012: Dealing With Outside Influences and Preserving Your Child’s Values

Download: MP3 (61.9 MB)

Try as we might to prevent it, our children will be exposed to values that differ from our own. Sometimes they differ slightly and sometimes they are completely opposed. Sometimes the exposure comes from media and culture, and sometimes it’s as close as an aunt, uncle, or grandparent. How do we protect and preserve our child’s values when it’s impossible and unhealthy to shield them from the world? How do we balance our concern with what is truly best for them?

In this episode, Ben and Rachel talk about the different kinds of influences that come into our children’s worlds, how to manage our own feelings about this, and how to help our child develop and maintain a healthy set of values, even when faced with the differing values of others.

Highlights, Takeaways, Quick Wins

• The practice of your values will speak volumes louder than anything you say to your children.
• Slowly allow outside influences into your child’s world so they can begin to wrestle with conflicting values.
• Ask your children what they think about different values.
• Help your children build resilience.
• If we’re overprotective of our own values, our children feel squeezed.
• You want your children to own their own set of values.
• Nothing will make your kids internalize a value more than working through it on their own.
• Experiencing another global culture widens a child’s worldview, which gives their personal values more context.
• You want your children to understand and protect other people’s right to choose their own values.
• The relationship is always more important than the issue—a healthy relationship is one where there’s open communication and acceptance.

Shownotes:

• 04:35 Ben: This topic came directly from some feedback we got from the newsletter. At the end of the newsletter, I have a quick note saying, “If there’s anything you want to hear us talk about, please send me a message.” I love hearing from listeners so feel free to reply to one of those newsletters. We got a great question from one of the subscribers: “My husband and I are planning on starting a family in the near future. It’s exciting to think about, but I find myself worrying about a potentially difficult situation with our extended families. We very much love our families and we want them to be a big part of our children’s lives. However, we are also painfully aware that our parents, as well as other family members, adhere to family values that are drastically different from the values we have chosen to embrace.
• 05:45 In fact, many of their values are in direct contradiction to the values we hope to instill in our children. I would simply have a conversation with these family members and explain to them how we hope to raise our children, hoping that they will respect our wishes. However, some of these family members are completely unreceptive to these types of conversations, to the point that we actively avoid discussing our values with them. I openly admit that this is an unhealthy relationship. Do you and Rachel have any advice on how to approach this situation? Do we go on the offensive by approaching these family members even though it won’t be taken well, or do we go on the defensive by focusing on the kids and their thoughts. Or is it a mix?”

Outside Influences & Values

• 06:40 I am going to expand this topic to talk about values in general and outside influences.
• 06:49 Rachel: There are lots of outside influences once your kids go to school and other places. The family stuff is probably the most tender, and you have to be the most cautious about those types of things.
• 07:13 Ben: When I think about the different types of influences, family is the most difficult to deal with. There’s no recourse for ignoring the values you see in culture or media, so those are easier to deal with, but there can be relational ramifications when you’re dealing with family and family-related values.
• 07:53 It is very important, even before you have children, to define your personal values. We’re going to talk later about defining your own values and being the one who is in charge of what you believe instead of subscribing to someone else’s imposed values. We’ve talked about the steps you can take to define and practice your own family values, but in order for your kids to learn them, the most powerful thing you can do is to demonstrate those values daily (Related: e001 How to Get Your Family Out of Survival Mode).

The practice of your values will speak volumes louder than anything you say to your children.

• 09:21 Rachel: Actions are very important for teaching our children how to internalize those values. If you tell someone what your values are and how they should have these values, but they don’t see you living those things out, what kind of message is that sending to them?
• 09:45 Ben: When I look at our children and I see their behaviors not lining up with values we’ve told them are important to us, I can almost always tie that back to an inconsistency in the way I practice those things.
• 10:01 Rachel: It’s really important to be honest about those things, too, because the values aren’t in place to give us an impossible standard of perfection. They’re in place because we’re constantly growing into those values. They mean different things to us over the years.

Foster Personal Values in Your Children

• 10:25 Ben: Defining, demonstrating, and practicing those values is what’s going to help your child build a framework for their personal values. You have personal values because you believe these things are important, that life is better when you live out your values. Not only is life better, but it also protects against danger or harm. It’s very important for our children to have a set of values, even if it isn’t completely their own. When they’re very young, they can’t make those decisions for themselves.
• 11:15 At some point, which is different for every child, they have the ability to think more critically about those values, where they come from, and why they’re important. The values aren’t just important anymore because their parents say they’re important. You might recognize your child starting to come into this ability to think more critically because they’re asking more questions or they’re being a little bit more rebellious. That’s a good thing, because once they have a deeper understanding of those things, they begin the journey of developing their own set of values.
• 12:13 There is this tendency as parents to want to put a protective bubble around our kids. The influences that are the easiest for me to want to protect my kids against are things like media and pop culture. When I see or hear certain things, I think, “That’s easy; that’s not in line with our values, so they’re not allowed to listen to this. They’re not allowed to watch that. We’re not allowed to go there.” There is some value to creating those boundaries, but at some point it is also good to burst that bubble. That’s not to say you should expose them to things in direct contradiction of your values.

