No Sanity Required
No Sanity Required is a weekly podcast hosted by Brody Holloway and Snowbird Outfitters. Each week, we engage culture and personal stories with a Gospel-driven perspective. Our mission is to equip the Church to pierce the darkness with the light of Christ by sharing the vision, ideas, and passions God has used to carry us through 26 years of student ministry. Find more content at swoutfitters.com.
No Sanity Required
Building a Christ-Centered Family
In this episode of NSR, Brody shares key thoughts on parenting, offering practical tips and insights from his own experience raising kids with love, respect, and purpose. He gives updates on his recent hunting trips and the exciting plans to expand SWO’s camp, while also discussing the vision for his family and how they apply biblical principles in their home.
Brody answers listener questions about adoption, fostering, and sibling relationships. He talks about the importance of teaching kids how to handle conflict, disagree respectfully, and love each other well—even through disagreements.
Rooted in Romans 12, Brody shares the family values he and Little strive to live by, focusing on gratitude, kindness, and a mission-centered approach to life. Whether you're parenting young children or preparing teenagers for adulthood, Brody offers practical advice for building a home where love, faith, and strong relationships thrive.
- Romans 12:9-21
- Interview with Brody and Little: 30 Years of Marriage, Ministry, & Parenting
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Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.
Welcome to this week's episode of no Sanity Required Answering more questions. Today got an awesome email from Jordan Crockett. Shout out, jordan, hopefully you're listening you and your husband, justin, going to be working through your email and let me tell you how cool this is. The episode that I was preparing to record for this week lines up exactly with this email, so we'll get into that once we get through the intro here.
Speaker 1:Um, but it's just cool, the time and I believe it's the Lord's time, and I was I was kind of back and forth with should I go forward to this content or do I need to do more? Some advent, christmas type stuff, and we will address some of that. But, um, just really feeling like I needed to do, uh, uh, an episode where we addressed some follow-up to Little and I's two episodes, or that long episode that Little and I did, because I've gotten so many questions about parenting, child rearing, blended families, bio kids, adopted kids, foster kids, public school, private school, christian school, just so many decisions that young parents face, and so we're going to address some of that and I'd been kind of thinking through that, and then this email comes in, so I'm going to read most of this email to you, and then we're going to get into some parenting principles, and I think it's going to be a real productive episode. So thanks for joining. Welcome to no Sanity Required.
Speaker 2:Welcome to no Sanity Required from the Ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters a podcast about the Bible culture and stories from around the globe.
Speaker 1:All right, before we get into this, I want to give you a couple of updates. I ended that last episode and didn't update like I kind of had intended. Episode went longer than I had intended. So first things first, I killed a good buck. Lots of people asking me I love how many of our listeners gosh I mean quite a lot love how many of our listeners gosh I mean quite quite a lot will reach out through text or email and ask for hunting report.
Speaker 1:So I killed a big 10 point big 10 point buck here in the mountains of north carolina and, thankful for that, shot him with my rifle. It was not a bow kill. We do have two doe days coming up in december. I'm going to take my bow out and try to take a couple does meet for the freezer and also, I like I like bow hunting, but I love shooting my rifle. And people ask me okay, some of you are going to just zone out here, you don't care about this, but it's fun. So so give me, give me a couple minutes here, just two minutes to talk about this. What rifle do I shoot? I shoot a Tikka. That's T-I-K-K-A, tikka T3X and it is in the line that they call. I think they call it their Ruff-Tec line but it's stainless steel fluted barrel.
Speaker 1:It's got a muzzle brake on it. Sometimes, if one of the kids is shooting it, I've got a muzzle brake on it. Sometimes, if one of the kids is shooting it, I've got the muzzle brake on it because it reduces recoil. Or I've got a suppressor on it. It reduces recoil and sound.
Speaker 1:But it is chambered in seven millimeter remington magnum and the scope that is mounted on that is a loophole vx5 and that was a gift from a very close friend and listener of NSR about six or seven, I think seven years ago, I think 2017, I think it was in our in our 20 year anniversary, uh, at SWO. But anyway, uh, and then I I typically hand load which, if you know what that means, I build my own bullets. Uh, that was something we talked about in the John Rouleau interview when he interviewed me Um, I build my own bullets. That was something we talked about in the John Rouleau interview when he interviewed me Don't build my own bullets. I put together my own ammunition, cartridges and all that, and so, anyway, it was fun, shot a really nice buck. He's a doozy. He's a nice 10-pointer, by my standards, a very good buck, one of the best bucks I've shot, probably, so that was awesome.
Speaker 1:And now I'm trying to get Moses a buck, my 12 year old. He just turned 12. Mo had a birthday last week, so there's an update. He turned 12. I want to get him on here sometime soon. Y'all are not going to believe. His voice has changed and he does not sound like himself anymore the new version of Mo Mo 2.0, um, so that'll be fun. Get him on here, um, and he is a ham. He's a piece of work, but we've been hunting some in the evenings trying to get him something. Uh.
Speaker 1:The other update I was going to give you was uh, we, we are meeting. We had meetings this past week with um contractors construction company, ferry construction out of the Knoxville area over in Tennessee, and with their architect team, their design team. We're really ramping up and getting excited about the development of the Yates property. Please pray with us because we're going to need some substantial financial support and increase something greater than even what our Tier 1 donor base provides, but we trust the Lord with that. We've got to build a new dining hall. We've also got to build roads and bridges to just kind of lay out the infrastructure.
Speaker 1:Back-to-back Decembers we had worked to raise money to put in an expanded infrastructure water system, sewer system, stuff like that and over the last two Decembers the Lord provided that through so many of our donors and a lot of y'all. But that has not gone in the ground yet because we're dealing with state government. So everything's ready. Our town is ready to get the water to us, we're ready to get it in the ground and we're waiting on red tape. So it was an election year, whatever. I don't know. I don't understand it. I don't know how it can take so long. All we want to do is run a waterline. But once that's in the ground, we're ready to expand and grow and we've got big plans.
