The roles we play (or are cast) to play in our families: Patterns that were passed on to us from our parents and the patterns that we might be setting our kids up for as they grow up.

Take Aways:

* If we don’t point out these patterns to our kids, then they have a very high likelihood of repeating them.

* The role my father was made to play in his family (by default)

* The role my mother was cast in with her in-laws (my dad’s parents) as a result

* How that impacted me as a child and an adult

* How that impacted who I chose to marry (hint, I repeated the pattern)

My dad’s father did not have the awareness or the skills to address the issue with his wife

* How the pattern changed when my dad’s mother passed away (like flipping a switch)

* How this caused disagreement and discord between my mother and father

* What I want my kids to be aware of

 

Do kind kids (and adults) get taken advantage of? Perhaps, but what we have found is that being -passive- is often confused with kindness and is FAR more likely to be taken advantage of.

Take-Aways from this episode:

1: Kindness can be taken advantage of, but passivity in one’s life will be taken advantage of.

2: Passivity is often confused with kindness

3: Passivity can show up in certain areas of life and not in others; it is not black or white clear cut.

4: If you say yes to everything because you are passive and not living without a purpose, it is not really an act of kindness (if your default mode is to say “yes” to every request because you either can’t or won’t say no, it isn’t kindness, because the option to refuse didn’t exist). Kindness has to be purposeful

5: The cure for passivity in any area of life is purpose.

6: Evaluate requests or acts of kindness through the filter of your purpose and act accordingly.

7: If you are being passive, kind acts you perform without alignment with your purpose will serve to breed resentment… resentment toward the person you helped, resentment toward yourself, and resentment toward the kind act itself.

 

Several years ago, I recorded an interview with my father about a month after he was diagnosed with colon cancer. We discussed what it was like as a foreigner in the US in the 60’s, as well as his take on where kids today (including my kids) need to direct their focus in order to have a chance at success. I provide my commentary on this old interview.

Summary and Notes

* [00:01:09] How we repeat certain aspects of our parents’ parenting styles without even knowing it… in this instance why my parents did not socialize much when I was little, but they do now.

* [00:03:31] How I repeated that aspect of my parents’ behavior without realizing it… until I listened to this interview with my dad for the second time

* [00:03:46] Observations of unintended consequences of my dad’s strong self-identify as an “American.”

* [00:04:58] My observations on what my dad has to say about college for his grandkids & his work habits

* [00:10:20] Start of Interview with my dad

* [00:22:50] My dad provides an unexpected answer about assimilating to the culture at the time. This was the first time I realized this is what kept my folks (and also me) from socializing.

* [00:32:06] My summary and concluding comments on the interview, some points of agreement and disagreement, and how all this applies to children today.

 

 

My six-year-old son recently asked me to tell him a story about Christmas, specifically about the gifts I got when I was a little boy. I told him that I found it difficult to recount any gifts, not because I didn’t get any, but because with one or two exceptions, the gifts were utterly forgettable. Experiences that were given as gifts, on the other hand, produced vivid memories even decades later. In this episode, I discuss how we used to think about giving, and how we think about it now.

Summary and Notes

[00:00:50] – Lionel Train set, the annual gift tradition

[00:02:37] – Experiences vs objects for gifts

[00:06:36] – The Nerf gun vs My son’s favorite toy

[00:09:40] – Birthday party gifts, handmade… no stress

[00:13:00] – Intentionality in gift-giving

[00:18:25] – Intrinsic vs external motivations

 

Quotes from the episode:

“It was wonderful because although the experience itself was fun, the train ride in whatever, the kids are going to remember highlights from the train highlights from the hotel, but they’re going to remember being together.” [00:05:50]

“But the bottom line is that there may be a novelty to getting something new and there is value in novelty, of course. But I think that I would rather, I would rather have him focus on getting, Oh, a smaller number of quality toys. That he remembers and works with and potentially even saves as a, you know, as he grows into a young adult and then a man, versus filling our house, like a landfill filled with toys for us to trip over, and eventually either donate or give away or throw out.” [00:08:15]

“So much material stuff., it just seems like the kids are chasing the next high. It’s like. They open one thing and they can’t even look at it, and they want to know what’s next and what’s next and what’s next. And obviously eventually that ends. And it’s a huge let down because you can’t open presents from now until eternity.” [00:12:24]

