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304. What 5 Kids Taught Me About Letting Go Of Control · Badass Confidence Coach | Your Personal Trainer for Your Mind

0:00
SPEAKER_03: Hey everyone, welcome to or welcome back to the podcast.
0:10
SPEAKER_03: Today we are talking about what five kids have taught us about letting go of control.
0:18
SPEAKER_03: So a few weeks ago we did what marriage has taught us.
0:22
SPEAKER_03: I don't know, we did an episode on marriage.
0:24
SPEAKER_03: I don't know if we talked about specifically what it taught us, but today it's going to be about the illusion of control and raising five kids.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: That's probably the best way to say it.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: The illusion of control.
0:36
SPEAKER_03: The illusion, because because it is an illusion.
0:38
SPEAKER_03: And how I have brought those experiences in my personal life into my professional life with certain clients.
0:47
SPEAKER_03: Because I think there are times where what I have lived through, my lived experience, has actually shown more insight and wisdom than anything I could have read in a book.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: That's fair.
1:00
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:00
SPEAKER_03: So I mean, there's something though with that so goes on today.
1:06
SPEAKER_03: Control is an issue.
1:07
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's an issue, I think, to some degree almost every day, at least for me.
1:12
SPEAKER_03: You know, and you see it with me, Tim.
1:15
SPEAKER_03: Like when I get anxious or I get irritated or in a air quote bad mood.
1:19
SPEAKER_03: And what do I start doing?
1:20
SPEAKER_03: I start like barking orders or telling you to clean this or put that away.
1:25
SPEAKER_03: You know, and that that's me trying to get control.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:28
SPEAKER_03: And we've talked about this.
1:30
SPEAKER_03: And usually there's something underneath it that's that's bothering me.
1:33
SPEAKER_03: That's not always so much about all the crap that's on the stairs.
1:36
SPEAKER_03: But it is also about the crap that's on the stairs because you and our one son who's back home living with us while he's in graduate school, law school, you go up and down the stairs and you look at it, you just bypass it, and I can it drives me nuts.
1:52
SPEAKER_03: So it's it's twofold, I think.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: I I don't think it's about the stuff or the issue or the thing.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: I think it's more about the energy.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: Like you we quickly have arrived at at being on a pirate ship with you, right?
2:08
SPEAKER_00: Where you you're the captain and and and all we were all the crew and whatever.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: Um just speak the truth.
2:15
SPEAKER_03: Pirate ship.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: Just speak the truth.
2:16
SPEAKER_03: Okay, well, I don't mind being the I don't mind being the captain.
2:19
SPEAKER_00: We absolutely all know that.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that is facts.
2:22
SPEAKER_03: I like that idea.
2:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's actually a really good idea for a Halloween costume.
2:26
SPEAKER_03: I like that.
2:27
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: Hold on, blah blah blah.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: But so let me make the let me make the point.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: And as you run away with your captain suit on, I think that the energy around all of those things is is really what it's all about.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: It's not about it's not about the stuff, it's not about the task, it's more about maybe the thoughts in your head and the energy around that and then what to do with it.
2:50
SPEAKER_00: And I think for you, the thing to do is to increase the amount of words and the amount of energy that comes from you, right?
2:59
SPEAKER_00: I I feel like that.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: And maybe the volume goes up a little bit.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: You know, this is not a dig, this is just stuff, right?
3:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I kind of feel like that's how it goes, and I think that makes you in a way that let like kind of like it's like the it's like the pot on top of the key, the uh the teapot, the the lid.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: Like you need to like let the lid up a little bit, right?
3:20
SPEAKER_00: Like to like kind of relieve the pressure, and then it's like, okay, I'm good now.
3:24
SPEAKER_03: You need to put your clothes away.
3:26
SPEAKER_03: That's letting some of the pressure off.
3:28
SPEAKER_03: It's true, it's true.
3:29
SPEAKER_03: Ask any person who is sort of like head of household or manages a home.
3:35
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you know, it's even after the kids now are adults and grown and you know, out of the house, once just back temporarily, it still drives me crazy because he'll do it and you will do it.
3:48
SPEAKER_03: You're pretty good about it.
3:50
SPEAKER_03: But it does drive me crazy.
3:51
SPEAKER_03: I mean, dishes in the sink.
3:53
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's it's not that there's it's not that there's dirty dishes.
3:57
SPEAKER_03: It it's that the dishwasher is literally right next to the sink, and you go and you or one of the kids will put the dish in the sink and on the dishwasher.
4:09
SPEAKER_03: And I and I sarcastically was saying to all of you, oh, how hard is it to bend over, pick it up, pivot to the left, pull the dishwasher door down, bend again, and put the dish in the dishwasher.
4:22
SPEAKER_03: Drives me crazy because as a mom, I have done it for so many years, right?
4:27
SPEAKER_03: It's like it is right there.
4:30
SPEAKER_03: You were so close.
4:31
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you were so close you could have got it in there.
4:34
SPEAKER_03: But but let's remember that drives me nuts.
4:36
SPEAKER_03: And I know y'all, come on, somebody make a comment on YouTube.
4:40
SPEAKER_03: I know I'm not the only one.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: We we all get it.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: The comments will come fast and furious.
4:45
SPEAKER_01: I get all of that, but and I need support for this.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: But let's remember the context of what we're talking about.
4:49
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about control.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: So, right, like it's really not about it's not about the dishwasher.
4:53
SPEAKER_03: It's about like you And it is about the mess in the sink, it is about the house being a mess.
4:59
SPEAKER_00: It's about the control of the mess in the sink, it's not about the sink, it's it's about like I would like to control it.
5:05
SPEAKER_03: But I think it's okay to kind of try to control that a little bit because if I don't ever say anything, the dishes will pile up.
5:10
SPEAKER_03: And now I was like, okay, there's a dishes from that's a the dish from breakfast this morning where somebody scrambled their eggs, and it's now I'm trying to get ready for dinner, and there's stuff still in the sink from this morning.
5:21
SPEAKER_03: That's irritating.
5:23
SPEAKER_03: I I can anybody agree with me that that's irritating.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: I can safely say that I've actually never done that.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: I've never left.
5:29
SPEAKER_03: I'm not saying necessarily you, I'm not sure.
5:31
SPEAKER_03: Right.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: Well, but it sounds like you are so well you not and don't say never.
5:35
SPEAKER_03: You you have done it.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: There was that one time.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: You're right.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: There was that one time.
5:39
SPEAKER_03: Not never.
5:39
SPEAKER_03: You have done it.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: But that's not the point of it.
5:42
SPEAKER_00: Let's remember the context.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about control or lack of control.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: That's what we're talking about.
5:46
SPEAKER_03: See, see how quickly we're getting into this here?
5:48
SPEAKER_03: Because it's a thing.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: Continue.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: You're getting defensive.
5:53
SPEAKER_03: I mean, that the the kitchen is a common area.
5:56
SPEAKER_03: So that is something that is important for me to feel like the kitchen.
6:01
SPEAKER_03: It is true.
6:01
SPEAKER_03: When I feel like my house is clean, when I feel like the kitchen is clean, I feel organized and contained on the inside.
6:08
SPEAKER_03: You know, I cannot sit down, you know, I work from home.
6:11
SPEAKER_03: I can't sit down and do my work.
6:13
SPEAKER_03: There's two places I do like work for my business.
6:17
SPEAKER_03: I can't sit down and do that work if I see that the place is a mess around me.
6:21
SPEAKER_03: It's it's hard.
6:22
SPEAKER_03: And I know that I'm I know this is we've talked about this before.
6:26
SPEAKER_03: There's psychology behind this.
6:27
SPEAKER_03: You know, it's a thing.
6:29
SPEAKER_03: So that's why you're not going to be able to do it.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: Well, so let me ask you a question.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: Let's drill down on this just for a second.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: So on the in the context of this discussion, control, lack of control.
6:37
SPEAKER_00: So you you like when the kitchen is clean?
6:40
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: Right?
6:41
SPEAKER_03: Is it is it because the water is wiped, is the the counters are wiped out, we don't have to get into the minutia of what exactly we're talking about.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: But I'm what I'm wondering in from a psychological aspect, is it that you like the fact that it visually is clean and everything looks very much organized?
6:58
SPEAKER_00: Visually and everything's put in its place.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: Or do you like the fact that those of us that also work in with and do things in the kitchen have come to the same plan as you, like that that we are like in line with you?
7:14
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, basically.
7:15
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, basically, yes.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
7:17
SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm gonna admit what I think a lot of moms and dads who run the house feel.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: And I think that I say yes.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and I think that just lit a light bulb for everybody that's listening and me.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: Like it's it's like, yeah, you like the fact that it's clean, but you also like the fact that everybody around you has now aligned themselves with your cut your goal.
7:37
SPEAKER_03: You're making it seem like a total control freak, but it is true.
7:40
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I'm the one who cooks all the meals.
7:41
SPEAKER_03: I I'm the main purse kitchen person.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: You're missing the point, but no.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: Take a breath.
7:49
SPEAKER_03: You're getting you're annoying me right now.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
7:51
SPEAKER_03: Yes, the kitchen is I want the kitchen to be clean and organized.
7:55
SPEAKER_03: I know, because it makes me feel organized on the inside.
7:59
SPEAKER_03: And when I'm the one who's in there all the time, I've decided where everything went in the kitchen when we even moved into this house and where the glasses go and where the plates go.
8:08
SPEAKER_03: Like, I'm the one who organized it.
8:10
SPEAKER_03: I'm the one who does all the almost all the cook.
8:13
SPEAKER_03: 95% of the cooking is me.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
8:16
SPEAKER_03: So it's it's I feel like it's fair to ask you to please clean up after you're done cooking.
8:20
SPEAKER_03: I don't what you I don't care what you cook.
8:22
SPEAKER_03: I've said this to all of you.
8:23
SPEAKER_03: I don't care what you cook, I don't care what you do.
8:25
SPEAKER_03: Clean up after yourself.
8:27
SPEAKER_04: Right.
8:27
SPEAKER_03: You know, clean up, clean up.
8:29
SPEAKER_03: Like we learned it when the kids are in preschool.
8:30
SPEAKER_03: There's a song that you should sing.
8:32
SPEAKER_03: Clean up.
8:32
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
8:33
SPEAKER_03: Put your stuff away.
8:34
SPEAKER_03: Everybody.
8:35
SPEAKER_03: Take your dishes, don't put them in the sink.
8:36
SPEAKER_03: No, no, no, don't do that because it's like, oh, okay.
8:39
SPEAKER_03: This is what the kids do.
8:40
SPEAKER_03: I'll get to it.
8:40
SPEAKER_03: No, no, no.
8:41
SPEAKER_03: Then three hours later, I'm in there.
8:43
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, you know what?
8:44
SPEAKER_03: And then what happens is I wash them.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:46
SPEAKER_03: And I put I dry them and put them away.
8:48
SPEAKER_03: That's that's irritating.
8:50
SPEAKER_03: You can take it, you do it, you do it, you do it, you do it.
8:53
SPEAKER_03: Then you get to the point you're like, you know what?
8:54
SPEAKER_03: I'm sick and tired of doing this.
8:56
SPEAKER_03: And that's been me for 20 years in this house.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:00
SPEAKER_03: You know, and it's after, you know, right.
9:02
SPEAKER_03: And after us raising five kids, I know that there's certain things I can't control.
9:07
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I learned a long time ago, and I used to talk to my clients about this.
9:10
SPEAKER_03: I can't control their bedrooms.
9:12
SPEAKER_03: I felt like their bedrooms.
9:13
SPEAKER_03: So the kitchen's a common area.
9:14
SPEAKER_03: I felt like their bedrooms were their places.
9:17
SPEAKER_03: It was theirs sort of their sanctuary.
9:19
SPEAKER_03: The one place in the home was theirs.
9:21
SPEAKER_03: It was, it was, it was private to them.
9:23
SPEAKER_03: And we have our one daughter who, you know, it's funny, she's like this really successful.
9:28
SPEAKER_03: She's a physician.
9:29
SPEAKER_03: She's very smart, very successful doctor.
9:32
SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh, her room, even now when she comes home, it is like her clothes threw up all over the bedroom.
9:40
SPEAKER_03: I mean, oh my gosh, like her her that bedroom is it, especially when she was like middle school and high school.
9:46
SPEAKER_03: I just, I just would go by and I tell the parents, my client, just shut the door.
9:50
SPEAKER_03: Just shut the door.
9:51
SPEAKER_03: And I would just shut the door, like, I can't look in that bedroom one more time and see her clothes strewn literally all over the place.
9:57
SPEAKER_03: But that was her jam.
9:58
SPEAKER_03: That's you know how she operated.
10:00
SPEAKER_03: You know, being having an organized, clean bedroom in high school was not a priority of hers.
10:06
SPEAKER_03: So, you know, I didn't try to control that.
10:08
SPEAKER_03: You know, control the controllables.
10:10
SPEAKER_03: The kitchen's a common area, yeah.
10:12
SPEAKER_03: I was in there all the time.
10:13
SPEAKER_03: I was the main person in there, so that did drive me crazy.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: So I think there's some really good life lesson takeaways from this, too.
10:20
SPEAKER_03: I think because we have a lot to talk about today.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: We do, we're gonna get into it, but I think we also need to like let's finish this one.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: So I so thinking about the kitchen, like like you have a vision of the kitchen, think of it as a vision for your business, think of it as a a vision of your workplace outside of here, right?
10:38
SPEAKER_00: Like so, so if you have a vision of something as the president, CEO, boss, manager, supervisor, whatever it is, and you don't share that with anybody else, like it's in it's inside of you, not you, Anna, but you, anybody, right?
10:53
SPEAKER_00: That's inside of your head, but you don't actually talk about it out loud.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: No one knows, no one knows, and so you get yourself all worked up about how it's not really working out, right?
11:04
SPEAKER_00: But you've never actually said to anybody, hey, this is kind of the vision of this, right?
11:09
SPEAKER_00: Right, this is how I would I'm seeing this go.
11:12
SPEAKER_03: Well, you have expectations that you no one knows about nobody knows all in your head, exactly, yeah.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: It's a big it is a big one.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: That's a really good thing to throw into this too, because I'm sure there were expectations.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I have a perfect example, which I'm not gonna get into, but like why?
11:28
SPEAKER_03: Because you're gonna get me mad.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: Probably.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I can't, I I mean, I'm happy to share it, but like it may come up later this session.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it might come up this session.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: Okay, we're back in the session.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that funny?
11:40
SPEAKER_01: I just said that again.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: Hold on, can I say session all the time?
11:43
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, no, no.
11:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Venmo beef for that's so weird.
