Parent Perspectives: DJ and Roque Share the Joy of Taking Risks in Life

In this episode, DJ and special guest, Rachel “Roque” Stutz (DJ’s daughter) are discussing the various types of risks that parents and children encounter, including physical, emotional, and social risks.

In the segment, they share their approaches to encouraging children to take calculated risks while balancing safety and fun and challenge the traditional definition of cowardice, arguing that it's not always about facing danger head-on and that running away from a dangerous situation can be a smart and brave decision. Tune in to hear them share the importance of standing up for one's beliefs without being aggressive or confrontational.

TIMESTAMPS:
6:03 - Roque discusses how her tenderness and sensitivity may inhibit her children's social and emotional risk-taking, but they are more comfortable allowing physical risks.
10:54 - Roque describes an incident where her daughter wanted to jump off a bridge-like structure, and how she encouraged her to try it while also being there to support her.
16:40 - Roque shares an experience of advocating for her son to go on a scary waterslide, even though they felt uncomfortable confronting the lifeguard.
25:46 - DJ emphasizes the importance of advocating for your child in a calm and respectful manner, rather than being confrontational.
32:09 - Roque stresses the importance of accepting your child's personality and not forcing them into risks they are not comfortable with, while still encouraging them.

For more information on the Imperfect Heroes podcast, visit: https://www.imperfectheroespodcast.com/

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Transcript

Children  0:00  
Imperfect Heroes podcast is a production of Little Hearts Academy, USA.

DJ Stutz  0:07  
You're listening to Imperfect Heroes - Insights Into Parenting, the perfect podcast for imperfect parents looking to find joy in their experience of raising children in an imperfect world. And I'm your host DJ Stutz.

Hey, everyone, all my heroes and heroines, thank you for coming in. And joining us again, I've got such a fun episode this week with a very special guest. She's a return guest, she was on episode 11. This is episode 160. So it's been a little bit... little bit. But it's someone I keep very much in contact with. Because she's my daughter. And this is Rachel Stutz, you'll hear me call her Roque most of the time, because she's always been Roque to me and to our family. So may hear that going back and forth a little bit. And today, we are continuing our conversation on risk. And Roque is so good at letting her kids take calculated risk. I'm always amazed and impressed with what we have what I see you doing. And in fact, one of my favorite pictures of your son Sylvan, we were up at Lake Tahoe. And you may remember this, but there's these tall rot. And I mean, they were taller than me. And I'm five, two. So they're pretty high. And Sylvan. And this was a couple of years ago. So he had to be maybe only six. And he's leaping off of this ginormous Boulder, and landing in the sand. And and even I was like, oh, you know, at first could have been even three. But we've got a picture of him mid air, and he is happy, happy. And he must have done it like 10-15 times in a row, going around and jumping off and just landing in the soft sand and you didn't miss a beat you were there to support him and encourage him.

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  2:12  
We really got probably the first time I was like,

DJ Stutz  2:19  
Yeah, I'm sure. And then Peter was there to say, Oh, let him jump. So your husband, your husband is Peter. And anyone who's listened to the show, much as her Peters name come up quite a bit, as I think he's just such a great dad. And yeah, I'm just kind of amazed at is very laid back. very analytical way of looking at things and what you know, the what, well, what could go wrong? And why worry, let's let them try new things. And so I'm always excited to see that and hear that. So anyway, I love watching you too, with the kids. So you've got two kids, a boy and a girl. So there's Sylvan. And Ingrid, who you will also hear me call ag because I am the nickname queen.

