Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 240 | How to Address Not Wanting Family Members to Watch Your Kids

Transcript

Ep. 240 | How to Address Not Wanting Family Members to Watch Your Kids · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  We're fairly lax about things that feel just like differences.
• 0:08
  What's up guys, Jeff and Jeremy here, another episode of five minute fatherhood. This is a question today from Jordan in one of our communities. And he said, how do you talk with family members about how you might not necessarily want them to watch your kids because of some reason like parenting style that you don't agree with? Or should you just let them watch them and expose them to different ways of parenting? Super good question and really practical where the rubber meets the road. I think a lot of people, everyone at some level deals with this. Jeremy has a really cool paradigm that's really helpful.
• 0:34
  I know for me and Alyssa, we haven't wrestled with that or have a ton of experience. Both sides of our family watch our kids. They love the kids and are great and super respectful to us. And I'll talk from that side of like, because both of our sides, I think, do this well, this is one thing you do want to kind of, I don't know if you'd say apply pressure, but it is important, I think, to...
• 0:53
  be okay with the messiness of letting it be a teaching moment to trying to under, let the parents understand that like, Hey, we are kind of the authority over our kids in the way of like, Hey, can they eat? You know, we try to have them eat this or do this or whatever. And then having them respect that. I mean, I do think it's totally appropriate to ask the generation above you to respect the general values you've put on your family and your kids and then try to mimic that as best as possible, if that makes sense.
• 1:21
  With also, but if you're like a type A personality, then maybe that's the opposite and you need to let some stuff slide. So like for us, like we, in a way we've wrestled with this, and this isn't even just like parents, but this is just like anyone who watches our kids. Our thing is like, we'll tell them like, hey, you know, they like to eat this and do this and do that. But we also don't want it to be like the micromanaging family, like when we're gone. So in general, with stuff that doesn't really matter, like I don't think food matters for one night, right? Unless it's obviously a dietary restriction.
• 1:46
  So we just say like, we don't care. Like, yeah, we feed them like this back home, but we don't care. Like if you want to feed them that and that, like, so there's some things I do think you have to let slide. And I purposely even tell people that because I think it's a little bit of an olive branch when kids are being, you know what I mean? I'm just like, we don't care. Like we trust you. Like just feed them whatever you want. You know what I mean? Um...
• 2:05
  You know, and probably we'd probably be in right now. It's like move movies like there's only kid movies or kid movies But obviously when we're older, we'll probably set some boundaries with that stuff Like you kind of just it's all it's all case by case and it's all that stuff But I do think there's some stuff you should let slide Right, and I do think there's things that it's okay to ask them to respect and honor So that's it's really a wisdom issue and a sensitivity issue Um and a little tip for tap, but yeah, I like your paradigm. Jeremy. How would you guys talk about this?
• 2:28
  Yeah, so you guys understand that when you're trying to be more intentional to build a family team, sometimes people get a lot more worried about exposing their kids to other parenting styles like Jordan's describing here. And one of the things I want to help you guys, I really encourage you guys to consider is we're talking about building multi-generational family teams. And God's the one who's decided to make family multi-generational.
• 2:51
  And that means that sometimes you do need to expose your kids to family members who are different and have different ideas about family and parenting than you do. I think that's actually really healthy a lot of the time. Where I would draw the distinction is that you have to distinguish between relationships.
• 3:07
  when there is a parenting difference or an actual danger? Is it is what you're struggling with, like a different style of parenting like George describing here? Or are you worried about a dangerous thing that might be your kids might get exposed to? For example, we're always very careful about
• 3:23
  our kids spending a lot of time in homes where there are older children, five, 10, 15 years older than them, without our supervision. Why? Because obviously things can happen if there's a parenting style there that's fairly lax, there's not a lot of supervision. This is where a lot of weird things start to happen to kids. And we're very careful to make sure that our kids are not exposed to things that we don't want them to endure, like things that could really be traumatic for them. So we're very careful about things that feel dangerous
• 3:53
  But I would say we're fairly lax about things that feel just like differences. So I want my kids to see, you know, their cousins and, you know, their grandparents have different ideas about things. And I want to debrief that with my kids. And so I think that that can be really healthy, the differences, but also just distinguish the dangers. And if there's something dangerous, really dangerous, then I would say, you know, I'm much more cautious about putting my kids together.
• 4:19
  in a situation where they might be exposed to something that could actually create trauma for them. So I would be, I would make that distinction really clear, but this is a great question, Jordan.
• 4:29
  Also, real quick, guys, if you don't know, Jeremy wrote a book called Father's Compass. Incredible, short, little, concise book that you can pick up and kind of flip to any page with specific fatherhood insights. And one of them is on honoring your parents, guys. But it's supercharged. They're all incredible. They're all pack a punch. Highly recommend it. You can get it on our site. You can get it on Amazon. Make sure to definitely check it out. FamilyTeams.com.