Latest / Dadical / 15. Is a Long Trip Without the Kids Selfish?

Transcript

15. Is a Long Trip Without the Kids Selfish? · Dadical

• Seth Stoker: Hello, Dadicle listeners. Welcome back to another episode of the Dadicle Podcast. I gotta figure out what to call you guys. Are you are are you daticolites, dadiclers? I I need some guidance. Somebody needs to reach out to me and tell me what what would be good to call the listeners. I need something I can call you. Anyway, I'm excited to chat with you today. I it's a big day. It's a big day for a number of reasons. Number one, I gotta own something real quick before we get into why it's a big day. I've I've gotta own the fact that this podcast episode's getting out a little late. And I prefer to release my episodes on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. And with the travel that I've had lately, I just haven't been able to get get the episode out as quickly as I wanted to, but I appreciate you hanging in there and waiting for me. So So by the time you're hearing this, it'll be Friday. And just know that I plan to have the next episode out on the regular schedule, Tuesday night, Wednesday morning. And man, do I have some cool guests in store for you? yeah, I I had a great conversation today actually with one of the guys we're gonna have on the podcast, and I think you're gonna absolutely love them. So another thing, the reason it's a big day, let's talk about that. We've hit 1300 streams, 1300 streams on the Dadical podcast. This started out as just an idea of talking about fatherhood, because I thought it was fun to talk about fatherhood, not knowing if anybody would be interested in listening. And lo and behold, there are people out there who care about becoming better fathers. And really, that's all I could hope for with this podcast. So here's my request to you. Please continue to share with other dads who you think could benefit from learning from other dads' experiences. Let's get the word out. Continue to like, subscribe, and let me know if you know another father that I should talk to about their experiences that other fathers can benefit from. Because at the end of the day, that's all I want. I want us as fathers to be able to pull from other people's experiences, other people's stories, and figure out how to do this a little bit better rather than just learning from trial and error. And so thank you to those of you who have listened consistently. it's no longer just my mom listening and and so. grateful to those of you who who find value in this and and hopefully we continue to get the word out to other dads and and share these experiences to a larger audience. So another reason it's a big day, we got a mustache update. And I gotta tell you, you know, at first I thought I thought I was right. I thought I had to tell the boys that, yeah, see, I'm just gonna show you that you grow the mustache out. It looks really awful, and then I would win. But you know what? I'm coming around. I'm coming around on the mustache. It's growing in. It's looking better. now it still doesn't look great, but it's a work in progress. I'm probably still a couple months away from from what it needs to needs to be to call it a full-blown mustache. But ladies and gentlemen, we are making progress. And I'm looking at it, I think it's kind of like pickleball. You know, somebody invites you to come play pickleball, and you think, I don't, I don't know. Isn't that what old guys do? Like, yeah, I'm not even sure if I would enjoy pickleball. You know, I play golf, I play basketball. But pickleball, that's just not gonna be my thing. And then you go one time and you're like, I'll try it out. And you play it and you're like, wow, this is fun. This is a little addicting. Lo and behold, I start growing this mustache out, and I'm like, okay, this could be something. So we'll see. Jury's still out, but I'm getting there. I I'm worried though that that I'm developing what the kids call aura, and I'm not sure, not sure what to do about that. So anyway. In today's podcast, we're actually I I haven't done much of this, but I'm gonna react to a video that I saw online and and it it's funny, It I it shouldn't bother me, but it has been bothering me all week. I I saw this video on TikTok and I watched it, and it just for for whatever reason it struck a chord with me. And I'll I'll tell you, I'll tell you why I think that is. Number one, it's kind of funny because we're gonna watch the video. together and then I'll I'll react to it. But as I watch this video, I realized that when new parents ask me for advice, what advice would you give new parents? I hear that all the time. And when they ask me for advice, this video goes exactly in opposition to the advice that I usually give new parents. And so I feel pretty strongly about this one, and I think I'm right. I think I'm right. I'm gonna tell you why. And if I'm wrong, you you guys can totally let me know. let me know in the comments, send me an email, whatever you got to do, but I want to hear from you. And so the reason that this gets me a little bit fired up is because I feel like this video is an exceptional illustration of how parenting has evolved. And I don't think in a good way. I think as parents, somewhere along the line, we may have lost track of what our true purpose is as parents. Why, what is our job? What is it that we're supposed to be focused