Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
111. Preparing to Launch: Equipping Your High Schooler for Adulthood
Preparing teenagers for adulthood might be the most crucial—and challenging—phase of parenthood. In this candid conversation, The Vallottons explore the essential transition from raising dependent children to launching capable, confident adults.
When parents focus solely on creating a fun and carefree childhood, they risk raising young adults unprepared for real responsibilities. Drawing from their experiences launching three young adults (now 25, 22, and 20) while still raising younger children, Jason and Lauren share both their successes and the lessons they’ve learned through missteps.
The key insight? Start early. Children who learn to contribute to family life from a young age develop a sense of capability that serves them well into adulthood. But for those who realize they’ve started later than ideal, Jason and Lauren offer practical strategies for reframing expectations with teenagers—positioning them not as arbitrary rules, but as essential preparation for their future independence.
This episode includes real-life examples from their own family, including the transformative story of their son who chose to move out one week before high school graduation. Rather than creating distance, this experience strengthened their relationship as he gained a newfound appreciation for the guidance he had once resisted.
The conversation also delves into the different approaches needed for raising sons versus daughters, teaching emotional regulation, and establishing standards for family interactions. Ultimately, successful parenting isn’t measured by how much children enjoy their childhood, but by how confidently they navigate adulthood.
Ready to shift your parenting approach from control to coaching? This episode provides the framework to help parents prepare their teenagers for a successful launch into independence.
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We're the valetins and we are passionate about people.
Speaker 1:Every human was created for fulfilling relational connection.
Speaker 2:But that's not always what comes easiest.
Speaker 1:We know this because of our wide range of personal experience, as well as our years of working with people.
Speaker 2:So we're going to crack open topics like dating, marriage, family and parenting to encourage, entertain and equip you for a deeply fulfilling life of relational health.
Speaker 1:Welcome back everyone to Dates, mates and Babies with the Valetins. We are excited to be here with y'all.
Speaker 2:Yes, we are Happy Wednesday everybody, and today we are going to talk a little bit about parenthood, but not just any sort of parenthood, a very special sort of parenthood.
Speaker 1:Probably your favorite, favorite season.
Speaker 2:Parenting teens, but specifically preparing to launch our high schoolers into adulthood.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is a really big conversation and, honestly, one of the most exciting times in the life of a parent and child, but also can be really challenging.
Speaker 2:Yeah, our oldest kids are 25, 22, and 20. Am I right about that?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And so it's been a couple of years since we were in the thick of this, but there was a stretch there where we were really at it and you know, the parenthood journey is like most things you do not nail it every time when you're right smack dab in the middle of it. But there's a lot of things that you experiment with. There's a lot of things you learn in hindsight. There's a lot of things that we will hindsight. There's a lot of things that we will do even more intentionally the next time around when our five and three-year-old are in that season of their childhood.
Speaker 2:But it's a great conversation to have because so many families are doing this right now and, honestly, the landscape is changing all the time, just with regards to culture and what our kids are facing in culture and what's going on in the world. I think raising teenagers today is just very different than it was when we were growing up and families. In some ways, I think that families like the language around connection and emotional health and what does it mean to raise kids who love God and also we have a high value for our physical, mental, emotional well-being. We have so much language around connection in our family, which is honestly improved since I was growing up, but there's other things that our kids face that make it even more challenging than when we were young, and so, anyways, this is going to be a great conversation.
Speaker 1:Well, I think when we look back at kind of in society, I would say that parents did a better job at raising kids to be prepared to launch into, like the work world and responsibility world.
Speaker 2:Decades ago.
Speaker 1:Decades. Yeah, yeah, for reals. And a lot of that was just in the setup of home and farm, life and work life all that stuff.
Speaker 1:But I really think in our day and age, helping parents to understand that one of the main responsibilities in raising kids is you're raising kids to be great adults, really competent adults, and I don't think that parents think about that a lot. I think that parents think a lot about I. Have these people in my house, these kids in my house, that I really want them to have fun. I really want them to have a great childhood have an incredible childhood. I want them to want to enjoy to enjoy them, yep, all those things While they're here.
