June 23, 2025 • 29 mins
🎙️ Episode 15: Accountability & Respect
This week, we’re diving into two words that carry a lot of weight—and often get misunderstood in parenting: accountability and respect.
We unpack what these concepts really mean in a family setting (hint: it’s not about obedience), and how we’re trying to model them at home—imperfectly, but intentionally.
From birth stories to playground conflicts, we talk about:
- Why impact matters more than intent
- What Heart Repair looks like in real life (and how it’s based on Nonviolent Communication)
- How peer orientation pulled Greg away from his family too early
- And why “respect” might need a serious rebrand
We’re also sharing an experiment we’re trying with our kids—a Family Heart Repair Journal—to help build the muscles for empathy, reflection, and repair.
This one’s about power, connection, and the tools kids need to own their actions and stay close.
Resources Mentioned:
- The Wholehearted Parenting Manifesto – Brené Brown
- Nonviolent Communication – Marshall Rosenberg
- Conscious Discipline – Dr. Becky Bailey
- The Road Less Traveled – M. Scott Peck (concept of “bracketing”)
🎧 Listen now and let us know what shows up for you. And if it resonates, share it with someone else building family culture on purpose.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to The Most Important Thing.
I'm Danielle DeMarco Neufeld. And I'm Greg Neufeld, and
together we're exploring how ambitious busy families can
build culture at home. Because after all, family is the
most important thing. Hey, happy Monday.
Happy Monday Goosy, how are you doing?
Pretty well, pretty well. I'm excited about this video
format because you actually comeinto our home.
(00:22):
Yeah, like the least decorated part of our.
Home but. Got to start somewhere.
We're we're still living in somewhat COVID times, I think,
so we need reason to do a littlesprucing up around here as it
pertains to this office and maybe some new clothes.
That's right. Yeah.
Always a work in progress, yeah?OK.
So this is the sixth episode in our series on the Wholehearted
(00:44):
Parenting Manifesto. The hits just keep on coming.
That's right. This one is on accountability
and respect, among other things.From the Wholehearted Parenting
Manifesto, Brene says you will learn accountability and respect
by watching me make mistakes andmake amends, and by watching how
I ask for what I need and talk about how I feel.
So there's a lot to unpack in this one sentence, right?
(01:07):
I think we should probably startfrom the top.
Accountability and respect. Respect is a really loaded word
for me, I have to tell you. Say more.
It feels very boomer. I've heard my parents talk about
respect from their grandchildren.
I certainly grew up with this idea of respecting your elders
(01:30):
and respecting your parents, andit usually meant obedience more
than anything else. I honestly think about a
Catholic school nun with a rulerwhen I think about respect.
So. But then on the other hand, one
of the pillars in our children'svery gentle, whimsical preschool
is respect for the individual. So I suppose it can play both
(01:54):
ways. I personally, however, like it's
a little bit of a trigger word for me.
Accountability on the other hand, is a word I love.
I love the idea of I guess I think about, I think about my
career and I think about gettingthings done in deliverables and
shared accountability and individual accountability on
teams. And it's something that I am
eager to bring more visible accountability into our home.
(02:19):
So what shows up for you in combining these two?
Does it mean that you don't wantto talk about respect in the
traditional sense? Or do you think that maybe it's
just not properly defined and weshould redefine it?
Yeah, well, so I dug into some of the research on this, and
what Brené Brown says is that accountability breeds trust and
trust breeds respect. So when I think about the kind
(02:41):
of more positive connotation of respect, as I mentioned from the
kids preschool, respect for the individual, it's a way of
saying, I see you and I'm going to make space for you.
And in this particular context, it's about holding myself
accountable for the way that my actions may have had an impact
on you, positive or negative, even if my intentions were
different. Yeah, You brought that up
(03:03):
recently as as being the thing that you want our kids to really
understand about repair is that no matter what they meant, that
they kind of do have a a place in a role in how someone else
feels and what they take away from that experience and
interaction. That's right.
I I think I've been trying to talk to the kids about how
regardless of your intention, the impact is the same and you
(03:25):
have to be responsible for the impact.
So do you think that it's developmentally appropriate for
a three-year old A5 year old to be able to actually hold on to
that and and understand that? Yeah, it's a great question.
I think that it's aspirational, but I do believe that we can
give them the language and help them create a framework so that
they can grow into it. So are we trying to model
(03:47):
anything in particular here? Like what's?
What's the objective? Yeah.
So I would say that the biggest objective for me, the thing that
I wish that I knew earlier in life is this idea that
regardless of what my intention was, I need to be accountable
for the impact that my behavior has on you.
So I think for many years I thought, well, I didn't mean it
(04:07):
like that or that's just how my brain works, or I would never,
this is a big one. Like I would never feel this way
in that circumstance. So why would you, right?
And I think a lot of the learning that I've had over the
past really since becoming a Brené Brown fan, is that my part
is to get curious and to witnessthe way that something I did or
(04:31):
even something, even if I'm justlistening to a friend in the way
that they have experienced something, that my part is
really to hear them not put my own tape over it.
Oh, in, in this circumstance, I would have felt X.
So let me get, let me get more specific because it seems pretty
nebulous right now. So I think a great example for
(04:51):
me that's come up over the past decade repeatedly is pregnancy
and how some friends have had trouble getting pregnant, some
friends have had trouble with the newborn phase or with
breastfeeding or with the birth itself.
And rarely did those coincide with my struggles.
But I know that when Jade was born, her birth was deeply
(05:12):
traumatizing to me. And what I needed at that time
was for people in my life to hear me and understand how I
felt that regardless of whether or not I had a healthy baby and
a healthy Mama, which is what was repeated to me ad nauseam,
that I felt deeply lost and in alot of pain.
(05:36):
And I needed people to see me for that experience, regardless
of whether or not they would have had they would have felt
the same way. And so that lesson really that
experience, because I had some friends who said to me, oh, it's
fine. You didn't, you know, the baby's
(05:56):
fine, you're fine. It's OK.
Like I know way worse birth stories, right?
