May 2, 2024 • 13 mins
Judgement & criticism, punishing, provoking, and trying to “fix” a child—none of these are a parent’s job. They only serve to drive a wedge in relationships. Our job is to love our children. To set limits and have expectations—yes!—but to do so kindly.
In this episode:
- Shifting the paradigm
- Compassion and empathy
- Emotions go up, intelligence goes down
- The problem with judgement
- Why kindness is the answer
Links:
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen R Covey
- I don’t need Fixing! I need Guiding and Loving – Happy Families
- Why Our Kids Need Us to Set Limits – Happy Families
Leave a voice memo here or email your questions/comments to podcasts@happyfamilies.com.au
Find out more about joining THE QUEST at our website
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the
time poor parent who just once answers. Now. So good
to have you joining me for the Happy Family's podcast.
My name is doctor Justin Coulson, the author of a
bunch of books about making your family happier. Normally I
would do this podcast with my wife Kylie, but she's
lost a voice. Can't podcast with no voice. That was
(00:24):
a double negative. Kylie won't be joining me because you
won't be able to hear her. Her voice is totally gone.
It's actually very quiet around the house at the moment,
and I miss her. I miss her voice, and I
really miss her with the conversation that we would normally
have on a Friday. To change things up though a
little bit of background, Kylie and I were asked to
give a talk about families, parenting, and relationships at church
(00:49):
a couple of weekends ago, and since Kylie can't be here,
I thought I might share with you what we shared
because I think it's going to make a great podcast episode.
There are some religious themes. I know that not everybody
who listens to the podcast. In fact, many people who
listen to the podcast don't have a religious bone in
their body. So I'm going to dial down that aspect
of it. You're not here to be preached out. You're
(01:09):
here to hear parenting, and that's primarily what you're going
to hear. Let me dive into it, though, and share
this with you. I think that of all the things
that I could share with you, this is the kind
of stuff that will make your family happier. In The
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey tells the
following story quote. I remember a mini paradigm shift I
(01:30):
experienced one Sunday morning on a subway in New York.
People were sitting quietly, some reading newspapers, some lost in thought,
some resting with their eyes closed. It was a calm,
peaceful scene. Then suddenly a man and his children entered
the subway car. The children were so loud and rambunctious
that instantly the whole climate changed. The man sat down
(01:51):
next to me and closed his eyes, apparently oblivious to
the situation. The children were yelling back and forth, throwing things,
even grabbing people's pace. It was very disturbing, and yet
the man sitting next to me did nothing. It was
difficult not to feel irritated. I could not believe that
he could be so insensitive as to let his children
(02:11):
run wild like that and do nothing about it, taking
no responsibility at all. It was easy to see that
everyone else on the subway felt irritated too, so finally,
with what I felt was unusual patience and restraint, I
turned to him and said, sir, your children are really
disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn't
control them a little more. The man lifted his gaze,
(02:33):
as if to come to a consciousness of the situation
for the first time, and said, softly, Oh, you're right.
I guess I should do something about it. We just
came from the hospital where their mother died about an
hour ago. I don't know what to think, and I
guess they don't know how to handle it either. Can
(02:54):
you imagine what I felt at that moment? My paradigm shifted. Suddenly.
I saw things different, and because I saw differently, I
thought differently, I felt differently, I behaved differently. My irritation vanished.
I didn't have to worry about controlling my attitude or
my behavior. My heart was filled with the man's pain,
feelings of sympathy and compassion, flowed freely. Your wife just died. Oh,
(03:18):
I'm so sorry. Can you tell me about it? What
can I do to help? Everything changed in an instant
close quote. Judgment is when we criticize or condemn someone
from a position of assumed moral superiority. And that's the
(03:38):
problem with judgment. It presumes that my view is the
standard of truth. It exalts my needs while denigrating yours.
My moral superiority, My judgment, my criticism, and condemnation allows
me to be full of indignation in my least positive, helpful,
and righteous moments. It assumes that the best way for
(04:00):
me to help you is to paint your errors in
vibrant colors. And the terrible news is that we do
it all the time. It happens at work, it happens online,
it happens at church. But worst of all, it happens
in our most important relationships friendships and with loved ones husbands, wives, children, friends,
exes that we coperent with and so on. One time,
(04:24):
when I was younger and not quite as wise as
I have become through negative experiences, I walked into the house.