11:46
SPEAKER_01: I just said that again.
11:47
SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
11:49
SPEAKER_01: At the end of the recording.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: This is only a 15-minute session, by the way.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: You need to get out now.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: Bye.
11:56
SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah, I can't help it.
11:57
SPEAKER_03: I say that all the time.
11:58
SPEAKER_03: All right.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: All right.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: All right, keep going.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll get into my story later.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure it's gonna come up.
12:03
SPEAKER_03: We're talking about control and yeah, what the kids have taught us.
12:07
SPEAKER_03: So, as you all obviously can tell by now, we're not perfect at this.
12:09
SPEAKER_03: I'm not perfect at it.
12:11
SPEAKER_03: I think I've come a long way.
12:12
SPEAKER_03: I've come a long way.
12:14
SPEAKER_03: More since they were in high school and college than were than they were little.
12:17
SPEAKER_03: And we, I know you all may be assuming why, but we'll get into a little bit more of why and and the psychology behind it.
12:24
SPEAKER_03: So, you know, sometimes, you know, when we're trying to control our kids, it's about our ourselves.
12:32
SPEAKER_03: It's about us, right?
12:32
SPEAKER_03: It's about this control issue, like I'm talking about with me, that what we feel, but you we have to sort of learn to modulate it and regulate it, you know, and know like how much of it is about it's about the kids and how much of it is about me and my own stuff, right?
12:46
SPEAKER_03: And we know this by now, in the 13 minutes we've been talking.
12:50
SPEAKER_03: I'm not real, really that laid back in the way of my house.
12:54
SPEAKER_03: Like I'm not like, whatever, whatever happens, happens kind of person.
12:57
SPEAKER_03: I'm just not.
12:58
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I like an organized home.
13:00
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I like a plan.
13:01
SPEAKER_03: I like discipline.
13:02
SPEAKER_03: I mean, discipline's what's gotten me to where I am in life.
13:05
SPEAKER_03: I mean, discipline's what's gotten me to be successful in my business.
13:08
SPEAKER_03: Discipline is what's gotten me to be, you know, successful as a triathlete.
13:12
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you name it.
13:13
SPEAKER_03: I mean, discipline's what's gotten me some really wonderful relationships that I've continued to pour into and be of service to, right?
13:20
SPEAKER_03: You know, and I like people who will make an effort, right?
13:23
SPEAKER_03: People who were people who do what they say they're going to do.
13:26
SPEAKER_03: And I talk a lot with my coaching clients about this.
13:28
SPEAKER_03: Do what you say you're going to do.
13:31
SPEAKER_03: And, you know, that that's hard with kids because kids are like, whatever, mom, like your mom.
13:36
SPEAKER_03: And I, you said you were going to do this.
13:38
SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
13:39
SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
13:39
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, whatever, mom.
13:40
SPEAKER_03: I, yeah, uh-huh, I'll get to it as they're like on their gaming console, you know, and I'm like getting so frustrated because I, you know, I come halfway down the stairs.
13:48
SPEAKER_03: Hey, kids, boys, as we're gaming when they were little.
13:51
SPEAKER_03: They're like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll get to it the second time.
13:54
SPEAKER_03: The third time, I'm like, no.
13:55
SPEAKER_03: And then you let you like, no, get off the computer right now.
13:58
SPEAKER_03: Stop the game right now.
14:00
SPEAKER_03: You know, the right you're smiling because how many times are the get upstairs right now and wash your dishes?
14:05
SPEAKER_03: Let's use the dishes, for example.
14:07
SPEAKER_03: You know, get upstairs right now and take the dogs for a walk.
14:09
SPEAKER_03: You're just taking them to a walk an hour ago, you know, and that's you get to the point where you just look like, no, I'm tired of it because like, uh-huh, whatever, whatever.
14:17
SPEAKER_03: You know, that's hard as a parent.
14:19
SPEAKER_03: You get tired of that, right?
14:20
SPEAKER_03: And I do, so it's like you kids teach you, they force you to learn to like ebb and flow with them because it's like they're not a client and they're not adults.
14:30
SPEAKER_03: It's like people pay me to help them do what they said they're gonna do, and they've got skin in the game because they've given me money and they must really want the service.
14:38
SPEAKER_03: That's where they're paying a coach.
14:40
SPEAKER_03: So they do it, right?
14:42
SPEAKER_03: But little kids are like, whatever.
14:44
SPEAKER_03: I don't really care.
14:44
SPEAKER_03: I'd rather play my Minecraft game another hour, right?
14:49
SPEAKER_03: You know, so but here's the thing, too, I want to mention is that you know, these five kids are all have completely different personalities.
14:57
SPEAKER_03: So, like it may be, and I know over the years we've gotten really frustrated with some of them more than others.
15:03
SPEAKER_03: They come out different, and we're a blended family, and in some ways it doesn't even really matter.
15:07
SPEAKER_03: I mean, they are five separate human beings with different, like with different quirks and you know, different behaviors and and mindsets.
15:14
SPEAKER_03: I mean, some of them are more willing to jump up and help me, others are like, whatever.
15:18
SPEAKER_03: I'm I have no interest in, you know, I I that is not a priority of mine, and I'm not gonna do it.
15:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, mom, dad helping you, you know.
15:26
SPEAKER_03: So I think that what this whole episode is going to end up being about is how I have learned, and I think you have learned, you can speak for yourself, but I think we have both learned that parenting has moved over the years from control into influence.
15:44
SPEAKER_03: This is the one place where I think it is important to be an influencer, an influencer on our children's lives, right?
15:51
SPEAKER_03: So that's what we're gonna talk about.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: Well, an influencer, I I'm sure you could make an argument that it's helped your negotiation skills.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: Right?
16:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: I I'm sure that there's been some benefits.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: I can speak for me, priceless, countless benefits going into the workplace where I'm surrounded many times by kids that are 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 years old, right?
16:20
SPEAKER_00: And the mindset that they bring, now the mindset that our kids bring or brought 20, 15 years ago is a little bit different than it is in 2026 for obvious reasons, right?
16:33
SPEAKER_00: However, there are some underlying currents that are exactly the same, right?
16:39
SPEAKER_03: You know, and I I think that our five kids have learned so much about how to be, how to behave, how to show up at work, how to show up with how to show up with adults by listening to you talk about these teenagers that have worked for you over the past 25 years.
16:58
SPEAKER_03: Because you would come home and talk about really frustrating kids or kids who are just like, you just talked about the other day.
17:05
SPEAKER_03: I mean, kids who I think they're high, I think they're smoking weed, there's they look like they're high all the time.
17:11
SPEAKER_03: And or, you know, I know you could whatever test them, but like, or they're they show they come into work two to three hours late, or you know, these kids are just lazy and they're on their phones all the time, and they're doing their they're doing their homework, and you're really not supposed to be even the j though the job might be boring at times, you can't do your homework at work, you can't, you're public facing.
17:32
SPEAKER_03: And then I know that they've heard you talk about the kids who are like that, you're like, that kid's gonna be president someday.
17:37
SPEAKER_03: Like that kid is awesome.
17:39
SPEAKER_03: Like, what a great work ethic.
17:40
SPEAKER_03: And you're like, he must come from a great family.
17:42
SPEAKER_03: Who are his parents?
17:43
SPEAKER_03: Like they've heard you say that over all these years, because I've heard it, you know.
17:48
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you know, you cut you praise these kids who they know how to make eye contact, and they're like, what else can I do next, him?
17:56
SPEAKER_03: You know, I finished that job.
17:57
SPEAKER_03: What do you have for me next?
17:58
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think that that has had a huge influence on our five kids.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
18:03
SPEAKER_03: And they would sit here around the table today as adults and say, Oh, absolutely.
18:06
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: No, yeah.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: And I and I think it's for you and I both it's helped us go out and and try and coach, because you and I coach, but we coach differently in different arenas, but like to to help coach those that aren't quite up to snuff, right?
18:21
SPEAKER_00: There's kids that aren't quite brain, they're they're not holding their end of the bargain, right?
18:25
SPEAKER_00: Right.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: So like it's helped us to go out and be able to identify weaknesses in skills, right?
18:32
SPEAKER_00: And then and then have a strategy to go out and coach them up, right?
18:36
SPEAKER_00: To help them become better, right?
18:39
SPEAKER_00: Like help them give them skills that later on they're gonna be like, oh man, I'm so glad I learned that back in 2026.
18:45
SPEAKER_03: And I think you probably have taught a lot of these kids who didn't have the modeling from their own family of origin, from they're still living with their family of origin.
18:52
SPEAKER_03: Many of these kids over the years are at home with their parents or their stepparents or maybe grandparents, and they didn't always have the modeling.
18:59
SPEAKER_03: And I think that you probably model for them what good solid work looks like.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean, just yesterday, so we had a brand new guy starting, and he was training with another one of our workers who's been there for a while, both of them probably in there under 30 for sure.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: Let's so let's say 25 to 30 in that range.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: And so we're just talking, welcome them, give them your story.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: Hey, you know, what's your background, all this stuff, right?
19:24
SPEAKER_00: And so um, as I was getting ready to go, and I I try to do some version of this with all the new people, just because I want them, you know, I want them to know me a little bit.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: I need to know their background a little bit so we can talk and work together.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: And so I said to this this guy, I'm like, hey, I go, you know what, here's just I'll give you a pro tip today.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: And this was like at 7:30 in the morning, so it's kind of early for a pro tip, but I gave him a pro tip and I said, Hey, I said, you know what, you're just starting.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: I said, You've never worked in our world before, right?
19:51
SPEAKER_00: He's like, No, I've done retail, blah, blah, blah.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: I said, Okay.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: I said, well, here's the thing.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I think I think for you to to kind of kind of submerge yourself a little bit into our world, go take on your free time, go take some of our group exercise classes, right?
20:06
SPEAKER_00: Get into the world that we service.
20:09
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: So that you can understand the mindset and and kind of some of the personalities of of those that will be coming to you and asking you for this or that.
20:18
SPEAKER_04: Right.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: And he's like looking at me, he's like, that's and the other girl who works for me too, she's like, that that's actually a really good tip.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: I wish somebody would have told me that like years ago.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
20:28
SPEAKER_00: But just to be able to share things that you and I have learned over the course of decades, like, like, let's share it, right?
20:34
SPEAKER_00: Because at some point we won't be able to share anything anymore.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: So share it now.
20:36
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
20:37
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
20:37
SPEAKER_03: So let's get into let's go back to control and let's go back to raising little ones.
20:42
SPEAKER_03: So we're gonna segue into the first part of this conversation around when you do have control in your life and with your kids and your home life.
20:51
SPEAKER_03: You know, when you're when your kids are little, when our kids were little, we really were in charge.
20:55
SPEAKER_03: As parents, you really are in charge.
20:57
SPEAKER_03: You need to be in charge.
20:58
SPEAKER_03: That's your job, right?
21:00
SPEAKER_03: You know, you're in charge of everything bedtime, food, clothes, the clothes they wear, school, their activities.
21:05
SPEAKER_03: You you sign them up for activities, you sign them up for T ball, you sign them up for soccer, you do all of that, right?
21:11
SPEAKER_03: You decide if they go to church or not on Sunday or temple on Saturday or whatever, whatever your religion is.
21:17
SPEAKER_03: Like you decide all of that, you know.
21:19
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you when they go to the dentist, if they go to the dentist, you know, everything who drives them.
21:25
SPEAKER_03: So we have full control, you know.
21:28
SPEAKER_03: You're basically running this small corporation staffed by, you know, people who lose their shoes every morning.
21:35
SPEAKER_03: And don't we have one that that happened to?
21:37
SPEAKER_03: We have one of these kids, one of our five.
21:40
SPEAKER_03: That kid, he lost stuff all the time and forgot stuff at home all the time when he was at school.
21:45
SPEAKER_03: Our youngest all the time.
21:48
SPEAKER_03: Right.
21:48
SPEAKER_03: And and you know, we are in charge.
21:51
SPEAKER_03: The kids need structure and we provide that for them, right?
21:55
SPEAKER_03: They need limits, you know.
21:57
SPEAKER_03: We set the limits, right?
21:58
SPEAKER_03: We're we're the ones who do all the things.
22:00
SPEAKER_03: All that for them, you know, but then they get older and the amount of control that you legitimately have with them starts shrinking, you know.
22:08
SPEAKER_03: I mean, as it as it should be, as it should.
22:10
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
22:11
SPEAKER_03: The tr maybe the tweenish, the tween years.
22:13
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
22:13
SPEAKER_03: You still do control like the rules in our house.
22:17
SPEAKER_03: You know, we still die, kind of do control that now, even now, really.
22:21
SPEAKER_03: I mean, they're not here, but we control like the rules of the house, what we're willing to pay for.
22:27
SPEAKER_03: That's something we control when they get a little bit older.
22:29
SPEAKER_03: You know, how people treat each other, especially in our home.
22:33
SPEAKER_03: And we talked about how you treat each other outside the home, although we can't really control because we're not there to see it.
22:38
SPEAKER_03: You know, what we model, we can control what we model for them.
22:42
SPEAKER_03: Uh, we can control what, you know, yeah, we still can control what we allow them to participate in, right?
22:49
SPEAKER_03: But what we cannot control, and parents start to feel this, you know, you start to feel this a little bit as a parent.
22:55
SPEAKER_03: You start to feel the rub.
22:57
SPEAKER_03: You can't control who they become, who they're becoming.
23:00
SPEAKER_03: You can try to exert influence over that.
23:03
SPEAKER_03: You can try to control it too.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: I see this with that might not be a good early adolescence.
23:08
SPEAKER_03: We see this with parents, especially with girls.
23:10
SPEAKER_03: You're trying to control who they're becoming.
23:13
SPEAKER_03: You cannot really, and you can't control what motivates them.
23:16
SPEAKER_03: You just can't.
23:18
SPEAKER_03: You can't control who they love, you can't control what they believe.
23:22
SPEAKER_03: This has been, you know, this has been hard, I know for parents.
23:26
SPEAKER_03: You can't control what they eventually decide matters to them, right?
23:31
SPEAKER_03: And that transition, it's so hard for parents because it's not really an announcement.
23:35
SPEAKER_03: Nobody announces it.
23:36
SPEAKER_03: And it it's different for each.
23:38
SPEAKER_03: For some people, it may be for your 14-year-old, you know, daughter.
23:42
SPEAKER_03: For someone, it might be your 18-year-old son, it might be your 20-year-old who's in college and you don't really see it every day, but you get this sense from the holidays in their home and summers that oh wow, they're doing stuff and thinking about stuff and talking about stuff and feeling things and engaging in things that I don't like.