Speaker 1:I think I mentioned this in a previous episode. We just expanded. Yeah, last episode we put in six cabins thanks to generosity and the donation of labor, and so we now have enough to. I think that's going to increase our summer numbers by 500 or 600 people. So awesome things happening at SWO. Where there's no vision, the people perish. We got lots of vision. There ain't no perishing going on around here, so praise the Lord for that.
Speaker 1:Um well, let's get into today's content. I'm excited about it, um so, so I'm going to just work through this email that I got from Jordan Crockett I had planned on. So, again, shout out and a hello to Jordan and Justin Crockett. If you guys will get me, if you'll follow up that email with your mailing address, we're going to send you a really sweet SWO gift pack, because this is exactly what I need is this kind of question, this line of questioning. It gives us such momentum for the content that we're trying to put out, and so I want to address parenting, not just parenting of small children, but even of equipping your teenagers to go into adulthood.
Speaker 1:How do you prepare them for the transition? How do you get them ready for the next stage? How do you let them go? Turn them loose, give them a good shove, give them some momentum? How do you help them hit their stride as adults? And then also, how do you transition them from being little infants to being toddlers and what does that look like? And and are there principles that that you apply to?
Speaker 1:Not just this is not just going to be about discipline. It's going to be about preparing a culture within your home where, within your home, whether you're a blended family, a single mom, whatever, um, uh, a gospel driven mom and dad, single marriage with your own biological children, or you're a foster parent, whatever how do you create a home and an atmosphere that is here's the word that is principled. It's principled you need. You need to be principled in the way that you operate in your marriage and your home and your parenting, and so we're going to talk about that, and not just in in terms of discipline. Now, we may do a later episode where we run a deeper dive into discipline. Uh, when I say discipline, like, how do you, how do you deal with the discipline of a, of a kid, like you know, when they're, when they're out of line, we'll get into some of that today. We can do a deeper dive if, if it's so desired or if there's questions that come in based off of this content. This tends to be the kind of content that gets the most shares and listens, and so hopefully this will be helpful. Hi, brody and SWO family, I hope this email finds you to be well. Not sure if this is where I'm supposed to send NSR feedback and questions, so I apologize if this was supposed to go somewhere else. Nope, this is perfect.
Speaker 1:My name is Jordan. My husband, Justin, and I are longtime lovers and supporters of SWO. We both attended with our youth group with Pastor Kevin Burns from Pole Creek Baptist Church in Candler, north Carolina, for many summers. Justin is also an alum from the old school program at SWO fall of 2013. And I do remember Justin. I remember Justin well. Plus, we're great friends with many of your extended family and she named some of my family the Hempels and Smiths in the Candler area and some of my cousins and good people that I love dearly. Our family has always benefited and gleaned lots of wisdom and insight from the NSR podcast. Lately, we've especially enjoyed and clung to your episodes of Biblical Church Leadership comments on that. We've also enjoyed greatly your episodes on marriage and parenting. Justin and I have been married for over four years now. I have two daughters, ages three years and six months, and we pray the Lord will bless us with more in the future.
Speaker 1:That said, I have a couple of questions regarding parenting and families that I was hoping you maybe would touch on one day in a future episode or episodes. All right, asking you shall receive. I mean, this is a very near future, because I got this email yesterday, I'm recording it today and it's going out next week. So, as you're listening to this, the email is less than a week old. If you've already discussed these topics or simply don't think they weren't an episode, no worries at all. No, this is so cool because this was literally the direction that this episode was already headed. So I just love it, man, it's so cool. How God does that? Um, we truly appreciate the wisdom you've bestowed on every topic you've discussed.
Speaker 1:Okay, number one how did slash do you and little help to cultivate and grow your kids relationships with each other? And then she elaborates in a household of eight plus, I know there must be a hodgepodge of interests, personalities, dynamics and age gaps. I know that some of this just kind of comes naturally within the family context, but is there anything that sticks out? And how? Okay? So she just asked for um uh, you know to to talk about how do we do that? How do we create and cultivate the relationships between our kids within the home? Now I'm going to give you this is going to be a long answer. This is going to take up a lot of this episode and it may mean that we bump into a second episode, but I really want to unpack this because it's such a good, good, good question. Obviously, she says we want to keep away from jealousy and rivalry. But what about just simple disagreements? And and and for sure those are bound to happen.
Speaker 1:So what we've got to do is we've got to teach our kids how to disagree, how to work through conflict together, how to struggle through loving each other well, while not agreeing on something and having a disagreement. And even at the youngest age, how do we resolve conflict? And let me say, before I get into this, I think that one of the things that is missing in most young adults when they, when they transition from the teenage years into adulthood, what I see, both in our college age staff, the kids in our institute, the young adults that come and work on our summer in our summer program, folks that intern here, and then the students that come to camp and to conferences and retreats here very few young people are being taught and trained in the home how to deal with conflict, conflict resolution, how to disagree with someone and still be friends or loving. We live in a world where if you hold a different opinion or view than somebody else, it tends to it's kind of like well, that person's my enemy, we can't be friends, we can't get along and that's just simply not the way it should be. There is a healthy way to disagree. There's a healthy way to process conflict resolution, and so I want to talk about that. And what does that look like in the home? So I think it's a good question and a good place to start.
Speaker 1:All right, what I want to do is I want to start by walking through. Most of you know our family dynamic, but I want to walk through, um, our family and give you a simple, brief sort of description of the personality and and interests of each of each kid. And I'll start. I think, uh, if, if you haven't watched the 30 years of marriage, ministry and parenting with little and I, um that episode from, uh, a couple of months back, I would encourage you to go. I think you'll. You'll get a feel for her personality, my personality, kind of how we co-parent and work together, um the dynamic of our relationship. I am, I'm grateful that there's a lot of diversity with our kids, like, for instance, our oldest daughter, um, who is now married and is a mom, is herself a mother.