Speaker 1:And we forget it's like 16, 17, 18 years old. We forget it's coming and we forget that the 20s are coming and that kids are going to spend more time in their adult life than they ever are in their kid life. Right. And so, yes, I want my kids to be great kids, for sure, and I want them to crush their childhood and have the best time ever in their childhood. But really, a lot of childhood, most of childhood, is to prepare you to be an incredible adult, right, a competent adult, an adult that.
Speaker 2:A great contributor to society. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:And when you start looking at it from that lens it really changes what you do as a parent. For sure. Because, in order to raise a great adult I'm just thinking about this, I was thinking the other day because we have a Braveco conference coming up and we're talking about the life of David and kind of our theme is a warrior king-ish.
Speaker 1:And I was thinking through. God wanted to make David a king. He anointed David as king when he was a young boy. And then David goes through all these trials, right, he faces the lion, he faces the bear, he faces Goliath. Before he even becomes king, the ruling king, saul, wants to kill him. So he goes and he hides in a cave for years and years and years. David learns to become a king in a cave with a bunch of ragtag guys that ultimately become a smiting man.
Speaker 1:Okay, he gives him challenges and he lets him face those challenges and he lets him experience that God is always with them, that he's the God of miracles, that he's the God that speaks to them in a really, really dark time and the God that lifts them up out of the depths of hell. And a bit it does remind me of where my parents really did a great job. My parents, from a very young age, introduced us to God like the wild side of God, and some was just by.
Speaker 1:We were doing youth group and home group in our living room for a long time, and so they didn't hide the wild stuff and sometimes, if it got really crazy, the demonic stuff, they would send us upstairs. But you saw a good amount of it before. Where they didn't do great was talking us through it, you know like the emotional side of it. But they did awesome in helping us to have all these experiences, taking us to.
Speaker 3:Nine times I went to Mexico and helped to go to the dump see.
Speaker 1:kids who were less fortunate than me build a home, get blisters.
Speaker 1:My sisters went there in the summers and lived in Mexico and so much vision about other people and helping and what we were going to be and what the gifts that God had put on our lives and how we were going to use our lives, anyways. So I think a lot of our culture doesn't really think about that, that often Not about mission trips, but about I'm trying to instill these values and these principles and this character in our children that really create healthy, whole children, and so, anyways, I think there's some real good keys to helping to launch our kids in ways that are successful.
Speaker 1:And to me the first part of it. The first step is realizing my goal as a parent is to launch these kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:As competent, capable, confident kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, adults Right, absolutely comfortable like confident kids. Yeah, adults right, absolutely. I think that one of the things that has become clearer to me over the last short while, as we've got a five a newly five-year-old and an almost three year old in our house right now is and I think that this is where parents often get sideswiped as their kids start to get older is that when they're little, you know, it's really easy for me to feel like my main goal is to build a relationship between me and my kids so that they feel deeply connected to me and so that they deeply trust me and so that, when they're older, we can deeply enjoy each other.
Speaker 1:Like those would be my goals right Totally.
Speaker 2:That's good, except for the more primary goal should be that I help them have a deeply connected relationship with God.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because he's the only one that's actually going to be with them and not fail them right, yeah, it's true.
Speaker 2:Like this morning. I hit the end of my rope with our three and five-year-old and I had to apologize to my entire family twice before 7 am. I'm going to fail them Like I'm not going to be perfect, right? Our relationship is going to be tested and I will fail them, but God won't. And so probably even more primary than my kids growing up in a home where they trust us, which is important, hear me out so important. They learn to actually trust God.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that their comfort and their happiness. Quote happiness in my home is not my primary goal, Right? Yeah, we don't want to get weird about it. I'm not saying that they should sleep on the floor so that they're less comfortable and soft as they get older.
Speaker 1:It's an interesting conversation because when kids are young, they experience God through us.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And so that they would feel deeply connected to us and so safe we are becoming. For Edie, we are becoming the transition to God. So she experiences God how she experiences me.