Kylie had cleaned it all day while I've been at work.
It looked amazing, but there was still some dust on
the fans, which I felt judy bound to point out
that judgment was not good for my relationship. Another time,
Kylie had somebody visit her and drop off a meal
(04:46):
shortly after one of our babies had been born. She
walked in with treats, flowers, a meal, dropped it off
and left. Kylie will grateful for the meal, felt like
her friend could have stayed and talked, after all, that's
friends do, and for some time felt judgmental towards that friend.
It was only some years later when the friend explained
(05:06):
that at that time in her life, she felt like
everything was falling apart and all that she could do
was what she did. The conversation would have been too much.
See what happens when we get judgy and critical. When
we begin to condemn those around us, Our emotions go
up and our intelligence goes down. We choose to focus
(05:28):
on our perspective and we stop seeing things from another
person's point of view. We become critical and judge, We
reprimand rather than understand, we explode rather than explore. A
wonderful friend of mine once shared that the only one
who should be judging is one who knows everything and
loves perfectly, which rules most of us out in this light.
(05:54):
We had a similar experience just a couple of weeks
ago that Kylie shared in I'll Do Better Tomorrow right
here on the podcast, either last week or the week
before to refresh your memory. We just farewelled Ella, our
twenty year old daughter, as she departed to do mission
service in Canada. Leaving the airport, our three youngest girls
decided that they wanted to drive home with Chanell, our eldest,
(06:18):
being with their six month old niece. Chanell's first daughter,
our granddaughter, was the draw card. Walking to the car,
our fifth daughter, Lily, began fighting with her sisters about
who was going to sit where in the car. Chanelle said,
if this keeps on going, you're not going to be
driving home with me Lily and Lily stormed off, so
Kylie followed, preparing her incisive remarks about Lily's behavior as
(06:39):
she walked toward her. As Kylie neared Lily, she sought
Lily's tears and fortunately her heart turned away from judgment
and criticism and condemnation, Kylie decided to get curious, not furious.
She considered the context and invited Lily to share why
she was so upset. The next five minutes, they pretty
(07:01):
much stood and hugged in the car park, grieving the
goodbye that they just shared with Ella and the fact
that we won't see her for eighteen months. Now, I'm
going to share a couple of quick things that are
religiously oriented, and then I'm going to get back into
the parenting. For those who have a religious background, you'd
be familiar with the scripture in John chapter thirteen, where
(07:23):
Jesus says that we ought to fix one another. As
I've fixed you, that you also fix one another. Now
everybody knows that's not what he said. He said love
one another, not fix one another. But we get so
caught up in trying to fix. In Matthew on the
Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, and why beholdest thou
the moat that's in thy brother's eye, But consider us
not the beam that is in thine own eye. In
(07:44):
other words, we're also imperfect. A judgment is so flawed,
and our job is not to be judgy and keep fixing.
Yes we can have expectations, Yes we can encourage and guide,
but fixing is not part of the pro In one
of the most challenging periods of our lives in relation
(08:05):
to our eldest daughter, we took the challenges that she
presented to us very very hard. Those challenges shook us profoundly.
After all, I was a parenting expert, and so we
began to question a lot of things in our lives.
Our initial response was to parent harder. We increased preaching
at her and fixing her and coercing her and begging
her and punishing her and berating her and judging her
(08:27):
and pushing and pulling and provoking, and in our mind
our judgment seemed correct, and maybe it was. But that
behavior on our part drove her out of our door,
an out of our arms, and away from our influence.
And so then we found ourselves saying things like, well,
this is on her. It's her fault. She's done it
(08:47):
to herselves, she's done it to us, she's done it
to our family. She's the one that needs to change.
We're doing the right thing here. She's the one that's
making the mistakes. And we didn't really want her around anyway,
because we became fearful that her decisions would infect our
other children. But here's the thing, our demands were unfruitful.
When we had a conversation with a wonderful friend and mentor,
(09:08):
he counseled us that love was the answer. But our
daughter seems so unlovable, and she made it clear she
did not want our love. Apart from that, how do
you love her without it making look like you're condoning
what she's doing. Well, it was around this time that
I had an insight. I didn't have the right to
correct anyone I didn't love. Now that seems reasonable to say,
(09:28):
but there's a trap there. When I feel genuinely loving
towards someone, I generally lose interest in correcting them. I
just want to love them. I want to have them
close to me. See, my daughter wasn't the problem I was.
