Podcast Transcript
Attendees:
Richard Young, Julie Young, Joshua Boswell, Margie Boswell
Transcript:
Joshua Boswell: Hello everyone! Welcome to the Happy Family Club podcast. We are delighted to have you here. Margie and I look forward to these interviews because we learned so very much from them. And it's helped us to grow in our marriage and our family.
Margie Boswell: Definitely.
Joshua Boswell: And today is gonna be no exception. We're delighted to have with us special guests Rich and Julie Young. You want to tell a little bit about Rich and Julie?
Margie Boswell: Well, they are co-hosts for the Growing Families International, basically. And have done so many trainings and videos and just have Mom's groups and all different kinds of things that help families and help children and parents grow up. And specially grow up and to God and we are excited to have them here with us.
Joshua Boswell: One thing I love about… we're gonna brag on you here for a second. But one thing I love is, this is the couple that is not just learned a few theories and is teaching stuff. They have ground this stuff out in the laboratory of their own home with seven children.
Margie Boswell: Yes.
Julie Young: Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: Ranging from mid 20s and down to teens still at home. Plus they've got a grandbaby. So it's like they're in the thick of all these things right now, today, which is so beautiful. Because it's not theoretical, it's, incredible application. So it's wonderful to see.
Margie Boswell: Thank you so much for being with us.
Joshua Boswell: So officially welcome. We're delighted to have you.
Julie Young: Thank you, we’re glad to be here.
Rich Young: As you were saying that, sometimes you feel like an expert because it's going so well, but we know that just around the corner we're gonna have a learning experience with one of our kids.
Margie Boswell: Yes!
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: That we hold tightly the successes and we celebrate them but we also realize that there's going to be some opportunities to learn.
Margie Boswell: There you go.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, you know, we found our children keep getting super creative with learning experiences for us.
Julie Young: Yes! That's true. Yeah. Yeah.
Margie Boswell: Right there with you. Yes.
Joshua Boswell: It’s like, Oh, I got this figured out. Just kidding…
Julie Young: Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: Well I think it would be good to start off with just a little bit of background and your story and how you got to where you're at right now. It's not every day that couples dedicate so much of their life to serving God and to serving families. So how did you get to where you're at here? Particularly as a couple.
Julie Young: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well we actually took our first parenting class before we even had kids.
Joshua Boswell: Nice
Julie Young: Kind of a funny story to that, but we were putting off, kind of focused on careers and we'd have kids later on. And so one Sunday school class we went through this parenting curriculum, and we're like Well maybe we could do this. So we decided to have children and the Lord blessed us. One of our first intense fellowships as a married couple was I wanted two children and he wanted three children and it got kind of intense.
Joshua Boswell: haha Yeah.
Julie Young: So we just decided to multiply those two numbers and add an exclamation point at the end. So then we got seven.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah you both exceeded those expectations.
Rich Young: We have, yes.
Rich Young: But we knew we needed a lot of wisdom. We needed a lot of help. We wanted to do this well.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: And so we sought out that first parenting class was actually through the Growing Families curriculum golly 26, 27 years ago.
Rich Young: 1998. Yeah.
Julie Young: Yeah, and we went through it and just loved it. Loved the format, loved the discipleship, loved the families that we met, the community. And then these families that had teens and adult children who loved the Lord and loved each other.
Joshua Boswell: Wow.
Julie Young: And we thought, That's what we want. We had so much advice coming at us, but we wanted to see good fruit before we were going to buy into any sort of curriculum or…
Joshua Boswell: Of course. Yeah.
Julie Young: discipleship course or anything like that. Because we had a lot of people telling us, Oh yeah, that baby's cute now, but just wait till their teenagers. That's when things get bad. And there was just no hope in that. And we wanted to find something with hope.
Rich Young: And there was some material and there still is some material that's pointed to a certain age of a family or a child.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: But it's usually just around that season of life. And what we found with this ministry early on is that it starts with the baby and goes all the way through young adulthood. And so you really have curriculum and material and resources and parents who are all along those stages. And we're like, Hmm. This might be something to just sink our teeth into. So after we had our first child we started… well we actually didn't start leading. We kind of were volun-told to lead. We came up, we were ready for the next class because she was a toddler and we had moved. And at the church we thought… Well we sought it out in the church that we went to, and the new church had it. And we're like, let's sign up for the next class. So we signed up and then the person running it in the church called. Hey, would you host? And we said, Sure, we'll host!
Julie Young: We’ll take the leader into our home.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah exactly. The host, right? We’ll help.
Rich Young: Right, and she said there's really not a leader. You just plug in the DV… It wasn't a DVD...
Julie Young: I think it was a cassette tape.
Rich Young: Yeah it was a cassette tape.
Joshua Boswell: The VHS or whatever.
Rich Young: You just plug in the tape, watch it, talk about it. And we're like, Oh. Okay. And we kind of were… that was how we led our first class. We didn't even lead it!
Julie Young: We just facilitated it.
Rich Young: Yeah we didn’t know what we were doing. But then we both, shortly thereafter that, realized that this is something we want to go deeper on. So we went to a conference in 2000 and we met Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo. And really since the early 2000s, we have felt a calling together to work with families. Both encouraging and trying to help disciple them along with learning ourselves about how to enjoy our family, how to have fun with our family. How to align principles with what God's word says and try to bring all that together to enjoy our time together as a family and to hopefully have a vision for our family that's way bigger than we could do on our own.
Joshua Boswell: I love that. And do either of you come from large families?
Julie Young: No. We each had one sibling.
Rich Young: One sibling.
Joshua Boswell: One sibling, that's amazing.
Julie Young: We used to… my cousin's, there were 12 children in that family. And I remember going to family gatherings, just being overwhelmed thinking, This is crazy. Who would have as many children?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: Thus our intense fellowship early on.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, exactly.
Julie Young: But the Lord changed our minds.
Rich Young: I would say about a decade ago, maybe 15 years ago, we started working more closely with Karen Emery and redoing some of the videos and…
Joshua Boswell: Yes.
Rich Young: traveling to some conferences with them, both in the United States and internationally. And just trying to be an encouragement where we can. And we still homeschool three kids at home and then I run a business full time. So this is… we volunteer heavily.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: But we volunteer heavily because we love doing it. So…
Joshua Boswell: I love it. So.
Julie Young: And the founders, Gary and Anne Marie, they’re the real deal, they're awesome.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: They’re good friends of ours.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, we've had the opportunity to watch some of their things. And amazingly enough, all the things that we've been through… I mean really, Growing Families, we hadn't heard of. I mean it's a new world for us. So hopefully after now it won't be new. So it's been beautiful to get to know what you guys have done and what they've done. So really awesome.
