May 19, 2025 • 18 mins
In today’s Tricky Questions episode, Justin and Kylie answer Kim’s heartfelt question: How do we raise young adult males and stay connected when we don’t agree with their choices? Whether your son is 16 or 26, this episode is full of practical, compassionate advice about letting go of control, nurturing connection, and guiding your son’s journey into manhood without damaging the relationship.
KEY POINTS:
- Independence is the goal. Young men need to pull away to become their own person. This is healthy and expected development—not defiance.
- Connection > Control. Every attempt to correct or direct your young adult without enough relational “water in the bucket” weakens your influence. Prioritise staying close.
- Rites of passage matter. Boys don’t just “become men” by aging—they seek experiences to prove themselves. Without intentional guidance, they’ll create risky alternatives (like Schoolies, binge drinking, etc.).
- Defer respectfully. As children grow, parents should move from cocooning → reasoned cocooning → pre-arming → reasoned deference → full deference.
- Ask for consent to influence. If you want to share advice, first ask: “Are you open to hearing some ideas?” If the answer is no, focus on rebuilding connection.
- Your presence matters more than your opinion. The way you show up—without judgement, with genuine interest—determines whether your young adult wants to stay close or push away.
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:
“If our relationship is a bucket, connection is the water. Correction and direction? That’s just air. And no one wants to carry an empty bucket.”
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
- Happy Families School Membership: A resource hub for schools and parents seeking connection-based parenting support.
- Justin’s upcoming book on raising boys and young men (sign up now to hear all the details!)
- More on rites of passage from Dr Arne Rubinstein in the Bringing Up Boys Summit
ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS:
- Step back from control. Accept that your child’s job is to grow away from you. Your job? Stay close enough that they still want to come back.
- Check your relationship “bucket.” Before correcting or advising, ask: Is there enough connection here for this to be received well?
- Use the deference ladder.
- Ages 0–7: Cocoon
- 8–13: Reasoned cocooning
- 13–15: Pre-arming
- 15–17: Reasoned deference
- 18+: Full deference with permission to advise
- Build trust by asking permission. Instead of jumping in with opinions, say: “Would you be open to hearing a thought I have?”
- Let them grow. Sometimes, encouraging your child to move out or take more responsibility is the healthiest path forward—even if it’s inconve
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Tricky questions are some of my favorites. Hello, welcome to
the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast where we give
your real parenting solutions. Every day on Australia's most downloaded
parenting podcasts. We adjustin and Kylie course and every Tuesday
on the pod we answer your tricky questions. You can
jump onto our website and scroll down to the podcast bit,
click the record button and tell us what it is
(00:26):
that you're struggling with. We love your tricky questions about
family stuff, relationship, parenting, children's screens, well being. Whatever it
is that you want to ask us, we'll answer it.
We do that every Tuesday. If you'd like to submit
a tricky question another way, we will accept them via
podcasts at Happy families dot com dot au. That's what
we've got today, Kylie, missus Happy Families. This one comes
(00:49):
from Kim. Do you have any tips on raising young
adult males maintaining connections and communication, especially when you don't
always agree on choices and actions.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
She must have got winged of a book that might
be coming out.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
I see this was not a setup. I just want
to be really clear. I'm not trying the book still
A while away like, we're not trying to. You can
pre order now at happy families dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Do you.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
I'm just letting you know. But so you can't even
pre order, you can register your interests. But no, this
was not a plant. This was a legit email that
came through.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
So I guess I'm just going to let you take
the lead on this. I'm interested to hear what your
insights are. Considering we are parents of six girls.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Okay, let's dive into it. I have a couple of
ideas that I think are going to be really useful.