Speaker 1:I remember when little and I got married, one of the things that we just assumed was that our kids would be athletes, that they would love sports. Both of us were athletes. It was kind of one of the things that brought us together. So we assumed that that's how it would be with our kids, that they would want to play sports. But our, our oldest daughter came along and didn't care a lot for that.
Speaker 1:She was interested in music and the arts. Um and when I say the arts, she took piano lessons. She uh enjoyed playing the piano and singing, uh in our, in our home. She enjoyed drawing and writing and reading and in fact she heard she got her degree in English with a. There was a heavy concentration in literature and that's kind of the world that she enjoyed and lived in. She was in plays, she did theater all through. Really that was mainly through elementary school and middle school and then I think she might have been in a play or two once she got into high school.
Speaker 1:She played a little bit of sports growing up. She played some rec sports as a kid and then she played in high school. She only ever did one season of a JV sport. She played JV softball for one season. She just wasn't into it and and that was totally fine. That was totally cool. He's tried to help empower her and and help her pursue what, what she loved, and and then, as a parent, figuring out what that is like. How's my kid wired and how can I, how can I give them an awesome experience and the things they love but also not, you know, not let them become obsessed with it where it becomes an idol. And, um, so Kilby was.
Speaker 1:It was great having her first, because it was completely different from what we expected. We just assumed we'd be going that you know soccer games and baseball or softball or football or basketball, whatever. We just figured that first kid would come along. That'd be our world, but it wasn't. Kilby is a person who has a deep appreciation for a good book, a beautiful sunset. She loves to, she appreciates creation, she sees the beauty in things, she's very sentimental, she's very emotional, she's very gentle and kind and and, to be honest, I she's wired very differently from me and really wired very differently from little, and so that was a good learning curve for us.
Speaker 1:Um, and then Tucker came along. Um, and was all those things with sports that we kind of had expected we would have in a kid and was a really gifted athlete but also was was Tuck is very trying to think like he's. He's a strong contrast between he and Kilby in terms of their personality makeup, where she's very emotional and sentimental and and and very like engaged with her emotions and with people. Talk is an emotional duty, super intense guy, um, obviously to compete at the levels he competes at, but he's and he's also very dialed into the needs of other people and very considerate of other people. But he's a real like straightforward business like kind of guy, like very just boom, boom, boom. Just this is what needs to be done. We're going to get it done, boom, boom, boom. And so just a lot of difference in that personality.
Speaker 1:Lely is next and she uh also now an adult and she is, uh the of all of our kids. I always say she's the one that's wired like me. I think Lely and I are very similar in the way we're put together. Tuck is very much like Little, so Tuck and Little are very similar. Lely and I are very similar and Lely is uh, I always joke that she's my spirit animal. She's just very much like. We're very in sort of in sync, in the same mind, and if you're a parent of multiple kids, you'll probably get that Like one of those kids probably is going to be wired very similar to you and so that's Laylee in our family.
Speaker 1:So she's always been super mature for her age, just very, very secure, very confident in her own skin as a freshman in high school, kind of unmoved by peer pressure or the stress and pressure of being a teenager at a public high school. She's just super solid and in terms of who she is, all three of those kids very um, uh, in tune to other people's needs and uh, lately was an athlete. She uh brag on her a little bit she's the all-time leading scorer in Murphy high school Women's soccer. Um was a two-time conference player of the year, two or three-time All-State first-team All-State selection, scored 103 goals in her career. In her high school career played club travel soccer up until high school and then decided I don't want to pursue this, I don't want to be a collegiate athlete, I want to have a fun high school career and that's as far as I wanted to go and I appreciated that and, to be honest, it was refreshing. I wasn't fighting to get her to the next level, we just had fun and enjoyed high school sports. She played volleyball, played basketball, won a state championship in basketball she has a ring. So it was funny, tuck.
Speaker 1:Everybody knows he's a football player but Tuck won two state championships in track. He was a state champion long jumper and then he was the leadoff on a state championship 4x100 relay team. That team was loaded, by the way, tuck led that off. The first guy he handed the baton to is a Division I football player. He plays at Vanderbilt but could have gone anywhere he wanted, was recruited. Literally he had the most offers of anybody in Tuck's senior class. Alabama Saban came to meet with him. Heupel from Tennessee flew to meet with him. They had him visit. You know it was crazy. That guy's name's Darren and he's a stud athlete. Then the third guy was Tuck's closest friend who plays nickel at University of Minnesota. His name's Coleman Bryson. Then the anchor guy was Marlon Klein, who is a tight end at the University of Michigan Won a national championship. Those who is a tight end at the University of Michigan won a national championship. So those guys won a state championship in the four by 100.
Speaker 1:And Tuck won one his sophomore year in long jump and then his junior year was washed out by COVID and then his senior year he bailed and went to. You know, he left early to go to Virginia Tech. So then Laylee comes along, wins a state championship her freshman year and it was like, okay, here we go when she won that state championship. Then they were tied up, they each had a ring and so they were going to have a battle and then I think Laylee, her team the next year, lost in the Final Four in both volleyball and basketball, so she didn't get another ring, but it was fun. You know, that was fun. It was a lot of competitiveness there. So anyway, painting that dynamic of the first three Now those three, when Juju and Mo came along, laylee was, she was eight years old, so for eight years it was those three. So for eight years it was those three and we worked hard to cultivate an atmosphere of kindness and love and gentleness.
Speaker 1:One of the things I think that's critical to creating that is that mom and dad are committed to just getting along, to liking each other, to getting along, to not fighting you know, to, to, to. I think this is important as parents, if, as husband and wife, if you have a disagreement sometimes. Now listen close. I'm not going to give you a bullet point list of how to do these things. But I was sharing, just sharing okay Thoughts and what we've seen work.
