October 20, 2025 • 14 mins
Ever wish you could talk to your kids about the big stuff — without it feeling awkward or heavy? In this episode, Justin and Kylie show you how to make tricky conversations a normal (and even fun) part of family life. From friendship dramas to body safety, honesty, and screens, discover how to help your kids open up, think deeply, and learn to navigate life with confidence.
KEY POINTS:
- How to start having “tricky talks” — even with 5- and 7-year-olds
- Why weekly conversations build trust and emotional safety
- Conversation starters that aren’t awkward or forced
- Turning everyday moments into teachable moments
- The ultimate question every parent should ask their child
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:
“Let your kids know there’s no topic that’s off limits. When they trust you with the little things, they’ll come to you with the big ones.”
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
- Relationship Rules and What Your Child Needs From You by Dr Justin Coulson
- Have a tricky parenting question? Ask us here.
ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS:
- Schedule a weekly 15-minute “tricky talk” with your kids.
- Start light — use silly “would you rather” questions to build comfort.
- Gradually introduce deeper topics like kindness, honesty, or friendship.
- Ask your child what they think before you give advice.
- Try a “parent performance appraisal” — ask your kids how loved and understood they feel.
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 (00:05):
A few months ago on Parental Guidance channel nines hit
TV show, I made a comment that seems to have
captured a lot of people's imagination, and really, I don't know.
It feels really good when as a parent you feel
like you can connect with and even share important things
with your kids. So I shared on Parental Guidance that
every Sunday or most Sundays in our family, listen down
with the kids for fifteen minutes or thereabouts and have
(00:28):
tricky talks. We talk about tough conversations, the things that
really really things that kids might struggle with, so that
we can help them to have a dry run. They
can have a bit of a practice as they work
out how to navigate life today. Our tricky question from
one of our Happy Families podcast listeners is about how
to have these conversations with your kids, especially when the
(00:51):
kids are little. That's coming up. Stay with us. Hello,
Welcome to the Happy Families podcast, Real Parenting Solution, Every
single day on Australia's most downloaded parenty podcast. We are
Justin and Kylie Colson. Every Tuesday on the pod, we
give you a chance to ask your tricky questions whatever
it is that you would like to know about Happy
Families dot com dot A. You scroll down to submit
(01:13):
your tricky question about discipline, or screens, or family life, generally, relationships,
whatever it is. Ask us literally anything and we'll talk.
We love to talk about stuff. Happy families dot com
dot You just scrolled down to where it says podcasts
super simple system. You literally press the record button and
start talking. Or you can email us podcasts at happy
(01:33):
families dot com dot you podcasts with an s at
happy families dot com dot you send us a voice
note and we'll answer your question there. Kylie. Today we've
got a question from Alana and this is what she
wanted to know.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
My name Zalada from the Gold Coast. Just wondering if
you could help us out with some suggestions for your
tough questions to ask with our children. Want to incorporate
what you've talked about by talking about tough questions, but
just wondering where to start and some examples of those questions.
We've got two girls age five and seven, daks.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Okay, Alanna, we really appreciate that you want to have
these discussions with your kids, Kylie. We were not having
these conversations with our five and seven year olds because
we just weren't onto it that way. I mean, I
guess in a kind of a way we were, but
not the way that we talk about it here on
the podcasting, in my books and things.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Well, the reality is with family life, everything morphs with time,
with age, with experience. And so while we weren't having
tricky conversations, we've always had a framework around how we
spend time with our children in intentional instruction.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yeah, So the background of that is we've always been
open about this. We have a church background, and we
got a church most Sundays, and our religion, our religious organization,
about one hundred and something years ago now instituted this
thing that they called Family Home Evening. And the idea
of family Home Evening was parents the primary socializer of
(03:02):
their kids. Parents are responsible for moral instruction and training
for their kids. And so they said, one night a week,
we want parents, whether you're on your own or whether
you've got mum and dad both available, we want parents
to sit down with their kids, have some activities, have
some fun, have some laughter, have a treat, and do
some I mean we would have called it gospel instruction, right,
(03:23):
do some conversation around questions that have moral or faith implications,
and teach the kids the stuff that you really think
that they need to know. And we've just allowed that
to morph over time. We still do the religious instruction,
but we don't talk about that on the podcast so much. Instead,
these tough talks, while sometimes they have a religious foundation,
(03:45):
quite often the stuff that our kids are dealing with,
it's just it's stuff that kids are dealing with.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
And the conversations get trickier as they get older.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yeah, yeah, they do.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
And the reason they're tricky is because they're the conversations
that usually make us squirm a little bit. It's hard
enough having a conversation about sex with another adult, but
then you're having it with your twelve year old daughter
or your fourteen year old son. Those kinds of conversations
leave us feeling a little bit, i don't know.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Squirmish sometimes. Yeah. Yeah, And so let's get into this
a little bit more. The first thing that I would say,
especially if you've got younger kids, let's say five, six, seven,
eight years of age something like that, I don't think
that you well, I was going to say, you don't
need to have them that often, but I recognize I'm
changing my mind. You do you want to have them
every week to establish the pattern that's exactly right and
(04:34):
let the kids know that there is no topic that's
out of bounds. There's no topic that you can't bring up.