It was my judgment that was driving the wedge in
the family. It was my judgment that made her feel unwelcome.
(09:49):
It was my judgment that was pushing her away, and
that meant that Kylie and I could have zero influence.
Our home was not the safe haven that it ought
to be for her. We were the problem. We were
trying to fix our or. One of my all time
favorite quotes that does come from a religious leader, but
doesn't really have much of a religious undertone. Is this
(10:10):
he says, When a battered, weary swimmer tries valiantly to
get back to shore after having fought strong winds and
rough waves, which he never should have challenged in the
first place, those of us, who might have had better
judgment or perhaps just better luck, ort not to row
out to his side, beat him with our oars and
(10:30):
shove his head back underwater. That's not what boats were
made for. But some of us do that to each other.
As I reflect on the things that I've talked about,
there's a quote that really means a lot to me.
It comes from a talk called the Virtue of Kindness,
(10:52):
and here's what it says. Kindness is the essence of
a wonderful and good life. Kindness is how a christ
like person treats others. Kindness should permeate all of our
words and actions at work, at school, at church, and
especially in our homes. There is no substitute for kindness
(11:15):
in the home. But you ask, what if people are rude,
love them, If they're obnoxious, love them, But what if
they have fanned? Surely I must do something, then love
them wayward. The answer is the same, be kind, love them.
Who can tell what far reaching impact we can have
(11:36):
if we are only kind. So that's basically what we
shared now. There does need to be limits. We do
need to be kind and help our children to know
that there are expectations around their behavior. But when we
do that kindly, we just get so much better results.
I hope that as you've listened to that you've found
(11:57):
some inspiration in there. Maybe this will help you to
be better tomorrow. If your children are driving you crazy,
as children often do, Hopefully there are some words there
that will be encouraging for you this weekend and into
next week. Thank you so much for listening to the
Happy Families podcast. On Monday, assuming Kylie's voice is better,
we're going to be talking about one of the hardest
(12:19):
decisions that I've ever seen on social media. If you
had to leave your daughter in a forest with either
a man or a bear, and you knew nothing about
the man and nothing about the bear, what would you choose?
That's coming up on Monday, A great conversation that I
think you're going to love if Kylie gets a voice back.
(12:40):
Thanks so much again for being a part of the
Happy Family's podcast. We love having you as part of
our community. The Happy Family's podcast is produced by Justin
Rowland from Bridge Media. Craig Bruce is our executive producer.
Have a fantastic weekend and we'll talk to you again
on Monday.
It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the
time poor parent who just once answers. Now. So good
to have you joining me for the Happy Family's podcast.
My name is doctor Justin Coulson, the author of a
bunch of books about making your family happier. Normally I
would do this podcast with my wife Kylie, but she's
lost a voice. Can't podcast with no voice. That was
(00:24):
a double negative. Kylie won't be joining me because you
won't be able to hear her. Her voice is totally gone.
It's actually very quiet around the house at the moment,
and I miss her. I miss her voice, and I
really miss her with the conversation that we would normally
have on a Friday. To change things up though a
little bit of background, Kylie and I were asked to
give a talk about families, parenting, and relationships at church
(00:49):
a couple of weekends ago, and since Kylie can't be here,
I thought I might share with you what we shared
because I think it's going to make a great podcast episode.
There are some religious themes. I know that not everybody
who listens to the podcast. In fact, many people who
listen to the podcast don't have a religious bone in
their body. So I'm going to dial down that aspect
of it. You're not here to be preached out. You're
(01:09):
here to hear parenting, and that's primarily what you're going
to hear. Let me dive into it, though, and share
this with you. I think that of all the things
that I could share with you, this is the kind
of stuff that will make your family happier. In The
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey tells the
following story quote. I remember a mini paradigm shift I
(01:30):
experienced one Sunday morning on a subway in New York.
People were sitting quietly, some reading newspapers, some lost in thought,
some resting with their eyes closed. It was a calm,
peaceful scene. Then suddenly a man and his children entered
the subway car. The children were so loud and rambunctious
that instantly the whole climate changed. The man sat down
(01:51):
next to me and closed his eyes, apparently oblivious to
the situation. The children were yelling back and forth, throwing things,
even grabbing people's pace. It was very disturbing, and yet
the man sitting next to me did nothing. It was
difficult not to feel irritated. I could not believe that
he could be so insensitive as to let his children
(02:11):
run wild like that and do nothing about it, taking
no responsibility at all. It was easy to see that
everyone else on the subway felt irritated too, so finally,
with what I felt was unusual patience and restraint, I
turned to him and said, sir, your children are really
disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn't
control them a little more. The man lifted his gaze,
(02:33):
as if to come to a consciousness of the situation
for the first time, and said, softly, Oh, you're right.