So I'm interested in the question we love to ask our guests: Is there a core principle that if applied in a family environment will lead to greater family happiness? And we'd love to hear your insights. Especially, given the hands-on, tangible family experience and all the structured training that you guys have done and been through, I'd love to hear your insights on that particular question.
Julie Young: Yeah! Well when that question was posed to us, we could probably think of 20 different things that we'd love to share, as you know.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: I would say more than 20, but yeah.
Julie Young: Parenting isn’t just one key concept. But we did think of one that has really impacted our family and so many families that we have interacted with. It's a core principle, a core teaching in every single one of the Growing Families classes, books, anything that you would read coming out of Growing Families.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: But we're not going to tell them yet.
Rich Young: Not quite yet. Not quite yet. So…
Joshua Boswell: So give us insights on how you got to there.
Julie Young: Yeah. Absolutely.
Joshua Boswell: Because now we’re in suspense. Now we want to know.
Julie Young: Absolutely. Absolutely. You want to start?
Rich Young: You go ahead. You go ahead and start. Yeah.
Julie Young: Well, kind of want to get back to the home.
Joshua Boswell: Yes.
Julie Young: The home is where we raise our children. The home environment is so important.
Rich Young: It is.
Julie Young: It's the society where our children are first brought up in the home. And in the home, the primary relationship is the husband/wife relationship. And in God's word that is the very first social relationship is the husband and wife.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: Every other relationship is dependent on the husband wife relationship. And there are a lot of things that make up kind of the developmental influences of a child. There's their temperament. There's their personality. There's the genetics that they got. But the third one that we can control is the home environment that they grow up in. And so at the core of that is the marriage. The husband/wife marriage.
Rich Young: Well, and the other thing too is that having children does not make you a family. It completes your family.
Joshua Boswell: Hmmm. Right.
Julie Young: It adds to it.
Rich Young: It adds to it. When you’re married, you have a family.
Joshua Boswell: Yes.
Rich Young: And the children expand the family that was already started through marriage. So that is something that we come back to with ourselves, and with anyone we talk to. Which, in society today, that's really not really seen as the family. It's when you have kids you're a family.
Joshua Boswell: Right.
Rich Young: And we believe that when you get married you are a family and you're just adding to it. And if you keep that small little approach or viewpoint of it, it changes how you lead your family significantly.
Julie Young: Yeah, and so our children, even from a very young age, they may not be able to logically reason. But their senses from that infant who is just a few days old, they have senses that can see, that can hear, that can sense what's going on in the environment. And so when there is an infused stability in a child's world, no matter the age, there is an infused stability in them. There's security.
Joshua Boswell: Hmm.
Julie Young: And when a child feels secure, they can learn. They can grow. And there have been some studies that show that the wiring in the brain of a child that grows up in a very stable environment is different from the wiring of the brain of a child who does not have that privilege and that luxury. And so as parents we can really dictate our home environment. What kind of stability, what kind of security are they growing up in? And because the primary relationship in a healthy family is the wife relationship. And so, I think for most listeners it’s, Yes, I have a good marriage. That's going to help my kids. But what often happens is, especially when those kids are young, is we're parenting and it's full on. Especially if you have a lot of kids. And really marriage can become this business relationship.
Joshua Boswell: Yes.
Julie Young: I cook, you mow the lawn. I do the laundry, you change the light bulb, you know? It can become very transactional. And things may be great in your marriage. But you have to remember what the kids are seeing. What are their senses? And it may be a well-oiled machine. It may be that you don't even fight. You don’t even have harsh words. But do the kids know that Mom and Dad love each other?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: Are they seeing visual, tangible representations that Mom and Dad love each other? Are they spending time together? And so what can happen is if one of the parents is away at work, they come home and it's full on, getting a meal, getting the kids ready for bed...
Rich Young: Basically checking the boxes.
Joshua Boswell: Checking the boxes off, yeah.
Julie Young: Yeah, you got to get it done. The kids are in bed, and then what do Mom and Dad do? How was your day?
Joshua Boswell: Right.
Julie Young: And now we get to interact. Now we get to about my day, talk about his day, talk about our plans for the future, talk about exciting things that are going on. But the kids never see that.
Joshua Boswell: They don’t see it. Yeah. And I think… if I can just interject there real quick. I've also seen that even sometimes that debrief at the end of the day actually doesn't end up happening. We have someone that's a good friend of ours, at one point was actually a family member. Not anymore. There was a divorce there. So we still treat her like family.
Julie Young: That’s good.
Joshua Boswell: But she's not legally bound to the family anymore. But you know, she had… her parents, she said my parents never fought when I grew up. There was always an okay feeling in the home. And within six months of when the last child was off and away, they got a divorce. And everyone was like, wow what?
Julie Young: We hear that a lot. Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: And digging into it, it was exactly what you're saying. It had just become a well-oiled, transactional machine. And that was it. As soon as the children were gone, that idea that the children were the family, with the children gone, family gone, marriage gone, right? And it was tragic.
Margie Boswell: Sad.
Joshua Boswell: It was crazy. So I didn't mean to cut you off, Rich.
Rich Young: No…
Joshua Boswell: But just thinking about this and I’m like, Oh.. you just quantified what was going on there?
Rich Young: Yeah, so true. It's so common.
Julie Young: Definitely.
Rich Young: And what ends up happening then is you… a lot of people replay what happened and then they realize what happened.
Joshua Boswell: Right.
Rich Young: What we want is we want to lower the number of replays that go on.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: And help people not have to go through that to do the replay.
Joshua Boswell: Yes, yes.
Rich Young: So when you think about kids early on, and even kids older, but we'll talk about kids early on. They need to know a couple of things. They need to know that they're loved. So they need to know that they are loved as children, as part of your family. Can't say that enough to them. They need to know where they fit in Mom and Dad's world too. They need to be told on a regular basis that they are an important part of the family, but they are not the priority of the family.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: And if we don't tell them that, they can easily believe through what happens that they are the main priority.
Julie Young: And become very child centered.
Rich Young: Yes and become very child centered. Sometimes we as parents do that unintentionally and sometimes we do it intentionally.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: And that's not healthy. And then third, they really need to know Mom and Dad love each other.
Margie Boswell: Mm-hmm.
Rich Young: They need to have the security, like Julie was saying, the security, the safety, the belief. Mom and Dad love each other and if that love is being shared outside of their viewing eyes, how are they going to know that?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: They're not.They're not going to catch it unless they see it.
Julie Young: And we have parents say, but we don't fight in front of our kids. And we say I don't care. I mean, that's great. Good job.
Joshua Boswell: You’re like, okay. Great.
Rich Young: Yeah, we do care about them fighting in front of their kids. That is important.