Speaker 2:Totally.
Speaker 1:She experiences the Holy Spirit how she experiences you and. Jesus, how she experiences her brothers and sisters. So we're making that deep bond.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we're going to start bridging for her the connection, for her own unique relationship with God, absolutely which we've already started to do.
Speaker 1:But you're right in the sense that one of our primary motivations in our connection and relationship is to introduce her to God that doesn't fail, that loves her unconditionally, that gives her identity.
Speaker 2:Right. I guess my point is moms in particular can get so obsessive over. I have to. I have to do this perfect job at raising these kids and if I don't, if I mess up, if I don't make the mark, you know they're they're gonna not be okay for it and I'm like no, no, if our primary goal is actually obviously to do our best and to love our kids unconditionally well and damage them as little as possible like that's definitely on the goal list, but primary is that I introduce like I wouldn't be okay if I didn't have God, like we are safe, protected, covered, provided for, loved unconditionally because we know God.
Speaker 2:And in that context our quote comforts come secondary, like the prioritization of our children's comfort comes second to creating them to be people who trust God and who can do hard things and wonderfully easy things because God is with them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was looking at some friends of ours that just had a baby. She's, I think, five months old and they're on their way to South Africa. They're going on a mission trip and I said, oh my gosh, you guys, that's so incredible. Yesterday I was talking to them and they said, yeah, we're bringing our baby. And I was like, oh gosh, that's wild, you guys.
Speaker 1:They said, yeah, the sacrifice of having a baby on the mission field with us is worth it, because we told each other when we have kids, we want to introduce them at a very young age to sacrificial living and they're not going there in mission field permanently, but they're going there, they're just starting out and they're like she's five months old, and this is what we do this is how we live life, but I want to just talk a little bit about maybe some of the mindsets that have to switch in parents too, in order to launch your kids really well.
Speaker 1:When kids are young, you're very much in control of their life, every aspect of their life, and from what they eat to when they eat, to how much they eat, to their play dates. You're setting all that up and there's a big transition that has to take place in order for us to start to raise kids that can make really healthy, helpful decisions on their own and that should start as young as possible, in the sense that we want to give our kids as much control of their life as possible that they can handle without it absolutely crushing them.
Speaker 2:Well, we want to teach them what to do with their ability to make choices. We want to teach them what to do with freedom.
Speaker 1:And how to make good choices.
Speaker 2:And how to make good choices.
Speaker 1:yeah, so, ultimately, your goal, my goal as a parent, is to work myself out of a job, so I'm trying to yeah, by the time they get to be old enough to leave home and be on their own, we want them.
Speaker 2:We want to have worked ourself out of that role that we had when they were young.
Speaker 1:And long before that. So in the early childhood stages, the early years, is all about the nurture, the caring, the I'm making all the decisions for you, and then we're starting to get the kids, as they get older, to make really good decisions. So it's fun or no fun.
Speaker 2:I don't know that everybody listening is going to know what that means.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, instead of just taking your kids to their room because they're having a bad attitude, you're starting to teach them that they get a choice and, yeah, their attitude right we've done so, our parenting style.
Speaker 2:what we've chosen to do, which definitely airs on the side of helping kids learn how to make great choices, is we've subscribed a lot to like the love and logic way of doing parenting, which there's a heavy emphasis on giving kids choices at a very young age for little things. Do you want the red spoon or the blue spoon? Do you want to brush your teeth first or would you like to wash your face first? In this bedtime routine, figuring out ways to help them feel powerful in making choices. So then, as they get older than it is you know, it's like they're having a bad attitude out in the living room. No problem, if you're going to be fun, you can be here. If you're not going to be fun, you need to go do that in your room.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it's helping them take ownership of their responsibilities right. And their life as they get older and older and older. Anyways, I think a large part of it is parents have to shift from being in control of everything to helping coach our kids and give them options without overly empowering them in a way that crushes them. I'm 15 years old and my dad says to me hey, I want you to make all of your mistakes at home because you have mom and I. I mean they did such a great job.