Slowly allow outside influences into your child’s world so they can begin to wrestle with conflicting values.

• 13:26 Rachel: Establishing values isn’t so much for the purpose of my children taking on those values so much as it is for the purpose of teaching them about those values. It’s teaching them what honor, love, and forgiveness look like in the way that we act. I try to use a lot of different opportunities to do that. If we’ve just watched a movie and something happened in there that wasn’t very honoring, such as kids making fun of each other, I’ll turn it around for them and ask if they think the kids in the movie were honoring each other. I try to help them develop the language for that so they know what it looks like and they can decide for themselves: do I want to be an honorable person, or do I want to be the person who makes fun of other kids? Kids are a lot smarter than we give them credit for, and they know what will make them feel the best. It’s not making fun of other kids.
• 14:41 Ben: Sometimes what we see in the world, particularly values we disagree with, is a result of not having been exposed to anything different. Some people were so consistently exposed to a single set of values that they never considered another way of living. I really like this distinction: it isn’t about giving our children certain values so they can experience the joy we have because of these values, but you get fulfillment from those values because they’re values you’ve chosen for yourself.
• 15:28 I don’t want my child to become an adult saying, “One of my values is this, but I don’t really know why.” I want them to be fully aware of the reason why they chose that as a value. Chances are, if you’re demonstrating your values consistently and practicing them, your child is going to grow up with a set of values that’s very similar to yours, but you want it to be theirs. You want your children to own their own set of values.
• 16:04 That’s thinking long term. I wanted to have that as an idea we hold in our minds, because having the end goal in mind of our children understanding different types of values and choosing for themselves what their values are going to be is going to help us have the right approach.

How to Handle Family Members That Don’t Respect Your Values

The relationship is always more important than the issue.

A healthy relationship is one where there’s open communication and acceptance.

• 16:46 It doesn’t always go both ways, but if you’re doing your part to maintain a healthy relationship, that will support your set of values in the eyes of your child. For example, to answer the original question, it’s a mix of both going on the offensive and going defensive. The offensive looks like opening up lines of communication, saying, “I know we disagree about this, but I want to describe my values to you so you understand me.”
• 17:46 It takes courage to do that, because if there’s a possibility that you’ll be met with disgust or hurtful words, you might want to avoid that conversation. It’s better to have it and be open, because that action is in support of a healthy relationship. Approach the conversation from the angle of wanting a healthy relationship, even if you won’t agree. If you can understand each other, accept each other, and still have open communication even when you don’t agree, you’re going to have a healthy relationship.
• 18:43 Rachel: When we first started doing our family values, for a long time we had been building our home around creativity instead of television and gadgets. I worried a lot about what would happen when our kids went to the family’s house and how we would maintain that value of pursuing creativity instead of sitting in front of a screen. I finally had to let that go, because they’re not always in that situation. They’re not always at a grandparent’s house where they can watch a movie. They can see the benefit of what they come up with to do at our house even though screens are super addictive, because they can see the difference between those environments.
• 19:59 Ben: Maybe you’re a family that values minimal screen time in favor of creativity. Maybe your child goes to their grandparent’s house and they come back and feel frustrated and bitter that they don’t get the same freedom with screens at home as they do at their grandparents. At a young age, it’s difficult for them to understand that value. If you want to go beyond enforcing that value for your children when they come back from being exposed to something outside of your value system, whether it’s for screens or some other issue, start a conversation.

Ask your children what they think about different values.

