188. Parenting & Intimacy: When Your Older Kids/Teens Aren't Making Good Decisions... And Why You Shouldn't Blame Yourself

In this insightful podcast episode, Nick and Amy dive into the intricate relationship between parenting older kids and teens, and intimacy within a marriage. We hear from many couples who are struggling with kids and express how their marriage is negatively affected in so many ways because of it.

As parents, we invest tremendous effort in guiding our kids toward success and happiness. However, the evolving dynamics can sometimes lead our children down unexpected roads, causing strains on a marriage. We unravel the ways in which these changes can create barriers to intimacy and communication between spouses.

Tune into this episode to discover practical strategies for maintaining connection and fostering intimacy amidst the challenges of parenting older kids and teens. Join us as we talk about bridging the gap between parenting and maintaining a thriving, intimate relationship!

If you haven't already, go check out the Ultimate Intimacy App in the app stores, or at ultimateintimacy.com to find "Ultimate Intimacy" in your marriage. It's FREE to download and so much fun! Find out why over 650,000 couples have downloaded the app and give it such high ratings and reviews!

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If you have any feedback, comments or topics you would like to hear on future episodes, reach out to us at amy@ultimateintimacy.com and let us know! We greatly appreciate your feedback and please leave us a review.

Transcript

Amy: 0:00

You are listening to the Ultimate Intimacy Podcast, where we discuss how to find ultimate intimacy in your relationship. We believe that, no matter how many years you've been married, you can achieve passion, romance, happiness and ultimate intimacy at any stage of your life. Join us as we talk to not only marriage experts, but couples just like yourself and people who are just flat out fun. The Ultimate Intimacy Podcast is for couples who have a good relationship but want to make it even better.

Nick: 0:42

It's episode 188 of the Ultimate Intimacy Podcast with Nick and Amy, and today's episode is on parenting when your child isn't making the right decisions, and why you shouldn't blame yourself. I think I'm excited for this episode and I think this really applies to everyone, whether you have young children or adult children. This is something that you're probably going to be dealing with in your marriage, and when our kids make bad decisions, or the decision maybe we don't want, it can have a profound effect on the intimacy between a husband and wife.

Amy: 1:22

I don't know much about this.

Nick: 1:24

You don't?

Amy: 1:26

Well, I hope I have stuff to say in this episode. How?

Nick: 1:29

about it even in our marriage, when maybe our kids are struggling with things, how it affects our relationship sometimes. So imagine if you have a child that's maybe not making the right decisions, living their life a different way than what you had maybe hoped for.

Amy: 1:45

I don't have any experience in that, but I know that that affects so many marriages. Well, we do have it.

Nick: 1:53

Maybe we don't have experience yet with our kids, but we have a lot of people very close to us relatives, friends that we have seen this happen first hand. Maybe we haven't been involved in it in our kids yet, but we've been involved in it through other experiences with people that we're close to.

Amy: 2:16

I'm not saying my kids are perfect. I'm just saying our son has made amazing decisions and our other three girls are still at the age where I'm like I don't know what they're going to do.

Amy: 2:24

Yeah, like our kids, I don't know what they're going to do I'm not saying that they might not.

Amy: 2:27

I'm just saying they're not quite there yet.

Nick: 2:31

And our kids are at an age where they're just not quite there yet, right? The other three yeah the other three.

Amy: 2:36

I hope that they keep making really good choices and become amazing adults. I hope so.

Nick: 2:43

We had a listener reach out to us and tell us hey, my son's not making the choices that me and my wife feel that he should make, he's making bad decisions and it's really having a huge impact on me and my wife and our intimacy that we have. And so that's where we want to approach it today is to approach it from that standpoint, because it's one thing to have a child not making the right decisions, but especially when it's affecting your marriage, your intimacy, your connection, I mean that can be really hard.

Amy: 3:18

I do have an experience, one of my really good friends. She is probably one of the most Christ-like people I've ever met. She's an amazing mother and her son has completely gone wayward. Like we're talking drug addiction, homelessness, like the whole thing right, and it breaks my heart. But I'm going to use her as kind of my thought process for this, because I can see how the heartbreak and the stress that she goes through on a weekly basis would totally affect intimacy. Because we feel like even when my kids are just struggling with something like with friends or with school or something like way more minute than that, but even I feel like that emotional stress or anxiety on my shoulders when my kids are going through something hard, right, because I love them, like I feel their pain or their heartache, I feel it for them.