We're really happy to talk about anything at all.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
And if this is something that's new and you have
young children, then I'd have crazy conversations with them. I'd have,
you know, like, would you rather conversations where you're kind
of just stretching their thought process, their curiosity and kind
of helping them to recognize that nothing's off limit, that
we can have these conversations and have fun with them.
(05:03):
They don't have to be scared or it doesn't actually
have to feel like a tricky question because they're so
used to having kind of curly, wirly questions talked about
at the dinner table.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
In my book, Relationship Rules, and yes, this is a
blatant plug for the book, because part two of the
book is what are some things that you can talk about?
And I just want to run through a couple of
these because I think they're really really instructive that highlights
that it doesn't always have to be a tough or
a tricky conversation or talk. It can be just a
conversation that's relationship building. So listen to what they're looking
(05:36):
forward to. You might listen to what they're grateful for.
You could listen to what made them happy today. You
could learn about the kind of business they'd love to start.
You could listen to answers to hypotheticals that you invent.
And here are three that I've thrown into the book
just for fun. You find a book and begin to read,
only to discover that it is your life. You get
to the point that you are at now do you
turn the page knowing that you will not be able
(05:58):
to change the events to second one? Would you rather
get uglier or dumber? I thought that was funny. You're
not laughing, or you could reverse it. Would you rather
get more attractive or smarter? You're thinking about your answer
right now?
Speaker 3 (06:10):
No, I'm thinking about the question. Emily actually just asked
me the other day. Emily's eleven, and she asked me
if I would rather have all my teeth pulled or
all my fingernails pulled?
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Okay, what's your answer, my aunt? What did you say?
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (06:27):
My fingernails?
Speaker 1 (06:31):
I'd rather lose my fingernails. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure,
for sure. What would you do if you discovered you
only had twenty four hours to live?
Speaker 3 (06:39):
And let's face it, Elana, we're probably making this a
little bit harder on ourselves than we need to. We're
having conversations with our kids all the time, and I'm
sure that your kids are no different to any other kids.
They're asking you tricky questions all the time.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Yeah, they bring stuff up. And so, I mean the
one that I always talk about in my presentations and
things is the day that our fourteen year old daughter said, Dad,
what's an STI? And I said, hey, let's talk about
that on Sunday, because we've got two minutes in the
car where I can give you a short and generally
unhelped lanzer. Or we've got fifteen minutes on Sunday where
we all come together and we discuss it. Now, obviously
(07:15):
you're not going to have that conversation with you five
to seven year old, but your five to seven year
old is unlikely to say, hey, Mum, what's an STI?
Speaker 3 (07:21):
So she'll ask you something else.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
There'll be something that will come up. Yeah, So after
the break, what I want to do is just highlight
a bunch of topics that you could discuss and that
will lead to a whole bunch more. And the more
you do it, the more you start noticing topics that's next,
the topics to talk to your five to seven, five
to ten year olds about when it comes to tough
talks and tricky conversations. On The Happy Famili's podcast today,
(07:53):
we're talking about how to have tough talks and tricky
conversations with younger kids. What discussions are up for conversation?
Which things do you want to leave alone? Kylie, here's
my list. I'm going to work through it and you
tell me if there's anything that you would add. I thought,
first off, friendship stuff. I mean, kids come home every
day talking about something that happened to friendship. Isn't good?
Is it bad? What would you do differently in fact,
(08:16):
relationships generally?