Julie Young: We say that’s not enough. That’s good. But that’s not enough. And I'll share a little story that the Ezzo’s shared with us. They had a couple that have been going through some of their classes and they said our three year old is waking up in the middle of the night every night coming into our room.
Joshua Boswell: Wow.
Julie Young: Needing something, wanting whatever, wanting to climb in bed with us. Every single night. And… this one thing that we're gonna share with you the Ezzo’s shared with them, try doing this. And the husband laughed and said, that's not gonna do it. You tell me that's gonna fix the middle of the night problem?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: And Gary said, give it a week. They had class every week.
Joshua Boswell: One week, yeah.
Julie Young: Give it a week, just do what I say, this one thing and see if it works.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: And the wife was like, yeah! let's do it. The husband was like, if that works, I'll eat my shirt.
Julie Young: So he comes to class the next week...
Rich Young: You never should say that.
Julie Young: And he starts to unbutton his shirt.
Rich Young: We're not gonna do that on the podcast.
Julie Young: It's very G-rated!
Rich Young: Yeah.
Julie Young: But this one thing stopped the child from getting up in the middle of the night. And it can affect a lot of other issues. Because what was happening was this child's security was rattled, right?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: And she… she knew if she came in the middle of the night to wake up Mom and Dad, Mom and Dad were going to work together to get her back to sleep. And she wanted to see Mom and Dad working together. And so that was the way that she did it. And that happens with a lot of things. If kids aren’t… if they're security need isn’t being met, they can't verbalize, Mom, Dad, I'm feeling a little insecure about something.
Joshua Boswell: Sure. Yeah.
Julie Young: And so it acts out in behavior.
Rich Young: And as a family gets busier, what a lot of times happens is you divide and conquer.
Julie Young: Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: Hmm.
Rich Young: You have the belief that, Oh, we’ll do this by dividing in conquering. And you start splitting up duties. Kids don't see you working together because you're out getting stuff done, but they don't see that interaction of how that looks like. They don't see you laughing together. They don't see you talking together. And what we know is that if your kids can see you laughing together, talking together and working together on a regular basis, they are going to see what a true healthy relationship looks like.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: Not where just we're just checking boxes off and doing our old dividing in conquering, but we're doing it as a team.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: And that's what we want to encourage people to do is to do it together more as a team instead of trying to get more done by this whole divide and conquer mindset.
Julie Young: Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, and so really it sounds like I mean we're doing… Not focusing on getting more done but focusing on raising the children by showing them you can do stuff together and showing what real relationships look like is what I hear you saying, right?
Julie Young: That could be a whole other podcast, too. But yes.
Joshua Boswell: That could be a whole nother podcast!
Rich Young: That is not the thing we’re going to share with you but right!
Joshua Boswell: Yeah I’m just saying it sounds awesome.
Julie Young: Yeah, I…
Joshua Boswell: Can I ask a quick follow-up question on something? And then I want to hear the rest of this because I want to get the one thing. But you talked about having them feel their position in the family and helping them to feel loved. I wonder if you could just dive a little deeper into maybe another example of how you've seen. Because we see our children, they’re all so unique, they’re so different. And a lot of them feel loved in different ways. Our first son, if I wrote him a little note, it was like that was everything to him. Right?
Margie Boswell: He still treasures all of them.
Joshua Boswell: And another one… I was like, Oh, this works so good. So child number three, I wrote little notes to and it was like… he couldn’t find them, didn’t even acknowledge that he had received them, it was like it meant nothing. So, I just wonder if you have some insights on that process of helping them to feel loved and really connecting with them?
Julie Young: Yeah, absolutely. And just a note on that too, that as parents, we want our children to be secure, to grow up happy. I can work really hard on loving all of my children really well. Whether it's a note, whether it’s a gift, whatever it is, but no matter how hard I work on that relationship… And it’s important.
Joshua Boswell: Yes.
Julie Young: It still is not as important as me working on this relationship.
Joshua Boswell: I love that.
Margie Boswell: Mmm.
Julie Young: And it's because of the priority. And it's in scripture. God declared it a priority. This husband/wife relationship is the priority. Everything else is dependent on that. And we do want to talk about… we realize some people are parenting in less than ideal circumstances. There is single parenting. And God is the father of the fatherless and the motherless. So I don't want to lose hope for other people, but I just do want to continually point back to the health of that.
Joshua Boswell: Can I share a quick example on that real quick?
Julie Young: Yeah!
Joshua Boswell: Just for our listeners. Here's our thought on what Julie just said in terms of God is the God and He loves all the fatherless, the widows, everybody for sure. But I'm reminded of an old example that I heard one time. This particular speaker said, When I was young my grandma would make shirts for everybody. And she just had a pattern, she'd take an old shirt and make a pattern out of that shirt and then just take that shirt again and make another pattern. Eventually the sleeves were up here and everything was down there because she wasn't using an actual exact pattern. Little mistakes that were propagated in the first one were carried on to the second one and the third one, Etc. And what I want everyone to hear is that we're not talking… by talking and focusing on husband and wife and stable families in that traditional core pattern that God's given, we're not trying to isolate anybody. What we're trying to do is give the actual pattern so that we know where to go from there, right? I grew up in a broken up family with all kinds of crazy stuff. And if I use that as a pattern, Margie and I would not be here today.
Rich Young: Right.
Joshua Boswell: Julie, what you said was so powerful. I just wanted to make sure that everyone understood that we're not going for mediocre or exceptions, we're going for what's the ideal so that we can base everything off of that pattern. So thank you for bringing that. I think it's awesome.
Julie Young: Absolutely. Love that analogy too. That was good.
Rich Young: I think what I'm gonna do is share something we did on Valentine's Day a number years ago. And then you can talk about it in context of your question about kids feeling loved.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: Because that was the context of your question. So on Valentine's Day every year we write a note to them. Well we each write a note to them on a card. And we just speak life into them. We just share some things that we love about them and share some things that we see in them. We want them to be looking ahead, appreciating what God has done in their life, who they are and using those gifts to impact others. Put them on the counter and they come down in the morning. And this year we titled it “Our Favorite Child” and we did that to each one.
Julie Young: Each our favorite.
Rich Young: To our favorite child.
Margie Boswell: There you go.
Rich Young: And each of them got their cards and was kind of like…
Julie Young: I can't show that! Mom and Dad just said I'm their favorite!
Rich Young: And then when they each realize it was titled the same to everyone.
Joshua Boswell: Right!
Rich Young: And we were doing it to make a point.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: We were doing it to make a point that each one of them is our favorite, but they are not better than their siblings.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: We don't view that as better. We view them each as our favorite and they all are loved by God and they all are loved by us.
Margie Boswell: Mm-hmm.