Don't have any idea how old this young adult male is,
but the word adult makes me think eighteen plus. I'm
going to pull the age down to sixteen plus because
many people who are listening to this pod have got
teenage boys and they are They're frothing for independence. They're
starting to say, I want to be my own man,
(01:51):
I want to step into my I want to make
my own decisions. So the first thing that I want
to really really have a home is that this is
what's supposed to happen. Our children, in order to differentiate
from us, will work really hard to make decisions on
their own and the easiest way to say I'm an individual,
(02:13):
I'm not like you, I'm making my own choices is
literally to do things that their parents might always agree about,
so that the comment from Kim, especially when you don't
always agree on choices and actions, this is in many cases,
this is a sort of a way that a teenage
boy will plant his flag and say, my life making
(02:34):
my choices.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
As I'm listening to all I can think about is
in this situation when we think about our children, is
it better to be right or is it better to
maintain a relationship with your child? Too often we come
in where gung ho, we're frustrated, we're angry, we read
them the Riot Act, we tell them all the reasons
why what they're doing is wrong, and it severs our
(02:58):
relationship with them. But if we recognize that in this instance,
we're talking about a young adult, we're talking about someone
who's actually at a point where they can start making
decisions for themselves, and they're going to make keeps that
go against what you would hope for them. But the
reality is it's not a defining moment.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
You can come back from pretty much anything. I mean,
not totally completely everything, but pretty much anything, you can
come back from it. When I think about what I
was like as a young man, when I think about
the young men that I've spoken to for my book
that is coming out soon about raising boys and young men,
the central thing that I see here is that as parents,
we want to control. And if our relationship is a bucket,
(03:43):
I've used this metaphor so many times. If our relationships
a bucket, and the water in the bucket is connection,
the air is the control, right, it's the correction and direction.
And anyone who walks around with an empty bucket that
is a bucket full of air, a bucket full of
correction and direction. Pretty soon they just put the bucket down.
They walk away from the relationship. Right, no point carrying
(04:04):
an empty bucket. You only want a bucket if it's
full of water. You want the good stuff, so you
can use that water for the things that you need
in life. So when I hear Kim's question, what I
really want to focus on is connection, connection, connection, And
that's really the I guess the central part of what
her question is, how do I maintain connection and communication?
(04:24):
You maintain connection and communication by stepping away from control,
by stepping away from agendas exactly the correction and direction.
What are you living your life like that? For if
every time, let's say he's moved out, or maybe he's
living downstairs in the spare room and he's got his
own n swite and the rumpus room areas kind of
become his or whatever it is, every time he comes
(04:46):
home and sits at the dinner table and sees you,
if the conversation is what are you doing with your
life and why are you doing that? And you know
you've got that bill and if you don't pay it,
this is going to happen. If all we're doing is
having those conversations with our kids, pretty soon they stopped
talking to us. The second point that I want to
make really sort of leverages or sits on top of that. Recently,
(05:10):
I had a chat with my mom. I haven't even
shared this with you, So my mom has recently had
a birthday. I was chatting with her about her newfound
additional year of life and how it feels to be
getting older, and I commented that I really enjoy talking
with her, and sometimes she drives me crazy like all parents,
and sometimes I probably drive her crazy like all children.
(05:32):
But I just said Mom. I love catching up with you.
I love calling you. I love that I can pick
up the phone and ring you. I'm so glad that
you're still here and we get to have these conversations
like it's really it's really delightful that you're in my
life and that you're in my life the way that
you are.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
But you haven't always felt like that.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
No, I haven't. It's been a decades long process to
get to that point.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
But the one thing that your mom has always done
is she's accepted those bits of however small they've been,
and she has continued to strive for connection even when
it's been tricky.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
That's almost almost exactly what I was going to say.
As I was talking to her, I made this comment.
I said, it's just occurred to me. I really like
spending time with you. In fact, I love spending time
with you and Dad because you love spending time with us.
You make the effort, You make it so that there
is no judgment. I'm living my life the way I
want to live it. I really like my life, and
(06:29):
I know that you're pretty generally happy with how I'm
living my life. But I still do things that annoy you.
But you don't let that get in the way of
our relationship. Your love for me and your desire for
this relationship to flourish is far greater than any of
those ruffling of feathers that can happen from time to
time when I do something that you don't like, or
say something that you don't like, or I decided to
(06:49):
spend money on something that you don't think I should
be spending money on. I mean, that still happens. I'm
turning fifty this year and she still gets franky about
that stuff. And I think what I really want to
emphasize for Kim and any pair who's raising kids in
their teens and in their young adult years, is that
if you can demonstrate to your kids that you love
spending time with them, then they will love spending time
(07:11):
with you. That's not a very sciencey answer, but if
you want to keep that connection and that communication open,
I mean, that's what connection.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Is, right.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Connection is feeling seen and heard and valued. And the
one thing that my parents have consistently done exceptionally well
for all of their many faults, and they have them,
is that when we're with them, we feel like we matter.