on as we raise these kids? What is it that drives us? What should our goals be? What are the outcomes that we're seeking? And man, I tell you what, I think watching this video makes me feel like some people have it so backwards that it it concerns me. I think we can reframe the purpose of parenthood and get things back on track. And I just think it's a little bit of an adjustment from I don't think it's a I don't think it's gonna be hard to get back on track, but I do think that this is critical for us to understand in order to do what we're truly supposed to do as parents. And so the other thing I want to say is look, I've got a negative reaction to this video. But that being said, I I'm sure the the person in this video is is a great dad, a great person. And so this isn't meant to be a specific criticism on this person, as much as it is a criticism of what I see on a broad scope in parenthood today. And so this video is from someone named Kraf Law, K-R-A-F-F Law, L-A-W. And we're gonna go ahead and watch this video and then I'll go ahead and react to it and give you my thoughts. v12300gd0001dbh0s3fog65n506f6an0: Leaving your kids for more than three nights so you can take a parents only vacation is selfish. I'm not saying never leave your kids. One, two, or even three nights for a parents-only trip is totally fine. But once you go past three nights, you're really putting what you want instead of what your kids need. Your kids are going to miss you, and depending on how old they are, they may not fully understand why you left them or even if you're ever coming back. A week doesn't feel long to you. But to a toddler, it's mom and dad disappearing for what feels like forever. That's why I call it selfish and inconsiderate because the entire trip is about the parents and the kids are the ones who feel it. If you want a trip that long, bring them with you. Plan it around the fact that you're a family now. To me, three nights is the line, and I don't think it's a hard one to hold. Seth Stoker: Okay, so I'm curious, should I be as bothered about this video as I am? I'm I I would l absolutely love to hear your thoughts. In fact, hey, if craft law, if you're interested, love to have you on and talk about it with you and and see if maybe maybe you agree with me or or if we have some disagreements. And either way, I'd love to talk it out. But here's here's my reaction to this video because first of all, as this guy talks about The fact that parents shouldn't leave their kids for more than three days on a trip and the fact that that's selfish. Here's the number one problem. Well, well, the first problem that I'll lay out that I have with it. I think it's one thing to share your opinion and say, hey, you know what? When when parents leave for more than three days, I don't think that's what's best. I think what I've found to be successful is That if I leave for no more than three days, then my kids are okay and that sort of thing. And and I think that's totally fine. if that's been your experience and that and you feel good about that, then you do you. I'm not going to tell you how to live your life. That being said, I think when you start to criticize others for having a different opinion than you, you better be able to back it up. And that's what I'm struggling with because there's zero research or data that's being provided to support this claim. It's just, he's just simply adopting his opinion as fact. Which it it's one thing, everybody thinks they're right. That's fine. But it's another thing to put that on other parents and say, other parents who feel different than me are selfish. And I think that really, really irks me because I've had my own personal experiences with this, but also I think there is a lot of data to back up the way I feel about this video. And so if you're gonna call it selfish. I think you need to back it up and I think you need to have evidence of the effects that it has on children because the other thing that he lays out in this video is the adverse effects that he suggests is A, your kids might miss you. B, your kids might wonder if you come back. And I'm sorry, my gut reaction to that is so what? Now, I'm gonna expound on that. We'll talk about that. But but if if those are the effects, I I think I think you have to be able to express better detail on what those effects might be, then your kids could be sad. Because guess what? There's a lot of reasons your kids will end up being sad. This is one of them that doesn't make you selfish, okay? And that's exactly why I think he's wrong, is because this may be your personal feeling, but that's just it. It's your feelings, and that doesn't make other parents selfish who feel he'll feel differently. In fact, I'm gonna show you why we should be looking at this in the exact opposite way from the guy in this video. So, in in in fact, I'm gonna go a little further. So I'm gonna make the argument that this guy, if this is the way he looks at parenthood, I actually wanna make the argument that he is actually being more selfish than the parents that he's criticizing in this video. And here's why. Robbing your kids of the opportunity to learn to be comfortable with discomfort is a far more selfish proposition. Your kids must learn to deal with discomfort. It's a fact of life. And you know, we'll talk about our job as parents. One of our jobs as parents is to help them understand