Speaker 1:When you disagree as a husband and wife, slash mom and dad, sometimes it's good for your kids to see you disagree and watch you work through that together. Other times that discussion needs to go on behind closed doors. So if there's uh and some examples would be if it's an intense disagreement that they're not in a maturity level, at a maturity level to be able to handle, then you need to discuss that behind closed doors and not include them. If it's a disagreement, let's say it's something like um, you've got a saturday afternoon and dad wants to do one thing and mom wants to do something else. Um, and they, you just work through that together and let them see that. And one of you is going to end up saying, oh, let's just do what you want to do, like, like, something like that. But if it's like hey, we've got this $6,000 on this one credit card, we need to get rid of this debt, and then the other you know the other spouse is saying, no, it's not a big deal and it's a pretty heavy discussion about your finances, maybe, maybe, maybe, if that's going to be intense, it goes on behind closed doors. Now, if the kids are older, maybe you bring them into some of that discussion and but, but you're teaching them. There need to be some times where they see you work through things together as mom and dad. So they need to see you work things out.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I think is important is that your kids don't see you fight. They don't see you fight Like. I mean, when I say fight, I mean really fight. You know, they don't see you go at each other. They can see you disagree and work through conflict together, but they don't see you go at each other. They can see you disagree and work through conflict together, but they don't see you go at each other. I think that's important. And then you, you sort of lay the groundwork for teaching them how to deal with conflict.
Speaker 1:Um, the next question that's asked we'll get into sort of what, our, what our set of core values. We don't really have a mission statement as a family, but we have a set of core values and so we'll get into that. Um, all right, so then, next in the line was we adopted Juju and Mo, and at that time Juju was almost five years old, mo was one and a half and we adopted them, brought them into our home. Awesome story how the Lord brought that about. But then now you're bringing. You're bringing two children into your home who have a different genetic influence or hereditary influence, you know.
Speaker 1:But the reason I laid out the personality and sort of make makeup of each of my first three kids was to say, bring in Juju and Mo into our home. I don't feel like it was any different in terms of figuring out how they're wired, because the first three were so different in the way they're wired and so the hereditary component, the fact that you know they don't have your DNA. I just don't. I don't, at this point in our lives, I don't think we put a lot of stock in that. Um, you just got to figure out a parent, every single kid, what? What we did put stock in was their environmental experiences. You hear people talk about nature versus nurture. What shapes a person more? Their genetic makeup or their environmental makeup and experience.
Speaker 1:And I will say that what we've learned with Juju and Mo was they both came from traumatic backgrounds. Their biological mother had died. Juju has vivid memories of her death. It was pretty tragic and traumatic. There was trauma in their past. There was just some. I want to be careful to protect them and not share personal, intimate information, but they had a, they had, they had some some serious trauma. So what? What, um, we might refer to as they were trauma brained? They were trauma brained kids. Their, their, their brains had formed around coping mechanisms that had to do with early childhood trauma, and I, when I say trauma, I mean the kind of stuff that that really could ruin or shape a life. At the very least, it's going to shape who you are as a person.
Speaker 1:At the worst it's going to ruin your life, and so God brought them into our family, I believe as a calling for us, but also he put a deep love in our hearts for them and so they're just our son and daughter. I don't think of them any other way. Um, I love them so much. This past week, uh took Juju, just showed up at I went to the high school. She didn't know it was coming, I didn't, it was spontaneous and uh texted her and said, hey, you want to go get lunch? She was like heck, yeah, so went and got her out of school like 1115. We went to her favorite restaurant in the booming town of andrews, which is mani alban, the mexican restaurant. We went and got mexican um, and she's back at school by 12. You know, like it was a 45 minute, little little deal and we just hung out, laughed, cut up, had a good time, got lunch.
Speaker 1:Love being a dad. Love me, even now that I'm in my 50s. I love being a teen, a dad to teenagers. I never thought, you know, I'd be in this position, but here I am and I love it. Um, but she is a kid that is dealt with the effects of severe early childhood trauma and pain and everything associated with that.
Speaker 1:And then Moses um was one and a half, was one when their, when their biological mother died I'm not even it was before he turned one, he was, he was not even a biological mother died, not even it was before he turned one, he was not even a year old yet. But from the time she gave birth to him there was a lot of I'm being really raw and transparent here y'all, and this is a look behind the curtain into our home. But he was, during that first year, those first 12 months, the formative um period of of early child development, where a kid's brain is really formed around stimulus of if I cry, someone's going to respond and figure out what my need is. If I'm hungry, I cry. If I'm wet, I cry. If my belly hurts, I cry, if you know, if I'm hot or tired or whatever I cry, and then someone responds. Well, when, when a child is three, four, six, eight months old and they scream and cry and no one responds, it it really wires their brain into this sort of survival mode where the mechanisms in place are survival mechanisms. And so bring those two kids into our home. Now there's a completely different dynamic, and one of the dynamics is that they're survivors and so they with. When you have a survival mindset, you it's kill or be killed, and so now, if there's something as simple as there's enough food for everyone to have some but I'm going to get two portions to make sure I get mine and then some, I don't care if somebody else misses out like there's that, so that had to be retaught, rewired. So there's this unwiring and rewiring and so what, what? That obviously created some, some difficulties, and so that obviously created some difficulties.
Speaker 1:And then Malachi came into our home when he was nine, just turning 10, and he is now 14. And so we've had him in our family for four years and he is right in between Age-wise, he's right in between Juju and Mo, and he comes from a very difficult background. He's a local kid, juju and Mo comes from a very difficult um background. He's a local kid, juju and mo were from uganda, east africa. Malachi is from here in andrews, and so a lot of uh trauma also in his background. And he came to pinwheel littles tutoring program from the time he was in kindergarten and so he was a kid that was in our, our afterschool gospel centered tutoring program, and the Lord used that to eventually land him in our home, and so that's the dynamic.
