Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
There are as many
ways to parent as there are
parents in this world, but thereis one way to parent that wins
every time, and that's doing itintentionally.
This show is about helpingthings go right before they can
go wrong.
Each episode is chosen to helpparents like you who may be
overwhelmed or uninspired,bringing the ideas and
(00:26):
motivation to give their bestefforts to the people and place
that matters the most.
I'm Dr Tim Thane, author of thebook and host of the podcast.
Not by Chance.
I believe that a family'ssuccess and happiness is not by
chance, so welcome to thepodcast, built especially for
intentional families.
Let's jump in.
(00:47):
Hi everyone.
Thank you for joining me againfor this podcast today.
I'm excited to be back in thestudio today to carry on a
little bit of the theme that wetalked about last time.
I just really felt it.
Last time I was trying toconvince you as a parent that
(01:08):
you had influence, that you hadpower.
I really felt it and I hope Iconvinced a few of you that you
needed to go ahead and believethat that you have a special
role that only you can play andthat you need to step into it.
Well, today I'm going to buildon that a little bit by talking
(01:30):
about another principle, andthat is that parental leadership
is essential to healthyfamilies.
Think about that statement fora second.
Parental leadership isessential to healthy families.
We have seen where thehierarchy or the leadership
system is not in place and theoutcomes in those cases are
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never as good as they could be.
Now, this is where I thinkabout the single parent out
there and recognize that in theideal scenario, you've got at
least a couple parents who areall invested and they have
different talents, they mighthave different personalities,
but they have the same visionand they're trying to help
(02:17):
convey that vision to theirfamily and bring them along
through the stages of the lifecycle, and they do that together
.
We all know what it feels liketo be on the front lines in a
parenting role, that we're therealone, and sometimes it might
be just because our partner, ourspouse, went on a vacation for
(02:38):
a while and left all the dutiesto us, or, if we really are
single parents long term outthere, by ourselves doing it.
I just want you to know.
If you're in that category, myhat goes off to you.
I really think that you haveone of the toughest jobs on
planet earth, and that is thatyou're on 24 seven all the time,
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needing to play that role ontop of everything else that you
need to do.
I also hope the parents outthere that have a co-parent can
see the power of setting up theleadership structure that we're
going to talk about today, sothat you can really facilitate
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and lead out in front and byexample, your family.
There's one thing that's harderthan single parenting, and that
is trying to parent with someonewho is pulling in the opposite
direction you're trying to go,or that they have serious mental
health challenges, or they'vegot personality disorder, or
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they've got mental healthdisorders, or they just hate you
.
That's another one.
If they just will not cooperate, that's tough, and they might
even convince you that you haveno power if you're in a
situation like that.
But I'm going to bring you backto some of the principles that
will put you in a place ofinfluence and a place of power.
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I don't want you to leave todayfeeling less powerful and
influential because, ultimately,your kids need you to feel this
way.
They need you to feel confidentin this role.
If you were to draw a picture, adiagram, of a healthy family
structure, you would see theparents at the top and equally
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working together, maybe indifferent roles, but working as
a team.
And then you'd see below them,you'd see the children and
almost like an org chart.
Think about an org chart whereyou've got the president up here
, you've got the executivepresidents, the vice presidents
here, and then you've got thedirectors In the family.
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There's at least a couplelayers here.
You've got the leadership team,the parents, and you've got the
children.
If we could draw it out alittle further, you would start
to look at the relationshipsbetween each parent and each
child, and that has a hugeeffect on the family culture.
And so one of the things I hopeyou will do as a leader inside
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your family is get really,really good at understanding how
you're coming to that role,what kind of influence you're
having over each one of thechildren and your co-parent, and
become very intentional aboutwhat you bring to those
interactions, because as you dothat, your leadership influence
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will increase, it will getstronger and you're not
undermining your own authorityor your own role, because you're
being intentional about howyou're managing the emotions,
about the way you'recommunicating with members, your
family, about the cultureyou're creating.
(05:53):
If you say to yourself I want,we value having fun as a family
and you intentionally go aboutthat, you're probably going to
find a good balance between allthe other responsibilities you
have and then having a good timewith your family and building
those bonds.
I bring that up because that'sone of my regrets.
I believe that Iover-emphasized hard work in our
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family and I do think my kidspicked up on that and in some
ways I'm afraid they've maybepicked up on it too well, but we
miss some opportunities to havemore recreation together and
more fun together.