how to get through discomfort and build resilience. We'll talk about that more in a second. So I will say that keeping them dependent, raising your kids to be dependent on you so that you get to keep being the hero is not parenting. It's actually serving yourself. It's parenting for your own feelings and not what's best for your kid. So we'll we'll touch on that. But here's the deal: as parents, When did comfort become the goal? When did we decide that our job is to swoop in and remove every obstacle, every opportunity for our kids to feel sadness, to feel discomfort, to experience even anger or anything negative? When did we decide that that was what our job is as In the anxious generation? Great book, by the way, for any parents. Every single parent should read that book. Jonathan Haidt directly connects overprotective parenting and the removal of struggle to the mental health crisis that we see in kids today. That's just that's a fact. He talks a lot about parents who anytime they see their kids meet any kind of an obstacle, they swoop in and they want to be the hero, they want to make their kids feel good. And listen, that's a noble desire, right? Like you as a parent, it you hate to see your kids suffer. You hate to see your kids struggle. And while I I can respect the fact that that's what you're trying to do, that's exactly why we cannot lose focus on what our purpose is as parents. At the end of the day, there is zero growth and zero learning in the comfort zone. And if you swoop in and save your kid every single time that they might experience discomfort, then you are robbing them of that opportunity to grow, to build resilience, to learn to deal with adversity. In fact, the American Psychological Association, in their framework on building resilience, it explicitly names struggle and adversity as prerequisites for resilience development. That means that the only way for your kids to build resilience is to actually experience adversity. So you leave on that trip. And we'll talk about, what it means for your relationship and your marriage and things like that in a bit. We'll get to that, okay? That's important. But when you leave on that trip and you think, no, I can't be gone too long because my kids might worry. My kids might miss me. Well, guess what? On the other side of your kids missing you is your kids learning that they will survive without you. They will be okay. Mom and dad will come back, but it may not be as quickly as I'd like. In fact, I may need to learn to function and learn that life goes on without mom and dad. hanging around being able to swoop in and save the day all the time. The idea that you would choose not to do something because discomfort could be the outcome shows that you don't truly understand what your purpose is as a parent. And here's the way I look at it. So in 2012, I went to basic training. And over the course of the next six years, I went through several military training schools that honestly were physically taxing. And you look back and you say, okay, well, it wasn't that hard. But at the same time, when you're in it, when you're out in the field and you're cold and you're wet and and You're you're exhausted. I remember when I was on a 12 mile ruck at one point and we we walk in these columns and I swear to you, I I I don't know how, but I swear to you, I fell asleep walking. I didn't even know that was possible. Now I I I came to very quickly and and maybe it was just for a second. I don't even know. But it blew my mind how tired I was. And here's the thing. There's a there's a term in the military that you hear all the time. And they they say you gotta embrace the suck. Okay. You've gotta embrace the fact that it's hard. And as you do that, you start to recognize that, hey, if I can make it to the next meal, there's a little reprieve there. And then if I can make it to the next meal, there's another reprieve. And then you know what? They gotta let us sleep at least four hours. So I know that at some point I'm gonna be able to go to sleep and be able to reset. And you start building these checkpoints. And that's what got me through a lot of the challenges that I faced. it was hard to be away from my family. It was hard to not be able to talk to my kids. I wrote letters back and forth to my wife, which it is crazy. And that was really, really hard. But I knew that that day would end. And I knew that eventually the suck would end. And I learned to endure. Now, I learned to endure because I practiced it. I practiced it by choosing a difficult situation and learning to navigate it and work my my way through that adversity. I worry about our kids. If our kids have never practiced enduring adversity, if they've never practiced resilience, how on earth are they supposed to magically learn it on your own on their own? It's your job as a parent to teach them. So what is our job? What's our job as parents? Ultimately, we're playing the long game, and we have to remember that. We have to remember that our job is to raise our kids in a way that they'll be able to successfully live without us. Now that's counterintuitive. And you know what? That sucks. It sucks that your whole job is to raise a kid who starts out needing you so much to not need you anymore. That that's a tough proposition, and I see why that's hard for a lot of parents to process that or to keep sight of that. If we raise them