Throughout our parenting journey, one parenting tool that we have utilized the most is planting seeds.  While the generic concept of planting seeds is not new, our friends Dave and Lis provided us with a perspective that took the concept to a new level in our parenting with a 2 step approach:

  • Planting seeds – Initiate a significant idea or topic with a question
  • Cultivation – Ongoing conversation follow up

This tool has been particularly helpful for us in a wide variety of areas from Character Development to The Drugs Talk to The Sex Talk and more.

Reaching the fullness of our potential is something that we desire for ourselves and our boys.  However, telling Trevor and Alex when they are in elementary school, for example, to always do your best is fine, but it lacks a substance that they can internalize and harness for future life application.  What does doing your best look like to someone in elementary school?  This is where planting seeds can be helpful.  For us, we would ask each of our boys a series of questions to get them thinking and internalizing what doing your best means and what it looks like to them.  We asked questions like:

What is the difference between a 4 and 5 on an assignment (B or A grade)?
What kind of effort is needed to get a 4?  How about a 5?
Is it ok to ask the teacher questions about confusing things?
What would happen if you spent more time to double check your work?

Of course, with most things in parenting, saying something just once usually never does the trick.  That’s why you need to make it any ongoing conversation.  You begin by throwing out a few questions to introduce an idea or topic and then follow up periodically with the same or similar questions as the ongoing conversation.  This will also give you a gauge on where their thinking and internalization is at in their own minds.  Sometimes our boys would completely miss the boat about an idea we were trying to convey but other times they would surprise us with more insight than we expected.  That’s why it’s so important to follow up your seed planting with cultivating ongoing conversations.  Sometimes you’ll need to replant some seeds and sometimes you begin to see the growth emerge!

Another added benefit of the seed planting/cultivation concept is that it prevents lecturing to your children.  Lecturing to your children seldom, if ever, works in parenting.  In fact, for Trevor and Alex, Rich’s lectures were more painful than any corrective consequence or punishment we could provide!  When your children are in school all day long, coming home to more lectures has little effect.  Yet, as parents, we fall into lecture mode because we can get it all out at once and are presumably finished with that idea or topic.  This is particularly the go-to approach when it comes to uncomfortable topics like Sex, Drugs or even Faith in some circumstances.  We know we need to talk about these things, so “having the talk (lecture)” is the perceived easy way to mark that off of the parental to do list. However, Planting Seeds and having the ongoing conversation about uncomfortable topics actually “takes the pressure off” by allowing you to present these topics in much smaller bite size pieces.  Here are some sample questions (seeds) we used on these uncomfortable topics at various ages of our kids:

Drugs
Have your teachers or friends ever talked about Drugs?  What are Drugs?
Drugs can help people, but how can they hurt people?
Why do you think people use drugs illegally?
What are people trying replace in their lives with illegal drugs?

Sex
Do you know the names of all your body parts?  How about the opposite sex?
How do all these parts work? Why do you think some parts are private?
What is puberty? What do you think happens?
Have your friends talked about sex? What do you think sex is?

Faith
Why do you think God created us?
What do you think God looks like? Where does He live?
Do you think God hears/sees you, hears your prayers?
Why do we believe what we believe?

We started planting these seeds/questions when our boys were in elementary school and continued the discussion of these topics even as they became young adults.  These uncomfortable topics need to progress appropriately to the age of your child.  Talking to your kindergartner about body parts and private parts is appropriate, but not about puberty.  And as your children get older, often times the seeds/questions evolve into more in-depth conversations, which is terrific because then they drive the ongoing discussion.  Planting seeds/questions early and continuing the discussion (over the years) removes most of the uncomfortableness and any taboos associated with these kinds of topics.

The goal of planting seeds and cultivation is to have a fruitful harvest.  A lifelong harvest where your children take ownership of topics and ideas with the confidence that they fully understand and have discerned the ideas and topics that are significant to their personal growth and development.  We love this tool because it also allowed us to incorporate and dovetail many of the other principles and tips we have already mentioned in our previous letters – Parenting during a time of non-conflict, explaining the “moral reason why”, role playing and build a trusting relationship.  It’s just one more tool that helps us to become the parents we want to be for our children.  We hope you consider adding this valuable tool to your parenting approach.  Maybe we just planted a seed with you!

Blessings to your family,
Shelly and Rich

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