Rich Young: And I think kids in a family, no matter if it’s two, three, four siblings, five, whatever number you have. There is this feeling sometimes like, Oh I'm not as worthy. My Mom and Dad don't like me as much.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: Or the other side of it, I'm the best! I can’t do anything wrong. Each of those is very destructive.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Margie Boswell: Right.
Rich Young: And we don't want that to be the case. So we try to do things that help us to share with them and show them where our heart’s at, where we want their heart to be. Not to be too prideful, but also not to be too discouraged by what's going on.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: So, I don't know if you want to follow up to that, but I remember that.
Julie Young: Yeah, that was good. And I think kind of what you were alluding to is Love Languages. And getting to understand how our children best receive love. Whether it's a note, whether it’s acts of service, whether it's a gift giving. What are the different things? And so we do… I think kids need all of them, some just have… I always say you have a tank for each one. Just some of you have a really big tank for one.
Joshua Boswell: I love that.
Julie Young: And so I have to write a lot more notes to that one and I have to get a lot more gifts to this one. But I mean, it can be overwhelming too if you have a lot of kids. This one likes notes and this one likes this and this one… I try to do all for all of them at different times. And they all receive love in their different ways. Quality time is my love language. So I tend to be like hey, let's go out for coffee or let's go for a walk on the beach or something like that.
Rich Young: So thank you for scheduling this podcast because she's getting her love tank filled up with quality time with me.
Joshua Boswell: Yes!
Margie Boswell: There you go.
Rich Young: So it's a win-win all the way around. Thank you.
Margie Boswell: You’re welcome! That’s great.
Julie Young: All right, are we ready to share the one thing?
Rich Young: I think so. And then we'll expand on that. So the one thing…. drum roll plays… we call it couch time.
Margie Boswell: Okay!
Joshua Boswell: Oh, I love it.
Julie Young: Couch time. And I am not kidding, when parents call us, you know… My three-year old is waking up in the middle of the night. The first thing I'll ask him is how's your couch time? If they're familiar with the curriculum and they've gone to classes.
Joshua Boswell: Okay, yeah.
Julie Young: And if they say, Ah… we haven't done it in weeks. I’m like, you might want to start there. I'll listen. We'll talk. Obviously, there's a lot of other things that play into it. This isn't the Cure All for everything. But it's really foundational. So we like to start there.
Joshua Boswell: That’s great.
Rich Young: So really what this is doing… it’s a tangible demonstration between husband and wife with the children observing that your love relationship, Mom and Dad's love relationship is alive and well.
Joshua Boswell: Hmm.
Rich Young: And they can see that.
Margie Boswell: Mm-hmm.
Rich Young: So let's just talk through me a little bit of how it can be done, some different ways that we've done it.
Margie Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: And it hopefully will encourage some folks to start demonstrating their love relationship in front of their kids, which we feel like will just do absolutely amazing things in the family.
Julie Young: Because it touches on that security.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: Which is just so foundational for kids.
Joshua Boswell: I’m interested to hear this because I don’t think you’re talking about couch potato time.
Julie Young: No, no, no.
Rich Young: No, no.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah. I was excited to bust out some potato chips. But we’re not going there. Okay.
Julie Young: Yeah, turn on Netflix and bust out some potato chips.
Rich Young: No, that's not gonna happen.
Julie Young: What couch time is the strictest sense, and you're gonna see there's a lot of latitude here, but it got its name from literally a husband and wife sitting on the couch together at some time during the day and having a conversation and enjoying each other catching up on each other's day looking in each other's eyes and not being interrupted by the children.
Joshua Boswell: Wow.
Julie Young: And that can take a while to get there. And we try to do it. So for example, I'm home all day. He's at the office. So when he comes home, we try to make it, and there's context. Again, we don't want to be legalistic on this stuff, but we try to make it so the first thing that we do is we spend 10 or 15 minutes catching up on each other.
Joshua Boswell: Hmm.
Julie Young: He'll give all the kids a hug, He gives me the hug first though.
Joshua Boswell: Yep.
Julie Young: And it's just a small thing to say, You know what? I value my relationship with my wife. I value my relationship with my husband. And we're gonna start there. Hugs and kisses for the kids. And then let's talk. It doesn't have to be on the couch. But let's say it is, you just go sit on the couch. Kids are very… especially young children, they are very concrete. They need to see Mom and Dad interacting. So when the kids were young, I put a blanket, maybe the baby's in a bouncy seat. Sometimes I would have a playpen in there if I needed the child to not be running all around. So the child will be in a playpen, but somewhere where they can see mom and dad, sometimes we would set a timer so that they knew this wasn't going to go on forever.
Margie Boswell: So they can see it.
Julie Young: Kids… it's funny. They love it, but they hate it. It's like, I love that you’re interacting, but isn't life about me? So you'll get some of the “mommy, mommy, mommy” and it's no, no, no, this is my time with Daddy right now.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: I will get to you when the time or goes off. Obviously unless it's an emergency. And so when they're young they see that. And it speaks to that security, that stability that they need. As they get older and our youngest is 10 now, so he doesn't have to be in the room and he's grown up with it.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: And so we say, hey we're going out on a date now. They're like, awesome. They have the visual of what that is. They love it when we go out on date night. One they get to fix whatever they want for dinner and have fun together. They love to play games. But two, they know how good it is for us, which is really neat.
Joshua Boswell: So awesome.
Rich Young: So what we're doing with this when we do it is we are catching up on the things that we can catch up in front of them.
Julie Young: Yeah.
Rich Young: So we're not talking about deep, deep things. We're not going through major issues that happened with the child or something really really really hard that happened in a family that we know and exposing them to things that they just aren't ready for or shouldn't hear. We're catching up on the things that we can catch up in front of them. They're seeing us interact. They’re seeing us enjoy each other. They are realizing that Mom and Dad are connecting. That they do love each other. That they care about each other. And they're also realizing that they're not the most important thing in this family.
Joshua Boswell: Mm-hmm.
Rich Young: And they're getting that repeated over and over and over again in a tangible way. So you can tell them that. You know what? Mom and Dad, our relationship is more important than you. You can tell them that. That's one way to do it, but it's not the most powerful.
Joshua Boswell: Yep.
Rich Young: The most powerful way to do anything is see it done.
Margie Boswell: Show it. Yeah.
Rich Young: No matter what it is. And if the most important thing in your family is for your children to know that they are loved… For your children to know where they fit in Mom and Dad's world and for your children to know that Mom and Dad love each other. Shouldn't we as parents be demonstrating that to them in front of them almost every day of the week intentionally?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah!
Rich Young: Rather than just telling them?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: And that's why we think… This principle doesn't solve everything. But it does lead from where… It begins as we mean to go. This is what we want our kids being raised with and ultimately we want them then looking for a spouse that is important to them.