Speaker 1:When I was 15, 16, I did not have a time in which I had to be home they also trusted you a lot. Yeah, I'm saying that was their goal.
Speaker 2:Yes, 100%.
Speaker 1:Their goal was that I would get to a spot in my life where I'm 16 years old, I can drive a car, I can handle my grades and my homework and all that stuff with minimal effort. I can stay out as late as I want to, as long as I do a great job with my responsibilities and communicate well and manage my relationship well.
Speaker 1:They showed me the benefit of managing myself really well. Totally. The benefit of having a great relationship with them and protecting my relationship with them was I got more freedom and it worked really awesome. Nowadays there's a lot of people, a lot of parents, that, as their kids are getting older, and you feel that rub right. You feel the kids push back a lot the challenges with attitudes, I mean just all the things right, and we have stuff nowadays that I didn't have back then.
Speaker 1:We have phones and computers and we're not even going to talk about all that stuff today. But what I see a lot nowadays is and you would say the same, and you would say the same is, I think, kids that are having a hard time transitioning into more responsibility, more freedom, more taking on a burden of their own and wanting to stay in the phase where the parents make all the decisions, but then they hate the parents for that. Do you know what I'm talking about? It's the I want. Okay, here it's like this I want my own freedom, I want to make my own decisions, I want to do what I want to do, but I don't want to contribute.
Speaker 2:I don't want responsibility. I don't want responsibility, yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's a lot. There is definitely that phase that we have to help our kids through, but a lot of parents get caught in this space of I'm going to control my kids into doing the right thing, but also this weird, confusing piece of when they don't and when they push back and when they're disrespectful. I don't know what to do about that either.
Speaker 2:Right, 100%. Yeah, I think people get themselves into a real pickle. And it is confusing because I think that what I think parents have a hard time knowing how to do and I can say this because I'm like this was the challenge for me to do, and I can say this because I'm like this was the challenge for me was I want to believe that, because I've raised you with so much love and care and have done my best to be like a integrous person, full of character, and you can see the fruit of my life that you would be happy to contribute in the ways that I'm asking you to, you're thankful for me, because look at this space we've created for you, look at the freedom that you have. Aren't you happy now to start giving back, or am I going to have to harp on you? And I think we find ourselves in this spot where we're like, oh shoot, like my kids aren't.
Speaker 2:You know, either are or aren't right. A lot of it has to do with personality. A lot of it has. There's a lot of factors involved, but I think parents don't always know how to make that transition between I tell you what to do from that to. I require a lot of you, but I don't tell you what to do.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And I think that that's the tricky part Like we have to get great at, like we, as in society, we need to get great at requiring a lot, cause here's what. Here's what I used to do when our big kids were young. I would notice a lot who are the families around us who have older children that I actually like, who around me has adult children or high school age kids who I really enjoy, and I would look at kind of what do those families do, how do they operate, what are, what are the standards involved, what are the expectations involved? You know we had, like middle school age kids and I'm looking at how do we do high school. Well, so, kind of taking notes around me.
Speaker 2:And the truth is is that the families who had teenage and young adult kids who I really enjoyed, they required a lot of those kids. I can't think of one family whose adult kids I super enjoyed being around in that phase where the standard was really low in areas like contribution, responsibility, pitching it, taking care of the family. Contribution is a really big factor. So the code to crack right is how to have those really high standards and how to produce kids who contribute and hold a lot of responsibility that also have connection with you.
Speaker 1:So part of it to me is one of the mistakes that I made was starting too late with our older boys because of the divorce and the disruption and all the trying to blend the family and just all that craziness that happened.
Speaker 1:I could see that I didn't create a rhythm enough for the kids to contribute when they were young and continue that through that. They really did a great job at learning responsibility as part of being the family. I get a lot of identity out of taking the trash out. I get a lot of identity out of taking the trash out. I get a lot of identity out of mowing the lawn. I get a lot of identity for my boys right.