Amy: 4:18

So I can only imagine, like what having a kid that is like totally making bad decisions would just hurt you so bad.

Nick: 4:30

And the one thing that we I think most of us have a tendency to do is blame ourselves.

Nick: 4:36

We start questioning ourselves and saying, okay, what did we do wrong? Because if our child's making bad decisions, obviously it's something that we did wrong. And we're really going to hit on that as to why you shouldn't blame yourself for decisions that your kids are making and we'll kind of talk about that a little bit later in the podcast so we want to cover the ways that you can approach this and try to help your child, how you can help your marriage, and then again getting into why you shouldn't blame yourself for the decisions that your kids make. I mean, we have just seen that over and over again of how much parents beat themselves up and blame themselves for decisions that their adult kids have made, and that makes me really sad. It also frustrates me because we all have free agency, right that's. I mean we all have free agency to make the right or wrong decisions, and every one of us out there listening know that we made bad decisions when we were.

Amy: 5:40

I was going to say do you want? Me to share my child, my growing up.

Nick: 5:44

Well, we'll get into that a little bit more, but we really want this podcast to be, you know, hopefully really touch some of you parents out there.

Nick: 5:54

I mean, if you have kids that are younger and you aren't in this, hopefully these things can help you in, you know, as your kids get older and dealing with different things in the family and the marriages obviously. So again, many of us have children and some of us have children that have made bad decisions and that can have just a profound impact on our marriage and the intimacy between a couple. But here are some of the things that you can do as a couple to help or try to help that child that's maybe not making the best decisions in their lives. One of the most important things obviously we're going to talk about is communication. We see a lot of people that really close down the communication when maybe their child's making the wrong decisions, they're not happy with them. They almost like almost like cut them off and say, well, if you're going to make those bad decisions, we don't want anything to do with you.

Amy: 6:52

Oh, that's awful.

Nick: 6:55

But it happens right.

Amy: 6:57

I can't even imagine feeling like that. I like literally can't. I decide, like I know that there is such a fine line with parenting of still being the parent but still being a friend. I can honestly say that I didn't have an amazing relationship with my parents. They're amazing people, don't get me wrong but I didn't spend that time or put that effort into having really amazing, that close relationship where you go to your parents because you want to talk to them, right, you want to share your deepest things as a teenager or child, whatever. That could be a lot of my fault, but I learned, like from my upbringing to where I am now, having my own teenagers and kids.

Amy: 7:45

I want that relationship with my kids, that they can come to me for everything and if you feel like it's too late, you're like I don't know what happened. I don't have that. I think it just takes baby steps. I think that kids, regardless of their age, just need to know that you love them, no matter what right, no matter what you do wrong. I might not support your decision, I might be 100% against your decision, but I will always be here for you. I might not fix your problem, I might not hand you money, but I'm going to love you or you're going to be responsible for the consequences If you make bad decisions.

Nick: 8:24

I'm not going to bail you out.

Amy: 8:26

But I'm going to love you.

Nick: 8:27

But I'm going to love you and I think it's so important trying to have that open communication with your child. Try to create an environment where they feel comfortable discussing their choices but also don't feel like they're being criticized. One of the worst things we can do is sit down with them and constantly put them down and tell them how bad they are and this and that. Now I think it's our role as a parent to tell them that, hey, we don't agree with your decisions, but I think you know, trying to approach it in a non-judgmental way, like you said, and letting them know that, hey, we don't agree with your decisions, but we're always here to talk. We're always here to help, listen in any way that we can.

Amy: 9:17

Can I expand on that?

Nick: 9:18

Yes, please.

Amy: 9:20

I heard a quote at church or maybe it was a talk at church one day, long time ago and it said it's easy for us as parents to jump in because we've already been there, we've been through a lot of their situations and be like, okay, this is what you should do, or this is how you should fix it, or this is what you should have done, or you could be better at this, or this is my advice. Sometimes to show love to your child, sometimes the best thing that you can do is just listen, and that's hard for me, nick. I'm gonna say that that's me and Nick's weakness, because not that we think we know everything, because we don't, but sometimes-.