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  3:08  
Yeah, you love. I do love a good thing

DJ Stutz  3:13  
as a family thing. But yeah, anyway, nobody got their real name. No, not in our family. Absolutely, man. But before we get started, though, I just wanted to remind everybody that you can register for our parent perspectives, workshops, there once a month, they're on the fourth Thursday of every month. And if you register, so it starts at 1pm in the afternoon on mountain time. But if that time doesn't work for you, when you register for them, you also get access to all the replays of all the workshops. And this is at no cost to you. And so it's a great resource that is free. And you get to get in on conversations, you can ask questions, you can choose stories, share ideas, you meet other parents, some and often. I'm really surprised how many grandparents I get coming into these. So you get to meet with other people who are involved with kids and love and appreciate kids. And so take a chance come on in and join us. You just go to the website. And of course the link is in the show notes. It's www dot Little Hearts Academy usa.com. You just scroll down a little bit, you'll see parent perspectives. And you click on that to register. And then you'll get the link to get into the Zoom meetings and just have a great time with us. So give that a try. All right on with our topic then. So Rocky, we were talking a little bit earlier about how there are different kind of categories of taking risk, especially with kids. And so when we talk about taking risks, the first one that you think of is the physical risk, letting them do physical things like jumping off a five and a half foot Boulder and then There are emotional risks that we all take as human beings. And then there's social risks that we take. And oftentimes, we don't really think about those as risks. But as we can teach our children to be confident enough to take those risks, their lives are really enriched. And actually, they are able to enrich the lives of others through taking those risks as well. Let's talk for a little bit about the first thing that you would think of, and that is physical risks. And so your mom, and you've got your little ones, and you have a very tender heart, Miss Rachel, you

are prone to tender at times

showed growing up and with animals, and with other people. And so it's funny when I think of someone who's likely to allow their child to take the risks that your kids do, I wouldn't think of you. So it's interesting. Where do you think that came from? And how do you go about working now with that tender heart that you have?

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  6:03  
What I think about it, because I have friends that are like the same way, like, just kind of let our kids play. But I have friends that are also very, like, safe with their kids. And so when I compare myself to them, I'm like it because I'm just like, I'm just lazy, like

DJ Stutz  6:21  
I would not say that about you.

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  6:26  
I could stop it. But let's see what happens. But I feel like my tenderness, I probably inhibited more with the social and emotional risk for my kids. That's probably where I do struggle and where the tenderness or like my sensitivity plays a role, I think physical risk, I don't know, I just want my kids to have fun. And I don't want to interrupt that fun. And when I see my kids jumping off a five and a half foot Boulder, if you assess the risk, and there might be a broken bone, like they might, they could get hurt. And though you don't want your kids to break a bone. If they do, it's not like surfing. So if the risk isn't like really life threatening, or in that way, this is just how I assess it, we can handle a broken bone. Kids break bones all the time, like you see kid right past all the time. I don't want them to I don't want them to break a bone at all. I've never broken a bone, it's my worst fear. I have a very low tolerance for pain. I never want to be in pain. But at the same time, like I also like to have a lot of fun and do some scary stuff. And my kids like to as well. And so I don't want to like stop them from that. And so yeah, I'm like if the worst that can happen is a broken bone. Right? We can handle broken bone. We can handle stitches. I don't want to I'd rather not. But that's like worst case scenario. And knock on wood. We've yet have had to deal with that. So

DJ Stutz  8:04  
yeah, well, there's plenty of time. There's time.

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  8:07  
We know

DJ Stutz  8:13  
knock on wood, I never

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  8:19  
but like it's in my right. I made it this long without Yeah, anything. Yeah,

DJ Stutz  8:24  
yeah, yeah. But so some of the risks that I see your kids taking are like climbing so so then it's so good at climbing. He was even invited at eight years old to be part of a competitive climbing team, right. And when he was little, you would take him out on these BMX bike routes, or whatever they're called bike parks. I remember him even being on his like his little Strider he doesn't even have pedals.

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  8:48  
Usually like he's you know, you bring the kids on the pump tracks, but still, they wanted to great the big BMX swans with the big hills. Yeah. And

DJ Stutz  8:56  
one of the things that I noticed too, was when you were doing that your husband Peter would go with him. It was a team thing. And I think that's a huge part of it, especially when you're early on, you're not too sure of their skills, of their abilities or whatever. And so you're with them and encouraging them along the way. And they're looking at it as like, Oh mommy or daddy, would they? They're coming with me, this is so much fun, but you're thinking I'm making sure they're safe.

