Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / The Missing Ingredient When Disciplining Your Kids with Rachel Awtrey

Transcript

The Missing Ingredient When Disciplining Your Kids with Rachel Awtrey · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  we say this in our own house and like connection over correction we have to connect them for us to have earned the right to be heard where then they trust our correction hey guys welcome back to the podcast i'm excited to be joined today by rachel autry rachel thanks for jumping on here
• 0:16
  Yeah. Thanks for having me, Jeremy. I'm excited to be here. Awesome. So I started to get to know Rachel just by following her on Instagram. There was a particular reel that we shared that I loved. You were describing life growing up in your family and how to be a daughter who actually appreciates her father's discipline. I've got four girls. And so I was like, whoa, this is a good topic. Yes.
• 0:38
  And so I just really appreciated what you said. And maybe you could tell us a little bit about your background, your family story. And then I'd like to maybe drill a little bit deeper into your relation with your dad to start with. I love this. Yeah. No, he would be so happy that we're having a whole conversation about him and his discipline.
• 0:56
  Ideas, for sure. I grew up in a pretty charming family. We called it like the VeggieTales household where we prayed over our meals and we supported missionaries overseas and really had this greater idea of living a life with Jesus beyond it just being go to church on Sundays. It was a very active part of how we grew up.
• 1:17
  I was introduced to who Jesus was and really the gospel in general. When my dad was really sick, I was in second grade. He had kidney failure and was in need of a transplant. And I'll never forget, he was able to receive the transplant. So he did years of dialysis. I saw him sick. We weren't able to live the life that I think I saw my friends living, my friends' family's lives. It just looked very different than ours at home.
• 1:47
  And my dad explained to me after he received his transplant that a lot like how Miss Judy, his donor, donated her kidney so that my dad could live a life full and free to be able to go and adventure and wonder and do the things that his body was created to do. Similarly, we are in need of a transplant. And without it, we also are going to be sick in bed and not living the version of life that was intended for us. And for some reason, that clicked to me. And that's when I really started understanding Jesus and what he did for me.
• 2:17
  So from there, like faith lens in my family was huge. And then I lost my dad suddenly in an accident my junior year of high school. So I'd say it was pretty kosher and normal until that moment. And that moment really rocked the boat for myself and my siblings, my mom. We all grieved really unhealthily, made some decisions that affected us and still are affecting us to this day. And it just it was not cute. It was really messy. Yeah.
• 2:47
  Now I'm a mom. I have two little boys. And so it's really sweet to walk through parenthood. And it's a different level of grief not having him. There's also a huge level of compassion and grace and appreciation for what it took to do the hard work that they did.
• 3:02
  And I'm married to a great dad. So it's really cool to see even my dad's legacy honored through him being a grandfather, even though he's not here, to our two little boys and my husband. And my husband and I are high school sweethearts. So he knew my dad and is able to help me with that, keeping his legacy alive. So that is the gambit of life and how I grew up and how it's affected me today.
• 3:25
  Wow. Well, thanks for sharing. I definitely want to, yeah, I'd love to understand a little bit more about your guys, especially as a family, that process of grief. In terms of being a daughter, you know, you're just seeing the way, one of the things I feel like I've talked to my girls about a lot, it just seems like there's like that role of what it means to be a daughter. Yeah.
• 3:48
  isn't necessarily something that is discussed or shared or celebrated today. So I'm curious, yeah, how does, how does that identity that, like when you think about that, you know, spiritually in a family, how do you process what that means? Especially like as you're, it sounds like, you know, having to have to process, you know, both having such a great father and then losing your dad. That's a great question, Jeremy. I, I,
• 4:16
  I don't know if it was explained to me what daughterhood would look like. I think it just was one of those caught, not taught sort of things growing up for me. I had two brothers, and now I even have two little boys. So daughterhood is still a little bit elusive to me to this day because I only know it from my own experience. I was heavily included in things that my mom and my dad did.
• 4:41
  on my own and I feel like that experience was tailored to me and I think they saw my childhood different as a daughter than they would have the sons um I my dad like pursued me and in a non-strange way like dated me he'd take me out for sushi dates and that was our thing and he gets car washed before and he'd open my door before and
• 5:03
  He'd compliment my outfit. So like in a lot of ways, I think too, there is this really sweet softness side of my dad. I was able to see that, was able to hold who I was as a woman really well. So I'd say, yeah, it's interesting, daughtership.
