Never Sever: How To Raise Kids You Actually Like
In this week’s episode of the Daron Earlewine Podcast, we continue in our new series, Parenting for a Purpose.
This week Daron and Julie discuss the importance of building a solid relationship with your children at an early age, and to be sure to never sever the ties. It doesn’t matter if you are a new parent, single parent, co-parent, or veteran parent, this episode will give you a framework to help you raise kids you actually like.
Let’s dive in!
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VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Daron:
He said, you know Daron, what’s interesting to watch is I watched these kids come up from elementary school all the way up into high school and he was like, and what I observed is some of the kids get into high school and all of a sudden they start going off the rails. And he was like, and what happens is he’s like, what I know is that when those kids were somewhere between five and eight and they became a little self-sufficient. Very yourself. Yeah. And he said what he sees is in that somewhere between five and eight, a lot of parents check out, they go on autopilot.
And then at 13, 14, 15, the parents jump back in freaking out and usually trumping and try to control through punishment and fear the bad behavior they’re seeing in their 13, 14, 15, 16 year old. And he said, the sad thing is I don’t have much to tell ’em because what I want to say is, listen, the problem is you didn’t develop a relationship from eight to 16 and now you’re showing up and you can’t play the role you want to play you. You didn’t actually build it.
Tagline:
Created on purpose and for purpose.
Daron:
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Daron Earlewine podcast with special guest Julie Earlewine. Maybe unless I kick her off the podcast of this episode.
Julie:
He is so rude. I didn’t even want to be here. Now you’re going to kick me off all of a sudden? I’m out. Hey, sky is great Up.
Daron:
Hey, welcome back. We’re talking about Parenting for a Purpose and we’re excited to do this series. Julie and I have been talking about some of these concepts for a long time, since we’ve been parents now for 19 years, which seems crazy, doesn’t it? Does it seem like we just had kids Not that long ago, yes, but now it’s been 19 years. Yes, we have a full grown adult person.
Julie:
We haveumltiple of them it feels like.
Daron:
Yeah, we do. And they keep getting bigger, which is great except makes me feel really short. We just took family pictures, side story. It doesn’t have to do anything with this episode.
Julie:
This is already going to be a long winded one. Lok, he’s already derailed.
Daron:
We took family pictures. We hadn’t taken them since the kids got over six feet tall.
Julie:
Maybe Darren (Cooper) can supplement a photo in right here so everybody can see what’s actually happening.
Daron:
That’s great. Here’s a photo that we just took as a family photos. What you’re going to notice is everyone except Knox and it’s getting real close is taller than me.
Julie:
Including me.
Daron:
You had heels on, heels on, you had heels on, which is cheating. Anyway. It’s odd. Did you really have these kids? You hold them? Oh look, they’re nine pounds. And then you just keep doing life and then all of a sudden I have to get on my tiptoes to hug my sons to not feel awkward. I feel like I’m hugging men. I am.
Julie:
I feel like this is a personal insecurity.
Daron:
It is. It is. I’m five die. Five nine. Okay. It’s not…
Julie:
Cheers to my family for making us have tall boys.
Daron:
Five nine is average height for a man, but we just have tall kids. Anyway…
Julie:
Five nine is the average height for a man?
Daron:
Yes, we should Google it, I’m sure.
Julie:
Who said that?
Daron:
Google says it.
Julie:
Can we get on with this? You already told me this is going to take a long time.
Daron:
All right. Anyway, Hey, welcome back. Parenting for a Purpose.
Julie:
This is real deal right here, guys. Let’s go.
Daron:
Anyway, talking about some concepts that we’ve tried to use in our parenting that so far we think they’ve done a good job. Kids may go off the rails at some point, but we’re at 19, almost 17 to 13. And there’s times where we’ll just look at the boys and they actually, there’s tons of times where they kind of blow me away. I’m like, wow, that was an awesome thing for a human being to do. And you’re my kid. That’s awesome. And I don’t take credit for it all the time, but then sometimes I’ve thought, I guess we must’ve done some things right along the way here.
Julie:
Most of the time I think we just got lucky.
Daron:
I don’t think, I mean maybe I don’t think we did, but as we
Julie:
Built it, this whole podcast series may be invalidated by the fact that we just got really lucky. They’re really amazing. Yes. No, I think that there’s definitely been things that we have. We came from great families. They did a few things kind of crazy. Sorry, mom and dad and then we’re doing our thing, trying to do the best we can. But I just think the people that us as our parents, but then they surround themselves with other great people and they’re not perfect though. Let’s don’t celebr right them to perfection. Sorry.
Daron:
But they’re not saying they’re perfect.
Julie:
They’re not perfect.
Daron:
They’re not perfect, but I’m pretty proud of who they are…
Julie:
and striving to be.