So we're trying to catch up onthat.
We're trying to build that inat this point in time.
(06:38):
But it starts with thestructure in place, right,
getting the right structure,with the parents at the top of
the hierarchy.
Now I've mentioned a little bitin our last podcast how
sometimes teens will flip thehierarchy upside down, and it's
natural, isn't it?
Think about the naturalprogression of a child as they
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grow up and over time.
Their goal and your goal as aparent is to help them become an
independent, successful, happyadult, and you're equipping them
with the tools and theknowledge and the skills to be
able to do that.
So, in essence, your role asthe leader will ultimately be
(07:21):
replaced with you being more ofa consultant or a supporter in
some way, and so that changeover time and the maturation of
a child over time, where theystart to take on more and more
of self-leadership andself-determination of what
they're going to do in theirlife, is a challenge for us
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parents, because sometimes westruggle to let go and let them
start to make those decisions intheir life, because we have
evidence in our minds thatthey're not quite ready for it,
and so we hold on, maybe to thatleadership position a little
too long in some cases.
In other cases it's really clearthat our child or teen is
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trying to flip the hierarchyupside down and put themselves
in a place of power so that theycan maintain the status quo.
They don't want to, they don'twant you necessarily to be their
leader, even though they reallyneed a leader.
And there's lots of ways thatthey try to do that, and all of
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them include a lot of strongemotions.
And when our teenager cantrigger us in a way that brings
on serious you know, heavy dutyemotions, then we oftentimes
lose some of the leadership thatwe had, some of the influence
that we had before this and wehave to get that back, and so
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one of the core things that weall need to do as parents is to
be able to take this journey,you know, with our family
members, the most intenserelationships that we'll ever
have, where we feel every bumpthey go through, where we feel
every emotion they feel.
We can sense that, empathizewith that and still stay steady
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and strong along the way.
That's what our families needfrom us.
As hard as that is, that's oneof the biggest challenges, and
so I invite you to continuallymonitor your emotions.
That is the big thing going onall the time.
That's the thoughts and theemotions we have in different
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situations with our kids thatget the best of us if we're not
aware of what they are.
So we're doing this parentgroup that I mentioned to you.
It's a pilot group for thetrusty parent group, and they're
going to help us beta test theapp as it comes out, but it's
going really well.
We had our third week and I'malso doing some individual
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one-on-one coaching, so I'm kindof getting back into that role
and really enjoying that.
One of the couples that I'mcoaching that's in our group.
I asked them to share theirstory last night with the entire
group because it's inspiring.
Now this is a situation wherethere's a daughter that
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struggled.
She's been into treatment,she's now home and doing quite
well.
But, as is always the case withkids that are coming back from
treatment, there's a period oftime where they move into what I
call the testing phase andthat's where they start to test
these new skills they developedin treatment.
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That's where they begin tomaybe push back a little bit on
the initial boundaries that wereset with their families.
So they've entered the testingphase and what's so impressive
about this couple is that therewas there's sort of the story of
who they were before theirdaughter went into treatment,
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and it's quite different fromwho they are today.
It's a huge change.
So I was asking the father,because they had a little
incident that came up.
I asked the father I said sowhat would have you done in the
past?
Because we were talking about,you know, setting boundaries,
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having consequences for thoseissues, those big expectations
they have that are mostimportant, and being able to
follow through with thoseconsequences.
He said, oh, I would havegrounded her till she was 30.
He exaggerated that, obviously,but he was trying to share with
me that his natural instinct isto clamp down.
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You know, really get tough withthings, and it's all coming
from a really strong emotionalreaction to what the behavior
was.
And I said so let's talk aboutwhat you did this time.
Well, this incident happened.
They knew they had to followthrough with the consequences
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they talked about related tothis kind of behavior, and there
was a lot of strong emotion.
And so he did the very oppositeof what he did in the past.
In the past, he would haveplowed ahead with all that
energy, with all that negativeemotion, and that's where the
you know grounding till 30 comesfrom.
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Instead, he said we do need totalk about this, but I can't yet
, I'm not in a place that I cando that, and so we'll get back
to you on this issue.
Well then, you know, we're kindof on a pause until we can have
, you know, this conversationand so forth.
So it took him four days fourdays to kind of work through the
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emotion, get to a place wherethey could then have a really
great conversation.
Part of that time was mom anddad getting on the same page.