They make the effort to demonstrate to prove consistently you
guys matter, and we're willing to travel into state, or
(07:41):
we're willing to do this or this or this will
cancel our plans, will do these things to make sure
you know that you matter in our lives. You're a
priority to us. There's always water going into that relationship bucket.
All right after the break. Two more complicated ideas for
when things get tricky. Okay, so you're raising a young
(08:06):
adult boy. I mean, the same principles apply for a
young adult girl as well. Rituals and rights of passage.
They just don't exist today like they did decades and
centuries ago. And this is a real challenge because every boy,
every boy has to prove that he's a man. Masculinity
is something that is both learned and earned, and this
(08:28):
is something that I really focus on in my upcoming book.
You can watch others and learn about masculinity, but you
actually then have to go out and earn it. That's
something that's quite different to womanhood. So girls grow up
and they are accepted as women once they are mature,
once they reach a certain age, once they start to
live their lives as young adult females. But for men,
(08:51):
there's this thing where your masculinity has to be earned,
it has to be proven. It's precarious, it can be
taken away. So quite often what you do is you
find yourself heads with a young man because he's constantly
in prove it mode and he's not going out and
slaying a lion or sticking his hand into a mitten
full of fire ants or being circumcised. He's not going
(09:12):
through those things as a young adult to prove his masculinity.
What he's doing instead is he's driving his car too fast,
or he's going on too many dates and maybe causing
some emotional distress for the people in his orbit, or
he's doing whatever else. It is drinking too much, doing
all these things that as a parent, you're looking at
(09:33):
him going, hey, buddy, this is not smart. You're not
making safe, healthy decisions. What's going on?
Speaker 2 (09:38):
This is really curious to me. And we're going to
go on a little tangent here, But just listening to
you talking about this need to prove your masculinity and
the fact that as a woman, I'm accepted as a
woman in society just because I purely grow up right,
(09:59):
But I don't ever have to prove my femininity.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Never like, no, how is this?
Speaker 2 (10:05):
It just doesn't make sense to me? And how has
this become about masculinity as opposed to just maturing.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Well, I think it's a combination of two. But to
mature into a healthy form of masculinity, you need to
be comfortable and confident with who you are. And when
somebody's constantly telling you to not be who you are
right now, you feel like you have to push against them,
and it creates a whole lot of frustration. It creates
a whole lot of anger, It creates a whole lot
of discord in relationships.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Our twenty two year old went through a rite of
passage the other day. She brought a self a car
when she got home after being away, and she had
to take it for its first service, and she got
a quote. They told her how much it was going
to be, and she dropped it off, and about two
hours later she got a phone call, well, we've done
(10:53):
the service, but we've realized that there's X, Y and
Z that needs to be done, so it's actually going
to cost you an extra you know, two hundred bucks.
She said, okay, and then she got a phone call
about another forty five minutes later, they checked the tires
and they found that not only had she got a
tax stuck in it, but it actually needed replacing as
a result. So it was another two hundred dollars on
(11:15):
top of what she was expecting. And she walked in
to me and she said, I think I've just had
the worst half of my life.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
And I looked at her and I thought, welcome to adutod.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
This is what it means to go to car. So
moving on from that, this idea of earning your masculinity,
I actually this is really hard for mums to hear, especially,
but I think there's really great value in boys moving
away from home, like once the young adults, I think
that we should encourage them to create a little bit
of distance to go out and experience.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
I didn't think it matters with they're boys or girls.
I actually think that it's really important for our kids
to actually move on. Progression is literally why we're here.
We're here to progress. And while ever we stay under
mum and dad's roof, Mom and Dad are still doing
the world and they're cooking your food, and we just
kind of sit in this space of I'm going to
(12:06):
say nothingness. We're not going anywhere, We're we're not working
towards anything more times than not. And I just I
don't think it's a male thing or a female thing.