Amy: 10:04

Just most of them, not a piece Sometimes our kids will come to us and we'll wanna fix their problem. We'll jump in and be like, well, this is what you should do, Well, this is what I would experience, or we've already been through what you're going through. You should listen to us. They don't understand that we have been through a lot of things they've been through. They don't get that. So sometimes they just need you to listen and keep your mouth shut. Give them a hug, tell them you understand and to just show not love, which takes you to the next one, which is support, not control.

Nick: 10:39

So true. Going back when we say communicate, part of communication is listening.

Amy: 10:44

Like you said, same with marriage, same with marriage. Yes, exactly, you can't just always try to fix everything by talking. Sometimes you have to step back, have some humility as a spouse or a parent and just say I'm just gonna listen to you, like that is what shows love, right.

Nick: 11:03

Yeah, for sure. And, like you said, it goes right into the next one, which is offer support, not control. It's totally natural to wanna shield our kids from mistakes, right, we wanna protect them, we wanna keep them from making mistakes, but they need to make their own decisions. I mean, they need to learn. It's through the mistakes that we make that we often become stronger or become better people. But, again, instead of trying to control them, which is our natural tendency, we wanna do, if we can learn, to not control them, but just be there for our support. Now, again in this podcast, we're talking about, like, older kids. Right, we're not talking about three-year-olds, five-year-olds, we're talking about kids that are getting.

Amy: 11:54

It could apply to all ages, though, because the more you can try to control little kids, the more they can do the same thing right.

Nick: 12:00

Yeah, but I think for the most part we're talking about kids that are getting closer to adult age, that are making those decisions, or adult age, because obviously we have to parent our younger kids sometimes a little bit different. But a lot of these things can apply to little kids as well.

Amy: 12:19

I can honestly say from experience that the more that my parents tried to control me as a teenager, the more rebellious I got.

Amy: 12:26

No question.

Amy: 12:27

Nick was an amazing teenager. We've talked about all about this. I was a very, very rebellious teenager. I didn't wanna be told what to do. The more I was, the worse I got Like do you know what I mean? I was the kind of person that was like I need to figure stuff out on my own. I will figure out my own life.

Nick: 12:43

You're bringing up a great point which I think we need a hit on. So I'm not saying this is the way you should parent, because it's not, but Amy just shared a great example, Like she grew up in a household where the parents were more strict, right.

Amy: 12:57

Not strict. I gave them a reason to be strict, like I don't wanna say they were overly strict, it was self-caused, like I made some choices or lied or whatever. And I feel like if your kids I mean you give them as much trust and then they start breaking it and then you start bumbling down a little bit right. That's what happened to me. It was self-inflicted.

Nick: 13:18

Well, I-.

Amy: 13:19

But, yes, but they got stricter and I got more rebellious. It was a cycle.

Nick: 13:22

You're exactly right, and this hits on what we're talking about Don't try to control them. Offer the support, but don't try to control them. So like when I turned around 8, 17, even around 16, like I virtually had zero rules. I mean I could stay out till five in the morning on a school night with girls or whoever I mean I could do-.

Amy: 13:42

Remember, his parents were divorced.

Nick: 13:44

Yes.

Amy: 13:45

He literally moved in with dad. Well, mom, was it around? I mean, it was just a situation, right, where you didn't have two parents that were no one was controlling.

Nick: 13:54

Correct. Yeah, no, there was no control. Now I'm not at all saying that's the way people should parent, because there's no way in the world I would parent my own kids that way. I'm just trying to make a point that when and I've seen this a lot like I've had friends growing up where their parents were very, very controlling and 100% of the time, 100% of the time, those kids rebelled. I don't have a friend that I can say that when their parents were controlling that they didn't rebel. And the ones who had parents that kind of took back and didn't try to control their lives, just offered support. The kids seemed to turn out for the most part, to be much better adults.

Amy: 14:41

Well-.

Nick: 14:42

And make better decisions.