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Yeah, I was just thinking about that as you were
talking about relationships and the idea that our kids often
come home and tell us about things that they saw
on the playground that aren't even related to their friends. Right,
They've seen something happen, They've seen a kid be bullied,
or they've seen you know, someone being mistreated and they're
trying to understand the world.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
How should we live? How do we respond to this?
What's the right thing to do here? What's the wrong
thing to do here? What are you seeing happening? What
are other people saying? Like these conversations really do take
on and explore, explain in power format, where you say and.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
What would you do if it was you? Yeah, what
would you do if you were in the same group.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Or you just want to know what their perspective is
all the way through, whether you were adding a little
bit of guidance or asking permission. Hey, I've got an idea,
mind if I share that with you? What do you
think about this? That's kind of where we're going. So
first on my list is friendships, bullying, all sorts of
relationships stuff. You might even bring in siblings or grandparents,
anything that has to do with relationships. You're going to
(09:13):
get a fifteen minute conversation without trying.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
I can't count how many times we might have had
conversations around kindness, right and right, unconditional love, and so again.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
My relationship rules books, there are eighty five relationship rules.
You could literally just do a different rule every week
and that would I mean, that would give your kids
a PhD and how to have healthy relationships. It would
be great as a family discussion. We should do that ourselves,
calling that that I think about it. The next one screens.
What's happening on screens? What's everyone doing on screens? You
can talk about gaming, you can talk about social media.
(09:49):
I mean, hopefully not with five to seven year olds,
but kids are on screens. They're seeing stuff, whether it's
on YouTube, whether it's on a social media platform. I
don't want to we call it social media anymore. Do
you know Facebook recently had to front up to court
because of well they're always in court, and they're arguing
now that they're not a social media company because more
(10:09):
than eighty percent, in fact, as much as ninety percent
of content that occurs on Facebook is people who don't
know each other viewing or sharing content with other people
that they don't know. So less than ten to fifteen
percent of what happens on Facebook now on meta platforms
is actually people who know each other talking to one another.
I thought that was an astonishing thing. Anyway, screens, I
(10:31):
reckon body safety would be something that you could talk about.
Staying safe.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
I was just thinking about your screen's conversation, and I
think it would actually be really curious to ask you
five and seven year old what they notice when they're
in a room with people.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Yeah, including you. Yeah yeah, little self assessment. Like I said,
body safety. There's so many things that you can talk
about in terms of staying safe in different situations and
how do you navigate that and what to do when
you're at the park or are their trick adults who
ask for kids' help? What's the deal there. I've also
made some notes. You can have conversations about honesty, you
(11:07):
can have conversations about integrity, you can have conversations about
what big kids do. You can have conversations about I mean,
even in grade five there's boyfriend and girlfriend's stuff. If
they're older, you start to have long, more detailed conversation.
If they're younger, you have shorter discussions, and you're just
(11:27):
exploring their perspective, explaining a couple of things, and then
getting them to come up with their own ideas. We
need to wrap it up. That's kind of everything that
I had on my list to get you started. Alana, Kylie,
you're looking at me longingly like you want to add
one more thing.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
I remember one of the most trickius conversations we ever
had with our children. Yeah, was not long after you
published your first book, What Your Child Needs from You Ah,
And you had a set of questions in there, or
statements that you could answer kind of mentally on your own,
but from your child's perspective. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Yeah, would my child say yes or no to this question?
Speaker 3 (12:05):
And I read it and I was like, I don't
want to guess what they'd say. I want to know
what they'd say.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
So we had a very first parent performance appraisal where
the kids literally told us what's really going on.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
They were some of the trickiest conversations I've ever had
with them. Three year olds telling me the things that
I wasn't quite getting right, but in such a loving
way and with so much forgiveness and unconditional love. But
you want to start a conversation that's going to stretch everybody.
(12:36):
Ask your kids if they feel like you love them,
and how do they know that you love them? Ask
them if we remember things that are important to them,
and can they tell you of a time where you've
done that. Things about whether or not they feel like
we're interested in them and the things that they're doing.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
What page number is it on on page eight? Okay, well,
while I'm shamelessly plugging relationship rules, let's also shamelessly plug
what your child needs from you. They're both available at
Happy famlies dot com dot you, and they will create really,
really meaningful and important conversations with the kids.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
It was the first time we'd had a pretty big
uppercut from our kids. They really beautifully told and worded,
but just showed us where we were lacking.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Alana, We really really hope that this has been a
helpful conversation to get those tricky talks going with you
and your kids. Thanks so much for submitting your question.