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  9:29  
I think that's a lot too. It's like, I like jumping off rocks and been doing that since before they were born and Peters the same way. And so I think them seeing us doing it, doing our own risk play kind of shows them how to do it. And I think also just kind of like encouraging them but not forcing them like we're not the parents who are just going to throw them in the deep end. We're not going to throw them off the bridge into the water and like that would

DJ Stutz  9:59  
be your uncle? No, I know what I'm doing, brother.

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  10:04  
We're gonna love them whether they do it or not. And right, I want them to get confidence from my competence in them. And just by encouraging them and loving them, but also like, they're not worrying about what I think if they don't do it, or they have all the space to chicken out, they have all this space to say no, because you want that in life. There's no going too far before you can turn around. You can always turn around you can always change your mind. Yeah,

DJ Stutz  10:33  
well, and in fact, I saw that manifests itself while you guys were here. So we were at a local park. We call it the Redneck waterpark. Little small town. And there's a river in so you know, we're playing in the water plane in the river. And there's like this bridge kind of thing that goes across.

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  10:54  
Yeah, there wasn't a bridge because they kept calling it a bridge when I got up there. I'm like, this isn't a bridge. It's like a water pipe that is protected by these steel beams. But the steel beams are only like a foot wide. So we got up there. Oh, it wasn't like a white bridge. Like no, you had to like shimmy on a one foot steel beam. Yes.

DJ Stutz  11:11  
Like, so Anyway, tell the story. So yeah, it was ag that first wanted to go up, right? Yeah.

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  11:18  
We were seeing my cousin's like grown adult jumping off of it. And she just wanted to go up and see. That's all she wanted to do. And I'm like, Okay, I'm thinking it's just a bridge. And so we go up there with our cousin who's from there. I asked him to help us and he comes with us. And we get up. We're like, oh, okay, we're just gonna go and look, that's all we're gonna do. We had no intentions of jumping. We just want she just wanted to see it. And so we did. And wolf was like, Are you gonna jump? Are you we jump in and like, we're not jumping? Cuz I didn't want to jump with her. On either, because it's not what I thought it was. So I was like, Okay, we're gonna head back. And then after a while, I think she saw some other kids jumping off. And so she was like, Okay, I'm ready to jump. I'm gonna jump. And I'm like, Okay, let's go. And so we get our life jackets on Sylvan sees us going, and it's like, we're going to try to jump and I looked at you, I said, they're not going to jump. We're just gonna go up there. Yeah, yeah. And so they have their life jackets on and we get on and we're shimmying across, and I have two cousins with me. older cousins that are helping us and jumping with us. And we're up there and they're nervous. And in no way did I convey that they had to jump. Right. It was worth checking it out. And they jumped. Yeah, they didn't hesitate. hardly at all. There was some nervousness. But no, they don't do it was like 20 feet high. Yeah. And it was high. I was really surprised. And they wanted to do it again. And still, then. Oh, how was it? You would always like terrifying. Yes. And that's his first word terrifying. Even when he went again, it was terrifying. Like, but was also fun. He's like, yes. And so I don't know. I'm very proud of them. Yeah,

DJ Stutz  13:07  
for sure. Well, and then that brings into so many great conversations that can happen. Sometimes being a little scared is fun. That's what we go to see scary movies. That's why we push. That's why there are people who jump out of perfectly well working airplanes for no reason, they just jump out of them. And so sometimes that exhilaration is the joy, that being scared is the joy of whole act. And another thing though, too, is you can talk to them about being brave and having courage. Because if you're not scared, you're not brave, because then it's no big deal. It's not a big deal to do something you're not afraid of. That's not being brave. But when you're really afraid to do something, and you still do it, then you're brave. And when you can convince them that they are brave. And this is my evidence that can bleed into so many other parts of their life. And so that kind of brings us to one of the other types of risk is the social risks that we all take and kids are learning to take. But it's that thing of dandy, not when someone's being bullied and understanding or asking, if you don't understand what the teacher is saying, or what someone is telling you to do. And you have to ask, what is it I'm supposed to do? I don't understand. And sometimes you have to ask more than once. Like, it's still not clear, then it's like you're embarrassed or you're worried they're gonna get frustrated with you because you don't understand or whatever. And that's a huge risk as well. And so when kids get the courage and they understand from their physical taking risks, how do we help them then transfer that confidence into social and emotional risks?

