Do you have a vision for what you want your family life to be like?  Do you have a vision for what you want your child to be like? We can just do parenting off the cuff or we can ask these important questions.  Why are you parenting – or what are you parenting towards?  I’m not talking about your kids career choices, or their personality but rather the values that they build their life on – do you know what you want that aspect to look like?  Often parents say – I want my child to be honest, a hard worker, kind to people, I want them to look after the environment, to manage their money well, to be happy in their own skin.  Each one of those things reflects something we (as a parent) hold as important and when we can articulate them as our goal or vision we can then intentionally teach those things to our kids and help them grow in those areas.  But how do we do that in our busy life?  I’ve got three ways I want to share with you today.

Practical Ways To Embed Family Values In Everyday Life

Our family culture is the unique expression of our family’s values, beliefs, traditions and consistent behaviours.  

A few things that were a part of our family culture were – hospitality, living life with our church family, board games, conversations, questioning things, Sunday family breakfast.  These were some of the things we did that reflected the core values that Peter and I held as important – and they were so consistent in our life that we were known for them.

Can you define your family culture?  What are the beliefs, values, traditions, habits that define you being your family?

My family growing up – I think some of our family culture was – family time, long road trips, camping, serving Jesus.  My parent’s family verse was:  As for me and my house we will serve the Lord.  That set our family culture.

As we find ways to live out our beliefs and values we will create a culture whether we know it or not.  Parents who value relationships will create a culture where you hang out together, parents who value stories will create a family culture of reading, or maybe watching movies, always enjoying the story, parents who value the environment and the protection of that will create a family lifestyle of joining clean up days, and recycling, and sustainability shopping.

Family values are the compass that guides all the things that we do as a family; they are the deeply held beliefs, virtues, and principles, that influence our decisions, shape our behaviors, and ultimately create our family culture. 

In an earlier episode of the Heart-Focused Parenting Podcast, I talked about creating a family vision statement, which is just a tool to help us articulate the core beliefs and values that will guide your life as a family. 

I will link that in the Podcast Notes, or on the Blog post for this episode.  There is a Heart Booster available for you to sign up for – it is the Family Vision Starter Kit which outlines the process you can go through to come up with a family vision statement and your core values.  

Part of our family vision statement lists 5 virtues: Peace, Wisdom, Creativity, Order and Integrity.  I share the rest of our vision statement in that episode so have a listen there if you are interested in clarifying your values. 

Even without going through that process, I am sure you know some core values that are important to you.  Maybe family relationships, education, church, productivity, health, wisdom.

So these values are big picture stuff – how do we teach our kids to have what it takes to get to these values in their life?  In my mind it comes down to two things – we teach our kids WHAT is right and HOW to do right.  When they do what is right – they will be growing towards these things that you’ve listed as important.

You have probably heard me say it before that our society says that our emotions set the parameters of what is right.  If I feel this – then this is true.  If I feel this then that becomes the value or boundary that I live my life by.  And we are told to teach our children to direct their choices, and their behaviour based on what they feel.  And it might be good feelings – not all feelings are bad. But that doesn’t line up with God’s word.  For me – God’s word, tells us what is good and true, not my feelings.  It is God’s word sets our moral parameters and family values.  

So how do we teach our kids all the things we want them to learn when our life is so busy already?  Well, I have 3 things that you can do on the fly – on the run – in the car – around a meal – waiting in a line somewhere. 

Now I do have one caveat – the one thing that can’t be done on the fly is having a deep understanding of what is important to you, and why it is important and how that looks in your life and your kids’ life – both individually and corporately as a family.  There are no shortcuts – you as a parent must understand what you believe and how those beliefs look in action.  You also must know how you are going to communicate that to your kids.  This is the heart-work of parenting. You can’t teach your children beliefs, values, character, wise choices when you haven’t processed what is right and why it is right for yourself.  

But that isn’t what we are here to talk about today.  Today I want to share 3 tips that will help you teach your kids what is right and how to do right even in your busy days. They are:

• Talk about your values
• Have visual reminders
• Celebrate success

1-Talk about your Family Values

My parents didn’t just have a poster on the wall that reminded us of their family verse – they talked about it.  They referenced it when they were talking about decisions or struggles – it gave our family purpose and helped us as kids to understand that purpose or understand why things were important to mum and dad.

Talking about our values – our beliefs and the character traits we want for our kids – is one of the simplest yet most impactful ways to teach your family values and build your family culture.  

We have four different ways we talk to our kids:  

• We give instructions
• Corrections
• Conversations
• Praise

And we can weave our family values – our beliefs and core virtues –  into each and every time that we talk to our kids.

When you give instruction, or correction, or praise you can use words of character (or virtues/values – all much the same in meaning) to help your child understand why the action you are talking about is so important.  

For example – I would say – Hey Kids – it is time to pack away our toys now and get ready for family time.  Remember you need to put each toy in the right box because that is being orderly.  

In this instruction I have reinforced that family time is happening and we need to get ready for it – and that there is a right way to put the toys away – and I gave the reason why it is important – I reminded them of the virtue of orderliness or being orderly.  This of course only works if you have already taught the value of orderliness and that word is a part of your family vocab.  But that is for another podcast episode – but send me an email if you have any specific questions about doing that, about using the language of character.

