Teach Your Kids the TRUTH about Romantic Love, Podcast & Blog, Episode 72
Click to Listen to Episode 72, The Truth for Kids about Romantic Love. What are Your Kids Learning about Love & Relationships & Marriage?
"First, WE guard our children's hearts. Then we teach THEM to guard their hearts. This episode will help you learn to do both." - Val Harrison, The Practically Speaking MOM in Episode 72, What is Your Child Learning about LOVE & Relationships & Marriage?
If you’re anything like me, you have a whole list of things you know are very important to teach your children – essential truths that you long for their hearts to know before they grow up and begin life on their own.
I wish I had MORE time in my days to huddle up with my kiddos to transfer as many of those essential truths as they need before they go.
There’s never enough time to download all of my heart to their hearts in the eighteen years I’ve got them.
Side note, you’re going to miss some things. We need to aim high and squish a lot of wisdom into these years, but we aren’t going to squeeze it all in and that’s where God comes in. He’s the Great Gap-Filler – you know all those gaps of imperfection or shortcomings in your parenting, No worries, He’s got your back! He is going to teach them plenty of lessons without you. Now, with that being said, we want to do all we can to make the most of every opportunity.
When I'm publishing this podcast & blog, it is six days before Valentines Day. And that means we've got six whole days to make the most of this annual opportunity to shape their perspective about love & marriage.
Teaching our children the right views about love and marriage is one of the primary areas of life that they need the most wisdom downloads given.
There’s two reasons why I think it is so critical that we spend time on this topic
1.The world is pummeling our kids constantly with lots of lies about love
2. For most people, who they love and how they love will shape the moments of their lives more than almost any other aspect of their life. As parents, we must be intentional about shaping our kids' view of love and marriage.
If you look all around us and if you listen to all the messages, you will hear a constant bombardment of false messages in our society about love and about relationships and about marriage. Our kids see unhealthy relationships depicted in just about every movie out there today.
Don't even get me started on pop culture music lyrics and the love messages they send! Then our kids get to see and experience many broken relationships all around them.
That’s a lot of information they’re taking in that is not setting them up for successful relationships.
❔How are you doing at
*limiting the bad relationship messages your child is receiving
*correcting the messages they couldn’t escape,
*and filling them with helpful, life-giving TRUTH about how HEALTHY relationships should look and of what healthy relationships CONSIST.
I want to give you some action items to help you take advantage of the upcoming Valentine holiday to teach your kids about love and marriage.
✔1. Look up some of the unusual-to-you wedding traditions from around the world and then help them understand that no matter what traditions or laws may come and go regarding marriage, ultimately, God’s design for marriage is timeless. (If you listen to this podcast episode, we share some very funny examples of wedding traditions from around the world. Click here to listen to episode 72).
✔2. Watch a movie that incorporates love and marriage and compare the actions in the movie to God’s design. The movies I share here have wholesome, good examples while also contain examples of how NOT to do relationships. They are all family friendly, of course.
Cinderella 2015 Starring Lily James, Directed by Kenneth Branagh
Emma 1996 Starring Gwyneth Paltrow Directed by Douglas McGrath
Sense & Sensibility 1995 Starring Emma Thompson & Kate Winslow
Careful! Not all the versions of these stories are good examples. That's why I share specific versions above.
Admittingly, all of those are some what chick-flicks, but I had my three sons suffer through them anyway. Mostly because I didn't know good guy shows that had good examples of love & marriage in them. If you know some, I do hope you'll let me know so I can update this list!