Pratica di Shadowing: What Old Fashioned Moms Understood About Parenting That We Forgot - Impara a parlare inglese con i video

Believe it or not, there was a generation of mothers who were raising large families, running entire households, preserving food, educating their children, tending to their homes from the ground up.

And somehow, they weren't drowning in overstimulation, resentment, and the constant pressure to keep their children entertained every waking moment.

They weren't Googling toddler activities near me at 9am on a Tuesday, wondering how they're going to fill the next eight hours of their day.

Today, so many of us feel like full-time cruise directors in our own homes.

We're constantly rotating activities, planning outings, managing emotions, diffusing sibling conflict, trying to keep everyone happy,

and then we collapse at the end of the day, wondering why we're already dreading tomorrow.

It's exhausting, and frankly, no one's even tipping.

Somewhere along the way, we didn't just change how we raise children.

We changed how we thought about children in the first place, and that is the root of the problem.

The key is to shift how you think about your child.

If you see your child as someone whose needs must constantly be met through a consistent flow of stimulation

and entertainment and emotional management, then of course your days will feel exhausting and never-ending.

But if you begin to see your child as someone who is meant to be trained, formed, and brought into the life of your home,

as someone who's not the center of the household but a participating member of it, everything begins to settle into a place in a way that feels really very simple.

Almost like someone's already figured this out long ago and we've just been reinventing increasingly more complicated wheels ever since.

And so in this video I want to walk through what old-fashioned mothers understood about parenting that we have largely forgotten

and why reclaiming this way of thinking is one of the most freeing transformations you can make in motherhood.

If you're new here, I'm Kiri

and I help out burnt-out Christian mothers retrain their brains

and calm their nervous systems so that they can escape survival mode and fall back in love with motherhood.

And if you're wondering how I went from chronic fight or flight to building a joyful home without changing my circumstances,

I share the exact biblical brain rewiring process step-by-step in my free workshop.

The link is below.

So the more your life revolves around your children, the more chaotic your home will feel, and the more difficult your children will actually become.

It's one of those delightful paradoxes of parenting that no one warns you about.

A lot of what I talk about today comes from a book called Hunt, Gather, Parent

and what struck me as interesting about this book is how

so many of the concepts in the book were simply a

rediscovery of what scripture has already been instructing all along

and ironically the author i don't believe is a christian

so forewarning there fair warning there

if you are thinking about buying this book there's a lot

it's one of those things you have to eat the meat spit out the bones

and take it all with a grain of salt

because again she's not a christian but anyway i did just find that interesting, the parallels with scripture, because what she observed in other cultures,

like children contributing to the household and participating

and being trained into the rhythms of daily life is not actually new and profound advice at all.

It's biblical.

And yet today we've created a completely different paradigm where the child becomes the center of the home

and everything about our days bend around them, the schedule, the activities, the energy, everything.

But old fashioned mothers did not live that way.

And so what I found too, in her research in the book is

that a lot of the discoveries she found

when she was going to these cultures really mimicked the way that old-fashioned parents used to raise their children.

It's sort of like they just lived their lives

and they contributed to the home economy by managing their homes

and creating order and maybe even earning an income in some way.

And their children were brought into all of that, not as this like revolutionary parenting philosophy, but just as like a simple expectation of the home.

It's like, you live here, cool, you contribute here too, right?

It's shockingly simple, but we have gone away from that so much in parenting.

And what's interesting is that they didn't separate their lives from their children in the way that we tend to now.

They didn't feel the need to carve out an entirely separate category of kid activities

and mom life and self-care as if those things had to exist independently of one another.

They did their work with their children.

They lived their lives with their children.

And even the things that filled their own cup were often done alongside their children rather than in opposition to them.

And I think that's where we've strayed.

Historically, mothers were not outsourcing the formation of their children to activities and programs.

They were integrating their children into real life, into meaningful work at home, into their own daily rhythms.

And that integration is what allowed both the mother and the child to thrive without this constant tension of, I need a break from you in order to function.

Because when your life and your children's lives are constantly at odds with each other, then motherhood will feel really draining.

But when your children are brought into the life that you're already living, then there's a sense of alignment that makes the entire day feel more peaceful and far less fragmented.

You stop feeling like you're managing two separate competing realities, what I need to do versus what my children need from me.

And you start living one integrated life where everyone has a role.

So we should stop asking, how do I keep my child busy today?

And instead think, how do I bring my child into what I'm already doing?

And this will completely change how you think about your child.

And that single shift will remove an enormous amount of pressure from your day too.

I'm not saying that you need to think about your child as a commodity.