You know, think about, you know, leadership being so essential
to healthy families, you getthat leadership team on the same
page, working through theiremotions and then finally
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getting ready to have a reallygood conversation with their
daughter.
And that is exactly whathappened he shared in our group
meeting last night.
He said he said there was someemotion we have not seen before
from her, some empathy, evensome emotion from him.
It was soft, it wasopen-hearted kind of emotion and
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in the end, you know, they cameup with the right consequences
and the follow-through.
She felt like they were lighton her, even though the
consequences are probably thesame as they would have done.
But because the conversationitself was one that lifted their
relationship and honored therelationship and it was not
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heavy-handed but it wasconsistent with what they had
talked about.
He said it's the bestconversation they've had,
probably in two years, and hadlittle tear in his eye and,
honestly, all of us parentslistening in we just wanted to
rejoice with him because theyhad such a successful experience
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.
But that's because a lot ofthese things were lined up right
.
They had clear expectationsbefore the event happened.
They knew that they had to beon the same page, you know,
instead of mom being worn downby the daughter and kind of you
know, taking her side on somethings.
Potentially, the mother is alsodoing some amazing things.
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Her daughter still has the samenatural instinct.
I'm going to go to mom first.
I'm going to kind of get her onmy side a little bit and
that'll help me.
When it comes to my dad, who'sstricter, and instead what mom
did was, as her daughter came toher and wanted to talk about
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all this that had happened andkind of soften her up a little
bit, she said you might want towait until your dad gets here,
because you're going to have togo through all of this again.
Anyway, it's up to you, butyou're going to have to share it
with him.
Another thing she said that Ithought was awesome is when her
daughter texts her that hasanything to do with any concern
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or you know thing that might beimportant for the dad to be
involved in.
She'll say, hey, this isprobably one of those things
that you ought to text both ofus at the same time.
So at every turn, as thedaughter is trying to
potentially separate thisleadership team, they are
closing the gap each time andwhat that's done is it's helped
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the dad realize oh, I've got totake responsibility.
Now I'm not trying to offset myspouse from the past or her
mother from the past, whereshe'll get soft, she's not,
because she's not doing that Now.
I got to take responsibility onmy side and manage my own
emotions, take the time out if Ineed that time out, and then we
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come together and have aconversation and it's the best
one they've had in over twoyears.
So I wanted to share thatsuccess with you, because that
is the ideal.
We can do that a lot more oftenthan we do.
Too often.
Parents are actually underminingeach other instead of finding a
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way to work together.
Some parents like the feelingof I've got my child on my side
because I'm either mad at or Idon't like the, the co-parent,
or we've got this tensionbetween us.
They tend to enjoy the feelingof closeness with their child
over the feeling of thisleadership team, of us coming
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together, doing the hard workthat would be required for us to
see eye to eye about a fewthings, because they haven't
connected the dots to thenegative downside, to their
child, who they love, thatthey're going to have because
they were not united with theirco-parent, and so they will do
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things, whether it's intentional, whether it's obvious or not,
you cannot not communicate withyour kids.
Everything you do you arecommunicating with them.
If you're mad at their motheror their father or the other
parent, that is going to comethrough.
So I'm saying, if you havethose strong feelings, get some
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help and work through that sothat that leadership structure
that's so essential to healthyfamilies is in place.
Your kids will thank you later,when they get to be older, and
say thank you for working thatout.
Even though you weren't youknow, maybe you didn't see eye
to eye about a lot of things youworked as a team to make it
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work for us.
Now there are obviously theseexceptions where there's a
parent that's so far out and sooff track that you can't, you
can't unite or align with them.
But I'm telling you that 90, Idon't know high percentage, 90,
some odd percentage of all thefamilies I've worked in the past
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that's had this divisionbetween them.
You know you talk to one parentand they'll tell you the reason
their co parent is isimpossible to to align with.
And then you talk to the otherparent and they'll tell you why
it's impossible to align withthat other parent and you can
see both parents perspective,and you could really agree with
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both of them.
And so if you are skeptical asyou listen to this and say, well
, I'm different, my co parent isimpossible, please, please, put
a question mark on that.
You know, don't take that facevalue anymore.
The best thing you could do isfigure out why you should
apologize to your co parent, andyou might say never.
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I'm telling you, though, thatif you can find a legitimate
reason why you can apologizeeven if it's really not all your
fault, you've you can findsomething that you can do better
and apologize for that, andthat's your part.