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  14:47  
Phil and I just had this conversation last week where he likes to come up with these scenarios like would you rather and it's usually to do with being in a medieval village would you rather or warrior or worker, whatever. Anyway, so he was coming up, or I forget, like what the actual scenario was. But it was kind of like, what would you do if you were having to fight this monster? Or like this really bad guy? And I was like, Oh, I probably run away. Like, no, I would fight him. And he used the word coward, because he's the meaning of a coward. And he's been using that a lot. And but then he was like, Yeah, I'd probably run away like a coward. And I was like, No, that's not what a coward does. Like if you are in a dangerous situation. And you get yourself out of that, instead of facing it. That's not cowardly. But smart. I think of cowardly as you're seeing kids being mean to another kid, and you ignore it when the brave thing would be to either confront the kids, or probably the smartest thing to do is to just befriend that kid and play with that kid to make them feel better, cowardly thing would probably be to do nothing. But it's not cowardly to run away from a dangerous situation. So if there's someone bigger than you coming after you, you don't have to fight them back.

You know, you

love this martial art.

DJ Stutz  16:11  
Yes,

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  16:12  
I take that very seriously. And so they teach a lot of self defense and martial arts. But I'm also it is not cowardly to just run away, because you need to be smart as well. And so it's interesting. We just had that conversation. And that's fun. Yeah, like he, he learned the word coward. And he thought of it as someone like running away from a fight. And I'm like, no, please run away from a fight. So we had to redefine the word, coward. Let someone who doesn't do the right. And I

DJ Stutz  16:40  
think then if you're defining coward, I think it's worth taking time to make sure we're properly defining hero, as well. There's so many false heroes that are out there. And we can question that, is that really a relic? Or what is that that we're seeing here? And I think too, I love the idea. And again, this is part of my mantra, but practicing, you know, while everything's cool and fun, and the kids are just there and to practice, oh, I'm being a bully, and I'm telling this little girl, you can pretend you're bullying. Ingrid. And what would Sylvan Do you know, and in my book, Roma's beggar, I have this scenario where there's a little girl and boys are bullying her teasing her, and Romans able to go up and just say, he says, This isn't cool. But then he doesn't bring it further. He just tells a little girl, let's go play somewhere else. You let's just go play somewhere else. We don't need I push that

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  17:35  
scenario more than like confronting the bullies. Lately, yes. Like then being confrontational, let's be what's the word? peacemaking, not confrontation? There you go. There

DJ Stutz  17:48  
you go. Yeah. And so but I think when we can practice these kinds of scenarios with our kids, and give them that almost muscle memory, in a way, if we can practice it enough so that when they do see something, then they kind of know what to do, oh, I know what to do. We've practiced this. And they can go on with it. And so those are big risks, or even just standing up for yourself against an authority person, even if there might be an adult who's being rude or awful, are you notice it like you're in public, right? And we always see rude people. It's just they're abundant. But I think most people are very kind and gentle. But we all have that moments. And so you can use that as a learning thing and say, wow, how did you feel when you saw that? And how would you handle that? If you were the cashier or the waitress or the whatever? And someone was talking to you like that? How would you manage that, using real life scenarios that they can see are happening in the world around them. And then using that to learn, there's lots of opportunities for that. Yeah.

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  18:55  
And I also think that while teaching risk taking, especially when the physical risk taking transfers into the emotional and social risk taking, like when my kids are taking a physical risk, they know if they don't go through with it, that's okay. And so, when they're put in a situation of a social risk, even if they chickened out quotations for lack of a better word, that's still okay. Because usually when you don't do it, instead of beating yourself up, maybe you'll be ready for the next time. And so we weren't ready the first time we went on the bridge to jump off, right went back and that was fine. And I was no less proud. It didn't affect my feelings and I want my kids to know that whatever decisions they make, and even if they are the right or the wrong or even in a situation like jumping off a bridge, there is no right or wrong that I understand that and that it's okay. It's okay because I am the first one to not take a social risk or And just what was it two days ago we were at the waterpark here in Reno. And Sylvan is finally tall enough to go on all the rides. When I say tall enough like he is