That would be a completely wrong way to think about them, but rather as a capable contributing member to your home who's being trained and discipled within the life that you're building.

And once you can make that shift in your mind about how you think of your children, then something that feels almost too simple to be true will begin to happen.

You stop feeling like your child's cruise director and you start actually enjoying their presence in your home.

And it's really amazing when you start to see your child just like being a genuine help from a very, very young age.

That's like one of the blessings of motherhood for me.

Another paradigm shift that might be a hot take is this.

It's not your job to entertain the children.

It is, however, your job to train them, disciple them, and bring them into the meaningful work and rhythms of your home.

But the trap is that if you are simply trying to just appease and entertain them all the time, it becomes really difficult to actually disciple and truly train them on the important life skills and lessons.

And so if your entire day is structured around keeping your children happy, you will end up exhausted.

And they will be trained to be incredibly difficult people to be around when you aren't able to entertain them.

And this concept is so freeing, actually, because it means that you don't have to center your days around activities that solely benefit the child.

It means that if you despise going to indoor playplaces or constantly planning elaborate kid-centered outings, you don't have to do another one in your whole life.

And your children will be perfectly fine.

Better than fine, actually.

They might even develop the lost art of entertaining themselves, which previous generations somehow managed without a single sensory bin, you guys.

That does not mean that we never do fun things with our children because for example, I genuinely delight in my children's delight.

And sometimes what we enjoy overlaps with what our children enjoy.

And I, for one love, for example, play dates.

I host them often and it brings me immense joy to watch the children play with friends while I host other moms.

But our days no longer revolve around the child centric activities that we used to do.

And like thinking, okay, what's the morning activity?

What's the afternoon activity?

All of that is just, it's gone, right?

The structure of the day is the work of the home, the rhythms that sustain the family and the things that are just life-giving for everyone.

And the children are brought into all of that.

Because if you haven't noticed, when the day revolves around entertainment, children often become even more restless after that entertainment is gone, not less.

It's like sugar.

The more you give, the more they crash.

It almost stunts their own imagination.

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But I've learned that if I just do my thing more often

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and I let them either join in or find their own things to do to keep them busy, they end up being perfectly satisfied playing with a stick for three hours.

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A stick, okay?

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Not a $47 Montessori-inspired wooden tool, but like a stick from the yard.

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So here is the key on deciding if the activity makes sense for your family.

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If that activity makes them less of a joy to be around afterwards, the activity is probably the issue.

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And you'll find that those are probably the exact activities that you dread the most.

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Funny how that works, right?

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Almost like your instincts were trying to tell you something the whole time.

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Listen, it's perfectly acceptable to bring your children into your life and the building of your own home economy.

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That's what old-fashioned moms knew and they understood and surely felt absolutely zero guilt about.

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They didn't need permission from a parenting expert to let their children help with real work.

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They just did it because it was a Tuesday and there were dishes to do.

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And so when you fire yourself from that role of cruise director for your children, you start to notice just how little your children actually need to feel content.

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So many of the things that we thought they needed suddenly start to look completely irrelevant.

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And yes, even toys.

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We've built an entire culture around toys, and yet they are not nearly as essential as we've been led to believe.

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In fact, they are a remarkably recent invention that we somehow convince ourselves are fundamental to childhood.

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So yes, toys, and I mean toys in general, like the whole concept of toys, is a result of the industrial revolution and the rise of consumer culture

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that needed to convince mothers that their children required specially manufactured objects to develop properly.

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And dare I say, they are irrelevant.

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And by the way, I write this as my son is playing with toy cars, like the hypocrite that I am.

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But yeah, we do have toys, okay?

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But when you really think about it, children historically did not have rooms filled with toys.

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They had real environments, real tools, and real work, and the great outdoors, and all the things around the house to play with.

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They had sticks and mud and the family's actual work to participate in.

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And somehow, shockingly, they turned out fine.

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Built entire civilizations, actually. and not endless entertainment.

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And this doesn't mean that you need to throw out every toy in your home or swing to the other extreme, because clearly I'm not doing that either.

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But it does mean

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that you can release the pressure to constantly keep up with what everyone else is buying

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and doing and providing for their children.

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And instead, remember what scripture prioritizes, which is not endless entertainment,

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but training and stewardship and bringing our children up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

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And then you'll realize something really surprising about your children.

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What we often label as boredom in children is very often just a lack of meaningful responsibility.

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We've mistaken their restlessness for a need for more stimulation when really it's just a need for more significance.

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They're not bored.

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They're just purposeless and there's a difference.