I think across the board, our kids need to move on.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
So fundamentally, when we are progressing, we feel good about life.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
And we've got purpose, we've got direction.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
And by moving out, it kind of forces progress that
doesn't happen when you're living at home and you're still
having your washing done for you and your meals cooked
for you, and you're borrowing mom and Dad's car or
whatever those things are that are happening. So I'm not
encouraging everyone to say, well, boys, if you go like
get out of the house. I know that there's a
whole lot of other factors that come into it. There's
financial factors, and there's schooling factors and work factors and
(12:48):
all those kinds of things. I get all of that,
but I just want to highlight creating some distance is
sometimes the best thing that you can do for your relationship,
and that might be helpful. There's one last thing that
I'm going to mention. We are out of time, so
I'm going to mention it really, really briefly, and that
is that when there is some conflict, when there's some
disagreement about what's going on, if your child is now
in their young adult years, as a parent, it's your
(13:11):
obligation to not tell them what to do. It's now
their life, and I know that comes with a whole
lot of frustration. But if you really really really have
to tell them, let me go through a quick process,
a quick framework that's helpful. When your children a little
it's appropriate to cocoon them, to hide them away from
danger and risk and problems and concerns. But as they
(13:34):
get a bit bigger, you start to step into what's
called reasoned cocooning. That is, you explain them why you're
cocooning them, or you talk to them about why you
think you should cocoon them, and ask them how they'd
like to work with you around that cocooning, because maybe
they are big enough to start to make their own decisions.
So that cocooning and reason cocooning is appropriate for young children.
(13:57):
But as they get older, they start to want to
explore the world, and that's when we have to step
into something called pre arming. We pre arm our children
by saying pretty soon, you're going to encounter these kinds
of situations. How will you navigate them? And that's what
we do is our children are sort of between the
ages of eight and I'm going to say fourteen. When
(14:17):
they're a bit bigger and they're in those early teen years,
we move to something that's called deference. That's when we
defer to them. Now, if you defer to a thirteen
year old, you're going to find yourself in trouble. So
I mentioned the word reasoned. When it comes to cocooning,
we actually step into reasoned deference. So we say, okay,
here's the situation. You're thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, you want to
(14:39):
do that thing, Let's talk it through. Here are all
of the options. Now I'm going to reason with you,
and then I'm going to defer to you and see
if you've got the executive control and the brain power
to work out the right way forward. And if they can't,
we still do step in from time to time and
cocuon them or spend some more time pre arming them.
But finally, by the time they get to sixteen, seventeen,
eighteen and step into younger dulthood, we moved to deference
(15:02):
where we say, well, you're a young man, now you're
a young woman. This really is your choice. If you
really feel like you need to have some input, you
don't start lecturing. You simply and gently say I have
a couple of ideas around this. Are you open to
hearing them?
Speaker 2 (15:20):
So I love this question because in their answering, we
get clarity on where we are in our relationship. When
they say yeah, I'm open, then you have influence. If
they say no, they're not.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Yeah, no, leave me alone, I've got this.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yeah, then you actually know that there's some work to
be done on your relationship because the connection isn't strong
enough right now for them to accept.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Normally Yeah, and normally. So I think about the couple
of decades where I did not want to hear from
my parents when it came to advice. It was because
I didn't trust them, or more that I felt that
they didn't trust me.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
I'm going to push back. I don't think it was
that so much at all. I think it was the
fact that your mom never gave you the opportunity to
accept it.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Well, I guess that's a trust issue though, It's like
you don't trust me and so I don't trust what
you're saying because you're not trusting in my ability to
do it.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
She never asked if you were open to her opinion.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
She just always has here it comes.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
But the beautiful thing about that is over the years,
you've matured as a person number one, so you're more
I don't know, but you're more confident in your own decisions,
Whereas when you're younger, you're not. You're not confident, and
so when your mom comes in, she's busting to tell
you how.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
To do it, how to live my life, because she's
got the experience, having lived hers already.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
You've got to prove her wrong, right, correct, You've got
to prove it wrong. So you're not open to hearing it.