Speaker 1:And Malachi, his personality makeup is not so much survive. So, juju, her survival mechanism is to dominate and control and get ahead. Malachi, survival mechanism is to shrink sort of into the shadows and kind of hide and lay low. I think a lot of that came from the fact that he was he lived in multiple drug houses where there was screaming abuse, severe, you know, violence, physical violence, and his mechanism as a young kid was to to hide in a corner somewhere, to go get under a bed or whatever. So his he shrinks back from conflict. And so you've got these different personality makeups. And then you've got we've got three kids that were imprinted from birth in our home and three that were, um, that come from crazy backgrounds.
Speaker 1:Now I'm not going to get into any of the the issues associated with raising a foster kid or adoption, or dealing with kids that were traumatized in early childhood and then you get them later. I'm not going to. That's not what this episode is about. I wanted to simply lay out the dynamic of our family. So eight folks, six kids Malachi, by the way came into our home after Kilby was gone. So Kilby graduated from high school in 2018, headed off to college, was married in 2019. Malachi didn't come into our home until 2021, I think We've had him three or four years, I think maybe 2020, but uh, there, so there was no overlap there, but there's obviously a lot of overlap now, and so that's the dynamic.
Speaker 1:So now back to the question. In a household of eight plus, I know there must be a hodgepodge of interests, personalities, dynamics and age gaps. So again to work through the age structure of our home first, two kids are two years apart. Numbers two and three are three years apart. There's some miscarriages in the mix. Kids three and four are four years apart. That's Laylee and Juju, four years apart. So from Kilby to Tuck two years. From Tuck to Laylee, three years. From Laylee to Juju, four years apart. That's Lely and Juju, four years apart. So from Kilby to Tuck, two years. From Tuck to Lely, three years. From Lely to Juju four years. From Juju to Malachi one year. From Malachi to Moses two years. Three, two years, yeah, so that's the age gap. So the closest age gap is a year, the broadest is four years between two kids that are that are about, you know, in the birth order. Um, I would say, let me add one thing here. Um, as an aside for folks that are praying about adopting.
Speaker 1:I think that if you're going to adopt, adoption works best if you don't break birth order. What I mean by that is, let's say, you've got, like the, the family that we're um responding to in this email, they've got a. Let's see, their two daughters are ages three and six months. So, like I wouldn't adopt a kid that's older than either one of those kids, um, let's say that that the Lord gives this family, uh, two more kids. Okay, so they've got kids that are, you know, at some point they're going to be, this three-year-old is going to be eight. Let's say you got eight, six, four and one. I would not adopt a child that was five and is in the middle. Now, this is not the gospel, according to Brody. Uh, we I know there's families in our church there's a Lely nannies for a family that we love and are very close with that have kids that are in the mix of their birth order. But I'm just saying, if you want to know what I think. I think the order mattered in our home because the three older children were very involved in the process and then they took ownership and weren't threatened relationally by the younger kids when they came into the home. I think it created a lot of strength. Those three older kids have a lot of ownership in the development of the three younger kids. They really have invested in them. I think it's going to turn into. They've learned how to deal with conflict. They've learned how to be in difficult situations. When they're older and they're, when they're raising their own kids, um, they've got a, I think, a naturally built-in nurturing mechanism where, even if you think about an oldest child, um, typically is very nurturing when they become a parent, you know, um, but so I I that's something I would throw in there that I think not breaking birth order is preferred. If you're going to adopt or foster, do what you want to with that. Okay, now back to the question.
Speaker 1:So all these different interests, personalities, dynamics, and I didn't really get into the personalities of the three younger kids, talked a little bit about their survival mechanisms and, and you know, fight or flight and that, and juju is, she tends, she's, she's a, she's a fight person, she's kind of a dynamic of fight and flight. There's some situations and circumstances that she would just run from and just kind of get away from and I don't want to deal with it. There's others where you know the typical teenage girl stuff. She's gonna snap back and bark back and she gets right in the middle of that stuff, whereas laylee and kilby did not. They just avoided it. They were not. Laylee was never involved in teenage girl drama. Um, juju juju tends to jump in the middle of that because that's that fight mechanism. I think. Um, and now Lely is not a flight person, she's a hit. She's a hit stuff head on kind of person, but she, she's a non-drama person.
Speaker 1:So again, we're talking about personality dynamics. Um, moses, my, our youngest, who's 12, our youngest child is 12 years old. Moses, our youngest, who's 12, our youngest child is 12 years old. He is 100% fight. If something doesn't go his way, he's coming out swinging. I mean, he only knows how to deal with things with violence, which is how I mean he's actually wired like me. And so you get those different dynamics. But the three older kids, I will tell you this, they are all very good at addressing conflict, dealing with conflict in the workplace, on a team, in school, in family dynamics or whatever, and I think that had to be taught and ingrained in them. So how do we, with all those personalities, how do we cultivate those healthy, godly relationships? And this is going to flow into the second question. Um, and she did say in this email, the Bible gives examples of some of sibling relationships, some good and some bad. How do we keep away from jealousy and rivalry? How do you work through simple disagreements? So at a young age, when you're dealing with, you know, like these kids, three and six, um, you're just staying hands on with that and you're.
Speaker 1:What I would do is I would create opportunities to share. This is the first principle for people raising young kids early childhood principle Don't wait till, like when one kid wants something the other kid's got. It may be too late to teach them how to share because things are so worked up. So set them up for the success of sharing. So hand that kid two cookies and say here's two cookies, one is for you and one is for your sister. Now I know in this dynamic you got a three-year-old and a six-year-old. You're not going to hand that six-year-old a cookie. But in principle, when you've got two kids that are, say, four and two, you're saying here's two cookies and the whole idea is share one of these. And so you're setting them up to share and you're creating a normalcy to sharing.
Speaker 1:Another thing would be to get food together as a family. So so you, you go to Buffalo Wild Wings and order four different types of wings and we all pass around and share, instead of everyone ordering their own thing or something like that. Just think of ways that you can create a sharing mindset. You've got kids that are a little older. You figure out what their favorite game or TV program is. You set them up to share by preemptively making that happen. So you don't wait. In other words, don't wait until one kid's got a cookie in their hand and say, hey, give your sister some of that. I think now there may be a time where you do need to do that, but if you can set up a pattern of sharing, I think that's helpful. So anything you can do preemptively, I think that's helpful. So anything you can do preemptively.
