Introduction to Teaching Values
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 93 of Outnumber the Podcast. We are very excited about today's topic, which is raising your own children to have values without condemning others whose values aren't the same as yours. This is kind of a tricky, sticky topic and we have divided it up into three different segments so that we can try to have it make sense to you and help you when you are teaching your own children to have values.
00:00:35
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Outnumber the Podcast. I'm Bonnie. And I'm Audrey. We're experienced moms to a combined total of 18 children. Our mission is to help overwhelmed parents find peace in parenting and humor in the chaos. Come join us as we attempt uninterrupted conversation about parenting with joy and intention.
Episode Milestone and Listener Engagement
00:00:59
Speaker
All right, and we're back with episode 93 for you on teaching values without condemnation. And we are so ready to dive into this topic because it's one we've both been thinking about for a long time. But first, Bonnie has something for you.
00:01:16
Speaker
Yeah, we have a really exciting anniversary coming up. Our 100th episode is coming up really quickly towards the end of this year, and we need you guys' help to pull it off. So we want to share lots and lots of tips for finding joy in the chaos of motherhood. And so we need as many suggestions from you all as we can get. So if you have a suggestion for how you have been able to find joy, even when there's vomit to clean up and messes,
00:01:44
Speaker
to take care of, we would love to hear it. Please email us at outnumberedthepodcastatgmail.com and hopefully we'll get to read yours on air. Yes. Awesome. And there also may be, may or may not be a giveaway connected with this hundredth episode. We've got some really cool stuff going on happening. So yes, we're so excited. I can't believe we're here. So fun. I know a hundred episodes. Can you believe it? Crazy.
Condemning vs. Judging
00:02:10
Speaker
All right, so this episode, 93, we are gonna split this episode into three parts. And we're calling these condemning versus judging, pity, empathy, and compassion, and control versus influence. So we've kind of condensed our thoughts on how to teach your kids values without condemning others into these three significant areas.
00:02:35
Speaker
Yeah, and these are kind of big topics, so hopefully we can break them down and make them seem pretty simple. But the reason we came up with this topic was because teaching your children requires some backbone, right? It requires knowing what you believe in and want to stand up for and teaching your children the same. And sometimes that doesn't go off really well with people outside of your home who believe differently.
00:02:57
Speaker
So we wanna try to focus on teaching our children the values that we hold the most dear without being cruel to other people, right? That's something that I think all mothers get to at some point in their mothering career. In each of these, we will clarify where we're coming from on these topics and then give a few examples on how to use them to teach your kids values without condemnation.
00:03:22
Speaker
Yes, sometimes or often people do things and our kids see them do it. And it's things or choices that we don't want our kids to do or think or make in the future. And they ask us, why does so-and-so do these things that they're not allowed to do? And so we're hoping that our explanations or our thoughts or listening to this episode will try to help you have the answers that you need to give back to your kids.
00:03:51
Speaker
Right. And I have noticed that I personally feel like this is a really awkward spot to be in as a parent, especially when the questions come at you in a public forum. Right. So I believe I can't remember what episode it was, but we shared a humor segment where a reader said that her daughter noticed someone who had a bunch of tattoos and asked why he had drawn all over himself.
00:04:12
Speaker
So, you know, out of the mouths of babes, they say wacky things, right? But when it comes directly in conflict with something that you've taught your kid not to do, like drawing themselves, then it can get a little awkward. You don't want to stand there in front of this man who has tattoos and say, that's naughty. We're not going to do that. Right? So I feel like sometimes we need to wrap our own heads around how we feel about a topic before we choose to teach our children about it.
00:04:36
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. And being prepared is always, well, let me say it this way, being unprepared is always a recipe for disaster. So we're going to try to help prepare you. Right.
Teaching Through Judgment
00:04:48
Speaker
OK, so let's start with the difference between condemning versus judging. So we're going to define these things as condemning is to pronounce somebody guilty and sentence them to punishment.
00:05:03
Speaker
that's condemnation, condemning. Judging is to form an opinion or an estimate about something.