But when you get to a point in your life
where you're you've matured enough, you're comfortable, you're confident in it,
you can hear what she has to say because you
know that you don't actually have to accept correct can
listen to it. But it doesn't have to destroy your
relationship asking consent.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
It just opens your kids up to it if they're willing,
And I think that's the real crux of it. But
I love where this has gone Kim. Hopefully there's been
some useful ideas for you in this conversation. That's the
idea of asking those tricky questions. If you have a
tricky question, you can jump online to Happy families dot
com DOTU, go to podcasts on our website, click the
record button and start talking. It's literally that simple, super
(17:27):
simple system. We will also take your voice notes podcasts
at happy families dot com dot au. Got a voice
note lined up for next week from Anna can't wait
to talk about that one. Where do babies come from?
That's our conversation tomorrow on the podcast, we've gone from
big people.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
I thought tricky questions were today to.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Little people's tomorrow. Join us then, thank you so much
for listening. The Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin
Roulant from Bridge Media. For more information and more resources
to make your family happier, you'll find them at happy
families dot com dot au.
Tricky questions are some of my favorites. Hello, welcome to
the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast where we give
your real parenting solutions. Every day on Australia's most downloaded
parenting podcasts. We adjustin and Kylie course and every Tuesday
on the pod we answer your tricky questions. You can
jump onto our website and scroll down to the podcast bit,
click the record button and tell us what it is
(00:26):
that you're struggling with. We love your tricky questions about
family stuff, relationship, parenting, children's screens, well being. Whatever it
is that you want to ask us, we'll answer it.
We do that every Tuesday. If you'd like to submit
a tricky question another way, we will accept them via
podcasts at Happy families dot com dot au. That's what
we've got today, Kylie, missus Happy Families. This one comes
(00:49):
from Kim. Do you have any tips on raising young
adult males maintaining connections and communication, especially when you don't
always agree on choices and actions.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
She must have got winged of a book that might
be coming out.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
I see this was not a setup. I just want
to be really clear. I'm not trying the book still
A while away like, we're not trying to. You can
pre order now at happy families dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Do you.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
I'm just letting you know. But so you can't even
pre order, you can register your interests. But no, this
was not a plant. This was a legit email that
came through.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
So I guess I'm just going to let you take
the lead on this. I'm interested to hear what your
insights are. Considering we are parents of six girls.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Okay, let's dive into it. I have a couple of
ideas that I think are going to be really useful.
Don't have any idea how old this young adult male is,
but the word adult makes me think eighteen plus. I'm
going to pull the age down to sixteen plus because
many people who are listening to this pod have got
teenage boys and they are They're frothing for independence. They're
starting to say, I want to be my own man,
(01:51):
I want to step into my I want to make
my own decisions. So the first thing that I want
to really really have a home is that this is
what's supposed to happen. Our children, in order to differentiate
from us, will work really hard to make decisions on
their own and the easiest way to say I'm an individual,
(02:13):
I'm not like you, I'm making my own choices is
literally to do things that their parents might always agree about,
so that the comment from Kim, especially when you don't
always agree on choices and actions, this is in many cases,
this is a sort of a way that a teenage
boy will plant his flag and say, my life making
(02:34):
my choices.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
As I'm listening to all I can think about is
in this situation when we think about our children, is
it better to be right or is it better to
maintain a relationship with your child? Too often we come
in where gung ho, we're frustrated, we're angry, we read
them the Riot Act, we tell them all the reasons
why what they're doing is wrong, and it severs our
(02:58):
relationship with them. But if we recognize that in this instance,
we're talking about a young adult, we're talking about someone
who's actually at a point where they can start making
decisions for themselves, and they're going to make keeps that
go against what you would hope for them. But the
reality is it's not a defining moment.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
You can come back from pretty much anything. I mean,
not totally completely everything, but pretty much anything, you can
come back from it. When I think about what I
was like as a young man, when I think about
the young men that I've spoken to for my book
that is coming out soon about raising boys and young men,
the central thing that I see here is that as parents,
we want to control. And if our relationship is a bucket,
(03:43):
I've used this metaphor so many times. If our relationships
a bucket, and the water in the bucket is connection,
the air is the control, right, it's the correction and direction.