23:59
SPEAKER_03: I wouldn't like that for them.
24:01
SPEAKER_03: And you see your influence has diminished.
24:05
SPEAKER_03: You can't control it, right?
24:06
SPEAKER_03: You know, there, and there's we don't get an email.
24:09
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, there's no notice or side to us, you know, like I say when the kids are little and you know, we feel like we've done a good job that day.
24:16
SPEAKER_03: Like no one ever gives you a gold sticker like you got in a paper when you we were in grade school saying A plus job today.
24:22
SPEAKER_03: I mean, there's no sticker saying you did a good parenting job each day, and there's no email or gold sticker as adults saying, you know, congratulations, your kid is now 16 or you know, 18 years old, and you're you know, your previous, you know, management strategy of how you took care of these kids and managed them is no longer helpful or useful anymore.
24:43
SPEAKER_03: You know, it's it's not supported.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:45
SPEAKER_03: You we none of us gets that.
24:47
SPEAKER_03: It it's like it happens, and when does it happen?
24:49
SPEAKER_03: It happens differently, I think, for each kid.
24:52
SPEAKER_03: You just started like discovering, oh, okay, wow, like, yeah, okay.
24:57
SPEAKER_03: My can I don't have control and my influence is dwindling because I think we do have influence in the really little, right?
25:03
SPEAKER_03: We have control and we have influence that starts to change.
25:06
SPEAKER_03: That this is very big for some parents, very, very hard for some parents.
25:12
SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's why we we're seeing so much.
25:14
SPEAKER_03: I've mentioned it here on the podcast before, so much on this in social media, especially TikTok and and Instagram, about, you know, adult children going low contact or no contact with their parents.
25:28
SPEAKER_03: Much of it goes back to these years of control.
25:31
SPEAKER_03: And now they're in their adult years and they're like, you can't control me anymore, mom.
25:34
SPEAKER_03: And so now I'm at the point where I'm gonna set a really hard boundary on you and dad or stepdad and stepmom, and I'm stepping away.
25:42
SPEAKER_03: Or we're not gonna talk that much, or we're not, we're going to have a cutoff relationship.
25:46
SPEAKER_03: I I will have not have a relationship with you anymore.
25:48
SPEAKER_03: I'm deciding that.
25:50
SPEAKER_03: And it can go back when you when you do when you do the history with when I do the history with clients, it can go back to these early, early years.
25:57
SPEAKER_03: All right.
25:58
SPEAKER_03: So the question that I had I started to have to ask myself, let's go back to the dishes.
26:04
SPEAKER_03: All right, let's go back to the dishes because obviously, oh no, that's we're gonna use that throughout this.
26:09
SPEAKER_03: You know, obviously kids, they need responsibility, right?
26:12
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I'm not advocating that we're raising raccoons here.
26:16
SPEAKER_03: I mean, put your dishes in the dishwasher, pick up your clothes.
26:19
SPEAKER_00: Wait, why raccoons?
26:21
SPEAKER_03: Because raccoons love dishes and they like cleaning dishes.
26:27
SPEAKER_03: What they have OCD.
26:30
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
26:31
SPEAKER_03: See, here's my here's my uh set.
26:34
SPEAKER_03: I I like to talk.
26:35
SPEAKER_03: I mean, this is the these are our daily conversations that you get annoyed with me.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: We're not raising raccoons.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you could have you could have said almost anything.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: Raccoons have obsessed raccoon bullets.
26:44
SPEAKER_03: It's not on the list, and they like to clean stuff, they like to clean, and they have five, they have a fop, they have thumbs, they have hands, they have like hands like us humans.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: They have opposable thumbs.
26:53
SPEAKER_03: They have opposable thumbs, and they can pick up dishes and wash them.
26:56
SPEAKER_03: And if you get a raccoon, it'll wash your dishes for you.
27:00
SPEAKER_03: I read a book about this, and it was the funniest book.
27:02
SPEAKER_03: I was like crying laughing on a plane one time, and I just saw the name of the book in my Goodreads.
27:07
SPEAKER_03: I was looking at my Goodreads last night.
27:08
SPEAKER_03: I read it in 2013.
27:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:10
SPEAKER_03: This family that the mob, there's a wacky family, and they had a the dad hit the somebody had hit the mother, and the dad stopped.
27:19
SPEAKER_03: He was a taxidermist, and he stopped to pick up he stopped to get the make a pelt out of the raccoon mother.
27:30
SPEAKER_03: And he looks over, he sees five little baby raccoons.
27:34
SPEAKER_03: So he picked him up and he put them in the back of his truck.
27:36
SPEAKER_03: This is an I won't say where it is.
27:38
SPEAKER_03: He put in the back of his truck, he brought them home, and his wife and the two kids raised those raccoons.
27:44
SPEAKER_03: And the mom, I love telling the story.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: Did he stuff the mom?
27:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he did.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: So the mom's like always.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: She's all the way in the back.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: She's always there.
27:54
SPEAKER_03: She was like 10 acres back in the taxi derby shed.
27:57
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's kind of gross.
27:58
SPEAKER_03: But, anyways, they raise these five little baby raccoons in the house.
28:03
SPEAKER_03: And they're very, they're little, they're very cute.
28:05
SPEAKER_03: They put them in the bathtub and they got older and they have personalities on them.
28:09
SPEAKER_03: They have OCD.
28:11
SPEAKER_03: And they couldn't tell them apart.
28:13
SPEAKER_03: So the mom sewed like little jammer, jammer, Hawaiian jammer shorts for each of them, and put shorts on each of these.
28:21
SPEAKER_00: Of course she did.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
28:24
SPEAKER_02: Put shorts on the raccoon so they knew them apart.
28:27
SPEAKER_02: But she talked about how they were always in the kitchen sink, always washing the dishes.
28:32
SPEAKER_02: So there you go.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: Okay, now I get it.
28:34
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
28:35
SPEAKER_03: So very funny book.
28:40
SPEAKER_03: Email me, or you can even like just uh DM me on Instagram, and I'll tell you the name of the book and the author.
28:46
SPEAKER_03: It's such a funny book.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: Hashtag raccoons.
28:48
SPEAKER_03: Hashtag raccoons edit in.
28:50
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
28:50
SPEAKER_03: So, you know, it's like, you know, the basics of like put your dishes in the dishwasher of raising kids, right?
28:56
SPEAKER_03: Like pick up your clothes, help out around the house.
28:58
SPEAKER_03: We gave them chores they had on Saturday mornings.
29:00
SPEAKER_03: I know they hated it, but that's how I was raised, and that's how you were raised.
29:04
SPEAKER_03: We wanted to instill that in them that we're not raising pre Madonna's and donos, you know, you're gonna have chores because when they get older, we want them to know how to clean a house, clean their own place or apartment, their condo, right?
29:15
SPEAKER_03: You know, but I had to eventually, I think, realize in myself that, you know, my reaction to these kids wasn't always about teaching responsibility.
29:27
SPEAKER_03: It was because I'd get reactive, I'd get in an air quote bad mood.
29:31
SPEAKER_03: And it was like, why am I the only person who is noticing this?
29:35
SPEAKER_03: Why am I the only person who seems to care that, you know, the house is a mess, there's blankets all over the floor, there's a remote serve, where's the remote control?
29:43
SPEAKER_03: You know, you know, the family room's a mess, right?
29:45
SPEAKER_03: It's underneath the the the couch.
29:47
SPEAKER_03: You know, why do I have to say this again?
29:50
SPEAKER_03: Like I gave the example of going halfway down the basement stairs and yelling at the boys to get upstairs, you know.
29:56
SPEAKER_03: Right.
29:56
SPEAKER_03: You know, why can't everybody just do what they're supposed to do?
29:59
SPEAKER_03: And that was what would go through my mind like, why can't you just do it the first time?
30:03
SPEAKER_03: You know, because I know they thought I was a nag.
30:05
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, well, if you did it the first time, there would be no nagging because it'd just be done, it would be over with, and we would have moved on 45 minutes later, we wouldn't still be dealing with this, right?
30:14
SPEAKER_03: And underneath that, I think, well, not thank, I know for me, it was overwhelm, right?
30:21
SPEAKER_03: It was I was overwhelmed about like maybe I uh well working outside the home and taking care of things.
30:27
SPEAKER_03: I was up in my head about maybe my my business.
30:30
SPEAKER_03: And then, you know, there was anxiety, you know, and and wanting there to be order in the house, right?
30:37
SPEAKER_03: Wanting, I think wanting to feel respected was something for me.
30:41
SPEAKER_03: You know, I I did have that.
30:42
SPEAKER_03: I think, especially with having step stepsons, I wanted to feel respected, you know, wanting my environment to settle down so that I could settle down.
30:51
SPEAKER_03: Oftentimes, like I couldn't sit on the couch and watch a show, whatever I was watching back then when they were young, if the house was a total mess.
30:59
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I just couldn't do it, you know.
31:01
SPEAKER_03: And what I would do is I'd I'd stand, remember, I would start to like, I'd like be Windexing the coffee table or the or something or a mirror, or I'd be like folding blankets or folding laundry.
31:12
SPEAKER_03: I just I had things had to get done.
31:14
SPEAKER_03: And that was me as a mom, but I know that I'm not the only one.
31:18
SPEAKER_03: There's so many people who feel the same way that I felt, you know, wanting the environment to be calm so that I could settle down is a very different, is a very different thing.
31:28
SPEAKER_03: I mean, and it gave me this question that I still use for myself or for my clients am I teaching right now or am I regulating myself?
31:37
SPEAKER_03: And that was a hard one because I don't think I got think it got to the point where I was no longer teaching these kids.
31:43
SPEAKER_03: I was yelling at them more because I was trying to regulate myself because of what was going on in my inter my internal world, my interior life that encompassed not just them, but everything that was happening in my life that they know nothing about, right?
31:57
SPEAKER_03: Like my business and maybe other relationships.
32:00
SPEAKER_03: You know, so if I'm teaching, okay, if you're teaching your kids, okay, teach, right?
32:05
SPEAKER_03: Go ahead, teach them.
32:06
SPEAKER_03: It's your job.
32:07
SPEAKER_03: Set the expectation with them, hold that boundary, which we need to do.
32:10
SPEAKER_03: You know, we're teaching them by holding boundaries, you know, follow through on what we say, what we're gonna do, right?
32:16
SPEAKER_03: But sometimes I think we're trying to get another person to change their behavior because we don't want to feel what we're feeling.
32:24
SPEAKER_03: And I think that we have to slow down and and really sort of do that deep dive into ourselves with our kids, especially as they get older and look at ourselves, do the inner work of is this about them or is this a little bit about me and what's going on in me, what I'm feeling, right?
32:40
SPEAKER_03: That that's worth catching.
32:42
SPEAKER_03: That's worth you noticing in yourself because kids know the difference between, and make no mistake, I mean, they do know the difference between a boundary and your anxiety coming across as a boundary, like a boundary costume.
32:56
SPEAKER_03: They know the difference, right?
32:57
SPEAKER_03: Like mom's anxious, dad's anxious versus you're setting a boundary because boundaries, it shows up different.
33:03
SPEAKER_03: You know, it's it's more clear-cut, it tends to have less emotion to it.
33:07
SPEAKER_03: Anxiety shows up as it's riddled with more emotion.
33:10
SPEAKER_03: It's like, all right, this is not really, even as kids, they may not have the words for it, they may not have the vocabulary or know how to articulate, but children know a mom's anxious or mom's nervous or mommy's in a bad mood, daddy's in a bad mood.
33:25
SPEAKER_03: They don't know how to say what it is, but they know that that's different than they're setting a boundary.
33:30
SPEAKER_03: It before okay, time for bed before you go to bed, and maybe you want to have some dessert, you need to clean up your toys.
33:36
SPEAKER_03: That's setting a boundary.
33:37
SPEAKER_03: We're cleaning toys up now.
33:38
SPEAKER_03: You know, that's very different for them than seeing you with your anxiety or me with my anxiety.
33:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: I think a third arm of this too could be like, well, in in those moments, we're also teaching ourselves.
33:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:52
SPEAKER_00: Right?
33:52
SPEAKER_00: Like, like I think we're teaching ourselves patience.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: I think we're teaching ourselves the strategy of maybe reconfiguring what our game plan was in the moment, right?
34:03
SPEAKER_00: And let's attack this a different way.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: You know, those are things that you then take out into the to your other world, you know, your business world or whatever.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: But I think you think you're you're in real time being able to learn how to pivot.
34:16
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: Right.
34:17
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you weren't expecting that, you know, because because it's it started out as simple as like, go walk the dog or do the dishes or this or that.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: But then all of a sudden it's like inside of yourself, it's like, okay, yeah, calming your anxiety, that's fine.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: And you're also learning something from it too, right?
34:35
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
34:36
SPEAKER_03: It's funny.
34:36
SPEAKER_03: I you I have a memory, and it even happens now because I noticed my flip-flops were pulled out from where they normally are in the garage.
34:45
SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, okay, well, I haven't been home.
34:47
SPEAKER_03: So somebody was wearing my flip-flops, and it was one of the boys.
34:49
SPEAKER_03: The boys have like size nine and ten feet, and they shove their feet into my flip-flops to take the trash out.
34:55
SPEAKER_03: You know, and I and it's like sometimes when you're asking them to do things, you just you'll do, you'll take anything from them.
35:03
SPEAKER_03: Like it just had I just had this memory of you'll take like, just get it done, just take the trash out.
35:07
SPEAKER_03: I've asked you three times take the trash out, just take the trash out.
35:10
SPEAKER_03: Well, you'd ask that you'd want them to put like it's winter, we live in Chicago, it's cold here.
35:13
SPEAKER_03: You'd want them to like put on, you know, or put shoes on.
35:16
SPEAKER_03: Don't walk outside in your white sock feet that I have to scrub because it's this, you know, they walk out and they're or they put my flip-flops on, which they barely they jam their feet in my flip-flops.
35:28
SPEAKER_03: It looks so stupid.
35:29
SPEAKER_03: I took a picture of it, or I have a bright pink fuchsia, like crop top coat, and it would be near them.
35:36
SPEAKER_03: They put my coat on.
35:37
SPEAKER_03: They look like they look like Elton John.
35:40
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, really?
35:41
SPEAKER_03: That's what you're wearing to go to take the trash out.
35:44
SPEAKER_03: Because it would go just quickly, oh, and I'm like, all right, it's not worth yelling at them because they're doing it, but they have my flip-flops on.
35:50
SPEAKER_03: I have a seven and a half foot, you know, my girly flip-flops and my girly coat, and they wear that to go take the trash out.
35:57
SPEAKER_03: Or sometimes I'd walk the dogs down.