Daron:
And so we talk about, Hey, what are some things we can put together in a podcast series that might be helpful? This is the third episode. This episode is going to go together with an episode later that we’re going to do is kind of the two parts of it. This episode is called Never Sever, okay? And the title comes from a conversation we had with some great friends of ours, Steve and Stacy Mattingly. They’re the best that been kind of like mentors of ours. They’re a little bit more mature than us and they raised two great boys and we kind watched them raise their boys when our boys were little and they would come into our life at different times. And we were intentional to seek out people in our life, seek out some mentors that we could be around and learn from. I remember us having a conversation with them.
This would’ve been, the boys would’ve been really little. I don’t even know how young probably, and I remember Stacey, I think Stacey said it to you. She said, you know what Julie? She said, here’s one thing I want you to remember. No matter whatever the boys do, whatever you go through, they’re going to do things that you’re not going to like. They’re going to do things that need consequences and whatever else. But here’s what I want you to remember. Whatever you do, never sever the relationship with the boys. And that stood out to me a lot. And then another book that was huge in changing my entire paradigm in parenting was by Danny S was the author and the book’s called Unpunchable. And it completely reshaped the way that I saw our role in our kids’ life. That our role is not to be their punisher, but is to be their guide and their parent and to model that after the way that we’re loved by the father.
And so these two things for me really shaped a ton of this. And I’ve thought about it a ton when we get into tough situations with the boys of how are we caring for and building the relationship, not just dealing maybe with a behavior. So the high idea behind this is a framework, the understanding, and I think all of this is when we’re looking at how do we learn to parent? And it could be in a co-parenting situation, could be a single parent situation and could be a blended family where you’ve got multiple people in the mix is the goal is the same, which is to never sever the relationship that you have with the child. And all of this is based on how does God parent us? We’re his children. And so if we want to learn, how can I be a good father?
How can I be a good mother? Well, how does God love and treat me as his child and how do I actually make that be what I’m striving for? And so the concept here comes from Romans chapter eight, verses 38 through 39. I’m reading from the Living Bible. It says this for I’m convinced that nothing can ever separate us from his love. That’s really all we need. I’ll read the rest of it. But right there, I’m convinced that nothing can ever separate us from his love. And I guess the question I would have is in your parenting, if you were to be honest with your kids and say, Hey, is there anything that you could do that would separate you from my love? You want to be at the place where your kid would be like, no, I truly believe that nothing would separate me.
None of my bad behaviors, none of what I could do could ever separate our connection. And that’s the goal, but that’s probably a tough place to get the rest. Scripture says this, death can’t. Life can’t. The angels won’t. And the powers of hell itself cannot keep God’s love away. Our fears for today, our worries for tomorrow or where we are high above the sky or in the deepest ocean, nothing will ever be able to separate us from the love of God demonstrated by our Lord Jesus Christ when he died for us. And that’s Romans 8 38 through 39. And Drew, that’s something that I want our kids to experience and I think we’ve done a decent job with it of them realizing no matter what happens on your best day and on your worst day, the connection we have with you is number one, the focus isn’t just on your behavior, the focus is on our connection.
Julie:
I just keep coming back to the mattingly’s who dare mentioned at the very beginning. I do think it’s super important as you walk through and you’re learning how to be a parent, to have somebody who’s ahead of you. And just recently in my life, God sent a new friend into my life just a couple years ago who just literally her daughter. So her third child is going into her sophomore year of college. So she’s an empty nester now. And I’ve just, God sent her my way at just the right time for that season to help me have somebody to look through and walk through it. And the mattingly’s played a brilliant, significant role. And one of the things about never severing the relationship is we have boys and my best friend has girls and boys and girls, they talk about everything all the time to my best friend about everything.
And they will sit right in the middle of the kitchen and do it. And one of the things I realized with my boys is boys are so different when they’re ready to talk, you’ve got to be ready to talk. And one of the things that Stacey said to me is sometimes it’s in the car in our room at night when the lights aren’t on and we’re all just in our room, maybe laying in the bed or just whatever, they don’t have to look at you and figuring out a way to connect with them and not sever that relationship or not sever it, but connect with them. They gave us really good tools on how to build a safe relationship for boys for us, where now so many times we’d pull into the garage and it’d be dark and then all of a sudden one of ’em would start talking and I was realizing this is a safe space for them or they felt comfortable and it was just like sometimes it’s just like that with God, where all the sudden the beauty of the fact that he’s willing to just be there whenever we need him to be there.
And that’s one thing we’ve tried to do is just be there and be present just for the relationship with whatever they needed when they needed it.