“I definitely would challenge people to think about how to focus more on the experiences and if you are going to give material gifts, real intentionality behind it, like what is the kid going to get out of this. And are they going to remember it even six months from now, let alone a lifetime from now when they’re an adult.” [00:14:33]

“I want my children to understand what they are signaling to other people by wearing a specific name brand or a specific style or whatnot… And what comes along with that signaling… if they’re not aware of it (why they buy certain things), I think is the biggest danger… Granted, there can be some utility to dressing up in a certain way if your job requires that… but, at the same time, if you just go out and copy what somebody else (you admire or aspire to) is doing without thinking about that and just acquire those things because you think that by virtue of acquiring those things it will somehow imbue the qualities of someone who you aspire to be on you. Then that’s a really dangerous and slippery slope… that I once fell into” [00:19:23]

Transcript Below

How our kids will deal with peer pressure, social ostracism, and wanting to “fit in” is determined largely by how they see us dealing with these issues as parents. We recount how we were given a choice between our peer group and our kids, how we made the decision, and the consequences of our choice.

Summary and Notes

[00:01:11] – The going away party

[00:06:51] – Being ostracized used from a group

[00:10:54] – The group fractures from within

[00:15:27] – The lesson to take away

[00:17:10] – Understanding where we stand in our family

 

Quotes from the Episode:

“We prefer to take care of conflict on a personal level.” [00:05:29]

“If we roll over on this then what we are basically sending a signal that we don’t care about our children as much as we care about fitting in with your group.” [00:08:05]

“It made us realize there was more power that we had than we acknowledged.” [00:13:56]

“Understand the groups that you belong in, understand the feelings of belongingness and how that feels really good, then ask yourself what would it take to make this feeling go away.” [00:15:30]

“I think that groups and community are vital to interdependence….the important thing to know is what that group is all about and what happens to that group when it’s tested.” [00:16:19]

“It’s easy to spout platitudes and talk about family first but then to actually identify what that means and to live those values I think is extremely important and an extremely valuable lesson.” [00:17:38]

Transcript Below

What matters more, a person’s skill set, or the network of people who know about that person and their skillset?  As always, the answer is “it depends.” In this episode, I discuss Imposter syndrome and how it applies to adults (me specifically) and how this perspective might impact my children as they grow up.

Summary and Notes

[00:00:24] – Imposter Syndrome

[00:03:47] – Over-preparing/perfectionism….it’ll never be ready

[00:05:12] – Competence vs Confidence

[00:07:35] – The most important message

[00:11:24] – Conditioning in school vs the real world

[00:14:11] – Building social capital, rather than building a standalone skillset.

Quotes from the Episode:

“A lot of opportunity happens when we don’t have full information. And if we wait to have full information on something, then oftentimes that opportunity will have changed or will have entirely passed us by.” [00:02:59]

“The people who have the least competence in a subject area are, generally speaking, those who have no qualms about putting themselves out there and advertising what it is they have and making claims about what it is that they can do.” [00:05:09]

“Rather than focusing on an absolute level of skill and comparing yourself to, other people who you may never meet. Focus instead on who you can help with, the skills that you have developed.” [00:07:38]

“You have to be able to find people who find your skill valuable.” [00:08:44]

Transcript Below

Today I want to talk about one of the things that comes up for me repeatedly, and I think it’s useful for my kids to know this, and I think it’s useful for other people to understand how I’ve kind of dealt with this over the years and how I think it’s benefited me, but also how I think that it has really held me back. and that is something called imposter syndrome. Now, impostor syndrome is when. You don’t feel that you are good enough to be doing what you’re doing or you don’t feel that you are up to par with your other contemporaries in a particular field. this kind of manifested itself for me early on, I would even say probably going back into, high school where I didn’t, I was in the smart kid classes, but. I didn’t really feel like I belonged in the smart kid classes, and I realized that there’s a lot that just goes into saying the smart kid classes where I went to school, they broke you down into, the a B and C units.