That's not helpful. What's helpful is people
honoring one another's experience and recognizing that,
no, I may not have had that samereaction in this had this happen
to me, but I can, I can accept and I can support and empathize
(06:17):
with you going through this hardship.
And I think that, birth stories aside, this comes up all the
time when we hurt each other and.
So let's play that back. So a friend says to you, but the
baby's healthy, right? And you say, yeah, but that's
not the point. How do?
(06:38):
You that feels bad. It really does, right?
That just feels really bad. That feels like I'm not being
seen, someone is not hearing me because it's a both ends
situation. While that is true, my
experience was one of deep trauma and pain.
And so I guess that experience has really helped me with much
(06:58):
smaller things, such as when Jade is deeply pained by one of
us raising our voices, right? You, me, Hunter, Maverick, we're
way less sensitive to raised voices than Jade is.
But I'm not going to look at herand say toughen up or this is no
big deal, right? Is it helpful to you to go to a
(07:19):
place where you were misunderstood or you felt like
there wasn't empathy in terms ofrespecting your situation?
Does that help you kind of show up differently for Jade or for
Hunter or Maverick or for me? I mean, that's what Brené Brown
would say you're supposed to do,I believe.
I don't know that I do that directly, but I do think that
I've had enough practice now that I can recognize like, oh,
(07:43):
I'm looking at this through my lens.
I need to start accepting that Idon't know what the other person
is feeling and that if they tellme, if Jade tells me, that
raising my voice deeply disruptsher, what she can tell me with
her words or her actions, I needto believe that.
Like for my, for my own heart. Because I want.
(08:03):
Because I know that I have idiosyncrasies.
Also that I really want the restof you to believe when they show
up. Do you think that's the hardest
part about what do we call this accountability to taking, taking
accountability for your actions?Yeah, I think it's respect.
Respect. I think it's that is really the
respect for the individual. So it's no longer a boomer term.
(08:25):
It becomes respect, meaning I respect your position.
I respect. Your experience?
Your experience and what I'm here for you and I'm I see you
and I see you. And while this particular
circumstance may not have brought up fill in the blank
deep fear, I can I can empathizewith you because I have had
(08:46):
other experiences that look different but that bring up that
same emotion within me. And I can use that to relate to
you. Right.
And we all have those. So it shouldn't be too hard to
reflect on a situation where I have felt misunderstood and
bring that back full circle. To understand what it feels like
to be misunderstood and know, hey, this might not be my
(09:09):
experience, but it certainly sounds like it's yours.
M Scott Peck in his book The Road Less Traveled, talks about
this term that he uses bracketing, which is essentially
suspending your own existing beliefs and making space for
what the other person needs to fill that in with.
So putting aside oneself to makeroom for new information.
(09:31):
And I think that that is an extremely powerful concept to
teach our children as early as possible.
I completely agree, we've had some luck, for lack of a better
term with this already showing up in some of our kids schools.
Is that where you where you wantto go?
Absolutely. Let's talk about that.
So Hunter and now Jade go to a local school here.
(09:56):
It's called Coca Plum Nature School, where the founders have
created a framework for repair called heart repair.
And so it's based off of the principles of nonviolent
communication and conscious discipline, two other wonderful
frameworks that have terrible names.
Terrible names. It's a consistent theme, but
essentially it's a way for kids to make up without having to say
(10:17):
I'm sorry. So I think one of the first and
one of the most important aspects of this is that both
people have to consent to heart repair.
And often times that takes, I won't say at their school.
I can tell you in our home, sometimes that's immediate, but
more often it takes hours or days.
Attachment styles are a whole different topic, but I would
just say that like we have Hunter who leans towards an
anxious attachment style and wants to repair immediately,
(10:38):
whereas Jade, you could call hersomeone avoidance and likes to
take more time, just by way of example.
So sometimes heart repair, typically heart repair will be
anywhere from 10 minutes to a couple of hours after said
incident depending on what happens.
But respecting each individual and having them consent to come
(10:59):
to the table, so to speak, to even begin the heart repair
process is a very important first step.
Yeah, and I've noticed it's a little anxiety inducing, but
once you've done it once or twice, that anxiety kind of goes
away and you're more prepared and excited to show up and get
it not over with, but actually get into it.
As opposed to what I noticed with most interpersonal
(11:20):
conflicts, even as adults, is I we tend to take space from a
person, almost too much space, and let it fester and build.
As opposed to going to that person and saying, hey, this was
my experience and it didn't feelso.
Good, right. So we can get into how it how it
happens. But I do just want to say that I
think that this really is our job as parents is to give them
(11:41):
the framework, give them the language in a developmentally
appropriate, accessible manner and then they can grow into it
over time. Right now the heart repair is
extremely one O 1, but I do think that now they know they
have a process for making up andmaking amends and holding one
another accountable. That really is a skill that they
(12:01):
can build upon as they grow. Yeah, and what it?
What is the format? Sure.
That they go through so it's thefirst person will say I feel and
then insert some emotion. Typically for our children
that's sad, mad, scared. But it obviously can be more
advanced as you get older. I have done this with adults
before and had to had very good results for my own self.
(12:23):
Peace in my heart. So I feel when you so I feel mad
when you steal my monster truck I need and then they typically
say you 2 not do that. Can you please stop?
That's usually how it goes, right?
But then the most important partthat for me is when the other
(12:43):
person reflects back what they heard.
And so it's you feel sad when I take your monster truck you need
me to stop and then it are you willing to stop?
Yes, I am willing to stop, right?
And then sometimes the other person will say, well, I feel
really mad when you RIP my book,can you please stop, right?
(13:04):
And so I'm using a little bit ofa sassy tone, but sometimes that
happens too. But it's this understanding that
often times the incident that isthe reason to come to the heart
repair carpet, if you will, is preceded by many other actions,
right? It's built upon.
And so there's not blame, but there's accountability on all
sides. And so the other person would
repeat back, You feel mad when Irip your book, I will stop,
(13:32):
right? Right.
Relatively simple, but impactfulnonetheless.
It's been remarkable just hearing about these interactions
happening without our supervision at school.