00:05:12
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm so glad that you differentiated between those because originally we had kind of talked about this episode and talked about calling it teaching your kids values without judging. And then Audrey was like, well, actually, judging is a good thing, right? If you were to judge right versus wrong, then you'd never have anything to teach your children. You obviously have some values when you want to teach your children, whether they're popular or not is a different subject.
00:05:36
Speaker
What we want is to teach our children to judge so that they can make correct choices for themselves according to their own value system, but we do not have the authority or the right to condemn other people, right? To say, you're a bad person or you're guilty of this or you deserve this punishment, right? In other words, unless we're actually serving jury time, we don't have any power to make decisions about the consequences for other people unless they're our children, we're trying to teach them these value sets.
00:06:04
Speaker
Right, exactly. Condemnation is out of our power. Even if we decide to say to somebody something that's very judgmental, they're still in control of what happens to their future. If they take what we say to heart or not, should we put ourselves in that situation? But still, we can't condemn somebody.
00:06:32
Speaker
We're just not in that we're not in that seat.
00:06:35
Speaker
But we do have the responsibility to determine for ourselves what is right and wrong and teach that to our children.
Real-World Consequences at Home
00:06:43
Speaker
Like we're going to, I believe, and I know Bonnie, you believe the same. We are going to answer for what we taught our children. Like we have responsibility for that. Even if you don't believe in a higher power and a future judgment day beyond this life. If you don't teach your children that it's wrong to disobey laws, there is going to be consequences for that.
00:07:04
Speaker
in this life. So you think about the laws of the land, speed limit. So try 55 around this curve. That's a law. Well, okay, so you disobey that law and you might make it around the curve at 75. But if you keep going faster, the laws of nature are going to work against you going 90 degrees around that corner.
00:07:29
Speaker
There is going to be consequences. And just showing this silly little illustration to show you that we do have a responsibility to determine for ourselves and then teach it to our kids what our values, our family values are for right and wrong.
00:07:43
Speaker
Right, exactly. And I think we all probably know examples of people who have not been taught how consequences work as children, right? There's not usually a natural consequence for one kid hitting another one, right? Except for maybe that one will hit him back. But the point is, what we want to do is mimic those consequences, the real world consequences within our own home so that they are prepared for that. What happens if you're an adult and you go out and deck another adult? You'll probably get arrested, right?
00:08:11
Speaker
So we need to teach them early on, oh, that's not appropriate behavior. And there needs to be a consequence that we get to come up with as a parent in order for them to understand those. So yes, such, such important part of parenting, but it's a tricky part for sure, because everyone has different values.
Examples of Condemnation and Judgment
00:08:26
Speaker
Okay, so we're gonna give you just a couple of examples of how we see the difference between condemnation and judgment. So an example of a condemnation, sometimes a little bit tricky to see this outside of the person to person realm. But one thing I was thinking about is the pecking order in chickens, right? So we have chickens, this is kind of random, but bear with me here.
00:08:48
Speaker
We have chickens and we have learned that if one of them gets hurt or shows some sort of weakness that oftentimes the other ones will turn on it and it's just kind of a way to keep I believe it's just a way to keep like illness or like weaker animals from Kind of bringing everybody down in the in the no, it's not called a pack. What's it called?
00:09:09
Speaker
Chicken flock. Chicken flock. And so sometimes they will peck it even to death and eliminate that kind of weak link from their flock. And that sounds kind of horrifying as a person, but that's nature's law. And there are reasons that they have those laws. They're condemning this chicken as too weak to survive or not healthy to be around everyone else. So they're going to take care of it and eliminate it. Right. Right. That's a super good example for the way that condemnation happens, like outside of people. It just does. Chickens are brutal.
00:09:39
Speaker
It's freaky. So an example of judging, like that doesn't involve people. So you might think, well, I don't judge, but okay. So if you touch the hot stove, that shows that you have not used a judgment evaluation or if you, what you use judgment every morning, when you turn on the shower and you stick your hand in before you stick your whole body in, you are judging to see if that is hot or cold. That is an example of,
00:10:08
Speaker
judgment that, is this right for me, this shower, is this shower too hot or too cold for me? That by sticking your hand in. So that's an example of what judging is outside of people.