35:58
SPEAKER_03: And I'd say take the dogs for walk.
36:00
SPEAKER_03: They would take the dogs down the seriously walk 50 yards and 50 yards back.
36:04
SPEAKER_03: And that was air quote walking the dogs, it's driving me crazy.
36:07
SPEAKER_03: So it's like, be careful, you know, just take what you can get from them.
36:10
SPEAKER_03: So that was more the high school years of like just take what you can get from them because they technically are doing what you're asking them to do, but they're not really doing it the air quote right way.
36:19
SPEAKER_03: It's like you learn to give up control and you learn to be like, okay, take a deep breath.
36:25
SPEAKER_03: Like they really need to take those dogs, excuse me, for a 20-minute walk, not a 30-second walk, right?
36:30
SPEAKER_04: Right.
36:30
SPEAKER_03: Okay, so but I want to get into this a little bit.
36:33
SPEAKER_03: You know, having us having five kids has totally destroyed, for any of you who are divorced or remarried and have blended families, or in any any version of a blended family, these five kids have totally destroyed the nature versus nurture fantasy, I think, for us.
36:48
SPEAKER_03: So, you know, this is another thing that having these five has taught me because, you know, the boys came to me in my life as a stepmom when they were like three and six, little.
36:58
SPEAKER_03: You know, so three of the kids were biologically mine, two are biologically yours.
37:04
SPEAKER_03: You know, the two, I just said, you know, the little one, yours came in when they were little.
37:08
SPEAKER_03: People sometimes assume that, you know, I think blended families explain why kids turn out differently.
37:15
SPEAKER_03: And quite to the negative.
37:16
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I know that our families, our parents, I think our our siblings were like, oh, those kids are all damaged goods.
37:23
SPEAKER_03: They're all damaged.
37:24
SPEAKER_03: They're all going to be damaged because Anna and Tim are a second marriage and they brought these kids together.
37:30
SPEAKER_03: And, you know, maybe the kids didn't want it.
37:32
SPEAKER_03: What kid wants their their mom and dad, their biological mom and dad to get divorced?
37:36
SPEAKER_03: Unless there's domestic violence or some some sort of violence or abuse in the home, no one.
37:42
SPEAKER_03: They don't want their parents to get divorced, they want their parents to stay together by and large.
37:46
SPEAKER_03: That's what children want.
37:47
SPEAKER_03: Don't blame them.
37:48
SPEAKER_03: I would never, you, my parents and your parents are still married, you know, when my father passed, but like 50, 60 years of marriage here, 60 plus years of marriage.
37:57
SPEAKER_03: Did I want my parents to split up?
37:59
SPEAKER_03: Hell no.
38:00
SPEAKER_03: So these kids want it?
38:01
SPEAKER_03: Hell no.
38:02
SPEAKER_03: They didn't.
38:03
SPEAKER_03: Right.
38:03
SPEAKER_03: Um, dealt with a lot of guilt for that, with that for many years for myself, a lot of a lot of therapy around that.
38:08
SPEAKER_03: And people think, oh, they're damaged goods, they're gonna be messed up.
38:11
SPEAKER_03: They're good that, and so that's why they turn out differently.
38:13
SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's please, I mean, that's not the case at all, right?
38:18
SPEAKER_03: I mean, my three biological children grew up in essentially the same house.
38:24
SPEAKER_03: I mean, same parents, same rules, same expectations, same values, right?
38:30
SPEAKER_03: And they are wildly different people.
38:32
SPEAKER_03: I mean, they have three very different personalities, right?
38:35
SPEAKER_03: Different temperaments, different motivations, you know, you name it, different ambitions, different ways of dealing with stress.
38:41
SPEAKER_03: Don't we know that?
38:42
SPEAKER_03: You know, and the same with Tristan and Tyler.
38:44
SPEAKER_03: I mean, just very different individuals.
38:46
SPEAKER_03: And all five of them are very different.
38:48
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
38:48
SPEAKER_03: Right.
38:49
SPEAKER_03: You know, different relationships with achievement.
38:52
SPEAKER_03: We've seen that.
38:52
SPEAKER_03: I mean, they all have different, they sort of they have some values that are the same, but they I know they look at achievement differently.
39:00
SPEAKER_03: And all of that taught me something, you know, really important by watching them as they've grown into adults.
39:05
SPEAKER_03: You can influence a child enormously, right?
39:09
SPEAKER_03: Without being able to engineer the adult that they turn into.
39:14
SPEAKER_03: You know, you can have that influence, and we ought to have that influence, but we cannot engineer the adults they are they are.
39:20
SPEAKER_03: You know, they're not blank slates, right?
39:23
SPEAKER_03: I mean, they come with temperament, with personality, right?
39:26
SPEAKER_03: With their strengths.
39:28
SPEAKER_03: They come with different sensitivities.
39:29
SPEAKER_03: We've seen that in all five of them.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
39:32
SPEAKER_03: Different sensitivities, you know, different levels of drive.
39:35
SPEAKER_03: We see that.
39:35
SPEAKER_03: We see that today.
39:36
SPEAKER_03: We this is like real life stuff now, today, sensitivities and drive.
39:41
SPEAKER_03: They all five have different levels of drive, right?
39:43
SPEAKER_03: Some are more aligned with me, some are more aligned with you, some are very different than us.
39:48
SPEAKER_03: And, you know, it's it's interesting to see.
39:51
SPEAKER_03: They may have drive or they may have a complete lack of interest in the thing that you think or I think that they should be driven about.
40:00
SPEAKER_03: And that's what's been, you know, a sort of a hard pill to swallow over the years, right?
40:05
SPEAKER_03: You know, which I can't talk about drive without talking about sports.
40:09
SPEAKER_03: You know, an example of drive is so two of our kids.
40:13
SPEAKER_03: Well, let's take two out of the five.
40:15
SPEAKER_03: They all play sports, all five.
40:16
SPEAKER_03: Two are good at football or have potential.
40:18
SPEAKER_03: So Grafton was he was good at football.
40:21
SPEAKER_03: He was he played since he was, didn't all the boys play since they could start like fourth grade?
40:26
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
40:26
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
40:27
SPEAKER_00: I think I think who started tackle first, I think it might have been.
40:30
SPEAKER_00: Tackle football, I mean Tristan might have been the first one, or was it Tyler?
40:33
SPEAKER_03: Well, he's the oldest, so yeah.
40:34
SPEAKER_03: Started because he's the oldest.
40:36
SPEAKER_03: Maybe they went in line, then Grafton and Tyler.
40:39
SPEAKER_03: And you know, they you know, enjoyed it, were good at it.
40:42
SPEAKER_03: Some not great teams, not great coaches.
40:45
SPEAKER_03: Then uh, I remember Grafton went to a better coach.
40:48
SPEAKER_03: He went, we went outside of our community where we live, and we went into another community nearby because it had a much better football team and much better football coach.
40:55
SPEAKER_03: It was sort of like a reputation.
40:57
SPEAKER_03: So we put him into that league with that specific team, and he just killed it and loved that coach.
41:03
SPEAKER_03: Actually, just recently was talking, he's 20, gonna be 26.
41:06
SPEAKER_03: He just recently was talking about that coach and what impact that coach had on him, not just in football, but in life.
41:12
SPEAKER_03: That that that man was passionate and just excellent, excellent and sort of raising these boys via football, the sport.
41:19
SPEAKER_03: So we go to high school, he played freshman year, sophomore year, his high school football team, and then junior year he quits.
41:25
SPEAKER_03: Remember?
41:26
SPEAKER_03: Because they got a new coach.
41:27
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and he couldn't stand that coach.
41:30
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and he just quit.
41:31
SPEAKER_03: Like two weeks into practice in August.
41:33
SPEAKER_03: He's like, I quit.
41:34
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, What?
41:35
SPEAKER_03: Like he was what was he, linebacker?
41:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
41:38
SPEAKER_03: He was a good football player, yeah.
41:40
SPEAKER_03: And he's like, I hate I can't stand that coach, I'm not gonna play for him.
41:43
SPEAKER_03: And you and I are like, What?
41:44
SPEAKER_03: What are you what are you talking about?
41:46
SPEAKER_03: He's and he wouldn't hear it, he wouldn't hear it from me, you, or his dad.
41:50
SPEAKER_03: Right, and his dad too was like, Why are you quitting?
41:53
SPEAKER_03: He just basically said, I'm not playing for this guy, right?
41:56
SPEAKER_03: And done.
41:58
SPEAKER_03: Like he was just done.
41:59
SPEAKER_03: There, there's no more conversation around this, right?
42:01
SPEAKER_03: You know, and we could see you and me and his dad.
42:05
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think we we could see his ability, right?
42:08
SPEAKER_03: The year before they'd gone to like regionals, it was like one game away from state.
42:12
SPEAKER_03: Like they had a good football team, and but the new coach came in, and he just like, I don't like him.
42:17
SPEAKER_03: I don't like him.
42:17
SPEAKER_03: He knew, I think he knew him.
42:18
SPEAKER_03: I think he was a teacher at the school.
42:20
SPEAKER_03: And and you are you and I are people who believe deeply, deeply.
42:24
SPEAKER_03: This is so much of what informs me as a high performance personal development slash life coach is sport.
42:32
SPEAKER_03: Sport has informed me, and I bring it into how I coach my clients.
42:37
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I was really having a hard time with him just wanting to quit because you know, sports teaches us discipline, it teaches us resilience, it teaches us to stick with it, even though we may not like something or a coach, it teaches us how to lose, right?
42:54
SPEAKER_03: You know, how to deal with people that you don't like.
42:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
42:57
SPEAKER_03: That was a that was life was showing him an example right there, how to keep showing up when something gets really hard for you.
43:03
SPEAKER_03: So part of me was thinking at that time, you're giving this up because you don't like coach so and so.
43:10
SPEAKER_03: You're not gonna play football this year in your junior year because you don't because you don't like coach so and so, you know, but he had made his decision and that was it.
43:22
SPEAKER_03: And then there was Tristan, and you know, I don't know if you remember this, you're going to, but he was, I think he was like maybe eight or nine or ten years old.
43:31
SPEAKER_03: We were at a party in someone's backyard.
43:34
SPEAKER_03: We were in a backyard party, and we were meeting a bunch of new people.
43:38
SPEAKER_03: There are a bunch of couples there with kids, and this guy that we met played, he was quarterback, he played D1 football.
43:45
SPEAKER_03: Do you remember?
43:46
SPEAKER_03: I won't say for a school, East Coast school.
43:48
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
43:49
SPEAKER_03: Do you remember that guy?
43:50
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
43:51
SPEAKER_03: And and you were in the backyard throwing the football around with Tristan, he was there with you.
43:56
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and he said to you, He said, That kid has an arm.
44:00
SPEAKER_03: Remember this?
44:00
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
44:01
SPEAKER_03: He said that kid has an arm.
44:02
SPEAKER_03: You should you should develop that.
44:03
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
44:04
SPEAKER_03: Support that.
44:05
SPEAKER_03: He's got an arm.
44:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:06
SPEAKER_03: And then we told him, and we're like, oh, okay, like this is amazing.
44:11
SPEAKER_03: Like, there's something there with him.
44:13
SPEAKER_03: Like, he's got this arm.
44:14
SPEAKER_03: You know, we should maybe we should get him coaching.
44:17
SPEAKER_03: We we should like develop this.
44:18
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I'm thinking this, you're thinking this, you know.
44:21
SPEAKER_03: And we told him, remember in the car, he could have cared less.
44:26
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
44:27
SPEAKER_03: He's like, Yeah, whatever.
44:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:28
SPEAKER_03: He didn't care.
44:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:29
SPEAKER_03: I think he was playing football, but he wasn't quarterback, and he never played for quarterback all through high school.
44:34
SPEAKER_03: And he had no interest in getting into that position and at all.
44:37
SPEAKER_03: Like he's like, Yeah, whatever.
44:38
SPEAKER_00: Right, right, right.
44:39
SPEAKER_03: And we were like, What?
44:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:42
SPEAKER_00: You remember that?
44:43
SPEAKER_00: I yeah, I do.
44:44
SPEAKER_00: I do.
44:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:45
SPEAKER_00: We haven't talked about this in years.
44:46
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting because, like, yeah, you're right.
44:48
SPEAKER_00: He didn't, he never played.
44:50
SPEAKER_03: He never picked up what we put down with that.
44:52
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
44:53
SPEAKER_03: We told him what that dad said, who is a former D1 quarterback.
44:56
SPEAKER_03: He didn't care.
44:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:57
SPEAKER_03: He's like, whatever, I'll go.
44:59
SPEAKER_00: He had tris so Tristan during those years that you're talking about.
45:02
SPEAKER_00: So you're talking about fruit.
45:03
SPEAKER_03: Did that make you emotional?
45:05
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, not at all.
45:06
SPEAKER_00: I'm fine.
45:06
SPEAKER_03: I thought I thought you were you were welling up with tears over the lost opportunity.
45:12
SPEAKER_03: Oh, God, oh man.
45:13
SPEAKER_00: Stop it.
45:14
SPEAKER_03: Well, it can be.
45:14
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
45:15
SPEAKER_03: It can be with we'll get into that because it can be that way for you.
45:17
SPEAKER_00: I'm not, I'm not the kind of parent that lives uh vicariously through your kids.
45:20
SPEAKER_00: Vicariously through that.
45:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no.
45:22
SPEAKER_00: But I do remember.
45:23
SPEAKER_00: So Tristan was really good at I don't know if you don't.
45:26
SPEAKER_03: Anyways, we'll talk.
45:27
SPEAKER_03: We can get into that.
45:28
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
45:30
SPEAKER_00: Gosh.
45:32
SPEAKER_00: Tristan was the Tristan did other things really good.
45:35
SPEAKER_00: He did, I don't think he was interested in throwing the football, right?
45:38
SPEAKER_00: Like which is what that guy was suggesting.
45:40
SPEAKER_00: Like Tristan was fast.
45:41
SPEAKER_00: Tristan was a good runner, like in terms of a run, like the vision, all of those things.
45:47
SPEAKER_04: Right, right.
45:47
SPEAKER_00: He did have because this you just mean I had a flash.
45:50
SPEAKER_00: Like there was the there was that championship game, you were there, where they were this was when that undefeated season, and they were getting crushed at halftime.
45:58
SPEAKER_00: Remember, they were down by like 28, like four touchdowns down, right?
46:02
SPEAKER_00: And they hadn't lost a game all year.
46:04
SPEAKER_00: And the coach rallies them all up, blah, blah, blah.
46:06
SPEAKER_00: They and they came all the way back.
46:08
SPEAKER_00: And then they called that play, which I had never seen them run before, which was interesting.