Even at Jade's preschool, she took it upon herself, didn't she
to? She did.
Yeah. I'm smiling big because I I
(13:52):
forgot about that and it's such a great thing.
So about six months ago, Jade came to me after school one day
and said, mom, my friend keeps yelling at me, stop talking when
the little girl, the other little girl had been talking for
a while and Jade tried to say one thing.
But the point is Jade said, mommy, it really hurts my
feelings and she says it a lot. And so we talked about what can
(14:14):
you say to her? Let's just call her Sarah.
So Jade and I discussed how she would go up to Sarah the next
day when things are peaceful, right?
And just say, you know, Sarah, when you say stop talking, I
feel sad. Can you please stop?
And I wasn't there. So I don't know for sure what
happened. But I do know that she came home
the next day and said, mom, Sarah heard me and she's not
(14:38):
going to do it anymore. And we haven't heard about it
again. And she was 4 at the time.
Yeah, it was awesome. Just remarkable.
But she's got the scaffolding and she's seen it at home.
She's seen it at school, supervised, she knew what to do
and that's that's really a special framework that our kids
have and we want to share and make sure that it's well known.
(15:01):
Yeah. And I mean, we're just getting
started, right? I don't want to make it sound
like we have this unlocked because we don't.
And there are plenty of times that there is an incident in our
home and we don't do heart repair, but when we do, it has
very strong results. Yeah, I think that the you've
mentioned this, the the parroting back, the echoing back
what what you heard about the other person's experience is the
(15:22):
most important thing from heart repair.
And it sometimes gets lost in the conversation just because I
don't think that kids and adults, it's the hardest part.
It's the hardest part really know how to in the moment make
that feel authentic and show up as authentic and but.
I think it's one of those thingswhere you fake it to your make
(15:43):
it right. Like I was listening to a Doctor
Becky episode the other day and she was like, we as parents make
way too much of an eye roll. I actually think that an eye
roll is a positive thing becauseit's a sign of compromise.
These are my words right where it's a sign of compromise, where
the child is trying to say, I think you're saying something
valuable right now, but I need to protect my independence.
(16:04):
And so am eye rolling as a way to make space from that.
And I think you'll get a lot of eye rolling.
At least I've witnessed a lot ofeye rolling and heart repair.
But they're still standing thereand they're still, the kids are
still showing up. And so it's this balance
between, I mean, you can't just necessarily jump into full
accountability. I think this experience of
learning to hold another person's experience in your hand
(16:27):
as opposed to pushing it completely away or taking it in
and taking it on is a deliberatepractice that takes time.
I know I'm still working on it. Especially with our children, I
have a tendency to do one or theother.
And so, of course, in heart repair, it is often times
(16:48):
challenging to get a child to repeat back what the other has
said and to really accept the impact that their behavior has
had. But that's what practice is for.
It's not always going to go perfectly.
Yeah, exactly, which is why justhaving this as a tool in the
tool kit 1 and then two, maybe having something documented
(17:10):
about that heart repair. So one experiment that comes up
for me here is having a family heart repair journal where we
just document what the other person's experience was.
It's not about what you did to make them feel that way, it's
just more that you understand where they're coming from when
that experience might not be what you felt.
(17:31):
It is what what they felt. I love that.
I think that's such a great ideato have some type of ongoing
journal. It's just talking about what
really occurrences in our life, conflicts and resolutions,
making amends in our home. Yeah, I just finished reading
Esther Wojacki's How to Raise Successful People, and she
(17:51):
always had her daughter. She said write a apology letter
to them. Now I feel like that's respect
capital R old school maybe. Maybe trending towards that
side? She also threw out that there
was a practice of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
So I was like, you know, take what you want from that.
But I do think that to make thisa little more modern, a family
(18:13):
accountability journal where we write in what the other person's
experience was and what we heard, I think would be a really
helpful tool. So who's doing the writing then?
I I would like to suggest that they do it together, but it's
not like the perpetrator has to write what they heard from the
victim or something. That's kind of like a guest book
at a, a inn or something. You, you sign it together, you
write, you know, we had this little experience, this little
(18:35):
thing happened. This is what we resolved.
Sure. And we can write it for them, of
course, but they want to. We want them to be there and and
document it with us. I love that.
I think that's an excellent experiment to run.
Let's get out of composition book after this.
Sounds. Good.
All right, so to recap, the mostimportant thing about
accountability and respect is that when we expect kids to own
(18:57):
their actions and give them the tools to repair, we teach them
how to be powerful and stay connected.
So it's one of the frameworks that I love.
It's like a meta framework. So if we've heart repair as a
framework, one of the frameworksthat I think about a lot is that
we have to 1st give kids the language, then we can be
(19:20):
supportive in their process. And then as they get even older,
we really have to be invited in.So this is the time, I think
that this is really the most crucial time to support our
children with frameworks for interacting frameworks for
courage, like we talked about before, deliberate practice and
seeing mistakes as learning opportunities.
(19:42):
And then here framework for accountability.
So owning our own mistakes, but using heart repair as a
framework, even if you don't come up to a friend and say,
Hey, it's time for heart repair,right?
But actually saying, you know, like Jay did at school, I felt
sad when you told me to stop talking repeatedly.
Can you please not do that again, right?
That's just a she didn't ask forconsent to have a whole like a
(20:06):
whole heart repair tete, a tete if you will, but it it really.
Is a framework that gave her thelanguage to address her own
needs. Right.
Cool, you have a lot of other things that you want to say on
this topic. Let's get into it.
Well, some things to explore. OK, so to lean back the where I
(20:30):
noticed that this all broke downbecause I had a lot of good
modeling of accountability and respect as a younger child.
But then where this all broke down for me, I think was around
peer orientation. So when I was exposed to other
friends, families and and ways of doing things that I thought
(20:50):
were especially funny, cool, youknow, laissez faire if you will,
Like letting the kids get into fights or the siblings get into
fights and just kind of like throat blows and not apologize
or, you know, take each other's toys and not do anything about
it. Just kind of a free for all if
you will. So very different than.