If you would like to submit a tricky question, just
go to Happy Families dot com dot you, click the button,
start talking and we will get your voice message. Otherwise,
send us a voice note to podcasts at happy families
dot com dot au. The Happy Families podcast is produced
(13:45):
by Justin Rowland from Bridge Mediamhammond's provides research and other
support and if you think your family could be happier
from this conversation, please share the chat with them, but
also with other people that you think might benefit from
it when you share the pod, when more people get
to hear it, and we get to help more families,
which is what our currency is. If you would like
more information and resources to help your family be happier,
(14:05):
visitors at happy families dot com dot au
A few months ago on Parental Guidance channel nines hit
TV show, I made a comment that seems to have
captured a lot of people's imagination, and really, I don't know.
It feels really good when as a parent you feel
like you can connect with and even share important things
with your kids. So I shared on Parental Guidance that
every Sunday or most Sundays in our family, listen down
with the kids for fifteen minutes or thereabouts and have
(00:28):
tricky talks. We talk about tough conversations, the things that
really really things that kids might struggle with, so that
we can help them to have a dry run. They
can have a bit of a practice as they work
out how to navigate life today. Our tricky question from
one of our Happy Families podcast listeners is about how
to have these conversations with your kids, especially when the
(00:51):
kids are little. That's coming up. Stay with us. Hello,
Welcome to the Happy Families podcast, Real Parenting Solution, Every
single day on Australia's most downloaded parenty podcast. We are
Justin and Kylie Colson. Every Tuesday on the pod, we
give you a chance to ask your tricky questions whatever
it is that you would like to know about Happy
Families dot com dot A. You scroll down to submit
(01:13):
your tricky question about discipline, or screens, or family life, generally, relationships,
whatever it is. Ask us literally anything and we'll talk.
We love to talk about stuff. Happy families dot com
dot You just scrolled down to where it says podcasts
super simple system. You literally press the record button and
start talking. Or you can email us podcasts at happy
(01:33):
families dot com dot you podcasts with an s at
happy families dot com dot you send us a voice
note and we'll answer your question there. Kylie. Today we've
got a question from Alana and this is what she
wanted to know.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
My name Zalada from the Gold Coast. Just wondering if
you could help us out with some suggestions for your
tough questions to ask with our children. Want to incorporate
what you've talked about by talking about tough questions, but
just wondering where to start and some examples of those questions.
We've got two girls age five and seven, daks.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Okay, Alanna, we really appreciate that you want to have
these discussions with your kids, Kylie. We were not having
these conversations with our five and seven year olds because
we just weren't onto it that way. I mean, I
guess in a kind of a way we were, but
not the way that we talk about it here on
the podcasting, in my books and things.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Well, the reality is with family life, everything morphs with time,
with age, with experience. And so while we weren't having
tricky conversations, we've always had a framework around how we
spend time with our children in intentional instruction.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yeah, So the background of that is we've always been
open about this. We have a church background, and we
got a church most Sundays, and our religion, our religious organization,
about one hundred and something years ago now instituted this
thing that they called Family Home Evening. And the idea
of family Home Evening was parents the primary socializer of
(03:02):
their kids. Parents are responsible for moral instruction and training
for their kids. And so they said, one night a week,
we want parents, whether you're on your own or whether
you've got mum and dad both available, we want parents
to sit down with their kids, have some activities, have
some fun, have some laughter, have a treat, and do
some I mean we would have called it gospel instruction, right,
(03:23):
do some conversation around questions that have moral or faith implications,
and teach the kids the stuff that you really think
that they need to know. And we've just allowed that
to morph over time. We still do the religious instruction,
but we don't talk about that on the podcast so much. Instead,
these tough talks, while sometimes they have a religious foundation,
(03:45):
quite often the stuff that our kids are dealing with,
it's just it's stuff that kids are dealing with.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
And the conversations get trickier as they get older.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yeah, yeah, they do.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
And the reason they're tricky is because they're the conversations
that usually make us squirm a little bit. It's hard
enough having a conversation about sex with another adult, but
then you're having it with your twelve year old daughter
or your fourteen year old son. Those kinds of conversations
leave us feeling a little bit, i don't know.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Squirmish sometimes. Yeah. Yeah, And so let's get into this
a little bit more. The first thing that I would say,
especially if you've got younger kids, let's say five, six, seven,
eight years of age something like that, I don't think
that you well, I was going to say, you don't
need to have them that often, but I recognize I'm
changing my mind. You do you want to have them
every week to establish the pattern that's exactly right and
(04:34):
let the kids know that there is no topic that's
out of bounds. There's no topic that you can't bring up.