I guess I should do something about it. We just
came from the hospital where their mother died about an
hour ago. I don't know what to think, and I
guess they don't know how to handle it either. Can
(02:54):
you imagine what I felt at that moment? My paradigm shifted. Suddenly.
I saw things different, and because I saw differently, I
thought differently, I felt differently, I behaved differently. My irritation vanished.
I didn't have to worry about controlling my attitude or
my behavior. My heart was filled with the man's pain,
feelings of sympathy and compassion, flowed freely. Your wife just died. Oh,
(03:18):
I'm so sorry. Can you tell me about it? What
can I do to help? Everything changed in an instant
close quote. Judgment is when we criticize or condemn someone
from a position of assumed moral superiority. And that's the
(03:38):
problem with judgment. It presumes that my view is the
standard of truth. It exalts my needs while denigrating yours.
My moral superiority, My judgment, my criticism, and condemnation allows
me to be full of indignation in my least positive, helpful,
and righteous moments. It assumes that the best way for
(04:00):
me to help you is to paint your errors in
vibrant colors. And the terrible news is that we do
it all the time. It happens at work, it happens online,
it happens at church. But worst of all, it happens
in our most important relationships friendships and with loved ones husbands, wives, children, friends,
exes that we coperent with and so on. One time,
(04:24):
when I was younger and not quite as wise as
I have become through negative experiences, I walked into the house.
Kylie had cleaned it all day while I've been at work.
It looked amazing, but there was still some dust on
the fans, which I felt judy bound to point out
that judgment was not good for my relationship. Another time,
Kylie had somebody visit her and drop off a meal
(04:46):
shortly after one of our babies had been born. She
walked in with treats, flowers, a meal, dropped it off
and left. Kylie will grateful for the meal, felt like
her friend could have stayed and talked, after all, that's
friends do, and for some time felt judgmental towards that friend.
It was only some years later when the friend explained
(05:06):
that at that time in her life, she felt like
everything was falling apart and all that she could do
was what she did. The conversation would have been too much.
See what happens when we get judgy and critical. When
we begin to condemn those around us, Our emotions go
up and our intelligence goes down. We choose to focus
(05:28):
on our perspective and we stop seeing things from another
person's point of view. We become critical and judge, We
reprimand rather than understand, we explode rather than explore. A
wonderful friend of mine once shared that the only one
who should be judging is one who knows everything and
loves perfectly, which rules most of us out in this light.
(05:54):
We had a similar experience just a couple of weeks
ago that Kylie shared in I'll Do Better Tomorrow right
here on the podcast, either last week or the week
before to refresh your memory. We just farewelled Ella, our
twenty year old daughter, as she departed to do mission
service in Canada. Leaving the airport, our three youngest girls
decided that they wanted to drive home with Chanell, our eldest,
(06:18):
being with their six month old niece. Chanell's first daughter,
our granddaughter, was the draw card. Walking to the car,
our fifth daughter, Lily, began fighting with her sisters about
who was going to sit where in the car. Chanelle said,
if this keeps on going, you're not going to be
driving home with me Lily and Lily stormed off, so
Kylie followed, preparing her incisive remarks about Lily's behavior as
(06:39):
she walked toward her. As Kylie neared Lily, she sought
Lily's tears and fortunately her heart turned away from judgment
and criticism and condemnation, Kylie decided to get curious, not furious.
She considered the context and invited Lily to share why
she was so upset. The next five minutes, they pretty
(07:01):
much stood and hugged in the car park, grieving the
goodbye that they just shared with Ella and the fact
that we won't see her for eighteen months. Now, I'm
going to share a couple of quick things that are
religiously oriented, and then I'm going to get back into
the parenting. For those who have a religious background, you'd
be familiar with the scripture in John chapter thirteen, where
(07:23):
Jesus says that we ought to fix one another. As
I've fixed you, that you also fix one another. Now
everybody knows that's not what he said. He said love
one another, not fix one another. But we get so
caught up in trying to fix. In Matthew on the
Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, and why beholdest thou
the moat that's in thy brother's eye, But consider us
not the beam that is in thine own eye. In
(07:44):
other words, we're also imperfect. A judgment is so flawed,
and our job is not to be judgy and keep fixing.
