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Parenting with Purpose w/ Steven Shapiro & Nancy Shapiro-Rapport
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For as much as schools are a necessary collaboration of communities and families, we haven’t spent much time, if any at all, on this podcast focused on parenting itself. Well that changes today, as I’m joined by Steve Shapiro and Nancy Shapiro-Rapport, siblings, and co-founders of Our Family Culture.
Our Family Culture is a platform dedicated to helping families build strong, intentional cultures rooted in shared values, traditions, and meaningful connections. Through stories, guides, and community support, it empowers families to create lasting legacies centered on purpose and togetherness.
Founder’s Discount: FOUNDER
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Transcript
Introduction of Educators' Experience
00:00:00
Speaker
And this is where we brought our combined almost 80 years of experience as educators to to the system is that, look, there are so many decisions to be made about everything, every single day, all day long. We've curated some really good content for parents to be able to use, not to have to Google, you know, what's a good, what are some good conversation topics for my for my family?
00:00:26
Speaker
i mean, that's great. It's great to be able to do that, but it's just not as intentional and as focused. and so And so our goal is really, it it sounds trite, but it's not.
00:00:37
Speaker
Our goal is to make the world a better place one family at a time.
Podcast Introduction and Conference Announcement
00:00:44
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 170 of our podcast here at Human Restoration Project. My name is Nick Covington. Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that this episode is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Darren Ushanowski, Kimberly Baker, and Corinne Greenblatt.
00:00:59
Speaker
Thank you all so much for your ongoing support. And with the help of teacher-powered schools, learning Inspire Ed, Sokal Moran Partners, Stimpunks, and What School Could Be, the lineup for our fourth annual virtual Conference to Restore Humanity is complete, focused this year on the quest for connection from July 21st through the 23rd.
00:01:19
Speaker
If that sounds interesting to you, tickets for the whole conference start at just 50 bucks, and you can find the full lineup at humanrestorationproject.org slash conference.
00:01:32
Speaker
For as much as schools are a necessary collaboration between communities and families, we haven't spent much time, if any at all, on this podcast focused on parenting itself.
Shapiros' Career and Family Culture Platform
00:01:42
Speaker
Well, that changes today as I'm joined by Steve Shapiro.
00:01:45
Speaker
My name is Steven Shapiro. I've been an educator for 34 years, mostly in high school, and and I've also taught in college. and taught in middle school. I've been a school leader, big focus on experiential learning. A lot of my work has been really around creating powerful and enduring learning experiences for young people.
00:02:00
Speaker
And over the course of my career, I watched the deterioration of young people's mental health and felt really called at the later part of my career to focus more intensively on helping young people grow up healthily and deal with the chronic anxiety, depression, and loneliness that we're seeing across the country and across the world, really.
00:02:20
Speaker
And Nancy Shapiro Rapport. Hi, Nick. It's good to be with you. My name is Nancy Ramport, and I also had a 34-year career as an educator, started as a teacher, English teacher, but moved and spent the majority of my career as a middle school counselor.
00:02:38
Speaker
And so I've been working individually in groups for a long time with students, with adolescents, on managing mental health and ah anxiety and depression, and I too have seen it skyrocket. But i I frankly spent a lot of my time with parents and helping parents through the struggles of knowing how to stay connected with their kids and to have an impact on them as they started growing into those teen years a little more fully.
00:03:10
Speaker
Retired educators, siblings, and co-founders of Our Family Culture. Our Family Culture is a platform dedicated to helping families build strong, intentional cultures rooted in shared values, traditions, and meaningful connections.
00:03:24
Speaker
Through stories, guides, and community support, it empowers families to create lasting legacies centered on purpose and togetherness. I think it's so interesting, both of your backgrounds, if you think about it, I mean, that's nearly 70 years combined between the two of you. It's just an immense amount of experience in schools, particularly vulnerable ages. Nancy, the experience of middle school is a really precarious one as kids make a transition from elementary schools into their adolescence coming into their own, and then the
00:03:56
Speaker
The handoff ah to Steve at the high school level um is really fascinating. Now, you both retired from long careers in schools, but instead of spending that time at the lake or at the pickleball court or anything else like that, you've taken on this new phase of your work life, supporting kids, parents, and families in a whole new way.
00:04:14
Speaker
So how did this family collaboration for families come to be and what led you to create our family culture?
Origin and Philosophy of Our Family Culture
00:04:22
Speaker
That's a great question. Honestly, this is something that Stephen and I have been talking about mostly around Thanksgiving time each year when we're spending lots of time together, really talking about about families and about culture. We're both culture builders.
00:04:37
Speaker
We have been. It's been a ah huge part of what we brought to our experience as educators, that nothing great happens without first establishing a powerful culture with your students.