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So in our home, one of the foundational principles is

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that everyone has a role to play and no one is simply floating through the day.

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Even my one-year-old has a role to play.

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So I go out of my way to make my children feel like they have a job to do.

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And because I want them to grow up with that deep understanding that they belong to something, that they contribute to something meaningful to the family and that they are needed within this family.

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Now, this does come at an upfront cost, and I want to be clear about that because I think that this is where most mothers opt out.

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Training children to be helpful isn't efficient in the beginning, but it pays dividends later.

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It's an investment with a terrible short-term return, but a really, really excellent long-term return,

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which is why most of us living in our instant gratification culture don't do it.

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So in the beginning, it is slower, it's messier, it requires a lot of patience.

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For example, my three-year-old and five-year-old now do the dishes from start to finish.

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And that's amazing.

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But that didn't happen overnight.

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And it certainly didn't happen without effort on my end.

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So at first, I taught them how to load the dishwasher.

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And even that was divided into even smaller segments, right?

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My three-year-old sprays the dishes and my five-year-old loads them up.

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And of course, in the beginning, they did a careless job and things were flipped over the wrong way and items were just in the wrong place.

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And it would have been far easier for me to just step in and do it myself.

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But instead of correcting everything for them, I turned it into a training opportunity.

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And I saw those messes, the water everywhere, all over the floor and just broken dishes and things like that as an investment into the future, which is where we are now,

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where they do the dishes on their own.

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And it's a huge blessing to our family.

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So like if something looked off in the dishwasher, we would stand at the dishwasher together and I would say, okay, can anyone tell me what looks off here?

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And then they would, you know, eagerly scan the dishwasher and then one of them would shout out, the cup is flipped over.

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And I would say, yes, okay, let's fix it.

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And then we would move to the next drawer.

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Okay, anything wrong with this picture?

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The spatula goes on the top shelf and then they would fix it.

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And so slowly through these small, almost like playful corrections, they learned how to do it better.

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Still not perfectly, but I've just learned to let that go because the job still gets done nonetheless.

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Then once they mastered the loading of the dishwasher, I began to teach them how to unload the dishwasher, starting with categories.

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So my three-year-old owns the silverware while my five-year-old owns the bowls.

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And then once they learned how to do those properly, then we added new categories in, like the cups and straws for one and utensils for the other.

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And what used to be something that took 10 minutes of my time now takes them 30 minutes, but those 30 minutes are an investment.

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They're learning a skill and they're contributing to the home.

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And I'm not standing there supervising them like a foreman.

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I'm just doing something else, which means that I've actually bought myself time, not lost it.

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And then that's a bonus because then they are occupied in meaningful work instead of floundering, looking for something else to do or someone to fight with.

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And it turns out purposeful children fight less. Who knew?

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Maybe everyone before 1970, apparently.

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Okay.

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But my point is, yeah, it just teaches your children teamwork too.

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They learn how to be on a team together and less sibling rivalry and all kinds of benefits to this.

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Now, one thing that I want you to keep in mind too, is that children are like little emotional barometers.

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They're constantly reading and reflecting the atmosphere of the home.

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And it's very difficult to raise peaceful, capable children in a home that is constantly being led by a mother who is stuck in fight or flight, because this is where so many moms get stuck.

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They hear something like this and everything that I'm talking about in this video, and they think that sounds lovely, but I don't even have the capacity for the bare minimum,

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let alone, you know, training my children on something that's really complicated in the beginning.

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And I'm already overwhelmed.

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I'm already overstimulated and I'm barely holding it together.

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And that's exactly why this channel exists in the first place, because if your nervous system is constantly on edge, even the mess that naturally comes with training your children will feel intolerable,

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and I've been there.

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It will feel like one more thing that you can't handle rather than an investment that you're making.

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I had a student in my course tell me

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that once they began changing the atmosphere of their home

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and bringing more calm and purpose into it by regulating their own nervous system

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and finding joy in their own role as a mother, their children started sassing less and fighting less, and she said that they responded differently almost immediately Which makes sense

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because children tend to mirror the environment they're living in

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which is exactly why most mothers don't struggle with the concept

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of training their children They struggle with their tolerance for the mess

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that comes with it And I understand that

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and that's exactly why I have my free workshop in the link below that you can join.

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And I teach you all about how I got out of that tighter flight.

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So if you're constantly avoiding messes and like chaos, then you may also be eliminating your child's opportunity to actually become capable.

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Because the reality is, is that children will not do things well at first.

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They will spill, they will forget, they will do it imperfectly.

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And if your standard is perfection, then you'll end up doing everything yourself and you'll resent that.