Speaker 1:We teach love by example. We teach gentleness and kindness and compassion toward one another by example, and so I think it's important to and then like also, this is very freeing when you realize I don't have to discipline every kid the exact same way, I don't have to parent every kid the exact same way. I've got to figure. You know, paul, I'm sorry, solomon or whoever somebody wrote in Proverbs 22, verse six train up a child in the way he should go, and when he's old he won't depart from it. So train him up. So as you're bringing him up, training him up the idea, and if you really look at the Hebrew structure of that sentence, what it's saying is study the way a child is made up as they're coming up, study the way they're built in terms of their personality, what kind of stress they can handle, what kind of stress they can't handle, and and help them be successful in dealing with their own emotions. And so train them up, study them, understand them, learn them. And then, when you understand the way a kid is wired, then you're going to parent them accordingly.
Speaker 1:I had to learn that, especially when I went from my first son to my second son it was from Tuck to Moses, before Malachi was in the mix. Well, tuck, if Tuck got out of line, I'd just wear his hind end out. You know, I'd give him a spanking, spanking, whooping, whipping, whatever you want to call it. I'd take a belt to his rear end, and it was usually three pops, it was one, three or five, depending on the offense. Never did more than five and that was only a couple times. Usually it was three pops, sometimes it was one, and it was with a belt and it was turn around and take this like a man, I don't care that you're six years old, turn around and take this, I'm not going to fight you.
Speaker 1:Well, mo comes along and it didn't work because he was a fighter, he was a survivor, he was trauma-brained. He had been, he had dealt, he had experienced, even at the earliest young, young, young child, early childhood development. He had experienced some really difficult things. So I had to come up with a different system. We had we had Little and I had to go to counseling and training and she attended a three-day training just dealing with kids that have trauma. We brought an instructor here a couple times and we set through that counseling and that training and it was real helpful, had to kind of so as a parent, you got to figure out how to parent each kid. Now the principles are going to be the same. Your principles of discipline that we'll get into in a different episode. We'll go ahead and roll that in the next episode. Principles of discipline that's going to be the same, the principles, but the application might be different. And so figure it out and then, once you figure that out, help them succeed and typically now watch this. This is going to be a top down in the age order, so it's going to be easier to teach the three-year-old how to how how to apply love and kindness and generosity to the six month old. It's going to be easier to work with a 12 year old to help them understand something that a six-year-old can't understand. But you're just, you're setting them up for success.
Speaker 1:We're doing things together as a family. We don't all go in our rooms. This is one thing. Everybody in my house there's no TVs in anybody's rooms Nobody gets to go in their room and be on a phone or a device or a TV. I don't care if you're 16 years old. You're not going in your room closing the door and getting on a device or watching a TV. You're not going in your room closing the door and getting on a device or watching a TV. You're not. You're not doing it. And so if we're going to watch a movie together, it's a good time. We have game nights it's going to be. You know, we do that once or twice a week. We play games at the kitchen table board games, card games, whatever. Just I mean this ain't rocket science, right? Just do stuff together, enjoy doing stuff together, play together, have fun together, entertain yourselves together. Then have a healthy dose of separation from one another. So if Juju wants to go into her room and do art, she can do that. She has an art table, she can go in there and Juju's a phenomenal athlete.
Speaker 1:I didn't get into what each of the younger kids are into sports-wise, activities-wise. Juju is a phenomenal volleyball player, really good volleyball player, great at track and field, and loves to do that. But Moses could care less about sports, moses, and he would be a phenomenal athlete if he wanted to be so fast. I was watching him race a kid, one of his buddies, zeke. I was watching him race in the gym after a basketball game the other night and Mo would run one step behind Zeke and I know Mo enough to know he's not going full speed, he's just checking. Zeke's like two years younger than him. You know he's a younger kid. He's just checking him. Zeke's like three years, two, two years younger than him, you know younger kid, and most just kind of hanging back and he never hit the accelerator. He's just not a competitive dude, you know? Um, what he loves is he loves working with techie stuff. So for his birthday he wanted a legit drone so he could work on his own videos. He works with our video editing crew at SWO, so that's what he's into.
Speaker 1:So figuring out how to cross interests. So as a family, we go watch Malachi's basketball games because Malachi loves more than anything to play basketball. So we all go watch Malachi's games. As a family, we go watch Juju's volleyball games. We do that stuff together. If Tucker's playing football and it's on espn um and it's a road game and we're not traveling, we all sit down to get. Everybody's gonna be in the house during the game. You can be doing something else, you can be doodling or what, but we're gonna.
Speaker 1:So creating those family things where we're doing stuff together that's important I know so much of is basic. I feel like this is a rambling episode where we're just talking about our family in the most mundane way. But this stuff really is. It's not rocket science, but you do have to be intentional. So there is a need for them to have solitude. So you need to go in your room and have some you time and that could be art, could be.
Speaker 1:Mo does lego stuff and people are like you're 12 years old, you need to be done with legos, mo. Mo loves to build and construct and so now he's doing you know these model cars and stuff like that and it's good for him to go in there and do that or to go out. Sometimes he'll go outside with his 22 and he'll walk around and he'll target shoot and he'll plink. But they do need to have some alone time or jump on the four-wheeler and just go ride for 20 minutes. So alone time is important. Doing things together is important, as a family is important. A couple kids together is important.
Speaker 1:Mo and Malachi do not naturally get along. They feel very competitive towards Little. They're both very competitive towards little, towards her affection, her time. They want her time and her affection and so they become competitive. So someone gave us a game system. It's an older, two or three gens back. It's an older like Xbox or PlayStation or something like that. We have that hooked up to a TV in our bedroom where they're not allowed in there. But then they get a set. If they both have a good day at school, then they get to go play a game together and that's a good place for them to connect and they actually cooperate well together. So creating opportunities for them to be together in a healthy way, for them to have separation and and and and be alone and have alone time, that's important.
