 Next question is from Micah2448. What are some of the best habits and activities you can instill in your children throughout their development so they can grow up healthier? I like this as a full on single topic episode. I feel like there's a lot to talk about instantly. And by the way, we're not experts too. We're experts in fitness. This is challenging for us too. Oh yeah, I know. You're very clear. And a challenge. It's for sure a learning process for me because I'm in the thick of it right now, right? So I don't know what some of these things will end up happening later. I could think of three things right away, though, that come to mind. One, the decision to not put shoes on Max's feet, I think, was one of the best decisions that I ever made. And I watched that as he started to go through the walking phase. My son really didn't go through that falling down and hitting his head. Literally, he had one situation where he fell down and hit his head. Because he had shoes on. He had shoes on. I know. Katrina put shoes on him early on and was walking with him. And he just fell out of it. It was off balance and fell over and then hit his head. And a little bit of it was on his hairline. So blood came out. It was this big ordeal, if you guys remember when that happened. That was crazy that I noticed what a difference it's already made. Now, I have no idea what that impact will be. Five, 10, 15 years now, if it really, if it plays a role in his athleticism or his balance and coordination. I don't know. Yeah, but his feet look so strong, developed, and stable. Whereas you see other kids who start walking with shoes. Pronate. Yeah, pronation. And they have low little control over their feet. Your feet, there's so many muscles and nerve endings on the bottom and you cover it. It's like, imagine putting gloves on your kids when they were babies. How much less articulate they'd be with their hands. So that's the first one. There's one, too, that I made as a role and I totally failed here. I don't know if I failed, I ended up changing. And now I've learned, I know better now on this podcast to say, I'm never going to do this or I'm never going to do that because it eventually life hits you in the face. And you go, oh, maybe I don't want to just be like that. And that was the TV thing. Originally, I had this plan that he's not going to have any TVs. Never going to see the TV on. I was just going to keep it off until he gets to an age where he even really understands what it is. And for the most part, I actually stuck to that pretty well. Then he got to an age where he was interested in it and what I was doing. And I had these moments of like on Sunday, I wanted to lay around with my son. And he's at an age where he'll actually cuddle up next to me and chill for a while. And I'm like, oh, man, this actually sounds really good. I don't want to deprive him that or myself selfishly of that. And so I reintroduced it. But making that kind of a rule and being so hyper aware of it early on taught me a lot already about behavior and how much time in front of the screen really affects his behavior. So even though I've loosened up on he'll never have any television, I was so paying attention to that so much that I recognized that, man, if he gets over an hour of iPad or TV time, his behavior and his sleep completely changes. Like the way he goes down a bed is completely different than if we have a full day of playing and never doing that. So that taught me a lot about how that can affect behavior, sleep and everything. So I'm really glad that. The third thing for me is the no sugar. So, and we now have, and it's actually kind of cool because we have these moments. There's been a couple of times now where I've, Katrina or myself has allowed him to taste something that's like, we just, just this happened two days ago. We were doing gingerbread houses with him and we were making it and it has the icing. And I had it on my finger and I let him lick it. And he was, he didn't want anything to do. Yeah, I didn't want nothing to do with it. And I'm like, oh, it's so great, right? So, and then my mom did the same thing. I let her, let him try to buy a cookie and he just, he had no interest in it whatsoever. And we just, we avoided giving him that for such a long time that I actually think that he doesn't even really crave it. Now we're still early. I'm only heading into three years old. So we'll see what happens. And I predict that like all kids, he'll love it. He'll want it. But I think because we did such a good job of limiting how much I don't think you'll have the same pool because one of the mistakes I see a lot of parents do and I understand, so this isn't me at all shaming anybody but they use that as a way to bribe the kid to do what he wants. I see this a lot. And I see that with the TV too. I see the iPad and I see sugar as ways of bribing. And you have to understand that even though it's really, really young you're already starting to change their relationship with that thing. Reward, reward, reward. Yeah, and so I've avoided that. We've avoided doing that. Like we don't use the television and we don't use sugar as a way to reward, punish or whatever with him at all. And I think those are things that I'm glad we're doing. You know, when you look at the data on this it's