that I'm queued up visually. and i I know that not everybody is the same way that I am.
00:13:41
Speaker
That kind of stuff. But for me, it was always a struggle. And so in my mind, like... Me too. Me too, man. so lot Plenty of failure at the theme park, baby. but my My thought of taking my son to a place like that where, um you know, there's like a water park or whatever...
00:13:57
Speaker
like i'm not I'm not myself going to go anywhere near something like that. I ah definitely shouldn't be taking a son who's experiencing pubescent hormones and negative self-control to the same area and expect that that's going to sharpen him.
00:14:13
Speaker
it's It's not. It's going to crush him. Matt, do you take your kids to theme parks? We do. We get season and passes. like but um But I will say, though,
00:14:27
Speaker
Every summer we have the conversation with the kids. Like, look, you're going to see some stuff. You're goingnna see a lot of everything. You're going to see LGBTQ stuff. You're going to see what awful dressing. Like, you're gonna see everything. Hear cuss words.
00:14:42
Speaker
But look look, that stuff is not it's not acceptable. It may seem like it's normal and it's the thing to do, but um we just got to teach them. I mean, even our five-year-olds were like, listen, we're going to go there today and we're going to see two boys holding hands.
00:14:57
Speaker
And that is not right. You know, and we talk about that a little bit. So even we were in line. um I forget which daughter it was, but I'm like, I'm like, look at that girl right there.
00:15:09
Speaker
You think you like the way that she's dressed? She was wearing like spikes and just really just all kind of crazy stuff. And she's like, well, first of all, she said, I didn't even notice her, which I'm like, well, that's good.
00:15:20
Speaker
but but that And then I'm like, would you ever want to dress like that? and she goes, no, of course not. And so, but like you were saying, Tony, control what you can, what you can control. So like we make sure our daughters know how to dress feminine.
00:15:38
Speaker
Right. And that starts with my wife. She's, she's the example because when they go out, they're going to see a lot of girls that are even, don't know, might, this might hit a few people, but um even some Christian girls dressing sloppy, you know, wearing sweatpants, baggy shirts, like that's just not really feminine, you know?
00:15:57
Speaker
And so we're just trying to teach the girls that, um especially. But yeah, they're going to see it all when you go to places like that. And we just try to be upfront with them and teach them as much as we can. And obviously we start with scripture when it comes to teaching. Let me challenge a little bit. Would you take them to see movie that had those things in it?
00:16:16
Speaker
We try to, I would say no, not, I mean, unless it just, unless we do our research and it still gets past us. Like we try not to do that. Yeah. Yeah. So we, We try to, we look up everything we let them, we let them watch. Now we'll say I kind of ah slipped up a little bit. We were at the beach a couple of weeks ago and um we came in for lunch and the kids turned on the TV. we We watch HD, HGTV a lot until there's a weird couple on there. Then we change it, but which is now it's like every other one. But anyway, so we came across dumb and dumber and I'm like, I'm like,
00:16:55
Speaker
All right, we're good. I know. I said, listen, I said, May, don't worry. I know when all the, I know when the cuss words are coming up, don't worry. And 20 seconds later, I missed one. But, um, so I did kind of mess up a little bit there, but i could still, it's such a good movie. i funny But yeah, we do try to, i and so even, um,
00:17:19
Speaker
Hey, parents, if you're looking for a fun and entertaining way to teach your children about character, then I've got the right podcast for you to check out. It's called Character Stories Podcast. On the Character Stories Podcast, we do voices of all shapes and diseases, and we have occasionally sound effects as well.
00:17:40
Speaker
And I would love for to come and join us over there and hear a great story that has a great lesson and moral in it as well. So come on over and check out the Character Stories podcast today.
00:17:55
Speaker
Just this past weekend, my son, who's six, he was on the kids' YouTube. Is that what it's called? you i don't know. Anyway, there's a little kids. Yeah, yeah, anyway.
00:18:09
Speaker
No, I take that back. No, we were watching, um what's the and the animal, the Paw Patrol thing? Well, there's one little version of it, Rubble and Friends or something. It's one version of Paw Patrol.
