THE PARENTING FLYWHEEL

I’m not gifted in auto mechanics or engineering, but I came to really know the concept of a flywheel from a most unusual source: a documentary, The Biggest Little Farm, where the filmmakers describe the flywheel effect in their context of creating an organic farm that nourishes the ecosystem. Check out their flywheel film clip – your kids will like it too! Cars have flywheels to smooth out the delivery of the power from the combustion of the cylinders to the compression of the pistons. And many of you know that businesses use this term too, evidenced in the book, Good to Great, by Jim Collins. To get a sense of how this works and feels, check out these excerpts from his book:

Excerpts from Good to Great¹

"Picture a huge, heavy flywheel—a massive metal disk mounted horizontally on an axle, about 30 feet in diameter, 2 feet thick, and weighing about 5,000 pounds. Now imagine that your task is to get the flywheel rotating on the axle as fast and long as possible. Pushing with great effort, you get the flywheel to inch forward, moving almost imperceptibly at first. You keep pushing and, after two or three hours of persistent effort, you get the flywheel to complete one entire turn. You keep pushing, and the flywheel begins to move a bit faster, and with continued great effort, you move it around a second rotation. You keep pushing in a consistent direction. Three turns ... four ... five ... six ... the flywheel builds up speed ... seven ... eight ... you keep pushing ... nine ... ten ... it builds momentum ... eleven ... twelve ... moving faster with each turn ... twenty ... thirty ... fifty ... a hundred.

Then, at some point—breakthrough! The momentum of the thing kicks in in your favor, hurling the flywheel forward, turn after turn ... whoosh! ... its own heavy weight working for you. You’re pushing no harder than during the first rotation, but the flywheel goes faster and faster. Each turn of the flywheel builds upon work done earlier, compounding your investment of effort. A thousand times faster, then ten thousand, then a hundred thousand. The huge heavy disk flies forward, with almost unstoppable momentum.

Now suppose someone came along and asked, “What was the one big push that caused this thing to go so fast?” You wouldn’t be able to answer; it’s just a nonsensical question. Was it the first push? The second? The fifth? The hundredth? No! It was all of them added together in an overall accumulation of effort applied in a consistent direction. Some pushes may have been bigger than others, but any single heave—no matter how large—reflects a small fraction of the entire cumulative effect upon the flywheel. … Here’s what’s important. We’ve allowed the way transitions look from the outside to drive our perception of what they must feel like to those going through them on the inside. From the outside, they look like dramatic, almost revolutionary breakthroughs. But from the inside, they feel completely different, more like an organic development process.

Picture an egg just sitting there. No one pays it much attention until, one day, the egg cracks open and out jumps a chicken! All the major magazines and newspapers jump on the event, writing feature stories—“The Transformation of Egg to Chicken!” “The Remarkable Revolution of the Egg!” “Stunning Turnaround at Egg!”—as if the egg had undergone some overnight metamorphosis, radically altering itself into a chicken. But what does it look like from the chicken’s point of view? It’s a completely different story. While the world ignored this dormant-looking egg, the chicken was evolving, growing, developing, incubating. From the chicken’s point of view, cracking the egg is simply one more step in a long chain of steps leading up to that moment—a big step, to be sure, but hardly the radical, single-step transformation it looks like to those watching from outside the egg. It’s a silly analogy, granted. But I’m using it to highlight a very important finding from our research. We kept thinking that we’d find “the one big thing,” the miracle moment that defined breakthrough. We even pushed for it in our interviews. But the good-to-great executives simply could not pinpoint a single key event or moment in time that exemplified the transition."

I would contend that each family has its own flywheel directed by the parents (hopefully), and if God is at the center of the family, that flywheel is powered by God’s Holy Spirit. The family flywheel s-l-o-w-l-y builds momentum with the establishment and execution of each intentional habit and rhythm. The parenting grind can be exhausting, especially if we are striving to push the wheel with our own power. But if we allow the Lord to help us, the effort can bring joy, and observing the results in our kids is invigorating!

Jesus encourages us in the Gospel of John, promising that the Holy Spirit will abide with us as believers in God. This Advocate will empower our parenting, keeping our hand to the wheel, refreshing us on the inside as we deliberately speak life into our families through every conversation, activity, meal, and routine.

“If you love me, obey my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth…But when the Father sends the Advocate as my representative—that is, the Holy Spirit—he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you. I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid.”

John 14:15-17, 26-27 NLT

You may have heard that parenting is one long conversation. That convo is meandering sometimes, bending and doubling-back into a sluggish oxbow as we repeat ourselves ad nauseam, training our children in respect for others, kind sibling interactions, and social etiquette. Other times the conversation quickens, skipping along as our children rapidly develop new skills and abilities. Allowing those interactions to play out, for child and parent to mindfully listen to one another, needs God’s power and energy. That can happen when you’ve committed to steadily pushing the family flywheel in a consistent direction – toward Jesus.

So what does your family flywheel look like? I think God loves variety in His beloved families! If you haven’t sat down to talk with your spouse or parenting accountability partner about your family’s flywheel, prioritize that conversation! What habits do you want to build into your days, weeks, months, and years? Each of these habits are a push on the wheel. What special celebrations are important to your family? Build those into your rhythms. Who are the people you want to interact with regularly? Schedule visits or calls to strengthen those ties.

Your family flywheel will gain momentum as you steadily sow these intentional habits. Plus, if you are careful to minimize pushing the wheel in askew directions and instead maximize synergy in your family efforts, the flywheel will gain consistent speed with the same force of effort. And please, resist the urge to compare your family with others. Your family’s rhythms and culture will look different than mine, but one thing WILL be universal: all families should be fertilized with LOVE.

“I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow! This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you…You didn’t choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name. This is my command: Love each other.” John 15: 9-12; 16-17 NLT

Epic families, we love you and are committed to praying for you. You are beloved by God and are in the midst of a long, organic conversation with your kids and are turning your unique family flywheel with your habits and rhythms. Allow the Lord to power you. Give the Holy Spirit the reins to plow your family garden. By working with God, in love, you will reap the lasting fruit that Jesus desires for us – families who grow to be a delight and joy as they learn to follow Jesus, nourishing our community ecosystem – a little bit of heaven here on earth.

Grace and peace,

Annikki

What Epic Kids & PreK are learning in April:

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_{1 Collins, Jim. www.jimcollins.com/concepts/the-flywheel, The Good to Great Project LLC, date accessed 4.4.24}