Daron:
Yeah, we’re going to talk about some couple building blocks that are going to help you build the relationship, but what I want to do before we get to those building blocks is just take a look at the goal. And this was big, and this is something that, like I said, completely changed my parenting paradigm that I learned from that book from Danny Silk and some of his other podcast materials he has is we talks about that our parenting goal, if our goal is to never sever, here’s the parenting goal. Your parenting goal is love and connection to your kid that leads them to freedom. And if you look at the story of the Bible, that’s what God has done. God has said, listen, I’ll never leave you. I’ll never forsake you. If you look from the Old Testament all the way through, he’s pursuing connection with his children for the goal of setting them free.
That’s what the Bible tells us that he’s come to actually set us free to live in freedom, the freedom of his love, the freedom of the connection, the freedom of the relationship. And so looking at that, my goal with my kids is love and connection so that they can learn to live in freedom. I think the Christian kind of world that we grew up in and that if you grew up in the church, and maybe I’m just saying that’s my lived experience, this could be for you as well if you grew up outside the church. But what I saw usually as a predominant paradigm for parenting growing up was that the goal, and this is a false goal in my opinion, the goal was obedience. What do I want from a kid? I want my kid to be obedient. I want them to do what they should do and what I want them to do. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to use punishment and fear to make them obedient. And I think sometimes I don’t know about Julie, your thought is, I think when I grew up, I kind of thought that was what God was like in the old.
Julie:
Yeah. I think that we grew up in a situation where we were never told the why to the no. And that’s been something in connecting with our kids and really being relational is that we want there to be a why to the no. And then we want there to be a why to the yes. And we didn’t necessarily grow up with that. It was just a no, it was a no. And if you did the no, you’re punished. And there wasn’t a reason to the no if that makes sense. And I think that’s something that through the course of our parenting is we always wanted our no’s to matter and our yeses to matter and whichever one we gave, we wanted them to know the reason why,
Daron:
Because we wanted to build connection, relationship to lead them…
Julie:
and steward them towards freedom, which is the other part that you mentioned there.
Daron:
So I just want you as we’re going through this to think about is what paradigm do you live in with your parenting right now is your number one goal? Obedience my kids will obey me and when they don’t, they will be punished. And what I want you to realize is that every time you’re bringing the element of punishment and fear into the relationship, you’re potentially severing the relationship because you’re introducing shame and fear and disconnection, which you think about what God does. When’s the last time, and maybe you have really bad theology, I hope not, but the thought of, well, when I do things, God gets really mad and he tries to punish me.
What you see in the scriptures is God doesn’t play the role of Punisher in our life. I love the quote I’ve said multiple times by, I think his name is Ebert, but where he says, we’re not punished for our sins, we’re punished by them.
And so with our parenting, if we have a situation where our kids have stepped into sin or they stepped into disobedience, the reality is that situation is going to bring about consequences that are going to teach them something about stewarding their freedom, about managing our relationship, about our trust, caring for our hearts, all these different things. If we then come in and introduce more punishment and more fear into the situation, we now have changed our role of my role is not being here to mentor and guide you in this. Now I’ve chosen the role of, and I’ve stepped out of our relationship as your parent. Now I’m your punisher and we don’t have time to get through all of those. We’re going to have another episode to talk a little bit about that. But I just want you to take a little time before we jump in and talk about how we build some of the building blocks of the relationship of what is your parenting goal.
Would you follow this thought of I’m never going to do anything that severs the relationship with my kid or are you so strong on you will obey me and do what I tell you to do even if you don’t know why I’ve told you to do it. And if you don’t, there’s going to be punishment. And one of the things that Danny Silk says, I thought this was great, he says this, it’s easy to make obedience. It’s easy to mistake obedience for a good relationship. I do all the right things, but we’re not connected and I don’t think, I know that’s not what we want from our kids.
Julie:
No, I don’t even really, I feel like I’m sort of at a loss of words to put it, to explain it how it’s been because it’s sort of become just a natural outpouring of who we are. I don’t, I think obedience and disobedience or really, they’re really harsh extremities and extremes. So you’re either disobedient or you’re obedient and no, there’s really, most of us all live somewhere in the middle of that. And I just keep thinking to the fact that we’ve just tried to steward them towards their best self and making the best choice for them and seeing why they choose what they choose for their life, still their life. One of the things I always remind myself of is as much as a mom that wants to control them and I want to work it all out for them and I want everything to go just right because don’t get me wrong, majority of the thing I have to fight against sometimes is trying to control it to make it all just right for them, for they don’t even have to figure out obedience or disobedience.