And anyone who walks around with an empty bucket that
is a bucket full of air, a bucket full of
correction and direction. Pretty soon they just put the bucket down.
They walk away from the relationship. Right, no point carrying
(04:04):
an empty bucket. You only want a bucket if it's
full of water. You want the good stuff, so you
can use that water for the things that you need
in life. So when I hear Kim's question, what I
really want to focus on is connection, connection, connection, And
that's really the I guess the central part of what
her question is, how do I maintain connection and communication?
(04:24):
You maintain connection and communication by stepping away from control,
by stepping away from agendas exactly the correction and direction.
What are you living your life like that? For if
every time, let's say he's moved out, or maybe he's
living downstairs in the spare room and he's got his
own n swite and the rumpus room areas kind of
become his or whatever it is, every time he comes
(04:46):
home and sits at the dinner table and sees you,
if the conversation is what are you doing with your
life and why are you doing that? And you know
you've got that bill and if you don't pay it,
this is going to happen. If all we're doing is
having those conversations with our kids, pretty soon they stopped
talking to us. The second point that I want to
make really sort of leverages or sits on top of that. Recently,
(05:10):
I had a chat with my mom. I haven't even
shared this with you, So my mom has recently had
a birthday. I was chatting with her about her newfound
additional year of life and how it feels to be
getting older, and I commented that I really enjoy talking
with her, and sometimes she drives me crazy like all parents,
and sometimes I probably drive her crazy like all children.
(05:32):
But I just said Mom. I love catching up with you.
I love calling you. I love that I can pick
up the phone and ring you. I'm so glad that
you're still here and we get to have these conversations
like it's really it's really delightful that you're in my
life and that you're in my life the way that
you are.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
But you haven't always felt like that.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
No, I haven't. It's been a decades long process to
get to that point.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
But the one thing that your mom has always done
is she's accepted those bits of however small they've been,
and she has continued to strive for connection even when
it's been tricky.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
That's almost almost exactly what I was going to say.
As I was talking to her, I made this comment.
I said, it's just occurred to me. I really like
spending time with you. In fact, I love spending time
with you and Dad because you love spending time with us.
You make the effort, You make it so that there
is no judgment. I'm living my life the way I
want to live it. I really like my life, and
(06:29):
I know that you're pretty generally happy with how I'm
living my life. But I still do things that annoy you.
But you don't let that get in the way of
our relationship. Your love for me and your desire for
this relationship to flourish is far greater than any of
those ruffling of feathers that can happen from time to
time when I do something that you don't like, or
say something that you don't like, or I decided to
(06:49):
spend money on something that you don't think I should
be spending money on. I mean, that still happens. I'm
turning fifty this year and she still gets franky about
that stuff. And I think what I really want to
emphasize for Kim and any pair who's raising kids in
their teens and in their young adult years, is that
if you can demonstrate to your kids that you love
spending time with them, then they will love spending time
(07:11):
with you. That's not a very sciencey answer, but if
you want to keep that connection and that communication open,
I mean, that's what connection.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Is, right.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Connection is feeling seen and heard and valued. And the
one thing that my parents have consistently done exceptionally well
for all of their many faults, and they have them,
is that when we're with them, we feel like we matter.
They make the effort to demonstrate to prove consistently you
guys matter, and we're willing to travel into state, or
(07:41):
we're willing to do this or this or this will
cancel our plans, will do these things to make sure
you know that you matter in our lives. You're a
priority to us. There's always water going into that relationship bucket.
All right after the break. Two more complicated ideas for
when things get tricky. Okay, so you're raising a young
(08:06):
adult boy. I mean, the same principles apply for a
young adult girl as well. Rituals and rights of passage.
They just don't exist today like they did decades and
centuries ago. And this is a real challenge because every boy,
every boy has to prove that he's a man. Masculinity
is something that is both learned and earned, and this
(08:28):
is something that I really focus on in my upcoming book.