00:04:49
Speaker
And when we talked about even talking about our own family, talking about what we want for our own children when they have their families, if they choose to have families, we just talked a lot about how the world has gotten so very complex since we raised kids, even. Our kids, my daughter is 31 years old today, and ah my son is 27. And we didn't have to deal with social media. We didn't have to deal with the influencers that are trying to grab everyone's attention. And and we talked a lot about how how can we have an impact once we're retired? What can our work continue to be in our retirement that could be powerful, impactful, and really focus at the heart of it, which is family?
00:05:36
Speaker
I would add to that, that we witnessed during our time as educators, some families that were doing great, some kids that were doing great. And we noticed this pattern that the kids who were doing great disproportionately came from families that had really clear and aligned ideas about what they were about and what they were trying to do in terms of raising their kids. And so we realized that if we wanted to help kids be successful and thrive, we had to help parents be more clear about what their family was about.
00:06:02
Speaker
And so that we've talked about that for years and with the time that we have in our retirement, we're really contributing all of our efforts to trying to help parents raise emotionally healthy kids by being more purposeful and intentional about how they parent.
00:06:15
Speaker
Yeah. We talk all the time in education about how, you know, the issues of school don't just arrive, you know, they're out of the mist or whatever, right? They come in through the schoolhouse door from families and communities around there. So you're talking about going upstream a little bit of solutions that aren't school-based, but that are actually rooted in communities and families and in enriching conversations around ah those values. so One thing that we had talked about, Steve, we had the benefit of being in ah in Canada together over the last week for the Mental Health Summit. One thing that really struck me in your conversation about this was
00:06:51
Speaker
an emphasis on changing behavior over changing just changing values. And I would be curious if you'd be willing to share with listeners your impassioned rationale for that, because I found it very compelling.
00:07:02
Speaker
Absolutely. So our partner in this work is David Freeman. And David has written the book Culture by Design. He's been a culture builder in a business setting for a long time. And one of the things that David has been really great about in terms of clarifying is that people talk a lot about values, but values can be nebulous or unclear. Like we say respect is important, but like what does respect mean? What does respect look like? Different people define respect differently.
00:07:26
Speaker
And that we can have a lot more impact if we clarify specific behaviors that reflect those values. So for example, if you want to raise a resilient kid, instead of saying resilience is important, you have a a behavior that you identify, which we call bounce back.
00:07:44
Speaker
And so you can talk about what does it mean to bounce back? That's what resilience looks like. If you want to raise a kid with integrity, you can have a behavior you call do the right thing. which is a very specific way of describing what that behavior looks like. If you want to raise a kid that perseveres, you have a fundamental called stick with it.
00:08:02
Speaker
And so these fundamentals are really descriptions of behaviors that reflect your values. And if you have language that that specifically speaks to behavior, it's a lot easier to build a culture. I mean, in the end, we talk about culture as reflection of values, but really culture is just the series of behaviors that happen over and over again that reflect demonstrate how those values live in a culture, in a group.
00:08:25
Speaker
I think it's so different from our conversation in schools, which in my experience was usually framed around PBIS, or you know positive behavior interventions and supports, which are these big value-driven things that you decide on as a school, right? We had honorable, accountable, willing, and knowledgeable. So it spelled Hawk because that was our mascot.
00:08:46
Speaker
And you know in all of the rooms, we've had signs like, what does it mean to be a hawk in this place and that place and the other one? and And really sort of what it meant, it was an appeal to behaviors and action and culture, but but not really rooting them in those, right? It was in these big nebulous ideas and kind of um almost assuming that by osmosis... You would come to be these things, or you'd have to read a sign to figure out what it means to be a hawk in the bathroom and in the media center and in the hallway, as opposed to rooting them in these more concrete
App Features and Family Engagement
00:09:18
Speaker
behaviors. And that's one thing that when I was playing around with the Our Family Culture app, which which is wonderful um and that you guys have have built and put together here, as you're selecting those family fundamentals, then you're actively choosing those habits and those behaviors that you're going to engage with
00:09:35
Speaker
as a family that come to define your family culture. So could you speak more to those fundamentals and perhaps the steps that people take to create their family culture?
00:09:46
Speaker
It's funny that you talk about PBIS because when you're in a school and you're trying to support students in living these values, it's very hard because you've got kids coming from all over the place, experiencing different things in their in their home environments,
00:10:04
Speaker
And so we want them to embody these different values that we, ah the honor, the integrity, whatever it is that we've chosen for PBIS. And then teachers get discouraged pretty frequently because there's not like a complete system for figuring out how to teach those behaviors systemically to kids and to have those follow you know to have the follow-through at home as well.
00:10:29
Speaker
And so what we decided is by going upstream, like you said, with families, we have worked together to build a system in conjunction with David Friedman, who whose system that he uses business to business has been so successful.