I’ve already gone ahead of ’em and fix it all. You know what I mean? That’s a natural weakness as a mom where I’m trying to be ahead of the game, nobody be disappointed. Let’s try to avoid all the negatives, but that isn’t a reality. And I just wanted really them to be able to have freedom to steward their choices and their highs and their lows the best they can. And so we’ve not really done a ton of punishing, but we’ve done a lot of conversating and about their choices and about our choices and about what would be a good choice or maybe not as good of a choice so much. It’s just hard for me to put into words. I just feel like we’ve just, our greatest desire has to been to have a really deep relationship with them. And one of the things I’ve always said is that the day they put one of the boys in my arms, that was the day they needed me the very most.
And if you watch the transition of parenting every day, a child needs you less than they needed you the day before. And I think that’s the way God managed it for moms especially because if you had to let go of ’em when they needed you for everything, you would literally never survive because right now barely surviving with my first one leaving for college. And so I think he does that for us to then also every day that they need, you need you a little less, you become less of their parent and that you become more of their friend and there’s learning the balance. And when is the right time for those each day-to-day transition of that?
Daron:
Well, I think and if you haven’t built the relationship, once they don’t have to be around you.
They won’t be.
And once you can’t punish them and they fear you,
Julie:
They don’t need to be there. They may not Feel the need to be there.
Daron:
They don’t want to be there a lot of times. No, and we talked want that. I don’t want that. We didn’t want to be a situation where it’s be when you hear people say, I can’t wait. My kid’s 18 can’t get out of my house. I’m like, you can come back.
Julie:
I can come back whenever you want, live there.
Daron:
This is weird. But at this point, my three boys are three of my best friends and we built that relationship together. Think it
Julie:
Is. People ask me right now, how are you coping with your child going to college? That’s the top conversation piece in our life right now. Me and myself and so many of my really good friends we’re walking through for the first time here, literally when we’re recording this, it’s like we’re all walking right through it this week, some of us and me a few weeks months ago. But they keep asking me like, oh my goodness, isn’t it so hard? And the truth of the matter is what I’ve realized is that I feel like one of my best friends moved away and it’s one of my best friends that I want to see be happier than any friend that I’ve ever wanted to see happy before. So it’s a really unique thing to have that kind of relationship, but then still to be called to ask if his bug bite is infected or how many Tide pods to put in his laundry? That happened yesterday. Yesterday. How many tide pods do you put in and how long do you actually draw clothes? So it’s that mothering role that I will always play in his life, but also I feel like my best friend left. Yeah.
Daron:
Well, we’ll have another episode after this down the road here of talking a little bit more about punishment and about the goal of the connection leading to wisdom. It is weird. We talked about this. We grew up in punishment heavy homes. You’re grounded or even we’re spanked, we’re not talking about spanking whatever, but it’s like
Julie:
I did not get spanked.
Daron:
I did probably she needed it. Maybe you need a little more punishment Anyway, but we’ve talked about it. We’ll be like, when’s the last time we grounded the boys? I can’t really remember. And I think about, I want to do another episode called Four Not Against is actually I think what the episode’s going to be called, this Little Teaser. But the idea that I think for what it is, we’ve tried our best and our home with the boys have that we were for certain values, not really against behaviors. And so it kind of removed some of the realm of punishment, which I think removed the realm of fear, which then removed the realm of hiding, of lying, of blaming. I mean, this is maybe a dumb illustration, but I know the boys have listened to some music that probably as a good Christian pastor dad, I shouldn’t have let them listen to.
Julie:
Yeah, I’m fairly certain they probably should have not listened to that filth.
Daron:
Probably true. I grew up,
Julie:
I don’t like it. Maybe you should listen to Country Only,
Daron:
And I listened to crap music I shouldn’t have listened to, but the deal was I was listening to it, hiding it from my parents. Mom and dad. Don’t watch this episode, but there was a drawer in Damon’s bedroom where we hid all of our tapes of N W A and Ice Cube and DJ Quick. You didn’t know about it.
Julie:
I did not listen to those things.
Daron:
I did. Anyway, I can remember having conversations with them because here’s the option, we’re only going to listen to Christian music in this song, which is not going to be the case because that’s what I had Mike growing up. Like I said, I didn’t do it. I lied to my parents, I hid the whole thing, and I want them to listen to the best music because I want them to learn to love music and artistry and all that. And sometimes you may have an artist that uses a lot of language, but they actually have a prophetic spirit speaking against what needs to be seen in culture and art. And anyway, we’re getting deep in the weeds, okay, what I’m going to say is this. We could have said, there’s absolutely going to be no secular music in our home, and if we catch it, you’re going to be punished.
