Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 04 | Q&A: How Should I Think about Building a Friendship with My Kids?

Transcript

Ep. 04 | Q&A: How Should I Think about Building a Friendship with My Kids? · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:06
  Hey guys, welcome to the 5-Minute Fatherhood Podcast. I'm your co-host, Jeff Beth Key, along with my friend and mentor, Jeremy Pryor. Join us Monday through Friday as we chat about quick tips, skills, and ways to help equip you on your journey as a father to build your multi-generational family team on mission. Stay tuned.
• 0:27
  What's up guys, Jeff and Jeremy here. Welcome back to the five minute fatherhood podcast. Today is Q and A day as we like to call it. And the question we got from you guys is how should I think about building a friendship with my kids? That's a question we get a lot. I think there's a lot of different layers there, but Jeremy, I'd love to hear what you have to say.
• 0:43
  Yeah, this is a really good one. And one of the things I would say, there's obviously nothing wrong with being, and we're going to constantly be encouraging you guys to have a deeper, more intimate connection with your children. And I hope that that results in an amazing friendship with your kids. But there is something to watch out for here. There's a watch out that I really think we need to pay attention to. And that is...
• 1:05
  we tend in our culture to be much more comfortable with the idea of being friends than the father-son or father-daughter relationship. And so what happens sometimes when I hear people obsess over, I really just want to be friends with my kids. Yes, but...
• 1:23
  Do you want to be a father to your daughter? Do you want to be a father to your son? Those actually are not the same thing. And so being a father to a daughter or a father to a son is a different kind of relationship. There are friendship elements to it, and those friendship elements often get stronger the older your child gets.
• 1:43
  But you need to be careful to let your heart fully engage as the father. And so when you think about friends, one of the big reasons why I think we're really comfortable with the idea of friendship is there's a mutuality to it, right? There's not a hierarchy to it. So we're like, oh, we like being friends. It's like...
• 2:00
  sort of 50-50, we sort of figure out what we want to do, and we do it together, and it's fun, and a lot about sort of mutual interests, and there's a lot of elements like that to friendship. Man, there's so many other nuances to the father-daughter, father-son relationship that are rich, that are generational, have to do with training your children, have to do with leading your children, have to do with guiding your children, have to do with—
• 2:21
  giving wisdom to your children have to do with giving feedback, sometimes rebuking or correcting. And if you are so obsessed with the friendship element of the relationship, what you'll tend to do is shy away from the fatherhood elements of the relationship. And I know that, man, when I think about it, and oftentimes where I see this happening in my own heart,
• 2:42
  is that if I think back to the best relationships that I ever had, a lot of times for a lot of people in our culture, they're friendships. And so what they're really saying is, I want to have a great relationship with my kids. That must mean that I need to have a friendship with my kids because maybe I didn't have a great relationship with my dad, so obviously that's not what I want. What I want is a friendship. What you have to be careful of there is just because you had a difficult relationship with your father doesn't mean that there isn't
• 3:09
  there isn't a way for you to redeem the elements of fatherhood that you can bring into that relationship with your child. And that often requires thinking deeply about fatherhood, looking for models of fatherhood, and beginning to really let your heart say, no, I do want to be their friend, and I hope that friendship develops over time. But I also, and probably I would say even more, I'm more passionate even about being their father.
• 3:36
  And I would really emphasize there's something totally unique. Your kids are going to have lots of friends in their life, and you're going to be one of them, but they're only going to have one father, and that should be you, and you need to lean into that relationship as a dad, as a father. But, yeah, Jeff, what are your thoughts about this?
• 3:52
  Yeah, I think it's I think most guys and I think you hit it right on the head. I think most guys very within within two seconds can able to self identify as either a dad who's emotionless detached. I mean, their temptation is to be emotionless, detached, no connection, don't really ever care much to play with the kids. And you have to work really hard to do that.