Speaker 1:And then we'll get into the final question, the second and final question, and it's and it's going to flow right out. The answer is going to flow right out of this first answer how do you establish a family culture that's meaningful, impactful and life-giving to all family members? And she talks about the mission statement at SWO. I know you have a mission statement as a ministry. Do you have one as a family? We don't have a mission statement, but I want to walk through sort of our principles of parenting or not of parenting, of family, principles of family is what I would call it. I want to walk through some of that and it comes from Romans, chapter 12, and we'll get into that in a second.
Speaker 1:But, but the the thing that we're working to do is create an atmosphere of love and joy and peace and conflict resolution, and there's consequences to your actions. And we're going to share, we're always going to share, we're going to be thankful, we're going to give thanks, um, uh, if, if, if I stop if we're on a road trip and we go through a drive through, we hit Zaxby's and everybody gets food. If, if, I'm not. If, if, if they don't say thank you, then the next meal I don't pull off, I just keep driving and people are like, uh, when are we going to eat? I'm hungry, I'm like that stinks for you because you didn't say thank you for the last meal. And then we don't end up skipping the meal, but I'll drag that thing out, you know. So just creating an attitude of thankfulness and thanksgiving, that's very important.
Speaker 1:What I've learned is that those younger three are far this is bizarre, y'all. This just seems backwards. They're far more an entitled mindset. Um, and I, and and I have some thoughts on the psychology of that it's tied to that survival mechanism, but you would think they would be the most thankful and that they would practice the most gratitude because of what they've come from. But that is not the case and I think it has to do with that survival mechanism. Um, but anyway, so we got to cultivate that.
Speaker 1:Attitudes of thanks, attitudes of rejoicing. You know, think about, think about the scripture in in uh, first Thessalonians that we did a few weeks ago. This is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus, pray, pray always, rejoice always and give thanks always. So we should be in an attitude of prayer, rejoicing, or joyfulness and thanksgiving, cultivate those three things. So those are all part of what we want to cultivate in our home. So here's what we do in our home Romans, chapter 12, verse 9,. Here are the principles and core values of our household and core values of our household. Romans 12, verse 9,. Let love be without hypocrisy. So ESV says let love be genuine. So we work to cultivate genuine, non-hypocritical love, and I'm not going to exposit this passage, but these are the principles.
Speaker 1:To answer Jordan's question here Hate what is evil. The CSB, the Christian Standard Bible, says detest evil. So let love be genuine and without hypocrisy. We work to do that. Hate what is evil. We hate evil, we abhor it, we fight it, we don't allow it into our home. We work to root it out of our relationships. What we entertain ourselves with, the music we listen to. We're going to root out that which is evil. We're going to create a hatred of it. We're going to create a hatred of it. Hold fast or cling to what is good. So we're going to hate what is evil and we're going to work hard to hold fast to what is good, what is good. Well, just unpack what the Scripture says is good, what is good, what is lovely, what is a good report, what is virtuous, what cultivates love and generosity.
Speaker 1:Okay, next, verse 10, love one another deeply as brothers and sisters. So love, genuine love, brotherly affection, and then outdo one another in showing honor. So those, those are the next two things that we're constantly working towards out. Do one another and showing honor and let love be um, brotherly, like, like love one another with brotherly affection, as brothers and sisters, um, and then rejoice in hope, be patient in affliction, be persistent in prayer, share with saints in their needs and pursue hospitality. So we work to create a home of hospitality.
Speaker 1:So one of the things we do is we have kids that come from really rough families in our home. Often. Let me ask you something you live in your nice house up on the hill. You got your two kids, your 2.5 kids, a boy and a girl. You know a girl for her and a boy for you. We've got two. So now we're through, or whatever. You know, like I, like I ain't hating on nobody that only has two kids, I'm not at all. But I'm saying what are you teaching those two kids about inclusivity? And? But I'm saying what are you teaching those two kids about inclusivity and exclusivity? Do you live in your house up on the hill where everyone's got a nice vehicle, including the kid when they turn 16, and everybody's got their big, nice room and everybody you know? You just kind of live isolated. Or are you coming down off the hill opening the door of your home and bringing listen to me the least of these into your house? Well, that's dangerous. I don't want to expose my family Bull. I'm calling BS on that. Open your home and you can open your home and still protect and be safe.
Speaker 1:Now, on our road there are I'm not going to name names or give numbers, but there are a number of kids that live up and down our rural road that come to our home, often when the weather's permitting. They're up there daily after school and they come from broken, broken homes where there's poverty, there's abuse, there's drug abuse, there's abandonment and neglect. And I want those kids in our home and I want our kids seeing them in our home and ministering to them. And so you're cultivating a place of hospitality where we're bringing folks in and sometimes we're bringing uh, we, you know, one of the things we've done recently is had a home show where what do they call it? A house show, where a couple of music artists came to our home and played, did a concert, did a little show, acoustic show, and we had folks come over and everybody you know, we cooked and had food and it was 30 or 40 people in our house. It was awesome. So it's that kind of hospitality. And then there's hospitality where you have a family over, and then there's hospitality where you have people that don't come from your social, socioeconomic demographic. Have them into your home. And so what you're doing is you're getting everyone on mission together. If everyone is on mission together, it's harder for us to disagree and argue with one another. So we're cultivating a gospel and mission mindset. And then the last thing is that I would say is um, and and go ahead and finish unpacking that.
Speaker 1:Romans 12 passage.
Speaker 1:Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud. Associate with a humble Um. Don't repay anyone evil for evil. Give careful thought to do what is honorable in everyone's eyes, as far as it is possible and depends on you. Live at peace with everyone, not avenge yourself. Leave room for god's wrath. Vengeance belongs to me. I will replace his lord. So then it goes into. If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him something to drink, and so doing, you'll be heaping fiery coals on his head.
