Highlights from the Show:

• Heather says she likes to streamline everything and plan in batches. For example, she has only one day that she does laundry because she can’t handle thinking about it any other day of the week. She can’t be bogged down with the details because otherwise, it will take the joy out of life for her. I also share a bit about how I have been meal planning for 13 people in my home!
• I ask Heather what inspired her to write Knights in Training. She said the inspiration came from doing a homeschool lesson about the middle ages with her boys. She said her boys were mesmerized by learning about the Middle Ages and were really into learning about the Middle Ages. She decided to teach her boys chivalry early.
• In her book, Heather teaches her boys to resist the entitlement mentality and I ask her how parents can practically help their kids in this battle for narcissism we currently face. Questions such as “how can we be generous” and “how can we share,” were the building blocks for being strong and standing up for the weak as a knight would.
• “Instead of ‘don’t do this,’ it was a shift to ‘go do this' instead.” — Heather Haupt
• We talk about how entitlement hits all kids, but I ask her to discuss how it affects boys and girls differently. Heather says that boys are motivated by a sense of adventure and purpose. She also says that it’s easy for girls to understand and have feelings for and about entitlement, but to reach the heart of a boy is to appeal to his desire to have a sense of purpose and to fix things. She says that boys rise to challenges and will do what they’re wired to do.
• “I think we need to be challenging our boys more. And as we do that, it’s going to become a habit, a way of living instead of sitting back and passively receiving from us.” — Heather Haupt
• I ask Heather to talk about “throwing down the gauntlet” that she mentions in her book. She says the “throwing the gauntlet” section is the practical area that helps parents to put what they’ve learned and understood into practice in ways that boys are going to want to engage.
• I mention a parenting session our pastor gave, and how I learned that when it comes to discipline with boys, there has to be a physical element because boys just need that activity.
• I switch the subject of conversation from “activity” to “non-activity” and bring up by Dr. James Dobson's Bringing Up Boys book and how he talked about how men are being depicted so poorly in the media. I ask Heather to talk more about “mindful media consumption” that she brings up in her book. Heather says that she and her husband tried to search for movies and cartoons that showed men’s strength and good moral character because, in our culture, a lot of the media makes fathers seem dumb.
• We talked about a few of Heather's favorite books for “knights in training.” {Heather has a great list of books within her book!}
•  I ask Heather to talk about the Code of Chivalry and the rules she has to go along with it.
• “The code of chivalry starts with love for God, and when you get that right, everything just falls into place.” — Heather Haupt
• Heather also talks about “squire work” and how she doesn’t pay her children to do chores around the house.
• “If we’re paying them every time they do something in our home, then they have that sense of entitlement…A home can’t run without everyone pitching in and helping. That’s just being an adult and part of being a responsible human being.” — Heather Haupt
• Heather also talks about the word “wanton” that she uses in her book and says it comes from an old Saxon term that means “badly trained.” In that chapter, she talks about what bullying and table manners have to do with each other. They both constitute the “wanton giving of offense.” One is malicious and on is unintentional, but both hinder being able to live civilly with other people.
• “We want to prepare our children to read different situations and be able to move in those different scenarios without giving offense.” — Heather Haupt
• “We need men to be men. We need them to stand up and be great dads. And I want to raise sons who are going to be amazing fathers and amazing husbands because those are roles we need in society. And I feel like those are roles that crumbling.” — Kristi Clover

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