November 21, 2024 • 11 mins
Parenting isn’t always smooth sailing, especially with a teenager in the house. In this reflective episode, Justin shares a wake-up call about his own negativity bias and how shifting his focus transformed a tricky relationship. Kylie brings balance with a reminder that kids spell love as T-I-M-E.
Whether you’re juggling the chaos of year-end or simply trying to connect better, this episode offers inspiration to help you do better tomorrow.
In this episode:
- Parenting teenagers
- Teens & screens
- Relationship bucket
- Focusing on the negative vs finding the positives in relationships
- #148 Flecks of Gold
- Intentional 1-1 time with each child
- Kids spell love T.I.M.E
Related Links:
- Building Strong Parent-Child Connections That Last
- Miss-Connection Webinar (Why Your Teenage Daughter “Hates” You, Expects the World, and Needs to Talk)
- Intentional vs. Unintentional Parenting
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Leave a voice memo here or email your questions/comments to podcasts@happyfamilies.com.au
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's the Happy Families podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
It's the podcast for the time poor parent who just
wants answers. Now.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Hello, this is doctor Justin Coulson. I'm here with my
wife and mum to our six daughters. Kylie, missus Happy
Families say Hi, Kylie. Hello, Today it's older better Tomorrow
You're so good, I'll do better. Tomorrow is the day
where we analyze the week that was. We try to
work out how we're going with this parenting business, this
(00:34):
parenting thing, and see how we can do better moving forward.
I'm going to go first today, Kylie, because mine's Oh
it's one of those ones. Yeah, it's one of those.
I love how you're mocking me already.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I'm not mocking you, right, just feel the heaviness.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Well you got stuck into me. I don't know yesterday,
the day before, maybe it was this morning. I can't remember.
I get confused on what day. Things happen a lot,
but one of our kids is just driving me up.
I'm just gonna say it's our fourteen year old. Fifth
fourteen year old, seriously, like, how many times do we
have to go through this fourteen age gap?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Once more? One after this one?
Speaker 1 (01:11):
But we're still in it with child number five, and
I've had a remembrance. I've realized this many times. You know,
when you're looking to buy a new car and you think, oh,
that's a nice car. I haven't seen those around before,
and then you start to see them everywhere. It's like
everyone has bought that car. You think, my goodness, where
were they all? I've only just discovered them because you've
really just started looking at it yourself. It's that whole
(01:33):
you find what you're looking for? Is am I saying
that the right way? Help me out here? You know,
when you spot what you spot, you see now you
find what you're looking for. And the fourteen year old's
just been annoying me ongoingly to the point where I'm
almost pre agitated. If I walk into the room and
I know she's there, I'm already annoyed before she even
(01:55):
does anything. Does that make sense? Do you ever get
that with me?
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I remained silent, and so I walked into.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
The room the other day. She hadn't done anything, but
that was kind of the issue. She hadn't done anything,
and the room was a mess, and I said, seriously,
and it's amazing how our brains work.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
They literally look for proof to validate whatever it is
we're thinking.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
And lately, something that's really been on my mind is
just how much I want our daughters to be living
a life like we had when we were kids, which
means no screens, lots of time outside, exploring, time with friends,
lots of freedom, totally different to what the world in
twenty twenty four has been. And I walked to the
room and she was on a screen, and she was
(02:45):
sitting there and it was messy. And the line that
I've actually used more times than I would like to
admit is you're just not a participant in life. I
think I've used that line maybe ten times over the
last couple of weeks. I looked at her. She met
my eyes as her eyes started to light up because
his dad, and he's in my space and maybe I'm
(03:05):
going to get a hug or maybe we're going to
have a nice interaction. I growled at her, and my
eyes went hard, and I said, you are such a
non participant in life. Look at the mess of the
room and you're sitting there on your screen, and it's
whatever time of the morning. It was like it was
well and truly time to be out of your pajamas
and getting on with things, and you're not a participant
(03:25):
in life. And then she said something snarky at me,
and the light from her eyes disappeared, and I retaliated
with something snarkier back because I'm the parent and I
know better and I'm observing this and you're arguing with
me about something that you don't know anything about. And
it kind of escalated from there, and it didn't get
any worse than that, but it was snarky, it was
backwards and fords and I just thought far out. I've
(03:47):
got a PhD in psychology, i write pairing books for
a living, and I've just gone and done this, and
you're in the room next to us. And as I
walked out of that room and walked into the office
so that I could just breathe a little bit and
distract myself and try to recalibrate, you and missus Happy
Families walked into the room and you were not Misshappy Families.