00:10:46
Speaker
We thought that this system would make a lot of sense in families. And so for families to identify what their fundamentals are, and when I say families, I really mean parents. So our the Our Family Culture app is designed for parents to identify what their fundamentals for their family, what they want them to be.
00:11:07
Speaker
And so we have written and built a library of 44 fundamentals, And Stephen talked a little bit about how they're not values, they're behaviors, but in each behavior are values embedded.
00:11:22
Speaker
And so instead of trying to pick something a little more nebulous, like the value of persistence, We have the behavior, stick with it. And a description of that. So the way that our system works is that when parents sign up for the system, for our family culture, they, first of all, are greeted by by me and Stephen, because for us, building culture and having the our family culture community is incredibly important to us.
00:11:54
Speaker
We want people to know that we're walking the walk right along with you. And then the first step when you download the app is that you get to select the fundamentals that you want for your family.
00:12:06
Speaker
And it's hard. it's a It's a great exercise. We had a lot of people beta test this program for us, and we got very good feedback about things that worked and things that that we have made changes to to make it more family friendly.
00:12:24
Speaker
But what we ultimately found is that when when parents are selecting their fundamentals, and we recommend between 13 20, which sounds like lot, which sounds like a lot we recommend between 13 and 20, they have a really hard time narrowing them down because there are so many that they want to work on.
00:12:42
Speaker
And so we talked through a little bit about what that means and how you identify your family fundamentals. And some people are like, just because I didn't pick it doesn't mean I don't value having an open mind. I just don't have enough room in my list of fundamentals.
00:12:57
Speaker
But we do ask that people pick between 13 and 20, And that goes back to the marathon, not a sprint. Because what happens with the system is that we have, we provide the content for people to practice one fundamental a week as a family.
00:13:16
Speaker
And when I say practice, this is really important. We're not talking about people having to add an extra 30 minutes to their day to do our family culture. Like, you know, how many more 30 minute chunks of time can we add into our day when people, you know,
00:13:32
Speaker
do this for exercise, meditate, you know cook healthy meals, that right all the things that we're asked to do. What we do here is we provide content for people to have conversations and work the fundamentals with their families during times that they're normally spending together.
00:13:48
Speaker
So it could be when you're in the car. It could be when you're putting your kids to bed. It could be when you're having dinner together as a family, if you're doing that. If you're not, it might encourage you to start doing that. So you've got time to be together as a family, because that is the elusive for everybody right now is time.
00:14:06
Speaker
We don't have time. We don't have time. We don't have time. What could be more important than building your family culture and and having your kids really get what it means to be a part of your family? It's an interesting question to ask. And I think if you're if you're a parent yourself listening to this, or even if you're just you know watching your friend's parent, what are the core things that you really are trying to raise in your kids? What are the most important things you're trying to teach your kids?
00:14:32
Speaker
And we asked a lot of parents this question. And one of the unsettling realities is most people have a difficult time answering the question. I mean, there are a couple of easy things. So we want our kids to be kind or honest. But very quickly, it's like, well, um let me think about it. ah Maybe, ah and then the you know you if if you have two parenting partners, write down what what do you think are the eight most important things you want your kid to learn, and then your parenting partner.
00:14:58
Speaker
It's almost certain that you're not going to have the same list. Parents have really not intentionally created this clarity about what they're trying to raise their kids with. And what's obvious to everyone is you're very unlikely to hit a target if you haven't defined the target.
00:15:11
Speaker
So part of the beauty of our family culture is it's helping families say, this is what we're about. These are the 15 things that we really want to focus on. And before you do anything with the system, that in itself is a very powerful thing to clarify with your parenting partner, if you're parenting with a partner, what you're really trying to to do in terms of your your child rearing, what you're trying to really accomplish in terms of the kinds of kids you're trying to raise.
00:15:35
Speaker
Absolutely. and I want to add in there too, you know we talk about parenting partners and it's really important because families come in in all shapes and sizes and we respect that completely. And so ah you know I personally am a so was a single mom.
00:15:51
Speaker
And so I didn't have a parenting partner. i mean, i had I had my kid's father that I would talk to occasionally, but but most of the load was on me. And so I think it's it's important when we talk about parenting partners, this is a system that is ah that anyone can do, whether you're parenting on your own or with others. And parenting partner can mean a lot of things.
00:16:11
Speaker
It could be a grandparent, who you know someone who is your main confidant, so to who you talk about your parenting with. It could be a very close friend. It could be a neighbor. It could be so just anyone who is in the conversation with you about parenting. And I think it's really important to recognize that we talk about parenting partners, but we also recognize that families come in all different forms and and our family culture is for everybody.