• 5:18
  And now having two sons, they still have emotions and they still have that side of them that they do need a softness to. But the difference between what they need, I even see it as a parent myself, like the rough and tough versus the conversation and intellectual companionship. Right. Yeah.
• 5:37
  And I think my dad did that really well, for sure. So I don't know if it was ever plainly told to me, you are a daughter and this is why we're doing it this way. I definitely, hindsight, seeing the way he parented me, I do know it was pretty strategic and I feel it now. That's good. And I'm curious too, you know, you described a little bit of your dad's just creativity around discipline. Yeah. My impression, and I'm sure having articulated that so publicly, is,
• 6:07
  There is a huge amount of backlash and parents should not be training their children. You can train and discipline your pets or what, but there's something about...
• 6:22
  They're a human being and there's something inherently disrespectful about any kind of discipline going that direction. And so, you know, with all these trends and I'm curious, number one, did you receive much of that feedback? And how have you thought through that both as a daughter and now as a mother?
• 6:40
  Oh, yeah. So I posted a reel. That was the clip from a podcast episode that I recorded with a friend of mine named Ellie Holcomb. Posted it just like we do. We post little clips of the podcast all the time, but it definitely, they say it's rage bait now to talk about anything, discipline. If it has the word spank in the captions, you can bet your bottom dollar that somebody is going to be there barking at the comments.
• 7:05
  Yes. And that's exactly what happened. So to give context for friends listening, that's that's. Yeah, it was a little bit bizarre and you get opinions you never asked for. And again, I'm saying this is my experience. This is not my advice. There's a difference between a witness and an attorney. I'm just telling you what I've seen and what I try and what I've done. I'm not saying that this is the only way to do it.
• 7:28
  Um, and I think also it's really interesting too now being a mom my two I only have two they're four and three years old So you can imagine how much shepherding and training there is in our house right now like how to be A civil adult I mean one day not at this very moment, but like to train them up to be people that We would want to spend time with and we would be confident sending out into the world and to continue to make disciples of their own like I I um
• 7:55
  It's interesting. They both need something completely different from us. And so it takes also a level of discernment and stewardship to know what each child needs. And I say that to almost blanket this entire conversation. There is no one right way other than doing it in prayer, other than doing it with the discernment and discretion of Holy Spirit. Otherwise,
• 8:20
  I don't know if I can give rules to how to do it. Number one, because I'm only four years in on the journey myself. But number two, I even saw as a kid the difference in discipline between my brothers and I. We all had to have different aptitudes for how we showed up to this whole conversation. So whereas my brother would have gotten grounded, I would have just gotten my phone taken away. Whereas another one of my brothers couldn't read his magazines. I don't care. Take my magazines. That's fine. I don't need the Legos. So I think it just depends on also how the kid...
• 8:50
  is wired and created. And, um, anyways, to sum it all up, I think the one thing that I took away from that whole conversation and the backlash is that there's so many ways to go about this and my kids don't need me to go about it perfectly. They need me to go about it confidently. So even if I can just make a decision and follow through, I can kind of AB test and pray my way through this whole process. Yeah.
• 9:14
  Yeah, what's interesting to me is your dad was clearly a very engaged father. He was trying to use his creativity to make sure that these disciplines were appropriate to you guys. That's right.
• 9:29
  They they they they helped your kind of you move in the direction that you were to go. And I think I think there is a to me what it feels like is there's a sort of a ideological collision that is.
• 9:46
  really rooted in philosophy. Like there's, there's one philosophy that says children are perfect. It's kind of a Jean-Jacques Rousseau was sort of the father of this idea that, um, people are born perfect and innocent. And if you see anything negative come out of them, it's because society messes them up, their own family system screws them up. And so you can almost only hurt your children by being intentional. Um,
• 10:10
  And then there's, of course, a very different philosophy slash theology you get in the Bible where there is a great battle going on inside of every person, both in their flesh and from personal evil coming in the form of an enemy who is trying to incite.