You gave it to me. Do you have any idea
what you say to these girls? Do you know what's
(04:07):
coming out of your mouth? Have you listened to how?
And you gave me the whole correction and direction versus connection,
the bucket spill, you know, the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Where I might have asked you how your bucket was looking.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Yeah, there's a relationship that you have and it's a bucket,
and the water in the bucket is the connection, and
the air in the bucket is the correction and direction.
And you quite quickly pointed out to me that there
was no water in my relationship bucket with our fort
and year old daughter, whole heap of hot air. Yeah,
and what's the point of carrying a bucket full of air?
Whether it's no point, I believe you just gave me
the doctor j business. So my older beddit tomorrow? Is
(04:39):
this what you're looking for? You find? And for whatever reason,
over the last week or so, I've had it in
my mind that this kid is not actively participating in life,
and therefore any any sceric of evidence that supports me
I feel obliged to point out to her, to highlight
(04:59):
for her, to demonstrate her inadequacies and incompetencies around it,
as if that's going to motivate her, as if making
her feel worse about things is going to make her
feel better about life or move her into a better space.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
The two most damaging words in any relationship. Always and never.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
So you should never say never always. Is that what
he's saying when we're looking.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
For proof, it's you always do this, well, you never
do that, and the damage that it does to a
relationship because you're always looking for proof to prove your point.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Well, but I didn't say you always or never. I
just said you're not participant in life. Not helpful, not helpful.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
After I had a conversation with you, I might have
had a conversation without fourteen year old.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Oh, I don't know about this.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
And she said, he always does this and he never
does that. Ah, And I just said to her, I said, well,
I've sat there and I've spoken to dad and I've
told him what needs to happen to make things better.
I said, but it goes both ways. I said, you're
giving me a big long list of all the things
he does wrong, but I think you're missing all of
the good things that exist in your relationship. She went
(06:10):
really quiet, And I think it's just it's really important
for us. Whether it's a parent child relationship, or partnered
a relationship, or even just a friendship, we can always
find something to grumble about. But we miss the richness
of relationships if that's all we see.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Yeah, as you were saying that, I remember my favorite
story of all time when it comes to parenting, and
it's not a parenting story at all. It's the one
about the young man who hears about the gold rush
and races out, gets his pans, sits down by the
river and starts panning for gold. And all he finds
is these rocks every now and again or cracker rock
open and see some gold flexing them. But he's certainly
not getting the nuggets that he's hearing about everyone else finding.
(06:47):
As he's packing up and getting ready to go home, destitute, despondent,
and looking like he's going to have to move back
in with the parents while he tries to re establish
himself in life, a wealthy prospector walks past and points
out the pile of rocks, comments on how big it is,
and when the young man scoffs and says, I came
here looking for gold and there is none, the prospector
picks up one of those rocks, cracks it open, and
(07:09):
points to the gold flex. The young man says, I
don't want gold flex, I want nuggets like you've got
in your pouch. And the prospect is wearing a pouch
bulging with gold on his waist. And the prospector opens
the top of the pouch and the young man looks
in only to see to discover that there are no
nuggets in there. It's just thousands and thousands of tiny
flecks of gold. The prospector says to the young man, son,
(07:33):
it's the steady accumulation of these flecks of gold that
has made me wealthy. In family life, it is dirty,
and it's rocky, and it's messy, and our fourteen year
olds have attitude, and sometimes they don't participate in life enough.
And the more you pointed out, the more of it
you'll see, and the more of it will come up
in your life. But what I discovered after you had
that stern talking to with me is that that kid's
(07:54):
actually a real delight. And I spent some time with her,
and it was so much fun. We laughed and we played,
and we hugged and we wrestled and we talked, and
I just saw those gold flecks. In fact, I reckon
there was a nugget or two floating down that river
of the relationship of our life, and it felt really good.