You don't have to fix them, youdon't have to change them or
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anything else, but just do yourpart and see if that improves
that co parenting alignment even10, 15, 20% and your kids will
be better off as a result ofthat.
I'd like you to do a littleexercise and just get a piece of
paper out, and I'd like you tokind of list all of your family.
You know immediate familymembers and, and just
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hierarchical, you know who'swho's at the top of the
hierarchy and what's the what'sthe order of things.
The way to figure this out isto ask yourself who in the
family is most responsible forthe emotional climate of our
home, who tends to get their way.
You know if they, if there's adisagreement, you know that
person is probably at the top ofthe hierarchy and it's not
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always apparent.
A lot of times it can be ateenager.
So do that activity and then Iwant you to think about how do
you get this right.
Flip the hierarchy back up towhere it needs to be.
And it's not through control,it can't be through heavy handed
means, but but you need tofigure out how to address the
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issues that are happening.
That's attempting to flip thehierarchy.
Like I said earlier in thepodcast, there's always some
strong emotions attached to this.
So let's think about just a fewof the things that a few of the
ways teens either intentionallyor unintentionally flipped the
family hierarchy.
One for sure is emotionaloutbursts and you know, I, I, I
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know that this is going on in alot of homes and you would never
know that.
If you know this kid outsidetheir home, you would, you would
meet this, this, you know girlor boy, and you'd say, wow, what
a great kid.
They're nice, they're, you know, good student, they're doing
some good things in their life.
But if you get into their home,you would see that that's where
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they let it all go.
You know, maybe they're holdingit together and they've got all
this, these challenges outsidethe home and it it wears them
out all day, but then they gethome and they just relax and
they let themselves be whateverthey want to be in their home.
Sometimes, though, theyliterally are saying I know, if
I escalate, escalate, escalate,then what will happen is, out of
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the strong emotions that arethere, my mom or my dad and my
parents in general will lose theinfluence they have and they'll
sort of take their hands offand I'll be able to kind of go
forward with what I want to do.
Look at the patterns, figure outhow emotional outbursts are
often, the ways that the familyhierarchy has flipped and you're
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removed from your leadershipposition.
Another very common one is aguilt trip.
You know you, none of us areperfect, and so there's
definitely some places our kids,if they wanted to, could point
out our imperfection, and ifwe're prone to guilt, guilt is
one of those emotions thatcauses us to want to repair or
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get rid of that feeling bymaking our child happy.
And so if you're operating froma place of guilt.
Just know that most of the timethat is not going to lead you
in a good direction.
So figure out what you need todo to get rid of the guilt.
Recognize that no parent'sperfect, you're not going to be
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and it's okay.
And if you need to apologize,do that for your teen, but don't
go forward with this sense ofguilt and I've got to make up
for this all the time.
Another one is threats thatcould be either vocal, vocally
threatening something, or itmight be by their action.
I remember a boy that we workedwith a long time ago that he'd
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escalate his anger when hedidn't get his way and at one
point he took the hockey stickand he started smashing things
in the house and broke the stickover the mantle and a few
things like that and of courseyou see a display of kind of
violence like that and trashingthe property in the house and
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all of that.
That now sticks with theparents and they're like, wow,
he can escalate.
So in those cases, in order torestore the family hierarchy,
sometimes you have to bring inhelp.
You know, especially if you'rea single parent and he's bigger
than you are, you know, andthere's a real threat and a
worry about what he might dophysically.
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You have to help him understandthat that is not going to be
okay and you're not going to beafraid of that.
You're going to get the helpyou need whether it be a
neighbor, a friend, a familymember or the police to help you
to establish order and safetyin the home.
That's your job and you'll bethe judge of that really what's
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needed.
But get a plan to make surethat you've got the influence
and the power behind you toaccomplish that important task.
These days it's interesting whatI see.
Just this week I heard a sonthat was basically saying things
like you're just, you know,you're just.
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Every time you get a new bookand you read the book and you
try to apply that, you reallydon't know what you're doing.
He's undermining them and kindof demeaning his parents for
them trying to do a good job,and that's another way to try to
undermine their leadership.
Another one that's so commonI've heard it for years and
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years is that if your team tellsyou you are the only parent
that does this, you're so farout.