Speaker 1:Like this is what I contribute. I'm doing great and the family needs me, and so I see a lot of parents trying to start responsibilities at 16 years old with their kids. Now that you can drive.
Speaker 1:you need to go get a job Now that you can drive. You need to pay some bills Now that you can do this thing right Now that you're going to be out in two years, now you need to start carrying this load. And because it's so much easier for parents to just do the chores around the house or for parents to kind of do everything.
Speaker 1:But what my parents did really good with us from a young age was we worked. We worked outside, we worked at the businesses that my dad had. I went there almost every day after school and that's how I spent time from three to five o'clock till we came home and made dinner was cleaning the machine shop. And I specifically remember cleaning the machine shop, which was where we turned brakes and rotors, and it's greasy, it's dirty. We pressed bearings. People won't really know what that means.
Speaker 1:But, we made hoses, hydraulic presses, so I'm like 9, 10, 11 years old there almost every single day after work in my job. Yeah, after school, my job was to clean it. And I remember just being. I hated it. And I remember my dad telling me you can make any job fun if you want to, but he didn't care if I didn't make it fun.
Speaker 1:Totally Not his responsibility, not his responsibility, right, and I remember having access to the red rags. But that's where I learned to sing, Because I learned that if I sang it would just make things so much funner. And then in my mind I would make a competition of how quick can I clean something? If I was the best cleaner, I had this story in my mind. You know how Edie has these crazy stories. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I was like I wonder if I'm the best cleaner that's ever cleaned this place back here. You know just all these things, but to me, when you start your kids contributing too late now, it's this massive fight because you're trying to get them to do something and you have this expectation of them that they're going to want to carry a load and want to do this thing. That hasn't ever really been instilled in them. And then it becomes this massive fight, what we want to do and not that it's not going to be a fight, even when they're older, but we want to have a conversation with them when they're young, that we carry all the way through adulthood, which says this is part of what we do, this is part of being a family. You're a valet, valetins do X things.
Speaker 2:We do that a lot with our little kids. Yeah, a ton.
Speaker 1:We're constantly telling them that.
Speaker 2:Valetins work hard. Valetins are trustworthy. Valetins carry responsibility.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Valetins, do the hard thing. Valetins, don't quit.
Speaker 1:Yep, and having that conversation all the way through their life. I remember my parents said a lot of great things without even knowing how. I remember my dad sitting me down and saying you're going to hit puberty in the next couple of years and when you hit puberty, this is what you're going to feel like and this is what's going to happen to you. You're not going to probably want to spend a lot of time for me. You're not going to want to hear me coach you a lot. And I was like dad no, that won't happen. I remember so.
Speaker 1:I used to sit on the toilet every night while my dad took a bath and just hang out with him. We had the best relationship, and he was right, though, 13 years old, I hit puberty and I no longer wanted him to come play basketball with us, but I still told my dad things and I still went and worked at this shop.
Speaker 2:But when you had that feeling, you had somewhere to put it, because he already told you to expect that feeling. Yep and that's a huge key because we can tell our kids things like valetins, pitch in Valetins. Right now, edie and Liam think it's cool to like help me unload the dishwasher and we can tell them from a really young age valetins, pitch in, valetins contribute. There's going to be a time when you don't want to do that, but you're going to remember.
Speaker 1:This is what we do, yeah, and this is the benefit, this is what you get and this is where you're going in your life. And so I think a lot of the coaching that I would do for parents right now is you have that 15, 16, 17-year-old boy especially in your home that doesn't want to contribute and doesn't want to give back.
Speaker 1:And the conversation is I'm sorry, I am so sorry, I don't know that I actually set you up for success by having this conversation with you, by saying, hey, the responsibility is changing on your life, my role in your life is changing, but we have these not just this expectation of you this responsibility to help you launch really well as a man. The difference between a boy and a man is a boy consumes more than he produces, but a man produces more than he consumes.