actually pretty interesting. Something like 80% of what you do will impact your kids and 20% of what you say will impact them. For example, children who grow up in households where their parents smoke, even if the parents tell them don't smoke, it's not good for whatever, they're twice as likely to grow up in smoke cigarettes as well. Same thing with alcohol, bad eating or whatever you wanna call it, inactivity. So, and this was a tough one because we often, for me at least, it's easier for me to tell like this what you do, this what you don't do, teach you verbally and talk about certain things. But your kids learn from watching, you know, like I remember I had a client once that was a, she was a therapist who specialized in child therapy and we were talking about like eating disorders and stuff. And this is a big one for me because I had body images, she was growing up and after I had kids I was like, oh man, I really don't want my kids to have to go through this. I'm already in the fitness space, I already work out, you know, they might see that I post pictures of my body or whatever, like how do I navigate this? And she said, you know, when I work with kids and their body image stuff, like sometimes it comes from the parents saying shitty stuff to their kids, which is obvious. Like I would never say to my kids, you're ugly and you're fat. Like that's obvious to me, right? She said the less obvious one is when kids hear their parents talk about themselves. So like, you know, why did you start doing this? Well, I heard my mom saying how fat she was all the time. You know, or, you know, and so that's the big one. It's like, okay, your kids model, whether they even tried to or not. I mean, I'll tell you what, you talk to anybody who became a parent themselves and became a little older and what do they always say? Oh man, I'm turning into my dad. I'm turning in my mom. Like I find that with myself. I'm like, I got all these traits that my parents have, probably because I grew up with that and I saw them doing it and you just, it becomes instilled in you. So I would say that's probably the most important thing. And that's something that I always, I constantly get challenged with because I may tell my kids, don't go on your electronics so much and then I'm on it. I'm on my phone and oh yeah, I'm working, but am I really modeling what I want them, how I want them to be or how I treat my wife. If I could tell my son, you make sure you treat women this way, but if I yell at my wife or I say something condescending to her, that's what he's gonna end up learning. So I think that's the biggest one of these. Such a good point. Like that's something that Katrina and I, and we actually made an agreement on this before Max was born that we would call each other out on certain things like that. And one of them was the, because I can't just tell him no TV, no iPad and then be sitting there on my phone. So if we're ever with Max, that's a rule between her and I is like, phone is out. If you gotta get on the phone, you gotta do work business, we're both very, you go somewhere else. You walk in the other room, but you don't ever sit with him while he's playing or doing something and pull your phone out and let him see you do that. And absolutely there's been times where mindlessly one of us does it, but the other one always calls that one out, so they know and so it's like, hey, if you gotta go take that call, you gotta return something, go, go away. They're a little mirrors, yeah. No, I totally, that's the biggest lesson is that they pick up all your habits. They pick up the way that you talk to people. They pick up the food choices you make. And so it's really just been a reflection on my own, what I'm bringing in to the house. Like, so we make sure, which was the biggest thing for us is to make sure we always have like good, healthy whole foods around and less the processed stuff. We never even really go buy it. And so they just don't constantly have that available. It's just not there. And so they just tend to not make those decisions when they're with their friends quite as much. Again, there's kids where now it's unfortunately, sugar is a bit of a currency for them. And I'm struggling through how to deal with that right now because it's not available now. It's like, oh, where is it? If you're at somebody's house, it's like, wow, they have sugar and they get crazy over it. So I'm kind of working my way on how to deal with that. I don't really have a good answer for that yet. But one of the best things that I've done in terms of like health and fitness was to sort of engineer a way for them to climb and to express their strength and movement and challenge them physically. And so I just was always passionate about making sure they're outside and how can I make them do things outside that's gonna challenge their body in a certain way? So there's big old trampoline, there's things for them to climb on, there's ropes, so that was just a big thing for me. And then getting them involved in gymnastics was another great addition to their body awareness and just really enjoying that they can move in cool, unique ways. And I think that that's something they can build on. No, I think that was brilliant that you did that because let's be honest, at that age, they're more interested