00:18:24
Speaker
And it had like a ah boy dog dressed in pink and whatever, you know. And so we had to we had to change that. So, you know, we we try to keep it away from as much as possible. you know, it's really hard to do because, um you know, we we got burned before on, you know, saying, oh, the kids can probably watch this. It's probably fine.
00:18:46
Speaker
And you know this seems like an innocuous, safe kind of a film to let them watch. And they end up doing doing things or saying things in that movie that we do not want our kids to hear yet.
00:18:58
Speaker
And so now we never let our kids watch anything that we haven't previewed first. And it's not always because there's going to be bad language or or sensuality.
00:19:11
Speaker
Sometimes there are things that are too scary for our littlest ones to endure. we're We're not really interested in staying up till three o'clock in the morning, you know, helping them calm down and go to sleep.
00:19:23
Speaker
So, you know, even things like The Chosen, which is a great series. i really love it. ah We watch every episode before any of the kids watch one because there's some things in there that are are kind of scary for our younger kids. So it's it's really challenging in today's world to be able to um to effectively keep your kids from dangers.
00:19:46
Speaker
But I think that we need to be able to um recognize when, like Tony, like you're saying, in that moment when you're out in the world and somebody walks up and they're doing drugs or they're dressed inappropriately or they're talking like they shouldn't talk, things come up and they happen.
00:20:05
Speaker
And I am trying not to kind of freak out when the kids go, you know, what are they smoking, daddy? or what does he mean, daddy?
00:20:16
Speaker
um I smell skunk. Where's that skunk coming from? yes Marijuana. Ask your mother. Yeah. I'm trying not to be the dad that freaks out and goes, don't say that word.
00:20:27
Speaker
Yeah. I want to be more like the guy that says, and I'm trying to be the dad that goes, Hey, we don't want to say that word. It's not a nice word. So just don't say it anymore.
00:20:39
Speaker
Or, well, that person just needs Jesus, buddy. They're, they're, you know, clearly having, yeah you know, some real issues in their life. Maybe they're drunk on the side of the road or something.
00:20:51
Speaker
And it's like, hey, you know what? That's my friend, Tony. it's He's okay. is There's nothing wrong. We're going to pray for him. He just needs more of Jesus. but but' That's really good because that's that's something. my My kids are little. And so, you know, we have, but we I feel we have a little time before we have to seriously buckle down on this stuff. But,
00:21:14
Speaker
Um, you know, even so, you know, my kids don't have free reign over the iPad. Now we don't also have internet where I live cause we live in the middle of absolute nowhere. So even if they wanted to, they couldn't get on it.
00:21:25
Speaker
But, um, you know, any, the, the if few moments we can connect to a hotspot, you know, same thing. We preview what we're watching and we'll stick with the things that we know are safe. But what you just said there, I think it's a great mindset to have, um,
00:21:40
Speaker
about when those questions come up because I've had that before. i' trying to remember the exact moment that it was, but my older daughter asked me a question. I don't remember if it has something to do with LGBTQ or something. It was something that we saw either in public or a commercial that came on somewhere.
00:21:58
Speaker
And what I told her was a very similar thing to what you just said was rather than trying to explain it to a four-year-old, to understand, well, that person just doesn't know the Lord.
00:22:11
Speaker
And that's somebody that we need to pray for. And I think instilling that mindset at a young age um is a very healthy way to distinguish that there is right from wrong, but not in a religious way that is us against them or that we are more self-righteous than they are.
00:22:29
Speaker
Because the root cause of why they are doing the thing that we are deeming bad is ultimately sin in the fact that they don't know the Lord and they are living under deception.
00:22:43
Speaker
And so I think instilling that mindset from a young age is is huge. So I like what you said.
Digital Age Parenting: Challenges and Vigilance
00:22:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's better than what I do. And I just call them names. So good job.
00:22:53
Speaker
There's a time and place for both. and problem Hey, I've got a question if it's okay. um As we've been talking, I've been thinking like, did my parents... shelter me too much or not enough? So I was just kind of thinking about that. So any of you want to want to share?