When we have conversations about everyday life things then we can weave in our family values – when we are talking about a person’s choices in a movie or story, when we see the news, when we make family or business decisions, when we have conflict in relationships and are processing that.  Any situation we face or our child faces where we have to make a choice in how we respond can more than likely be an opportunity to talk about a virtue as the guiding value.

I know it seems verbose to add words of character into your conversations – and until the language of character – or the words of virtues rolls off your tongue it probably is verbose.  But the more you start talking about why something is important or why something is the right thing to do – the quicker that becomes natural.  Natural to talk about virtues or character traits.  Each time you do, you are connecting actions with moral values layering the understanding and commitment to living out the values you have said are important to your family.

2- Have Visual Reminders 

A visual reminder is a poster that can quickly communicate what is important to do and why it is important. 

For some reason, I have an aversion to things hanging on the door of my fridge.  I much rather find another spot to hang all those reminders and special pieces of artwork!!  But there was one thing that I made an exception for – and that was my Reminder Posters.

I had two places where I hung visual prompts in my house – my fridge door and the cupboard doors in our family room.  I called these two places – My Reminder Wall. The posters were visual reminders of the heart lessons that we were working on.  I have seen other families use the back of the door in their bathroom/toilet – this works too!  

The idea is that you use visual prompts that are quick to remind you of the right way of doing life. It might be a belief, or virtue, truth or process that we were learning or working on. These days Canva makes that so easy.  I hope you have all found Canva – but if you haven’t – it is an app that helps you create graphics in a very easy way. If you are homeschooling your kids should be using it as well.  

I liked changing these posters up every so often otherwise they become white noise and you stop noticing them.  But also they need to be changed as your kids grow and move on to other heart lessons.  

These visuals remind everyone in the home what your values are and encourage behaviour or choices that are consistent with those family values.

I have some Reminder Wall Posters available in the Heart Booster Library – so sign up to Heart Boosters to get your Library Pass – it’s free – and the link to that will also be in the Podcast Notes or on my Website under the tab FREE RESOURCES.  

3- Celebrate Success

I am sure we all know how important praise is to the heart of a child – but unless we word it carefully, we often miss the opportunity to consolidate our family values.  

Remember I said there were four different times we talk to our kids:  

• We give instructions
• Corrections
• Conversations
• Praise

When we insert our values as a reason why something is the right thing to do when we give instructions to our kids – we have established the platform to correct and praise them in the same vein.  If they don’t do the right thing, we have established the reason why it would have been the right thing to do, so there is then the context to correct them, using the language of that value or virtue.  For example, if my kids didn’t pick up their toys and used the right boxes to pack them away, I would be able to correct them for not being orderly.  

On the flip side if they did do what they were asked, and they were orderly then I would be able to praise them once, again using the language of Orderliness – to commend them for their choices and effort – because they achieved orderliness in that moment.  

When we include the language of character – giving our children the reason why something is the right thing to do – we consolidate the sense of virtue in their heart.  

I would often take the opportunity at dinner time to acknowledge and celebrate instances where someone made choices consistent with the virtue we were studying – or maybe they did something that reflected our core family values.  

It could be as simple as thanking a child for showing kindness to a sibling or doing something without being asked to do it, or recognizing a struggle that they overcame by choosing to do the right thing which took wisdom and courage. 

Making your Family Values Shape your Family Culture

Let’s review what we’ve talked about today.  There are three things we can do to establish core family values in our everyday life

• Talk about them
• Have visual reminders – 
• Give praise that includes the words character.

Each of these strategies will help you communicate the core values to your family, and help your family live them out in everyday situations.  It means though that you have to be on it.  You have to put in some thinking to 

1. Know what your core values are
2. Know why the things you ask your kids to do are important.(from a spiritual, moral or practical perspective)

The more you think about virtues, and the more you understand why a virtue is the right way to live – and by virtues I mean – gentleness, truthfulness, courage, punctuality, thriftiness,, benevolence, honour, empathy, generosity, dependability – and I’ve listed so many in this episode – and this is not by any means an exhaustive list.  The more you become familiar with these virtues and the language of character – the more you will be able to impart that to your kids.  They don’t just get character by osmosis.  They don’t just absorb knowing what is right and how to choose what is right from simply being in your family – you need to be intentional to teach it and to call everyone on to make choices consistent with the values you want in your family life.

Heart-Focused Parenting Action Step

This week, I challenge you to choose one value (or virtue) and consciously integrate it into your daily interactions with your kids – when you give instructions, when you give praise, and when you are talking about your day.  See how often you can catch each other making choices to live out that value (whichever one you choose). 

Bonus score:  if you can live in humility and encourage your children to watch you and catch you d oing the right thing as well!

I am sure this intentionality will change the dynamics within your family. 

I love hearing how you try things out that you hear on this podcast and the impact it has on your family life so if you take the heart-focused actions step and it does make a difference I’d love to hear your story – so shoot me an email.

Thank you for listening today, and remember to download the Family Vision Starter Kit which will help you define your core values and get you on your way!

Hi there! I'm Belinda and I'm glad you are here!

I am a family life coach and help parents to raise their kids with faith, values and life skills in a way that is intentional, relational and heart-focused. Read more in my Introduction page

You can learn about heart-focused parenting through my podcast, blog and weekly email (Heart Boosters).

If you need help you can book a coach call or email me here.

.

.

Search by using keywords to find what you are looking for