Speaker 1:So all romans 12, chapter 9, verse, verse 21, that is the, the blueprint, the roadmap, that is how we, that is what we strive towards in our home. So so, as far as, how do we teach and instruct and and what is the mission statement? It's Romans 12, 9 through 21. We try to live that out, we try to cultivate that and we try to be very intentional. And so intentionality is critical. It's's key um in cultivating um, those relationships within the home.
Speaker 1:And we just say this little was a little was in a home recently where two, two siblings were younger kids. She was in a home of a younger mom. She came home and we were talking and she said these two kids are screaming and yelling at each other and one of them's's, you know, got to be protected from the other one at all times, so so that this kid doesn't get killed. And and the mom said something like I don't remember now exactly how this went down, but the mom said something like um, I've never seen siblings that didn't fight and little, little little was like oh no, no, that's not true. There are disagreements, there's conflict, but you can cultivate love toward one another, cooperation, kindness and honor. Outdo one another and show an honor.
Speaker 1:Romans 12, 10,. Love one another with, with the affection of brothers and sisters, and outdo one another and showing honor. You can do it, you can strive towards it, you can teach it, you can create it and cultivate it, but you got to work at it and there's no days off. There are literally no days off, so you work to create that. Now I have just gone for 45 minutes and I hope this is beneficial for some folks.
Speaker 1:I did not even get into the older, the older, um, like, like transitioning into adulthood, like I said I would. We will come back with another episode, but let me just finish, and you, if you're still with me, then maybe you you're interested in hearing this. What if you've got teenage kids and you didn't implement these things at a young age? Here's what I would say. Let's say you've got a 17 year old daughter and a 15 year old son, or you know, and a 13 year old son, or you've got a 20 year old, college age daughter and you've got a 17 or 18 year old son, still at home. He's a senior in high school and you've got a daughter who's a 10th grader, ninth grader, whatever. So you know, you're kind of in that we're done with all of the early child development. Here's what I would say Fight to back off of the materialism and the creature comforts of being and we're the most comfortable people.
Speaker 1:We want comfort, we want a comfortable house and a nice chair and, you know, a big screen TV and good meals and like, back off the creature comforts a little bit. Do some things that are uncomfortable, but not just physical. Anybody can take a cold plunge. That's not what I'm talking about. That's stupid. Anybody can get in cold water. I'm not talking about get uncomfortable like that. I'm talking about find a family that you're going to invite into your home. Go, take your family and your teenage kids and go do some work projects for some flood victims that are not going to be able to pay you or give you appreciation, and don't post it. Don't freaking post it on social media. That's some bull crap. Don't go do some work project and put it on your stinking Instagram page some work project and put it on your stinking Instagram page. Teach your kids to minister to and love and serve the least of these, with nothing in return, and you can do that if they're already 17, 18 years old. Start to live that out and do a family vacation.
Speaker 1:I think one of the most life-changing experiences for our kids was that every year when they were our three older ones, every year when they were growing up, every single year, every single year, our family vacation was a trip to an orphanage in central america with a team from snowbird and our church, and that was what we did. We spent a week in december at christmas, every year, just before christmas an orphanage and we served and we ministered and we helped and exposed them to man. If you as a family, if your kid's 18 years old and every year they've gone to the beach, they've gone to the beach for a week, but they've never been to an orphanage, they've never been to a soup kitchen. You've never fostered or helped. You don't have to foster. Bring a kid into your family Not everybody's going to be called to do that but you've not worked with a foster family to support them and prepare meals for them One of the most loving things that we experienced as a family is there's a network of families.
Speaker 1:We have a foster support ministry at our church. Last night we got home at seven 30 from ball games and there was a hot meal waiting on our table from a family the Schwartings in our church who they don't foster, they don't adopt, they haven't adopted. They have three small children. They have three boys that are like ages, I want to say like six to two or five to one or something like that. I'm probably off on the ages, but they're young, four to infant. You know three boys. No, they may eventually adopt or foster or whatever. I don't know. It doesn't matter if they do or don't. They're ministering to us by supporting us and you could, as a family you've got older kids Look at a younger family that needs help and start to invest in them. Teach your kids to be a part of something where they're ministering to others and prepare them to go into the world, not just to make money and be comfortable, but to impact the world with the love of Jesus. Yeah, that's some thoughts I've got from that email.
Speaker 1:Thank you, jordan, for sending this email. I hope that's helpful. Now what we're going to do is we will get into another episode coming up I don't know if it'll be a part two immediately following this, but I'm gonna do an episode on on discipline and we're going to align discipline in the home with the discipline of the Lord. How does God discipline his sons and daughters? And I hope that'll be beneficial. But anyway, thank you for sending that, jordan. Send us a, please email me your information and we're going to send you a sweet SWO packet. Jb will get that out to you and hopefully it'll be there before Christmas and you can enjoy it, and I hope that you have a Merry Christmas. Grateful again for your support and for listening and for your kind words and for the email. What cool timing.
Speaker 1:I was going to go more in the direction of discipline. I like the way this went. Maybe it was helpful and beneficial. It was just a kind of a look behind the doors of our home. One thing that I'll close with is this If you're a dad or a mom, be willing to admit when you're wrong and be willing to apologize for being wrong. Confess when you've done wrong, you didn't lead well, you made a mistake and own up to it. I think that can be very helpful and that transparency and vulnerability and humility. So love and appreciate all of you. Hopefully this has been official and we'll follow up real soon with that next episode on discipline. Until the end, god bless. You have an awesome week, enjoy this season, remember what it's for. We're celebrating Jesus and the fact that he came into the world to give us salvation. I'm so grateful for that. You are loved and we'll see you next time thanks for listening to no Sanity Required.
Speaker 2:Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a rating. It really helps. Visit us at SWOutfitterscom to see all of our programming and resources, and we'll see you next week on no Sanity Required.