to be dependent on us, ultimately we're failing them. So if we leave for three days and our biggest concern is that our kids might miss us and that might be uncomfortable for them, guess what? We are failing in that particular purpose as parents to prepare them to be on their own. Don't raise them to need you. You have to raise them to not need you. And here's the uncomfortable truth about overprotective parents. The desire that you have to swoop in and save the day often stems from a parent's own insecurity and their desire to be needed rather than what's actually best for the kid. It makes me feel good to be the hero. It makes me feel good when they fall down and scrape their knee. To run and jump in and save the day and pick them up and and and and and coddle them and say, hey, it's gonna be okay. It's okay. But is that what's best? No, no. That's what makes you feel good. Now, the dad who sits there and sees his kid fall and scrape their knee and laughs a little bit and says, Man, that was a good one. Get on up, let's do it again. And encourages them that adversity is not that big of a deal, that it's okay to get knocked down and get back up again. Those are the parents who are raising kids who will be able to face the challenges that they'll face in their lives. And let's face it, life is hard. And life is harder now than it's ever been. You consider the unaffordability that our kids are going to have to deal with. You consider the challenges that that AI and and job security and and all these other things that our kids are going to be facing. It is imperative. In fact, it is impossible to raise a successful kid if you don't help them practice dealing with adversity. It's impossible. And on the flip side, it's crucial. It's crucial. You are doing your kids such a disservice if you rob them of those opportunities to do hard things. So our true purpose is certainly not to create dependence to service our own insecurities. It's to raise the child so that they have no doubt of the love that you have for them, but they're fully prepared to live without you. I hate it. I hate that. I hate that you got to prepare them to live without you, but it is just an absolute fact of life. Now, he's right. He's right about this. Your kids will miss you. when you leave and take a trip that's longer than three days, your kids will miss you. They might be sad. And that might be hard. And you know what? Good. Good. Because then you come back and they learn they can survive. They learn that on the other end of that discomfort and sadness, they learn that on the other end of that is resilience, confidence, a recognition that, hey, I'm going to be okay. Mom and dad love me. They're coming back. And maybe I'm capable of of being okay until they get back, regardless of how long they're gone. because I was in the military for a short time, my kids had to learn to live without me for months at a time. And you know what? That that was really hard. But I've got pretty resilient kids. And the reason for that is because they've had to go through hard stuff. And look, I'm I'm not I'm not tooting my own horn as a dad. I think a lot of this has happened in spite of me rather than because of me. But at the same time, my kids have had the opportunity to go through some pretty significant challenges. My wife had to take the kids and move across the country to live with my parents when I was going through basic training because that's what we could afford. my wife went through breast cancer and surgery and chemotherapy and challenge after challenge after challenge that our kids, no doubt, this was taxing on our kids. But the the bottom line is, is because of those challenges that our family's been through, my kids have been able to develop some significant resilience. And it's something that I am incredibly proud of as a dad, even if I had very little to do with it. And so I I think about it like this: you think about a parent who Is putting their kids to sleep. Every parent wrestles with this. You've got a young baby, you want them to sleep through the night, you need them to sleep through the night because you're exhausted. It's hard. It's absolutely hard. And so you know you need that baby to sleep. So you go put that baby in their crib. And what's the first thing they do? They start crying. They start crying and they're upset. You know why? They're sad. Why would mom leave me alone? Why would dad leave me alone in here? and and force me to have to figure this out on my own. And what a lot of parents struggle with is a lot of parents struggle with letting that kid cry. Because when you let that kid cry, you feel bad. You feel guilty. no, it's because of me that this kid is sad. And so what do a lot of parents do? A lot of parents run in there, no, don't cry. They pick them up and and maybe they bring them back to their bed or whatever. And and slowly what you start to do is you condition that baby to learn that. If things get hard, all they have to do is cry and you'll come in and save the day. You'll come in and take them out of the bed. You'll come in and rock them to sleep. You may man, I remember my oldest son. In the vein of me saying I certainly am not per perfect as a dad, my oldest son, we used to put him in the car and drive him around because that was the only way we could get him to sleep. So I'm not good at this either. But what I will say is we