Are you worried that your kids aren’t receiving the discipline they need when they go to their dad’s house? Or maybe you don’t agree with the way their mom is choosing to schedule their free time? Split families are hard to navigate, but it’s not impossible. In today’s episode, Melvin Adams concludes his interview with Joel Hawbaker—a teacher, coach, and dad of a blended family. Joel has practical, encouraging advice for divorced or separated parents on how to begin communicating about what’s best for their kids. He uses principles as a teacher and a sports coach to remind us of what is most important in life and the development of a child.
RESOURCES MENTIONED ON TODAY’S EPISODE:
GET CONNECTED WITH NWEF
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nwef.org/
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NWEF_org
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nwef_org/
Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtdHayyOqPftVoiGEqxYdsg
To hear more from NWEF, subscribe to our other podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1898310
– WHAT IS THE NOAH WEBSTER EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION? –
Noah Webster Educational Foundation collaborates with individuals and organizations to tell the story of America’s education and culture; discover foundational principles that improve it; and advance practice and policy to change it.
Website: https://www.nwef.org
Reach out: info@nwef.org
Are you worried that your kids aren’t receiving the discipline they need when they go to their dad’s house? Or maybe you don’t agree with the way their mom is choosing to schedule their free time? Split families are hard to navigate, but it’s not impossible. In today’s episode, Melvin Adams concludes his interview with Joel Hawbaker—a teacher, coach, and dad of a blended family. Joel has practical, encouraging advice for divorced or separated parents on how to begin communicating about what’s best for their kids. He uses principles as a teacher and a sports coach to remind us of what is most important in life and the development of a child.
RESOURCES MENTIONED ON TODAY’S EPISODE:
GET CONNECTED WITH NWEF
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nwef.org/
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NWEF_org
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nwef_org/
Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtdHayyOqPftVoiGEqxYdsg
To hear more from NWEF, subscribe to our other podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1898310
– WHAT IS THE NOAH WEBSTER EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION? –
Noah Webster Educational Foundation collaborates with individuals and organizations to tell the story of America’s education and culture; discover foundational principles that improve it; and advance practice and policy to change it.
Website: https://www.nwef.org
Reach out: info@nwef.org
Joel Hawbaker Interview Transcript
Part 2
Interviewed by Melvin Adams
June 2022
[00:00-19:57]
ADAMS: Let’s shift back now, just a bit, to parents (and we’ve kinda covered this). But now in the context of school and all of the dynamics we’ve just been talking about, how can divorced parents take the high road when conflicting opinions arise pertaining to their child’s education?
HAWBAKER: That’s a really difficult one and it requires a level of emotional maturity that, unfortunately, seems to be dwindling a little bit. Because the idea is, that when you have disagreements about your kid, you have to be able to separate the question, “What do I want?” from the question, “What is actually best?”
And that’s not easy to do because naturally, we assume that what we want is best for the kid, right? Because we think, “Well, I’m the parent, of course, I want what’s best for them.” That may be true, but like you asked, what if there are two different opinions about what is best for that child?
And unfortunately, there’s not any kind of one silver-bullet, catch-all, kind of answer. But what I would answer is to give a couple of things to consider. The first one I already mentioned: and that is to be able to separate the question, “What is best for this child ?” from “What do I want?”
You have to think about it in a different way. “Am I willing to admit that what I want may not be what’s best?” Or to put it another way, “Do I possess enough humility to admit that I might not be right? Am I willing to admit that I might be wrong?”
One of the other things that’s important to understand—and this is especially key for blended families—is that you need to understand the difference between a personal preference and, what we call, a red-flag issue.
Because the other part is if there’s a disagreement between you and your ex about what’s best for the child and you just cannot come to any sort of compromise, only one of you can get your way. That’s just the nature of the world that we live in.
So the question is, are either one of you willing to say, “Okay, I don’t like this, it’s not my choice, it’s not my favorite, but it’s also not my call to make right now. It’s a personal preference issue so I’m not going to make a big deal out of it.” Right?
So just as an example, when our girls were younger, we had different bedtimes at my house than at their mom’s house. And the reason is that I’m an early riser. So I would get up [at] 6 o’clock or 6:15 and the girls would get up with me and our day would start and they’d get ready for school and so on and so forth.