So my older bed tomorrow is really simple. Whatever you
(08:16):
look for is what you'll find. Oh that's what I
was trying to say at the start. Whatever you look
for is what you'll find. And as you look for
the gold flex, you'll find that the river of your
relationship with your children is literally teeming with them. That's
my older bed tomorrow. This is happy family. How's that
for inspiration? What's yours?
Speaker 2 (08:41):
So a couple of weeks ago, you and I attended
the charity event for Fathers of All.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Girls, Fathers of Girls, That's.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Right, and I shared the speech that I gave on
the podcast.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Yeah, and we got some gorgeous feedback. I shared it
on Facebook, like people are literally saying, I listened to
that episode and cried in my car. I needed a
content warning or a tissue warning or something. I nearly
had a crash.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
But the most important thing that came out of that
process was just this acknowledgment that our kids are desperate
for time with us. And so over the last few
weeks since that, I've been really trying hard. And the
challenge I have, as lots of parents have, is the
more children you have, the harder it is to split
yourself between each of them. We've got a married daughter
who's desperate for my time, and then we've got a
(09:29):
child who's overseas who rings us at all kinds of
crazy hours because she's desperate for our time. And then
we've got another daughter who's you know, working and trying
to kind of sort things out, and she's desperate for
our time. And then I've got these three little girls
who are at home who are desperate for my time.
And it's really hard sometimes to juggle at.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Home and you've forgot one you you're.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Desperate for my time, and it's really hard sometimes to
juggle it. But having shared those thoughts with all of
those men a few weeks back, it really just reiterated
to me that's how important it is for us to
make the effort to be intentional about that time. And
so over the last few weeks, I've really been intentional
(10:08):
about making time to go and spend with our children,
just to walk along the beach, go get an ice
cream cone, a swim in the pool when it's pouring
with rain. Just spending some one on one time with
each of our children makes such a difference to the
way they see the world. I honestly think it alters
the way they see their world when we make an
(10:31):
effort to spend time with them.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah, kids spell love t IM.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
That's me.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
That's it really simple. It's a regular reminder that we
share on the podcast, and yet it's one of those
things that you kind of can't hear it enough because
we get so caught up with so much other stuff,
especially at the.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
End of the I mean, we're coming to the end
of the year. This is Crazyville time. Everybody feels more
stretched than ever and our kids can literally be forgotten
in the process because it's just so much. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Well there's some inspiration. Kids fell love t I m E.
And you find what you're looking for. Hopefully that will
help you to have a better weekend with your kids.
Hope that you can do better tomorrow. The Happy Families
podcast is produced by Justin ruland from Bridge Media. More
information about making your family happier is available on our
social media pages, but especially at Happy families dot com,
(11:21):
dot a U
It's the Happy Families podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
It's the podcast for the time poor parent who just
wants answers. Now.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Hello, this is doctor Justin Coulson. I'm here with my
wife and mum to our six daughters. Kylie, missus Happy
Families say Hi, Kylie. Hello, Today it's older better Tomorrow
You're so good, I'll do better. Tomorrow is the day
where we analyze the week that was. We try to
work out how we're going with this parenting business, this
(00:34):
parenting thing, and see how we can do better moving forward.
I'm going to go first today, Kylie, because mine's Oh
it's one of those ones. Yeah, it's one of those.
I love how you're mocking me already.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I'm not mocking you, right, just feel the heaviness.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Well you got stuck into me. I don't know yesterday,
the day before, maybe it was this morning. I can't remember.
I get confused on what day. Things happen a lot,
but one of our kids is just driving me up.
I'm just gonna say it's our fourteen year old. Fifth
fourteen year old, seriously, like, how many times do we
have to go through this fourteen age gap?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Once more? One after this one?
Speaker 1 (01:11):
But we're still in it with child number five, and
I've had a remembrance. I've realized this many times. You know,
when you're looking to buy a new car and you think, oh,
that's a nice car. I haven't seen those around before,
and then you start to see them everywhere. It's like
everyone has bought that car. You think, my goodness, where
were they all? I've only just discovered them because you've
really just started looking at it yourself. It's that whole
(01:33):
you find what you're looking for? Is am I saying
that the right way? Help me out here? You know,
when you spot what you spot, you see now you
find what you're looking for. And the fourteen year old's
just been annoying me ongoingly to the point where I'm
almost pre agitated. If I walk into the room and
I know she's there, I'm already annoyed before she even
(01:55):
does anything. Does that make sense? Do you ever get
that with me?