• 21:15 Rachel: Sometimes when our oldest, Jadon, says something about us not letting him watch as much TV as his friends or a certain TV show, I’ll take him over to a box in our closet with all the books he’s written and tell him, “Do you see all this stuff you’ve created? Do you think you would do that sitting in front of a TV?” He gets this look on his face that says, “I really don’t want you to be right.”
• 22:02 Ben: When our children get older, I might want to test out giving them the freedom to express a value that’s different from what we’ve been trying to instill in them. I might say, “Okay, watch as much TV as you want.” I don’t just want them to hear me talk about the difference, but I want them to experience the difference. I want them to experience the effect that has on their creative output, because unless they can make a personal decision about why that value is important to them, they’re going to have trouble living it out consistently in the future.
• 22:58 I don’t want to be super strict about TV rules all through their childhood for them to become adults who felt so squeezed as kids that they go the opposite way. Sometimes, we go on these peals as adults where we don’t necessarily agree with a set of values or behaviors, but we do it almost out of rebellion against the pressure we felt as children or young adults to subscribe to a set of values we didn’t choose for ourselves. I want to be really careful with that.
• 23:57 I like the approach of not trying to guide this conversation with your child in a particular direction, but just asking them questions: “What do you think about that?” Let them describe their thoughts and feelings. Brandon asked, “How much of owning those values can you expect at younger ages, like ages four to seven?” Young children aren’t going to be able to have complicated conversations—everything is kind of black and white for them. At various ages, there are various levels of comprehension.
• 24:42 You may be able to ask a four year old questions and get basic answers, but they can still begin to form their own thoughts about things. At seven, it’s a little bit more complex; they have some life experience they can run through that filter. The practice of having open communication and asking questions instead of sitting down and having a talking-to. When you give a lecture, you’ve lost kids’ attention. When you ask questions regularly, you show kids what it looks like to be engaged. They get used to that and start to welcome that into their lives. That’s what you want.
• 25:43 Furthermore, don’t make the family thing about the other people or the issue you disagree with. Ask them your questions, let them talk about it a little bit, and then go on to describe why you have your value that’s in conflict with theirs. Show them what it looks like to own your value. Tell them why and then demonstrate that.

Local Culture & Media

• 26:37 Because of our value around screens, our children are not as often exposed to commercials and advertisements, but unless you live in a bubble, it’s unavoidable no matter where you go. There are billboards, magazines sitting out in waiting rooms, the radio, television, and YouTube commercials. The culture and values expressed through media are not in line with what we think and believe. It is really important to protect your children against things that will be harmful to them, but it’s a fading out and fading in thing. They’re not always going to live in a world where they’re protected against values other than their own.

Help your children build resilience, so the things they see in culture have to run through a filter before they have any influence on how they think and feel.

• 28:26 Rachel: Before the 1980s, it was illegal for advertisers to market toward children. Now, children are the biggest marketing audience for advertisers.
• 28:48 Ben: In a lot of families, if you control the kids, you control the parents’ wallets. It’s a scary thing. I’m targeting advertising and marketing because it’s not just people sitting in a room thinking about what would be the most compelling thing for kids, but they’re doing scientific studies on how to get past peoples’ filters and influence their behaviors. I don’t want that for myself or my children; it influences the way they behave without allowing them to wrestle with it first. In the beginning, I do want to shelter them against those things, but as they are exposed and as I poke holes in that bubble, I want to be proactive with my children about those things as they experience them.
• 30:09 Rachel: When I think about this, I think about toys. Recently, the kids were away and Ben and I went through our play room and weeded out a bunch of the toys that were unnecessary. We know from scientifically proven fact that when kids are exposed to a lot of stimulation, like a lot of different toys, they lose the ability to make good choices. They’re so stimulated that they don’t know how to choose. Simplicity is one of our values.
• 30:58 Ben: Because of where they are in their development, they don’t have the ability adults do to tune out that noise. You think about driving down the highway, listening to the radio, there are billboards outside, and maybe someone was a screen on in the car. As an adult, you’ve learned to shut that stuff out and only take in the important pieces of information. Our children are capable of doing that, but they’re not as good at it. They don’t have the same ability to filter that stuff, to know what to block out and not pay attention to. It can get overwhelming.
• 31:41 Rachel: At the same time, children don’t recognize that. They see us getting rid of some of their toys and they think, “My parents are getting rid of my toys! I love these toys and I play with them all!” even if they haven’t played with some in a couple of years. Sometimes, it gets pretty dicey, because you can’t engage that conversation because they don’t understand the complexity of what happens psychologically when you have too much stuff. We know what happens, so we are able to reduce, but every time they go to the store they want a new toy. It doesn’t matter how many times we’ve told them no or how many times we’ve said that they can get something with their money if they give something else away; they only think about wanting something new.
• 32:52 Ben: There’s a big drive for that in culture. Instead of talking about it directly, trying to have that complex conversation with your children, look at your own life. Are there things you do or say that are consistent with the value of “things”? In it’s simplest form, when we value things, having things taken away makes us upset. I like to say that I don’t value things, but if something happens to my computer, my favorite coffee mug, or someone stains my shirt, how do I respond in front of my children?