At their mom’s house, she is a night owl, so at their mom’s house they would stay up a little later. [So] they would sleep in till 6:45 or 7:00, and they were still able to get up and get to school on time. Well at first it really bothered me because I thought they weren’t getting enough sleep and I was wrong—they were getting enough sleep.
They were just going to bed 45 minutes later and getting up 45 minutes later—the same amount of sleep, right? The issue wasn’t bedtime, the issue we agreed on was that we wanted our kids to get enough sleep. So if you can, when you’re faced with one of those, “Well I think this is best” and “I think this is best” see if you can back that up to what value are you trying to teach your child? Or what lessons are you trying to impart to your child at that moment?
And if the lesson can be taught in multiple ways, that’s where it takes enough humility to say “This isn’t the way that I would have done that, but ok.” And in doing so you also need to be willing to, as much as you can, back up the other parent.
Because again, I’ve never heard of anything good coming from parents bad-mouthing each other. Certainly not in front of the kids. So if you disagree, maybe you disagree respectfully—especially if the kids are of a certain age, they’re gonna know you disagree, right?—but you can say, “Yeah, that’s not how I would have done it. But I know your mom loves you, I know that your dad loves you and so I know that they also have your best interest at heart. So that’s what we’re going to go with right now.”
ADAMS: Yeah.
HAWBAKER: And again, it’s not easy to do because you’re relinquishing a little bit of that control or authority. And it’s scary. But the reality is, you don’t have as much control or authority as you think you do anyway.
ADAMS: Yeah, that’s really good stuff and it’s interesting, I’m thinking here as you’re talking about blended families, but some of those very same principles apply to traditional families. I mean, the reality is (maybe in a traditional family they haven’t split up, maybe it’s a whole nuclear family) but those same issues have to be dealt with.
You know, moms and dads don’t always agree. They stay together because they learn how to get along together—before they break up typically. But those are still constant challenges for any parent and they’re just new every day.
Because issues are constantly coming up in life because you can’t necessarily anticipate everything and so you’re constantly having to make decisions and sometimes you just have to figure out, overall, that we agree on what are the big issues that are important to both of us that we both know are absolutely critical to the wellbeing of our child.
HAWBAKER: Right.
ADAMS: So we come back to those things and then as long as those things are happening, how we get there if we go your direction or my direction, or whatever—if we’re going to let mom make most of these decisions or we’re going to let dad make most of these decisions.
And those things can vary from their diet, their sleeping time, how they get their homework done, and who gets them to school, on and on… every part of life… and that’s really true for every parent, not just for blended homes.
HAWBAKER: Yeah, that’s right. And it’s interesting too because as they get older, the issues change, we talked about that a little bit earlier. And that’s where it gets even more complicated in a blended family.
Because what if you have very different opinions about things that have huge implications. Right? At what age do they get a phone? Do they get a smartphone or do they not? And what do they have access to? And who monitors to make sure that they’re only going to get…
Those things get really complicated. As you said, that comes up in a traditional household but it’s even more complex in a blended family because if the kids are only here half the time and I’m not the one who pays their cell phone bill, I may not be able to monitor that.
And so you’ve got to come to some understanding as to whether or not you trust your ex to do the monitoring. Or can you also be a part of the monitoring program? That’s a big one right now that we’ve seen a number of parents in the school that I teach handle it differently. And there are pros and cons to some of that.
I know one kid that I taught last semester who got in trouble at home and his parents (they’re a nuclear family) took away his smartphone and gave him a flip phone. And that’s what he had for a month or three months or whatever it was.
And it still had internet access but it had internet access in the way that an 8-bit Nintendo is a video game system. It couldn’t do the things that most things can do. And, okay, that was how his parents handled that.
Well, what if mom and dad had wanted it handled differently? What if mom had still wanted to have the flip phone, and dad had allowed him to have the smartphone back when he…? Because that’s the other thing. When you’re disciplining your kids, it’s really hard to discipline them across two homes.
ADAMS: Yeah.
HAWBAKER: Especially any kind of discipline that takes place over time. That’s really hard to do. So the single biggest thing is communication between houses.