Speaker 1:And, son, it's my job to help you make that leap over these next two years. So you're going to experience things that are uncomfortable. My first goal with you isn't that we'd be best friends. My first goal with you is that I could help, guide you and lead you, coach you to be a great man. I want to be best friends. I want to be somebody that you really want to follow. But you're almost on your own, and so things are going to probably be a little uncomfortable, or they can be really exciting.
Speaker 1:This is the conversation because, son, the better you do at taking responsibility, the more freedom you can have. So you do a great job with these little things. We're going to give you more responsibility. You do great things with whatever you go work, you earn money. You can take that money and spend it however you want. That's what life is becoming. The more responsible you are, the more you delay gratification, the more you do hard things, the better your life becomes, and you can take them through that whole conversation. Right. Look at your friends who just do what they want to do. How are you going to build a life that you're really proud of 10 years from now? So you're starting to have that conversation and giving them context for why they're about to take on more responsibility and you're less concerned about how much they love it and more concerned about teaching them these principles and getting them a work ethic that sustains them when they're out of the house.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I started having that conversation with both of our boys a little bit late and because I told you know. I'm telling everyone like, hey, hey, this is one of the things that I didn't focus on other things, yeah.
Speaker 1:I didn't do a great job of, and I had one of my sons who, man, he just awesome. Both our boys were great, but just had a really hard time with the responsibility piece without having to be reminded five, six times. When I would remind him to do his responsibility, he would get really frustrated with me. So, 17 years old and 18.
Speaker 1:He was 18. Yeah, actually he was 18. He was 18. Okay, yeah, so he was 18, still in high school, and I just continually had to remind him every single week hey, I need you to mow the lawn and weed whack. It takes like probably takes like 35 minutes. We've got an awesome riding lawn mower and incredible weed whacker.
Speaker 2:State-of-the-art tools. State-of-the-art.
Speaker 1:And he just kept not wanting, kept not wanting, delaying it. So finally, I mean, every week was like that. So on this particular week he had asked me on Saturday if he could do it on Sunday and I said, oh, I feel so much fear I do, because I am afraid that I'm going to have to ask you tomorrow to do it and remind you. And he was like no, no you won't have to.
Speaker 1:This is like months and months, and months going on. So Sunday rolls around and he says, hey, can I go to X person's house? And I'm like I'm feeling some anger, I am, I'm frustrated, I'm really frustrated. That's the difference, too, with, as your kids are getting older, they need to carry the weight and responsibility of how they're affecting the relationship. So I'm letting him know. Hey, I feel really frustrated. And he's like, well, fine, I'll go mow it right now. I was going to do it when I got back and I'm like, okay, yeah, totally, I get it.
Speaker 1:So he goes and he mows the lawn, and then he's all right, I mowed the lawn, I'm ready to leave, and I said, hey, you didn't weed whack, like valetins finish the job all the way. So he just out the door, he goes, he's so pissed off, he's angry, he weed whacks really fast. And he's like, all right, I'm leaving. I was like, wait, hold on, let's go, look at it. I mean I want to see what you did, you know. So I go out there and it looks like a blind barber's haircut. I mean it's so bad. And I said, hey, man, I love you so much, but I would be a really irresponsible father if I let you do this crap job and leave. You need to either do the job right or don't do it all. That's what my dad told me, and if you don't want to do it, then you need to go find a place that's okay with you living the way that you want to live, which isn't here. So this is where I started to have the conversation with him.
Speaker 1:There's only one of us that gets to mow the lawn, however we want to mow it. There's only one of us that gets to not do things around here, and however we want to mow it. There's only one of us that gets to not do things around here, and it's me, because I pay all the bills. I own this house, I pay all the bills. I water that grass, I pay for that grass, I pay for your room, I pay for your food, I pay for you to lay and sleep in your bed. So at this point in your life, son, if you want to not have to mow, not have to do dishes, not have to clean your room, you should just you should go do that somewhere else, but you can't do it here. Because my responsibility is to offer you a chance to grow into a man who can take care of himself. That's what I'm going to continue to do here. I love you so much, but you can't live here and not work hard and not help me and not contribute to the family. You're a man, you're a grown man now.