You can watch others and learn about masculinity, but you
actually then have to go out and earn it. That's
something that's quite different to womanhood. So girls grow up
and they are accepted as women once they are mature,
once they reach a certain age, once they start to
live their lives as young adult females. But for men,
(08:51):
there's this thing where your masculinity has to be earned,
it has to be proven. It's precarious, it can be
taken away. So quite often what you do is you
find yourself heads with a young man because he's constantly
in prove it mode and he's not going out and
slaying a lion or sticking his hand into a mitten
full of fire ants or being circumcised. He's not going
(09:12):
through those things as a young adult to prove his masculinity.
What he's doing instead is he's driving his car too fast,
or he's going on too many dates and maybe causing
some emotional distress for the people in his orbit, or
he's doing whatever else. It is drinking too much, doing
all these things that as a parent, you're looking at
(09:33):
him going, hey, buddy, this is not smart. You're not
making safe, healthy decisions. What's going on?
Speaker 2 (09:38):
This is really curious to me. And we're going to
go on a little tangent here, But just listening to
you talking about this need to prove your masculinity and
the fact that as a woman, I'm accepted as a
woman in society just because I purely grow up right,
(09:59):
But I don't ever have to prove my femininity.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Never like, no, how is this?
Speaker 2 (10:05):
It just doesn't make sense to me? And how has
this become about masculinity as opposed to just maturing.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Well, I think it's a combination of two. But to
mature into a healthy form of masculinity, you need to
be comfortable and confident with who you are. And when
somebody's constantly telling you to not be who you are
right now, you feel like you have to push against them,
and it creates a whole lot of frustration. It creates
a whole lot of anger, It creates a whole lot
of discord in relationships.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Our twenty two year old went through a rite of
passage the other day. She brought a self a car
when she got home after being away, and she had
to take it for its first service, and she got
a quote. They told her how much it was going
to be, and she dropped it off, and about two
hours later she got a phone call, well, we've done
(10:53):
the service, but we've realized that there's X, Y and
Z that needs to be done, so it's actually going
to cost you an extra you know, two hundred bucks.
She said, okay, and then she got a phone call
about another forty five minutes later, they checked the tires
and they found that not only had she got a
tax stuck in it, but it actually needed replacing as
a result. So it was another two hundred dollars on
(11:15):
top of what she was expecting. And she walked in
to me and she said, I think I've just had
the worst half of my life.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
And I looked at her and I thought, welcome to adutod.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
This is what it means to go to car. So
moving on from that, this idea of earning your masculinity,
I actually this is really hard for mums to hear, especially,
but I think there's really great value in boys moving
away from home, like once the young adults, I think
that we should encourage them to create a little bit
of distance to go out and experience.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
I didn't think it matters with they're boys or girls.
I actually think that it's really important for our kids
to actually move on. Progression is literally why we're here.
We're here to progress. And while ever we stay under
mum and dad's roof, Mom and Dad are still doing
the world and they're cooking your food, and we just
kind of sit in this space of I'm going to
(12:06):
say nothingness. We're not going anywhere, We're we're not working
towards anything more times than not. And I just I
don't think it's a male thing or a female thing.
I think across the board, our kids need to move on.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
So fundamentally, when we are progressing, we feel good about life.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
And we've got purpose, we've got direction.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
And by moving out, it kind of forces progress that
doesn't happen when you're living at home and you're still
having your washing done for you and your meals cooked
for you, and you're borrowing mom and Dad's car or
whatever those things are that are happening. So I'm not
encouraging everyone to say, well, boys, if you go like
get out of the house. I know that there's a
whole lot of other factors that come into it. There's
financial factors, and there's schooling factors and work factors and
(12:48):
all those kinds of things. I get all of that,
but I just want to highlight creating some distance is
sometimes the best thing that you can do for your relationship,
and that might be helpful. There's one last thing that
I'm going to mention. We are out of time, so
I'm going to mention it really, really briefly, and that
is that when there is some conflict, when there's some
disagreement about what's going on, if your child is now
in their young adult years, as a parent, it's your
(13:11):
obligation to not tell them what to do. It's now
their life, and I know that comes with a whole
lot of frustration. But if you really really really have
to tell them, let me go through a quick process,
a quick framework that's helpful. When your children a little
it's appropriate to cocoon them, to hide them away from
danger and risk and problems and concerns. But as they
(13:34):
get a bit bigger, you start to step into what's
called reasoned cocooning. That is, you explain them why you're
cocooning them, or you talk to them about why you
think you should cocoon them, and ask them how they'd
like to work with you around that cocooning, because maybe
they are big enough to start to make their own decisions.