You're crazy as a parent,basically, if your team's trying
to get you to think that youare on an island and you're only
parent in the world that isexpecting the things that you
expect from their child.
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They're trying to undermineyour confidence and make you
think that you're dumb or youare clueless as a parent.
That's a really you know veryobvious manipulation that
they're doing, and they want youto stop trying to be a leader.
So don't take the bait, youknow.
Figure out a way that you canget that confidence and maybe
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it's talking to more parents andrealizing you're not alone.
But at the same time, becareful, because a lot of
parents are out there just sortof doing what everybody else is
doing.
If you're not going swimmingupstream a little bit as a
parent, doing something that'snot the common thing to do, then
you probably need to be goingthe other direction.
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I've seen teens give theirparents the silent treatment,
and if you're a parent, that'sone of the worst things that you
could go through.
You know, the cutoff ofinformation and obviously the
lack of communication reallyhurts the relationship, and it
does take two to maintain thatrelationship.
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They've got to contribute some,and so I'm sure there's a lot
of anxiety.
If you have a child that'sdoing that to you, it is
definitely a manipulation tacticand be careful, don't allow
that to work, just because youdon't want to have those kinds
of demands made of you and I'mnot going to talk to you until
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you give me what I need.
You know, you have to realizethat starting a precedence like
that is not going to be good.
It's not going to work out wellAll right.
So I've shared a few thingsabout how parents undermine each
other sometimes and how teensundermine the authority of the
parents.
I want to give you a back, getyou back to some solid ground.
(27:29):
You've probably been takingsome notes and nodding and some
cases saying, yep, my child doesthat, does this, does this
other thing, and so what do youdo about it?
Right, where do you go fromhere?
I want to invite you again togo back to that place we talked
about last week, where it's.
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The circle of control is whereyour greatest control is, is
over your own thoughts, feelingsand actions.
If you take full responsibilityfor all three of those things,
you can begin to change them andsee that you've got a lot of
power.
If nothing else changes, butyour emotion changes around
these certain topics, guess what?
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Your influence goes up.
Your leadership ability goes up.
So start there and have adifferent experience internally.
That's the first place.
The next one is to developcommunication skills.
When I think about the tool, Ithink about the tool.
It's almost the universal toolin family life and really
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anytime there's an interpersonalsituation going on.
That is, get really good atcommunication.
I want to do a whole podcast oncommunication soon because it's
so core to everything else.
But if you can get good at thatand there's at least two real
big parts to that, that is sortof this ability to step outside
(28:53):
yourself, checking in and seeing, watching your emotions,
watching your thoughts and thenmaking decisions about those
emotions and those thoughts andthose actions and then following
through with the skills.
So the skill of personalinsight into all of those things
and the skill of actuallyknowing how to speak with
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responsibility, how to listenactively, how to summarize all
of those things we've heardabout.
But it makes it difficult.
The most difficult place you'lltry to do this communication is
going to be inside your ownhome, because there's so much
emotion and that's exactly whythat second part of the
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emotional management andintelligence is going to be so
key to this.
So those are a couple of reallybig things.
Go back to where you havecontrol and influence over
yourself.
Add to that the communicationand do that really well.
And notice when you have goodconversations that are
productive, that lead to greaterconnection even if you haven't
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made a decision on how you'regoing to go forward yet, but
there's a better connection youhave already started to again
put yourself in that leadershipposition so you can guide your
family.
Oh, there's so much more totalk about on this subject.
So know that if you will stepinto that leadership role with
confidence, with education andlearning, if you can put all of
(30:25):
this together, it doesn't takelong for you to begin to see the
results of all that effort.
So I wish you all the best asyou apply these principles, and
I hope that you'll find at leastone thing from today's podcast
that you can do differently,whether that be strengthening
that co-parenting relationship,recognizing when you're in a
(30:47):
leadership role, when you'rekind of undermining yourself or
others inside the family.
Whatever it is, write it down,tell someone, tell me I would
love to hear about it and thenmake it something you
intentionally do for a whileuntil it becomes habitual to you
, and then you can move on tothe next thing.
(31:08):
We can't do it all at once, butwe can do something.
Thanks for listening and wishyou all the best as you
intentionally lead your family.
Parents, your time is valuableand I'm grateful you spent some
of it with us.
What you're intentionally doingin your home life is inspiring
and unmatched in its importanceand long-term effects.
(31:28):
Ask yourself what am I going todo because of what I've learned
today?