And because they didn’t think that kids were smart enough to figure this out, they put all the smart kids in the C. Level classes and all of the kids who are having challenges with the educational system. We’re in the A-level classes. And so they thought that if they put the smart kids in the AA classes and the kids who are having problems in the C classes, that would unfavorably stigmatize the kids according to where they were, , kind of stratifying themselves. And they didn’t think that we were smart enough to figure that out. So just to give you kind of an idea of the, The what the learning institutions were all about when, when I was a boy, that’s the level of intellect that they thought that pretty much everybody was bringing to the game. And of course, the thing was that pretty much anybody could figure out where those kids stratified themselves in terms of not just their intellectual ability, but also their desire to be in school. I remember, there was this one kid who I went to school with who, He actually is a brilliant, brilliant kid. His mother passed away, I think maybe his freshman year of, of high school. And he actually went on to be a professor at a, at an Ivy league, university.

And in high school you would not have guessed that from just looking at his academics. he was, he was in those A classes, but he should not have been there.

In this episode of the parenting manual we discuss how conflict over screen time leads to meaningful conversations. So today’s episode is another episode featuring my wife and we are going to go through something that happened this afternoon, and we had a conflict that we resolved in real-time over text messages, which is never a desirable medium by which to resolve conflict. unfortunately, that’s what was available to us at the time.

Summary and Notes

[00:01:21] – Quitting screen time cold turkey

[00:04:15] – The correlation of Isaac’s tantrum in regards to screen time

[00:15:22] – The difference in energies between parents

[00:18:58] – Meeting frustration with frustration

[00:23:45] – Separating your feelings vs handling the situation

[00:27:33] – Behavior issues in schools: Behavior is communication

Quotes from the Episode:

“If we’re looking at the wrong, just the answer the wrong question, then we’re never going to find the right solution.” [00:10:07]

“I want to be able to have them kind of expand their boundaries and stretch and see, but then I do want to be able to reel them back in when, necessary….I want them to explore their  boundaries, not the boundaries necessarily that I set for them. [00:18:14]

“I separate what they’re doing from how that’s making me feel at the time.” [00:23:16]

“We need to be able to manage this situation regardless of what the stimulus.” [00:24:59]

Transcript Below

And oftentimes I think it’s probably better to not even. Start over text because there’s so much meaning that just is lost. But the bottom line was I got a text from my wife who was at gymnastics with my son and daughter. We did the shuffle where I took my daughter to gymnastics and then my wife met us with my son or vice versa.

And then, I got to take off and she took over at that point in time cause we were doing the shuffle. At the end of the day. And what happened was my son, normally in our house, our son does not listen to or watch any, any screen time really. for the first two and a half or three years.

we let him have an iPad that he kind of dragged around with him and his sister, had one for like the first maybe year of her life. And then, we quit cold Turkey. Like. Just, that was it. And he has not had any screen time for I think a year now. Maybe a little bit more. What is it roughly a year, roughly a year, and neither has a sister.

But what we started to do recently is I have started to watch, films on, the screen of a laptop, at a table with my son and daughter. So I’ll be there. Generally speaking, I’ll be sitting with them. There’ll be watching something and we’ll be talking about it and we’ll be going over what it is that they’re seeing.

my son, he enjoys some action type stuff. introducing him to some of the Lord of the rings and talking about how the man who originally wrote those books was in a world war one, and that is, he helps to contrast that with his grandfather who was in the second world war. But regardless.

both of us acknowledge that screen time, not particularly good for the kiddos, especially extended screen time. Now where we have some difference of opinion on this is what counts as screen time. And so what happened today? my wife obviously had a very busy day traveling around for work.

we’re doing the shuffle with the kids and I get a text from her that says. Something along the lines of it’s Isaac is, is screaming right now. , he wants me to give him a movie on my phone while we wait for his sister at gymnastics. And the text said, please, no more movies with him because it causes this conflict.

And so. I responded back and I agreed. I said, I think that we should begin limiting the screen time a little bit more.

What are the impacts of having a “favorite” child and how can we provide each kid with the parenting they need while avoiding resentment or unhealthy competition among siblings? In this episode of the parenting manual we discuss the impacts of playing favorites with your kids while avoiding resentment or unhealthy competition among siblings.