learned valuable lessons with my first son that made. My daughter and my youngest son much, much easier to deal with when it comes when it comes to things like bedtime. And so it's hard. It's absolutely hard. We all go through it. But what I will say is if you sacrifice the pain of letting that kid cry, even though it's hard, that kid realizes that hey, I'm even if I cry hard, even if I'm upset, mom and dad aren't coming in. So I have to figure this out myself. And what do kids do when they have to figure it out themselves? They figure out how to relax, how to calm down, and go to sleep. And as a parent, it's so interesting because some of the most noble things that you do where where you don't want the kid to be sad are things that make your life so much harder as a parent, because those parents that struggle to listen to their kids cry and let them cry it out and be patient, those parents create more and more work for themselves because that baby will never go to sleep. Night after night, they wrestle with the same thing. And so I I I think about that. And I think that's a good, that's a that's a good lesson or a good example of of why this is important is it's gonna be hard to let that baby cry. But if you do, then that baby will learn to go to sleep. And how much better is your life going to be if that baby can actually go to sleep? How much better is that baby's life gonna be if they learn to put themselves to sleep? Because then they get the rest that they need. They're not as cranky in the morning. there's so many benefits from. From going through that short sacrifice, that short-term pain for the long-term gain. And you know what? At the end of the day, that's what parenting is all about is you've got a lot of short-term pain, a lot of short-term discomfort that you have to, that you have to navigate in order to successfully raise a kid who's prepared to live without you. That's just the bottom line. So at the end of the day, parents who don't allow their kids to experience this, they actually condition them to need a parent present anytime to feel safe. And you're actually not protecting them from anxiety. You're building it if you're not careful. Now, I I'll give you an example. So my oldest son, I'm gonna talk about the trip a little bit. So so my wife and I do take longer trips than three days. and so, you know, I I guess maybe I felt attacked a little bit because we've definitely had these experiences, but I want to talk about a few experiences that we've had that illustrate illustrate this point nicely. And I think will help help you understand why I feel so passionately about this. So my wife and I, we took a cruise in 2014. My my son was seven at the time. my wife's sister stayed with my son and we were on a seven-day cruise. at that time, there was very little internet access on the ships and things like that. So we so we didn't have we didn't have great ways to communicate back home. And I remember one time, one of the nights, We got an email that said, Hey, Jackson was at baseball baseball practice and he got hit by a bat in the head. And he actually got popped right right in the forehead and had to get stitches. So she had to take him to the ER and he had to get stitches. And we actually didn't find out about this until the next morning. So I guess I said we checked the email at night. We checked the email in the morning and realized she had sent this at night. And by the morning, she had sent a follow-up email that said, hey, he he he's doing okay now. He he's fine, but he did have to get stitches and that sort of thing. So tough thing for him to go through as as a kid. And for us as parents, we definitely felt bad. Of course, you hate the idea of you know your kid going through something like that having to go to the ER and you not being there. And so I I I had some feelings about that, but we also felt that the time, the time that we took away for our relationship was critically important. And so obviously. we'll touch on that a little bit more. But I'll I'll take you to another trip that my wife and I took. a couple years later, actually I I should say five years later. So my son's my son's older now, he's 12. Five years later, my wife and I go to Hawaii. And my parents actually came to stay with the kids while we went to Hawaii. And it was another one, I think we were gone for for six days or something like that. And my parents, as they were staying with us, my dad somehow, as he was turning lights off when the kids were going to bed and everything like that. Somehow he fell down the stairs. He fell down the stairs and got knocked unconscious. And I I I remember it it was crazy because my wife and I actually, even though we're on this trip because we're supposed to spend quality time together as a couple, we had been fighting on that on while we were traveling. I can't remember what it was about or anything like that, but I remember we were really upset with each other. And then we just check into the hotel room. I mean, we had just barely gotten there and I got a call from my brother. Saying, hey, dad's falling down the stairs at your house. they had to take him off in an ambulance. And anyway, come to find out what happened is and my dad's okay, by the way, thank goodness. he he was fine and and I he he did get knocked unconscious. He went to the hospital. They they fixed him up. I I had a a a nice dent in