00:10:19
Speaker
And we make a million in one of these seemingly innocent examples of judging all day long. We're like, is the light too yellow to go through? Am I running too late to stop by the store on the way to pick up my kid? All these minute little decisions that we make day in, we're making judgment calls to see if we can pull something off safely and appropriately. So that happens all day long.
00:10:45
Speaker
So moving back to condemnation again, so let's talk about an example of condemning an actual person. So this happens in the court system. We just brought up this example, right? Someone is arrested for a violent crime and they are brought before a judge and a jury and they have counsel and the prosecution has counsel and this whole ordeal goes through until the jury decides, usually a combination jury and judge decide whether or not this person is guilty and whether he should be condemned
00:11:15
Speaker
to punish according to the law. And that's kind of a severe example, but that's how our court system works is by hopefully correctly condemning those who deserve the consequences to stay, to keep our society safe.
00:11:31
Speaker
Right, right, and that's where, that's such a good example because that's where we don't, like looking at it that way, we realize that when our kids bring to us a scenario and they say, hey, so and so, you know, got a cell phone and they were looking at this or that on it, we don't have the authority to say, oh my goodness, that person is so bad, they are going to go to the hot place for that. Like that would be condemnation because we're not sitting in the driver's seat and we don't have any power
00:12:00
Speaker
to put somebody in their one eternal destination or another. So like we can just refrain from going there. But like an example of judgment. So say our kids said, you know, my friends have decided to do this whatever teenage dangerous behavior.
00:12:17
Speaker
And like a way to respond to that using judgment and teaching your kids judgment without using condemnation is say, you know what so and so did or with that group of kids, what they did, that's going to hurt them and possibly others. But we don't do that in our house.
00:12:35
Speaker
And that's that's good. You say that you have made the judgment that that person is probably going to get hurt doing that. But that's their choice. They made it. But our choice is that we don't do that. Like our family doesn't do that. And that's our judgment.
00:12:49
Speaker
Right. It is our freedom to teach our kids right from wrong and actually our responsibility to teach our kids right from wrong, but without venturing into that condemnation territory. And I'm sure all of us have seen examples of each end of the spectrum. I've seen examples of people who do nothing but condemn other people according to their own set of values, right? And I've seen people who don't even do any sort of judgment and their kids get into all sorts of trouble because they don't want to ruffle any feathers, right?
00:13:15
Speaker
And I think we all know that there's some sort of happy medium right there in the middle where we teach them our set of values and then teach them how to be kind and empathetic to those who choose not the same way as us.
00:13:28
Speaker
Yes, that is true. And I love what you said about just having the liberty from having to judge, having to condemn or be in that place of, you know, the judgment seat or just not being too afraid to say anything about anybody. It's like you just have liberty to set the values for your own family and go with it.
00:13:47
Speaker
Yeah, that's your right, for sure. And that's a perfect segue into our next area that we're gonna talk about, pity, empathy, and compassion. Like what is the difference between these three and which ones are useful tools for us to use when teaching our kids values?
Pity, Empathy, and Compassion
00:14:01
Speaker
So pity is looking at somebody's misfortune and feeling bad about it, like personally bad. Like pity often says, oh my goodness, that's so hard. I am so glad that's not me. Like there's a little tiny element of condemnation
00:14:15
Speaker
in pity when you pity someone or something. Empathy is looking at someone's misfortune and feeling what another person is feeling. So like putting yourself in their shoes and entering into that actual feeling. And then compassion is pity or empathy that takes action.
00:14:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. You know, I've tried to do a little bit of study on empathy recently. I've been really curious about it and have thought about how it can help us. And generally, when you think of empathy, you think of putting yourself in someone else's shoes. Like, how would I feel if I were in that scenario?
00:14:57
Speaker
But I also think it's important to realize that that is a very exhausting place to be, right? You literally can't feel everyone's pain that you know and love. It's really hard. In fact, I kind of feel this way sometimes when I'm like making a prayer list or thinking about all the hard, heavy things that are happening to people I love. It's really hard. It can be emotionally tiring. Just a quick example, I knew a woman, didn't know her personally. She was a friend of a friend, but she lost a toddler.