00:16:38
Speaker
Yeah, certainly an emphasis just on caregivers being intentional about values. And I think that's what I appreciate so much about this is providing a really safe structure and support for people to not just have to brainstorm again out of the ether, what are my fundamentals, right? Like, good luck coming up with that list. But it was really helpful in my experience with it just to be able to have that big long list. And knowing that I was going to have to pick at least 13 to get in the door really was just like, oh, you know, I did wrestle with, um,
00:17:08
Speaker
Which ones, oh, I really like this one, but this one, and I don't want to like leave this one out. um So for example, like one of the first ones I selected was appreciate differences, you know, and in the language that you both have shared here now that would maybe allow me to talk to my family about like, hey, how can we as Covingtons appreciate differences? And You provided this definition to say like, yeah, people come from different backgrounds, different races, religions, cultures, abilities, lived experiences. How amazing. Engage with and appreciate the special gifts of people's differences. So even if, you know, you had younger kids who said, well, what does it mean to appreciate difference? You know, how can we be more inclusive of all of these things? Or a lot of mine are the appreciation ones, I realize now.
00:17:49
Speaker
But appreciating nature, the world is filled with beauty. Spend time noticing, appreciating, and connecting with the natural world. Listen to nature's teaching. So again, when you ask, what does it mean to be a Shapiro or a Covington, that language is is there.
00:18:04
Speaker
But it goes further than just deciding what your family fundamentals are as not as difficult, right, but as as difficult of a choice as it is to sort of narrow those things down and and really pick and choose.
00:18:16
Speaker
That's not the end because then you have to build that intentional time and you all provide those little micro supports and those nudges to help find that intentional time. Can you give some examples of what those other nudges look like as you go through the week? I know I was prompted for my next Sunday check-in. i think I missed the Wisdom Wednesday because we're recording on a Thursday. Could you both provide examples of what those things look like?
00:18:42
Speaker
These are really simple things. So basically, we're giving you one small thing you can do each day to practice that fundamental during the week. So you're practicing one fundamental per week. So as an example, let's say practice kindness is your fundamental.
00:18:55
Speaker
You know, on Monday, you might get, we might send you a discussion question, something simple. So instead of saying, how was school today? Or what'd you do in school today? You might have a question that says something like, what was the kindest thing you saw someone do today?
00:19:08
Speaker
Or a question like, would you rather do an act of kindness for someone else or have someone else do an act of kindness for you? And these are just little questions to get you talking to your kids about kindness and why it matters.
00:19:20
Speaker
Or we might send you on Tuesday, like a two minute YouTube video of someone doing this beautiful act of kindness that you can watch with your kids. It's just like, oh, here's two minutes. And you might have a conversation with your kids about it, or you might just watch it and just let it let it resonate with your kids.
00:19:35
Speaker
We have some other examples of things that we send that are like scenarios. What would you do in this situation? Would you rather questions? We have ah one of our favorite things we offer is what we call so sort of storytelling or vulnerability questions.
00:19:48
Speaker
And this might be a question where we invite parents to to show some vulnerability in discussing the fundamental with their kids. So an example with kindness might be, Parents, tell your kids a story about a time in your life when you were less kind than you wish you had been.
00:20:02
Speaker
Ask your kids for some advice about what they think you should have done differently. And so this is a really lovely time. too You're talking about practice and kindness by acknowledging ah place where you fell short on that fundamental earlier in your life and engaging your kids in advice giving to you.
00:20:16
Speaker
So over the course of a week, you're going to have a series of short conversations with your kids about practice and kindness. And That will all culminate at the end of the week ah with this reflection. We have a journal feature in our app. If you want to capture some of the great conversations you had, you can record videos, you can record audio, you can just you can record written reflections.
00:20:36
Speaker
And then on Sunday, you'll start the next fundamental and start over again. And if you have 18 fundamentals, you'll do that for 18 weeks. And then on week 19, you're back to practice kindness with all different questions and different content.
00:20:48
Speaker
And you do that for 18 more weeks, and then you're back to practice kindness again. and The end outcome is that when you practice something over and over and over again in very small ways, the slow drip, that's how culture is built.
00:21:00
Speaker
Culture is not built by a big one-night event or a weekend retreat. Culture is built in the slow, small, steady experiences that reflect a clear idea of what you're trying to build. And this is how it works. This is how the system works.
00:21:14
Speaker
And they're repeated over and over and over again. so So it goes back to how can you choose that many fundamentals and practice that many fundamentals? Because it's if you're not seeing it once.
00:21:26
Speaker
You're seeing it over and over and over again. Because our ideally, this is a system that you that you don't use one round through. you use it for hopefully years until this stuff is just so completely embedded into who your family is and how you speak.
00:21:46
Speaker
That when you're out and about going for a walk and you see litter in the street, litter in the street and one of your fundamentals is leave it better than you found it, then nobody says, oh, pick that up, or we should pick that up. Or or if you go to pick something up, say, why are you picking that up? It's not yours.