What would’ve happened is we would’ve set up a barrier in the relationship. They would’ve known why that wasn’t important, and then the whole time it would’ve been a chess match to figure out how they hide, lie, do whatever they can do to what they want to do to stay away from me because they’re afraid of my punishment. Or I can sit down and say, here’s what I’m for, I’m for that. The five greatest influences in your life are what you watch, what you listen to, what you read, who you surround yourself with and what you consume. These five things will make you who you are. And we’ve had that conversation a ton, and there’s been times I’ve had to grab their Spotify account and look at it and say, okay, let’s take a look here. What’s going to make you who you are? Is this what you want to become?
If it is, what am I going to punish you to? You don’t want to be that. I can guide you in that process. And then I think what I’ve seen, I’m not saying they don’t still mix in some stuff when I’m like, Hey, maybe not so much. But what I have seen is them coming back to a place of listening to worship music, listening to stuff that builds them up, finding things that actually and what they’ve been able to discover that for themselves of this is who I actually want to be. I’m for being the kind of person that God’s created me to be. I don’t have this long list of things that I’m against. So we’re going to do a whole episode on that. But here’s what I want to get into real quick, Jules. Some things that we have done with the motive of never severing the relationship and building the relationship.
First one is time spending a lot of time with the boys. One quick illustration. I remember when Nicole was little, there was a day a week where I had to stay home with them when you were working or something like that. And I can remember being a first time dad being young and during that time being agitated that I couldn’t go to work on that day and I had to be home and it was just stupid. I thought I had to work harder than everybody in the world, whatever. And I can remember by that time we got to still do I know, but when I got back to halfway through probably Ty’s young life in the Knoxes where I was like, oh my gosh, this goes so quick and this is such an honor that I have an opportunity to make time for them. But it was a conflict of that selfishness in that. And you’ve done an amazing job, Jules, because you’ve chosen an entire life that allows you to be flexible to be there for the boys. Talk a little bit about that.
Julie:
Well, I have, but that’s what I felt led to do. I don’t think that’s for everyone. Sure. I think that your time with your children is not, your story won’t be the same as mine. I was a predominantly stay home mom with a part-time job and it worked for us. Awesome. It was the ideal situation for our family and the way it works. There are lots of really awesome situations where the woman is working outside of the home and maybe the dad is more part-time and it’s flexible or maybe you both work, but then you’re so extremely intentional on a Saturday and Sunday that you create really tight boundaries around your family to make that time quality. There’s no right way. This is just our way and it worked for us. I don’t have any regret. I don’t have a ton of career accolades beside my name, but I have a lot of confidence and assurance in the life that I led here that I’ve led raising my boys that that’s what I was meant to do for such a time as this.
That was my story, and it is not the same for everyone. And that I want to reiterate over and over again is that you have to find the balance of time with your children that works for you, that makes you the health issue because some moms are healthier if they go to a full-time job that makes them a better mom by being outside of the home and then being in the home on the weekends and the evenings and on their days off and on vacations. So time is this something that you have to literally, I think, say to the Holy Spirit, if you’re walking with God right now, you have to say to the Holy Spirit, okay, what does this look like for me where I’m the best me when I get to be at the time with them? Because I still had to work.
I still had a part-time job because if I was there all the time every day, I wasn’t the best me because I needed a minute that I still had my own self-identity that was outside of three other little peoples at the time. And then as they got older, I’ve worked more and I work full-time now and they’re in school and I have another part-time job. So I have a job and a half right now. So my story is very different. But one thing I do know that I do not regret is that they’re things and their opportunities being present at them was my first priority, and mainly because I wanted them to know that I was their biggest fan and I still am. And it doesn’t always work that way. Life doesn’t allow you to be at absolutely everything. And there’s been plenty of things that we’ve missed, especially with three kids.
I mean, you can’t be at every amazing thing they do because you’re probably at another kid’s amazing thing they do. But time for us is just, well, first of all, it’s a thief because it’s gone really fast. But secondly, it’s just one of those things where I think when they see that the way you make it work for your family that they’re a priority, then I think that also builds a relationship of trust and safety for them where we’ve given them a space to say, we will be there. We’ll show up. It may not be both of us, it may be one of us, one of us is showing up for your sibling. But then through that, by making that kind of time priority for the other one, is they’ve also learned to respect someone else’s time and respect somebody else’s boundaries and respect someone else’s needs. So yes, I had a very flexible schedule for that. I’m forever thankful and I wouldn’t trade my story for our family for anything. But I think you have to take a look at time and say, Hmm, time’s a priority and it’s a thief. So what are we doing as a family unit to make it work best for our family unit? Yeah.