What are my behaviors as a parent telling my children that are different from what I’m saying they should value?

• 34:45 Ben: That’s the first place we should look. Instead of trying to point fingers at other things, we should see if there is anywhere in our own lives or behavior where our children are picking this value up.
• 35:00 Rachel: That’s another cultural force that comes in that we have to battle against. They’re exposed to all these things at school, so they come home and they want to watch these shows, buy this toy, or ask why they can’t have a phone.
• 35:29 Ben: Another area of local culture is our children’s peers, the people they interact with at school, and the people they look up to and admire. Charla asks, “When you know your kids are playing with kids who have different values, how much do you prep them? For example, they don’t believe the same things about something as we do, so you need to be respectful and not expect to agree with them, and discuss it afterwards, and how often do you let them come to you with it?”
• 36:07 Rachel: We’ve just gotten into the whole playdate thing, where the parent is not there. We aren’t there with our child, but the other parent is there. After the first playdate, they came home and were talking about this movie they watched and how they baked cupcakes, which is totally different from how we run our home. We didn’t think about talking about what kind of values their friends have.
• 37:23 Ben: They were having a sugary treat, whereas at our house, they might have a fruit salad. I don’t feel it necessary to bring that up and have a conversation with my children about something like that, unlike something that really comes into conflict, like watching a movie with a lot of violence. It is good for our kids to be exposed to values that are different from those of their family. It’s like the multi-media thing: in the beginning, you want to create a foundation for understanding values so you have the ability to explain your own values and why they’re important for you, but you also want to fade out from instilling your own values and fade into allowing other influences to come into your child’s world.
• 39:01 It’s hard, because you want to protect them from things you think will be harmful for them, but they also live at home, and while they live under your roof, they’re going to be subject to your personal values because you’re the one who’s in charge of them at that point.
• 39:23 Rachel: They’re also most exposed to the people living out those values, which is very valuable to them.
• 39:29 Ben: You have that to your advantage. Don’t think about it in terms of protecting your values in your children. Rather, when they’re exposed to the values of other people, it gives them an opportunity to see something different and it creates contrast. Sometimes, if we’re overprotective of our own values, our children feel squeezed. Because they’ve had that contrast, they run to something else they’ve been exposed to. They say, “I don’t want to be squeezed, I want to choose my own thing.” They choose something for themselves that may even be potentially harmful.
• 40:17 I don’t say that to scare you, but to say that I experienced that myself; I did the same thing. I’ve seen other people do it. One of the ways we can avoid that is by allowing those external influences and opening up a conversation, just like we did with the multi-media. Say, “What do you think about that?”
• 40:41 Rachel: There are some lines that need to be drawn. Know the parents. One time, my mom called and asked if we were comfortable letting the eight year old watch Percy Jackson, and we talked about it and felt like it was a little bit too scary right now. He could watch it eventually, but there still need to be some lines drawn in the interest of protection.
• 41:12 Ben: You know your child better than anybody else does, so you should be able to make those determinations and know how much external influence to let in. Do the things you must to protect them against potential physical harm. I assume you feel comfortable with these other people your children are spending time with, whether it’s peers or family. You know they’re not going to be in physical danger, but they may be exposed to a set of values that is different from yours. In that case, instead of trying to protect your own set of values and talk to them from that angle, ask your kids questions and give them room to think for themselves about that experience.
• 42:11 Rachel: Any opportunity we can give our kids to critically think about the values they’re living out and what they’re exposed to is really beneficial.

Nothing will make your kids internalize a value more than working through it on their own.

• 42:32 Ben: I’m in favor of increasing outside influence over time so they can be exposed to those things. Not things that are going to harm them, but things that will allow them to create their own contrast and come to their own conclusions about why a value is important to them.

Global Culture

• 43:04 There’s a great deal of value to exposing your kids to global culture. Within your local area, there’s an overarching national culture, pockets of subculture, and a wide variety of individual beliefs. Allow your child to be exposed to other worlds. If you live in suburban America, allow your child to experience what life is like for someone who lives in a culture that doesn’t have a strong economy or a solid “governmental system.”

Experiencing another global culture widens a child’s worldview, and that gives their personal values more context and more power.

• 44:19 There are a couple ways you can allow your children to have those experiences, like letting them go on mission trips or taking trips with them to other countries. Even in your own area, there might be cultures so different from yours that it allows your child to experience something completely different. That contrast and giving them room to think through those things for themselves is really valuable in helping them solidify their own beliefs.
• 45:05 Let your child’s values belong to them. Set the foundation for them in the beginning and help them understand the importance of defining and setting their own values, but give them the room they need to determine those things for themselves so that when they become adults, they can live out their values with the confidence they need and they can accept who they are. If you’re a parent of an older child, maybe one that’s trying to graduate and go off to college, don’t make the issue more important than the relationship.