We're really happy to talk about anything at all.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
And if this is something that's new and you have
young children, then I'd have crazy conversations with them. I'd have,
you know, like, would you rather conversations where you're kind
of just stretching their thought process, their curiosity and kind
of helping them to recognize that nothing's off limit, that
we can have these conversations and have fun with them.
(05:03):
They don't have to be scared or it doesn't actually
have to feel like a tricky question because they're so
used to having kind of curly, wirly questions talked about
at the dinner table.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
In my book, Relationship Rules, and yes, this is a
blatant plug for the book, because part two of the
book is what are some things that you can talk about?
And I just want to run through a couple of
these because I think they're really really instructive that highlights
that it doesn't always have to be a tough or
a tricky conversation or talk. It can be just a
conversation that's relationship building. So listen to what they're looking
(05:36):
forward to. You might listen to what they're grateful for.
You could listen to what made them happy today. You
could learn about the kind of business they'd love to start.
You could listen to answers to hypotheticals that you invent.
And here are three that I've thrown into the book
just for fun. You find a book and begin to read,
only to discover that it is your life. You get
to the point that you are at now do you
turn the page knowing that you will not be able
(05:58):
to change the events to second one? Would you rather
get uglier or dumber? I thought that was funny. You're
not laughing, or you could reverse it. Would you rather
get more attractive or smarter? You're thinking about your answer
right now?
Speaker 3 (06:10):
No, I'm thinking about the question. Emily actually just asked
me the other day. Emily's eleven, and she asked me
if I would rather have all my teeth pulled or
all my fingernails pulled?
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Okay, what's your answer, my aunt? What did you say?
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (06:27):
My fingernails?
Speaker 1 (06:31):
I'd rather lose my fingernails. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure,
for sure. What would you do if you discovered you
only had twenty four hours to live?
Speaker 3 (06:39):
And let's face it, Elana, we're probably making this a
little bit harder on ourselves than we need to. We're
having conversations with our kids all the time, and I'm
sure that your kids are no different to any other kids.
They're asking you tricky questions all the time.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Yeah, they bring stuff up. And so, I mean the
one that I always talk about in my presentations and
things is the day that our fourteen year old daughter said, Dad,
what's an STI? And I said, hey, let's talk about
that on Sunday, because we've got two minutes in the
car where I can give you a short and generally
unhelped lanzer. Or we've got fifteen minutes on Sunday where
we all come together and we discuss it. Now, obviously
(07:15):
you're not going to have that conversation with you five
to seven year old, but your five to seven year
old is unlikely to say, hey, Mum, what's an STI?
Speaker 3 (07:21):
So she'll ask you something else.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
There'll be something that will come up. Yeah, So after
the break, what I want to do is just highlight
a bunch of topics that you could discuss and that
will lead to a whole bunch more. And the more
you do it, the more you start noticing topics that's next,
the topics to talk to your five to seven, five
to ten year olds about when it comes to tough
talks and tricky conversations. On The Happy Famili's podcast today,
(07:53):
we're talking about how to have tough talks and tricky
conversations with younger kids. What discussions are up for conversation?
Which things do you want to leave alone? Kylie, here's
my list. I'm going to work through it and you
tell me if there's anything that you would add. I thought,
first off, friendship stuff. I mean, kids come home every
day talking about something that happened to friendship. Isn't good?
Is it bad? What would you do differently in fact,
(08:16):
relationships generally?
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Yeah, I was just thinking about that as you were
talking about relationships and the idea that our kids often
come home and tell us about things that they saw
on the playground that aren't even related to their friends. Right,
They've seen something happen, They've seen a kid be bullied,
or they've seen you know, someone being mistreated and they're
trying to understand the world.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
How should we live? How do we respond to this?
What's the right thing to do here? What's the wrong
thing to do here? What are you seeing happening? What
are other people saying? Like these conversations really do take
on and explore, explain in power format, where you say and.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
What would you do if it was you? Yeah, what
would you do if you were in the same group.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Or you just want to know what their perspective is
all the way through, whether you were adding a little
bit of guidance or asking permission. Hey, I've got an idea,
mind if I share that with you? What do you
think about this? That's kind of where we're going. So
first on my list is friendships, bullying, all sorts of
relationships stuff. You might even bring in siblings or grandparents,
anything that has to do with relationships. You're going to
(09:13):
get a fifteen minute conversation without trying.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
I can't count how many times we might have had
conversations around kindness, right and right, unconditional love, and so again.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
My relationship rules books, there are eighty five relationship rules.