ADAMS: You know, you’re absolutely right. Because one of the things with discipline … we talked a little bit about this earlier. Part of it is the parenting thing, you know, the authority. But even in that authority thing, even when you discipline—you discipline because you love that kid and you’re looking out for their best interest, hopefully. That’s the purpose.
And I’m telling you from my own experience, no parent likes to be the one that does all the discipline because it’s like you’re the bad guy. And I’m not saying that was necessarily the situation in our home. But all of us as parents, we feel that because it’s like, “I don’t want to have to do the discipline all the time, we need to share this.”
Because it’s best when it is shared. So children, until they understand how important discipline is, as they mature, they tend to gravitate toward the person that is not the disciplinarian.
HAWBAKER: Right, just cause it’s more comfortable.
ADAMS: And that, all by itself, can create more problems.
HAWBAKER: Yeah, and unfortunately in blended families, it’s not uncommon at all for one parent to be seen as the permissive parent and the other one to be seen as the permissive parent. And as you said, kids are just naturally going to gravitate towards the one where they know they can get away with more.
ADAMS: Yeah.
HAWBAKER: And that makes it really hard on everybody. Because if you’ve been in a classroom if you’re a teacher who lets kids get away with stuff, you know they may like you for a little while, but really all you’re doing is sowing the seeds of long-term disrespect.
They’re not going to have any respect for you, they’re not going to have any respect for the rules. You think they like you for the first week of school and then the rest of the semester is miserable.
ADAMS: They run right over you.
HAWBAKER: That’s exactly right. If you try to be the nice parent who just lets them get away with stuff, yeah, they’ll like us for a while. But when they hit those teenage years, man, they’re going to run all over you because you didn’t have any discipline to begin with.
They don’t have any respect for you, they're not going to listen to you. And if you’ve alienated the other parent to where they also don’t listen to them, that’s not a good situation.
ADAMS: Yeah. So you are also a coach. So what value do you see in keeping sports in school? This is completely off [topic] in some respect. But in other ways, it may be an important part of this whole conversation.
HAWBAKER: Yeah, I think sports are great. I grew up playing sports, I started playing organized sports at age 3 and as soon as I stopped playing them, I started coaching them. And everybody knows the cliches about how sports can teach life lessons and they can teach good habits.
And that’s true. They’re not any less true because they’re cliche. They’re cliches for a reason because they’re true a lot of the time. With blended families especially because it allows the child another area where hopefully they can go and not have to worry about the complexities of what their blended family may be at home.
Because for a lot of kids, school is an escape from the issues they’re dealing with at home, we’ve all heard stories about that. Well, hopefully, sports can be the same way. Unfortunately, sometimes it doesn’t work that way. I had a girl, a number of years ago, on my soccer team [who] was a senior and for senior night we would do a walk-out where the parents would come and you give them flowers and the PA announcer would read over the intercom at the football stadium, you know, “This is this child’s name and here’s what they’ve accomplished. Here’s what they’re going to do after high school…”
And as we were lining up on the field—her parents had been divorced for years—she had to look at her mom and dad and say, “I expect you two to behave.” It’s like, the 18-year-old should not be having to chastise the parents. But she did because they had shown in the past that sometimes they didn’t act as maturely as they should have on the sidelines of those games, right?
The good side of sports is that it really does teach a lot of those life lessons. It teaches about hard work and determination. It teaches about the way that you practice is the way you will do something when the pressure comes on in the game. You know, it teaches responsibility, it teaches selflessness. It teaches all sorts of things. And those are wonderful.
But maybe the biggest thing that I think the value of sports is, is that it helps us learn priorities. Because I am a teacher who is a coach. These are students who are athletes. Right? At the school I’m at, we’ve had a lot of success, we’ve had a lot of great athletes, and we’ve got great support from admin.
And so as a result, we’ve had a lot of success in our program. The girls have won a lot of soccer games and stuff. That’s great! That’s now what it’s about, right? Someone says, “Well how’s your soccer program?” Well, it’s too early to tell, I’ve only been here for seven or eight years.
Now, what I’m thrilled about is not just that the kids are good at soccer. It’s that when they graduate, they go to the military, or they go to college, or they go to trade school. They become—I coach girls’ soccer—good wives and mothers, right?