The way very different from the way that I grew up and I began
(21:13):
to model some of those things. And it was really hard, I would
say, to to come back to the family orientation for me,
especially because one thing that happens when you change
your belief system, when I change my belief system, is that
I stopped caring about what we do as a family and cared more
(21:36):
about how I got over, got through the uncomfortable,
awkward moments just to get to the next thing that I want to
do. Right about.
Can you give us like an age timeframe for this?
This is probably 4th or 5th grade and on.
OK. So lying to get out of Trump,
(21:57):
right? Even if it wasn't anything
necessarily malicious. Just like, oh, what movie did
you watch at that sleepover? Starts small, starts small,
because what I've heard you say before is that you had a really
strong system for accountabilityand repair in your home when you
were little. And that probably relates to the
(22:17):
fact that your mom was an early childhood educator and she knew
how to facilitate those types ofinteractions.
But it sounds like at some pointthat changed.
And it's probably one of the reasons why we're starting this
podcast, honestly at this time to kind of hold on to our kids
ahead of that because this peer orientation, you haven't talked
(22:38):
about it too much on the podcast, but it's something that
we've talked about a lot. And I think that you would, is
it fair to say you would have preferred to have done it
differently or that you think ofit as part of the demise of your
relationship with your parents? Or how do you think about it?
I. Don't think about it as the
demise of the relationship with my parents, I think about it as
more of the lost years. Lost years.
(22:59):
So it's a much better framework.Yeah, there.
Was no demise of of a relationship.
It was just more we grew apart too early and then I didn't have
them for the years that I thought that I would.
And so that is to me, something that shows up when I think about
our family is this idea of holding on to our kids.
It's not just about keeping themfamily oriented.
(23:21):
It's about not knowing the time that we have together and making
sure that the time that we do have together is spent
intentionally and with open hearts and vulnerability, not
getting by or getting over in order to get what we want
selfishly. It feels like at a certain point
you kind of embarked on your ownjourney, separate and apart from
(23:46):
your parents, which I think is anecessary part of separating
during adolescence, but it felt pretty significant for you.
Yeah, I mean, look, the small town culture of kind of everyone
in the same schools, everyone competing for the same things
(24:07):
drives a lot of behavior that I would call helicopter parenting.
And helicopter parenting sets a culture of the self.
It's a very selfish orientation where I'm have to be the best at
this in order to get on this team.
I have to be the best at this inorder to be top of my class so
that I can get into the best schools.
I have to put this on my transcript, whatever.
(24:27):
So I have to do this thing for myself.
There's no we, There's no service, there's no belief even
that the world is any bigger than the town that I grew up in.
We have a friend locally in in Florida and she went to private
school, but we grew up in the same town.
And I notice the same thing about her as with all my other
(24:50):
friends that I grew up with who also went to private schools as
they were much more family oriented.
The reason being, I think, is school districts.
When you have school districts around good schools, that's how
neighborhoods develop. People buy houses in order to
move into the school districts. We have a friend from New York
who moved into a house that I used to play in growing up for
(25:12):
the great school district that Iwas in.
Right? Like these are the reasons we
live in Florida where there are no desirable school districts
necessarily. It's all about charter schools
and private schools. And so people just live wherever
they want to live. So Hunter goes to school with a
bunch of kids that live all overthe place, as far as, you know,
30-40 minutes away. That, I think is a feature, not
a bug, because it allows us to be much more family oriented on
(25:34):
the weekends as opposed to running into the same people
that she goes to school with andthe same people that she does
activities with. It's completely separate.
All right, we are all over the place.
What does this have to do with respect and accountability?
That's. That I think we can hold on to
our kids a little bit better in this way, but we still have to
be mindful of that creep. Yeah.
So what I'm hearing you say is that for you, respect and
(25:57):
accountability kind of went by the wayside in your adolescence
because you shifted from a family oriented person to more
of a peer oriented person, right?
And we keep saying hold on to your kids.
That is a book that neither of us have read completely by
Gabriel Mate and Gordon Neufeld that sounds.
Great, no relation. Yeah, no, that we know of, but
(26:19):
that maybe is an episode for another time, yeah.
But it sounds like it, I mean a lot shows up there for me.
And I think part of it, I think you're right though it and the
reason I went off on a tangent is a big reason that we're doing
a podcast around this particulartopic, you know, one, because
it's a topic that we are very passionate about.
But why are we passionate about this?
We each have different reasons for that.
(26:40):
And your reasons versus my reasons like are kind of wildly
different. But we both arrived at the same
conclusion even before we had kids.
Yeah. Can I say a little bit about my
reasons By all means, that's coming up for me today because I
am not a peer oriented person, which is something that we've
talked about. However, I did grow up in a
suburb in a neighborhood with a good school district and I did
(27:02):
have a relatively peer oriented mom, and that community, by no
fault of any individual, almost destroyed her and almost
destroyed our family. Because of this, keeping up with
the Joneses, she had to work when other moms didn't have to
work and we couldn't afford to go on vacations that other
(27:22):
people could afford to. And it created a lot of noise
that really wasn't focused on our family values and what we
wanted. And I think that a lot of the
reason why we have started this podcast is because we are
finally at a point where our children were out of this
blocking and tackling up five times a night phase of life with
the kids where we actually do have the opportunity to choose.
(27:43):
And I think that it would be very easy to ingratiate
ourselves into a community wherewe are trying to keep up with
other people and that we are kind of staking our claim in a
different direction and saying no, we are going to cultivate
our own family culture based on what our values are, our
(28:05):
rhythms, the routines and rituals that we want to have as
a family. Then how does the outside world
fit in as opposed to a lot of other noise from the outside
world penetrating our family andus trying to find space in
between those things for the individuals in our home?
(28:26):
Yep, and we believe we're not alone.
Yeah, I don't think we are. So we're here to say let's all
do it together, right? Just because we're each starting
within our family doesn't mean that we are alone, right, Right.
When your coach likes to say that you and I are on an island,
(28:47):
but that's OK, I think as long as we know that there are other
islands out there. We we know for sure that there
are. Yeah, an archipelago, if you
will. One of my favorite words, right
That's. Right.
