Our future leaders are falling asleep in the herd today and the practice of critical thinking, at a time we need it most, is being lost. Definitions are being blurred and confusion is on the rise. How can we recognize this in our kids and what can we do about it? 

About the Host:

Nellie Harden is a wife of 20+ years, mom to 4 teen/tween daughters, dreamer, adventurer, servant, multipreneur, forever student, and a devoted teacher, but her ride-or-die passion is her work as a Family Life Coach & Mentor. 

Coming from a career background in marine mammal sciences, behavioral work, and a host of big life experiences, both great and not some not so great, she decided that designing a life of purpose and freedom was how she and her husband, along with their 4 daughters, wanted to live. 

Her work and passions exist in the realms of family and parent mentorship because she believes that a family filled with creativity, fun, laughter, challenge, adventure, problem-solving, hugs, good food, and learning can not only change a person’s life but is the best chance at positively changing the world. 

She helps families build Self-Led Discipline™ & Leadership Into their homes, sets their children up for a wildly successful life on their terms, and elevates the family experience with big joy, palpable peace, and everyday growth!

With a lifelong passion and curiosity in thought, choice, behavior, and growth she has found incredible joy in helping families shift perspective, find answers, and a path forward.

(Nellie has been coaching families for over 10 years and has degrees in Biology, Animal Behavior and Psychology. ) 

LINKS:

Family Success Vault- https://www.nellieharden.com/vault

Website- https://www.nellieharden.com

Online Community- https://www.facebook.com/groups/the6570project

Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/nellieharden/   

Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/nellie.harden/

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Hello and welcome to the 6570 family project podcast. If you are a parent of a tween teen or somewhere on the way, this is exactly the place for you. This is the playground for parents who want to raise their kids with intention, strength and joy. Come and hear all the discussions, get all the tactics and have lots of laughs along the way. We will dive into the real challenges and reason kids today how to show up as parents and teach your kids how to show up as members of the family and individuals of the world. My name is mellie harden, big city girl turns small towns sipping iced tea on the front porch Mama, who loves igniting transformation in the hearts and minds of families by helping them build self flood discipline and leadership that elevates the family experience, and sets the kids up with a rock solid foundation, they can launch their life on all before they ever leave home. This is the 6570 family project. Let's go.

Alright, Hello, everyone. Welcome to our third episode of the 6570 a family project podcast. And this one is all about what is happening to our future leaders. And before we get into that, I realized that I didn't tell you what you can expect in this podcast. So I'm going to be coming to you with information. I'm also going to be having some very special guests on here, some other parents on here speaking. And I'll also have some guest experts on here speaking sometimes, but today it is a little old me and remember we are sitting on that front porch Sipping Some iced tea right now. And I want to have a serious conversation with you about our future leaders. And, you know, I think about this year right now, I think about 10 years from now 20 years from now 30 years from now. Those kids are being are being created, those leaders are being created right now. And remember from our talk about core beliefs and what is cemented injuring this 6570 the 6570 days that within this training ground that we have our high impact, high influence time period as parents, those things are being tied down right now in your living room, which means that we are going to the world is going to be effectively touched by it later on. Right. But what's happening right now, so our future leaders are literally falling asleep in the herd. I told you guys I'm a very visual person. So I picture this a herd of cattle that is going along and there's these these dots, these painted backs of some of them on there that are meant to be they have all you know, all of the the makings the skill sets the DNA of a great leader in them, and they're being lost in the herd. They're falling asleep in the herd right now. Things are going by so fast for them. There isn't time to think about consequences and I'm going to get into this in a minute. So think about it.

Have you seen Pinocchio alright. Even if you haven't you chances are you've probably heard of the donkey boys right and Pinocchio and I'll give a couple of other examples if you guys have not seen Pinocchio, but maybe you have but anyway in Pinocchio there's those boys that get lost on pleasure Island right? And what is that place they go it's this carnival. everything you could possibly want as a you know 810 1214 year old boy is in there. And you go in and it's just like pleasure, pleasure entertainment, entertainment over and over and over again. And everything that you want is at your beck and call and you don't have time to think about is this right or not. Wait, am I missing my family? Wait, am I supposed to be here? Hold on a second. You don't even have time because there's a new whistle a new Gizmo lights are going off and it is crazy there and they are constantly entertained. Right? Percy Jackson another movie. Anyone seen that one? Percy Jackson, the Lotus motels, same type of deal. They go into this hotel everybody loses all track of time because it is entertainment, entertainment, entertainment, look at the flashy things. Look at the big color lights. Listen to the the music that is going off everywhere and it's you know, tantalizing for years.