Summary and Notes

[00:00:22] – Emphasize effort over outcome

[00:02:41] – My wife’s perspective on how favorites play out in family

[00:11:31] – The impacts of obvious favoritism

[00:14:55] – How parents change their lingo and give praise

[00:25:21] – Long term effects of motivation

[00:29:51] – Setting Aspirations: the work and the journey

Quotes from the Episode

“We don’t want to waste our kids’ time and they shouldn’t have to wait for us to pass away for any wedge or division that we have placed there to go away. We want them to be close now. We want them to be close in the future. Of course, that’s always going to be their choice, but we don’t want to set it up to fail from the beginning.” [00:08:33]

“We don’t want our kids to have to go on some quest. It’s not to get something that we could give them for free.” [00:12:22]

“We celebrate the accomplishments of both kids as an aspiration for the other kid.” [00:27:18]

“The joy is in the journey and the work and not the end product.” [00:34:08]

Transcript below

Today I want to talk about how my wife and I go about not choosing favorites with our kids. So we’re going to talk about how we were raised and also what we do to make sure that we treat our children as equitably as possible. So one of the things that we have focused on is making sure that we.

Emphasize effort over outcome. So we, we praise our children for the effort that they put in the practice that they put in rather than the grade that they get or the, or the, if they, if they win or if they score the goal, we focus on how they’re showing up and hoping that, that a good outcome does arise from that rather than praising them only for when they score that goal or for when they achieve that outcome.

And so I’m going to have a little chat, with my wife right now because I think that this is going to be something that’s useful for, for our kids to hear, but it’s also useful, I think, for other people listening in. And the reason that it’s useful for, for our kids is that when we did the research or this episode, we realized that.

Neither of us really understood how our, how our grandparents were raised, how they were parented. For instance, my grandfather, I know that he was in the middle somewhere of 10 brothers and sisters, and I knew that they grew up very, very poor in the depression. And other than that, I really don’t know very much about how he was parenting other than there was not a lot of food around my, my father.

I came from a culture where the firstborn son was basically the favorite, the chosen one. And my father was, in the middle. He was the second boy, and then he had a younger sister, so he was basically in the middle and he was kind of always had to prove himself to his parents. And so I want my kids to know that history.

And then I want them to understand how we made the decision to change that pattern moving forward. So, what do you want to say about that in terms of, of, you know, like, I mean, you’ve met my grandfather. You’ve met, my parents. You met both of my grandfathers actually. , my grandmother passed away before we got married, of course.

But, and then you met my dad’s mom. What do you think? What’s your perspective on seeing how favorites played out and your family?

Well, I’m going to answer the first question about your family cause I think it’s just ...

On this episode, we discuss the nuances about kids, holiday visits, and behavior. It is the day after Black Friday here in the United States, and this is an interesting time of year, because at this time of year, we tend to go visit different family, friends, and relatives. It’s a little bit different for us because. We live across the country from where we grew up, both, both my wife and I, are just completely across the country from our folks, which means that our visits are very different from when we used to live there.

Summary and Notes

[00:01:40] – Change in behavior depending on who you are around

[00:04:56] – Children’s observation of their parents change in behavior

[00:08:33] – Upfront agreement, how everyone is expected to behave

[00:11:23] – Negotiating the expectations of behavior

[00:18:46] – Physical proximity does not equal closeness

Quotes from the Episode

“It’s hard to say that mommy or daddy behaves differently around these people because this is how we, we’re conditioned to them as we grew up and now, even though we’re adults, full-grown adults, we still act differently around this person or this person because that is the role that we have cast ourselves to play.” [00:06:15]

“Seeing that we as parents are also subject to the rules that we put forth, I think is very important for them to.” [00:10:31]

“I realized that if I wasn’t important enough to get to know, for them to get to know me, then ultimately, I was making an investment in a relationship that would only go one way. And when you give too much without gaining anything in return, then you ha you end up in debt.” [00:20:04]

“Showing an interest in someone is an investment that costs you nothing. It literally costs nothing to take an interest in a relative and a friend and a coworker in a colleague.” [00:20:50]

Transcript continues below:

And what I find is interesting is that, I moved away permanently pretty much when I was 25. And so I had a good amount of exposure to family holidays from the time I was born up until I was 25. And then for the next almost two decades at this point, the holiday season has been spent either with just my wife and kids, or maybe with some, some friends that we have over here as well, who will invite us over for their family events.