Amy: 14:43

One with our son. We have tried to really find that balance. We've tried to be like okay, this is your life, you're now old enough to make some decisions. Here is maybe a consequence that could happen or here's the benefit that can happen if you choose it a certain way. But this is your life and I feel like when you approach a situation with your child at that age and say this is your decision, I really hope that you make the right choice and put it on them. I could honestly say they're more likely to make a right choice, like you just said. For sure and we've seen that with our son we put a lot of accountability on him and let him make a lot of his own decisions and tried not to act controlling at all, and he's turned out to be a really, really good child, I think because of that or maybe he's just awesome, I don't know.

Amy: 15:31

Our girls might be different.

Nick: 15:32

Which goes right into the next thing, which is encourage your adult children to really self-reflect on things. Help them realize or understand what impacts or what consequences they're going to have based upon their decisions. When you sit down with them and talk to them, ask them thought-provoking questions to prompt them to think about okay, if I make this decision, what can happen because of this decision, or can this decision affect my short and long-term goals? I think, as parents, rather than again just saying you can't do this or here's what you need to do, ask these important questions to them to help them start thinking about how their decisions are going to impact their life. Good, very good. And the next one, which can be really hard, is share personal experiences, both your successes and failures, things that you, as parents, have gone through.

Amy: 16:37

We'll share yours and we will not share mine.

Nick: 16:40

I mean, I actually think that's a really good thing when they hear I mean, if many of you are like us, your kids say you just don't know what I'm going through. Things are totally different now than when you were growing up or when you were in school you never even had a phone.

Nick: 16:58

Yeah, you don't know what's going on. I think what we found powerful is sharing personal experiences, and we obviously have to determine okay, what ones do we share, what ones don't we share, what ones are never going to see the light of day?

Amy: 17:11

Oh gosh.

Nick: 17:13

But sharing personal experiences, I think, can be really powerful to help your kids realize that hey, you know, my parents made mistakes. Here's what they learned and I think, for the most part, our kids really look up to. When I say our kids, I mean all of us our kids in general really are probably look up to us as parents and are going to want to heed our advice and hear the experiences that we've had.

Amy: 17:39

If, if you have created that relationship, friendship with your kids, which is a balance, but you've got to have that friendship aspect of the relationship already built for them to want to listen to what you have to say and that respect, like it's really hard, that's such a hard balance that we talk about all the time in our marriage is having that half-respect, half boundaries, friendship but still parenting. Yeah, like that's. It's a pretty fine line and it takes some practice.

Amy: 18:15

It does so if your first kid, you're like oh, we're just figuring this out. By the second or third kid, like we're all just learning right, like you totally can't blame yourself for that.

Nick: 18:26

We totally are and I think everyone would of us would go back and say oh you know I wish I did this. I wish I did this different, right for sure but I Think it's also, like I know, for me in my Life, like some of the decisions I've made have had an impact on my life either in a good or good or bad way right.

Amy: 18:45

Absolutely.

Nick: 18:47

I like. The next one, of course I think this is vital is set boundaries. If your adult child is Making decisions that you don't agree with, you know, make it clear what your boundaries are. What behavior is acceptable to you, what behavior is not acceptable to you? And, I think, more more select boundaries with, like, let's say, your child's living at home still, you know, let's say they're 20 years old, 21 years old, they're still living at home. They're not making the decisions that you know you feel are good decisions.

Nick: 19:22

It's having a negative impact on on your marriage. I think you have to set boundaries down and say, okay, as long as you're living in this house, you know you're gonna be home at a certain time. You're not going to be doing this, you're not going to do things that affect me and your mom's relationship, right, whatever those are. But having having those boundaries and setting those boundaries and obviously those boundaries look different based upon is your child living at home? Are they living away? I mean, you know and those are boundaries that just you know you, you and your spouse have to talk about and determine what you're gonna set for your child.

Amy: 19:59

Which comes to that Portion of the respect slash, I'm the parent. So just because your child is an adult, maybe living at home or as an older teenager, you're still the parent, it's still your house and if anything is affecting your marriage negatively, you get a call the shots like I think we have to take back or keep. Our aspect of this is that I'm still the bigger adult here, I'm still in charge, I'm still paying for this house or this is my stuff. There's absolutely has to be boundaries yeah, absolutely. If our son move moves back in one day, you better believe he's gonna be playing by our rules.