You could literally just do a different rule every week
and that would I mean, that would give your kids
a PhD and how to have healthy relationships. It would
be great as a family discussion. We should do that ourselves,
calling that that I think about it. The next one screens.
What's happening on screens? What's everyone doing on screens? You
can talk about gaming, you can talk about social media.
(09:49):
I mean, hopefully not with five to seven year olds,
but kids are on screens. They're seeing stuff, whether it's
on YouTube, whether it's on a social media platform. I
don't want to we call it social media anymore. Do
you know Facebook recently had to front up to court
because of well they're always in court, and they're arguing
now that they're not a social media company because more
(10:09):
than eighty percent, in fact, as much as ninety percent
of content that occurs on Facebook is people who don't
know each other viewing or sharing content with other people
that they don't know. So less than ten to fifteen
percent of what happens on Facebook now on meta platforms
is actually people who know each other talking to one another.
I thought that was an astonishing thing. Anyway, screens, I
(10:31):
reckon body safety would be something that you could talk about.
Staying safe.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
I was just thinking about your screen's conversation, and I
think it would actually be really curious to ask you
five and seven year old what they notice when they're
in a room with people.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Yeah, including you. Yeah yeah, little self assessment. Like I said,
body safety. There's so many things that you can talk
about in terms of staying safe in different situations and
how do you navigate that and what to do when
you're at the park or are their trick adults who
ask for kids' help? What's the deal there. I've also
made some notes. You can have conversations about honesty, you
(11:07):
can have conversations about integrity, you can have conversations about
what big kids do. You can have conversations about I mean,
even in grade five there's boyfriend and girlfriend's stuff. If
they're older, you start to have long, more detailed conversation.
If they're younger, you have shorter discussions, and you're just
(11:27):
exploring their perspective, explaining a couple of things, and then
getting them to come up with their own ideas. We
need to wrap it up. That's kind of everything that
I had on my list to get you started. Alana, Kylie,
you're looking at me longingly like you want to add
one more thing.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
I remember one of the most trickius conversations we ever
had with our children. Yeah, was not long after you
published your first book, What Your Child Needs from You Ah,
And you had a set of questions in there, or
statements that you could answer kind of mentally on your own,
but from your child's perspective. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Yeah, would my child say yes or no to this question?
Speaker 3 (12:05):
And I read it and I was like, I don't
want to guess what they'd say. I want to know
what they'd say.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
So we had a very first parent performance appraisal where
the kids literally told us what's really going on.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
They were some of the trickiest conversations I've ever had
with them. Three year olds telling me the things that
I wasn't quite getting right, but in such a loving
way and with so much forgiveness and unconditional love. But
you want to start a conversation that's going to stretch everybody.
(12:36):
Ask your kids if they feel like you love them,
and how do they know that you love them? Ask
them if we remember things that are important to them,
and can they tell you of a time where you've
done that. Things about whether or not they feel like
we're interested in them and the things that they're doing.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
What page number is it on on page eight? Okay, well,
while I'm shamelessly plugging relationship rules, let's also shamelessly plug
what your child needs from you. They're both available at
Happy famlies dot com dot you, and they will create really,
really meaningful and important conversations with the kids.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
It was the first time we'd had a pretty big
uppercut from our kids. They really beautifully told and worded,
but just showed us where we were lacking.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Alana, We really really hope that this has been a
helpful conversation to get those tricky talks going with you
and your kids. Thanks so much for submitting your question.
If you would like to submit a tricky question, just
go to Happy Families dot com dot you, click the button,
start talking and we will get your voice message. Otherwise,
send us a voice note to podcasts at happy families
dot com dot au. The Happy Families podcast is produced
(13:45):
by Justin Rowland from Bridge Mediamhammond's provides research and other
support and if you think your family could be happier
from this conversation, please share the chat with them, but
also with other people that you think might benefit from
it when you share the pod, when more people get
to hear it, and we get to help more families,
which is what our currency is. If you would like
more information and resources to help your family be happier,
(14:05):
visitors at happy families dot com dot au
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