00:15:26
Speaker
to a drowning a while ago. And for some reason that news hit me really, really hard. You know, I had a toddler about the same age, we have a pool, et cetera, and I could not get her out of my head. And I felt more empathy for that woman than I felt for just about anyone in a long, long time. And it was hard. It was really, it was not something that I want to go through regularly. You know, I was in tears all the time just thinking about what this woman and her family were going through.
00:15:54
Speaker
And yet I was grateful for the example or for the opportunity to feel a little bit of that because I think that's what makes us human, right? Is that we can feel what other people are feeling. But also it's important to realize that we can still be compassionate without always feeling every bit of pain and suffering that somebody else is going through. Thank goodness.
00:16:13
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I love about compassion is that, um, empathy to me often feels helpless. Like when I feel what another person is feeling, it feels so negative and helpless. And like it doesn't, I mean, sometimes yes, we need to, we need to be there.
00:16:30
Speaker
But I don't know. Like I have come to a place where I don't let myself be drained of all my energy by feeling what other people are feeling because I have to have strength and energy left to
00:16:44
Speaker
Um, move into the compassion situation role where I can, um, have, have compassion on, on someone else by doing something like maybe it's because, you know, I'm a type A doer, but by moving out of the empathy role and into the compassion role, maybe I can cook a dinner for somebody who's struggling, or maybe I can send flowers to somebody who is grieving.
00:17:09
Speaker
maybe I can offer to babysit for an hour, or maybe I can anonymously send some money, or all these other things that can help me move into a role where I'm in a more positive space because I'm doing something. And that's what I love about compassion. We can explain how to have compassion on others. I love to use an example from the Bible of Jesus. There's a verse that talks about Jesus, and it says,
00:17:39
Speaker
a bruised reed shall he not break and a smoking flax shall he not quench. So you look at a candle, right? And it's almost out and it's still smoking. And it would be so easy just to reach over and just snuff it out with your fingers like, okay, boom, now we're done. But like, that wasn't the way that he was. He did not, you know,
00:18:03
Speaker
even though he could have been in the place of condemnation or in the judgments. He didn't do that. He had compassion. And as long as there's life, there's hope was the way that he went about it and then gave his life.
00:18:19
Speaker
You know, this isn't a religious podcast, but it's such a beautiful example of being in the space of compassion instead of in the place of empathy, which just feels so helpless to me. So yes, I love compassion that it's taking action to help others who are less fortunate.
00:18:37
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. And I love that you shared that a little bit of empathy can move you into that compassion space, right? And I really think that's what life is all about. Life was designed to not be perfect, that there's going to be suffering, there's going to be pain, there's going to be people making mistakes. Right now, I'm seeing a couple of examples of loved ones making serious mistakes. And part of me,
00:19:01
Speaker
is frustrated because of it. Part of me is horribly sad because of it, because I see that it's bringing them and the people they love suffering. But it really does help me feel compassion for this person instead of just anger, which is sometimes the first thing you think, like, why are you being so dumb? Why are you making these choices going to make you unhappy? But instead to think, and I think lots of examples in scripture about that too, about
00:19:26
Speaker
just being compassionate and loving to people who even choose to make decisions that are going to bring them suffering. You just still can love. Moving into our third area that we're going to talk about is control versus influence.
Control vs. Influence in Family Life
00:19:47
Speaker
My husband explains this to me really well a long time ago that we have a sphere of control
00:19:56
Speaker
And that basically includes our immediate family. And then we have a sphere of influence, which is wider, people we come in contact with and people that you see us or observe us. And then there's like the biggest fear is like the rest of the world, people we never come into contact with or never listen to our podcast. They're really missing out.
00:20:19
Speaker
So that's like three spheres. The closest, tightest one is right around us, like me, my husband, and our nine children. That's like my sphere of control. And then sphere of influence is the next circle out, people that we come in contact with and maybe will listen to us or we can say something to that will be an influence.
00:20:39
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. And I think that's why maybe teenagers and young adults are so hard for parents sometimes because they're gradually moving out of that sphere of control into the sphere of influence, right? All of a sudden, you can't control what they do or have access to. And that's painful, but it's the natural order of things, you know?