Amy: 20:41

It's our marriage, it's our home like you left, if you, if you come back and I'm all about like taking people in to help them, but I also have such a strong feeling on, okay, it's gonna be a certain amount of time. You're an adult now. It I mean we raise our children to leave and be successful individuals. Right, like we have to put timelines and say you've gotten till this day and then I need you To make some wise decisions.

Nick: 21:06

Have those boundaries and those expectations. And I love, I love the last one Is lead by example. If, if you have a 20 year old son that's out partying and drinking and he comes home and sees his parents drinking, I mean I how can you sit and tell him that he shouldn't be drinking when he sees his parents drinking? I mean, that's just a, that's just an example, obviously, but you're you need to set an example. You need a lead by an example Through your actions, through your behavior, through everything like that. You can't sit and tell your your child or grown adult son not to do something if you're doing it in your own life.

Nick: 21:46

Absolutely, you're looking at me like what are you thinking? Your mind is no it's just spinning.

Amy: 21:52

I just think that that we don't realize how much our kids are watching our every move, everything that comes out of our mouth, like there's some things that I've said that have been negative and I'm like, oh my gosh, my kids like totally learned that I Need to do better at that. Oh, I totally have like simple things too right, like they pick up the, especially as teenagers. We've got a house full of teenagers now and I'm like they are watching us. They're watching our marriage.

Amy: 22:24

They're watching our. They're watching everything that we say, everything that we do, the way we act, the Even just the things how we run our household. They're learning from us. So the best thing that we can give our kids Is what you're gonna talk about next. I see, yeah, which is having an amazing marriage. It has to come first.

Nick: 22:45

Yeah, so here are the things now diving in that you need to do to help your marriage First, before we jump in.

Nick: 22:54

I think we always look at adversity or trials as a negative thing, but and they are they suck, going through like I always say that I, you know I would never want to go through that again. But as I look back I see how Much my life has been changed in a positive way through some of the Trials or mistakes that I made or decisions that I made. And so Adversity can be an opportunity for your relationship to strengthen. So just, you know, have that in your thoughts and you know, think about that too. But number one you got to put your relationship and marriage first. Mm-hmm, your, your child has to be seen that you are united.

Nick: 23:38

We often see so many times that Even an adult child can get one spouse to agree and the other spouse to not agree and all of a sudden it's you know that couples fighting over how the child's being parenting, parented or disciplined, or or in what involvement there is or not involvement. So you have to put your marriage first and you have to be united in your marriage. It is, it's essential for both of you to be united when dealing with your wayward child. This means like communicating together all the time. You know, how are we going to handle this? How are we going to address this situation? What are the strategies, what are the boundaries? What are the consequences? Your child has to see that you are both Perfectly aligned and that's gonna send them a clear message that your marriage comes first and you're united and you're strong. Love it. You got nothing to add, nothing.

Nick: 24:43

Let's see do we do? Let me ask do we do a pretty good job of that in our marriage, do you think?

Amy: 24:48

Yeah, I was just trying to think of how to say it. So me and Nick have sat down when we started having kids and we still do, we still talk about all the time and we talked about our past and, okay, how was, how was your childhood, how was the parenting, what decisions did you make? How was your parents being this way affected that decision? And then we came together and so we had very, very different Uprings when it came to parenting. Right, very say if there was.

Nick: 25:19

If there was a couple out there that Could get in arguments and see things differently and parent differently, it would be a me.

Amy: 25:26

It would, it would be us. But instead of thinking, okay, well, I don't want to do that because this is how it was done, we both sat down and looked at this was the negative of the reason my parents did this or the reason I did this, this was the positive, and we brought these together and talked about pretty much every single aspect. Right, like, okay, I like that. I like that you made that choice because of what they did positive here. Or I don't like that I did this because of and we put our list kind of Not that we wrote them down, but like our verbal list together. I'm like how do we find a really healthy balance Together that brings both of our upbrings together, both of the parenting styles together, and be like let's just pick out all the awesome aspects of both or negative, and take them in or out of the way. We're gonna do things right and We've been pretty united for having such opposite Upbringings.

Amy: 26:23

We've done a really good job but what we've done has been humble about it and be like I Don't like that they did this. I think we should go your way, I, or vice versa, and come together and be like what is going to be healthiest for our children, and I think that takes humility and I don't know good conversation right, I totally agree and continual conversation.

