Janae Daniels (Host)

00:05

today's episode is a precursor to next week's episode, which is the most daunting episode that I think I've ever worked on or had to make, but it's been the whole premise of my podcast since day one. Next week we'll be talking about how do we take the hearts and minds of our kids back, particularly our teens, of whom hearts, whose hearts we may have lost. That's next week, and I've been working hours on that, getting the research done and just preparing for it mentally and emotionally, because it's a doozy. But this week is the precursor and I want to discuss today something that our kids want more than anything from us, and that is our attention. I love this quote by Carl Honor what children really need and want from us is the thing we often find hardest to give our time and attention, with no strings attached. It's by Carl Honor, y'all, yesterday I had a very rude awakening.

01:15

It's actually been the last couple days and this isn't the first time this has been brought up to me from my family, but we were taking a bike ride yesterday, my kids and I. My husband took a nap and I told the kids we were going to go for a little bike ride, so we went down to a track near our house and we were riding around the track and my youngest was practicing, riding her bike and um, and I put in my, I just put in one. I put in one headphone because I wanted to listen to music as I was riding around the track and my 17 year old daughter stopped me and said mom, can you just be with us right now? Can you just be with us right now? And I'm like I am with you. And she's like no, you are with your headphones, you are with your telephone, you are not with us. And I retorted that I'm like no, no, I am listening to just some music. And she made a very astute observation. She said no, because when you listen to music, mama, you go into your head and then you start to think and think and think and and I need you with me today, without music, without you going into your head and thinking and thinking and thinking. We just want to be with you right now, fully, completely with you.

02:53

The night before that, my husband and I were going on a date. He had been in a little like small local golf tournament and it was the dinner um where they were going to announce who who won everything. And so we were driving to the dinner and I um got on my phone to check a text that had come through and my husband stopped me. He's like so are you going to be on a date with your phone tonight, or are you on a date with me tonight?

03:30

So y'all, two times in a row, uh, I have been called to repentance by my family because they haven't felt present, they haven't felt my mind present with them and, granted, my mind is always going like a hundred miles an hour. I know I'm not alone in that. I know you, as moms, feel that too, because there's so many things on our plate, there's so many things that we worry about, that we have to take care of, and my mind is always running through checklists. But what I've found is that, by me always being distracted by other things or thinking about other things, it's robbing my kids of the thing that they want the most, and they want. What they want is is my attention, like full, complete, unadulterated, wholehearted attention. They want me to be there with them, mentally and physically, and I think all too often as moms and maybe I'm just speaking for myself and today's podcast is really just for me, maybe not, maybe you have this problem too, that we have to get out of our heads and we have to be present.

04:52

I love this quote by Dr Hannah Yang. She has a PhD in psychology. She's a licensed clinical psychologist and the founder of Balanced Awakening. She says being present usually involves an absence of thoughts about the past or the future. Sometimes we say that depression lives in the past and anxiety lives in the future. So by focusing on the present, we're inherently free of prominent experiences of anxiety and depression. Being present is about paying attention to what is happening right now, in the moment.

05:27

I thought this was really important because oftentimes, like if, if we are thinking about the future and we have a lot on our plates and we're with our kids I don't know about you, but there's so many things that I worry about, like, oh, I've got to do this and I've got to do this, and that brings anxiety into my heart and y'all. Our kids feel that energy they feel when we feel anxiety. Like we don't have to say it, they can feel that. And so not only are we robbing them of our attention by not being present, but we're also transferring anxiety to them by not being present because we are worried about things in the future, or if we're thinking about anxiety, to them. By not being present because we are worried about things in the future, or if we're thinking about things in the past, we're transferring that depression or that, you know, those feelings of angst that we might be dwelling on, and that's not fair to our kids.

06:30

I love this definition of being president, being present, being focused on one thing, a conversation, a project, a task at hand, without distraction and without wanting to be somewhere else or being, in your head, lost in thought. So I ask you a sincere question, because this is what I've been asking myself for the last for the last 48 hours, and that is like am do I have a technology addiction? Am I addicted to my phone? Do I find that I go to my phone, um, to scroll endlessly? You know Joshua also brought this up to me this this past week. He's like I need your eyeballs on me, right? This is a problem for me, if you can't tell.

07:16

And Josh, my, my 18 year old's like mom, I need your eyeballs on me. I'll be leaving in a few weeks. Um, he'll be doing some mission service for a couple of years and and I won't see. Get to see him. I'll get to talk to him and everything, but I won't get to see him. And and he, he's like I, I'm leaving in a few weeks and I need, I need you. So please put away your phone, please get off the computer, please make the time and it's, it's hit me pretty hard that um that I've, I'm, that I'm robbing my kids, and so, like yesterday, I honored Katie's wish.