Yes we can have expectations, Yes we can encourage and guide,
but fixing is not part of the pro In one
of the most challenging periods of our lives in relation
(08:05):
to our eldest daughter, we took the challenges that she
presented to us very very hard. Those challenges shook us profoundly.
After all, I was a parenting expert, and so we
began to question a lot of things in our lives.
Our initial response was to parent harder. We increased preaching
at her and fixing her and coercing her and begging
her and punishing her and berating her and judging her
(08:27):
and pushing and pulling and provoking, and in our mind
our judgment seemed correct, and maybe it was. But that
behavior on our part drove her out of our door,
an out of our arms, and away from our influence.
And so then we found ourselves saying things like, well,
this is on her. It's her fault. She's done it
(08:47):
to herselves, she's done it to us, she's done it
to our family. She's the one that needs to change.
We're doing the right thing here. She's the one that's
making the mistakes. And we didn't really want her around anyway,
because we became fearful that her decisions would infect our
other children. But here's the thing, our demands were unfruitful.
When we had a conversation with a wonderful friend and mentor,
(09:08):
he counseled us that love was the answer. But our
daughter seems so unlovable, and she made it clear she
did not want our love. Apart from that, how do
you love her without it making look like you're condoning
what she's doing. Well, it was around this time that
I had an insight. I didn't have the right to
correct anyone I didn't love. Now that seems reasonable to say,
(09:28):
but there's a trap there. When I feel genuinely loving
towards someone, I generally lose interest in correcting them. I
just want to love them. I want to have them
close to me. See, my daughter wasn't the problem I was.
It was my judgment that was driving the wedge in
the family. It was my judgment that made her feel unwelcome.
(09:49):
It was my judgment that was pushing her away, and
that meant that Kylie and I could have zero influence.
Our home was not the safe haven that it ought
to be for her. We were the problem. We were
trying to fix our or. One of my all time
favorite quotes that does come from a religious leader, but
doesn't really have much of a religious undertone. Is this
(10:10):
he says, When a battered, weary swimmer tries valiantly to
get back to shore after having fought strong winds and
rough waves, which he never should have challenged in the
first place, those of us, who might have had better
judgment or perhaps just better luck, ort not to row
out to his side, beat him with our oars and
(10:30):
shove his head back underwater. That's not what boats were
made for. But some of us do that to each other.
As I reflect on the things that I've talked about,
there's a quote that really means a lot to me.
It comes from a talk called the Virtue of Kindness,
(10:52):
and here's what it says. Kindness is the essence of
a wonderful and good life. Kindness is how a christ
like person treats others. Kindness should permeate all of our
words and actions at work, at school, at church, and
especially in our homes. There is no substitute for kindness
(11:15):
in the home. But you ask, what if people are rude,
love them, If they're obnoxious, love them, But what if
they have fanned? Surely I must do something, then love
them wayward. The answer is the same, be kind, love them.
Who can tell what far reaching impact we can have
(11:36):
if we are only kind. So that's basically what we
shared now. There does need to be limits. We do
need to be kind and help our children to know
that there are expectations around their behavior. But when we
do that kindly, we just get so much better results.
I hope that as you've listened to that you've found
(11:57):
some inspiration in there. Maybe this will help you to
be better tomorrow. If your children are driving you crazy,
as children often do, Hopefully there are some words there
that will be encouraging for you this weekend and into
next week. Thank you so much for listening to the
Happy Families podcast. On Monday, assuming Kylie's voice is better,
we're going to be talking about one of the hardest
(12:19):
decisions that I've ever seen on social media. If you
had to leave your daughter in a forest with either
a man or a bear, and you knew nothing about
the man and nothing about the bear, what would you choose?
That's coming up on Monday, A great conversation that I
think you're going to love if Kylie gets a voice back.
(12:40):
Thanks so much again for being a part of the
Happy Family's podcast. We love having you as part of
our community. The Happy Family's podcast is produced by Justin
Rowland from Bridge Media. Craig Bruce is our executive producer.
Have a fantastic weekend and we'll talk to you again
on Monday.
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