Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / Why Your Kids Stop Telling You Things

Transcript

Why Your Kids Stop Telling You Things · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: How much do you know about what your children are
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: up to? What are they disclosing? How carefully are you
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: monitoring what is going on in their lives? Did you
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: know that the best parental monitoring tool is not actually
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: asking them questions as much as it is your relationship?
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Snooping will usually tell you less than a chat in
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: the car. Your kids are really happy to tell you
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: stuff if you make it safe for them to tell you.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Today's Doctor's Desk episode on the Happy Families podcast looks
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: at a slightly older study, a study that was done
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: back in January of 2003.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: It's 23 years old, all about parental monitoring, where it
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: goes wrong, and what we should do instead to keep
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: our kids safe. Stay with us. That's next. Hello, welcome
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: to Happy Families Podcast. Great to have you along for
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: another Doctor's Desk episode. We are Justin and Kylie Coulson,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: parents of six kids. This is the podcast that gives
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: you real parenting solutions every single day.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Kylie, just before we talk about the Doctor's Desk, can
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: I tell you how exciting it is to see so
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: many people donating so much money for our Lift the
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Load Challenge? If you've missed it and you've only just
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: tuned into the podcast, in two days.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: I'm a bit nervous even saying it. I've been training
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: a little bit, but not nearly enough. I'm going to
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: put a.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: 10 kilo weighted vest on and walk 50 kilometers in
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: one day. On Saturday, it's World Mental Health Day. And
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: I'm raising funds for Toploaks. Toploaks is a charity, a
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: not-for-profit that is all about helping our young men with
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: long-term mentoring. Because too many of our young men are
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: at risk and we want to help them. So I'm
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: walking 50Ks so I can raise 50K. I've asked for
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: 1,000 people to give $ 50. Somebody gave $ 1, 000 the other day.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: How generous is that?
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: That's crazy.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Amazing.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: There's some really big hearts out there.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, really. It's so, so generous. Anyway, we're well on
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: our way to $ 50, 000, and we need your help. So
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: please go to lifttheload.org.au slash 50for50. au.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: And donate what you can. If you can chuck in
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: 50 bucks, that'd be amazing. If you don't have 50,
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: whatever you've got would be great. If you can spare
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: a bit more, if you can go to 75 or 100,
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: that'll make such a difference as well. This is going
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: to be one of the hardest physical challenges that I've
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: ever done. Walking 50 kilometers in one day with a
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: 10 kg load is heavy.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: It's hilly. It's not exactly a flat, simple, easy route.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: And lift the load. It's happening on Saturday. So that's the.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: That's the heavy thing that I wanted to talk about, Kylie.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Let's do The Doctor's Desk, which is one of my
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: favourite podcast episodes ever.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: I love talking about the science because it makes such
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: a difference. What do you want to know about this one?
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: Well, you're hilarious. You're asking me what I want to know,
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: but you have no show notes for today, so I
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: have nothing to go on. I don't know what we're
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: talking about, but... You heard my intro.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: It's all about parental monitoring, supervision, getting kids to tell
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: you what they've been up to, the unsafe, unhealthy stuff,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: keeping them safe.
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: It's funny. We had friends over for dinner the other night.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: And I asked each of the girls to share some
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: of the things that were going on in their world.
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: And it was so hilarious listening to one of our
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: daughters basically tell our friends all of the things that
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: she's been, I'm going to say getting wrong for want
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: of a better way.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Full disclosure. Full disclosure. Let me tell you everything.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: And it was so funny because we're telling the story
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: after the fact, right? But living it with her. Her
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: biggest beef with us was, I just need you to
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: trust me. I can make good decisions.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: And the whole way through, it's like, this is not
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: a good decision.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: But what I love about that particular daughter and all
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: of our children is the idea that when you build
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: good relationships, it might not come all in one gush.
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: But having an open relationship where your children know that
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: they can come to you, even if it is after
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: the fact, there is so much power in your child
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: coming to you after the fact and sharing what they've learnt. Yep.
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: You know, as a parent, we want to stop them.
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: We actually want to stop them from making silly choices
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: because we can see that they're silly choices, right?