The reason that I think that this contrast is important is because what I’ve noticed is that when I was around family members, I would, my behavior would sometimes change depending on what family members I was around. So, for instance, when I went over one set of grandparents house. I found myself behaving differently than when I was over a different set of grandparents house, even though I was a fully grown adult at that time.

And the interesting point to me was that this behavior was completely, or the change in behavior between the grandparents was something that was completely invisible to me until I moved away and did the work to kind of think about that. Because it’s something that comes so naturally, I think to us that we’re not even aware of it, where it’s, it’s something that other people might see us do, but we don’t see ourselves do.

And what’s interesting is when you kind of move as a family unit around to these various holiday functions, and you’re going to visit people, especially if you. Grew up in the same area as as your spouse, then they may not see it as well. It might be invisible to them as well. Why this is important and why I want to point it out is because when, what I, what I have noticed is that when we have gone back at the holiday season or to go visit, my children’s grandparents now or so, my parents and my wife’s parents in the past.

My kids specifically, , the boy who’s older has noticed a change in behavior depending on which ...

A Thanksgiving discussion with my wife on what we are grateful for when it comes to our family and how we work together to make parenting decisions that shape our family.

Summary and Quotes

[00:01:00] – Our Thanksgiving morning

[00:02:22] – Gratitude for our kids independent play

[00:06:25] – Emphasis on physicality vs sports

[00:18:36] – Result of kids artificial limitation of movement on a daily basis

[00:28:00] – What am I grateful for

[00:32:55] – Overview of my initial hesitation to do this podcast

Quotes from the Episode:

“Play should not be dictated by adults. Play should be unstructured. The kid or kids should be making the rules, figuring out what they need.” [00:07:33]

“I think also we’re trying to instill a pure joy for moving that moving is not a chore and it’s not something to check off your, to do lists that it’s something you do because it, it’s joyful and it makes you feel good.” [00:16:55]

“If you can continue to see moving your body as the play it, it doesn’t have to feel like work. It doesn’t have to feel like something to check off and you can can consistently be plain with your own movement in your own physical capabilities.” [00:17:51]

“But because I had not developed that physicality in K through 12. It took me a lot longer to become comfortable with what my body was capable of because I had focused only on grades.  Athletics was not a focus of our household when we grew up. [00:24:19]

“if something’s more difficult, then you’re less prone to want to do it. Which makes it more of a challenge.” [00:26:36]

 

Transcript Below

Father- So this episode is going to be a little bit different because this is the first episode where you will get to meet my wife and today is Thanksgiving in the United States and we have gone through the entire day and we decided that at the end of the day would be a great opportunity to just kind of talk to each other about what we’re thankful for. We went through this with the kids already. And it was really interesting to see what our kids were thankful for. They always surprise us. And so with that, how was your day?

[mother]- I had a good day. I mean, I really appreciate the fact that we’ve made holidays, not about big giant celebrations. I suppose it helps that we’re cross country from our families, but, you know, today, I guess from the outside looking in, maybe it looked like any other day. We started the day with a family favorite activity of exercise, which is something that’s really important to us. And I hope that because it’s really important to us, our kids are seeing that it’s an important thing.

So [father] ran a 5K with the kids. The three-year-old was in the stroller, and the six-year-old was running. This was (our six-year-old’s) third 5K, which is awesome. We’re really working hard on pacing when we do a 5K run and not chasing all the other kids, but trying to go at a pace that he can run consistently and because daddy was off running, I got to go do a CrossFit workout in a park with a gym that’s brand new to town that hasn’t yet opened, but they did a free community workout and a gorgeous park. It was freezing cold, but it was sunny and the nearby mountain had snow on it and it was gorgeous. And so we were all home by like [10:30] AM and showered and pretty much spent the rest of the day in leggings doing normal, around the house things. The kids were really engrossed in their Legos and their Play-Doh independently for a long time. Both of them have relatively new buckets of those things, so they’re entertained for a long period of time, which. Is awesome because we love independent play. We love creativity, and we have very limited screen time, if any screen time in our house,