08:08

The night before I honored my husband's wish, I put my phone away. I didn't get it out. The rest of the evening I put my phone away. I didn't get it out. The rest of the evening, um, and then yesterday I put my phone away and I just played with my kids and we rode our bikes and we rode our bikes and it was, it was soul filling, because I feel like when I don't put my phone away, um, it's soul sucking, it's soul sucking for me and it's soul, it's soul sucking for them.

08:42

Another thing that my husband and I started doing this past week is, um, he has a business coach and he expressed his business coach. I've I've had lots of anxiety about this and that and the other, and here's my concerns about, you know, life and business and all these things. And his business coach very wisely said every night um, I want you to put your phone away an hour before bedtime and I want you and Janae to to read scripture together and to pray together. Which is interesting because when he started coaching with this business coach, he was not a religious person at all. Um, and then he, over the course of the years, he's he's married.

09:26

We've been with this business coach for five years and, um, he married, and, and that changed everything for him. And and he said you know, this is this has been a game changer for my, my wife and I. So every morning and every night, we are to wake up, we're to read scripture, we're to say a prayer, and then, um, and then go about our day, and then we could go exercise and then we could do the other things, um and same when we go to bed. That the first thing that we do when we wake up is we turn on the lights and we say a prayer and we read the scriptures together, and and then we turn off the lights and we go to bed. So every morning, every night, first thing we do when we wake up and first thing we do when we go to bed and um, whereas before we would kind of just scroll and then just go to bed. You know, um, I mean, we'd say our personal prayers and stuff, but we just go to bed.

10:24

In the last, just the last few days, I felt a shift and a change and it's been amazing because we decided to be, to be present with each other, not lost in thought, not lost in technology, but together. I started realizing that's why reading aloud with our kids is so important and I guess it never hit me quite like it has this weekend. I did read aloud with my youngest two yesterday afternoon on our back porch. It was so pretty and it was, I mean, the weather was perfect. And so I sat in the back porch and my daughter picked out one of the Winnie the Pooh tales and we read that and I was right in the moment with them, and I had to because I was the one who was reading and they both snuggled up with me, my son, who was 13 years old, right, and most 13-year-olds at least, in public school.

11:31

I can't, you know, not all public schoolers are like this, but a lot of 13-year-olds are. They start to push away from their parents. I know because I was a middle school teacher and I would watch it happen. They start to push away from their parents, they become more peer-oriented, which we'll talk about a lot next week. Um, and that wasn't my son. Like he wanted that connection with me, he snuggled up to me, um, and we read the story together until it got really hot. Then we had to switch places because we were right, like it was, on the back porch, and it's covered, but there was sun, we were right in direct sunlight, and then it got hot, so we moved and but that that you know, 15 minutes that we took to read, 10 minutes that we took to read together, was was so precious.

12:25

Last, this past year, I started doing something a little bit different. We do read alouds as a family, um, but we also the kids have their quiet reading time, which I got got that term from Sarah McKenzie, who wrote, uh, the read aloud family, and she said she calls it QRT. That's their, their quiet reading time, and so we do read alouds, we do quiet reading time, but I felt like I needed to connect with my 13 year old more, right, my son more, and so I chose a book that looked interesting and every day we'd snuggle together and I would tickle his face as I read a chapter or two of the book and he told me that that became one of his favorite parts of his whole school year. Was that snuggling with his mom reading a story that we both were just completely, completely focused on and we were present together in the story and and then we talk about the story and he would make some kind of funny jokes. You know, um, he's he's pretty witty, and I look back on the year and I think those are my most precious times. So I started doing that with each of the kids where we start, um, where I would read just a book with them. You know, we've got the family, which is a lot right, it's a lot to go. Okay, I've got all these extra things, but, but that mattered and I'm trying to focus more on the things that that matter but and let go of the things that don't matter, which I've talked about before. But reading aloud enables us to be present together in the stories with our kids.

14:17

Another thing that I one of my most cherished memories was one night my daughter was going to a camp and she had they had like secret sisters at this camp and she was making the gifts for her secret sister and everything had to be homemade, like. So they're like write a poem or, you know, like make a little bookmark. Well, my daughter's an embroiderer and we decided to make a little doll. Um, because I do so, so does she. And so she embroidered the eyes and we made this adorable little doll and we were working on it late into the night because she was going to camp the next day. No, I guess she was going to camp in two days, but we hadn't finished it and we listened to an audio book together as we worked on it and then we'd put the audio book on pause and she and I would just talk, and we would talk late into the night as we kept our hands busy sewing our our ability to talk, and they were pretty mindless activities as far as things that we'd always done it. So it doesn't take a lot of thought, but I was able to really be present with her and we talked and and she's like mom, I loved that time.