• 10:40
  and is able to receive training and correction. These cannot be more different. And part of what's odd to me is that we're having a conversation about discipline without asking which of those worldviews you hold to. If I held to the Rousseauian worldview, and by the way, people that really believe that, you need to look up the kind of dad this guy was. He was the opposite of your father, Rachel. I mean, he was like, you know, poster child for the worst father.
• 11:09
  Uh, imaginable as kids were, you know, extremely broken. He abandoned his children into orphanage. It was just one of the worst examples. And so this is one of the things that people don't understand. Ideas have consequences and these are very different ideas. And so we feel fine just saying, assuming that we're operating from the completely same philosophy, the same theology, and then we're going to critique each other's parenting styles.
• 11:31
  without actually getting one layer beneath and saying, okay, but what do you believe about the nature of what a parent's to do and what, what a child is. And so I'm curious how you think about that collision and a conversation that erupts, like as you see the comments and cause I find it like, especially I want to have a different conversation with Christians, non-Christians and say, can't, can't we, it's important that we're not, you know, we're not just sort of bypassing this, these deeper questions. Yeah.
• 12:00
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, in my opinion, there's a totally different, there's a hybrid. And I don't think, I don't look at my kids as bad. I look at my kids as human, flawed, and full of sin. I also look at myself as human, flawed, and full of sin.
• 12:17
  I think that that's the interesting part about parenting is it constantly asks me to humble myself and choose humility to be like their sin. And the thing that they just did is no worse than what I do and the things that are in my heart and in my mind. And when I take that approach, I feel like there's a grace component that comes into it that does allow me to approach it strategically and not emotionally driven. That whenever I do hard things and follow through on consequences we've talked about, it's not because I am angry or angry.
• 12:46
  Or I don't care about them. It's because I do care about them. And I want to create beings that are able to then go into the world and come back home and love spending time with us and also go and love loving on other people. And they've been given the tools. Not only have they been given tools, but they know how to use them appropriately. And when to not use them at all. And that only comes with a training and a breeding ground. I think of like if I had spinach in my teeth and I was having lunch with a friend,
• 13:15
  And I went the whole lunch. I got in the car and I checked my rearview mirror and I saw I had spinach in my teeth. I would not feel loved by that friend. I'd be like, you let me sit there like a full the entire lunch without telling me I could have changed this one thing so easily. And I'm thinking back on all the conversation we would have had. At what point did the spinach get stuck in my tooth? Why didn't she? Does she not feel comfortable with me enough to tell me? Now...
• 13:39
  versus if she had told me, hey, Rach, you've got a spinach piece stuck in your tooth. I'd be embarrassed for a moment, but I'd be so grateful that she trusted me and wanted the best for me and was just being honest. Like, I won't be able to concentrate the rest of this conversation until we fix this. And I feel like that is parenthood. Both are hard.
• 13:57
  You choose your hard. Either you choose hard because it's hard to show up in consequence and punishment and conversation and having to explain logic. It's also hard to have to fight the battles later if you didn't do this hard up front because there's going to be bigger consequences. Life falling apart. Relationships hurt.
• 14:17
  Both are hard. So you just choose your heart. I'm like, okay, I'd rather have a moment to be like, I'm telling you this because I love you. That cannot happen again. That's not what we do in our home or our family. This is what happens when you do choose this. I hate that this is something that I have to do. It's just the only way that we are able to have a conversation here on out is if this happens first. Okay, great. And then we move forward. That's a discipline. I don't know. Yeah, discipline isn't...
• 14:44
  beating your kid i think that there's yeah there's just there's a heightened level of emotionality that goes into all this that actually gets in the way of us having a conversation about this and getting the job done it's not one or the other it's not neglect or beat it's a we can actually have a conversation they're being hard discipline while also having some of the goals met which is here's the culture of our home you're a part of it
• 15:10
  Most Christian parents feel like their homes are stuck in survival mode, rushing, reading, drifting apart. The issue isn't effort, it's the blueprint. Culture says build your family around individuals. Scripture says build a team. That's why we wrote a free course called Five Days to transform your family into a team.