00:20:57
Speaker
All right, so in talking about this, there's this concept of manuals, having
Unmet Expectations and Behavior Manuals
00:21:02
Speaker
manuals. And we're going to refer to this Life Coach School episode on manuals. It's episode 11, way back there. But I've been going back and listening to some of their early episodes to get some of these ideas. So the idea of having a manual for someone else is that I have this unwritten
00:21:19
Speaker
manual, list of rules for how I think you need to behave. Let's say you're outside of my sphere of control, you're in my sphere of influence, and I have this manual for how I think you should behave, and then I get frustrated and upset at you when you don't behave that way, but I've never showed you the manual on how you're supposed to behave.
00:21:40
Speaker
So oftentimes we have manuals for other people in our lives and that we run into that we really have no control over. And what ends up happening is we run around spending all our time trying to control other people according to our manuals. And then we just end up, what ultimately ends up happening is we end up really frustrated ourselves because other people outside of our sphere of control are not behaving according to our manuals.
00:22:08
Speaker
And we just can't control them. So we end up the frustrated person. And that's something interesting to think about. I encourage all of you to go listen to episode 11 of Life Coach School Podcast because it'll really help you understand this concept and be able to let go of trying to control other people who are outside of your sphere of control.
00:22:32
Speaker
Yeah. And really, if we want to get real specific about those fears, in reality, the sphere of control really just has us in it. True. We can control a lot of the media that comes into our house. We can control some of the friends, et cetera. But we really can't control anybody else's behavior. And even within our immediate family, that's maddening because we're like,
00:22:52
Speaker
this is how we're supposed to live, et cetera, and then they don't do what we want them to do. But yeah, you know, what I found recently is that so many of us have these manuals for people because they're kind of like us, like, well, that person is the same gender as me, so they've got to believe this. They're the same religion as me, so they've got to believe like this or act like this. They're the same political persuasion as me, right? And so we just naturally put our own beliefs and expectations on other people because we're similar in one way or another.
00:23:22
Speaker
And that just ends up in frustration. We get frustrated when we come up against unrealistic or unmet expectations, right? And so once again, we just got to remind everybody of our unofficial motto to lower your expectations, right? Or to just make them a little bit more realistic, like why am I putting my own values and my own manual onto somebody else when I really don't know anything about the inner workings of their mind or why they're behaving that way.
00:23:53
Speaker
Yes, that is so true. So let's move out to our sphere of influence. We should try to influence people in our sphere of influence, not by negative and condemning thoughts and words.
00:24:06
Speaker
but through a positive example and a joyful spirit about what we do. Like if we think raising kids is having a large family and raising kids is the thing to do, which obviously Bonnie and I do, but then we spend our entire life griping about it and complaining and being drugged down and having such a bad negative attitude about it. How are we gonna influence anybody to have a large family?
00:24:38
Speaker
This is not going to happen. Yeah, for sure. And I get that this is tricky because I've had this conversation with another friend of a large family multiple times that sometimes you just need to vent to a friend, right? Sometimes you just need to be upset about something. But my friend and I were talking about how we can't ever complain to anybody about having a lot of kids because they just look at us crazy like, well, you shouldn't have had so many kids.
00:25:03
Speaker
Yeah, so much of what we believe can be communicated to others simply through our attitudes, right? If we're constantly complaining about hauling all our kids to church or getting them ready or, you know, trying to teach them
00:25:17
Speaker
to read scriptures or whatever else, then people are probably gonna go, well, stop doing
Influencing Through Positive Examples
00:25:22
Speaker
it. Well, you're not making it sound very appealing or kind of a thing. And there's so much good we can put out into the world simply by having a positive, joyful attitude about what we have chosen to believe and how we've chosen to live.
00:25:33
Speaker
I really believe that our kids will largely adopt their own viewpoints about the world and about just life in general from us. And so it's essential that we show them how to accept people, how to show compassion for them, and how to accept the things that we can't control.
00:25:52
Speaker
And then of course to take action whenever we can control something like voting for a candidate that you really believe in or changing policy, et cetera. But there's so much about the world that we can't change and to just show love and compassion for everyone. Such a powerful thought.