00:22:04
Speaker
None of that happens because we're leaving it better than we found it. We happened upon some litter and we're going to pick it up because that's one of our family fundamentals. We're going leave places better than we found them. Yeah. And I think that that shorthand, I think the beauty of the behavior description in the fundamentals is that it becomes a shorthand that is automatic to your family.
00:22:22
Speaker
So for example, if you want your kids to to to be resourceful and you may have find a way as one of your fundamentals. So the minute your kid's like, hey, I can't figure out how to do this thing.
00:22:34
Speaker
It's like, find a way. And this is how it translates into schools. If you have kids that are practicing find a way at home, you know that kid where you pass out a paper, it's like, how do you do this? I don't know how to do this. It's like... find a way.
00:22:46
Speaker
Try to figure it out on your own before you start asking me for help. This is what we do. We're resourceful. We don't immediately fall to, I need help. We figure it out. We find a way.
00:22:57
Speaker
And so the beauty of these fundamentals is when kids practice them at home, they show up in school in really positive ways. And some of them are very specific, like include others.
00:23:09
Speaker
Well, if you practice include others at home, When a new kid moves into the school or when there's a kid that feels left out, when kids are choosing groups, there's going to be some kid in your class who's been practicing include others at home who will automatically just go like, oh, I noticed that kid just moved in. We should probably see if she wants eat lunch at our table.
00:23:27
Speaker
And that's because they've been practicing include others. it's it's They have the language in their head and it comes right to them. And so as we think about people practicing fundamentals and and working with our family culture, we imagine cultural shifts in families, not only families, but parenting is a hard thing to discuss with with other parents because sometimes it feels very judgy or a little bit too comparative.
00:23:54
Speaker
And so if you are working with our family culture and your friends also decide to do that as well, think about what your conversations could be like. What fundamental are you guys on this week? Has anything shown up for you that surprised you?
00:24:09
Speaker
You're having these more fulfilling conversations.
Impact on Community and Personal Parenting
00:24:13
Speaker
But ultimately, i think for for Stephen and I, our big hope is that it has the power to change communities.
00:24:20
Speaker
So as school leaders are thinking about how do we engage parents in the work that we're doing? You can't do PBIS in isolation.
00:24:30
Speaker
It doesn't work. You have to be able to to practice it back and forth. And it is not important that families have the same fundamentals. That doesn't matter. Everyone has their own unique combination, will have their own unique combination of fundamentals.
00:24:45
Speaker
It just matters that you're being intentional and you're focused on those. At one point, I heard you mentioned Wisdom Wednesday, and that is part of how we are trying to keep our family culture a community, is that we've decided on Wednesdays no matter what fundamental you're you're on, no matter where you are in your rounds, everyone will receive a two-minute video that is just a little bit of parenting wisdom, ah little gold there for you to think about.
00:25:18
Speaker
Maybe it's something that And our family culture family decided, like, we had this great luck doing this one ritual that was so simple. We want to share it with all of you.
00:25:30
Speaker
So could be something like that. It could be a parenting expert who is giving just a little bit of wisdom on how to approach something specific. So Wisdom Wednesday is is the same for everyone every week. And it's designed for us all to take a breath in the middle of the week and just get some gold.
00:25:52
Speaker
Yeah, I would also just going back to Nancy's point about schools and school leaders. I think if you're a school leader listening to this podcast, one of the things that we have had ah really great experiences doing is where schools have invited us either in in person or through a webinar to just do a short overview of how to build family culture at home.
00:26:10
Speaker
And you know whether parents choose to join the Our Family Culture system or not, it's I think it's very valuable for schools to to give parents tools to help them think about how to do better at home.
00:26:22
Speaker
teachers often complain about how parents need to do this and parents need to do that. But what we have to realize is parents are all doing the best they can with what they have. If you want parents to do better at home, you have to provide them with tools.
00:26:35
Speaker
You have to give them some support in doing that. And so schools have said, why don't you do a webinar with our parents just to talk about how you could be more intentional about your family culture building? Not so much to say you need to join our family culture to do it, even if you want to try to do it on your own.
00:26:49
Speaker
But if you want kids to show up better at school, we have to think about as leaders, how do we help parents provide better support at home so those kids are more likely to show up better for us when they get to the school doors?
00:27:02
Speaker
Yeah, the intersection with school just to me couldn't be more obvious. I mean, none of the fundamentals are in conflict with each other, right? They're all complementary. It's wonderful that families can choose different complementing values and have a focus and make that the focus of a conversation.
00:27:17
Speaker
But also, to both of your points here about school, the intersection there could be, you know, a PTO has a book study. And instead of, a you know, a book study, it's let's just be intentional and come to the table and each one of us can talk about fundamentals or you can do it at home and bring that, you know, to a biweekly sort of get together, you know, just like I've seen my local school district do with, you know, kids and anxiety and parent groups about cell phone use and all these other kinds of issues.