• 15:30
  Each day gives you one short teaching and one simple step around mission, rhythm, and unity. It's free and takes just a few minutes a day. Start today at familyteams.com slash transform.
• 15:44
  One of the things I feel like you really well described is the discipline has to be correlated to the level of connection that the parent has with the child. So sometimes we talk about these things as if they're sort of like a blanket. These are good. These are bad. But if you have your child's heart and they know you love them and you convince them of that over and over again, then in the same way, to me, like...
• 16:12
  Very much, I like to study coaching to really understand how this whole thing works. Because a lot of people have an experience with a coach they knew didn't love them, didn't care for them, but would discipline them. And then they had an experience with a coach they knew knew them, knew loved them, knew understood where they were coming from. And then also said, hey, go run a lap, do this, do some pushups, whatever. And you just experience that moment totally differently.
• 16:35
  And it's so important to make that distinction. And it sounded like, Rachel, you were saying in your case, your dad had done that work. And how would you describe the difference between what it means to be a kind of a daughter who has that connection with her dad?
• 16:51
  Mm-hmm. I'd say we say this in our own house, like connection over correction. Yes. We have to connect them for us to have earned the right to be heard where then they trust our correction. Because you also, I feel like there are situations, and I've seen it and even been a part of it, if authority in my life where they tell me something, I'm like, I just don't respect you. I can't take your advice. There's a block and a wall.
• 17:14
  And connection and intimacy and time spent and even like small little trinket spot or letters written, all that dissolve that wall. So then when you do say something, it can be presented as, yes, I do actually care about you. I'm not doing this to micromanage or to nitpick. It's because I love you. So, yes, we always connect before we correct. And even in, I see that all growing up, my dad would take me to the golf course and then we'd have a hard conversation on the way home.
• 17:41
  Not every time, but sometimes, right? Or like we would go on a walk if he wanted just to ask me about my day. Like there was always this connection piece to it so that when I was corrected, I was angry in the moment, Jeremy. Don't get me wrong. I was also a spicy...
• 17:58
  zesty 16 year old girl. So like when I, when rubber hit the road, I didn't always receive it. Well, externally, internally though, I never questioned if you loved me. So, so I'd say like also friction doesn't always have to reflect, um,
• 18:14
  the intention. So if you feel the friction, I think as parents, I feel friction and I'm very quick to be like, I'm just kidding. Change my mind. This is too hard. They're not taking it very well. But I just think, again, confidence and consistency over getting it perfect shows them, okay, wait, actually, she does mean what she says. My dad does mean what he says. There were several times where he, oh, I had so many weird punishments. One of them was like, I had to go and pick weeds.
• 18:45
  Basically, that was one of mine. And I just was so mad. And it was so hot outside. I remember I really, I ended up getting sick later that afternoon because of how hot I had gotten. And my dad felt awful. I saw a grown man cry. He's like, I took it too far. I'm so sorry. So, like, there's also this level of...
• 19:02
  When you connect well, you're able to also see your parent as a human and be like, they also are trying their hardest in this moment. They also, this is their first time doing it. So I don't know. The whole compassion conversation comes in well. So all that to say, yeah, we say connection over correction every time. I love that.
• 19:21
  Now, you just published a book, Love Your Life Even When You Don't Like It All the Time. One of the things that I would love to just hear you process is like, yeah, how do you think about like joy? Like, how do you work through joy?
• 19:38
  These situations when things are really, really hard. It seems like most of us live in this world where circumstances will just determine how we're doing, period. And you guys went through some really, really tough circumstances as a family. And yet, talk to me about what you learned about how to find joy or how do you love your life when you don't like it?
• 20:00
  Yeah. Yeah. I think this book was a project that I needed to have existed a few years ago. They always say you write the book you needed to read. Yes. Or I just I needed to know, is there anyone that can be so for real with me about things being really tricky, whether it's through a loss of a person, a loss of a dream, going through a radical identity crisis, trying to figure out.
• 20:22
  Why does my life look so epically different in the way I thought that it would, which can oftentimes land into a very discontent spot. And so I just said, I wish that there was a very almost textbook driven book through a faith based lens that could walk me through how do I.