00:23:11
Speaker
um i know you got they you they may be listening. You need to answer the question first. It's your question. I can do that. now um No, I wasn't sheltered very much.
00:23:23
Speaker
yeah I had a lot of um lot of freedom. I mean, ah thankfully, by God's grace, I spent most of the time with Christian friends and a youth group and stuff like that. So we weren't out in situations to get caught up in stuff, you know, it was fairly clean, innocent stuff we, you know, we were doing, but, but like with the computer and all, which I guess the computer, like I guess we, everybody got laptops when Tony, when we were like, what, 16 or 18 would get desktops or something. I can't remember, but, but yeah, that's not a good time for boys to be, have access to the computer, you know,
00:24:05
Speaker
So i would say we are much more strict than my parents were.
00:24:15
Speaker
What about you other guys?
00:24:19
Speaker
i went to public school. oh Tony went to public school. He's lucky to be a he's lucky to be a Christian at all. that
00:24:30
Speaker
But seriously, go ahead, Nate. Yeah, I was homeschooled. And so similar to Matt, you know, the crowd I was running with was really fine. I mean, there it was when I got to youth group, I definitely, that's when I really first started mingling with public school kids.
00:24:48
Speaker
And so there were a few influences that were not great um that certainly, wouldn't say introduced me to things, but definitely encouraged not great behavior. um But even so,
00:24:59
Speaker
That was quickly corrected. And I think that's by God's grace, really, is all I can accredit that to, that those influences didn't stand around long. And ultimately, I did find a better group of people to hang with. And so from the standpoint of actually running around, you know I wasn't wasn't out smoking pot and you know you know breaking into stores and stuff, whatever public schoolers do. i don't know, Tony, you tell me. but But my my issue is the internet, like Matt said. Yeah.
00:25:28
Speaker
The problem there is, oh you know, that's to me, I tried to hide it and I think I did a pretty OK job at it. and And, you know, for me, the tension was oh living a double life from a very young age and not learning how to process that and being too afraid to take that to anyone.
00:25:49
Speaker
And so that was something I struggled with for a long time. And thankfully, there were some really great guys in my circle that um helped me through that to a degree. But even so, that was something that the Lord really didn't deliver me from until really right before I got married.
00:26:07
Speaker
um And, you know, that's a huge part of my testimony is really just miraculous deliverance because I know that, I won't go into too detail because don't know kids are watching this show, but there are certainly things that I was delivered from that I can accredit to only the Lord because it is not by my own strength that I've been little over five years clean. So, um, yeah, but that's, that's, you know, I, I don't know if that actually answers the question as far as, you know, how much was too much sheltering.
00:26:45
Speaker
Um, you know, uh, I had access to the internet and I think if there's any lessons I've taken away from my childhood is that that's a big one.
00:26:56
Speaker
It's one of the bigger ones. is really being mindful of what my kids have access to. um And especially as they get to be older, because I remember that drawing myself, you know, when you get to be 13, 14 and all your friends have cell phones and all your friends have Facebook accounts and, you know, what kid is not going to want to be like their friends. And so that's something that you have to come to, you know, you can't just, I don't know, that's that,
00:27:25
Speaker
thankfully I have some time before I have to really truly worry about that, but it is something I want to be thinking about now and thinking of ahead of time, because I don't want to be the parent that just says, well, you can't have that and do as I say, because that ultimately was rebellion. And I know some, some kids that had that and they, you know, had secret Facebook accounts and, you know, stuff like that. So I don't, I don't want to go that far, but at the same time, I also want to be able to explain to them, Hey, you know,
00:27:54
Speaker
your mother and I are not going to let you do this for this reason. and it's because we love you. And it's also because your dad made some mistakes. And I learned from experience that I was not able to handle these things.
00:28:07
Speaker
um And you can learn from my mistakes. So learning how to explain that to them again, I've got probably about 10 years before have to worry about that, but I still want to be thinking.
00:28:20
Speaker
Yeah. One of the things that's a difficult factor that needs to be, I think, highly considered is that when we were we were kids growing up, there were no targeting algorithms.