So that cocooning and reason cocooning is appropriate for young children.
(13:57):
But as they get older, they start to want to
explore the world, and that's when we have to step
into something called pre arming. We pre arm our children
by saying pretty soon, you're going to encounter these kinds
of situations. How will you navigate them? And that's what
we do is our children are sort of between the
ages of eight and I'm going to say fourteen. When
(14:17):
they're a bit bigger and they're in those early teen years,
we move to something that's called deference. That's when we
defer to them. Now, if you defer to a thirteen
year old, you're going to find yourself in trouble. So
I mentioned the word reasoned. When it comes to cocooning,
we actually step into reasoned deference. So we say, okay,
here's the situation. You're thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, you want to
(14:39):
do that thing, Let's talk it through. Here are all
of the options. Now I'm going to reason with you,
and then I'm going to defer to you and see
if you've got the executive control and the brain power
to work out the right way forward. And if they can't,
we still do step in from time to time and
cocuon them or spend some more time pre arming them.
But finally, by the time they get to sixteen, seventeen,
eighteen and step into younger dulthood, we moved to deference
(15:02):
where we say, well, you're a young man, now you're
a young woman. This really is your choice. If you
really feel like you need to have some input, you
don't start lecturing. You simply and gently say I have
a couple of ideas around this. Are you open to
hearing them?
Speaker 2 (15:20):
So I love this question because in their answering, we
get clarity on where we are in our relationship. When
they say yeah, I'm open, then you have influence. If
they say no, they're not.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Yeah, no, leave me alone, I've got this.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yeah, then you actually know that there's some work to
be done on your relationship because the connection isn't strong
enough right now for them to accept.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Normally Yeah, and normally. So I think about the couple
of decades where I did not want to hear from
my parents when it came to advice. It was because
I didn't trust them, or more that I felt that
they didn't trust me.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
I'm going to push back. I don't think it was
that so much at all. I think it was the
fact that your mom never gave you the opportunity to
accept it.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Well, I guess that's a trust issue though, It's like
you don't trust me and so I don't trust what
you're saying because you're not trusting in my ability to
do it.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
She never asked if you were open to her opinion.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
She just always has here it comes.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
But the beautiful thing about that is over the years,
you've matured as a person number one, so you're more
I don't know, but you're more confident in your own decisions,
Whereas when you're younger, you're not. You're not confident, and
so when your mom comes in, she's busting to tell
you how.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
To do it, how to live my life, because she's
got the experience, having lived hers already.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
You've got to prove her wrong, right, correct, You've got
to prove it wrong. So you're not open to hearing it.
But when you get to a point in your life
where you're you've matured enough, you're comfortable, you're confident in it,
you can hear what she has to say because you
know that you don't actually have to accept correct can
listen to it. But it doesn't have to destroy your
relationship asking consent.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
It just opens your kids up to it if they're willing,
And I think that's the real crux of it. But
I love where this has gone Kim. Hopefully there's been
some useful ideas for you in this conversation. That's the
idea of asking those tricky questions. If you have a
tricky question, you can jump online to Happy families dot
com DOTU, go to podcasts on our website, click the
record button and start talking. It's literally that simple, super
(17:27):
simple system. We will also take your voice notes podcasts
at happy families dot com dot au. Got a voice
note lined up for next week from Anna can't wait
to talk about that one. Where do babies come from?
That's our conversation tomorrow on the podcast, we've gone from
big people.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
I thought tricky questions were today to.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Little people's tomorrow. Join us then, thank you so much
for listening. The Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin
Roulant from Bridge Media. For more information and more resources
to make your family happier, you'll find them at happy
families dot com dot au.
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