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: It's well-intentioned and that's why we enable location sharing on
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: their phone or we check their messages. It's why we
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: ask them so many questions.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: But, It's actually often in making the dumb choices that
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: they learn the lesson. You can't give it to them.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: The words that I would use are the unsafe, unhealth
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: choices rather than dumb or right and wrong because kids
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: don't respond well to that kind of language.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm not talking to kids. I'm talking to moms
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: and dads.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: That's true.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: And they are dumb decisions, let's be honest. So that's
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: basically what this study is all about.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Well done. Without the run sheet, because I was not
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: as organized as I should have been, I'm very impressed
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: with that.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Here's basically what happened. The conventional wisdom for decades has
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: always been know where your kids are, know what they're
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: up to, know who they're with. And then in 2003,
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: this paper was published by two Swedish researchers. And they
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: asked this really important question. How do parents actually know
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: what they know?
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: How do you know what you know?
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: We make dumb choices.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: Well, how do you know what you know about what
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: the kids are doing? I mean, yes, your dumb choices,
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: but there's still guesses, right?
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Whereas how do you actually get the info so that
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: you do know what is happening?
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: That's what they were looking at. So their names were
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: Statton and Kerr. And what they realized is that most
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: studies looking at what parents knew about what the kids
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: were up to were about parental monitoring. So you're assessing what.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Parents know, but not how.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: They know it, not where they got the knowledge from.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: And so they got 703 14-year-olds in central Sweden to
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: complete this study with their parents. And they basically separated
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: three separate sources of knowledge. You've got the source of
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: knowledge that comes from your child volunteering information, like our
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: daughter at the dinner table with friends the other night.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: You've got parents soliciting information, hey, tell me what's going on.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: And then you've got parents setting rules that require their
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: kids to report in other words you've got parental controls
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: being set up and what they found was that parental
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: knowledge mainly came from well which one do you think
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: again no show notes on this one which one do
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: you think parents requiring a report the child volunteering info
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: or the parents saying hey what's going on what are you.
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: Up to uh it's always going to be volunteering.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah disclosure like absolutely it's all about disclosure.
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: How often do your kids come home from school or
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: from an event and you ask them how things went?
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: They tell you nothing. But if you provide opportunities to
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: just be in each other's space without the pressure, all
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: of a sudden, you've literally got more information than you
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: asked for or wanted half the time. Yeah.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: They just keep on talking if you've created the environment
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: for it. Tracking and surveillance in this study is not a–
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: useful prescription for parental behavior to understand child behavior. I
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: made a mess of what I was trying to say there,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: but get this. They found this correlation basically between child
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: disclosure and delinquency, like police reports, police contact, getting in
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: trouble for doing the wrong thing. That is the less
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: your child discloses to you, the more likely it is
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: that they're going to get in proper trouble. They're going
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: to be.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: Doing things that are really challenging. And there was a
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: companion paper the same year with nearly 1,214 year olds
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: and their parents and they found that children's spontaneous disclosure
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: quote explained more of the link between parental knowledge and
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: good adjustment than parents tracking and surveillance efforts did so
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: after the break we're going to talk about how we
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: can get our kids to open up to be willing to.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Disclose that's the great challenge and that's coming next We're back.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: It's the Happy Families podcast. How do you get your
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: kids to open up and sit there and want to
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: tell you stuff like our daughter did at the dining
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: table the other night?
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: What a perfect model.
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: I try to remind myself that this is a good thing,
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: but I'll be in the car with a friend. And
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: in the time that we drive from point A to
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: point B, I have talked to six children and usually
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: you two or three times.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: I know this because we recently went, we had to
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: drive down to Brisbane and And I was so looking
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: forward to being able to talk to you. And almost
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: from the minute we got in the car, the phone
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: rang and then it.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Rang again and then it rang. And it was each
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: of the kids just ringing.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: To check in. And now our granddaughter, we add her
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: to the list because she's the one who calls.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: And they all called to disclose. They all called to
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: talk to you about stuff. Here's what's going on. Here's
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: what I'm doing today. Here's what was happening in my life.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: I just had a chat with this boy. I'm going
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: for this job. Like the level of disclosure. It's a lot.