Nick: 26:45

Yep, agree 100%. You and your spouse need to priority, prioritize quality time together. You have to spend time together. We see a lot of couples that, especially when they're really frustrated over a wayward child or a child that's not making the decisions that they want, it's amazing how often couples kind of just let that kind of overtake their life. They stop doing date nights, they stop doing fun things together. All their attention now is focused on you know what do we do? Sit around, there's depression, things like that. You have to stay busy. You have to prioritize quality time with each other as a couple. This will keep your emotional and physical bond strong during these trials.

Amy: 27:36

And I think what's really important with that one is not talking about your kids and their problems all the time on your date nights, date night, or that quality time that you give. Your marriage, which is for your kids too, needs to be positive and it needs to be about the two of you. And I think, as parents, especially when we're having some kind of issues with our kids, we tend to leave the house and we still talk about all the crap about our kids. Right Like, just remove yourself and be like. We need to focus on our marriage so we can stay positive for our children, because you'll take that back into the home and with your kids.

Nick: 28:18

Yeah, and this you're exactly right, and staying busy, staying productive, being busy, that can really help, obviously, with keeping you, I guess, from getting depressed, keeping trying to keep things off your mind as well too.

Amy: 28:36

I got an idea.

Nick: 28:37

Yeah.

Amy: 28:39

If you're really struggling with a child and you're just like, oh, I just want to like you know what I'm saying, Like I don't want to say ring their neck, I might get in trouble, but like you're just kind of fed up and done and you're just like I don't know how to keep moving on or whatever you're going through. Or sometimes you're just so sad about something or go take up pickleball and just smack that ball.

Nick: 28:59

That is a great idea, or?

Amy: 29:01

tennis or whatever, Like. Get outside, like you said, be productive, stay busy, go take out that frustration. I have friends that have told me like I go to the gym, I go do kickboxing, I go do regular boxing, like I just go get my take your frustration out. Negative energy or frustrations out somewhere else, so I can come back and still be an awesome parent.

Nick: 29:23

Yeah, yeah, love it. I think it's really important to maintain a perspective too and realize that the challenges you're going through, maybe with your wayward child, are temporary and don't define like everything about you and your marriage and your journey. Try to keep that big picture in mind and I know it's hard to do. But, like I said, growing up, you know I mean I had times where I wasn't making the right, maybe the best decisions, and you know I had to go through that and I ended up making better decisions and come up. You know what I mean, like we both, amy and I, did.

Nick: 30:02

So just try to maintain that perspective and I think, like Amy said, it's really important to maintain that self care and get out, engage in different things, activities, just just really try to keep yourself up, so to speak. So I want we want to dive into the reasons that you shouldn't blame yourself, and I think this is one of the key things about this podcast and so so important. I mean we see so many people that just beat themselves up and think that they were are a huge failure because their child didn't make or isn't making the right decisions, and I think it's really important to not blame yourself. And here's the reasons why you can't blame yourself for a child that's not making the right decisions.

Amy: 30:59

Well, first off, isn't it so interesting how we have this child and he comes out a certain way, and then we have this other child.

Nick: 31:11

Totally different personality has nothing to do with us completely opposite.

Amy: 31:17

And then we have child three and we're like, wait, what you're like a totally different person. And Then child like do you know what I mean? Yeah they come out like I look at my own siblings like I was like literally the teenager from hell. I'm just gonna say it, okay. And then my two little brothers were just like little angels. I had the same parenting right. I parent my kids the same exact way. They're all in the same house, they're all pretty, pretty close in ages but they're so different completely.

Nick: 31:51

All four of our kids are completely different personalities.

Amy: 31:54

They come here with their own Individualism, they're unique of their special. They are so different and and you can't Even though I tried to parent them all the same way to make it easier Like there's certain things I have to do different with certain. Like I can't yell at kid number three Like our third, like no, she can take it, the kid number one can't like it's just. Yeah, I mean, like you have to.

Nick: 32:23

Anyways, I just wanted to raise your voice with one, but you can't with the other.

Amy: 32:26

I just wanted to point it out. Like we don't control their personalities and so we can't expect them To be the same or to turn out the same well, they all have different experiences.

