527: 10 Controversial Family Rules In Our Home

Elisha Voetberg (0:00)

Okay, we're going to jump in to 10 controversial hard no's in our home when it comes to parenting. And I'm going to fire a thing, I'm going to start things off here. Katie, you started, I think, last episode off, so I want to start this one off. No special labels for our children, okay? So we don't put them in boxes. And this is because of, this is my desire, and Katie honors it. But here's the deal, we don't do this perfectly, okay? I think every parent falls short in, you know, executing 100% on some of these like hard nose that you establish for your home. But what I mean by no labels for our children is we don't label our children things like, oh, they're shy, or they're really into books, or that's our child that just is all about sports, or they're our outdoor kiddo, and they're our inside kiddo, or they're daddy's little girl, they're mama's boy, and so on and so forth. We will say things that are general about Voetbergs, like, Voetbergs are hard workers, Voetbergs take initiative, Voetbergs are problem solvers, Voetbergs do hard things. And so we want those to be labels that our children can own and identify with. But I think that there is more lost when you start labeling children young in life and saying, oh, they're our athletic one, or they're our extrovert, they're our introvert, they're our social butterfly, they're, you know, and you can go on and on and on with different labels because I think you're putting that child in a box that can hinder growth, but then you're also excluding the other children and you're saying, oh, well, that's not what I do. I'm not the social one. And here's the deal, okay?

The reason I don't think it's fair is because while that might be, why it might be true in your home that you've got a child that is, has, you know, he's more prone to going outdoors, or you have another child that's more prone to opening a book and being the bookworm. All those things can be true things. That might not be true or what's needed for the rest of their life. And so that, like, it doesn't matter really what's going on in your home. You need to be able to equip your child with the confidence that regardless of what's thrown at them in life, they can adapt and learn that skill in their own home, in a company, in ministry. And if they're taught at a young age, like, well, you don't really do outdoors things, or you don't work with your hands, or you're, you know, you love working on cars, you don't.

The reality is, they're probably going to come upon something in their life where they need to do that. And if they've got that voice in the back of their head, I don't think it's helpful.

Katie Voetberg (2:28)

Yes, that is so good, Elisha. We don't want our kids' identity to be fixed by something that we said as a parent. And so affirming something like, wow, you are such a good reader, or it makes me so happy to see you reading books, or I love seeing you outdoors and working with your hands. You're so good at that. You're like your daddy or something like that.

So affirming these traits that we see in our kids that are strengths for them is wonderful, but we don't want to tell them that is who they are. Because like you said, that identity might not serve them five years from now. Maybe they need to be the guy in order to get the job or in order to get into the school, in order to get in the program they want or whatever, that needs to become the book smart guy. And that's happening at 18 or 21 or 31 And all of a sudden they need to become something that they weren't before. And we don't want to just have them put in those boxes.

Elisha Voetberg (3:19)

Yeah, and I think we see this a lot. I know we're still probably guilty of doing this. It's something that we aim to do. But being somebody that's taught music lessons for the last, I guess, like 25 years now, which is crazy, or I guess 22 years.

This happens a lot in families where, you know, a family with multiple children, this has happened again since, since the time I started teaching lessons, is they bring their kiddos in, they've got three kids. They say, well, they're our musical one. And I'm like, they're seven, the other kid's nine.

Like you're, and you're already deciding that they're the musical one and the other one's the athletic one. I'm like, you have no clue, right? Like there's, that's the other reason it hinders growth. I don't think it, you do it to try to, I think parents sometimes do it to encourage growth, but I think it actually hinders growth. And, and this happens a lot. You know, there's that, that book Outliers that Malcolm Gladwell wrote a while back. And I think it's really insightful as to how we parents, because a child will have a proclivity in a certain area. And so we put all of our time and energy into that. And so they do excel in that particular thing, but it has less to do, less to do, less to do with whether or not they're naturally gifted and more it's like how quickly did they adapt to it early on? Like were they, because there's so many musicians, so many kids that I've taught, okay, where one sibling was quicker in the first, say, six months of learning than the other sibling. And then after a year, two years, three years, sometimes four years, the other sibling is so beyond them. And I'm just saying that like, because of the rate of learning, that everybody, it's different for everybody. And the same goes with athletics, right? Where the kid in seventh, that seven might seem so athletic and can jump, and you're like, this is so great. But then the sibling, they're just developing at a little different rate.