15:28

Another thing is when I take a walk in nature and I take out my headphones and I just am with the kids and I observe with them. Oh, look at that, and would you look at this? And oh my gosh, look at those birds. And not only do we get a little bit of exercise with a walk, but we also get the effects of a forest bathing, as the Japanese call it of the nature, affecting our, our emotions and calming our stress and increasing the dopamine release in our our body. But we also can really connect as we put away our technology, take out our headphones and just be with our kids, just be. I've also during my morning walks. So for those of you that are new to the podcast, I walk almost every day and I find it's really good for my emotional health. I'm not fast and I've expressed that before, like I'm a very slow walker.

16:39

Usually I listen to an audio book or I, you know, listen to a podcast or I listen to music. But I've decided the last few days I ended up just leaving my phone at home and my headphones at home. Days, I, I ended up just leaving my phone at home and my headphones at home, um and this is not all the time, cause often I'll still bring them, but for a few days I just I took out my headphones and I, um, left my phone at home. I brought a, a little watch with me I don't like wearing watches, but I brought one with me and, um, I just soaked in the moments of, of of nature and of God's creation and of the beauty, and I felt the wind in my face and I focused on the smells and the sounds of, of where I was walking and the faint, just these faint scents in the air that I would have otherwise missed had I had my headphones in and y'all, my soul was filled with joy and goodness and light, as I just unplugged and took the time to be present. And, granted, I wasn't with my kids at that point, but I just decided to spend time with my creator, without the distraction of everything else.

18:04

I think and I thought about things too is like for me I've, I've, I've put my, I've busied myself so much that I'm it causes my mind so much distraction. And so, as I've been trying to take things off my plate, as I've been trying to and, granted, we can't always take everything off our plates, right, we have to feed our kids dinner, we have to focus things, things like that but when our kids are over-involved and when we're over-involved, that causes stress and anxiety, then we're worrying about things and then it's harder to be present. And I keep coming back to this in my life, that I have to simplify things. I have to simplify things. Things are. Humans were meant to be slow and the like, really enjoying the, the rhythms of life, like that's. It's part of our DNA and yet we've been going against the grain by trying to go so hard for so long, and it's not good for us. It keeps us from being present, it keeps us from being in the here and the now. It keeps us from joy. So that's my message today is be present, take out your headphones, put away your phone, take time to stop and smell the roses.

19:34

Oh, when I went to school, my older sister gave me the best advice. I went to a private university in Hawaii and I didn't come from money, so that you know Like I paid every dime of that. Thankfully, it was subsidized and I was able to get scholarships. I ended up leaving with very, very, very, very little debt. I worked three jobs to go. I worked when I got there and my sister had also gone there. The same way, she paid for it herself.

20:13

And my sister said to me you're going to be in Hawaii, you're going to be close to the beach, you're going to start doing school and being stressed out and I would just tell you to take the time to smell the roses. Take the time to smell the plumeria in our case, actually, not not roses, but plumeria and and slow down. And so I, I really did that. As a you know, as an 18 year old I was like, okay, this is good advice for my sister. So I I took time to really slow things down. Living in Hawaii, anyway, it's a, it's a very it's a much slower pace. I don't know if it still is. I mean, it's been a long time since I've been there, but I went to school in a place where everything, where the pace was a snail's pace and and I feel like that was a blessing for me and that's something that I again recently been thinking I need to stop and take time to smell the roses and to be, to be.

21:16

I heard once a comedian. He was like best advice, wherever you are, be there. And everyone started laughing. But I thought about that yeah, wherever you go, you need to be there, not mentally somewhere else. Be where you are, be with the people you're with. Let them commune with you together, that you are together, mind to mind, spirit to spirit, heart to heart, and not somewhere else. That's my message.

21:46

Today is short, next week's will be longer because it's a doozy next week, but it's important. The things I'll be talking about but that's the precursor this week is I want to tell you. I want you to put away your phone. I can't tell you to. I would recommend putting away your phone, leaving it at home if you can Leave it in the car, leave it in your purse, leave it in your bedroom if you're cooking, be where you are with your kids, with them mentally. This is advice for myself too. Right now, I challenge you too. They need us. They need us right now more than they need anything else. They need us, you and I, their moms and their dads, and their grandmas and their grandpas. They need our attention. Again, carl Honor, what children really need and want from us is the thing we often find hardest to give our time and attention, with no strings attached. My friends, I love you, I think about you. You are doing so much better than you think you are. You got this. We'll talk next week.