Nick: 32:39

They all have different personalities, identities and there's so many things in life that are shaping who they are and what they believe and how they feel a lot of external influences right Like friends you have social media, you have friends, you have their teachers, the internet, everything.

Nick: 32:57

They're being bombarded with so many things and these things change their perspectives about things in life, the choices they're gonna make. So realize that in the reality of things, you're only one small Influence on their lives and they have so many other things that are influencing their lives either in a positive or negative way, unfortunately, unfortunately, that's how it works, because once they hit a certain age, I would say like 12, 13.

Amy: 33:26

Yeah all of a sudden, a lot of the stuff that's going into their brain is not coming from us, right?

Nick: 33:31

Yeah, and I also think it's important to recognize that. You know your child has their own genetics and tendencies and, like Amy's just been talking about, they all have their different personalities and there's some things no matter how much you try to to Teach them something or convince them of something or what have you, they're just. Sometimes they just don't get it or they don't want to get it, or you know they're not gonna listen.

Amy: 34:03

Absolutely, I mean.

Nick: 34:04

I know it's frustrating, but but it's true. They're just all so unique and individual.

Amy: 34:09

I look at my parents when I was about 20 and they were probably like we were a failure. What did we do wrong? Our daughter is doing like everything we told her not to do. Like that's literally like what I was. I was just a rebellious personality and my parents were great parents and I can only imagine the pain and the stress that I put on them. I've apologized many times now that I'm a parent and adult, but they probably blame themselves for a lot of my actions, even though it had nothing to do with them.

Amy: 34:36

I was just a certain personality and so I take that into my parenting now and I'm like okay, I was that kid, it was not my parents fault. I have to. I have to accept that I have a lot of that blame and I'm like I have to let my kids Maybe some of them are gonna be rebellious, maybe some of them are gonna make stupid decisions. I know that I can't blame myself yeah, been there, done that right. Like I cannot blame myself. And so it's hard as a parent because we do feel like we've had so much effect on our kids. I feel like it's easy to say that. It's really easy to say don't blame yourself, but that's really hard not to do, right.

Nick: 35:17

Yeah, and I think one of the things we do, especially nowadays as parents, is we try to shield our kids from Making mistakes. You know, we want so badly for them to not make mistakes that we don't even allow them to make mistakes, and I think that can be really detrimental. I think it's important to understand that our, our children do learn from their mistakes, even the adult children, like if they're going out and making mistakes. I heard I heard someone say this one time and I thought it was really, really good, and he says I want my kids to make mistakes. I just hope that the mistakes they make aren't so big that they Determine their whole entire life.

Amy: 35:57

I thought you said that well, no. I heard it.

Nick: 36:00

I'd heard that and I thought that was really interesting, because that is true, we do want our kids to make mistakes, because then they learn and grow by making mistakes.

Amy: 36:10

Well, I am who I am because of the mistakes that I mean and I am as well. We're doing what we are doing right now. Because of mistakes because of some of the mistakes I made, because of some of the things that I learned.

Nick: 36:22

Like literally me as well. Yeah, like we are doing what we're doing because of our mistakes.

Amy: 36:28

Absolutely so. As hard as it is and as bad as it sucks. When the kids are going through things as bad as those years I put on my parents, my parents are so proud. Now they're like oh, she's okay, she turned out, I, I'm stronger because I was stupid, yeah right, yeah, exactly.

Amy: 36:51

And that's hard, those years that are really really hard, and you hope that they, like you said, won't make mistakes. It will completely affect their life negatively. But our kids have to make mistakes and that's how they become who they're supposed to become a lot of the time and we have to allow them to make those mistakes.

Nick: 37:10

I think if we, if we don't allow them to make those mistakes, as hard as it is to sit back and watch and be like, oh, we know they're not making good decisions, but they have to learn from them for themselves, and I think that you know, again, come circling back to that, these are the reasons why you can't blame yourself for your kids decisions, I think to you know, life is Very complex.