We're like Thailand. It's like or New Jersey.
Or New Jersey. New Jersey is an.
Archaeople it is, I know. Yeah, OK.
So yes, other people on their own islands where we can all be
(29:10):
really happy and, you know, create some bridges.
An island hop, Yeah. Exactly.
Cool, cool. OK, until next time, love you
goosey. Hey guys, if you're still here,
you're definitely our kind of person.
Thanks for spending this time with us on the most important
thing. If this episode resonated with
(29:30):
you, we'd love for you to followus wherever you get your
podcasts and share it with someone else.
Building family culture on purpose.
Welcome to The Most Important Thing.
I'm Danielle DeMarco Neufeld. And I'm Greg Neufeld, and
together we're exploring how ambitious busy families can
build culture at home. Because after all, family is the
most important thing. Hey, happy Monday.
Happy Monday Goosy, how are you doing?
Pretty well, pretty well. I'm excited about this video
format because you actually comeinto our home.
(00:22):
Yeah, like the least decorated part of our.
Home but. Got to start somewhere.
We're we're still living in somewhat COVID times, I think,
so we need reason to do a littlesprucing up around here as it
pertains to this office and maybe some new clothes.
That's right. Yeah.
Always a work in progress, yeah?OK.
So this is the sixth episode in our series on the Wholehearted
(00:44):
Parenting Manifesto. The hits just keep on coming.
That's right. This one is on accountability
and respect, among other things.From the Wholehearted Parenting
Manifesto, Brene says you will learn accountability and respect
by watching me make mistakes andmake amends, and by watching how
I ask for what I need and talk about how I feel.
So there's a lot to unpack in this one sentence, right?
(01:07):
I think we should probably startfrom the top.
Accountability and respect. Respect is a really loaded word
for me, I have to tell you. Say more.
It feels very boomer. I've heard my parents talk about
respect from their grandchildren.
I certainly grew up with this idea of respecting your elders
(01:30):
and respecting your parents, andit usually meant obedience more
than anything else. I honestly think about a
Catholic school nun with a rulerwhen I think about respect.
So. But then on the other hand, one
of the pillars in our children'svery gentle, whimsical preschool
is respect for the individual. So I suppose it can play both
(01:54):
ways. I personally, however, like it's
a little bit of a trigger word for me.
Accountability on the other hand, is a word I love.
I love the idea of I guess I think about, I think about my
career and I think about gettingthings done in deliverables and
shared accountability and individual accountability on
teams. And it's something that I am
eager to bring more visible accountability into our home.
(02:19):
So what shows up for you in combining these two?
Does it mean that you don't wantto talk about respect in the
traditional sense? Or do you think that maybe it's
just not properly defined and weshould redefine it?
Yeah, well, so I dug into some of the research on this, and
what Brené Brown says is that accountability breeds trust and
trust breeds respect. So when I think about the kind
(02:41):
of more positive connotation of respect, as I mentioned from the
kids preschool, respect for the individual, it's a way of
saying, I see you and I'm going to make space for you.
And in this particular context, it's about holding myself
accountable for the way that my actions may have had an impact
on you, positive or negative, even if my intentions were
different. Yeah, You brought that up
(03:03):
recently as as being the thing that you want our kids to really
understand about repair is that no matter what they meant, that
they kind of do have a a place in a role in how someone else
feels and what they take away from that experience and
interaction. That's right.
I I think I've been trying to talk to the kids about how
regardless of your intention, the impact is the same and you
(03:25):
have to be responsible for the impact.
So do you think that it's developmentally appropriate for
a three-year old A5 year old to be able to actually hold on to
that and and understand that? Yeah, it's a great question.
I think that it's aspirational, but I do believe that we can
give them the language and help them create a framework so that
they can grow into it. So are we trying to model
(03:47):
anything in particular here? Like what's?
What's the objective? Yeah.
So I would say that the biggest objective for me, the thing that
I wish that I knew earlier in life is this idea that
regardless of what my intention was, I need to be accountable
for the impact that my behavior has on you.
So I think for many years I thought, well, I didn't mean it
(04:07):
like that or that's just how my brain works, or I would never,
this is a big one. Like I would never feel this way
in that circumstance. So why would you, right?
And I think a lot of the learning that I've had over the
past really since becoming a Brené Brown fan, is that my part
is to get curious and to witnessthe way that something I did or
(04:31):
even something, even if I'm justlistening to a friend in the way
that they have experienced something, that my part is
really to hear them not put my own tape over it.
Oh, in, in this circumstance, I would have felt X.
So let me get, let me get more specific because it seems pretty
nebulous right now. So I think a great example for
(04:51):
me that's come up over the past decade repeatedly is pregnancy
and how some friends have had trouble getting pregnant, some
friends have had trouble with the newborn phase or with
breastfeeding or with the birth itself.
And rarely did those coincide with my struggles.
But I know that when Jade was born, her birth was deeply
(05:12):
traumatizing to me. And what I needed at that time
was for people in my life to hear me and understand how I
felt that regardless of whether or not I had a healthy baby and
a healthy Mama, which is what was repeated to me ad nauseam,
that I felt deeply lost and in alot of pain.
(05:36):
And I needed people to see me for that experience, regardless
of whether or not they would have had they would have felt
the same way. And so that lesson really that
experience, because I had some friends who said to me, oh, it's
fine. You didn't, you know, the baby's
(05:56):
fine, you're fine. It's OK.
Like I know way worse birth stories, right?
That's not helpful. What's helpful is people
honoring one another's experience and recognizing that,
no, I may not have had that samereaction in this had this happen
to me, but I can, I can accept and I can support and empathize
(06:17):
with you going through this hardship.
And I think that, birth stories aside, this comes up all the
time when we hurt each other and.
So let's play that back. So a friend says to you, but the
baby's healthy, right? And you say, yeah, but that's
not the point. How do?
(06:38):
You that feels bad. It really does, right?
That just feels really bad. That feels like I'm not being
seen, someone is not hearing me because it's a both ends
situation. While that is true, my
experience was one of deep trauma and pain.
