Let's Chat with Will & Tony
Let's Chat with Will & Tony
SEG 3 of 3 - Parenting - The Bonds of Storytime: Enhancing Parent-Child Connections, Embracing Life Stages, and Valuing Stay-at-Home Parenting
As I sat down to read with Paxton, my youngest, I realized that our storytime was much more than just reading—it was a bridge to a stronger bond, a way to navigate the complexities of parenting with love at the forefront. This episode, joined by a renowned child psychologist, we share tender anecdotes and hard-earned wisdom on fostering deep connections with our children, striking a balance between discipline and nurturing, and guiding them through life's pivotal stages. We dissect the intricacies of child development, discuss the importance of letting kids tackle challenges, and reflect on the crucial choices parents make that sculpt a child's independence and sense of responsibility.
Shifting the lens to family dynamics, we zoom in on the transformative impact a stay-at-home parent can have during a child's early years. It's more than just a lifestyle choice; it's an investment in future happiness and lifelong familial ties. We navigate this topic with empathy for every family's unique situation while highlighting the profound influence attentive parenting can have. The episode takes a turn as we ponder the pursuit of personal fulfillment and the bittersweet nature of aging, opening up about our own transitions into our fifties and sixties. Join us for an episode that promises to not only touch your heart but also offer a treasure trove of insights on the art of parenting and embracing life's ever-changing seasons.
Common Sense Advice for Life, helping with self-awareness, family and relationships in a complex world. Now here's Will Kesley and Tony Patek. Welcome back to the show. It's called let's Chat with Will and Tony, so you got me thinking on the break. We are two committed individuals to chatting.
Speaker 2:We don't do this out of convenience. Deeply committed to random chatting, what did you think of?
Speaker 1:what was going on?
Speaker 2:You were asking the question about what do I want to give my kids? What do you want to give your kids? Man, that's a deep question, right. But I was thinking about it and at least one thing I wanted to give them a sense of their loved. I want them to know that they're loved. How do you do that? That's a million-dollar question.
Speaker 1:And that's a huge question, isn't?
Speaker 2:it, I'd have to jump in. My first thing is time, and I would say quality time. It's not just sitting around, you know, but that engagement in that time I mean I find when I come home and I'll tell you a story, my youngest son, paxton you know I had my older kids and then we get down to the last one. It's always the big joke, you know, the last one always. Yeah, you know he'll send himself.
Speaker 1:So the binky fell in the mud from back in his mouth.
Speaker 2:Well, one of the things I did early for my older kids is I read to them Almost every night I'd go in and read a book. I kind of got out of that habit for my youngest because there's a gap there at the bottom and I got out of that habit and about a year ago I was like you know what I miss that.
Speaker 2:And I think I had a lot of good connections and a lot of good stories about all these stories we read and stuff with my older kids that I hadn't had with my youngest son. So I started reading to them. So I got out of a book. I said, hey, let's read together. And so now from the last year and a half we've been reading all these books together and it's just been amazing. And you know, it's half hour every night and I read and I connect. So I think that time thing is super important.
Speaker 1:But that time thing is certainly don't have children to not do anything with your children. Please, please, don't do that to your child. Keep in mind a lot of your dysfunction you'll duplicate in your child. So you got to get. You got to get a hold of your own dysfunctions. If you've got anger issues, you need to deal with those in a healthy way before you Otherwise you will pass them on. You will pass those things on. But one of the questions comes up and it talks about time with your kids. It's like how involved is the keyword here? How involved do you want to be in your children? And I think most people say I want to give my kids everything. Yeah, and I would just caution you on that word of giving your kids everything. It's a mistake we're making a lot of in today in this society of the entitlement generation. Right, well, I'm entitled, I don't have to have heartache, I don't have to have struggles, I don't have to take second place. Mom does all my homework for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah about it, I want to be involved.
Speaker 1:I want to save my kids from pain. Tell me about that.
Speaker 2:You know, I think that I think you're really onto something, because one of the things is you know everybody like, hey, I want to work, I'm really successful, so I'm going to take away all of the pain from my kids, I'm going to do everything for them because I made a lot of money or whatever I made all these mistakes. I'm going to save them from them. Save them from them and, unfortunately, I think the key thing that we miss there is all those mistakes and all that struggle and all those stuff we went through to ultimately get us to where we are as a person. If you take those same things away from your kids, well, they don't have the growth and they end up not growing and not being able to fend for themselves and then by the time they, you know, go out of the house when they're 18 or 30, right, they fall on their face because they actually haven't had the chance to grow. You took away all of their growth opportunities.