Daron:
One of the things I want to just kind of maybe segue to this one was the next thought was going to be that one of the things we’ve done is we’ve shown up and been intentional, and it looks different for everybody. I agree with you, but you got to show up. And I remember early on, one of our mentors, a guy named Peter Bagley, I remember Peter Bagley, he was a children’s pastor at the church, first church we were at. And he said, Daron, what’s interesting to watch is I watched these kids come up from elementary school all the way up into high school. And he was like, and what I observe is some of the kids get into high school and all of a sudden they start going off the rails. And he was like, and what happens is he’s like, what I know is that when those kids were somewhere between five and eight and they became a little self-sufficient, right? And if you have a five or eight year old, and if you’ve walked this, you know this. But those first five years, they were great, but they kind of suck, right? I mean, at least the first two years are pretty terrible. They do not, anyway, terrible. It’s full contact all time. Keep them alive.
Julie:
Yes. Survival. Survival of the fittest,
Daron:
Right? Then they get gifted, 5, 6, 7, you’re all of a sudden you’re like, oh, wait a second. You can poop on your own. You can eat on your own, you can put on your shoes, you can do stuff.
Julie:
Can you shower yourself?
Daron:
Yeah. And he said what he sees is somewhere between five and eight, a lot of parents check out, they go on autopilot, they sever the relationship
Julie:
Not innocently. I think that’s an innocent severing. They don’t mean to be.
Daron:
It can be. And some of it, I think maybe it’s innocent or maybe it is, you’ve kept your selfishness under wraps for five years and then you just can’t take it, right? Maybe. And you’re not looking at like we’ve talked about caught not taught growing in this and you’re not protecting the relationship and you just let it sever. And then what happens is, yeah, the kid doesn’t need you to change their diaper, but they need you to sit and spend this time, they need to talk, they need to build the relationship. And then they start making decisions that really are dangerous for the life because they don’t have anybody actually guiding him through that. And then at 13, 14, 15, the parents jump back in freaking out and usually trump it and try to control through punishment and fear the bad behavior they’re seeing in their 13, 14, 15, 16 year old.
And he said, the sad thing is I don’t have much to tell him because what I want to say is, listen, the problem is you didn’t develop a relationship from eight to 16 and now you’re showing up and you can’t play the role you want to play because you didn’t actually build it. And that I would say my encouragement, I don’t want to, we don’t get to that place, right? Plan to paint of discipline, pain of regret. We talked about that on the podcast. You don’t want the pain of regret in that I didn’t take the time, I didn’t show up when my kid was eight to 14, and now I’m living with the pain of regret because I didn’t choose the pain of discipline. I don’t have the connection, I don’t have the relationship, and I’m not sure how to regain that. Those are special years to make sure you show up and it’s craziness the time that we’re around.
But one of the quote that I got right, one of Julie’s friends came and said, I said, what do you appreciate? But they said, she is very intentional with each of your boys. Shoot, she’s even intentional with my girls. And I have learned that turd from you, Jules, that Julie, she’s very, very intentional. There are times, whether it’s because I’m an apostolic, type seven Enneagram, whatever, I can get more selfish than Julie or if there’s something fun than I want to do and we have to go, we went to 162 baseball games this year, fifty two, fifty two, a hundred fifty two, and we made sure you, me, grandma and grandpa, somebody was at basically all 152 of them. And there are many times, and we’ve been doing this for 12 years now or something, but where I’m like, I don’t want to freaking go. I want to go to the concert. I don’t want to go do the thing. But we’ve had to make those sacrifices and we’ve shown up. And I know that my dad, I can think about growing up as a kid, how many times I caught this from my dad is he was there. I look up in the stands, he was there, he was there at everything. My mom was too, but my dad was just always there. And I think there’s a huge big of a building that relationship. We’ve got to show up, we’ve got to be intentional.
Julie:
I think it’s not always about their activities. I think it’s definitely not always about their activities. I think it’s that moment when they start talking if you’re tired or if you’re hungry or if you have plans with a friend. But all of a sudden, especially if in a position where they need you and they need to talk and they need to share their feelings, especially teenagers, because teenagers, the on button can turn on at 11:37 PM and if you don’t know me, you’ll know right now that at 11:37 PM I am should have been in bed two hours ago. But it’s like if one of them is at 11:37 PM needs to have the conversation and you’re up until 2:37 AM you choose that time because it is so intentional and you gain so much. And you know what? They may not talk to you again for five days.
Not they don’t love you or not you don’t have a great relationship, but just because they’re teenagers and their need to express and communicate is unpredictable as their hormones are figuring themselves out. And so there’s been nights where it’s been 11:37 PM and I am like, okay, here we go. We got this and I’m up till 2:37 PM 2:37 AM because not necessarily my physical body and my mental health is saying go to sleep. But my mom’s self is saying, there’s no better place in the world to be right now than right here. And because of that, one of my best friends moved away. That’s why they feel that way because of those times that.