Or they become good friends or they become active in their church. That’s what success looks like for our soccer program. Yes, we still want to win, but we want to win in the context of learning these priorities.
So if a kid comes to me and says, “Coach, I’ve got a big paper due tomorrow, I know we’re supposed to have practice today, I haven’t gotten around to doing this paper yet, can I leave practice early?” Well, I’m not going to be happy about it, but ultimately, academics are more important.
ADAMS: Sure.
HAWBAKER: And so now that may cost the kid some playing time because there are consequences to our choices, but I’m not going to tell the child, “Nope, you have to stay at practice and if you fail the paper, man that sucks for you.”
So one of the great things about sports is learning to prioritize. And also learning in a much less painful way about the consequences of our actions. If you skip practice, you don’t get playing time in a game. If you don’t have the right practice gear, then maybe the whole team has to run and do some work because you let everybody down.
If I yell at the referee and I get thrown out of the game, I have consequences for that in terms of having to pay a few hundred dollars in a fine, which I don’t want to have to do. And so there are lots of different things that sports do that can supplement the lessons that our academics are trying to teach them.
And for a lot of kids, they’re going to enjoy the athletic arena miles more than they enjoy the classroom. And that’s ok. And that’s why I think it’s important to keep the student-athlete dynamic. Because there are some kids, the only reason they go to school is so they can play sports afterward. That’s the only thing keeping them going to class. Okay, well, then let’s make it worth it.
ADAMS: Well that’s been very informative to us. And as I’m listening to you, I’m thinking ultimately whether it’s families, schools, or sports programs, it’s ultimately about building up these children and helping them become productive adults in society.
And so one word that kinda ties it all together is “community.” The local family. Whether it’s a nuclear family, or whether it’s not, it’s about relationships between people that form some element of community. When you come to school, at the school—whether it’s at the classroom… It's the whole school. It’s that element of community.
When you’re into sports, most sports are not just solo sports. There are solo sports, but even solo sports are part of a broader team, and so you get team points and all this stuff. But it’s about community. It’s about learning how to discipline yourself, how to grow, and learn as a person. So that you get along with others, so that you flourish in the community.
And all of these things weave together so strategically. And, I tell you what, in our country today, we desperately need to see more people flourishing in the community. There’s so much brokenness. And honestly, a lot of that comes back to role models for kids.
So for those of us who are adults in the room, I hope we’ll all take that seriously. And [in] every relationship that we have, we’ll do our best to be responsible to bring up and to pour good things into upcoming generations, wherever those relationships are.
And Joel. It’s been a real honor to have you with us today. Thank you for joining us. Are there any final thoughts you’d like to share with our audience? And maybe part of that is where they can learn more about you, your organization, website, and so forth.
HAWBAKER: Certainly. Well, first of all, thank you for having me on, it’s been an absolute pleasure, I’ve had a great time. And yeah, I’d love to connect with any of your listeners or viewers who have questions. You can find me [on my website] www.joelwhawbaker.com. You can find me on Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, or Facebook—same thing Joel W. Hawbaker. There’s not a lot of Hawbakers out there so you’ll probably find me.
If you’re in a blended family also go to www.stepdadding.com because there’s a ton of free resources there for blended families. There’s a video course and there’s all sorts of downloads and blog posts and things like that.
So definitely check out some of those resources. And then reach out to me on the social media. Send me a message on the website, I would love to answer whatever questions you have. I guess the parting thought that I would have is this. You mentioned earlier in my coaching statement is that I want to encourage families to have a long-term view.
And that’s very, very true. Because where you are today is not where you’re going to be 5, 10, or 15 years from now. Your kids may be driving you up a wall right now because they’re 7 and 11. They’re not going to stay that way for very long.
So whether you’re in a traditional family or a blended family, you need to be taking a long-term view and asking yourself, “Where do I want to be in 5, 10, or 15 years? Where do I want my kids to be? What do I need to do today to take the first step in that direction?” Right? And if we keep that long-term perspective, it makes our decision-making a lot more clear because it allows us to keep things in perspective.
ADAMS: Well that’s great stuff, Joel. Thank you so much and God bless you.
HAWBAKER: Thank you very much.