Speaker 1:So as a parent, you have to be willing to go through the transitions of childhood, meaning that when their infants look, they are cold. I mean they are wholly dependent upon you. Yes, when you get a little older, they start to spread their wings a little bit and they got to learn right and wrong. And there are parents who don't want to teach the children wrong because that's mean. But what you're being mean to your child is to never teach them wrong, because the world will teach them. When they're wrong, it's okay. But also remember to teach them what's right. We have a tendency to give them discipline, but you sometimes forget to also give them praise. Remember we learn by pleasure and pain. That's how the brain manages learning. So they need to learn when things are not right and they need to learn when things are right. They need both, but we often don't spend the time to go that was really good, you did really well there. It's always like that's wrong. Stop that, stop that, stop that. So keep that in mind.
Speaker 1:Then, when they get a little older, they got to start making decisions and living with their consequences. And this is where it gets real dicey for some parents. They don't want the children to ever have a consequence Like you can't go to your friend's house tonight. Oh, it's important, it's their favorite friend. Stop. Sometimes it's okay. It is always okay for the child to learn consequences to poor choices. We'd like to take away consequences and so by doing so, you actually steal from them the opportunity to actually learn.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that's the key messes I have is do not take away from your kids the similar things that you had to go through to become successful human being. Now I'm not talking about. Oh, my dad beat me with the stick, so I'm going to beat my kid with the stick.
Speaker 1:I'm going to beat my kid with the witch Kid with the stick. I'll get a twitch off this. You know no.
Speaker 2:It's the general principles of like. Well, like you were talking about choice consequence, make sure they're doing it Like my kids.
Speaker 2:When they, when they run a skew of a coach or something and I say, okay, well, what happened? Rarely do I go to the coach or anything, I say, okay, well, how are you going to deal with this? How are you going to work yourself through this problem you've caused yourself into, you've behaved yourself into, and how are we going to get through that? And I help them and I'm there and I support them, but ultimately they're the ones have to do it.
Speaker 1:So when we talk about for Charlene here once in a winter time to have a child, first of all, hopefully you have a spouse in your life, a committed spouse, not a convenient relationship you need to evaluate that. Charlene Also need to evaluate what are the characteristics of both you and your spouse, and I understand that you will have challenges to how you want to raise the child and how he wants to raise the child, and you've got to find out what that commonality is. Yeah, and many times we don't have that same common. You've got to get on the same page and be united. It is more important than being right or wrong here.
Speaker 1:Couples United is still more important If you disagree, go in the other room and talk about how you're disagreeing, but don't disagree and split each other in front of the kids because one's more this, one's more that and you try to intervene. That does more harm for the child because they don't learn, they don't understand, they don't have confidence in their parents relationship and kids need to have a good relationship with their parents and it starts with the parents first having a good relationship. So evaluate your relationship Now. If you're saying, I think when you have kids, because maybe that'll get us to love each other more, no Wrong reason to have a child.
Speaker 2:Wrong reason. Wrong reason. Kids are kind of like marriage. We talk about this on getting married.
Speaker 1:You don't get married and hope that all your problems are going to go away.
Speaker 2:Marriage actually brings more problems, but the reason it's worth it is because you love each other, you're committed, and when you get through that that work, to get through those problems, you come even closer.
Speaker 1:So kids are similar. Right, it's an amazing experience, but you have to first of all become more selfless. You got to make sure your marriage is sufficient. It's very difficult raising a family as a single mom or dad, yeah, and I'd say it's very difficult on your children to have a parent, mom and dad, who are fighting all the time. Again, it's not a healthy environment Now not a reason to new or not have children. You've got to fix your issues so you can have healthy children. So I'm trying to.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think that's important that we talk about all the all time on the show about content, communicating right, get in there and talk with your spouse and say hey, here's some of the things we need to think about. How are we going to deal with the household duties, yep? How are we going to split the workload? How are we going to you know what's?
Speaker 1:your am. I going to stay home and be a mom. Yeah, we're going to have kids and daycare. These are critical decisions. You want to have a good idea, Charlene, before you jump in this boat, because they will become very difficult rubs if you don't both understand what you're going to do going forward.