the wall for quite a while that maybe for sentimental reasons, I'll claim is the reason that I didn't fix it, but didn't fix it for a while. Now it's fixed. But anyway. What happened was is my dad fell down the stairs and my son heard it. He's 12 years old. He comes out and he sees my dad. he's got blood coming from his head. Obviously, a very scary experience for a 12-year-old to walk into. And my son immediately runs across the street to our neighbor's house and he has them call 911. And then he comes back. My my mom, in the meantime, or my mom had come down to tend to my dad and and make sure he's okay. But my son immediately went into action. He didn't panic. He didn't wonder what it is that he he should do or or maybe sit in the corner and cry or anything like that. He already had started to develop the resilience to just pop into action. And later our neighbors and and my mom were very adamant about the fact that they were so impressed with my son. for the fact that he did just the way he responded to that, he just popped right into action. And I don't think that unresilient kids do that. And so that that's another that's another example of us leaving for more than three days. And some hard stuff happened in that period of time. And yet, because my kids had to deal with those experiences and navigate some of that without us, it built resilience in them. And and what it leads to is this. So my son had a friend sleeping over at his house or at our at our house. This was several years later, I I I think he was 18 at the time, and and a friend came to sleep over to the house and ended up running into some health issues. And this is like at 2 a.m. and it looked like he needed to go to the hospital. And so my son actually grabbed his friend, carried him up to his car, and took him to the ER. And this is like at two in the morning. And I gotta tell you, my at my my biggest gripe that I had with my son is is I had to pull him aside and say, Hey. When stuff like that is happening in my house, I need to know about it. Because he took his friend to the ER while we were still asleep and never even woke us up. In fact, he had to come back to the house to get his friend's stuff and went back to the hospital. We still didn't know that it was going on. Now, shame on me. I didn't have the a ring doorbell at the time or anything like that. So I didn't know that he was leaving. I guess that shows that he could have snuck out no problem anytime he wanted. but but that's that's a conversation for another day. I told you I'm not perfect, but What I will say is he had the presence of mind to be able to spring into action and and he actually saved his buddy's life at that time by getting him to the ER when he did. And now and his buddy's fine now. But the reason I highlight these examples is because through the through these experiences, my son has shown a capability of being able to not sit and feel sorry for himself because something's uncomfortable. Not sit and dwell on the fact that he's sad because something bad is happening to his friend or or his grandpa got hurt or anything like that. But he's able to calmly respond, assess the situation, and be able to act. And that as a dad, that is what you want from your kids. You want your kids to be capable of handling the situations that that they'll run into, because you never know what those situations are going to be. So, as parents, when we worry so much about our kids being sad or experiencing discomfort while we're gone or anything like that, What we do is these kids actually become scared of independence. Independence isn't an exciting thing for them. It's actually something that that they dread. And they don't take chances because mom and dad never let them. Mom and dad never never gave them the space to learn to deal with these types of things. And they think consequences don't apply to them because their parents never enforced them or never introduced them to those consequences. Now, in the grand scheme of things, this guy was just sharing his opinion on something that was important to him. He doesn't want his kids to be sad or miss him or wondering if he's ever going to come back. his natural desire to remove the discomfort for his children is, like I said, a noble thing. Like you don't want to see your kids suffer. But it is a short-sided thing that I think is critical for us as parents to make sure that we understand. So that we have true vision into what our purpose is as parents and we can act accordingly. So let's talk about the relationship because the the other thing that's really important to me is I think it's so crucial. You know, one thing that he said in that video is he said, Hey, if you want to be gone longer than that, take your kids with you, do it as a family. Absolutely not. In fact, In nearly every episode, we've talked about this a lot. In nearly every episode that I've done, one of the most crucial points that have been brought up over and over again is that the relationship between mom and dad is so critical. It's so critical. Prioritizing that relationship above all is paramount. And the reason for that is, is I mean, the relationship with your spouse is what started this whole thing. You met your wife, you fell in love with her, and that's when you decided to start a family. And you know what? That relationship is what's gonna persist long after the kids are