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: It's a lot, people.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: I'm like– I need a prescription for overstimulation. I just
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: want to talk to my wife. Can you kids all
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: leave us alone?
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: I need some space. So one of the kids in
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: the family thread sent this little meme. Mom, you shouldn't
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: have been such a good mom if you wanted space.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Bit of a flex.
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: But to me, this is actually about building the relationship.
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: So I remember when our first daughter turned about 16
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: and I started to see a shift in our relationship.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: We had a really beautiful relationship, but she started to
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: make choices about what independence looked like, right? Because that's
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: where things actually start to get really tricky. When our
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: kids want more independence, they want to be able to
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: make their own choices. And we create stories about what
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: that means. It's actually got nothing to do with us.
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: It's about them. And if we can work our way
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: through that, then our relationship continues to thrive, recognizing that
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: they're not going to tell us everything.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Nor should they. Like how much stuff did you keep
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: from your parents? I kept so much from my parents.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: They're not going to tell us everything. And yeah, they
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: might be making some silly choices every now and again.
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: But if we've got a good relationship with them and
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: they know that if everything hits the fan, that we're
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: a safe place.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Okay. I want to wrap up this podcast with some
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: practical tips.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: So first, a little bit more science because this is
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: a doctor's desk episode and then five things that we
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: can do.
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: Do we have to do doctor's desk?
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Yes. But this is really important. Okay.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: So there's a researcher named Tilton Weaver and colleagues in
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: 2010 did three.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Waves of longitudinal data. involving nearly a thousand youth. And
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: here's what they found. Parents' negative reactions. Parents' negative reactions
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: were associated with youth feeling more controlled and less connected, which, surprise, surprise,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: predicted more secrecy and less disclosure. Positive reactions predicted feeling
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: more connected, which predicted more disclosure. So kids tell us
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: things in proportion, to how safe it felt the last
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: time they told us stuff if they've done something unsafe
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: and unhealthy and unwise you don't have to respond with
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: candy canes and balloons and rainbows and unicorns and confetti
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: but if you respond with negativity if you come down
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: hard on them if you look at them with furrowed
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: brows and frustration and consternation and all of those things
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: and if you become a little capricious in your response
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: then there's a good chance they won't tell you stuff
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: in the future Whereas if when they tell you stuff,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: you say, well, I'm really glad you told me that.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: It sounds like we have a bit of a challenge
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: to work through here. Let's grab some food and see
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: if we can puzzle it out together. If you can
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: respond with positivity and warmth and connection, the kids go, oh,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: I can trust this person to act in my best interest.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: I should tell them stuff more often. They're my ally.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: They're my advocate. They are not my enemy.
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: I'm going to push back on you a little bit.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Oh. Only because- I felt like I said that so well.
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: You did. You said it so beautifully. For any parent
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: who has sat with their child when they have told
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: them something that is really either heartbreaking or disturbing, to
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: be told that I'm supposed to sit there calmly and
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: let them know that they're loved, it feels a bit unreal, right?
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to. And as you were sharing, I
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: was thinking about a really, really challenging situation that we
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: had with one of our children. And I remember as
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: she shared what had gone on for her. And the
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: immense emotion that both you and I felt in that moment.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: And then how you specifically expressed, and it was a
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: lot of emotion. There was a lot behind it for
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: so many reasons. The difference is, do we come in hard?
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: I think it's really important for parents to understand it's
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: okay to have emotion. It's okay to feel something really big.
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: But our children need to understand why, the why behind
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: the really big. You weren't getting her in trouble, but
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: you were showing her just the depth of emotion that
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: comes from a parent who desperately wants to protect their
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: child and knows that they can't. And now how do
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: we move forward? And I was talking to that particular
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: child the other day, and she was so emotional about it.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: And she just said, when I think back to that
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: time and those things that I had to share with you,
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: she said, I am so grateful. that I had parents
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: who loved me through it. In the moment, I was like,
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: she's going to hate you. She's never going to talk
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: to you again because there was so much depth and
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: emotion shared in that moment. But she saw that for
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: what it really was. It wasn't, you weren't angry at her.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: You could easily take it at that in the moment.