Daron:
That was going to be my next point is that we listen and I was going to say, you do this so much better than me, and I’ve tried to learn it by watching you the amount of times I’ve gone to bed. And you were like, I’m so tired. I didn’t go to bed until two 30. I’m like, what happened? You’re like, you wanted to talk and you’ve done it. And another quote from a friend of yours, she said, what I really spoke about Julie is how she has boundaries and sticks with them, which is why you have unbelievable children. I respect that without a doubt. She would fight to the ends of the earth for her boys no matter what, but make them toe the line. She is their safe space, their number one, their go-to no matter what, they’re make everything better person. She really listens and hears what it is they have to say, need or want.
And that’s so true that you do that. And it’s something that I’ve learned from you, and it is there’s moments that you’ve stayed up till two in the morning when you didn’t want to and we had a big thing. We’ve showed up for the things and the depth of a relationship. And what I love about it is then you’ve been able to come and say, Hey, this is what’s going on. Let’s talk about how can we help him deal with this? How can we help him find the wisdom of this? And then we work as a team and share all that together so we can step into whatever that is that they need. But that listening part is something that you’ve done amazing. And obviously I didn’t just notice it, but another friend did.
Julie:
I don’t know who that one is, but I’m kind of mad at him. They made me cry, which is really rude right now. I do this a lot and I am kind of sick of it. I used to never cry.
Daron:
All right, A couple months I’m going to hit real quick. Nothing things you got to do is you got to set boundaries with the, and there’s got to be some boundaries where they realize they have to respect the relationship. And this is something that we stole from Danny Silk called Fun to Be Around, which we didn’t know with Tie, we did it with Knox is setting this boundary that hey, listen, there’s a relationship here and you don’t get to be however you want and enjoy this relationship. And so one of the boundaries is you have to be fun to be around. So I can remember with Knox, he would start losing, and he does. Knox is the best, but those first couple of years were touch and go a little bit, but he’s very passionate and he would freaking start still is to just lose it.
And instead of trying to control him and do it, we would just go, uhoh looks like you have a problem. It was so much fun, we were just tired by that. Oh no, it was so fun. Then you would give him a choice. Listen buddy, we have a rule here. You have to be fun to be around so you can either run up to your room or I can carry you up there, but we’re not going to see you again until you decide to be fun to be around. And we did it often. And he would go up and it was the coolest thing. It was like the first time it worked. It was like a Jedi mind trick. I couldn’t believe it worked. But he got a chance to go up and make a decision of what can I do to control myself to respect the boundary that I have a relationship with my parents that I have a role in maintaining. And then he would show back up and he would be like, I was like, are you ready to be fun to be around? And he would be like, I’ll be fun. And it was like in this situation, he got a chance to realize there are boundaries that mom and dad have set that if you want access to this connection, you have to bring something to the table. And he learned to own his own behavior in that. And I think some of those things made a difference in it.
Julie:
I want to push in a little bit of my professional career here. I’ve worked with zero to three year olds in cognitive developmental therapy for almost 20 years. And so I have a tiny bit of professionalism I can actually tap into, especially when it comes to boundaries and intentionality. But the power of the mind is usually controlled by choice. Very rarely do any of us want to be told what to do. But when given the power of choice, we will then actually do the thing. We’re given the choice to do so true. And so I see this in zero to three year olds. So what happens is if I am working with them to make them, there’s times in their life they need an adult directed activity that needs to be adult directed. However, there’s nothing wrong with giving them two choice activities to then do the adult directed activity where they then feel they have a sense of power over what they’re doing.
So what I’ll do is these little high intensity, some of them have behavioral delays, I will give them, Hey, hey Johnny, do you want to play with the blocks? Or Johnny, do you want to play with the ball right now? And then they have to pick one. Well, both of ’em are fine with me. You’re still going to do the thing I need you to do with the blocks or with the ball. But that simple power of them feeling like they have the freedom of choice creates in them a sense of their own level of need to be in control because no one likes to be told no and told what to do, but we do not mind being given a choice. And so I found this in our parenting is that Daron and I years ago, and some of this may come from my professional career, but when you say no, your no should matter.
A no should only be for things that really, really core matter to you. And some of those are personal to Daron and I that we’ve, our boys knows if you want to have a private conversation about our nos, I’m happy to have those, but I am not going to air them on however many people watch this podcast. But we have things that are very clear nos for our home. And then we have a whole lot of yeses because we find that we keep the relationship closer when we have more yeses than when we have more no’s. And I see that in clientele when I’m having their parents interact with them, make your no’s matter, make them count. And when they matter, then there’s no risk in your yes or your no causing extreme behaviors or drama or too muchness because your no, when it means no means that must really mean you care about me, mom, because you don’t want me to do that.