And so I guess that experience has really helped me with much
(06:58):
smaller things, such as when Jade is deeply pained by one of
us raising our voices, right? You, me, Hunter, Maverick, we're
way less sensitive to raised voices than Jade is.
But I'm not going to look at herand say toughen up or this is no
big deal, right? Is it helpful to you to go to a
(07:19):
place where you were misunderstood or you felt like
there wasn't empathy in terms ofrespecting your situation?
Does that help you kind of show up differently for Jade or for
Hunter or Maverick or for me? I mean, that's what Brené Brown
would say you're supposed to do,I believe.
I don't know that I do that directly, but I do think that
I've had enough practice now that I can recognize like, oh,
(07:43):
I'm looking at this through my lens.
I need to start accepting that Idon't know what the other person
is feeling and that if they tellme, if Jade tells me, that
raising my voice deeply disruptsher, what she can tell me with
her words or her actions, I needto believe that.
Like for my, for my own heart. Because I want.
(08:03):
Because I know that I have idiosyncrasies.
Also that I really want the restof you to believe when they show
up. Do you think that's the hardest
part about what do we call this accountability to taking, taking
accountability for your actions?Yeah, I think it's respect.
Respect. I think it's that is really the
respect for the individual. So it's no longer a boomer term.
(08:25):
It becomes respect, meaning I respect your position.
I respect. Your experience?
Your experience and what I'm here for you and I'm I see you
and I see you. And while this particular
circumstance may not have brought up fill in the blank
deep fear, I can I can empathizewith you because I have had
(08:46):
other experiences that look different but that bring up that
same emotion within me. And I can use that to relate to
you. Right.
And we all have those. So it shouldn't be too hard to
reflect on a situation where I have felt misunderstood and
bring that back full circle. To understand what it feels like
to be misunderstood and know, hey, this might not be my
(09:09):
experience, but it certainly sounds like it's yours.
M Scott Peck in his book The Road Less Traveled, talks about
this term that he uses bracketing, which is essentially
suspending your own existing beliefs and making space for
what the other person needs to fill that in with.
So putting aside oneself to makeroom for new information.
(09:31):
And I think that that is an extremely powerful concept to
teach our children as early as possible.
I completely agree, we've had some luck, for lack of a better
term with this already showing up in some of our kids schools.
Is that where you where you wantto go?
Absolutely. Let's talk about that.
So Hunter and now Jade go to a local school here.
(09:56):
It's called Coca Plum Nature School, where the founders have
created a framework for repair called heart repair.
And so it's based off of the principles of nonviolent
communication and conscious discipline, two other wonderful
frameworks that have terrible names.
Terrible names. It's a consistent theme, but
essentially it's a way for kids to make up without having to say
(10:17):
I'm sorry. So I think one of the first and
one of the most important aspects of this is that both
people have to consent to heart repair.
And often times that takes, I won't say at their school.
I can tell you in our home, sometimes that's immediate, but
more often it takes hours or days.
Attachment styles are a whole different topic, but I would
just say that like we have Hunter who leans towards an
anxious attachment style and wants to repair immediately,
(10:38):
whereas Jade, you could call hersomeone avoidance and likes to
take more time, just by way of example.
So sometimes heart repair, typically heart repair will be
anywhere from 10 minutes to a couple of hours after said
incident depending on what happens.
But respecting each individual and having them consent to come
(10:59):
to the table, so to speak, to even begin the heart repair
process is a very important first step.
Yeah, and I've noticed it's a little anxiety inducing, but
once you've done it once or twice, that anxiety kind of goes
away and you're more prepared and excited to show up and get
it not over with, but actually get into it.
As opposed to what I noticed with most interpersonal
(11:20):
conflicts, even as adults, is I we tend to take space from a
person, almost too much space, and let it fester and build.
As opposed to going to that person and saying, hey, this was
my experience and it didn't feelso.
Good, right. So we can get into how it how it
happens. But I do just want to say that I
think that this really is our job as parents is to give them
(11:41):
the framework, give them the language in a developmentally
appropriate, accessible manner and then they can grow into it
over time. Right now the heart repair is
extremely one O 1, but I do think that now they know they
have a process for making up andmaking amends and holding one
another accountable. That really is a skill that they
(12:01):
can build upon as they grow. Yeah, and what it?
What is the format? Sure.
That they go through so it's thefirst person will say I feel and
then insert some emotion. Typically for our children
that's sad, mad, scared. But it obviously can be more
advanced as you get older. I have done this with adults
before and had to had very good results for my own self.
(12:23):
Peace in my heart. So I feel when you so I feel mad
when you steal my monster truck I need and then they typically
say you 2 not do that. Can you please stop?
That's usually how it goes, right?
But then the most important partthat for me is when the other
(12:43):
person reflects back what they heard.
And so it's you feel sad when I take your monster truck you need
me to stop and then it are you willing to stop?
Yes, I am willing to stop, right?
And then sometimes the other person will say, well, I feel
really mad when you RIP my book,can you please stop, right?
(13:04):
And so I'm using a little bit ofa sassy tone, but sometimes that
happens too. But it's this understanding that
often times the incident that isthe reason to come to the heart
repair carpet, if you will, is preceded by many other actions,
right? It's built upon.
And so there's not blame, but there's accountability on all
sides. And so the other person would
repeat back, You feel mad when Irip your book, I will stop,
(13:32):
right? Right.
Relatively simple, but impactfulnonetheless.
It's been remarkable just hearing about these interactions
happening without our supervision at school.
Even at Jade's preschool, she took it upon herself, didn't she
to? She did.
Yeah. I'm smiling big because I I
(13:52):
forgot about that and it's such a great thing.
So about six months ago, Jade came to me after school one day
and said, mom, my friend keeps yelling at me, stop talking when
the little girl, the other little girl had been talking for
a while and Jade tried to say one thing.
But the point is Jade said, mommy, it really hurts my
feelings and she says it a lot. And so we talked about what can
(14:14):
you say to her? Let's just call her Sarah.