46:13
SPEAKER_00: And it was a it was a pitch to Tristan, and then the quarterback went into the end zone, and Tristan actually then threw it to him.
46:20
SPEAKER_00: Like yeah, I remember this.
46:22
SPEAKER_00: Right?
46:22
SPEAKER_00: It was cool.
46:22
SPEAKER_00: But I was and it but it was like a 50-yard pass, but it was like, whoa, like that, that's the arm that that guy was talking about, right?
46:30
SPEAKER_00: Like that, that's it right there.
46:31
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that was the arm he was talking about a few years earlier.
46:34
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
46:35
SPEAKER_03: Right.
46:35
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
46:35
SPEAKER_03: So I mean, that's the thing, is that like I think it's been, I think it has been hard.
46:40
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think you're not maybe aware of it, or I'm kind of teasing you, but I do think that I do think it away you may have lived a little bit vicariously through the boys and their football because you are obsessed with football and you didn't play football in high school.
46:54
SPEAKER_03: And I think you wish maybe you had.
46:55
SPEAKER_00: I wish I had.
46:56
SPEAKER_03: I do think you wish you had.
46:57
SPEAKER_03: And I think you love that the boys were played football and that they were into it.
47:00
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
47:01
SPEAKER_03: That's why it was so hard to see graft and be like, I'm out.
47:03
SPEAKER_03: I don't really care.
47:03
SPEAKER_03: We're like, what do you mean you don't care?
47:05
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you cannot care enough.
47:07
SPEAKER_03: We can't care for these kids.
47:08
SPEAKER_03: We can't care for them about our sport.
47:10
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
47:11
SPEAKER_03: And I think we learned that.
47:12
SPEAKER_03: You know, you can we can recognize talent, you know, that that person we met recognized talent for us.
47:19
SPEAKER_03: You know, you can, and we recognize certain gifts that these kids had.
47:22
SPEAKER_03: You can you can provide opportunity.
47:24
SPEAKER_03: We provided the opportunity, we can encourage, I mean, we can drive them to practice, right?
47:28
SPEAKER_03: Which we did so many times, drove to practice, all kinds of ungodly hours.
47:34
SPEAKER_03: Sit in the stands, you sit in the stands, right?
47:36
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you can be we can be totally right about their potential.
47:40
SPEAKER_03: And that's just two examples.
47:41
SPEAKER_03: I mean, Marissa is a great runner, and she was a that track meet where she like came from the behind and beat everybody in the 440.
47:48
SPEAKER_03: And then she's like, running is too hard, I'm done.
47:51
SPEAKER_03: We're like, what?
47:52
SPEAKER_03: And you know, here we are, triathletes and runners, first before triathletes.
47:56
SPEAKER_03: We're like, what are you talking?
47:57
SPEAKER_03: Like competitive runners.
47:58
SPEAKER_03: We're like, what are you talking about?
48:00
SPEAKER_03: You you have something here, and she's like, Yeah, no, yeah, no, I'm not doing it.
48:05
SPEAKER_04: We're like, oh my God, yeah.
48:07
SPEAKER_03: How do you like, oh you can't, and I remember I talked to her about that quite a bit.
48:11
SPEAKER_03: Like, you no, no, no, no.
48:13
SPEAKER_03: Just I'm not, I'm not running track next year.
48:15
SPEAKER_03: I'm not running track, I'm not, and I'm not doing cross country.
48:17
SPEAKER_03: That's way too hard.
48:18
SPEAKER_03: I was like, oh my gosh, you know, it's it's hard, you know.
48:21
SPEAKER_03: I mean, so I but I think you can't transfer wanting onto your kids.
48:27
SPEAKER_00: You can't.
48:28
SPEAKER_00: I I think that this is a difficult one, right?
48:31
SPEAKER_00: Because you and I understand the power of the the we versus me conversation, right?
48:39
SPEAKER_03: The more you keep pushing them, it's no longer about the problem, isn't the kid in the sport, the problem is me, the problem is you, yeah, right.
48:48
SPEAKER_03: And that's what it turns into is we're the problem.
48:50
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you know they're not deciding whether they like football.
48:54
SPEAKER_03: Now it's it's taken on life of its own.
48:56
SPEAKER_03: Now they're pushing against you.
48:57
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
48:58
SPEAKER_03: You know, and I and I wondered to some degree if that happened a little bit with the kids.
49:03
SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, it's funny.
49:05
SPEAKER_03: We talked about it a couple of years ago.
49:06
SPEAKER_03: Marissa said, you know, something about like, why did you let me?
49:10
SPEAKER_03: She is like, oh, it's amazing what we remember.
49:12
SPEAKER_03: Like, why did you let me quit track?
49:14
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, let you quit track.
49:16
SPEAKER_03: What do you mean, let you quit track?
49:17
SPEAKER_03: Like, you, there's nothing I could have said to you.
49:20
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we were at uh our nephew's house.
49:22
SPEAKER_00: Let's borrow the phrase from uh Mark McGuire.
49:24
SPEAKER_00: You're misremembering.
49:27
SPEAKER_03: I mean we were like sitting around with a bunch of extended family members, and she was kind of going, it started to go after me a little bit.
49:33
SPEAKER_03: Like you let me quit.
49:34
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, no, I didn't, because I remember this really well.
49:37
SPEAKER_03: Because I remember trying to not like go after you too much because I'm a parent.
49:41
SPEAKER_03: I I know better, I'm a coach, I'm a therapist, I know not to do this.
49:46
SPEAKER_03: But I was like, please, will you consider it?
49:47
SPEAKER_03: And she was like, she just wasn't having it.
49:49
SPEAKER_03: And now here she is in her 20s at that time, mid-20s, and telling me, like, why did you let me?
49:54
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, I didn't let you.
49:56
SPEAKER_03: You're not remembering.
49:57
SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry, but I don't think you're remembering this the right way.
49:59
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you just did not want to run because you said it was really, really hard.
50:03
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, yes, running is really hard.
50:06
SPEAKER_03: It's a really uncomfortable feeling of sprinting.
50:08
SPEAKER_03: Like, it is really hard, but sure, you know, it's you're really you're good at it.
50:11
SPEAKER_03: You have so much potential here.
50:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
50:13
SPEAKER_00: So my we versus me comment refers to the team, right?
50:19
SPEAKER_00: Like, like, like you've made a you've made a promise, you've made a a commitment to the team.
50:25
SPEAKER_00: That was our that was a part of our message, was like you need to honor that.
50:28
SPEAKER_00: You need to you need to see that through.
50:30
SPEAKER_00: Like when Grafton walked away from wrestling, uh, he walked away from wrestling was the same thing.
50:35
SPEAKER_00: Like, like I get that makes you feel good about you, makes you feel better about your situation.
50:41
SPEAKER_03: You want to talk about a talent?
50:42
SPEAKER_03: He was talented at wrestling.
50:44
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, he was good at football, he was talented at wrestling.
50:46
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and he walked away in his junior year.
50:48
SPEAKER_03: Again, he watched me from football and wrestling in his junior year, which I was very concerned about because sports was a wonderful deterrent from all the other things that these kids do and they've got nothing else going on, or they're not in theater, they're not in art or something, or volunteering.
51:02
SPEAKER_03: And that's exactly what happened.
51:04
SPEAKER_03: He had all kinds of free time in his hands, and he but wrestling, I couldn't believe he did it.
51:09
SPEAKER_03: And that poor coach, because that poor coach loved him and they wanted him on the team because he was really good.
51:13
SPEAKER_03: Like Grafton could have, if he'd really wanted to, he could have played wrestled in college, and he just walked away.
51:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
51:19
SPEAKER_03: And you can't make these kids want something.
51:22
SPEAKER_00: No, but I think that's that's important for like parents out there to hear, like, like you can want what you want, and you're you're trying to instill all of those traits, right?
51:32
SPEAKER_00: Like, like commitment and all of those things, and it and it's still Michael's idea.
51:38
SPEAKER_03: We were trying to teach these life skills and values, and it went in one ear and out the other.
51:44
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you could be right about your child's potential at the end of the day, yeah, and still be wrong about how much ownership you have over it.
51:51
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
51:51
SPEAKER_03: And that was the big lesson for all of us.
51:53
SPEAKER_00: So but I think that's I think the fallout from this too could be like like for when in this case we're talking about Grafton's situation, a little bit of Mercy's situation.
52:01
SPEAKER_00: Like, like I think now the light bulb is flickered.
52:05
SPEAKER_00: They're like like now they get it a little bit, and then let's hope that then the the win then is and share that with your kids.
52:12
SPEAKER_03: And then they will remember.
52:13
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, I remember I even now to this day and throughout my adult years, I regret giving up piano.
52:18
SPEAKER_03: I took piano for three years or five years, and I gave it up.
52:21
SPEAKER_03: And I wish I never had.
52:22
SPEAKER_03: It was stupid.
52:23
SPEAKER_03: I should have, I should have not given up playing the piano.
52:25
SPEAKER_03: I wish I could play the piano today.
52:27
SPEAKER_03: The one good thing is that senior year, he realized he missed wrestling.
52:32
SPEAKER_03: He missed all his buddies, a wrestling team.
52:34
SPEAKER_03: He loved that coach, and he went back and he wrestled a senior year.
52:37
SPEAKER_03: So that was good.
52:37
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, really good at it.
52:38
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, okay.
52:39
SPEAKER_03: So let's get into the research.
52:41
SPEAKER_03: I want to talk a little bit about the research, what the research shows about all this.
52:44
SPEAKER_03: Okay, so autonomy matters at the end of the day, autonomy in your kids.
52:48
SPEAKER_03: So there's actually there's some good, good psychology behind this.
52:52
SPEAKER_03: Uh, Edward Dessey and Richard Ryan's self-determination theory identifies three basic psychological needs.
52:59
SPEAKER_03: All right, and all of us, and we're talking about our kids autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
53:06
SPEAKER_03: So I have some ownership over my life, I can become capable and I belong.
53:12
SPEAKER_03: Really, really important.
53:13
SPEAKER_03: I have some ownership over my life, I can become capable, and I belong.
53:19
SPEAKER_03: The autonomy piece really matters enormously, especially with kids, because you can get behavior without autonomy, right?
53:27
SPEAKER_03: We see this all the time, especially in the in the milieu of sports.
53:31
SPEAKER_03: You can get the the grades, right?
53:33
SPEAKER_03: You can get athletic performance out of your kids, you can get the good kid.
53:38
SPEAKER_03: Don't we all want the good, the good quit kid for the most part, right?
53:41
SPEAKER_03: You can get compliance, but compliance and internal motivation are not the same thing.
53:47
SPEAKER_03: And that's this is the here's this is where where this is the rub, right?
53:52
SPEAKER_03: I see adult versions of this all the time in my office and in my practice.
53:59
SPEAKER_03: Highly successful person did everything right throughout their lives.
54:03
SPEAKER_03: I mean, just did it, just did it all the right way.
54:06
SPEAKER_03: Built the career, raised a family, checked every box sort of like on their to-do list.
54:13
SPEAKER_03: And then somewhere around like 40 or 50, they come to me and they're like, I don't know what I want.
54:19
SPEAKER_03: I don't know what I want.
54:20
SPEAKER_03: I know how I got here, but I don't know what I'm doing right now, and I don't know what I want in my future.
54:26
SPEAKER_03: It's it's really not uncommon.
54:27
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they've spent decades becoming excellent at responding to external expectations of them.
54:34
SPEAKER_03: They're really good at that, but they never really developed a relationship with their own wants and their own needs.
54:42
SPEAKER_03: That's why autonomy matters.
54:43
SPEAKER_03: They've got to have a sense of independence and free will and free choice in making these decisions in their early adolescence, adolescence, and adult years.
54:51
SPEAKER_03: All right.
54:52
SPEAKER_03: So that's really important because I see it shows up.
54:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
54:56
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't that doesn't a coach like doesn't that model that kind of fits the mindset of like a high school coach, doesn't it?
55:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean, like you see success, right, and it's in a kid, right?
55:06
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you see it in middle school a little bit.
55:08
SPEAKER_03: And then I think coaches, I think sports coaches see it in the parents on the sidelines.
55:13
SPEAKER_03: The parent who's over involved, coaching on the sides, when you're like, I'm the coach, and you see the the the mom, usually the dad, coaching up the kid on the sidelines, emotional, heated.
55:24
SPEAKER_03: That that's someone who's and you can see a kid who might be doing it for the parent and not for themselves.
55:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
55:31
SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm talking about the method of coaching.
55:34
SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
55:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like like the coach like identifies talent.
55:37
SPEAKER_00: They've seen this kid have success doing doing this as a a younger athlete, right?
55:42
SPEAKER_00: And now they inherit this talent, and now they have to understand that that kid's gonna start to kind of have their own process, their own agenda that, right, potentially, because they know that they've been successful, right?
55:54
SPEAKER_00: So now I as the coach, I need to kind of manage, help, help guide that a little bit, right, right?
55:59
SPEAKER_00: And then and then for the betterment of the team, then then recreate this new athlete, this new mental version of this athlete, and and that can then kind of blend in with the rest of the team and goes towards the goal of the team now versus like the individual.
56:15
SPEAKER_03: Well, there's no I and team, right?
56:17
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Well, that's the we versus me.
56:19
SPEAKER_00: That's I mean, that's exactly what we're talking about, right?
56:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
56:22
SPEAKER_03: And that's why even if you're like a part of like a an ensemble, you're acting and you're in theater, yeah, you're a part of a group, right?
56:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
56:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I say to my I I've used this so many times at work, and people look at me like, wait, I don't understand.
56:36
SPEAKER_00: Play for the name on the back of your jersey versus the front of the jersey.
56:40
SPEAKER_00: Like, which one should you be playing for?
56:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
56:42
SPEAKER_03: Same with volunteers.
56:43
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, wait, what?
56:44
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean?
56:44
SPEAKER_00: What name?
56:45
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, well, your name's on the back or your team's name's on the front.
56:49
SPEAKER_00: So what are you playing for?
56:50
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
56:51
SPEAKER_03: All right.
56:51
SPEAKER_03: So let's move on.
56:52
SPEAKER_03: So boundaries, boundaries are an important part of this discussion here.
56:56
SPEAKER_03: So I want to make an important distinction here because let go of control can sound like fine, like just let your kids do whatever they want.
57:05
SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's absolutely not what I'm saying here.
57:07
SPEAKER_03: So I just want to clarify that.
57:09
SPEAKER_03: The psychologist Brian Barber made an important distinction between behavioral control and psychological control.
57:16
SPEAKER_03: Behavioral control is structure, right?