Fostering Graciousness in Kids With Strong Values

• 46:16 Charla asked, “If you know your kids are very strong in their beliefs, how do you encourage them to be gentle about it and not to push it on others? Two of my kids are very vigilant about how healthy they eat, to the point that I worry they might make others feel guilty or that their parents would be afraid to feed them. I don’t want them to be arrogant or rude.”
• 46:46 Rachel: When our second son was five years old, he went to my mom’s house for the weekend. She pulled out boxed cereal, and we don’t eat processed food. She was about to pour him a bowl, and he said, “I don’t eat anything that was made in a factory.” She was shocked. We hadn’t had this conversation yet, because we thought it was only for the weekend and it wasn’t a big deal. She and I had to have the conversation about what that means, and since then, they’ve chosen to eat in a healthier way. It’s a hard line, trying to not have your kids be so vocal about it.
• 47:46 Ben: You definitely don’t want them to be rude, but it’s encouraging that they hold so strongly to something that they would be willing to say something and not feel self conscious about that. I would allow myself to feel happy about that for a moment, and they I would reinforce the idea that your child’s values belong to them. They have ownership of their values, so remind them that other people have ownership of their values.

In the same way you protect your children against people imposing their values, you want your children to understand and protect other peoples’ rights to choose their own values.

• 48:40 It’s a fine line; your value is a value because you believe it’s important, it brings you joy, and you want other people to experience the same joy you do. When you eat healthy, your body feels good, you feel more energy, and you can do more things, so you want other people to have that experience. Anyone in the health profession can tell you that unless the other person chooses for themselves that being healthy is a value to them, they’re not going to change what they do.
• 49:33 Rachel: It’s very hard for me to not be vigilant about telling other people about healthy eating because I know what a difference it has made in our lives. I want my parents and my family to live longer. I know what eating the right foods can do for you, so it’s hard for me not to impose that on the people in my life that I love.
• 50:01 Ben: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with sharing those things out of love, but it has to be in the context of a relationship. Encourage your children to understand that the relationship they build with a person is the foundation for any values they might try to impart. If there’s not a strong connection there, it’s going to come across as rude and arrogant. When there’s a strong relationship, it’s going to come across as loving, even if the other person doesn’t agree.

Teaching Courage to Stand Up For Values

• 51:01 Brandon asks, “How do you give your child the confidence to live out their values in the face of peers who may not share them—saying no to certain kinds of play or ways of addressing each other on play dates or on the peer’s home turf?” Essentially, how do you give your child the courage to stand up for your values?
• 51:34 This is a tough one. I’m not sure that we’ve had an experience where our child has come up to us and said, “My friends wanted to do this but I didn’t want to.” I don’t know how often our children experience that but don’t talk to us about it. Having that open communication is really important. You’re not going to be able to avoid your child being in that situation. You can’t anticipate every situation—before they go to school, you can’t sit down with them and say, “Somebody may tell you to do something that doesn’t align with your values.”
• 52:30 You’ve got to trust them to see that for themselves and experience that discomfort, and then have those lines of communication open so you can have a conversation about it. It’s not exactly the same, but when I can tell that Jadon’s had a bad day, I’ll probe a little bit and say, “You seem a little upset, can you tell me what’s wrong?” Just that question is enough for him to open up a little bit more, and then I get to ask more questions. I let him tell the story of what happened, how he responded to the situation, and then I get to come alongside him and teach him.

Being a good listener and having lines of communication open with your children is important.

• 53:29 Something I didn’t experience a whole lot as a kid but I think is really powerful is to give your children verbal permission to say no. If someone is pulling your arm toward something, it’s okay to shove their arm off of you. I could have benefitted as a child from having permission from an authority in my life to assert my own beliefs. As parents, sometimes we assume our children know they have that permission. Don’t assume; go ahead and articulate that for them. Give them permission when they come to you with those kinds of scenarios.
• 54:20 Rachel: It might also be good to open the conversation about when that’s a good idea and when it’s not. I know our eight year old has tried to do that to teachers when they have said something that doesn’t really correspond with our values, which can be a little awkward. I’m okay with that too, but the school is not. They might end up sitting by themselves at the lunch table, which is what happened to our eight year old.
• 54:55 Ben: What if defending one values causes you to come into conflict with another value? There’s a value-hierarchy you have to develop, too.