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I remained silent, and so I walked into.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
The room the other day. She hadn't done anything, but
that was kind of the issue. She hadn't done anything,
and the room was a mess, and I said, seriously,
and it's amazing how our brains work.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
They literally look for proof to validate whatever it is
we're thinking.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
And lately, something that's really been on my mind is
just how much I want our daughters to be living
a life like we had when we were kids, which
means no screens, lots of time outside, exploring, time with friends,
lots of freedom, totally different to what the world in
twenty twenty four has been. And I walked to the
room and she was on a screen, and she was
(02:45):
sitting there and it was messy. And the line that
I've actually used more times than I would like to
admit is you're just not a participant in life. I
think I've used that line maybe ten times over the
last couple of weeks. I looked at her. She met
my eyes as her eyes started to light up because
his dad, and he's in my space and maybe I'm
(03:05):
going to get a hug or maybe we're going to
have a nice interaction. I growled at her, and my
eyes went hard, and I said, you are such a
non participant in life. Look at the mess of the
room and you're sitting there on your screen, and it's
whatever time of the morning. It was like it was
well and truly time to be out of your pajamas
and getting on with things, and you're not a participant
(03:25):
in life. And then she said something snarky at me,
and the light from her eyes disappeared, and I retaliated
with something snarkier back because I'm the parent and I
know better and I'm observing this and you're arguing with
me about something that you don't know anything about. And
it kind of escalated from there, and it didn't get
any worse than that, but it was snarky, it was
backwards and fords and I just thought far out. I've
(03:47):
got a PhD in psychology, i write pairing books for
a living, and I've just gone and done this, and
you're in the room next to us. And as I
walked out of that room and walked into the office
so that I could just breathe a little bit and
distract myself and try to recalibrate, you and missus Happy
Families walked into the room and you were not Misshappy Families.
You gave it to me. Do you have any idea
what you say to these girls? Do you know what's
(04:07):
coming out of your mouth? Have you listened to how?
And you gave me the whole correction and direction versus connection,
the bucket spill, you know, the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Where I might have asked you how your bucket was looking.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Yeah, there's a relationship that you have and it's a bucket,
and the water in the bucket is the connection, and
the air in the bucket is the correction and direction.
And you quite quickly pointed out to me that there
was no water in my relationship bucket with our fort
and year old daughter, whole heap of hot air. Yeah,
and what's the point of carrying a bucket full of air?
Whether it's no point, I believe you just gave me
the doctor j business. So my older beddit tomorrow? Is
(04:39):
this what you're looking for? You find? And for whatever reason,
over the last week or so, I've had it in
my mind that this kid is not actively participating in life,
and therefore any any sceric of evidence that supports me
I feel obliged to point out to her, to highlight
(04:59):
for her, to demonstrate her inadequacies and incompetencies around it,
as if that's going to motivate her, as if making
her feel worse about things is going to make her
feel better about life or move her into a better space.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
The two most damaging words in any relationship. Always and never.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
So you should never say never always. Is that what
he's saying when we're looking.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
For proof, it's you always do this, well, you never
do that, and the damage that it does to a
relationship because you're always looking for proof to prove your point.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Well, but I didn't say you always or never. I
just said you're not participant in life. Not helpful, not helpful.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
After I had a conversation with you, I might have
had a conversation without fourteen year old.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Oh, I don't know about this.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
And she said, he always does this and he never
does that. Ah, And I just said to her, I said, well,
I've sat there and I've spoken to dad and I've
told him what needs to happen to make things better.
I said, but it goes both ways. I said, you're
giving me a big long list of all the things
he does wrong, but I think you're missing all of
the good things that exist in your relationship. She went
(06:10):
really quiet, And I think it's just it's really important
for us. Whether it's a parent child relationship, or partnered
a relationship, or even just a friendship, we can always
find something to grumble about. But we miss the richness
of relationships if that's all we see.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Yeah, as you were saying that, I remember my favorite
story of all time when it comes to parenting, and
it's not a parenting story at all. It's the one
about the young man who hears about the gold rush
and races out, gets his pans, sits down by the
river and starts panning for gold. And all he finds
is these rocks every now and again or cracker rock
open and see some gold flexing them. But he's certainly
not getting the nuggets that he's hearing about everyone else finding.