DJ Stutz  20:14  
within a millimeter, just

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  20:15  
he is getting checked every single slide. He is. But he wants to go on all of them. He wants one. All right. And, and he has been he's been going on all the rides. But there is the big scary one, like the scariest one where it's just like a straight drop of the Viper. And that one's a serious slide. He is tall enough. So I send them up. I sent him and his friends up. He was with two other girls and one is tall. One is obviously tall enough. They're all the same age, but one is really tall. And then, so then and then Ava, you know, Ava, she's, Oh, yeah. The same age, same sizes. So they're both they're both shorty. And so they're up there and we're down want me in the moms were down watching and Maggie the tall one goes down, no problem. But then we see Ava trying to go the lifeguards talking to her and then she starts heading down the stairs. And then Sylvan gets started to go. Lifeguards talking to him. And then he starts coming down the stairs. I'm like, really, they're gonna send them down like He's tall. They're tall. Yeah. And so he comes down and you could see somebody's like starting to well up. And he's really disappointed. They didn't let them go down the slide. And so I measured him again, because they have the sign at the bottom of this slide. He's for sure tall enough. He's right there. Just a little bit above the line. So it's like, Okay, let's go up. Like, I'll go, I'll go with you. And so I'm about to go down the Viper micelle. But I talked to the lifeguard, I'm like, I need to make sure you're gonna let him go down. Because we did measure him. He is tall enough. And so I showed I put him up against it and like measured it. And the lifeguards, like I'm sorry, he just looked, he just looked too short to go. And I'm like, That's okay. And so they let him go down. So then I were both taking risks. I know and he was taking the risk going down this scary slide. And me and I'm telling my friends because my friends no, this this would this would not even be a blip on my radar. But confronting the lifeguard were we were both so nice to each other. But to say oh my gosh, thanks. Thank you so much. And then like for half hour after that, like I was so glad and I was really proud of myself. I advocated for my son. Yes. I'm so scared for having to advocate person and that this is where I need practice and work because even the half hour after that it's uncomfortable. And

DJ Stutz  22:48  
that's still rocking out all the

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  22:50  
Vipers. Just don't let me confront somebody please. I will jump off all the cliffs. Just please don't let me

DJ Stutz  23:00  
know where you got that from? I'm just letting you know. It wasn't me. Your dad is. Yeah.

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  23:11  
So I got to show Sylvan because it really bothered him. And you know how he can like when he's in situations was getting to was getting pretty. Yeah, it was getting so wet. And then like he was so happy. He was so proud of itself. And I wish I could have been so happy. Barely talking to a lifeguard, a teenager, but because they're a lifeguard I put them in a position of authority. Yes,

DJ Stutz  23:38  
yes. But here's the thing, Rocky, you showed him how to do it without being a turd. You know, when you showed him how to do is just going up calmly talking, you had your plan. You knew you were in the right. And I think that when you come and confront someone who is I've made an error in judgment, and but instead of getting mad at them and being a jerk yourself, there are ways to do it are truly Peacemaker types of managing it. And yet, you're still taking that risk, you're still standing up for yourself. That's one of the things that I really think about, like even with parenting. And when we talk about enforcing the boundaries, our family, that boundaries that we have, what are the values that we hold dear, right? We don't need to be like, No, you can't do that. Or why are you but just say, No, this isn't what we do. And we have other things that we can do. You can choose from that. This is our boundary, but you don't need to scream and yell and be a jerk about it right with your kids. Which sometimes we feel like oh, we have to be really firm and stuff when we're enforcing a boundary. That's a lesson I had to learn. But just to say, yeah, no, this isn't us. This isn't what we're doing. But I have three other things you can choose from that will work and if you choose none of them is, that's fine. I'll be really interested in seeing what you do choose that stays in our boundary. But we're not going here, or Oh, I see you need to cry about that. That's fine. Do you want me to sit with you while you're crying? Do you want to go somewhere and cry alone? We're still not doing that though. But I understand you're disappointed. So if you approach it in, in that type of an idea, or that type of feeling, you're still advocating, you're still standing up for yourself as a parent, your child, or you're teaching your child how to do it, but you're teaching them how to do it without demeaning another person and trying to show that you're in charge of someone that you're not in charge of. Yeah, so good job kiddo.

