Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 48 | How to Balance Love and Discipline

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Ep. 48 | How to Balance Love and Discipline · 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, I'm Jeremy. I'm Jeff. We wanna talk to you guys about how do you balance love and discipline? This is a really critical thing to figure out as a dad. And oftentimes, we all kind of come at this fatherhood thing, we tend to be a little bit favoring one or the other. So sometimes you have dads that just are a little bit tilted towards discipline and then they really embrace sort of being strict and creating order in the home and then you have other dads that are fun and loving and affectionate.
• 0:56
  And, you know, one of the things that and that can kind of sort of flow out of this idea that you need to express your individuality primarily in all aspects of your life. And and one of the things that you have to embrace, though, as a father is that you have to sort of.
• 1:12
  increase the spectrum on both sides often. You have to become really good at being directive with your kids, and you have to become really good at training and disciplining your kids. You have to become very affectionate with your kids, very full of love, be more and more fun. And what really causes children to really feel at home and fall in love with their dad often is when you, instead of doubling down on one side or the other and being the fun dad or the strict dad, is to
• 1:41
  Both of those poles. Like, and to the extent that you do that, you are growing in your fatherhood. And so if you find, don't, don't sort of just give into the easy, like, area of like, I'll just be one or the other. Because what we, we live in a culture so individualistic, we just want to grab people, like in the workplace and say,
• 2:00
  just do one thing awesome. And we're, we live in a specialization culture. And when you bring that into the home or an individual expression culture, it can be really hard on kids. You got to like really push out both poles of, you know, are you able to really be a dad who can train and discipline kids well, and a dad who can really show affection and be full of love and connect with the hearts of your kids.
• 2:21
  Yeah. And one thing I'll add too, that we're learning with our toddlers, two and four is, and two, it's a little harder. I think it's more than once our three, four or five, but is to empathize. Now this doesn't change anything of the rule, but to actually put yourself in their shoes or to understand, like, I think we're really big on emotions. Don't rule. Emotions aren't King. Emotions aren't God and our culture. Sometimes they actually are. So they need to be regulated and tampered and dampered. But, um,
• 2:45
  but they are real. And so like to let them feel it in a sense, not to like, let them feel it, go crazy, just let it out. But like, Hey, I understand why you feel that way. Um, but still coming through. And I think, I think of this example of when I was in middle school, I got suspended and then expelled and kicked out and blah. That was only one of a chain of events and then got arrested all those things. Fun years. But, um, uh, so yeah, uh, probably cause the dad wasn't around. So there you go. That's why, you know, you need to listen to the podcast. Um, but, um,
• 3:10
  So yeah, I was just rebellious and all those things. But I remember through a principal who was more like a father figure, and I actually was a baseball coach of mine, when he suspended me, he was very like so tender and gentle and like empathetic in it, but like, and just gave me this long speech on just like he believes in me and all these different things. But he didn't say like, you're not suspended. He said, so like, so bye. Like, you know, he's not suspended. But there was a level of like, that stuck with me more than any other punishment I've ever had, because there was such a level of like...
• 3:36
  I'm on, I'm in your corner. I believe in you, but this is the rule you crossed it, you know? So there's a lot, like, we got to do that as a dad, as dads. And we got to do that. Like, if you can, if you can do that for 20 years, you will leave an impression. Like you will leave a, such a father, like God, the father, like heart and impression on your kid. If you can do that. And that's hard. Cause we want to just, I know for me, I'm just want to be quick. I want to be this. I want to be like, boom. Or, or like you said, or even on the other side, just like it's whatever. But if you can still like enforce while tender and gentle, and then, you know,
• 4:06
  Another thing I would add to that's kind of a caveat of that is like for us, we're learning to like understand like, you know, people have love languages. I almost feel like we're almost learning our kids, not love language, but like our kids just communication language. Like for Canon, like if you kind of like are stern and just say, hey, this is the way it is. He's very like repentant and like, oh, I'm sorry. Okay. But if you kind of push Kinsley on that, like you kind of push the gas on those things pretty harsh, it just ratchets really fast.
• 4:33
  And so for us, I've just experimented the last couple weeks of just like, hey, I'm not going to change anything I would discipline. I'm not going to change, but I'm going to be very much more like give her some space for it, to feel it, to talk to me about it, to empathize with it. When I don't do that with Cannon, and he's fine. He's just like, he's more of like a black and white. And when I've done that with Kinsley, it just doesn't climb that stepping stair of like, oh man, escalation. And so I just stuff like that. I'm like, you got to...
• 4:58
  Not that you're being unfair, but I think you also have to understand each kid might be disciplined in some way differently. And that's actually how you love them because it's showing you know them and understand them. And that gets back to the bigger point I started with, which is they'll be...
• 5:13
  They'll leave with that when they're older of like, he understood me and understood how I'm wired, but still wanted the best for me. Not just like, here's the hammer, here's the law. And God applies the law in the same way to us, right? Like the law is spirit now. And so it's fluid, but yet it's still the law, right? Like spirit is the new law. Jesus is the new law. So it's still a law, but it's fluid and spirit filled and sensitive to moments. And so, yeah, I think that's huge.
• 5:35
  I love that. I love that story of your coach, you know, that he he wanted to make sure that you understood that he understood. One of the things that can infuriate a child more than anything else is if they think they it's what you're doing is unjust because you just didn't understand the details. Right.
• 5:53
  Yeah. Oftentimes what they're learning the wrong thing in that moment, you know, they're being disciplined. But oftentimes because they've translated it in their own head, oh, you're only doing this because you really don't know the details. Yeah. If you knew the rest, then I would be off the hook or. Yeah. And so I love that technique of just sort of let me tell you, like, let's let's get the facts completely straight. I'm about to give you a pretty harsh consequence. But let's walk through the facts.
• 6:16
  And we both, and they're like, yeah, yeah, that's the truth. You're like, okay, and here's the consequence for that. Yeah, you almost lead them to the water. And sometimes I've seen the kids almost like, they almost say, okay, give me like, it's time. That's right. Because they would love, just like you and me, and we all do that. You know, anytime that we get busted for something as adults, we try to figure out, is it really my fault? Or, you know, we start spinning stories in our heads and our kids do the same thing. And so, yeah, seeking first to understand and be understood differently.
• 6:42
  really a helpful sort of parenting order, especially if you're going to level sort of a difficult consequence for your child to absorb. It's like, make sure that we're both talking about the same thing. But yeah, continue to think about, you know, being that kind of person who doesn't sort of default to the disciplinarian or the fun and affection, but really push both poles out further so that you can really give your children something, you know, all the different parts of you to grasp onto.
• 7:11
  Hey guys, can I just ask you a quick favor? If you could just pause real quick. Well, actually after I'm done with this, so it makes sense. And about for about 30 seconds and just rate and review this podcast. We can 10 X the number of dads we help through this content. If our podcast can be found by more dads. And one of the weird main things about this podcast game is that how they get ranked and how they get in front of other people essentially is because of how it gets rated and reviewed. So if you can just give a quick, honest rating and review, we would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Thanks guys.