57:19
SPEAKER_03: It's so it's think of externalities.
57:21
SPEAKER_03: It's rules, it's the curfews that we set, it's the expectations we set for our kids, it's monitoring them, which is our job, knowing where our kids are.
57:31
SPEAKER_03: That's our job, right?
57:32
SPEAKER_03: Psychological control reaches into the child's internal world, right?
57:36
SPEAKER_03: So this is inside.
57:37
SPEAKER_03: It's guilt, it's putting guilt on them.
57:40
SPEAKER_03: It's withdrawing our love when they do something that we don't like.
57:44
SPEAKER_03: It's making your approval or our approval dependent upon upon their choices, whether we like it or we approve or we disapprove of it.
57:53
SPEAKER_03: You know, communicating, you know, you can be who you want to be as long as it's who I want you to be.
58:01
SPEAKER_03: And there's a lot of parents who are doing this and they don't realize they're doing it.
58:05
SPEAKER_03: They're not, they're aware on the inside, they're not fully conscious because they don't want to admit that they're doing it and they're doing it, right?
58:11
SPEAKER_03: That's very different.
58:12
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you're allowed to have boundaries.
58:14
SPEAKER_03: You're allowed to say, of course, I want you to have boundaries.
58:16
SPEAKER_03: And you're allowed to say, This is how, this is how you'll speak to me in my home.
58:20
SPEAKER_03: Of course.
58:20
SPEAKER_03: That's absolutely this is how you'll speak to me in my home.
58:23
SPEAKER_03: This is what I'm willing to pay for.
58:25
SPEAKER_03: I'm not willing to pay for that.
58:26
SPEAKER_03: I'm willing to pay for this.
58:27
SPEAKER_03: This is what I will participate in.
58:29
SPEAKER_03: You know, I will, I will, uh, or allow you to participate in.
58:33
SPEAKER_03: You know, I'm I'm not buying you that$280 pair of jeans.
58:37
SPEAKER_03: I'm not doing that.
58:37
SPEAKER_03: I'm not willing to buy that for you.
58:40
SPEAKER_03: This is what I won't tolerate.
58:41
SPEAKER_03: This I will not tolerate you speaking to me in that way.
58:44
SPEAKER_03: I will not tolerate you, I don't know, whatever it might be, sort of half-assing your work and cheating.
58:51
SPEAKER_03: Because I know you're cheating.
58:52
SPEAKER_03: Right.
58:53
SPEAKER_03: Something like that, right?
58:54
SPEAKER_03: Letting go control does not mean that you're abandoning your standards.
58:58
SPEAKER_03: It means learning where you end and your child begins.
59:03
SPEAKER_03: All right.
59:03
SPEAKER_03: So that's really important when it comes to boundaries.
59:06
SPEAKER_03: You know, and then we get into the really hard stuff.
59:10
SPEAKER_03: You know, and it's it's not the dishes, it's not football, it's their actual lives.
59:16
SPEAKER_03: It's their lives, and that those are just small pieces, right?
59:20
SPEAKER_03: They choose friends that you know, they're going to, and they have chosen friends that we don't love.
59:27
SPEAKER_03: They've dated somebody that we would not choose for them.
59:29
SPEAKER_03: They've dated people that we haven't really cared for.
59:32
SPEAKER_03: You know, they have made career decisions that we don't understand.
59:37
SPEAKER_03: I mean, there's that one decision, I won't say names, but made a decision that I think was a major career pivot and not in a good way with one of our kids.
59:47
SPEAKER_03: And you and I were like, our heads were exploding.
59:50
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
59:51
SPEAKER_03: We could not understand why he turned down this internship.
59:56
SPEAKER_03: We could uh I was like, you do not, do you realize what you have done?
1:00:00
SPEAKER_03: Do you realize the opportunity you were just given?
1:00:03
SPEAKER_03: And was like, Yeah, I don't, you know, I don't want to do that, I don't want to do that.
1:00:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:00:06
SPEAKER_03: When they stop asking for our opinions, you know, they are going to stop asking for your opinion.
1:00:12
SPEAKER_03: And ours have stopped asking for our opinions, or they start questioning things that we taught them.
1:00:17
SPEAKER_03: And Lord knows I've had my share of that.
1:00:19
SPEAKER_03: They've they, you know, start speaking up and questioning, like, why this, why that, or pushing back against it.
1:00:25
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:00:26
SPEAKER_03: You know, maybe, maybe they'd question the religion that they were raised in, whether it be, you know, Judeo, Christian, any religion, Muslim, any any religion.
1:00:37
SPEAKER_03: They just, if it was some sort of especially formalized religion, they start questioning it, you know, that one can really hurt.
1:00:44
SPEAKER_03: It really hurt, especially if that's something if faith in your family is central to your family.
1:00:50
SPEAKER_03: You know, eventually I had to accept over the years that, you know, I can teach my faith to them, I can model it for them, I can explain to them why it matters to me, but I cannot manufacture faith inside another human being.
1:01:06
SPEAKER_03: I cannot manufacture faith inside another human being.
1:01:08
SPEAKER_03: That has been a hard pill to spur me.
1:01:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and that's how that goes, right?
1:01:12
SPEAKER_00: Like no one can.
1:01:14
SPEAKER_03: For all of us.
1:01:15
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:01:15
SPEAKER_00: Everyone.
1:01:16
SPEAKER_00: For you, for me, in the history of time, right?
1:01:18
SPEAKER_00: But it's it's it's a personal thing.
1:01:20
SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
1:01:21
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:01:21
SPEAKER_03: So you can you can put butts in seats, you could put when they're little, you could put butts in pews, butts in chairs inside a sanctuary, inside a temple, inside a mosque.
1:01:32
SPEAKER_03: You cannot install a relationship with God in their chest.
1:01:35
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you cannot do that.
1:01:37
SPEAKER_00: Well, and that's the model.
1:01:39
SPEAKER_00: Like, like, as I mean, if you believe what you read, if you believe what you read in the Bible, like you're instructed to to guide children.
1:01:46
SPEAKER_00: Like parents are like there's certain things you're you're instructed to do.
1:01:50
SPEAKER_00: You do that, and then at the end of the day, it's still up to that person.
1:01:54
SPEAKER_03: And they're adults, and they and they make their own decisions.
1:01:56
SPEAKER_03: But I'm and I know that, and we know that you and I know that in our heads.
1:01:59
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's still been hard to watch them make some of the decisions that they've made as adults.
1:02:03
SPEAKER_03: We're like, wow, never, never thought I'd see that, never thought I'd witness that, and it's happening.
1:02:08
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, at some point we have to let them decide what they believe, right?
1:02:13
SPEAKER_03: You know, we say we want with these independent children, you know, and I think we do.
1:02:19
SPEAKER_03: I we say we want it.
1:02:20
SPEAKER_03: I think a lot of us say we want that, and we've gotten that for for all the good and a little bit of the dolls.
1:02:26
SPEAKER_00: You cannot straddle the fence on that one, right?
1:02:29
SPEAKER_00: You can't want that and then have a problem when it's happening.
1:02:33
SPEAKER_03: Well, and I think I think as parents, and I will admit to this, I think as parents, a lot of us say, you know, we we pay lip service to be independent.
1:02:42
SPEAKER_03: I want you to be the independent mature adult.
1:02:44
SPEAKER_03: Well, they are that.
1:02:47
SPEAKER_03: And and I think a lot of times parents are saying, Yeah, I mean, I want you to become independent, but in ways that I admire, in the ways that I want you to do it.
1:02:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:02:57
SPEAKER_03: And then it doesn't happen that way and we don't like it.
1:03:00
SPEAKER_03: That's very, very hard for us.
1:03:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:03:02
SPEAKER_03: You know, it it's it's much harder when independence disagrees with us, you know, and that's the real test for us as parents, right?
1:03:09
SPEAKER_03: I mean, can I stay connected to my child when they make a choice that I wouldn't make?
1:03:14
SPEAKER_03: You know, can can I tell you what I believe, mom and dad, without requiring, you know, without knowing that you might not agree with me?
1:03:23
SPEAKER_03: You know, can I disagree with you without turning the disagreement into a threat to our relationship, me or you, you know, or a parent?
1:03:31
SPEAKER_03: You know that's emotional maturity for them and for us, for all of us.
1:03:36
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
1:03:37
SPEAKER_00: I think there's a there's also a factor of time in this too, because I mean, you and I both left home pretty young, right?
1:03:46
SPEAKER_00: Like we we detached and were 18, relatively supporting ourselves at a at a pretty you were at 18 young age.
1:03:55
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I was a little later than you.
1:03:57
SPEAKER_00: And let's quantify that by okay, okay, that was in the 80s, right?
1:04:01
SPEAKER_00: That was in the 1980s, so different time, yeah, right.
1:04:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, different circumstances and all things, right?
1:04:07
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:04:07
SPEAKER_00: But but that's our memory, that's our life, that's our path.
1:04:11
SPEAKER_00: Like, so we have to be careful that, like, well, we don't we can't expect that to be your path, right?
1:04:16
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think we do, but I think there are parents out there that might, right?
1:04:20
SPEAKER_00: Like, just remember that your path and your kid's path, they're not gonna be the same.
1:04:23
SPEAKER_00: They will never line up.
1:04:25
SPEAKER_00: They shouldn't, they should not.
1:04:26
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:04:26
SPEAKER_00: They might if you're lucky in certain things, but like in most things, it's gonna be a different path, as it should be.
1:04:32
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
1:04:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
1:04:33
SPEAKER_03: So then I want to talk a little bit about this next part, which I don't talk about.
1:04:36
SPEAKER_03: I don't know if I've actually ever talked about it specifically on the podcast.
1:04:42
SPEAKER_03: The hardest lesson for me came from being a stepmom.
1:04:45
SPEAKER_03: I mean, that has been really that's been a tough one.
1:04:48
SPEAKER_03: You know, my stepboys were three and six, like I said, when I came into their lives, right?
1:04:54
SPEAKER_03: So they were, they were really little.
1:04:55
SPEAKER_03: I came into their lives as a stepmom, as a as a mom, right?
1:04:59
SPEAKER_03: You know, they were little.
1:05:00
SPEAKER_03: They they had another home, they had another family.
1:05:04
SPEAKER_03: The older one remembers the family being with you and the and his mom.
1:05:07
SPEAKER_03: And then that changed, right?
1:05:09
SPEAKER_03: The younger one doesn't remember you with his mom.
1:05:13
SPEAKER_03: But so he had, you know, he has memories of his mom and his mom's family, and then you with me, the younger one.
1:05:21
SPEAKER_03: But they both grew up in a family that they spent 50% of their time with, with another set of values, you know, another another different relationships, a very different, and also another version of events of how things went down, you know.
1:05:34
SPEAKER_03: And this is the one of the hardest things that I've had to learn, especially back then, 20, 24 years ago, that I was a character in a story being told in a room that I would never be in.
1:05:48
SPEAKER_03: And that was hard.
1:05:49
SPEAKER_03: That was a hard pill to swallow.
1:05:50
SPEAKER_03: I was I was a character in that story that was being told about me in a room that I'll say it again, I would never be in, and I never was in.
1:06:00
SPEAKER_03: Nor would I want to be in it, right?
1:06:02
SPEAKER_03: You know, and their mom's life and their mom's extended family's life, and even like your side of the family in the beginning.
1:06:10
SPEAKER_03: I mean, there I was a character in your extended family's stories about me.
1:06:14
SPEAKER_03: Sure.
1:06:14
SPEAKER_03: Right.
1:06:14
SPEAKER_03: And that was sure.
1:06:16
SPEAKER_03: There were years when you and I believed that the boys were hearing really negative things from their mother's side of the family.
1:06:25
SPEAKER_03: I mean, believed it.
1:06:26
SPEAKER_03: Well, we it was true.
1:06:27
SPEAKER_03: We knew it was true, and you knew it was true, because you were hearing a little bit of it.
1:06:31
SPEAKER_03: And I could feel the distance from the boys towards me.
1:06:34
SPEAKER_03: I knew that when they came over here and in the very beginning, in the very beginning, they were fine and they'd give me a hug.
1:06:42
SPEAKER_03: And then I noticed pretty soon after we got married, they would walk in like the door after school on a Friday or whatever day we had them, and they would like not even look at me and just not want to even greet me or acknowledge me.
1:06:57
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, this is like my house.
1:06:59
SPEAKER_03: This is my house.
1:06:59
SPEAKER_03: We live here.
1:07:00
SPEAKER_03: And they would, I'm like, they just and remember, you got really mad at them and talked to them or said you need to give her a hug, hello, you need to acknowledge her, say hello, make eye contact.
1:07:10
SPEAKER_03: And they would, but it would, and then they just gave me this uh this like half-ass hug.
1:07:16
SPEAKER_03: And the only reason why they did it was because you told them that they had to do it.
1:07:20
SPEAKER_03: I knew that they were being told things about me, and that was affecting them.
1:07:24
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
1:07:25
SPEAKER_03: You know, I and I could feel that distance, and for so many years, I wasn't I wasn't their stepmom, I was their dad's dad's wife.
1:07:36
SPEAKER_03: You know, I was I was just Anna, you know, I was just this this Anna, you know, and you know, I wasn't I wasn't really me and how I knew me.
1:07:46
SPEAKER_03: It's hard to explain.
1:07:46
SPEAKER_03: I just was Anna, dad's wife.
1:07:48
SPEAKER_03: I mean though the obligatory hugs and goodbyes, which I knew that was a thing.
1:07:53
SPEAKER_03: I it's like you just get used to it, right?
1:07:56
SPEAKER_03: You know, I knew that they did not particularly want to be around me.
1:07:59
SPEAKER_03: Four years, four years they didn't want to be around me.
1:08:04
SPEAKER_03: And when they came here for I'd say 10 years, 10 years it was they came here and they wanted to be around you and they wanted to be around Grafton, who was like their best friend, their stepbrother.
1:08:13
SPEAKER_03: And they were little, it was easy because they were just playing video games and they had their whole little the three boys had their they had a whole life together.
1:08:21
SPEAKER_03: And I was just a person who cooked meals, you know, took care of them when they were sick, wiped butts when they needed it.
1:08:28
SPEAKER_03: Like I remember, like, you know, I I did the momming, I was momming, I was doing parenting things, driving them to and from practice when I needed to, when you couldn't, you you did the bulk of that.
1:08:39
SPEAKER_03: Um, but I truly was just like I felt like I was like the housemaid because they would not, they had zero concern or care or desire to want to be around me.
1:08:50
SPEAKER_03: That was really hard as a as a step parent.
1:08:53
SPEAKER_03: And for all of you out there who are dealing with it, my heart goes out to you.