Joshua Boswell: Exactly. Yeah.
Rich Young: If you look at it as far as a vision. So we need to be leading that way as parents. That's why we think this is one of the most important things you can do to demonstrate for your kids and your family.
Joshua Boswell: I love it. Yeah, and it brings to mind a couple of thoughts. I mean the first one is that if a child feels like they're the centerpiece, the most important, then there’s a couple… And I'm just talking out loud here, but there's a couple of really powerful negative repercussions there. So think about a child who thinks that the whole way to the family rests on them. In other words, if they mess up and offend Mom and Dad, and they're the centerpiece, they've just broken the family. That's an enormous amount of responsibility.
Margie Boswell: Weight.
Joshua Boswell: And it's a lot of weight and I think that it makes them feel insecure. It’s like, oh my gosh, everything's up to me. Versus, Oh… Mom and Dad are the most important in each other's lives. And even if I mess up, I’ve got this anchor that I can still connect with.
Julie Young: Exactly.
Rich Young: Mm-hmm.
Joshua Boswell: So it seems like such a powerful repositioning to have them sense and to feel that, right?
Julie Young: Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: And it gives them freedom to just be kids and to grow.
Julie Young: Yes.
Joshua Boswell: I love that so much.
Julie Young: Absolutely. And I think all of us can kind of reach back into our memory of a time where we maybe sensed instability in our parent’s relationship. And the angst that we felt. I can still conjure up that emotion in my mind when my parents would have some sort of argument. I remember getting out of bed and coming downstairs and feeling like, I can't sleep!
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: When I heard the voices getting raised a little bit.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, I think the other thing that we see there that I'm thinking about is that we know how important it is for all of us as human beings to feel important and loved. I mean like you talked about, they need to feel that love. And it's clear to me that when they think that they're the center of the universe, it actually is a mixed signal in terms of them feeling important. Because it disrupts all the priorities and everything that's going on in their brain and in their life. And I think that it has the exact opposite. And when they see that marriage is… You know, therefore shall a man leave his father and mother and cling…
Margie Boswell: Cleave unto his wife.
Joshua Boswell: Yes cleave unto his wife… It’s like THAT’s the actual order of things, not me. And we see a lot of stuff in society where children are lashing out trying to get affection and attention and you know… We’ve put into vogue all kinds of gender things and weight things and all kinds of crazy stuff.
Margie Boswell: Entitlement. Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: Entitlement attitudes. So while you're saying that you don't think this will solve everything. I don't know. I'm thinking…
Margie Boswell: It might!
Joshua Boswell: It comes close, right? It goes to this core thing that happens in a child's life how they choose to behave and it's…
Julie Young: Well when we, like I said, when we talk with parents, that's the first thing we'll ask.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: Because we don't feel it's a good use of our time or of their time to be trying this and trying that and trying this if that isn't first.
Joshua Boswell: Totally. Yeah.
Julie Young: Try that for a week and then let's talk. Let's see what we have to work on.
Joshua Boswell: Nice.
Rich Young: And I think so many times as parents we see an issue, and what we want is we want a specific correction for that issue.
Joshua Boswell: Yes.
Rich Young: And in many cases it comes back to something foundational that we got off track with.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: And if we just get back on track with something that's foundational that's not really flashy, but it's consistent, we solve problems.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: We solve problems through consistently doing things that are in alignment with where we want to go. And if we want to demonstrate to them our love for them. If we want to demonstrate to them where they fit in Mom and Dad's world. And if we want them to know that they're loved, let's do something every day or most days of every week that they can tangibly see…
Margie Boswell: See. Yeah.
Rich Young: and demonstrate that to them. And we feel like that's being on a couch, it can be standing at the kitchen counter making dinner together. It could be on a car ride. They can't talk and you're gonna talk for 15 minutes and that's your time. So it can be done in so many different places, it’s that…
Julie Young: Or if one spouse is traveling, it could be Zoom, FaceTime, something like that. Google Meet. You can do it on the phone. If he ever traveled, he would call and I'd say, Oh, I'm gonna talk to Daddy. And when I'm done, then you guys get to talk.
Joshua Boswell: You guys get to. Yeah.
Margie Boswell: Great.
Julie Young: It was just something simple as us first.
Joshua Boswell: Us first. That's right.
Margie Boswell: Yep.
Julie Young: Then you guys are dependent really. You're loved. He wants to talk to you, but…
Rich Young: The easy thing to do is let the kids all talk first, kind of get them out of the way because they're all excited and then they'll calm down.
Joshua Boswell: Right.
Rich Young: But once again, you're demonstrating that they are more important than the marriage and they're not learning as much by doing that. Short-term you think you're solving a problem by calming them down, by giving them what they want. But you're actually creating a bigger problem later by doing that. We feel then teaching them through delayed gratification that you're going to get time, but it's gonna after.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah. After and in the proper order of things.
Rich Young: Exactly.
Joshua Boswell: Okay, so I got a couple of follow-ups. I don't want to… if you have more to share on that, I want to hear it, but I do have a couple of follow-up questions.
Rich Young: Sure.
Joshua Boswell: So the first follow-up question is… I'm thinking of a couple different scenarios, one is Healthy relationship, but kind of a newer, maybe early on in the marriage, children are young. Decent relationship but it's migrated to transactional. Suggestions? In terms of what that conversation could look like when they first start? Because there might be a little bit of an awkwardness about, Hey, we're going to talk now. And then looking at each other and being like…
Julie Young: What do we talk about?
Margie Boswell: What do we talk about?
Joshua Boswell: We're supposed to stand here and look happy in front of the kids… hi kids, we're having a nice conversation… I don’t know what to talk about! So any suggestions on structuring that so that it not only appears that Mom and Dad are putting each other first and having a good experience, but they actually are.
Julie Young: Yeah, yeah. So I would say if there are some issues in the marriage that need to be addressed, obviously those are going to be addressed through working on it together, through counseling, through whatever it is.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: And that's where the children don't see. Because some tough conversations probably need to happen.
Joshua Boswell: Right.
Julie Young: As far as in front of the kids, we still encourage parents, I know you guys are having a tough time. I know you're in counseling, things are tough. Continue couch time and just say, What happened in your day today?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: And just listen. And then he says, tell me about your day. And I tell you, and he listens and we're done.
Joshua Boswell: Nice.
Rich Young: But you can't… like if she says, tell me about your day, I can't just say it was good.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, right! It was fine. Good.
Margie Boswell: Two word answer.
Rich Young: Yeah, yeah, that doesn't work. You still have to have a conversation back and forth on what actually happened. Have some interest. I mean, if you continue to do that and you work on the issues outside of that conversation and are really committed to the relationship, it will be a season that you go through that. It's not going to be forever.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, yeah.