00:28:33
Speaker
There was no mass metadata research that knew exactly what you watched for the last you know four months and how to potentially entice you into this next new thing. the the The enemy is much different than whenever we grew up.
00:28:48
Speaker
and It's a new world. It's a new world. Yeah, and it's a changing world, depending on how old your kids are now. you know, if you got teenagers now versus what Nate's little ones are going to have to face, that's going to be a new world all over. Probably gone through two or three remakes by the time you get up to that.
00:29:06
Speaker
So it's going I grew up... I went to public school all over the country, Ohio and Tennessee and Virginia. ah Not Virginia, I'm sorry, West Virginia.
00:29:18
Speaker
No, I never went to school in the West Virginia. Never mind. I think it was just Tennessee, Ohio. But anyway, the the but cultural rot that I remember struggling against when I was kid, my dad always told us, you know, that you're your lights to these schools. You've got to be, you know, you're like missionaries to your to your schoolmates. And I always thought of it that way, that, you know I'm not going to be loved or accepted here, but I'm here to make an impression, to be a good light.
00:29:45
Speaker
I would never have that conversation with my kids now because the the public schools now are way different than what I was facing whenever I was going through them in the 90s and early 2000s.
00:29:58
Speaker
I was thinking about that same thing, Tony. like Things are so much different now. and My mom and dad really did the best that they could, but there were some things that were happening in our culture that they were not aware of.
00:30:10
Speaker
The proliferation of the P word. and I think we have to say the P word because I think if we say it out loud, YouTube will give us a strike and we'll take our video down maybe. But the proliferation of the P word throughout the internet was something that was just kind of coming around and they weren't totally aware of everything that was accessible.
00:30:32
Speaker
So, you know, to them, having the computer out in the middle of the kitchen was fine. But late at night, nobody's out in the kitchen. And so, you know, people sneak up there and get on it.
00:30:46
Speaker
And so, you know, turning the internet off at night was also something that they didn't think about doing um ah for a little while. They did eventually, I think. But, um you know, it's just like, I can say that I'm way more strict about some things than my parents ever were.
00:31:05
Speaker
But I also think that it's, we we got to compare apples and oranges. And I'm sure I'm doing some things that my kids one day will go, why did my dad do that? Didn't he know? You know, um and it's is just the way that the way that life goes sometimes.
00:31:22
Speaker
I tell you one area where i I would imagine I'm a good bit looser than all of you guys. um and i I don't
Cultural Narratives as Teaching Moments
00:31:30
Speaker
know. I kind of am somewhat of a Gestapo kind of person Bring it on. I want to judge you. I want to judge you. Come on.
00:31:35
Speaker
Over the weekend, I watched two Chinese movies, ah Chinese animated movies. I don't have any idea what they're called, but I watched them with my kids. And they were both about ah Chinese mythology.
00:31:48
Speaker
ah One of them was, they're just, they're narratives. They're just stories and stuff. But one one was about the monkey king and the great Buddha. And the other one was about some dumb little demon kid.
00:31:59
Speaker
There was demon kid. He was the hero, wasn't he? He ended up being the one that saved the hero. So, oh but yeah, so, but it was, it's it's the whole yin and yang kind of mythology.
00:32:15
Speaker
But I've watched both of those on purpose because it was, oh I thought, a really, really good teaching tool with my kids. There wasn't anything morally crazy in any of the the movies. they were As far as like fundamental themes of a story go, they were very quite quite good. But the general idea was like these these are mythologies from a lost pagan people halfway across the world, but what do they recognize?
00:32:44
Speaker
They recognize some of the same fundamental truths we find in Christianity. This is how God um kind of reaffirms his truthfulness. You can see his themes throughout every lie that's out there that's trying to compete for your religious narratives.
00:32:59
Speaker
There's this idea that there's a master good that has to sit in judgment over all the world and that evil was once part of heaven but fell once it committed itself to evil.
00:33:11
Speaker
But it didn't have to be that way. It only became evil effort. rebelled against the great good. Some of those things that are out there that are we're were common themes throughout the story, it's like you're going to see this a lot. Christianity is the capital T truth.