00:27:44
Speaker
This just allows, again, a more intentional conversation to be had about those fundamentals and then kids and parents Parents, guess kids are bringing that language into school with them.
00:27:56
Speaker
Hey, the next step might be to work on that with teachers a little bit, right What does it mean to, looking at my values here, what does it mean to wonder, wonder, wonder, or to stick with it or roll with it or to make a difference?
00:28:11
Speaker
Then you're equipping everybody right with this common community-based language about, again, habits and behaviors. We don't have to say values. Our habits and behaviors will speak to values and culture that we create. And I have a question, Nancy, for you in particular, because...
00:28:27
Speaker
Almost four decades as a school counselor. I wonder how would this have changed the conversations, you know, that that you had. i imagine my relationship with counselors um when I was in the classroom and sort of the role they had. How would if something like this have changed those conversations for you when you were working as a school counselor?
00:28:47
Speaker
Oh, I think it would have changed changed things tremendously just to be to be able to have the language with a parent and say, tell me a little bit about what what fundamentals you're practicing at home. Tell me tell me what ah is most important to your family.
00:29:02
Speaker
And then you can take whatever issue surfaces for the parent and talk through it. as it relates to their different fundamentals and trying to attach it. And frankly, we are we're spoiled as as educators in that we have learned how to build culture. we don't We don't have a choice. You have a group of kids come in each year.
00:29:22
Speaker
You've got to build culture so that you that determines in the beginning of the year what your school year is going to be like. And so that is natural for people who are educators. Parents don't have that same kind of training.
00:29:36
Speaker
And so Just the gift of giving parents the language to be able to talk with their kids such that when they would would come in, my guess is they might not come in as much, to be perfectly honest, because they know how to work through some of the things with their kids at home.
00:29:56
Speaker
Whatever the case was, it's like if we had the fundamental language to speak to speak with, then we could talk about, well, what's important to you? Do you want do you want that fixed for your child or or do you want...
00:30:09
Speaker
Do you want your kids to to bounce back or to or to keep their cool when something happens? Do you want to teach them how to keep their cool? Because there are mean people. There are people who say things that aren't kind. And so how do we respond to that in the world when that happens?
00:30:26
Speaker
How do we not be reactionary? How do we figure out how to keep our cool when things don't feel great? Yeah, common language leads to common conversations. So I see that as that is the way forward.
00:30:39
Speaker
And Steve, I'm just curious as well, again, from the experience of as a classroom teacher, how would you have seen this differently had parents had access to this? There are things that teachers complain about that they wish their students were better at. Like teachers get frustrated when a kid doesn't try to use their resources and just immediately starts asking for for help.
00:31:00
Speaker
It's like, you know, let's figure it out as opposed to just ask immediately or practice self-reliance is another fundamental. It's like, I can do this on my own. I can figure it out.
00:31:10
Speaker
We have um ah fundamentals that have to do with collaboration. So ah do your part. So if you want to be the kind of person who, you know, you want to have kids who are like, if you're in a group, that's one of the great complaints about groups. it's like, oh, people don't do their part. So there's all these fundamentals that will actually show up in terms of how kids interact in the classroom in really positive ways.
00:31:31
Speaker
I think also as a, if you're a teacher who's also raising kids, I think something very clear will happen if you do this with your family. If you use our family culture with your family, what you'll realize is, oh, I see how this system works.
00:31:44
Speaker
And you will start to apply the same system, the same process to your classroom. So I think actually this will be ah the the teachers who choose to use our family culture as a family tool will end up finding it to be very useful as a classroom tool as well, to be more intentional about the culture they build in their classroom and a process for making that culture live.
00:32:07
Speaker
I so agree. They're just such natural collaborators. It's a good tool for that. I'm curious then, too, just from your own personal perspectives, then how has our family culture helped you be more intentional parents of adult kids now? a little bit of a different angle there. And what stories have you heard from other families about how this process has helped them?
00:32:27
Speaker
Well, Steven has been using this with his family. He's he's got the gift of three adult kids who are who are all very healthy and in good places. For me personally, i have a son who had who is autistic.
00:32:42
Speaker
And so it's a little bit harder for me. However, we still talk in fundamentals. we we still ah My daughter and son and I went through and looked at fundamentals together and talked about them.
00:32:56
Speaker
And it's not as easy, I'll admit, for me to do with my adult children as it has been for Stephen. But it's still something that's important to me because this is this is my work now. This is what I'm living.
00:33:10
Speaker
And so my family in particular has worked very hard in the past year just to bounce back. We're we're we working the bounce back fundamental pretty hard and sticking together, being being ah taking care of each other and and being a family?