Rich Young: And that's what you have to believe. And you have to spend time praying together. You may need to seek out help with another couple or an outside counselor or someone to help get through that issue. But the relationship is way too important not to invest in it.
Joshua Boswell: Totally.
Rich Young: So invest in it in front of the kids, invest in it outside of the family, outside of your kids. And put the time in to working through whatever those issues are to get to the other side. Because we've had to do that over time. We've had to work through some issues and it's not a line. It’s not a linear climb where it just boom boom boom. Relationships aren't that way. They move up and down.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: And there's times when things are going well, and it's not because of what you did. It’s just… well it is because of what you did but it wasn't because of what you did that morning. It's because of the cumulative effect of doing a lot of really good things.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: And then there's challenging times. And once again, it's probably the cumulative effect of not doing some things really really well.
Joshua Boswell: That's right.
Rich Young: It's usually not a one-time thing that got you to where you're at. So it's not going to be a one-time thing that can get you out of where you're at.
Margie Boswell: Right.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah. Years ago I had excruciating back pain and so a good friend of ours was a world-class chiropractor. And I was like, what's the deal? I was feeling fine a couple days ago and now it's excruciating. And he was like, Well actually… What are you doing about this? And how's your posture? And what's your seat look like? And he walked through a bunch of little things. He said, here's the deal. He said, you've been inflicting micro damage on your back for the last two years. And now it’s manifest. So we're going to micromanage it out. Little steps along the way. And we're going to resolve it. And so it makes me think of the analogy that you're saying there.
Rich Young: Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: It’s just we do little things and we're gonna need to tweak some little things. And the simplicity of what you're saying this couch time. It’s like, how's your day and then just give a narrative about what it was and then reciprocate, actively listen. Simple! How simple can you get? That's amazingly simple, right?
Rich Young: I know…
Julie Young: That's why we told you at the end because we had to set it up.
Joshua Boswell: Right right.
Julie Young: The podcast is over!
Rich Young: This would have been a 90 second podcast and you would have been like, hmm… okay. Gotta be something more than that.
Julie Young: I can't tell you how many people doubt it. They really doubt it, and I cannot tell you the countless testimonies to couch time.
Margie Boswell: Yeah, so good.
Joshua Boswell: Is there a natural progression to this? I mean obviously starting off with very simple conversations is cool. What have you seen as the natural progression to that in terms of the relationship with the spouse and then with the children?
Julie Young: As far as what they see or just what we experience?
Joshua Boswell: What they see and the kinds of conversations that you're having and the impact on the family.
Julie Young: Yeah. Yeah, I think as far as our interaction between us, we look forward to catching up.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: I mean we married each other because we really like each other.
Joshua Boswell: That's shocking.
Julie Young: And we've continued to grow. We've been married for 31 years. And we vaguely resemble those kids that got married 31 years ago, but we have grown and it takes intentionally.
Rich Young: Visually too.
Julie Young: Yeah but it takes intentionality to grow together and so being intimately involved with each other's lives… because he's at the office and I'm at home. There's a lot of hours where I'm not in his world and he's not in my world.
Joshua Boswell: Yes.
Julie Young: So it's staying intimately involved in each other.
Rich Young: Yeah, I would say also, something that has evolved over the last decade or so is us having a desire. So this is an evolution of I believe a regular rhythm of communicating is we have a desire now to get away multiple times a year to work on the vision of our family.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: The vision of our financial future, the vision of our marriage, the vision of how we want to influence people, relationships. So we just spent some time last Thursday through Saturday, just a couple days ago having a couple of days where we dreamed for next year. We planned for next year. We thought about that and you ask, what effect does it have on the family? We have an 18 year old daughter. You want to read that text?
Julie Young: Yeah. Yeah.
Rich Young: I'm gonna read this text. This is a tangible… so this is real time, we're working this out as you asked this question.
Joshua Boswell: Boom. Yes, okay. Good.
Rich Young: Yeah this wasn't part of our plan and thought process. But we're actually in a group talking to some people.
Julie Young: This past weekend.
Rich Young: This past weekend. And while we're in this group talking about our time together, visioning how important we feel it is to get away as a couple and having a vision, our 18 year old daughter who’s away at college sends this text. And she says, hey Mom and Dad. Just finishing up my quiet time and goodness gracious, I'm so thankful for you both. I've been dreaming so much about my future and so many opportunities that I'm hearing. And the things I would love to do and I'm realizing the priceless gift of having parents not only dream and vision for their and their family's lives, but who champion their kids dreams. I'm just overflowing with thankfulness. Thank you for listening to the Lord and showing me what it looks like. I love you both lots. So a tangible outcome might be an 18 year old daughter who's away at college for her first year sending a text, living out her quiet time with God and being thankful for having a visioning moment of her life.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: And thanking her parents for demonstrating that little by steps by the way that we've done by doing different things. So that to me is the answer to your question.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, yes.
Rich Young: It’s we would love to see each of our kids have a bigger vision for their future at 18 than we did. Because we didn't have this at 18.
Margie Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: And we would love to see them having this when they're 16, 18, 20, 25, and out. And that, to me... that gets us both excited.
Margie Boswell: Just to be that much farther ahead than we were at that age, right? Yeah.
Julie Young: Yes!
Rich Young: Right. Yeah.
Margie Boswell: Wouldn't that be nice?
Joshua Boswell: That text deserves a standing ovation somewhere.
Margie Boswell: That’s amazing! It’s beautiful!
Joshua Boswell: I mean, not just for you as parents, but for her as an individual and a daughter of God who's thinking clearly and recognizing what God's given to her, what you've given to her. And I have to imagine there are just thousands and thousands of parents who would just die to have a text like that. And it's beautiful.
Margie Boswell: Millions.
Joshua Boswell: Millions, yeah. The beautiful thing is like, well you can. Let’s start with some couch time.
Julie Young: Yes, exactly.
Joshua Boswell: Right? Let's really complicate this.
Julie Young: It's tiny little steps. It's so true people are like wow what you do? Well, we sat on the couch for 15 minutes when he got home from work every day! It was a lot more, but…
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: But you think about it, we do that for a long time. Then we start doing little getaways to talk bigger picture.
Joshua Boswell: Yes.
Rich Young: And to add more things to it. And then what we do is we come home from those weekends eventually and start sharing with our kids. But God is really showing us. And then as we share with them, they start going, Well maybe He's got something for me.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: Maybe He's got something… And that's all that she's doing. She's been hearing this for years now and she's starting to believe now He's got something big for me.
Julie Young: Yeah. Immeasurably more than all we could ask or imagine.
Rich Young: Yeah Ephesians 3:20.
Joshua Boswell: Yes, yes.