1:08:56
SPEAKER_03: It is not for the faint of heart.
1:08:58
SPEAKER_03: Step parenting is really true, really harsh.
1:09:01
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, true.
1:09:02
SPEAKER_03: And I don't think we talk about it enough.
1:09:04
SPEAKER_03: You know, especially when, you know, you believe there's a version of you that's being presented somewhere else that even I didn't recognize.
1:09:12
SPEAKER_03: I knew there was a version of me that they were hearing about that I didn't know who she was.
1:09:16
SPEAKER_03: And that's what the those poor little boys were getting.
1:09:18
SPEAKER_03: And I actually felt sorry for them as a year's.
1:09:20
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, wait a minute, I can you imagine being them and having to go to your dad's house with a stepmom who was like this evil witch, this step monster that they were hearing about.
1:09:29
SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, I wouldn't want to go there either, you know.
1:09:31
SPEAKER_03: So I kind of felt sorry for them because I'm like, I'm an adult, I've got my three kids, and I have a full life with friends and a job, a career, and a lot, a great marriage.
1:09:41
SPEAKER_03: And these poor little boys have to come over here and have to be around me because of what they're hearing about me.
1:09:46
SPEAKER_03: At the end of the day, I'm good.
1:09:48
SPEAKER_03: I got a good life.
1:09:49
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:09:50
SPEAKER_03: You know, I'll do my I'll do my job with them.
1:09:52
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's you know, but it definitely slowed down time in terms of becoming closer.
1:10:02
SPEAKER_00: Right?
1:10:02
SPEAKER_00: It it slowed it down to a snail's pace, and that's being generous, I would say.
1:10:07
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:10:07
SPEAKER_03: It just was, it was just lying like defunct.
1:10:10
SPEAKER_03: It was just lying like uh it did, it didn't do anything, you know.
1:10:14
SPEAKER_03: And everything, every instinct in me at that time, instinctually, you know, I wanted to sort of correct the record.
1:10:22
SPEAKER_03: I wanted to explain myself, I wanted to tell them like what actually happened.
1:10:26
SPEAKER_03: I wanted to kind of talk to them.
1:10:28
SPEAKER_03: I knew it wasn't appropriate.
1:10:29
SPEAKER_03: There were children.
1:10:30
SPEAKER_03: I wanted to defend myself, you know.
1:10:32
SPEAKER_03: I knew that I was vilified, but there were kids, you know.
1:10:36
SPEAKER_03: They're not, there were children, they were not jurors, you know.
1:10:39
SPEAKER_03: I didn't want and I didn't want to put them in this jury position, right?
1:10:43
SPEAKER_00: You know, they it was bad enough they were already put in that position.
1:10:46
SPEAKER_03: They were, and they they shouldn't have to have decided which household is telling the truth, right?
1:10:52
SPEAKER_03: So I had to learn something that I absolutely hated to learn, and it was that control.
1:10:57
SPEAKER_03: Here we go back to control.
1:10:58
SPEAKER_03: I couldn't control the story.
1:11:00
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I couldn't control the story, I couldn't control the narrative, I can only control the the evidence, really.
1:11:06
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I couldn't control what was said about me in someone else's house, I couldn't control our houses, I couldn't trust, I couldn't talk them into trusting me.
1:11:16
SPEAKER_03: I couldn't, you can't talk to little kids about that.
1:11:18
SPEAKER_03: I want you to trust me, why don't you trust me?
1:11:20
SPEAKER_03: Like, okay, that's that goes ear and we want your ear and out the other way.
1:11:23
SPEAKER_00: You have to earn that.
1:11:24
SPEAKER_00: You have to earn it.
1:11:25
SPEAKER_00: You can't ask for it.
1:11:25
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
1:11:26
SPEAKER_03: I can I can only give them the evidence to earn it, right?
1:11:30
SPEAKER_03: You know, and over time I knew, and I knew so.
1:11:33
SPEAKER_03: This is where my book knowledge and my knowledge of psychology and being a therapist did come in handy.
1:11:39
SPEAKER_03: I knew better, right?
1:11:40
SPEAKER_03: So I knew that it would take time, I knew that I needed to be consistent, be fair, keep showing up for them.
1:11:47
SPEAKER_03: You know, don't make them choose, don't campaign for affection from them, you know, don't interrogate them, let them be who they were.
1:11:55
SPEAKER_03: You know, don't retaliate when they're distant.
1:11:57
SPEAKER_03: Now, listen, this was very, very hard.
1:12:00
SPEAKER_03: And I didn't retaliate when they were distant.
1:12:02
SPEAKER_03: But what happened over the many, many years was I I kind of stopped making an effort with them too.
1:12:08
SPEAKER_03: Like I stopped making a huge effort because I don't think they cared that I came to their football games.
1:12:12
SPEAKER_03: They wanted their dad there, you, and they wanted their mom there.
1:12:14
SPEAKER_03: I don't think they cared if I was there or not.
1:12:16
SPEAKER_03: And I we talked about this when they were as and then they went when adulthood, and they were like, Yeah, it's true.
1:12:22
SPEAKER_03: Like they confirmed it.
1:12:23
SPEAKER_03: They're like, Yeah, I mean, we didn't really care if you were.
1:12:25
SPEAKER_03: They don't they weren't being mean to me.
1:12:26
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but they were like, No, we actually didn't really care if you were there.
1:12:29
SPEAKER_03: They cared that you were their dad who was there.
1:12:31
SPEAKER_03: That's what they cared about.
1:12:32
SPEAKER_00: And I think that that was the case because of the narrative that they thought was the facts, right?
1:12:38
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
1:12:38
SPEAKER_00: So they they they made a decision based off of the stories that they were but that you were a huge football fan.
1:12:44
SPEAKER_03: You all love football together.
1:12:45
SPEAKER_03: That was your common bond as males.
1:12:47
SPEAKER_00: That's that's they cared about that you were there, right?
1:12:50
SPEAKER_03: So, you know, so somewhere around high school, I started to notice a shift in them.
1:12:54
SPEAKER_03: I I did notice it.
1:12:55
SPEAKER_03: You know, there wasn't a big, we didn't have a big conversation.
1:12:58
SPEAKER_03: Nobody came to me and said, you know, Anna, I've re-evaluated the situation.
1:13:02
SPEAKER_03: I mean, no one, no, the boys didn't we didn't have a conversation.
1:13:07
SPEAKER_03: You know, it was just it was a lot quieter.
1:13:09
SPEAKER_03: It was, you know, they were just getting older.
1:13:11
SPEAKER_03: I think they were starting to see things more objectively.
1:13:14
SPEAKER_03: They could observe relationships for themselves.
1:13:16
SPEAKER_03: These they could observe me, they knew my character, they knew what was happening at their mom's house.
1:13:22
SPEAKER_03: They knew like, I think they started to see, like, oh, you know, that's not really true about her.
1:13:27
SPEAKER_03: She's not that way, or she's not evil, she's not that.
1:13:32
SPEAKER_03: What you're saying is not true.
1:13:33
SPEAKER_03: I think they started to see that because they basically told me that, you know, in their late teens and in their college.
1:13:40
SPEAKER_00: Basically told you.
1:13:40
SPEAKER_00: They didn't know that.
1:13:41
SPEAKER_00: They did tell me.
1:13:41
SPEAKER_03: They did tell me, yeah.
1:13:42
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they could compare what they'd heard with what they'd actually experienced with me.
1:13:46
SPEAKER_03: They're like, we have lived experience with her, she's not that way, you know.
1:13:49
SPEAKER_03: And they started slowly over the years, when I think when they were in college, they started to see, they started to really see me for who I was.
1:13:58
SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, not just their dad's wife, but like me, Anna.
1:14:01
SPEAKER_03: You know, and that that would that took years.
1:14:03
SPEAKER_03: And, you know, for all of you who are going through this, there is no shortcut.
1:14:06
SPEAKER_03: There's no shortcut because these are little human lives and and they are affected.
1:14:11
SPEAKER_03: They are affected by what they hear and what they see, you know.
1:14:13
SPEAKER_03: But I always have told my clients, and I would tell all of you who are going through something like this right now, take the high road.
1:14:20
SPEAKER_03: Take the high road.
1:14:21
SPEAKER_03: I know it's hard.
1:14:22
SPEAKER_03: I know you want to lash out, I know you want to say what you think.
1:14:25
SPEAKER_03: I know you want to speak in an unfiltered manner.
1:14:28
SPEAKER_03: I know you want to take the filter off and you want to just say whatever you think, speak your mind.
1:14:31
SPEAKER_03: Remember, take the high road with any situation in your life when you just feel like going off on someone.
1:14:38
SPEAKER_03: I know what that's like.
1:14:39
SPEAKER_03: But when it comes to step kids, especially and step families, really and seek help around it because there is there are a lot of good resources out there for you, but go see a therapist around this because this is hard.
1:14:51
SPEAKER_03: I mean, this is this is really, really hard, and I don't think we talk about it enough.
1:14:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:14:55
SPEAKER_00: And I'm a a real living, breathing example of the high road because I never ever once, and I can say never, ever once spoke negatively about the threes that your ex-husband.
1:15:09
SPEAKER_00: I I never said about to them.
1:15:12
SPEAKER_00: To them, yeah, at all.
1:15:13
SPEAKER_00: Not one time, not one time, and then they'll be the first to tell you that.
1:15:16
SPEAKER_00: Like I can you never did.
1:15:18
SPEAKER_00: I never did, and it and it served me well because it's there was no benefit to ever do that.
1:15:24
SPEAKER_03: My ex is my ex's family and my ex my ex-husband was pretty quiet, pretty good.
1:15:29
SPEAKER_03: He he did a really good job.
1:15:31
SPEAKER_03: He did a good job of how he really kind of was with you, but you did a good job.
1:15:36
SPEAKER_03: Like you, you didn't speak ill of him.
1:15:38
SPEAKER_03: And I know that there are times, like we have opinions about each other, right?
1:15:41
SPEAKER_03: I mean, we have thoughts, we have opinions, but you kept them to yourself.
1:15:44
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's gonna happen.
1:15:45
SPEAKER_03: I mean, most divorce cases and remarriage cases where there's kids involved, blighted families, you know the the new husband or wife, new partner may have opinions about the other, you know, you gotta keep that to yourself.
1:15:59
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:15:59
SPEAKER_03: As best you can.
1:16:00
SPEAKER_03: I mean, they're doing have those conversations privately between the two of you about the your frustration, like what's the ex-husband, the ex-wife, your ex, you know, your but not with an earshot of the kids.
1:16:11
SPEAKER_03: It does it doesn't help them at all.
1:16:12
SPEAKER_00: No, no.
1:16:13
SPEAKER_03: Actually is hurting you.
1:16:15
SPEAKER_00: A thousand percent true.
1:16:16
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, okay.
1:16:17
SPEAKER_03: So I I want to talk a little bit about me and then my role and the irony of being a therapist and a coach over these years over all these years.
1:16:24
SPEAKER_03: I mean, for years, you know, I have sat in my office helping clients with exactly this issue, you know, with in relationships with families, all relationships really, boundaries and communication, you know, not personalizing everything.
1:16:37
SPEAKER_03: That's a big one.
1:16:38
SPEAKER_03: Don't personalize everything.
1:16:39
SPEAKER_03: They don't, you gotta not take that personally, working on thought distortions, different, differentiating, you know, what's yours from what's somebody else's issue, what's yours to pick up, what's not yours to pick up, you know, tolerating, learning how to tolerate uncomfortable feelings, respecting other people's individualities within families, you know, then I'd have to go home and do all of this myself, you know, knowing the psychology, and all of us as therapists, especially, knowing the psychology doesn't exempt us from having to practice it, right?
1:17:13
SPEAKER_03: I mean, and I had to figure out these two things simultaneously, you know, what isn't about me and how do I deserve to be treated in my own home?
1:17:22
SPEAKER_03: You know, and that was there's there's I had to get really clear about that.
1:17:26
SPEAKER_03: Like, this is how I deserve to be treated in my home.
1:17:28
SPEAKER_03: And this is like we had that conversation about hey, when you come in that door, you know, on your weeknight at our house, Tim, you to the boys, or when you're here for the weekend, you have to say hi to Anna.
1:17:38
SPEAKER_03: You know, go give her a hug, say hello.
1:17:40
SPEAKER_03: That's it.
1:17:40
SPEAKER_03: That's all you need to do, and that's all you need to do.
1:17:42
SPEAKER_03: And that's really all we asked for.
1:17:44
SPEAKER_03: Because this is my home.
1:17:46
SPEAKER_03: I mean, but most of it, most of the rest, the other 90% that was with them wasn't about me.
1:17:53
SPEAKER_03: And I and I knew that.
1:17:54
SPEAKER_03: I knew that.
1:17:55
SPEAKER_03: I I did, you know, I did get my own therapy around this, you know, because I knew it.
1:18:00
SPEAKER_03: But it's hard to sometimes practice what you know in your head, right?
1:18:03
SPEAKER_03: So I did this in my own office, and I actually think it made me a better therapist when dealing with blended families and divorce because I I was also living in as well, right?
1:18:10
SPEAKER_04: Sure.
1:18:11
SPEAKER_03: And I that's why I think it's so important to vet your therapists, because you know, recently somebody's like, My God, therapists, I have like the most crazy lives.
1:18:18
SPEAKER_03: Like, they're the most someone said this to me.
1:18:20
SPEAKER_03: Like, don't they can be the most effed up people?
1:18:22
SPEAKER_03: And of course I'm gonna defend that profession.
1:18:24
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna defend my profession.
1:18:25
SPEAKER_03: Like, no, that's not necessarily true.
1:18:27
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they're a therapist I wouldn't even send my dog to or my cat.
1:18:30
SPEAKER_03: Well, I love my pets.
1:18:31
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they're a therapist, hell no.
1:18:33
SPEAKER_03: But you know, so vet your therapist, but there are a lot of really good therapists out there, you know, who live their lives in alignment, their personal lives in alignment with their professional lives.
1:18:42
SPEAKER_03: I'd like to think that that's me.
1:18:44
SPEAKER_03: I do that, right?
1:18:46
SPEAKER_03: So, you know, asking yourself the question, what isn't about me and how do I deserve to be treated in my own home, they're not opposites.
1:18:53
SPEAKER_03: You know, respecting the child's individuality doesn't require that I needed to abandon myself, right?
1:19:00
SPEAKER_03: I could say, you're allowed to have your feelings about me.
1:19:03
SPEAKER_03: Lord knows they did.
1:19:05
SPEAKER_03: You're allowed to have your own relationship with your mother.
1:19:08
SPEAKER_03: Of course, I want you to.