So Jade and I discussed how she would go up to Sarah the next
day when things are peaceful, right?
And just say, you know, Sarah, when you say stop talking, I
feel sad. Can you please stop?
And I wasn't there. So I don't know for sure what
happened. But I do know that she came home
the next day and said, mom, Sarah heard me and she's not
(14:38):
going to do it anymore. And we haven't heard about it
again. And she was 4 at the time.
Yeah, it was awesome. Just remarkable.
But she's got the scaffolding and she's seen it at home.
She's seen it at school, supervised, she knew what to do
and that's that's really a special framework that our kids
have and we want to share and make sure that it's well known.
(15:01):
Yeah. And I mean, we're just getting
started, right? I don't want to make it sound
like we have this unlocked because we don't.
And there are plenty of times that there is an incident in our
home and we don't do heart repair, but when we do, it has
very strong results. Yeah, I think that the you've
mentioned this, the the parroting back, the echoing back
what what you heard about the other person's experience is the
(15:22):
most important thing from heart repair.
And it sometimes gets lost in the conversation just because I
don't think that kids and adults, it's the hardest part.
It's the hardest part really know how to in the moment make
that feel authentic and show up as authentic and but.
I think it's one of those thingswhere you fake it to your make
(15:43):
it right. Like I was listening to a Doctor
Becky episode the other day and she was like, we as parents make
way too much of an eye roll. I actually think that an eye
roll is a positive thing becauseit's a sign of compromise.
These are my words right where it's a sign of compromise, where
the child is trying to say, I think you're saying something
valuable right now, but I need to protect my independence.
(16:04):
And so am eye rolling as a way to make space from that.
And I think you'll get a lot of eye rolling.
At least I've witnessed a lot ofeye rolling and heart repair.
But they're still standing thereand they're still, the kids are
still showing up. And so it's this balance
between, I mean, you can't just necessarily jump into full
accountability. I think this experience of
learning to hold another person's experience in your hand
(16:27):
as opposed to pushing it completely away or taking it in
and taking it on is a deliberatepractice that takes time.
I know I'm still working on it. Especially with our children, I
have a tendency to do one or theother.
And so, of course, in heart repair, it is often times
(16:48):
challenging to get a child to repeat back what the other has
said and to really accept the impact that their behavior has
had. But that's what practice is for.
It's not always going to go perfectly.
Yeah, exactly, which is why justhaving this as a tool in the
tool kit 1 and then two, maybe having something documented
(17:10):
about that heart repair. So one experiment that comes up
for me here is having a family heart repair journal where we
just document what the other person's experience was.
It's not about what you did to make them feel that way, it's
just more that you understand where they're coming from when
that experience might not be what you felt.
(17:31):
It is what what they felt. I love that.
I think that's such a great ideato have some type of ongoing
journal. It's just talking about what
really occurrences in our life, conflicts and resolutions,
making amends in our home. Yeah, I just finished reading
Esther Wojacki's How to Raise Successful People, and she
(17:51):
always had her daughter. She said write a apology letter
to them. Now I feel like that's respect
capital R old school maybe. Maybe trending towards that
side? She also threw out that there
was a practice of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
So I was like, you know, take what you want from that.
But I do think that to make thisa little more modern, a family
(18:13):
accountability journal where we write in what the other person's
experience was and what we heard, I think would be a really
helpful tool. So who's doing the writing then?
I I would like to suggest that they do it together, but it's
not like the perpetrator has to write what they heard from the
victim or something. That's kind of like a guest book
at a, a inn or something. You, you sign it together, you
write, you know, we had this little experience, this little
(18:35):
thing happened. This is what we resolved.
Sure. And we can write it for them, of
course, but they want to. We want them to be there and and
document it with us. I love that.
I think that's an excellent experiment to run.
Let's get out of composition book after this.
Sounds. Good.
All right, so to recap, the mostimportant thing about
accountability and respect is that when we expect kids to own
(18:57):
their actions and give them the tools to repair, we teach them
how to be powerful and stay connected.
So it's one of the frameworks that I love.
It's like a meta framework. So if we've heart repair as a
framework, one of the frameworksthat I think about a lot is that
we have to 1st give kids the language, then we can be
(19:20):
supportive in their process. And then as they get even older,
we really have to be invited in.So this is the time, I think
that this is really the most crucial time to support our
children with frameworks for interacting frameworks for
courage, like we talked about before, deliberate practice and
seeing mistakes as learning opportunities.
(19:42):
And then here framework for accountability.
So owning our own mistakes, but using heart repair as a
framework, even if you don't come up to a friend and say,
Hey, it's time for heart repair,right?
But actually saying, you know, like Jay did at school, I felt
sad when you told me to stop talking repeatedly.
Can you please not do that again, right?
That's just a she didn't ask forconsent to have a whole like a
(20:06):
whole heart repair tete, a tete if you will, but it it really.
Is a framework that gave her thelanguage to address her own
needs. Right.
Cool, you have a lot of other things that you want to say on
this topic. Let's get into it.
Well, some things to explore. OK, so to lean back the where I
(20:30):
noticed that this all broke downbecause I had a lot of good
modeling of accountability and respect as a younger child.
But then where this all broke down for me, I think was around
peer orientation. So when I was exposed to other
friends, families and and ways of doing things that I thought
(20:50):
were especially funny, cool, youknow, laissez faire if you will,
Like letting the kids get into fights or the siblings get into
fights and just kind of like throat blows and not apologize
or, you know, take each other's toys and not do anything about
it. Just kind of a free for all if
you will. So very different than.
The way very different from the way that I grew up and I began
(21:13):
to model some of those things. And it was really hard, I would
say, to to come back to the family orientation for me,
especially because one thing that happens when you change
your belief system, when I change my belief system, is that
I stopped caring about what we do as a family and cared more
(21:36):
about how I got over, got through the uncomfortable,
awkward moments just to get to the next thing that I want to
do. Right about.
Can you give us like an age timeframe for this?
This is probably 4th or 5th grade and on.