• 4:10
  If that's you, then yeah, this, what Jeremy's saying is probably not for you. What you need to realize is, man, what do your kids actually enjoy? What do they like? How can you get on their level? How can you play with them? If you're on the flip side of that and your main temptation is just to be buddies with the person and if you ever see yourself, you know, being the parent that you see in like the, you know, newspaper articles where, you know, the kids are 18 and having parties at the house and the parents are the ones hosting it and it's like, what, what? That's great. You know, like, and that's sad, but that's a common thing because people want to be like the cool mom or the cool dad.
• 4:40
  And so if you feel like that's your temptation of just being like a, um, you know, just kind of want to be buddy, buddy and never actually want to do anything hard. Well, then you really need to hear what Jeremy just had to say. Another way to put it too. I think what you're saying is a lot of times, um, the reason we, um,
• 4:55
  think back on a, in a warm way of usually our best relationships being friendships in the past is partly because we just, we just hate conflict. We're scared of it. We don't know how to deal with it. We don't actually had to do hard things and real relationships like marriage, like familiar familial relationships, et cetera are way harder and inherently have built in way more conflict than friendships, right? Friendships are a little bit more just about shared activity when marriages and families are about shared missions, shared vision.
• 5:24
  which means there will be conflict. You have to go in a certain direction. You have to grow together. You're not going any... You can't just kind of peace out and say bye, right? And with friendships, you can. And so I think very, very... Be very careful that that's not what the spirit you're creating or cultivating. And don't just say, man, I want to just be friends with my kid because I want to avoid conflict and hard things, or I don't ever want to be the bad guy. And then also, I think...
• 5:47
  Yeah, I just think that rings true that you need to be very, very careful of that. I think a helpful way to think about it is don't think of them as two competing things, friendship versus fatherhood, unless that's really helpful. But I think for me, I think of like the lens of fatherhood has an element of friendship, like you said. That's right. So it's kind of like there's a bigger umbrella with a smaller little thing underneath. That's what I would say. So I don't know if you have any final thoughts or what you'd say, but that's what I had.
• 6:10
  Yeah, tap into that part of your heart and it's there that is the dad part of your heart. Sometimes you just need to say to your kids, I'm your dad. I'm your father. You know, even saying that out loud, some dads, they can't really say that out loud. Like there's something, it's like they've actually closed off a part of their heart.
• 6:28
  And they won't open that up in a way that's going to really let this hit their identity. And a lot of it, just part of it, too, is our culture just takes so many pot shots at fatherhood and dads. And it's sort of dads are a punchline that sometimes we may just not even think it's cool to be a dad. So there's a lot of reasons why we might resist that.
• 6:49
  embracing this identity, but your kids can only embrace their identity as a daughter or a son to the degree that you embrace your identity as a father. So don't take that away from your kids. They need to sink the roots of their identity into the soil of your fatherhood, and you have to let this part of your heart open up.
• 7:09
  And so oftentimes if this friendship conversation is really sort of a screen for I don't want to be a dad, I don't want to embrace that identity, then I would resist it. But that certainly doesn't mean that you shouldn't cultivate an amazing intimate friendship with your kids, especially as they get older. And so everything Jeff said is really critical. Definitely don't take this to mean be the dictator. If that's your definition of fatherhood, that's not what we're talking about today.
• 7:33
  It means that there's a special bond that's very unique to the father-daughter, father-son relationship, and we really want to see you guys pursue that in addition to or as a part of that relationship and nest friendship inside of your fatherhood pursuit of that relationship with your kids.
• 7:52
  Hey guys, Jeff here. One thing me and Jeremy like to say is most fathers out there have never been taught how to be one. I know that was me until I met Jeremy. We have a skill of fatherhood masterclass that is on our website, familyteams.com. It literally walks through three modules with interviews, practical tips, training, and everything, including a digital workbook to show you the entire model from A to Z of how to be a father who leads his family team on mission and builds a multi-generational legacy.
• 8:22
  to check that out.