1:19:10
SPEAKER_03: Absolutely, you must have that.
1:19:11
SPEAKER_03: That's your mother.
1:19:12
SPEAKER_03: You're allowed to be angry, you're allowed to be so mad about this whole situation, or you're allowed to have your relationship with your dad.
1:19:19
SPEAKER_03: You're allowed to be mad about this whole entire situation.
1:19:22
SPEAKER_03: And you're allowed to prefer to be at one house sometimes.
1:19:25
SPEAKER_03: You're allowed to prefer to kind of be more at mom's or more at dad's, right?
1:19:29
SPEAKER_03: You still have to treat me with respect.
1:19:31
SPEAKER_03: You still have to treat me respectfully while you're in this home.
1:19:34
SPEAKER_03: You can have all those feelings.
1:19:35
SPEAKER_03: You got to treat me with respect.
1:19:37
SPEAKER_03: That's a boundary, right?
1:19:39
SPEAKER_03: You know, the the goal wasn't to become so evolved that nothing hurt me.
1:19:44
SPEAKER_03: Um I'm not superhuman, you know, that there's no way, you know, I'm not a robot.
1:19:49
SPEAKER_03: Things hurt, things hurt me, right?
1:19:51
SPEAKER_03: But the goal was learning not to turn every hurt into an attempt to control somebody else.
1:19:58
SPEAKER_03: And if I ever tried to do that with the boys, that would backfire on me.
1:20:02
SPEAKER_03: I mean, my relationship with them today is the way it is because I think I did all this for the most part.
1:20:09
SPEAKER_03: I wasn't perfect at it, I wasn't always great at it, but for the most part, we tried to do I tried to do this.
1:20:14
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
1:20:15
SPEAKER_00: And time.
1:20:16
SPEAKER_00: And now the boys just took time.
1:20:18
SPEAKER_03: I don't even say like stepsons.
1:20:20
SPEAKER_03: I don't even we don't even real, I'm saying it for this episode.
1:20:23
SPEAKER_03: For the most part, I say my sons, my kids.
1:20:26
SPEAKER_03: Well, you do too, like my daughters, my son.
1:20:28
SPEAKER_03: We don't, we don't even make that.
1:20:29
SPEAKER_00: I've never said that.
1:20:31
SPEAKER_03: We're so we've gotten so tight as a family over all the years.
1:20:33
SPEAKER_03: We put so much hard work into this that they're just our kids.
1:20:36
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:20:36
SPEAKER_03: So what the five kids, what the five kids have actually taught me and taught you.
1:20:41
SPEAKER_03: So here's where I've landed, and you can say where you've landed.
1:20:46
SPEAKER_03: I can't control who they become.
1:20:48
SPEAKER_03: We cannot control who they've who they are, who they have become.
1:20:52
SPEAKER_03: I can't control, and you can't control who they're coming home to, so who they're dating and who they're gonna marry.
1:20:57
SPEAKER_03: We can't control that.
1:20:59
SPEAKER_00: That's true.
1:20:59
SPEAKER_03: Although one's getting married, we're very happy about it.
1:21:01
SPEAKER_03: We love him.
1:21:02
SPEAKER_03: We can't control what they believe.
1:21:04
SPEAKER_03: That's been that's been a hard one a little bit.
1:21:07
SPEAKER_03: But I can't control, I have no control over it.
1:21:10
SPEAKER_03: I can't control whether they tell me what they believe.
1:21:13
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, like talking to me about what they believe and they don't believe, I can't control it.
1:21:18
SPEAKER_03: So it's kind of the same thing on unbelief.
1:21:20
SPEAKER_03: I mean, that that has been that has been a hard one because I've watched them sort of like walk away.
1:21:25
SPEAKER_03: And I and my faith has been such a framework and a groundwork for how I I live my life.
1:21:32
SPEAKER_03: And they've some of them have decided to do something a little different.
1:21:35
SPEAKER_03: And and and that's been hard, but I've accepted it and I'm I'm beyond it.
1:21:39
SPEAKER_03: But there were years where I really had to struggle, really struggled with it.
1:21:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but and that's a perfect example of of the past not aligning.
1:21:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like and I've had to work it through.
1:21:48
SPEAKER_00: Not possible.
1:21:49
SPEAKER_03: And I've had to let them let them go and let them be them and and discover and explore on their own.
1:21:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:21:55
SPEAKER_03: And and be adventurous and do it.
1:21:57
SPEAKER_03: And they're doing it.
1:21:58
SPEAKER_03: And and today I'm I'm I'm good with it.
1:22:00
SPEAKER_03: I mean, like you're living your own life.
1:22:02
SPEAKER_03: Well, and you have to you gotta make your own decisions now.
1:22:04
SPEAKER_03: You're on your own.
1:22:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and you can't predict the future.
1:22:07
SPEAKER_03: And I'm right, and I'm here for you.
1:22:08
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I'm still here for you, even though I don't agree.
1:22:10
SPEAKER_03: I'm still here for you, and I'm still gonna listen to you, and I'm still gonna be in your corner.
1:22:13
SPEAKER_00: And you don't know what's gonna happen 10 years from now.
1:22:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, five years from now, 25 years from now.
1:22:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
1:22:18
SPEAKER_00: You have no idea.
1:22:19
SPEAKER_03: I can't we can't control every story that someone tells about me.
1:22:25
SPEAKER_03: I can't control that.
1:22:26
SPEAKER_03: I think that's still going on, maybe a little bit now.
1:22:28
SPEAKER_03: I can't, I have no control over that.
1:22:30
SPEAKER_03: That is so not worth my time today.
1:22:32
SPEAKER_03: I don't even care.
1:22:33
SPEAKER_03: It's what's that?
1:22:34
SPEAKER_03: I say this to my clients all the time.
1:22:35
SPEAKER_03: And I say to my kids, it's none of your business what people say about you behind your back.
1:22:40
SPEAKER_03: I live that.
1:22:41
SPEAKER_03: It's none of your business what people say about you behind your back.
1:22:43
SPEAKER_03: You weren't meant to hear it.
1:22:45
SPEAKER_03: They didn't say it to your face, it did it behind your back.
1:22:47
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you may not like it, but you have no control over it.
1:22:49
SPEAKER_03: So I would tell all of us, and I've gotten there, I don't I don't care what you say about me.
1:22:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I would say this I mean, if there's a story being shared out there in 2026, that story, it's more about that person telling the story than it is about the person they're telling the story about.
1:23:08
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
1:23:09
SPEAKER_03: I think that's fair.
1:23:09
SPEAKER_03: And I don't think it's happening very much.
1:23:10
SPEAKER_03: I don't think, you know, so I can control the evidence I leave behind through how I behave, like my behavior.
1:23:16
SPEAKER_03: That's I can control that with my behavior, right?
1:23:20
SPEAKER_03: So I'm responsible for that.
1:23:21
SPEAKER_03: I can't protect and I can't protect the kids from every mistake that they make.
1:23:26
SPEAKER_03: I never could.
1:23:27
SPEAKER_03: And you couldn't either.
1:23:28
SPEAKER_03: I mean, they're we talked about like the career internship thing.
1:23:31
SPEAKER_03: We can't protect them from that.
1:23:32
SPEAKER_03: We're we're like, you're making a mistake, you're making a mistake, but they're gonna do what they're gonna do.
1:23:37
SPEAKER_03: I mean, sometimes the mistake is where the lesson is.
1:23:40
SPEAKER_03: And I think that there is a lesson, and I think that that kid already has regrets about that.
1:23:44
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, that one's brutal.
1:23:46
SPEAKER_03: I mean, that was a brutal one for us, you know, because influence requires something that control doesn't.
1:23:52
SPEAKER_03: Trust.
1:23:53
SPEAKER_03: Trust, right?
1:23:54
SPEAKER_03: We talked about trust today.
1:23:55
SPEAKER_03: You know, if your child believes that honesty with you will automatically result in judgment, that you're gonna get all judgy, you're gonna start, you're gonna panic or freak out or something they're telling you, or you're gonna start lecturing them, or I'm gonna start lecturing them, or or start pressuring them, there's no way they're gonna continue to talk to us and be honest with us.
1:24:14
SPEAKER_03: They're not gonna talk to us.
1:24:15
SPEAKER_03: So, you know, there's no honesty because they're not talking to us.
1:24:18
SPEAKER_03: We don't know what's going on because they don't trust us, right?
1:24:21
SPEAKER_03: Right?
1:24:21
SPEAKER_03: You know, and then, you know, you may still be talking, I may still be talking, but I'm not influencing them anymore.
1:24:28
SPEAKER_03: I don't have any influence over them, you know.
1:24:30
SPEAKER_03: You're just it's like Anna just broadcasting to the to the ether, and they're not listening because they don't trust us.
1:24:37
SPEAKER_03: So that's what's really important is you know that you're saying if they didn't trust you, right?
1:24:42
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:24:42
SPEAKER_00: You're saying not they don't, that if they didn't try if they didn't, yeah.
1:24:46
SPEAKER_03: No, like I think they do.
1:24:48
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think they we've earned it.
1:24:50
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's hard earned work that they they trust us now.
1:24:54
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and we have had growing pains.
1:24:56
SPEAKER_03: I think that you and I, Tim, as adults, as parents of adults, we've had growing pains as adults.
1:25:01
SPEAKER_03: There's no book on this, you know.
1:25:02
SPEAKER_03: There's that book when you're pregnant, you know, like what's it what to expect and you're expecting, and what we all read, and then what to expect the first year.
1:25:10
SPEAKER_03: Somebody should write a book on like what to expect with kids in their 20s.
1:25:13
SPEAKER_03: There's no book on that.
1:25:15
SPEAKER_03: You're still you're still parenting.
1:25:17
SPEAKER_03: That's a thing.
1:25:18
SPEAKER_03: You're but you're just parenting very differently.
1:25:20
SPEAKER_03: They're still, they don't want our opinions all the time, but they still want our opinions.
1:25:24
SPEAKER_03: They still want to come to us and vent about work, a coworker, a boss.
1:25:28
SPEAKER_03: They want to vent about a relationship, they want to vent about the dating world, the stupid dating apps, about someone ghosted them.
1:25:34
SPEAKER_03: They still want to vent about somebody they met at the gym or talk about that, like, hey, I want to tell you about this.
1:25:40
SPEAKER_03: They still want to know about like finances that you know, they they still want all of that as adults.
1:25:46
SPEAKER_03: Sure.
1:25:46
SPEAKER_03: It's more of a friendship now, but they still are coming to us.
1:25:49
SPEAKER_03: And I think that give ourselves a pat on the back, we've earned that with them.
1:25:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:25:54
SPEAKER_03: Because I think we've tried really hard to do all of this.
1:25:56
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:25:56
SPEAKER_03: Okay, so this week, if you feel like you're white knuckling it, you're white knuckling something with one of your kids and something that what something is doing.
1:26:05
SPEAKER_03: I want you to ask yourself these questions.
1:26:08
SPEAKER_03: These there's two questions here, okay.
1:26:10
SPEAKER_03: So to end, am I teaching or am I regulating myself?
1:26:14
SPEAKER_03: Am I teaching them or am I regulating myself?
1:26:17
SPEAKER_03: That goes back to the top of the episode, right?
1:26:20
SPEAKER_03: And is this issue actually mine?
1:26:23
SPEAKER_03: Is this mine?
1:26:24
SPEAKER_03: If it's yours, own it.
1:26:26
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:26:27
SPEAKER_03: This is your issue, not your kids.
1:26:28
SPEAKER_03: Own it, right?
1:26:29
SPEAKER_03: Set the boundary, have that conversation, say the difficult thing, hold that standard that you've set for yourself in your home, right?
1:26:36
SPEAKER_03: But if it's theirs, it's their issue.
1:26:38
SPEAKER_03: Be careful about picking it up just because you love the person who's carrying it, okay?
1:26:43
SPEAKER_03: It's good because your child's life eventually belongs to them.
1:26:47
SPEAKER_03: Their life belongs to them.
1:26:49
SPEAKER_03: It doesn't belong to you.
1:26:50
SPEAKER_03: You don't get to write the whole story.
1:26:53
SPEAKER_03: That's, I know that's a hard pill for some of you to swallow.
1:26:56
SPEAKER_03: You don't get to write their whole story.
1:26:58
SPEAKER_03: You do get to influence it through trust and through love, but you don't get to write that story.
1:27:04
SPEAKER_03: And I think one of the hardest jobs of parenting is learning how to remain close enough to influence someone while giving them enough room to become someone that you didn't completely design.
1:27:17
SPEAKER_03: That's giving up control.
1:27:18
SPEAKER_03: That's a hard one for a lot of us, right?
1:27:20
SPEAKER_03: I've had to practice this for years.
1:27:22
SPEAKER_03: I think more than you, Tim.
1:27:23
SPEAKER_03: I've had to really practice this.
1:27:24
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
1:27:25
SPEAKER_03: You know, the same thing that I've counseled to clients in my office boundaries, communication, self-awareness, knowing what's about you and what isn't, allowing people to be different from you, allowing your kids to be different from you, right?
1:27:36
SPEAKER_03: I'm better at it than I used to be.
1:27:38
SPEAKER_03: That is for sure.
1:27:39
SPEAKER_03: I'm a lot better at it.
1:27:40
SPEAKER_03: I'm not perfect.
1:27:41
SPEAKER_03: Still working on that.
1:27:42
SPEAKER_03: And I still want the damn dishwashers, dishes, put the dishwasher.
1:27:46
SPEAKER_03: Still want that done.
1:27:47
SPEAKER_03: I still want everybody to take stuff off the stairs when they're going up to their bedrooms.
1:27:52
SPEAKER_03: Because letting go of control does have its limits, right?
1:27:56
SPEAKER_03: That's the thing.
1:27:57
SPEAKER_03: It still has its limits, and I still want the little things in the house done.
1:28:00
SPEAKER_03: But for the most part, I think that it's so, so important for us to let go of control of our kids, especially as they get older.
1:28:08
SPEAKER_03: When they're little, yes, but as they move into those adolescent years, you know that you start to give them a little bit more control and autonomy over their lives.
1:28:16
SPEAKER_03: But at the end of the day, they're going to be who they're going to be.
1:28:19
SPEAKER_03: Let's be there to love them and to support them.
1:28:22
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:28:23
SPEAKER_03: All right.
1:28:23
SPEAKER_03: Okay, everyone.
1:28:24
SPEAKER_03: I'll see you next week.
1:28:25
SPEAKER_03: Please don't forget to subscribe.
1:28:27
SPEAKER_03: Rate and review the podcast with five stars.
1:28:30
SPEAKER_03: Mad love.