Speaker 1:So he listened. I didn't shame him that's a mistake that parents would make but I was really firm with him. He came back out of his room an hour later and he said hey, dad, I think I want to move out Now. He hadn't graduated high school yet. And I said oh, are you sure? And he said yeah, I really do. I think I want to move out. And he said, dad, it because, like I don't want to do any more chores or I don't want to do things around here. I actually really feel like I want the responsibility of moving out and I'm ready.
Speaker 2:And I said oh, dude, I think that it was about one week before graduation, I remember.
Speaker 1:I said I think that's an incredible idea. I really do. I think that you should move out and I'm happy to help you in any way that I can.
Speaker 2:And he said didn't he say? He was like I'm not mad.
Speaker 1:I'm not mad, so anyways, I forgot to tell you about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a whole nother story.
Speaker 1:Okay, basically what happened is our son moved out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one week before he graduated from high school. Now, mind you, he moved in with our nephew. It wasn't like he went and found a roommate off Craigslist like he did back in the 90s.
Speaker 1:No, but they lived on their own.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it was incredible y'all. When your kids move out and you have a good relationship with them, it becomes a great relationship.
Speaker 2:It's true.
Speaker 1:Because, all of a sudden, they need you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they have gratitude.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so he came back right away the first month. I mean, he cooked 50 pounds of spaghetti the first month. Literally that's all he knew how to cook.
Speaker 2:Jay just kept giving him meat out of our freezer and he'd make more spaghetti.
Speaker 1:But I went from being the bad guy to like hey man, you look really skinny. Are you hungry? Are you eating anything? And he'd come over so stressed out about money and you got to take him through his bank account and how to-.
Speaker 2:We did some good budgeting.
Speaker 1:Budget and we became the heroes while he carried this load and this responsibility. Anyways, he's doing awesome now. He went through school ministry, made great choices. As a parent, our job is to set up our kids for success. A lot of us parents are having to go, oh shoot. We're having to repent and go oh gosh, I haven't set my kids up for success well. And now I'm having to have these hard conversations with them. You cannot coddle your kids into being great men and women.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:And as they get older, that conversation gets harder and harder and harder. And if you, a lot of men and women, feel really guilty for not doing a great job and then we try to over which now I'm trying to like, do too much for them instead of rip the bandaid off and go hey, I messed up. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I should have set you up for success better Now. Now you're going to have to carry it. You know you're going to have to step up and it's not fun. I should have you know. We should have not given you a cell phone that soon. We should have not let you play video games that much, and, man, I wish I would have instilled this in you. I did it. So now we're in the last two years of you being at home and it's a little bit uncomfortable, but cast some vision for them. This is what's going to happen in your life. This is what we're going to do.
Speaker 2:So that's great, I think, on an emotional level too, and probably just as a mom, I think that one of the shifts we have to make is, you know, as a mom you kind of get used to like you just kind of take it right. You take it for a lot of years and you, you've got the. Some days are roses, some days are bad attitudes. You're working with what you got. You do your best there, you shoulder a lot as a parent and then when your kids kind of become in their later teen years, you realize like, wow, I'm interacting with a, with a full blown adult here. I actually have when it comes to like how I interact with other people.
Speaker 2:I actually have a pretty high set of standards in my life and we had this conversation with a friend not that long ago who's got teenage boys and she's trying to figure some things out, and she was like I'm offended, right, like I feel like there's a man in my house who's not caring for me I don't stay around people who don't care for me and she's like, but they're my kids, so I'm trying to figure out like I'm the mom.
Speaker 2:Should I even have my feelings hurt right now? But my feelings are hurt, you know. So we had this great conversation and it took me back to some moments parenting our older kids, where I had these moments of realization like, oh, wow, it's actually my responsibility to let my kids know how they're impacting our environment, how they're impacting me. I don't need to shield them from my hurt feelings. I don't need to shield them from my tears. I can let them know how sad and hurt I felt when dot dot dot. And then, of course, you know, I don't need them quote in order for me to be okay, for me to have a self-esteem or for me to have any self-confidence. I don't need them to treat me any certain way in order to have self-respect. However, I do need to teach them how they're impacting me and how that ultimately impacts our connection.
