How To Push Your Kids Without Taking Their Joy | JP Dinnell Podcast 154

Yeah.

So I've got some interesting, like camp specific notes.

I do have, I do have one personal question before we, uh, we dive into those Levi, my four year old did his first jujitsu class on Monday.

I love that.

It was pretty emotional.

Like I was not prepared for how emotional it was going to be, you know, for me to see him with our coach, uh, doing stretches and then just watching like how great for me it was with him and just like how excited Levi was to do it.

There's part of it that is, it's, there's the excitement of, you know, I'm doing jujitsu, which is what dad does, but then just him enjoying it was really great.

So it definitely brought a tear to my eye.

So now that I've made it through the high of that first class, and so has he, right? What things do I need to do as a parent to make sure that, jujitsu is something that stays or that is enjoyable for my kids instead of just like a thing that they want to do because it makes dad happy

yeah i think there should be a balance here of well one you want to make it fun right because if it's something that's fun and that he enjoys he'll be the one that's wanting to go he'll be the one that's like hey dad can we get the key hey can you put my belt on hey you know he'll be the one that's um pushing you to get ready.

But then there's also the aspect of that we did with our kids where we explained why it was so important that they train jiu-jitsu consistently.

And we explained to them like, hey, we're paying good money for you guys to be able to train.

We don't want to be wasting that.

But more than that, you know, here's why you guys training jiu-jitsu is very important.

And so there's going to be times that you're tired or you don't want to go train.

That's when we got to train, you know, and this is also You know, as our kids got older, we would explain to them, this is where, you know, development as adults comes from.

Like, you know, learning to endure through things that, you know, maybe you don't want to do, but, you know, you need to be doing.

And, you know, training when... you know, you don't feel good and that you're tired or you're frustrated or you're emotional, like, hey, no, guess what? Like, those are still times that we need to be in the gym training.

And so we just would have those conversations with the kids regularly.

And so when it came time, you know, which it did a few times, and it still does, that they're like, oh, we don't want to go to the gym.

We would just ask them earnest questions.

Well, hey, why don't you want to go to the gym? What's going on? And then we would explain to them, hey, remember last time that you didn't want to go to the gym and you went and trained? Remember how you felt afterwards?

Yeah.

all right, cool, you're going to feel the same way, or maybe even better, you know? And so just explain to them why it's important, but also just make it fun, you know? And, you know, I know you and I have talked about this before offline when, you know, when you're talking with your kids, One of the things Amanda and I have done with our kids to have intentional conversations is, hey, what was your favorite part of the day? Because if I ask my kids, hey, how was your day? They're going to say, fine, good.

Eh, you know.