(06:47):
As he's packing up and getting ready to go home, destitute, despondent,
and looking like he's going to have to move back
in with the parents while he tries to re establish
himself in life, a wealthy prospector walks past and points
out the pile of rocks, comments on how big it is,
and when the young man scoffs and says, I came
here looking for gold and there is none, the prospector
picks up one of those rocks, cracks it open, and
(07:09):
points to the gold flex. The young man says, I
don't want gold flex, I want nuggets like you've got
in your pouch. And the prospect is wearing a pouch
bulging with gold on his waist. And the prospector opens
the top of the pouch and the young man looks
in only to see to discover that there are no
nuggets in there. It's just thousands and thousands of tiny
flecks of gold. The prospector says to the young man, son,
(07:33):
it's the steady accumulation of these flecks of gold that
has made me wealthy. In family life, it is dirty,
and it's rocky, and it's messy, and our fourteen year
olds have attitude, and sometimes they don't participate in life enough.
And the more you pointed out, the more of it
you'll see, and the more of it will come up
in your life. But what I discovered after you had
that stern talking to with me is that that kid's
(07:54):
actually a real delight. And I spent some time with her,
and it was so much fun. We laughed and we played,
and we hugged and we wrestled and we talked, and
I just saw those gold flecks. In fact, I reckon
there was a nugget or two floating down that river
of the relationship of our life, and it felt really good.
So my older bed tomorrow is really simple. Whatever you
(08:16):
look for is what you'll find. Oh that's what I
was trying to say at the start. Whatever you look
for is what you'll find. And as you look for
the gold flex, you'll find that the river of your
relationship with your children is literally teeming with them. That's
my older bed tomorrow. This is happy family. How's that
for inspiration? What's yours?
Speaker 2 (08:41):
So a couple of weeks ago, you and I attended
the charity event for Fathers of All.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Girls, Fathers of Girls, That's.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Right, and I shared the speech that I gave on
the podcast.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Yeah, and we got some gorgeous feedback. I shared it
on Facebook, like people are literally saying, I listened to
that episode and cried in my car. I needed a
content warning or a tissue warning or something. I nearly
had a crash.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
But the most important thing that came out of that
process was just this acknowledgment that our kids are desperate
for time with us. And so over the last few
weeks since that, I've been really trying hard. And the
challenge I have, as lots of parents have, is the
more children you have, the harder it is to split
yourself between each of them. We've got a married daughter
who's desperate for my time, and then we've got a
(09:29):
child who's overseas who rings us at all kinds of
crazy hours because she's desperate for our time. And then
we've got another daughter who's you know, working and trying
to kind of sort things out, and she's desperate for
our time. And then I've got these three little girls
who are at home who are desperate for my time.
And it's really hard sometimes to juggle at.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Home and you've forgot one you you're.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Desperate for my time, and it's really hard sometimes to
juggle it. But having shared those thoughts with all of
those men a few weeks back, it really just reiterated
to me that's how important it is for us to
make the effort to be intentional about that time. And
so over the last few weeks, I've really been intentional
(10:08):
about making time to go and spend with our children,
just to walk along the beach, go get an ice
cream cone, a swim in the pool when it's pouring
with rain. Just spending some one on one time with
each of our children makes such a difference to the
way they see the world. I honestly think it alters
the way they see their world when we make an
(10:31):
effort to spend time with them.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah, kids spell love t IM.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
That's me.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
That's it really simple. It's a regular reminder that we
share on the podcast, and yet it's one of those
things that you kind of can't hear it enough because
we get so caught up with so much other stuff,
especially at the.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
End of the I mean, we're coming to the end
of the year. This is Crazyville time. Everybody feels more
stretched than ever and our kids can literally be forgotten
in the process because it's just so much. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Well there's some inspiration. Kids fell love t I m E.
And you find what you're looking for. Hopefully that will
help you to have a better weekend with your kids.
Hope that you can do better tomorrow. The Happy Families
podcast is produced by Justin ruland from Bridge Media. More
information about making your family happier is available on our
social media pages, but especially at Happy families dot com,
(11:21):
dot a U
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