Speaker 2:If I'm, if I have this assumption that my wife's going to stay home and raise the kids and she has the assumption that I'm going to have the kid have a maternity leave and then back to work, send the child to daycare Well, that's going to be a big conflict. Then if you talk about it up front and get in alignment with each other, then you know, going in, what your plan is and you can plan for the best circumstance.
Speaker 1:I'm going to ask that everybody take this. I want you to take this seriously for me, but I want you to. I'm not going to dictate this upon your life, but I want you just to hear my experience. Okay, If you're gonna have children, be a parent, Be a parent.
Speaker 1:I understand that sometimes we need to work, do everything in your power for one of you to be a parent and moms are much better at it than dads at nurturing children, particularly when they're little. Now, I grew up in an environment my dad had a massive coronary. When I was nine years old, my mom went to work, worked three jobs, my dad was at home and so dad kind of became mom. So I'm not gonna try to dictate your roles. I get that. A family is a family and you gotta make your roles work. However, when I look and this is just the evidence when you look across the table at families that made the commitment to have somebody stay home and be the parent at home, be the raise those kids, especially those early years and in the high school years, how many times did my kids come sit at the edge of my bed and wanna chat? Yeah, they needed that environment and so please consider deeply about whether you need the boat or whether you wanna raise children.
Speaker 1:If you're working to have the boat. Please give up the boat and have the children. My wife and I, early on, if we looked around our world, our family, cousins and others, and watched what worked and didn't work, there was one thing in common they had the commitment of one of them being a stay home parent. And so do everything in your power to make that commitment. So my wife and I said look, if we're gonna start this, where are you? And she said I wanna be home, I wanna be a mom, I wanna be a full-time mom, I wanna raise children. And I was so grateful for that commitment on her part. But I get not everybody can make this work and I'm not condemning anybody that feels differently. I'm just telling you, experience is very clear on this one. If something special happens when someone's committed to being at home with those kids, then let someone else raise them. Be careful of your motive, of why you're doing that. If it means you live in less of a home. Live in less of a home, it'll be worth it in the end.
Speaker 1:You have less of a car, have less of a car, cut your expenses back, do everything you can to try to make sure one's at home, and I would just tell you that when you get done with this as a parent I've been now I've got kids that all raised I can only tell you how it worked out for us. It was a huge, huge decision we made that worked out very, very well, and I've got neighbors that didn't choose that same path and I'm not gonna condemn them for that. I'm just gonna say there was one thing in common One was home helping with the children, the other one was gone at their career and I think if you ask them and I know because I've asked my neighbors this just the other day it's the hugest regret they have in their life Is that during those formidable years no one was home.
Speaker 2:I think that's, that's. I mean it's great advice. And again, no condemnation here. Everybody's got to make that choice. You got to make the choice. But I think the key there is it's. We're not talking about meeting Maslow's hierarchy of needs type of level.
Speaker 1:We're talking about hey, convenience is convenience is a nice clothes on a bigger house. Not worth it.
Speaker 2:It will not be worth it I really get and try and understand what's important to you, because it when you talk, lasting happiness. My mom used to. My mom chose to stay home with us and she used to always tell me and she said, the very best half hour of the day where I could connect with my kids was that half hour that they got home from school and they were a wide open book. We would tell her all the stuff. She could see whether we had a good day, a bad day, all this stuff and she was able to be there and help us with all that and then off off we went right, but she was she's. She used to always tell me if I would have worked, I would have never seen that and by the time I would have got home.
Speaker 1:So I wouldn't know any of that. There were a lot of divorce individuals you got to do what? You can to survive. Bless your hearts. It's a difficult place to be. Oh, our hearts go out to you. We're not there in that environment. But for for Charlene here that you're looking at having a child, make sure that marriage is sound. Make sure you got everything else in place, because it's very difficult to want to be a mom and work three jobs.
Speaker 2:Have the discussion to make sure you're on the same page. That's it.
Speaker 1:All right, it's this topic we go on. It's so deep, so please don't read into anything specifically. Look at the spirit of what we're trying to say here. In the broader picture. It's what will lead to ultimate happiness, and just be careful with it. All right, got to take a quick break. We come back. Last thing we're talking about aging. If you're over 50, just turn 50, just turn 60. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Life does really funky change on you. I don't like getting old. I can't run anymore. Yeah, a few other things. We'll be back in just a minute. Let's chat with Tony on News Talk 107.