Speaker 2:that ultimately impacts our connection and how our connection impacts the amount of freedom and trust we have inside of our relationship. So you know these are big shifts.
Speaker 1:Can I add to that?
Speaker 2:These are big shifts that we have to make.
Speaker 1:And we also have a standard for how we treat each other in the home, and so this is where a lot I feel like the father's role is to step up in those scenarios. This is where a lot I feel like the father's role is to step up in those scenarios, especially with boys who are becoming men, and to say hey, I love you. That's not how I would treat mom. I knew in my home what was okay to do to mom and what was not okay, and I remember there was a lot of times when well, actually there was only a few times when you chose wrong.
Speaker 1:We chose wrong. I remember my dad coming flying out of the bathtub because of my older brother talking to my mom rude, I mean holy cow, 17 years old and my dad's going. My dad is right up in front of him saying you can leave the house and not come back, or you can change how you talk. Those are the only two choices you have, and same with me.
Speaker 1:The fear of God. I can remember my sister's hitting me in the arm like 50 times and I couldn't get her to stop and I turned and I hit her once in the arm and my dad came unglued, Unglued. I realized really quick there's a lot of oh, there's a standard here. There's a lot of other tools that I should use besides rudeness, violence. But valet and men, we protect the women in the house, and how we talk to them really mattered.
Speaker 1:So, again back to. It's my responsibility as a dad to hold the standard my kids don't get to do, especially when they're older. They don't get to treat the family in a way that I wouldn't let somebody else yeah.
Speaker 2:One thing that I think we should mention. We've talked a lot about raising boys, and that's relevant, because we have more boys than girls. However, we do have an adult daughter and we have a little girl too, and I have grown up, and so one of the things that I think we would be it would be not good if we didn't mention when raising women. It might look a little bit different than raising boys, but what we're after is we want to raise women who are confident that they can handle the things that life throws at them, and part of people men and women growing in confidence is being responsible to handle what's on their plate and learning how to do that without being coddled, without having problems solved for them. So, raising women who know how to solve problems, raising women who are resourceful.
Speaker 1:Ultimately, Can I add one thing to?
Speaker 2:it.
Speaker 1:Also how to handle their emotions, yeah, and so as much as boys have to learn how to to handle their emotions, I think, the girls really have to learn how to handle their emotions.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like our little Edie Barrett, she loves the drama right now. Oh yeah, she loves the drama she does.
Speaker 2:She we asked we uh, we were getting ready for school today and we asked her if she was excited to see one of her friends and she said we're not friends anymore. And we were like what? She gave you a hug after school on Friday when we picked you up. What do you mean? You're not friends anymore. She goes that was a hug, agreeing that we were not going to be friends anymore, which is not true. It was a hug. Goodbye to being friends is what she said, which is super, not true. But she did have a little spit spat thing with that friend at school last week, so she's processing it, but she does love the drama.
Speaker 1:You know the two questions. It reminds me back to what John Eldridge gifted the whole entire world. The two questions that everyone's asking themselves. Boys are asking, or men are asking do I have what it takes? Yeah.
Speaker 1:And women are asking am I worthy to be pursued? And I think that, as parents, it's our responsibility, when they're young, to really answer that question for them and then help to transition them to Father God to get that question answered and to really shore that up in their life. And if we do a great job at again giving those boys. Do I have what it takes? Yes, you do. And the women? You are worthy to be pursued.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:You don't have to settle, you don't have to wear that skimpy thing, you don't have to conform, but you are incredibly.
Speaker 2:Or you're strong. Yeah, you're strong, you can do it, you're capable, you've got what it takes.
Speaker 1:So, anyways, guys, that's the topic today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you've got friends, parents of teens, if you think this would be helpful, go ahead and forward it on out there. Feel free to leave us your comments, your questions.
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