OK. So lying to get out of Trump,
(21:57):
right? Even if it wasn't anything
necessarily malicious. Just like, oh, what movie did
you watch at that sleepover? Starts small, starts small,
because what I've heard you say before is that you had a really
strong system for accountabilityand repair in your home when you
were little. And that probably relates to the
(22:17):
fact that your mom was an early childhood educator and she knew
how to facilitate those types ofinteractions.
But it sounds like at some pointthat changed.
And it's probably one of the reasons why we're starting this
podcast, honestly at this time to kind of hold on to our kids
ahead of that because this peer orientation, you haven't talked
(22:38):
about it too much on the podcast, but it's something that
we've talked about a lot. And I think that you would, is
it fair to say you would have preferred to have done it
differently or that you think ofit as part of the demise of your
relationship with your parents? Or how do you think about it?
I. Don't think about it as the
demise of the relationship with my parents, I think about it as
more of the lost years. Lost years.
(22:59):
So it's a much better framework.Yeah, there.
Was no demise of of a relationship.
It was just more we grew apart too early and then I didn't have
them for the years that I thought that I would.
And so that is to me, something that shows up when I think about
our family is this idea of holding on to our kids.
It's not just about keeping themfamily oriented.
(23:21):
It's about not knowing the time that we have together and making
sure that the time that we do have together is spent
intentionally and with open hearts and vulnerability, not
getting by or getting over in order to get what we want
selfishly. It feels like at a certain point
you kind of embarked on your ownjourney, separate and apart from
(23:46):
your parents, which I think is anecessary part of separating
during adolescence, but it felt pretty significant for you.
Yeah, I mean, look, the small town culture of kind of everyone
in the same schools, everyone competing for the same things
(24:07):
drives a lot of behavior that I would call helicopter parenting.
And helicopter parenting sets a culture of the self.
It's a very selfish orientation where I'm have to be the best at
this in order to get on this team.
I have to be the best at this inorder to be top of my class so
that I can get into the best schools.
I have to put this on my transcript, whatever.
(24:27):
So I have to do this thing for myself.
There's no we, There's no service, there's no belief even
that the world is any bigger than the town that I grew up in.
We have a friend locally in in Florida and she went to private
school, but we grew up in the same town.
And I notice the same thing about her as with all my other
(24:50):
friends that I grew up with who also went to private schools as
they were much more family oriented.
The reason being, I think, is school districts.
When you have school districts around good schools, that's how
neighborhoods develop. People buy houses in order to
move into the school districts. We have a friend from New York
who moved into a house that I used to play in growing up for
(25:12):
the great school district that Iwas in.
Right? Like these are the reasons we
live in Florida where there are no desirable school districts
necessarily. It's all about charter schools
and private schools. And so people just live wherever
they want to live. So Hunter goes to school with a
bunch of kids that live all overthe place, as far as, you know,
30-40 minutes away. That, I think is a feature, not
a bug, because it allows us to be much more family oriented on
(25:34):
the weekends as opposed to running into the same people
that she goes to school with andthe same people that she does
activities with. It's completely separate.
All right, we are all over the place.
What does this have to do with respect and accountability?
That's. That I think we can hold on to
our kids a little bit better in this way, but we still have to
be mindful of that creep. Yeah.
So what I'm hearing you say is that for you, respect and
(25:57):
accountability kind of went by the wayside in your adolescence
because you shifted from a family oriented person to more
of a peer oriented person, right?
And we keep saying hold on to your kids.
That is a book that neither of us have read completely by
Gabriel Mate and Gordon Neufeld that sounds.
Great, no relation. Yeah, no, that we know of, but
(26:19):
that maybe is an episode for another time, yeah.
But it sounds like it, I mean a lot shows up there for me.
And I think part of it, I think you're right though it and the
reason I went off on a tangent is a big reason that we're doing
a podcast around this particulartopic, you know, one, because
it's a topic that we are very passionate about.
But why are we passionate about this?
We each have different reasons for that.
(26:40):
And your reasons versus my reasons like are kind of wildly
different. But we both arrived at the same
conclusion even before we had kids.
Yeah. Can I say a little bit about my
reasons By all means, that's coming up for me today because I
am not a peer oriented person, which is something that we've
talked about. However, I did grow up in a
suburb in a neighborhood with a good school district and I did
(27:02):
have a relatively peer oriented mom, and that community, by no
fault of any individual, almost destroyed her and almost
destroyed our family. Because of this, keeping up with
the Joneses, she had to work when other moms didn't have to
work and we couldn't afford to go on vacations that other
(27:22):
people could afford to. And it created a lot of noise
that really wasn't focused on our family values and what we
wanted. And I think that a lot of the
reason why we have started this podcast is because we are
finally at a point where our children were out of this
blocking and tackling up five times a night phase of life with
the kids where we actually do have the opportunity to choose.
(27:43):
And I think that it would be very easy to ingratiate
ourselves into a community wherewe are trying to keep up with
other people and that we are kind of staking our claim in a
different direction and saying no, we are going to cultivate
our own family culture based on what our values are, our
(28:05):
rhythms, the routines and rituals that we want to have as
a family. Then how does the outside world
fit in as opposed to a lot of other noise from the outside
world penetrating our family andus trying to find space in
between those things for the individuals in our home?
(28:26):
Yep, and we believe we're not alone.
Yeah, I don't think we are. So we're here to say let's all
do it together, right? Just because we're each starting
within our family doesn't mean that we are alone, right, Right.
When your coach likes to say that you and I are on an island,
(28:47):
but that's OK, I think as long as we know that there are other
islands out there. We we know for sure that there
are. Yeah, an archipelago, if you
will. One of my favorite words, right
That's. Right.
We're like Thailand. It's like or New Jersey.
Or New Jersey. New Jersey is an.
Archaeople it is, I know. Yeah, OK.
So yes, other people on their own islands where we can all be
(29:10):
really happy and, you know, create some bridges.
An island hop, Yeah. Exactly.
Cool, cool. OK, until next time, love you
goosey. Hey guys, if you're still here,
you're definitely our kind of person.
Thanks for spending this time with us on the most important
thing. If this episode resonated with
(29:30):
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