Julie Young: Yeah we talk about that verse a lot with our kids. He has immeasurably more than all you can ask or imagine.
Joshua Boswell: All you can ask or…
Julie Young: According to His power does it work within you.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah. And when you turn to God it's interesting because He's not just an average Joe. He's all powerful, all knowing and there’s no limit. There's nothing impossible with him. So it's cool to start infusing that understanding and vision into our children. And with little couch time conversations and then interacting with them and this vision. I love your vision getaways. I think literally you probably have a course on it somewhere, but I think it'd be a whole other topic for a conversation we can have, right?
Julie Young: Yeah we have vision retreats every year and they're powerful. Really powerful.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, yeah.
Julie Young: We talk with people about having them.
Rich Young: Yeah. No, that would be a whole separate conversation. Because we've found that for us, it keeps us on track, it confirms what we've done is working. It allows us to do course corrections on things that didn't work. And then God imparts new ideas on us.
Joshua Boswell: Yes.
Rich Young: To maybe start on something different. And we’ve found it does all of that and that's all exciting to us. When we first… I mean, I'm more of a goal setter than you were, but she was…
Julie Young: I’m a perfectionist. I don't like to set goals because I'm like, what if I don't make it? And I will have failed.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: And he was like, it was either a bad goal, or you set a new one. It's not that big a deal. I was like, yes it is.
Joshua Boswell: You’re like, it is though!
Julie Young: Yeah. But we believe that's an outcome of having a relationship where you're in a rhythm of regular communication. You enjoy each other, you love each other and you want more for not just yourself but for your spouse and for your family. And that's another step that you can take that is an outcome of that regular rhythm of spending time together. And once you get in that regular rhythm of spending time together you realize there's more. There’s a great opportunity to go even further. And He's got more in us than just what we thought. There's way more in each of us than what we think.
Joshua Boswell: Right.
Rich Young: And we just sometimes need to stretch that a little bit.
Joshua Boswell: Totally. Reminds me of that quote from C.S. Lewis about, I'm gonna paraphrase, but you know, we start off, we have a little cottage and He comes and says, I’ll help you make this a little better place. And then He does a few repairs and you’re like, Oh that needs to be fixed anyway, and then He starts knocking walls out, right? And God starts knocking walls out and you’re like, that hurts! He’s like look, I don't expect you to live in a cottage. I'm building you a mansion.
Rich Young: Mmm.
Joshua Boswell: I’m turning you into a mansion and so He does have more for us and there is a way for us to learn and understand and stretch that. But it requires that quiet time and that communication. One thing I have also seen is the growth that I can have as an individual and the better understanding I can have of the vision that God has for me… The key to that gets unlocked in my relationship with Margie. And I see that what she fulfills in me is unbelievable. And on my own I never ever could have understood the potential and the plan God had for me. Or even come close to realizing it. And she unlocks that for me.
Julie Young: That's awesome.
Joshua Boswell: And so again this couch time idea that you're talking about is like… Oh! Let's have frequent communication so that for each other we become the lock and the key and open up total new vistas of potential and growth and who God wants us to be.
Julie Young: Yes.
Rich Young: Yeah, well it’s almost like good, better, best. It's good to have communication with each other. But the best is having communication in front of your children.
Joshua Boswell: Exactly. Yeah.
Rich Young: So they can see what that looks like and they can see the tangibleness of it. So I'm not discounting that you’re gonna… I mean, we know you're going to have communication outside of your children. You can't have all your communication in front of them.
Joshua Boswell: Sure.
Rich Young: But you can’t have it all outside of their eyes either. We don't think that's healthy.
Joshua Boswell: Totally, I love it.
Julie Young: Can I just address the single parent real quick…? Because...
Joshua Boswell: I wanted to go there because I wanted to… That was my last follow-up question.
Julie Young: Okay!
Joshua Boswell: We've talked about the pattern. I mean, we've got the pattern from McCalls. Isn’t that a sewing pattern…?
Margie Boswell: Yep, McCalls pattern for sewing experts.
Joshua Boswell: Okay, we've got the McCalls sewing pattern. So we know what the framework looks like. But now we've got variances there and we need to make some adaptations. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Margie Boswell: Mm-hmm.
Julie Young: Yeah, absolutely. We have quite a few single parents that come to us that are in their classes. And it can be very disheartening to hear this message thinking, Oh well… I don't have a husband. I don't have a wife. I guess my kids are gonna be completely insecure and every behavior problem is gonna go wrong.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: And that’s where that is not true. That is where God is the father to the fatherless, to the motherless. And what we encourage the single parent to do is to have couch time with the Lord in front of their children. And so they're reading His word, they're praying. It’s a time where the kids can't interrupt. And they can…
Rich Young: And they're talking to God.
Julie Young: Yeah, you can say I'm having couch time with God. If they feel comfortable praying out loud, Lord, thank you. Just praising him. Thank you for who you are. Thank you for my children. You know, a heart of gratitude when they hear these things come out of their parent. They see Mom or Dad going to God's word for wisdom. They see Mom or Dad going to God in prayer for help, for whatever. That touches their security.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: Oh, Mom's not alone.
Margie Boswell: Mm-hmm.
Julie Young: Mom does have someone. Okay, I thought she was doing it all on her own.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: Which it can feel like it. I mean single parenting is hard.
Rich Young: Hard.
Joshua Boswell: Totally. Yeah.
Julie Young: When you’re the single parent, single father or single mother. We had a dear friend in the ministry, her husband unexpectedly passed away. And they had a ten and a seven year old. And just how hard it is. Thankfully she's had this principle. She's continued couch time with the Lord, there have been… you know. He's met her in so many ways.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: And those children are thriving through a really difficult situation. But her kids know Mom's not doing this alone.
Margie Boswell: Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, I love that.
Julie Young: Mom's got the Lord lean on.
Joshua Boswell: So we're obviously not single. I grew up and when I was nine my parents divorce, so I watched my mom try to raise six children on her own. So I'm super familiar with those single parent struggles. We've had a lot of good friends who either had divorce or death caused them to be single parents. And so the struggles are really real. But the thing that I love about your answer is, no matter how tough the struggles of the mountain is, God is merciful to us and will help. And wants to help.
Julie Young: Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: And this couch time with the Lord I think is so powerful. I remember one day I was sitting… I like to get up super early in the morning and I'm just an early riser. And I was in my office, I always leave the door open and I was praying. Now my prayers are 10% on my knees, 90% on my writing device. I'm a writer and I like to just ask questions and record thoughts and I just… very open conversation with the Lord. And our daughter came and saw me and she was I think six or seven at the time. And I was sitting in my chair writing, so she said, Dad, what are you doing? I said, I'm praying. She was like, you’re not… what do you mean you’re praying? I said, well come sit down. So I sat her on my lap and we just started reading some of this stuff that I had together. And she still to this day will comment on how big of an impact that had knowing that her dad had a working communicative relationship with God. And the joy that I saw… she read with me for a minute and then gave me a big hug and was… She was fine from that point. It was great. She was totally secure.