• 20:40
  fall in love with what God has given me to a point of contentness and joy and zeal, even when my circumstances don't change. And it landed on this book, Love Your Life, Even When You Don't Like It All The Time. I found out that joy is not a personality trait, that it's actually just a gift that we all have access to.
• 21:01
  It's also a skill that you have to get good at. It's not something that just one day appears and has gone the next and comes back the next day and has gone the next or is dependent on if your friend got married one weekend or you're going to an amusement park or you're having the worst day ever. Like it is consistent. It is available. But it's a skill, which means you have to show up to it, do things that feel unnatural, lift some weights.
• 21:22
  Try it out. Strengthen yourself in this area so that when the time does come to carry heavy things, it's familiar and something that you have already been exercising in your life. And so I go through several chapters that walk through your home, your village, your rhythms, your rest, the way that you play, all the things so that you kind of have these good practicals, frameworks.
• 21:44
  for walking through life, no matter what it's going to look like or what it has looked like, it prepares you to be able to actually love a life, even if you don't like it all the time. That's so good. I'm curious, Rachel, how would you think about like, let's say somebody just got really bad news and they're just like, I think I should just be depressed. Like this is bad. And obviously those emotions, that grief is going to like wash over them. Like how, how would you talk somebody through that?
• 22:14
  you know, hearing something disappointing or difficult, do they find joy? How do they get back to that? How do they experience that emotion without it overwhelming them? Yeah. Yeah. So there's this really cool whole principle in psychology, which is basically what you look at is what you're probably going to see most often. And I think,
• 22:37
  I give this story about how our neighbor actually has an orange Subaru. And when we first moved in, I don't think I'd ever seen an orange Subaru or noticed one in my life. But because our Andrew next door has an orange Subaru and my boys know him very well. Anytime we see one out and about, like, there's Andrew, there's Andrew. Like, that's actually not him.
• 22:54
  Um, but what's fascinating is because we have been trained to see it. We just see it more often, not because more exist. And that's the way that our brains so beautiful that God has wired our brains to do that, too, that where Lisa Turker says this, where you steer, you stare. What you're seeing is probably what you're going to see more of.
• 23:10
  And so I have to say the first thing, if one of my friends get really hard news or when I myself get really hard news, I first go back to, okay, what is actually true that will not change? Okay, it's that God is good, that I am his and that he has me in his hands. He's not going to let go of me.
• 23:25
  That starts to train my brain to start seeing things as intended rather than how my circumstances are asking them to bend. And then I just start, I honestly, this sounds so wild, Jeremy, I just start trying my hardest to see things. Some people would say that's so frivolous. That's really vain. You're not being in touch with your reality. And I'd say...
• 23:46
  It was actually the joy set before Jesus that he was able to endure hard things. He was able to endure the cross. And it is the joy set before us that we're also able to endure the cross. And then even going one step deeper, Mike, if anyone had a hall pass on being able to experience joy, it should have been Jesus himself because he knew all the things that were to come, still lived through them, and still found time to feast and dance and perform miracles for people who didn't deserve them. So if he can, we can.
• 24:15
  And I'll revisit back to this idea of like, you choose your heart. It's hard because you're staying in this self-built jail cell, or it's hard because you're doing the work that's actually going to heal your brain and your relationships and your community. So you just choose your heart. And if I had to work for anything, I'd rather work towards a life that at the end, I'm like, that's legacy. I'm ready to meet Jesus. And I want everyone to be able to say that.
• 24:41
  Me too. That's so good. Thanks, Rachel. Well, so the book is out, Love Your Life, Even When You Don't Like It All the Time. Anywhere else you would point people to that they would like more? Yeah. Yeah. The book is anywhere books are sold. And then you can also find me on the podcast world at Real Talk with Rachel Autry, which is where you can get that little snippet.
• 25:02
  of the conversation that went viral for you and I. And then I love Instagram. I love just to bring light to a space that just could use a little bit more joy. So you can find me over there. And rachelautry.com is where really all of it is stored if you just need a good landing spot. Perfect. Awesome. Thank you so much, Rachel, for jumping on here today.
• 25:23
  Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening to the Family Teams podcast. If you're enjoying this content or have learned something new, please make sure to leave a rating and review and share with a friend. To stay up to date with our events, new content and products, you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Family Teams.