in play than they are like, I wanna learn how to do a bench press or shoulder press. I mean, maybe you get lucky and your kid wants to do that, but their likelihood of that is very slow. I know, I'm like praying that my youngest is like that. Yeah, and the likelihood of that is probably one in a million, but showing them how they can play and encouraging physical activity, you just reminded me of something else that we do. So we have friends that obviously have kids that are older and they, the way that, and they're very fit, right? And so one of the things that they do is that, the dad goes to the gym and then wife watches kids and then he comes home and then they switch and they kinda do that. And Katrina and I just took a different approach because I want them just to see us doing it. Like he doesn't have to do it. So we bring him to like a lot of times when, many times when I didn't even feel like working out that time, she's gonna go in the garage and go lift, I'll come out there. So it's like a family thing. And he's kind of playing and doing his own thing. You don't make a big deal about it. Yeah, yeah, it's what we're doing. Yeah, yeah, we don't even, yeah. There's nothing, it's like, I'll put him in the back of the truck and that's like a big playpen. So he could watch mom and dad exercising and we just kind of play with him and work out together. And so my idea behind that, of course I don't know how this is going to unfold, but my idea behind that is that it's just a part of our life and that he sees it and he picks up on the behaviors and it's not something I have to tell him he has to do or not do. It's just that. And I wanna be careful about coming across like, raising kids is so hard and so individual too. And sometimes they'll have the personality where they're gonna rebel. So you're modeling these behaviors and they're 13, 14, trying to figure out who they are. And this is very common, right? Oftentimes the kid will just do the opposite. It's like, what's that one meme where there's like a death metal family? And then one of the kids is like super clean cut. Yeah, you know, and it's like that's gonna happen. How do you react and respond? One thing that Jessica does, so I'll actually give a specific that Jessica does is so well. So it's real hard for me. Is she does, because I have two older kids, 12 and 16. So now they're at the age where it's a whole different challenge, right? Especially when you're a teenager, they don't tell you as much. They're not as open. Oftentimes they're in the room or with their friends. Their friends have a bigger influence now over them than you do. And so it's like, okay, what do I do? I want to hang out with them. They don't want to hang out with me anymore. How do I get them to open up? Like I'll be in the car with my son and we could drive for an hour and a half and he won't say a single word. So I want to talk to him, but like what do I do, right? Jessica is very good at this. She's like, when they tell you stuff, don't react in a big way. Like if your kid comes up to you and says, oh my buddy, you know, he, you know. He was smoking cigarettes or something, you know, or whatever, don't make this huge reaction. Oh yeah, my friend had sex and you know, when they're 15, don't react super strongly because then they're afraid to tell you, and she's so good at this. Like they'll say shit and I'm inside of my, cause I grew up in a household, we didn't even say the word sex. We didn't say the word drugs. We didn't say, we just didn't talk about it, right? So, and if I said anything like that, my parents would have, and that's why. They would have exploded. Oh my God, don't do that. But Jessica's so good. They'll say shit and inside I feel the turmoil. I'm like, oh, I start sweating like what? Your friend did what, you know, but I don't say anything. And she's super like, oh yeah, you know, a lot of kids experiment at that age and that's pretty normal. And you know, what do you think's happening or how do you feel about it? And she's so good at it. And then what it did is it opens up, like my daughter now talks about, you know, like cause she's 12, right? So a lot of her friends are starting their periods and stuff like that. And like we never talked about that in the house. Now my daughter just comes, you know, she'll tell us stuff and oh, my friend did this and this is what happened. And here's what we found in the bathroom. And it's so effective at keeping communication open. And so that was, you know, one big thing. But I think the big rocks are this, just like with fitness, there's all these things that can make an impact, but the big rocks are the most important thing, which is model the right behavior that has more of an impact than the stuff that you tell them. Show them love and create structure. Those are the big things. Love, if you have a lot of discipline without love, that's bad. A lot of love without discipline, that's so great. Love, discipline or structure. And then modeling and then- Just keep caring a lot. And then you can sail and do a lot of things that might not be great, but if you do those three things, I think you're probably, you know, 99% of the way there. Hey, if you enjoyed that clip, you can find the full episode here or you can find other clips over here. And be sure to subscribe.