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You'll be the martyr mother who does everything because it's just easier, which is actually code for, I can't tolerate the discomfort of watching them learn.

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For example, my one-year-old has the job of filling our rice mason jar when it's empty.

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So we have this really big mason jar and we put rice in it.

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And when that's empty, it's his job to fill it.

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And so he's one.

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Okay.

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So yeah, it's exactly as chaotic as it sounds.

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And I can hear some of you gasping like a one-year-old with rice, loose rice.

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Yes.

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Okay stay with me.

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So I'll take the large cup of rice that I get from Azure Standard.

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It's like a food grade five gallon bucket.

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And I'll place a funnel into the mason jar, hand him his measuring cup.

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And then I just let him go to work, filling up the mason jar with rice.

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It took four seconds to teach him how to do this, right?

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I just like put a couple of scoops in the mason jar and he figured it out and he was like, yes, let me add it.

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And so in the beginning there was dry rice everywhere.

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It was scattered in ways that totally made me question my own decisions for letting him do this job.

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But I made the conscious choice to see

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that mess as an investment rather than a problem because every time he's done the job, he's improved.

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And honestly, the rice is cheap and it took me 10 seconds to vacuum it up.

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And he just had the best time and he felt so empowered doing it.

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And he was genuinely contributing to the home because that was a chore that I actually needed to do.

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And now not only does he do it better, but he lights up when he gets to do it.

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Every time I open the pantry, he reaches for the rice bucket as if to say, is it time?

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Can I do my job?

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He wishes we ate rice more often so that he could participate more often in that chore.

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And so that is the heart of a child.

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They are not craving constant stimulation.

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They are craving purpose and they are literally built to be helpful, which is such a blessing.

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And so when that purpose is missing, it doesn't disappear, it will just redirect itself, usually into misbehavior.

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And so in our home, when a child misbehaves, we don't default to isolating them or removing them from the flow of the home, you know, making them feel more like a problem.

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Instead, we try to bring them further into the home and into the purpose of the home.

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And so in our house, we call it hard labor, which I'll admit sounds really dramatic, but really it's just redirecting them and their energy into more meaningful work.

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And so this might look like scrubbing the baseboards

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or mopping the floors by hand or doing something that's physically engaging and productive.

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Oftentimes my eldest son will, you know, go outside with my husband and do really hard yard work out there with him.

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And what's hilarious is that my children often ask for hard labor.

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They're like, can I do hard labor?

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Can I do hard labor?

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So I don't think that it's too traumatizing for them.

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In fact, I think that they instinctively understand something that we have forgotten.

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And it's that physical work is really regulating and it's really good for us.

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And that meaningful contribution feels good.

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That being needed is better than being coddled.

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So here's the caveat.

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We don't want our children to feel like little slaves.

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So there is a way to do this without them feeling like your own personal slaves.

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Okay.

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And you can make them feel like they are part of the team and you can make it fun.

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And you know, you have to let them know

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that you genuinely need their help and

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that they are a valuable part of the team

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and they need to see the impact that what they're doing has on the household because this is the paradox of children.

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They have an innate desire to be part of something that matters, their family.

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That's how God designed them.

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Genesis 2.15 says, the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work and keep it.

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We were created to work and to contribute and to be part of something meaningful and our children crave that same design.

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And when they're disconnected from that, they will seek stimulation elsewhere, often in ways that come out as defiance or chaos or conflict with other family members.

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But when you give them meaningful responsibility, you're not just correcting behavior, you're restoring their place within the home and empowering them to contribute,

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which means that the issue was never the behavior in the first place.

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It was what was shaping their motivation all along.

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So if there's anything that you take from this, I hope it's that you can relax a little bit

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and you can just breathe the breath of fresh air and you can take the weight off your shoulders.

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My theory is that old fashioned moms had a much more relaxed way of parenting, which might be how they were able to average many more children than the national average today.

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They weren't stressed out about whether they were doing enough enrichment activities.

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They were just living their lives and bringing their children along.

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Shockingly simple and shockingly effective.

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And if this is the kind of transformation you're craving, where motherhood stops feeling so reactive and like this uphill battle, then I'd love for you to watch my free workshop.

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I walk you through the exact biblical brain rewiring process that helped me to build a peaceful, joyful home and get out of survival mode.

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And it's helped so many other women do the same.

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So the link for that is below.

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It's always such a joy to have you here and I'll see you in the next video.

Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?

Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.

Pratica di Shadowing: What Old Fashioned Moms Understood About Parenting That We Forgot - Impara a parlare inglese con i video

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Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?