All the things. I was coaching one of my family's a little while back, and I was talking to this young man. And he was about 10 years old and I was talking and I said picture if you go into a mall I had to define what a mall was because I'm not sure. I'm not sure it gets Do they know what malls are? Back in my day we used to, like, go hang out at the mall, and it was a whole thing. And today they're like big empty places. Some shoppers, but nothing like it used to be in the 80s. Right? But anyway, so you're in a mall. So lots of stores, and there is a store on the left that is super glittery, shiny, Carnival type music, fun music.

The lights are everywhere, right? And then on the right, there's this store that is has some brown couches in it. It might have, you know, a couple of sodas, there something that you could have heard some tea or what have you are iced tea that we're sipping right now. And which one would you go to? And of course, he said, I would go into the one with all the lights and everything I said yes, exactly. That's the one that you would go into. And I'm glad that you recognize that that would be the one I would go into, at their age, probably to these days, I probably go into the brown sofa. But you know, at their age, I definitely would have. But what happens when you go in there? That's what's tricky. What happens when you go in there. So I'm going to propose something to you right now. And say that critical thinking is going extinct. Critical thinking is going extinct. So what is critical thinking critical thinking is the this is geekspeak here, so but it is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue, right? So you're analyzing an issue in order to form a judgment. Right. So that is what critical thinking is, and it is imperative to have critical thinking in a modern functioning world. But weirdly enough, we're getting away from critical thinking when we need to be stepping more toward it, especially for our self leaders and our leaders that are going to become leaders of other people down the line. So there's that word in there, right judgment. That word is really condemned today. But it's also vital imperative needed every single day. I mean, we make judgment calls every single day. In fact, there is a document if you guys haven't gone to the vault yet, on my website, there is a gift my heart to yours, my family to yours called the family success of volt. and it is just Nelly harden calm. So that's an E Ll IE everyone tries put a y on there, it's iy. So n e Ll IE, H, ar di n.com, slash backslash, volt Vu Lt. So go there and get yourself the key into the vault.

And inside of the vault, you're going to find a document that is called How to it's something like how to judge without being judgmental, or how to teach your kids how to judge without being judgmental. That word has gotten such a bad rap. But also we have to teach our kids how to make good judgment calls, right. And so it's really important when I'm looking at critical thinking and I was looking up the definition of that, the to understand Wait a second, we need to think about and analyze and evaluate an issue so we can form a judgment, it doesn't say so we can then in turn be judgmental, right. And so that's very clear, or I'm sorry, very important today that we make that distinction. So definitely go in the vault and get that document for yourself. So you might think after all I'm saying that I think is social media and all media the the YouTubes and the TIC tocs. And the everything that is a terrible. And I will be the first one to stand up and say I don't think social media is all bad. I have seen social media do amazing, brilliant, beautiful things in this world. It's just that like everything else. There's another side to that sword, right. And it can also be not all good. And when we send our kids into these Lotus motels or where the Pinocchio boys went, I don't know what it was called, but into the world of social media. And even if your kids side note, even if your kids are not on social media, they're still on social media because their friends are on social media, their school is on social media, their dance studio, their baseball team, all the things are on social media so you can try to stay away from it if you can, and definitely put up some boundaries to that which we'll talk about in a minute, but you aren't going to be able to stay away from it completely, easily anyway, I do know some people that do it, but I can't call them because they don't have a telephone. So you want to set up some boundaries there. The thing is when we put them in those situations, they don't have the internal resources yet to go in and no, what is good for them? And what is it? They don't, they're just like, oh, pretty. Oh, pretty.