Julie Young: Yes.
Joshua Boswell: And I'm just saying that to attest to what you're saying. Because there is this relationship and it's vital and then there's the relationship with God and that's vital. And our children pick up on it. It’s really cool.
Julie Young: Yes.
Joshua Boswell: Thank you for bringing that up. What great wisdom. All right, so before we wrap up. Is there anything that you wanted to say or that I should have asked you and you're like, why didn't Joshua ask me this question? Why didn’t Margie ask this question? Is there anything that we should have brought up or do you think that you would like to share just kind of to wrap up?
Julie Young: I don’t think so.
Rich Young: I don’t think so. Yeah.
Julie Young: I think we covered it all.
Joshua Boswell: Really? I love it. Thank you.
Margie Boswell: It was wonderful what you shared. Thank you.
Joshua Boswell: Last thing is we would love to send people your way. This has been awesome. So what's the best way for them to get deeper into your world and into the classes and the training videos and all the different stuff. What's kind of a clear path to learn more about this stuff?
Julie Young: Yeah, go ahead.
Rich Young: No you can do it. That’s fine.
Julie Young: Yeah so Growing Families International is the ministry and if you go to www.GrowingFamilies.Life you'll find the website and there are videos that for a small subscription you can have access to the entire library from birth to teen and all the parenting videos. There are online Zoom classes where if you want to be discipled by a leader in the Growing Families Ministry you can do those. Discipleship is a wonderful way to be held accountable and to really grow from other leaders who are walking here. We have a conference in Denver next April. We have family camps, online my mom's disciples group.
Joshua Boswell: All kinds of stuff.
Julie Young: There is! So in they’re books. I mean you can just go and get lost in the website and just hopefully be encouraged.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, what is the…? So that online the zoom class in the discipleship? Is that a typical coaching scenario where you're setting goals and being accountable? Or what does that look like a little bit?
Rich Young: So what's gonna happen with that is you're gonna have someone that has had experience in the material as a family and in the ministry leading a group of parents. And each leader is going to decide how many couples they want in their class. Sometimes it's four, sometimes it’s six, sometimes it's seven.
Julie Young: Small group format. Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: Okay.
Rich Young: It's a small group format. And every week you're gonna watch… or every two weeks depending on how the class is set up, you're gonna watch a segment of a video or a whole video on a topic.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: And then you're gonna get together as a group and you're gonna discuss that and you're gonna as a group, each person, each couple's gonna have a takeaway. Most of the leaders are gonna say okay, give us one takeaway that you got out of that video.
Joshua Boswell: Wow.
Rich Young: And then there'll be a time when they can teach through the takeaways. So we typically teach through the takeaways and then there's going to be a time for everyone to share like what are you challenged by? Where are you struggling?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: Is there something in there that you really want to understand a little bit more or you have a question on? And we're going to work through that. And a lot of these leaders have experience around going through it. And if they don't know the answer to the question, there's a whole pool of people out there that they can reach out to that will be able to help them. So if they don't have a lot of experience being… you know, with single parenthood, and there's a single parent in the class. We have a lot of connections with single parents that work through these specific issues. and we'll just connect people to have them help out.
Margie Boswell: That's great.
Rich Young: But that’s really… I mean what we want to do is encourage people where they're at and give them practical things that they can implement to improve.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Margie Boswell: Mm-hmm.
Rich Young: And if you can do both of those things while speaking life into people and encouraging people through where they're at and what they can become, we believe that not only can you improve that family dynamic relationship, but you can have a lot of fun together. You should be having a lot of fun together as a family. You really should.
Joshua Boswell: Yep, I love it.
Margie Boswell: So great.
Joshua Boswell: Well that is such an invaluable opportunity for people. Because here's my perspective. I think that we live in a world where so much information is bombarded. I think most people, too many people now are being... I'm gonna use a strong word, brainwash, through social media stuff.
Margie Boswell: Oh no.
Joshua Boswell: And through just this constant input of… The people on the other end of that, that they don't care, they didn't sit and pray about what's gonna be best for you. They didn't carefully put together any kind of a curriculum idea that's gonna help your family to grow and be strengthened. It's just information and it's stuff and the news media that’s out there. They're not desperately figuring out how to strengthen your family. But what you guys are talking about is one-on-one, real life discipleship and discipling that has all of those things. These people, I mean from what you're saying it’s like, they're thinking about their cohort, they're thinking about the families in there. What do they need? Do I need to connect somebody? What are you getting out of this class? I mean, it's just absolutely beautiful. And I wish I wasn't so rare, but most classrooms are, someone gets up, stands up, gives a lecture, you walk out, you have a homework assignment, done. What you're talking about is radically different.
Julie Young: Mm-hmm.
Joshua Boswell: So I'm saying all that to strongly encourage anyone listening to this. It's like, you know what? We do need to make some changes. The classes are awesome, but being mentored and discipled through that and having someone who cares as experience and has faith involved to help you is I think it's priceless.
Margie Boswell: So awesome.
Joshua Boswell: So that's my on the spot plug for your classes! This sounds awesome! Everybody should do this, okay.
Rich Young: We just have this desire for Dads and Moms to have a desire to continually be working on their relationship as a couple and on their relationship and their family. And we believe there's nothing more important to work on each and every year and build on that.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: And it shouldn't just be, we're gonna work on it for the first year we have this child and then let's just see what happens?
Julie Young: Then we’ve got it all figured out…
Joshua Boswell: Right… after the first year, you know everything.
Margie Boswell: Yeah you know everything as a parent… Ha ha.
Rich Young: It should be something you're working on even when your kids are adults. You should be working.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Rich Young: Okay, how can we continue to make this relationship with this child, and if they're married, their spouse, important to them and encourage them and how can we breathe life into this relationship? It’s just… we believe it should never end. It should be an ongoing thing.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah. We agree.
Margie Boswell: We agree with that. Yes.
Joshua Boswell: Well…
Margie Boswell: Thank you!
Joshua Boswell: Rich and Julie, thank you so much. This has been very insightful, love the simplicity of your wisdom and the experience there. We really appreciate it.
Julie Young: Well thanks for having us.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Julie Young: We're honored and love the work that you're doing as well.
Margie Boswell: Thank you.
Joshua Boswell: All right, we'll see you later. Thank you so much.
Margie Boswell: Thanks.
Rich Young: You’re welcome.
Julie Young: Okay, bye-bye