gone, hopefully, right? But if you don't prioritize that relationship even while you're having kids, then it's so easy to see why so many parents drift slowly drift apart because at the end of the day, you're running kids all over the place. There are different activities. They're interrupting you every time you have a conversation. And it is really, really hard. It is really hard to focus on that relationship as a couple. It gets crazy. just when you have a quiet moment, somebody needs a ride to take you somewhere, they need to know where. The the cheese is because it looks like we're out of cheese or or whatever it is. And If you're not careful, your kids can completely dominate the attention that you would have set aside for your spouse. What the trip actually does when you when you go take a trip longer than three days, what that does is it gives you several days of deeper conversation with your spouse where you can actually talk big picture. Hey, how are we doing as parents? You can evaluate your relationship with each other. Hey, how can I be a better spouse for you? here's what I need from you as a spouse. You can manage those things without interruption and and and without the obligations of of having to run people to different places. I mean, I feel like a lot of times just when my wife and I will start a conversation, it's time to go pick somebody up or that sort of thing. And and almost every conversation is just a partial conversation as a result. Let's be honest. The other piece of it is, it creates the space for intimacy that is is really difficult sometimes to fit into your daily or weekly routines. It recharges the batteries for you guys to come home and manage the chaos. And you need that. In fact, I there have been several times when my wife and I are are in the thick of it, when she said to me, Yeah, I just need something to look forward to. And and that's what it is, is is you have an opportunity to go and and shut out the noise and and reconnect and calling the chaos of everyday life noise probably sounds a little insensitive. But at the same time, When it comes to making sure that your relationship with your spouse is healthy and making it a priority, it really is. You have to have times where you can shut out the noise and focus on each other. Because here's the thing: kids notice more than you think. They observe other couples. They they recognize when something's off. They they consider what they consider normal is shaped by what they watch at home. you know, if you and your wife don't like each other, if if you lost touch a long time ago, Your kids recognize that too. And you're not doing them any favors by pretending everything's okay because your kids are smarter than you think. Parents who think they're hiding a miserable marriage from their kids are almost always wrong. Their kids know. And the thing is, is what one of the things that you're doing in your marriage relationship is modeling what a successful relationship looks like. In fact, man. That is such an important thing because your kids will shape what type of partner they look for. They'll shape what type of a relationship they seek and even how they feel like they should be treated. A lot of that is based off of what they see from their parents. Bradford Wilcox from the American Enterprise Institute. He said that children in two parent married homes have significantly better outcomes across mental health, education, and economic stability. So by having a healthy marriage, you're raising happier kids. In fact, the US Travel Association did a survey, and couples who vacation alone together without their kids at least once a year report happier, healthier relationships overall. In fact, 77% of couples who travel together report a vibrant sex life. So think about that. Those are critical components of your relationship with your wife. And if you only go for two or three days because you're scared the kids might be sad, then you are missing critical opportunities to work on your own relationship with your spouse. And that's one of the most important things your kids will ever see. So look. On the surface, it seems like no big no big deal. this guy feels bad for leaving his kids. I get it. I totally get it. And I don't want to beat him over the head with it. But at the same time, we've got to raise our kids to lean into discomfort. We've got to help them unlock their growth, and that's the only way that they can. And we've got to be able to do the same things as parents. You may be sad that your kid misses you. You may be worried that they don't know if you'll come back. But you have to be okay with it. You have to be okay with your discomfort just as much as you have to teach them to suffer through theirs. Because on the other side of that discomfort is a generation of happy, healthy, resilient kids and confident kids ready to tackle the world and not shrink in the face of it. And that's the beauty of parenting. While your entire job, your entire job is to help this tiny person grow into a capable and competent human. The outcome is that the exact same thing happens to you in the process. You grow, you learn to become better. You learn to sacrifice more. You learn how to teach critical things like resilience. confidence, competence, independence. All of that happens to you and your kids in the process. So, guys, don't sleepwalk through fatherhood. Be daddy.