00:26:09
Speaker
Yes, I too thought of some examples from a Christian world. If you think you're being a good Christian by being downtrodden and self-denial in constant self-denial mode, is anybody really going to want to emulate that?
00:26:28
Speaker
Yeah, I believe that we are responsible for teaching our kids what we believe. Like, I don't know, maybe it was a generational thing. But if you just say, you know, I just want to be at a good sample and live what I believe and not try to force my kids to do anything.
00:26:45
Speaker
Like, I think we're responsible for teaching them. Like, we're going to have to answer, well, why didn't you teach your kids the things that you believe? And like, sometimes they honestly don't know how to develop their own values without being condemning until we teach it to them. They don't know the difference between pity, empathy, and compassion until we help teach that to them. Those are pretty mature topics that I'm still coming to understand.
00:27:14
Speaker
much less, you know, expecting my kids to be able to develop their own values without condemning others. And so we have actually, I believe it's a privilege to guide them through these thoughts and ideas. Like you were talking about, you know, talking to people, you know, we're almost up to voting the election.
00:27:34
Speaker
And we can tell other people what we believe or why we're voting the way we're voting, but we can't really influence other people. But our kids, we can guide them through the way what we believe and why we believe it. And oftentimes kids come to the same beliefs that their parents have because they've seen them lived and loved so well. And that's the kind of parent I want to be.
00:28:00
Speaker
Yeah, you know I along those lines I wanted to mention that Usually by the time we have a kid mature enough to talk about Important more serious topics. We're a little bit set in our own ways. We're in our 40s. Maybe your 50s And I've noticed that with a teenager especially one who has a personality that's very right versus wrong, you know I have to really be cautious in how I teach him some of these things because sometimes he picks up on my
00:28:27
Speaker
on my gist and runs with it with like zero compassion for the other side, right? This is the right way to think and he just goes for it. And I've had to back off a little bit and say, you know, it doesn't mean anyone who doesn't do this is bad. It doesn't mean anyone who thinks a different way there's something wrong with them. Let's just stop for a minute and think about the other side, right?
00:28:47
Speaker
And that's been kind of hard for me because, you know, like I say, I'm a little bit set in my ways. I have more life experience than he does. And so I've chosen to believe a certain way because of that. But I want to give him the freedom to look around and decide, is that the way I want to believe and to treat people? And I hope that the way I'm treating people is a good example, right?
00:29:08
Speaker
I'm showing love and compassion for both sides, whether they agree with me or not. But I just wanted to mention that because it's kind of been alarming, like, whoa, you just picked up on that. What kind of crazy with it? Let's not forget that people on both sides are people.
00:29:22
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I wanted to mention that like at the ages before they really get to making their own decisions, that when we teach them these things, you know, how to judge things right and wrong without being condemning, that's like black and white is safe for kids. Whereas gray area where everything's okay and nothing's right and nothing's wrong, that is so scary for kids. And it's very safe for them
00:29:48
Speaker
before they get to their own age of being able to decide these things, it's very safe and comfortable for them to have black and white. This is what we believe and why we believe it. And that's good enough because sometimes, you know, before they get to the age where they're seeking out their own truth, if you don't give them stability of sharing your values and judgments with them, then it's going to, you're going to see some of that later in life where they're going to, they're kind of going to be floundering because of it.
00:30:16
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. All right. So that is all that we have for you today. We just are going to have that link to the life coach school episode on manuals in the show notes. And we want to again, remind you guys, please send us an email outnumbered the podcast at gmail.com with your ways that you're finding joy in the chaos of motherhood and help us out on that hundredth episode.
00:30:40
Speaker
Thanks so much for tuning in. Did you know you can help the podcast in several ways? First up, we're on Patreon, and there are three different levels to support us there. Just head to patreon.com slash outnumbered. Next up, if you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a written review on iTunes. It helps other parents find the podcast and receive the help you're enjoying. And finally, you can follow us on Instagram at outnumbered the podcast. We're always having fun over there too.
00:31:06
Speaker
As usual, if you have any questions or ideas for future episodes, you can reach us at outnumberthepodcastatgmail.com. Thanks for all your support. We'll talk to you next week.