Oh, that's good. Yes, I want that. Right. They get put into the, into the donkey boys and you know, girls of the world. And there was a book that came out actually called amusing yourself to death. I'm using yourself to death, it was by Neil Postman. And it was a book about what happens in politics and journalism, religion, education, when they all become subject to the demands of entertainment. Now, I think you and I would both agree today that all of those things, politics, journalism, education, religion, all those things are in some form of part on social media as a form of entertainment on TV, and all these these things. You guys, that book was written in 1985. That book was written 35 years ago. So we've been on this road for a while. This isn't a new thing social media came about in about 2007, with the advent of Facebook and Twitter and all the things, but we've been on this road for a while it was just a new pretty thing on that road is what social media was. And so what we don't want to do is just let our kids we're selves, frankly, I see this in adults too. And been guilty of it once or twice, I will fully admit, right, we're on always a growth path, I will never be like, to the end of my growth path. Neither will you neither will anyone, it's always a path forward. But you We can't just let them go and be loose in this playpen of sources that don't serve them. Right, they don't actually think about things they don't have. And they might even have pressure on them to do something or to not do something. And we're putting them in there before they have the skill set of discernment before they have that self love discipline. And they can lead themselves. And you want them to be able to go into this environment, be able to do what they want to do and make some choices and come out. And our problem today is they're having a real rough time coming out, right coming out of the circus, so to speak. And then you're gonna find yourself because this happened to us. We walked in my husband and I were astonished to see all four of our girls sitting around one tiny phone screen. This was a couple of years ago, watching soap get cut. Yes, there was this, this video of people cutting soap into squares and then cutting off the ends and just watching the soap get cut. And my husband and I just looked at each other. We're like, what is happening right now? And these were all quote unquote, satisfying videos. And it reminded me of the little aliens in Toy Story when they look up and they're like, the claw right? I told you I did movie movie references. I hope you guys can all hang on to them. Love movie references. But anyway, yeah, the claw. And that's what these people are my kids, these people, my kids, they were like, they're like, satisfying. And there was even this little jingle if you will that had them saying it like that, like satisfying, right?

And I was like, Oh no, like, what are we doing? We need to shut this down right now. My kids who have very active brains, they're brilliant. They're active they're doing all these things have been now brain morph to sit down for more than a couple seconds more than a couple minutes. And watch soap get cut. Okay, and you might be laughing at me right now. And if you are it's probably because you had the same experience and you know exactly what satisfying videos that I am talking about. So the kids don't go after effort yet. They go after the glittery easy, fun house, right? But it's the Fun House where those dangers can lie around all those corners. And the goal is to keep you in those in that Fun House right? Um, anyone? If you have seen the documentary, I would lost the word there for a second but the documentary The social dilemma, right. That is a very clear cut. We watched it as an as an entire family. I feel like we need to watch it again. That's like a good one to watch every six months to just keep awareness at its peak, right. But the social dilemma those companies are Trulli keeping us there in that space, so that they can get the likes, get the hits, get the everything that they need to be done. So boundaries are good, helping them training them to have boundaries to be able to go into the funhouse, go into the crazy store, go into the Lotus motel or the Pinocchio place, right? Whatever resonates with you and your kids, go in there and have some discernment, make the decisions and lead yourself back out. So you want to go in and find the good, there is good out there. There's incredible good out there. So go in, find the good and get out. And I want to say too, that living in a bubble has its own dangers, right, not knowing what you need to discern is just as dangerous as not knowing how to discern. So I've seen the bubble living like oh, we are totally shut off, we are not doing anything. And then when they are let loose, these kids are let loose into the into the real world so to speak, quote unquote, there is a quick drop off, and it hurts when they fall. And so teaching them discernment and teaching these boundaries is so imperative. So they're prepared and they know how to face these situations in these environments in our world, finding the medium and having lots and lots and lots of talks. So to do that, you need to know how to have those talks. And that is what I love to dive in with my family architect clients. In fact, in that vault that I told you about, there is another document in there called the 16 conversations to have with your kid to bring awesome to your family or something very similar to that it's in the communication folder. So take a look at that. Those are great ones to have and just keep on hand and just pull them out every once in a while your kids don't even need to know that you have them just pull out one of those questions every once in a while and have a conversation. Okay guys, that is it for today. Happy Day. Happy building and I will talk to you soon.