“Chivalry is dead.” That’s a phrase I hear from time to time. The thing is that chivalry doesn’t have to be dead. It needs to be trained.
A Return to Chivalry: Making Character Training Fun with Heather Haupt
It does feel like many kids these days don’t seem to have an understanding of basic manners. My mom actually used to teach customer service to corporate employees. So, I grew up with a very strong sense of the importance of good etiquette.
Every woman appreciates having a door held open for her or having a gentleman offer her his seat in a crowded waiting area. Good manners and etiquette seem to be missing from many in younger generation, but if we are intentional about how we are raising our kids we can bring it back.
Long live chivalry!
In her book, Knights in Training: Ten Principles for Raising Honorable, Courageous, and Compassionate Boys, Heather Haupt lays out a fun and practical plan for how to teach our boys to valuable lessons in character, etiquette, and manners. I love finding books like this. It’s filled with great parenting tips about how to combat entitlement and the messages our boys are getting from society about their worth. I know you are going to appreciate this episode.
On a “Simply” & “Joyful” side note…
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!
Get ready for a great interview — and get your own Simply Joyful Podcast mug HERE!
In This Episode…
In this episode, Heather and I talk about her new book Knights in Training. We cover all kinds of ground in the realm of parenting. You are going to love the creativity that Heather uses with her kids. Yes, we are going to be talking a lot of parenting boys. However, all parents will find things to glean in this episode. You are going to LOVE this episode!
Highlights from This Show…
- 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
- ‘We need to be challenging our boys more.’ – 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.
- “What we fill our minds with determines who we become. It determines how we engage in pretend play. It determines the attitudes that we take towards the people around us.” – Heather Haupt
- 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
Please Note…
- Be sure to grab your FREE copy of my book, Sanity Savers for Moms, by joining our Simply Joyful community. It’s a great way to keep in touch…and get subscriber only freebies like my book. Click HERE to get the book and join!
Connect with Heather Haupt…
Heather Haupt is the mother of three knights-in-training and a spunky little princess. She wants to be intentional during these years of parenting and raise children who will make a difference in this world. Heather is an educator, writer, and popular speaker. Recognizing the brevity of childhood and the power of a parent’s influence, she encourages and equips parents towards intentional parenting, pursuing God, and delighting in the adventure of learning. She is the author of Knights-in-Training: Ten Principles for Raising Honorable, Courageous, and Compassionate Boys as well as The Ultimate Guide to Brain Breaks. She writes at www.heatherhaupt.com.
You can check out Heather’s books HERE on Amazon! Be sure to visit her site as well at www.heatherhaupt.com.
Thank you, Rend Collective for allowing me to use your incredible song “The Joy of the Lord is My Strength”!
(This podcast is by Kristi Clover. Discovered by Christian Podcast Central and our community — copyright is owned by the publisher, not Christian Podcast Central, and audio is streamed directly from their servers.)