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  25:46  
About like, having to advocate for my kids. It just makes me so nervous. I know.

DJ Stutz  25:51  
I know. And Peter's really good at staying cool. I've never seen Peter get mad. I've seen him

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  25:57  
get mad once. And the level of Mad was, I was like, Oh, this is Peter mad. But it was still like at such a low level. I'm like, okay. Yeah, it was like while we were dating. Remember that? Yeah, that's the last time I saw him. He was getting swindled by a car rental company, and was not having it. And still kept his cool, but I could tell he was really angry. And it's still the angriest.

DJ Stutz  26:28  
Wow. But I remember you telling me too, that that was one of the instances when you thought, oh, maybe he's more than just okay, well, we're actually about at our time. And I didn't really get to have a talk about the emotional risks if we want to hit that really quickly. And that's the risk of daring to care about someone daring to care. That's a huge risk, caring about a friend, even a pet, right. And there are losses that we know are going to happen when you care about someone something and allowing yourself those emotions. So I know that it's been I guess, has it been a year since your dog passed and skirty passed. So and I know that that was very hard on you. I know that was fair to say.

But I think like allowing the kids though, to see that and work through that. And then now you've got creature or your cat

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  27:43  
I'm petting right now.

DJ Stutz  27:44  
So whom you're petting right now. And so but I think teaching our kids that emotional risks, they do come with loss. And they do come with disappointment. But we still take those risks. We take them smartly. Okay, I'm calculating, I'm using my brain, I'm paying attention to what's going on around me. But allowing yourself to take those emotional risks. And yeah. And so I was able to talk to you about that.

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  28:16  
Well, when we lost Gertie, she was old, it was expecting, you know, it was her time. And Peter, you know, talking about getting another dog, we wound up with a cat, but whatever. We wound up with a furry creature. It was so sad. And it was he had never gone through anything like that before. And it was like really sad and hard. And he was just like, why would you get another dog when you have to go through that again? Yeah. And again, like, it wasn't his dog. She was my dog. And so 100 times Saturday for me. And it was really sad for our kids. But talking about Gertie, it was like, It's really sad that we lost her, but what we got from her was just so much more. And that's, you know, the same with like friendships, and you know, friendships come and they stay. And it doesn't have to be death for someone to leave your life. Right, but also just to be so whenever we come visit you we stay at a hotel with a pool on the way in. And granted,

DJ Stutz  29:20  
you split the trip into two places, we split the trip, and

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  29:23  
we take two days to get there. We stay at a hotel halfway. And there's always a pool. And every single time there is also at least another kid at the pool are not the only genius parents here. And Sylvans always really excited to make a new friend. And so talking to him and like yeah, you're you're really good at making friends and and then Ingrid would talk about like, how sad it is that they don't get to see those friends again. And it's like, yeah, that is sad. And Ingrid was kind of saying like, I don't want to be friends with him. So I'm not going to stay with him. And it's like, yeah, but it makes that time in the pool so much better. That friend isn't meant to be your friend forever. But that friend is meant to be your friend for that time and to make that time of your life a lot better. And so Ingrid was kind of having the same mindset as Peter, why make the friend Why have the dog when there's going to be that loss of when we leave the hotel and never see them again? Yeah, but it's like, no, you're gonna learn stuff from that friend, maybe a new game. Maybe I don't know. And you know, playing by the by yourself in the polls boring. Make a friend so you can have fun in the pool. And just appreciate them for the time that they have. And there's a bully episode about that. That's perfect. Oh, really? is the best. There is an episode and so I referenced this episode. And I remember like remember blues friend, John Luke, and they were camping. And oh,

DJ Stutz  30:49  
you saw that when I was with your kids? Yeah,

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  30:51  
I love that episode. And then like they're camping, but then John, Luke's family leaves. And Louise really sad. And the moms like, you know, people are coming into our lives for a reason. And maybe you'll see him again, maybe you won't, but just be really grateful. Like, Aren't you grateful for the time you did get to spend with them? So yeah, so far in that. So final rescue? You're talking about?