Nick: 37:35

It's very unpredictable. The path that your, your kids, are going to take Are just. There's so many factors that are going to determine the path that each one of them take, and Sometimes their path is going to be different than maybe what we expect their path should be or what our path was growing up, and Sometimes we just have to embrace that and say, okay, this is their life, these are the decisions they're making. We hope that, even though we don't agree with them, hopefully they get back on the right path and these, these decisions will help you, know course, correct them, so to speak for sure so and then, finally, I Think we I think we need to redefine success we have.

Nick: 38:20

When we have people writing in, they're like, oh, I just feel like my kids aren't making the right decisions. I wanted them to do this, or I wanted them to go to law school, or I wanted this, and they've chosen to do this. Well, success is different to everyone and your child's journey. Because they're a unique person, their journey is going to look different. So, while what they what it may look like a bad choice that they're making, it might be a very important step in your Child's growth and development and discovery. So I think we need to be careful about what we're defining as successful or Unsuccessful and not putting that pressure on our children that, hey, this is what success looks like or this is what this failure looks like. Everyone's path is going to be a little bit different.

Amy: 39:12

Well, I have a family member that got married. The marriage turned into a disaster, decided to drop out of school, tried something new, tried to go be a flight attendant, came back, left the church like didn't want anything to do with God. I Mean as a parent you would think oh my gosh, my kid is like wait, what's happening? Keep switching careers. He dropped out of school, he's divorced, he's not even believing in God and Then, all of a sudden, he turned his life around and now he's a better, a better person than he ever was a better person.

Amy: 39:53

He's now happily married with a child. He's now going full medical and is almost done. Like he just had some learning, growing things and he needed a little life Like I had. I had that my own same experience right, where just the light switch turns on and then all of a sudden, like they go through enough heart things and they're like, oh, I'm going to do this instead. Like every child is Going to have some kind of turning point eventually and you just have to step back as parents and watch sometimes and cheer.

Amy: 40:26

Sometimes it's like watching a movie or you just have to and we're gonna go right back to where we started with is love. Like, no matter what you choose, I might not support it, but I'm still gonna love you Like that's what we can give them.

Nick: 40:42

And the sad thing we often see is when there is a way where a child making bad decisions, like I said, how it can have such a negative impact on not just that but also the marriage. And so, again, what we want to really express and really drill on is you have to keep your marriage intact. You have to be one as a team, you have to be united, you have to do the things in your relationship to keep your marriage strong, because at the end of the day, like we're talking about, there's only so much you can do to help a wayward child, and you try to do the best you can, you try to implement some of these things and at the end of the day, you just hope and pray that they make the right decisions. But you have to keep your marriage and your relationship with your spouse strong and united, because if you lose that, you end up with nothing, it's true. So anything else to add before we wrap this one up?

Amy: 41:45

Marriage first, marriage first. At the end of the day, it's going to be the two of you.

Nick: 41:48

I know a lot of people don't like hearing that, but Marriage first Always.

Nick: 41:57

You know it's hard. We really feel like our kids are just kind of lone to us for a temporary time and then our job, so to speak, is to try to raise them the best we can. And then they go out on their lives and start their own lives and it can be really difficult. It can be really difficult to watch. We understand that and you know we're getting to that point in our life where you know where our kids are starting to get older.

Amy: 42:26

Nobody prepared me for that. That was so hard.

Nick: 42:29

It's very tough and heartbreaking but again you put your marriage first, recognize that they are unique individually and you just do the best you can.

Amy: 42:42

Big shout out to all of you. Parents Want to just give you a big hug and a big high five for just making it through it. Parenting is hard. You don't get manuals, no one tells you what to do. You're winging it. Yeah, you're just winging it. So just keep going, trying to be optimistic and united.

Nick: 43:01

And if you feel like your marriage is struggling because of a wayward child, go get on the app Talk, start having that communication. Use the conversation starter, start connecting physically again. Utilize these tools and the things that you do have control over, which is strengthening your marriage. You do have control over that and so start focus on the things you do have control over and make your marriage what it should be. And I think we'll end with that. Hopefully, this podcast is beneficial. Again, we love doing these podcasts. We love getting the feedback from each and every one of you that reach out to us. Feel free to reach out to us at wwwamiatultimateintimacycom with any feedback or questions you have. Please feel free to leave us a review if you feel comfortable doing so, and until next time, we hope you find ultimate intimacy in your relationship.