So many yeses and the power of choice, it just creates a sense within your children that they are in control. This is their life. We’re stewarding them to be able to choose the best things for themselves. Someday when it’s the end of their time and they have to answer for eternity, I don’t get to stand there and make sure it’s all okay at the end of eternity when they stand there and they’re choosing their wife, I don’t get to stand there and make sure I have to steward them along the way so they choose the best possible thing for them. And so we just have tried the best we can to empower them to make the best choice for their yeses and their nos to matter in our home. And ultimately to give them the power of a sense of control was still sort of Jedi mantra controlling them. But you’re not because choice is power.
Daron:
I love it. And I think that’s the goal. Our goal is to never sever the relationship. Our goal is love and connection to steward freedom. So the sooner we can start giving freedom away, the better. So I don’t care how young, I mean, I remember when we first really started doing this with the boys, with Knox. He was so strong-willed. And the first time I tried it, we were late somewhere. I was angry. I was going to be punishing, mean, fear-based. I’m going to yell at you to scare you to put the red shoes on and then it’s going to be a power struggle and terrible
Julie:
Breakfast conversation this morning about the hair.
Daron:
I get it.
Julie:
Still happening.
Anyway, so I just tried. I was getting ready to lose it. Then I was like, no, we want to wear the red shoes or the black shoes. And he looked at me like he was in charge, right? Because I did. I just put him in charge. And human beings, we cannot control the human beings. And when you try to control a human being, you know what? You’re going to get the worst version of that human being. Trust me, corner someone and try to control them. See if they are peaceful to you, they’re not going to be, he looked at me, I had just put him back in control. Red shoes, black shoes, I don’t care. We just got to leave. He was like black shoes. And he put ’em on unbelievably quick because guess what? He was in charge and he made a decision.
I didn’t care what shoes he wore. I just wanted to get out of the house. We got out of the house and I got in the car and I was like, oh my gosh. When I empower him to make decisions and give him a situation that he can win in, it’s amazing what it is. So showing up, there was boundaries. Talk about that last one is this. You have to have fun, right? You have to have fun. Another quote came from one of Julie’s friends. Julie has fun with her kids and laughs with them. The kids want to be around her. She always makes sure to create special memories for them, whether it’s through the birthday table or a big vacation. And Julie’s great at this. I think we might do a whole episode later on just called celebration.
Julie:
No, we’re not. I only am doing one more.
Daron:
No, she’s coming back. She’s coming back for all eight.
But we do have fun with the boys and they are part of what we do. And I think one thing that, one of my greatest things is when the boys will say things like, dad, I’d actually rather hang out with you and your buddies than my friends this weekend or tonight. And obviously this is when they get older. But I do remember taking Knox golfing with me when his was five. One time he went, played 18 holes and didn’t play, but he was there. And I get Donna was like, dude, it’s really freaking fun to hang out with. Which was kind of funny. Donna suggested to don’t take five-year-olds playing golf. But it worked that day. But it is a deal where we’ve had fun. And I don’t know, I love what Janelle and Jeff De Wolf has said. I remember a couple of years ago, we were like, Hey, what’s been your favorite season of parenting? And they were like, this one. And then when we get to the next one, it’ll be that one. Because they have developed such great friendships and connections with their kids. They have fun together. It’s like it grows into that. And I think you’ve done a great job of making that happen and being intentional with it. Jules,
Julie:
Thanks.
Daron:
Is it important to have fun?
Julie:
Yes, it is.
Daron:
You’re done talking.
Julie:
No, I’m just think have talked too long and they all have to go fix dinner or something, or
Daron:
Their treadmill is done.
Julie:
I feel like this is a really long time to be looking at me on the screen.
Daron:
Well, most of ’em don’t look. Most of them. Most of ’em listen.
Julie:
I hope not. I hope that’s all.
Daron:
But this would be a great reminder that if you haven’t subscribed to the YouTube channel, please go do that.
Julie:
Oh no. Don’t do it until this series is over.
Daron:
Just do it, but don’t watch. We just really need more subscribers. It helps. If you care about this podcast, you think we’re doing anything good and you haven’t subscribed
Julie:
Just turn the screen to black screen.
Daron:
No, you’re not helping.
If you haven’t subscribed to the YouTube channel yet, please go over. Just search Daron Earlewine on YouTube and subscribe to the channel. It really, really helps. If you haven’t subscribed here on, if you listen Spotify or Apple Podcast, wherever get your podcast. Please subscribe. If you haven’t, share this episode with a friend, a neighbor, a coworker, a fellow parent, and we hope it’s helpful. So we appreciate you, love you. Thanks for downlading this episode. Remember, God’s for you not against you. He’s near you not far away. And he’s created a you on purpose and for purpose. We’ll talk to you next time on the Daron Earlewine Podcast.