DJ Stutz  31:15  
That's exactly it. That's exactly it. Yeah. Allowing yourself that opening yourself up to that, and to other people and things. So I love it. Well, Rocky, I know. I know. We'll talk more about our time has come down. And

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  31:33  
so anything that I wanted, yes, I say one more thing. Yes. With all this risk taking and stuff. And for some reason, I have these kids that really like to play hard and take risks. But some kids aren't going to be that way. And so I would just say just like accept your kids personality. And just always encourage them and always love them at whatever level they're

DJ Stutz  31:55  
at. Yeah, and don't force them into something they really don't feel

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  31:59  
like to have your kid feel that you're disappointed in them. Because they don't want to write exactly, or they don't want to put their face in the water or meet them and love them where they're at.

DJ Stutz  32:09  
Right? Well, and then sometimes if you do that you're devaluing their ability to feel like I know what's best for

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  32:15  
me. You know, can you imagine being scared to put your face in the water, and you fight like my kids came out of the womb loving water. So putting their face in the water is not a big deal. But I have nieces and nephews who do who struggle with that. And when they finally do, it's like, yes. And that was braver than my kids putting their face in the water absent. So just kind of meeting them at where they're at and seeing like how brave that is. But also when they don't put their face in the water. They are still loved and you're not disappointed in them. Yeah. And then you don't want guess hits making decisions and like putting themselves at risk to please you.

DJ Stutz  32:55  
Because that'll transfer into friends later on. Yeah, I feel like I have to please my friends because I had to please my parents and, and to, if they're things that they have to take hours, days, weeks, even months, to be able to overcome and to do it once they accomplish it. The satisfaction and the exhilaration of that success is all the more great. So yeah, absolutely. Great point. Rocky, thank you so much for encouraging

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  33:24  
them to do the risky thing, but also encourage them when they are able to like say No, I don't want to do that. And be like, Okay, I know there's nothing wrong with that.

DJ Stutz  33:35  
There's a we can always try it at another time. Maybe when you're older. I love you. I

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  33:39  
can understand why that's scary. And I love you.

DJ Stutz  33:43  
Yeah, exactly. I love it. Such a good little mommy. Love you too. All right, Rocky, I always ask my guests that same question at the end. How would you describe a successful parent? For

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  33:58  
me, it's important to know that my kids know that I love them no matter what. Whether they take the risk or not. It does not change my opinion of them.

DJ Stutz  34:07  
Yeah, whether they get the A or the C doesn't matter. My love for you is the same or the D or the F Yeah, my love and I liked them and I

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  34:16  
love them. And you know, they didn't ask to be here. So

DJ Stutz  34:23  
watch out. They may sue later on. She brought me into this world and never got my permission.

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  34:33  
No consent and they had no choice. No choice.

DJ Stutz  34:36  
I forced you. Yes, yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. So everyone just remember if you want a lot of great resources or want to join us for like conversations much like this and and having fun with the Parent Perspective Workshops. Just remember to go to the website www.littleheartsacademyusa.com and you're gonna be surprised at all the fun things that are there. And you can always catch me on Facebook and Instagram Imperfect Heroes podcast, and we can always catch each other there. Roque, thank you again so much. I loved having you. I know in 160 episodes, this is just our second one. We should do this more often, but I don't know maybe you and maybe we're not nearly as it is a big risk for you. Social. Well, and maybe we're not as funny and entertaining as we think we are do.

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  35:37  
Oh, no, definitely not. No one's laughing with us.

DJ Stutz  35:42  
I thought there's one or two. We're entertaining Darnit. Everyone, thank you again for joining us and until next time, let's find joy in parenting.

Rachel "Roque" Stutz  35:54  
Bye bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai