The Babymoon Manifesto

My wife was sure that we were going to die.

You know how sometimes in a marriage, one person is calm and assumes things will turn out alright, and the other person is just waiting for certain doom?? I’ll let you guess which one my wife is.

Our two little ones were finally old enough where we could leave them with the grandparents for a couple of days, so we decided that it was time to go on our first trip together without kids (aka, "The Babymoon") and fly to a beach like we did before we had kids.?However, since our demise was imminent (but going to the beach was worth the risk, apparently), my lovely wife decided that we needed to get our will done - which is a smart thing to do for anyone.? Part of this entailed deciding who would take care of our kids if our plane were to crash. After that, I wrote out how I thought the money we were leaving them should be used.?

Taking the next step, I started thinking about who they should become was more important than the money we were leaving them, so I jotted down some ideas out how I thought they should be raised.? My wife and I went over this and talked about it, she put in her thoughts, and we came to a realization.

Why should we expect other people to be so intentional about how they’re raising our kids if we aren’t even doing it ourselves?

When you first have kids, it can feel like survival mode.? Who is going to get them in the middle of the night? Who is going to feed them, change them, or give them a bath?? Success is measured by everyone just staying alive and fed and at least a little clean.

But then your kids start learning from you, and you need to be intentional about what you want them to learn and how you want to help them grow.? We realized we were still in survival mode, but we needed to change.? If we weren’t intentional about growing our kids, who would be?? I won’t go into all of it, but here are some of the things we decided:

Our kids will learn about Jesus and what it means to be a Christian.

We knew it would be their decision about their faith, but we wanted to make sure they knew about where we placed our hope and our trust, how we made decisions, and where our love came from.

Our kids will learn to be themselves.

Early on, we realized that one of our daughters was really quirky and creative, a color-outside-the-lines type (in her case, it was to draw on everything she owned plus everything she didn't).? We had to decide whether it was more important for her ‘keep her things nice’, or to make them her own. We chose the latter. Mom’s dresser is off-limits, but all of your Zhu Zhu Pet toys are fair game for her myriad of markers. With another daughter, she was just crazy strong willed. As a parent, do you try to break that strong will, or help her to learn how to use it to stand up for herself and others, without being a bully or being too disrespectful? Those are just two examples, but it’s about continuously trying to shape them into being the best of who they are, not trying to get them to fit into a particular mold.

Our kids will learn to believe that they can do hard things.

One of my old coworkers liked to say, “Of course it’s possible. We just haven’t figured out how to do it yet.”? I wanted to make sure our kids had that same mentality. Sure, we don’t have the whole thing figured out, but is there any part of it we can work toward?? Whether it’s been planning trips years in advance, playing sports, doing high school math or learning anything new, our kids have learned that the best things take time, have rough spots, but are ultimately rewarding.

If you’re a parent, my challenge to you is to figure out what you want your kids to learn and grow into while they’re at home.? Don’t worry about getting everything written out or just right. It’s a process, things will change, but the main thing is to get started.??

If you’re not intentional about growing your kids, who will be?

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From 2002-2007, I wrote a weekly comic strip that appeared in about 40 small publications in the US, Canada, and Israel. If this is a newsletter, might as well have a comic each week, too!

My grandpa was a doctor (along with his five brothers), and this is something he often told us.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brian Lord is the President of?Premiere Speakers Bureau ?and the host of the?Beyond Speaking Podcast . A 28-year speaking and entertainment industry veteran who started his first agency in his dorm room, Brian has done everything from running a non-profit and writing a comic strip to coaching youth softball and competing for TeamUSA in the duathlon age group world championships in Romania in 2022. He and his wife Krista enjoy raising their four kids outside of Nashville.