00:33:28
Speaker
Yeah, I would say two things that we observed. One is a lot of parents who started using this immediately reported to us that they're having better conversations with their parenting partner. So like people are saying, I, first of all, have more clarity about what my partner and I share or differ in terms of what's important to us. And this is so, so important because sometimes we have slightly different fundamentals that we approach parenting with. So I'll give you an example.
00:33:56
Speaker
I really believe in fight for what's right. I'm a big social justice guy. So I want to raise my kids with fight for what's right. My wife is really a big show respect person. Okay. So let's say our kid goes to school and the teacher does something that they think is not fair. And our kid challenges the teacher.
00:34:13
Speaker
And then we hear the story and I'm like, ah good for you. Like, that was awesome. You fought for what's right. And my wife's like, bad for you. You didn't show me. Right. So what now happens is instead of my wife and I fighting it out, we can both recognize she can say, Stephen, I understand. Like, that's cool that we want our kids to fight for what's right. And I can say, Susan, I get it.
00:34:33
Speaker
We want them to show respect, too. And now we can say we're having a conversation about how we can tell our kid that's cool that you fought for what's right. But let's talk about how you could do it while showing respect at the same time.
00:34:44
Speaker
How could you do that in a respectful way? So instead of parents fighting out their fundamentals, they can actually have language to talk about them in a healthy way. and So we've seen actually real improvement in couples' relationships with each other because they have new way to talk about the things that that they're doing with their children.
00:35:00
Speaker
So I think that's one really important, one really important outcome. I think another really important outcome is that we hear from families that they're having better conversations with their kids. So, you know, there's that awkward thing where like p everyone's on their phone and you see people at family at a restaurant and everyone's on their phone. They're not talking to each other.
00:35:18
Speaker
What we're finding is that families that are using our family culture are just able to have better conversations with each other because they have more purposeful and directional conversations. I spent my entire career like leading great discussions with kids. That's all I did. I was a really discussion-based teacher.
00:35:32
Speaker
So now instead of you having to figure out how to have a great discussion with your kids, I'm feeding you. Nancy's feeding you the questions you can ask. We're feeding you the stuff. It's like we're giving you the expert support to like... have a great conversation with your kids in a way that you might not have known how to do it on your own.
00:35:48
Speaker
So it's a lot of improvement in connectedness and families feeling like we talk to each other, we talk about more interesting things, we talk about more important things. We're more connected to each other. One of the great challenges right now is the challenge of loneliness. A lot of kids feel alone and lonely. A lot of adults do too.
00:36:05
Speaker
And part of the promise of our family culture is you will be closer with your family as a tribe. So no matter how lonely you feel in the world, you always know, like, I've got the Shapiros. I'm a part of the Covington tribe. I'm a part of the Rapport tribe. We have each other.
00:36:19
Speaker
And we're never totally alone in the world because we are a team together. Another piece of feedback we've gotten from from people who've used the system is that they are learning things in Stephen mentioned the vulnerability questions that we have where where we ask parents to tell a story about a time when they, the example he used is maybe weren't as kind as they as they would have liked to have been.
00:36:43
Speaker
And so what we're hearing from families is that they're learning things about their partner. They're hearing stories that their partner is telling that they never would have heard. But we're sort of getting into those in a way that that makes family members hear things and learn about each other in ways that they never would.
00:37:01
Speaker
couple things have bubbled up for me as you both been been talking, coming back to this idea of the conversations that exist over those fundamentals. It's not even so much that they're conflicting, but we have to then find the intersection of all of those things, right? Like how do each of these values then coexist? Or is there you know any tension between say fighting for what's right or showing respect? When can fighting for what's right actually be a sign of respect or a self-respect or how do we do some of those things together?
00:37:30
Speaker
coming back to something Nancy, you had said earlier, right, about the app as a ah sort of as part of the process, right, as the delivery vehicle for the process. I even think that might sell itself short a little bit, right, if we think about um how apps almost become habits. You know, I have a muscle memory with my fingers about where all of the apps on my home screen are.
00:37:52
Speaker
If it's on the wrong page or something, i'll I'll hit the wrong one and end up opening something I haven't opened in you know, a year. But I think you know the success of a lot of tools that people use every single day that might be more gamified and things like Duolingo and all these other kinds of things, again, they're just there to help create habits about language learning or about social media use. A big way to break that habit might be just ah move that app.
00:38:19
Speaker
So you have to be intentional about finding it in your thing. And in that moment, you can, oh, I didn't want to be on Facebook right now. Okay. You could, you know, conceivably replace that that Facebook icon with the ah Our Family Culture acorn.
00:38:32
Speaker
And that could be a new way to help prompt um you know, some muscle memory around those conversations. So I think don't sell that short of, you know, having that the convenience um for the apps that I think maybe a lot of people believe are harmful um and replacing that with a positive habit instead.