00:33:24
Speaker
But there's a lot of other things that will try to disguise that and say, see, we're just the same. We're we're just as good. Or are we we we know a little bit more of the truth than you do. And it's disguised up in these other decorative flavors.
00:33:37
Speaker
And my my kids thought it was a real both really dumb movies. So they didn't like either one of them. um I don't know the object lesson was, was quite there, quite good, but I'm not worried about them falling in love with pagan religion.
00:33:53
Speaker
But it is the, ah it is one of those things where and I do know a lot of Christians out there, like with same thing with like Harry Potter and stuff like that. Well, that's kind of a dividing line amongst parents of whether or not we should allow our kids to, you know, watch these movies with real satanic spells in them, or if they should consider this to be entertaining.
00:34:11
Speaker
And, you know, that's... You might have guessed where I land on that one. But the... yeah Where do you think I land on that one? I don't know. I was just trying to poke.
00:34:22
Speaker
What do you think, Jared? I know that you let your kids read Harry Potter books. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So Mae reads the... Reads it with them.
00:34:36
Speaker
and And then they can... So she's introducing them to witchcraft. Correct. You guys practice the spells of the family? Stupid thoughts. Oh, my goodness.
00:34:48
Speaker
You just spoke Latin. actually we don't have We don't have any issues with Harry Potter. We just teach them. you know Well, listen, guys, this has been a good discussion.
Conclusion and Listener Reflection
00:35:00
Speaker
I hope that we've been able to give one another some things to think about, maybe give some of our listeners a chance to think about it. And, you know, consider what does your line need to be?
00:35:10
Speaker
How much is too much? um You know, that's something that dads need to be thoughtful about and be prepared to, to you know, be weird. And I think all of us probably at some point or another have felt kind of weird for the things we say, nope, that's not for my kids.
00:35:25
Speaker
um But we got to be willing to do what's right. But we also got to be willing to um give them the right perspective on the world. So, Thank you guys for everything that you're sharing. I did want to point out something interesting that maybe not everybody knows that I wanted to make sure that everybody knew.
00:35:43
Speaker
and that is that Georgia was recently ranked in the preseason poll at number four, which is poll number five in the AP poll.
00:35:54
Speaker
Matt, where was Alabama ranked? um I can't remember. um i do remember. And the the lowest or the, The worst we've been ranked in a long time, and that was number eight.
00:36:07
Speaker
Number eight. Even Notre Dame is rated higher than Alabama. I guess we'll have to see what'll happen. I guess we will. Hey, Jerry, I've got something that it's not, people don't need to know this, but it's just kind of a funny story I heard, and probably not many people have heard it.
00:36:27
Speaker
ah There's a zoo in northern Denmark, And they explained in a Facebook post that if you have healthy animals that you want to give away for various reasons, feel feel free to donate it to them, that they would gently euthanize their the pets and feed it to their animals at the zoo.
00:36:51
Speaker
a So apparently this zoo got in trouble a couple of years ago because people saw them feeding a giraffe to the lions.
00:37:08
Speaker
ah So...
00:37:11
Speaker
A live giraffe? ah No, no, no. Not at the time it was being eaten. so So, yeah. and then and And then I just, last thing about this, I'm i'm like, what do these zoo animals typically eat?
00:37:25
Speaker
like What do lions and tigers typically eat at a zoo? do Y'all have any idea? Had to look it up. i engine I don't know. i mean, I'm sure they throw them some raw meat. probably Probably cow. A lot of... What, Nate?
00:37:40
Speaker
Cats? i don't know. No, a lot of... Mainly beef, but then horse, too. Horse? Okay. about A lot of horse. Because zebras, you know, or lions. Yeah. say yeah yeah I imagine horse... Horse would be a delicacy, I think, in a lion's den.
00:37:56
Speaker
Yep. All right, guys. Well, thank you very much for your contributions. And I hope that all of you listeners out there, all seven or eight of you, have a wonderful weekend. And we'll see you next time on Fatherhood Friday.