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: But because you were able to work through that with
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: her and talk her through why you were feeling the
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: way you were, and it wasn't emotion at her, it
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: was emotion for her and with her. and there's a difference.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great distinction. It's not emotion at the person,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: it's emotion with them and for them.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: So let me run through five simple strategies. Simple to say,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: hard to do.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: The first one is to watch your reaction. I think
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: that it's probably the biggest lever in the research. If
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: you can take a breath before you respond, if you
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: can say, thanks for telling me. Even when they've said
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: something that's really, really hard to hear. Or if you
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: can say, okay, this is really hard to hear. And
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: I'm having a really big emotional reaction to this. I
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: can feel myself having it, but it's not because I'm
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: angry at you. It's because I love you and I'm
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: wanting the best for you. And we can work this out.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: Like being able to communicate that as I recall doing
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: something along those lines with that daughter. The second thing
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: is I think that we've got to keep punishment out
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: of the conversation. Like if honesty, if your child owning
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: what they've done and coming to you and telling you
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: what they've done is going to trigger a punishment, then
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: they're going to stop being honest. What we need to
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: do is we've got to deal with disclosure in such
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: a way that we can say, okay, I'm so glad
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: you told me.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: And then we move towards problem solving rather than punishment.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: That's always going to be better. The reality is if
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: they're telling you, there's already something going on for them
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: where they're going, I need some help with this. This
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: is not working out well. They're not saying, oh, guess what?
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: I did this, this, and this.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: How awesome am I? They're usually telling you because they
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: know that there's a challenge there. The most important thing,
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: and there's so much data on this. One of my
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: favorite studies comes from Netta Weinstein and Andy Schabulski over
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: at Oxford. They did a study with a thousand or
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: so British adolescents. And they found that if you set
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: up rules in a really controlling way, you trigger what
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: psychologists call reactants. In other words, the kids blow up
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: and it undermines trust. But if you can set up
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: your rules in an autonomy supportive way, it increases that
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: feeling of trust. So what we really want to do
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: is provide really clear rationale for our limits, explain where
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: they're coming from and why we're implementing them. And it just,
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: it makes a huge difference. Give reasons, acknowledge their perspective,
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: offer choice where you can. That's the three E's of
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: effective discipline in a nutshell. And that's what the research
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: continues to point to.
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: All right, do you have anything else?
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Just a couple of others. I'm always saying get curious,
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: not furious. I think that's really important. Don't do any
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: covert snooping. If you discover it in a covert way,
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: like because you've been snooping, what you've taught them is
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: that you don't trust them and that you're going to
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: find out things and then they're therefore not going to
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: tell you. They'll just get sneakier. I think that those
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: are probably the last couple of things that really stand
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: out to me. This idea matters so very much. Location
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: apps will show you where they are, but only the
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: relationship that you have will tell you how they are.
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: What you just said actually breaks my heart a little bit.
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: As a parent, having a child come to you after
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: the fact and tell you that there was a time
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: where they weren't safe, but they chose not to come
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: to you because they didn't feel you were a safe
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: place for them. They didn't feel like you were open
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: to being a part of that part of their story
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: is probably... That was the biggest and the hardest learning
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: experience for me as a mom. Because I don't ever,
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: ever want one of my children to feel like they
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: have stooped so low that I wouldn't be there for
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: them in that moment. No matter what. No matter what.
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: No matter what I've taught them. No matter what values
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: they have, you know, kind of disregarded in that moment.
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: I need them to know that I will be there
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: no matter what.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: We will link to Staten and Kerr's article from Child
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: Development from 2003. For those who are curious about knowing more,
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: we really, really hope that this podcast has prompted some
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: ideas for you around how much you surveil your children
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: versus how much you build a relationship with them so
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: that you can learn not just where they are, but
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: how they are. The Happy Families podcast is back tomorrow
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: as we continue.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: To celebrate Mrs. Happy Family's birthday week. Please join us
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: for an I'll Do Better Tomorrow special as we talk
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: about Yet another of our daughters. That and more tomorrow
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: on the pod. Sound and audio for the Happy Families
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: podcast from Justin Rulon at Bridge Media. Mim Hammonds provides
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: our additional support. If you'd like more info to make
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: your family happier, visit us at happyfamilies.com.au.