App Design and Listener Call to Action
00:38:50
Speaker
um i think there's a lot of value, you know, in that. I think there's a lot of value in making the good things as easy and convenient as, you know, the time consumers, the attention stealing things to have a moment to be intentional with your family.
00:39:04
Speaker
No, you're absolutely right. We we lean a lot on on James Clear's atomic habits and and recognizing the power of those small habits that you do. If you do them a little bit each day, that just becomes part of your routine. And we're hoping that our family culture will become an atomic habit.
00:39:24
Speaker
for many people. The other thing I think is sometimes people think it's ironic that we're delivering this content via the cell phone, which is part of the problem. But the beauty of our app is that the idea of the app is that not that we want you to stay on it for a long time. I mean, the idea of Facebook is they're they're gamifying it to try to keep you there all the time because they're selling advertisements there.
00:39:43
Speaker
We're doing the exact opposite. We want you to get on the app, see the question, and then put down your phone and go talk to your kids. So really, ideally, it's the kind of app that you might literally spend 30 seconds or a minute on each day just to get the the nugget and then go have the conversation with your family or do the activity with your family or watch the video with your family. So this is the opposite of most apps, which are the longer you stay on it, the more successful they are. we For us, it's the less time you spend on it. Get on it, get the thing, and then sit down with your family and have a great conversation.
00:40:14
Speaker
And this is where we brought our combined almost 80 years of experience as educators to to the system is that, look, there are so many decisions to be made about everything, every single day, all day long. We've curated some really good content.
00:40:32
Speaker
for parents to be able to use, not to have to Google, you know, what's a good, what are some good conversation topics for my, for my family? i mean, that's great. It's great to be able to do that, but it's just not as intentional and as focused. And so, and so our goal is really, it it sounds trite, but it's not.
00:40:52
Speaker
Our goal is to make the world a better place one family at a time. A couple of other things I want to mention about about the system is that really, obviously, the best time to teach your kids these things are when they're young and you just practice it over and over and over again so that because it's harder to to teach new things, especially in the in the teen years.
00:41:12
Speaker
But we are really appealing to all ages and For kids that are very young, we have children's books that are aligned with every single fundamental.
00:41:23
Speaker
And so if what you do for the first couple rounds is you're reading various children's books that that go along with the fundamental with your kids, then they're getting it.
00:41:35
Speaker
They're hearing it. They're hearing the way parents are talking with one another. We say ah in our introduction, when you start with the app, it's like, parents, the one warning we want to give you,
00:41:47
Speaker
is that make sure that the fundamentals you pick, you're prepared to live. Because if you don't, your kids are going to call you out on it. And that's a beautiful thing. We want to be able to hold one another accountable for the things that are important to us.
00:42:04
Speaker
We've been talking about all of these wonderful ah ways that parents, families, kids, schools can connect to their fundamentals. How can people connect with both of you and learn more about our family culture?
00:42:17
Speaker
One of the important things is people think, I don't know how this is going to work or if it's going to work. We're offering a free 30-day trial for anyone who wants. So if you're like, I don't know if this is the right thing for me, jump on and just try 30 days for free.
00:42:29
Speaker
It'll give you time to choose your fundamentals and run through a few weeks of it. and see if it's right for you. So there's no risk to do that. The other thing is, depending upon when you're listening to this podcast, we are offering, because because we're a new company, we're offering a founder's discount to make it really affordable.
00:42:45
Speaker
So like less than 10 bucks a month if you use the code founder. So when you go to the app and you register, when you go to the, there's a coupon code section, put the word founder in there and it will discount the price for you.
00:42:58
Speaker
So you can go to our website, which is ourfamilyculture.org. And so that would be one thing we'd encourage you to reach out to do that if you want to talk with us. And that could be to learn more about our family culture or to talk about how we can help support your school. If you think that that's an important thing we can do to help ah work with parents in your school or with your PTO or with ah groups or organizations in your community.
00:43:19
Speaker
ah We think that that's one of the really important opportunities is for schools to help support parents. And we would love to be able to to be resources for your parents in your community.
00:43:31
Speaker
Feel free to reach out to us directly. Our emails are nancy ourfamilyculture.org or steven, S-T-E-V-E-N at ourfamilyculture.org. We love to hear from people and we will respond to you.
00:43:45
Speaker
Thank you both so much for joining me today. Nick, thank you so much. This was great. It's a pleasure, Nick. Thanks for having us.
00:43:55
Speaker
Thank you again and for listening to our podcast at Human Restoration Project. I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to start making change. If you enjoyed listening, please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast player. Plus, find a whole host of free resources, writings, and other podcasts all for free on our website, humanrestorationproject.org.
00:44:13
Speaker
Thank you.