How We Put Family First Using this 1 Guiding Principle

Do you ever get to the end of the day and wonder, “Did I actually connect with my family today—or did I just get through the checklist?” 

It’s so easy to fall into a routine where we’re physically present but emotionally checked out—rushing from one task to the next without really being with our kids in the moments that matter most.

In this episode, we share the guiding principle that’s helped us keep our family at the center and helped us know how to be present parents—even in the busiest seasons of life raising three kids. You’ll learn how to use this simple mindset shift to become more present and create meaningful connections with your family every single day.

Things we’ll talk about in this podcast:

• Anthony’s background story.
• The mental mistake parents make that keep you from putting your family first.
• The “funeral experiment” that can help you put life into perspective.
• What success and failure looks like in family life.

If you're craving more presence and connection at home, this podcast is for you—let’s dive in.

00:00 Introduction: Prioritizing Family
00:32 Anthony's Background and Family Challenges
01:57 The Guiding Principle: No Success Can Compensate for Failure at Home
03:20 Applying the Principle in Daily Life
07:28 Defining Success in Parenting
11:13 Real-Life Examples and Final Thoughts
13:07 Conclusion and Free Resource

When you finish listening, we’d love for you to connect with us on social media!

Follow us on Instagram and like our page on Facebook to keep the conversation going. It’s the best way to get quick tips, encouragement, and resources to help you make time for what matters most—your family.

Get our FREE resource, "30-Second Micro Moments of Intention with Your Kids", by going to: parentsmakingtime.com/freeresource

Parenting is hard. Intentional parenting can seem even harder. Motherhood, fatherhood, marriage, and all that goes with those important aspects of life can make it difficult to prioritize tasks, embrace intentional living, focus on present parenting, and build family bonds. We're here to help ease your parenting anxiety so that you can stop feeling overwhelmed, find joy in your parenting journey, and build family bonds that last for generations. Here at Parents Making Time, we are all about that parent-child connection, self-care for parents, and helping you overcome mom guilt and dad guilt. If you have a question or would like to share an experience about your own parenting, please feel free to reach out to one of us! Please note, we may use your question and/or comments as a part of a Q&A Parenting Advice segment on one of our episodes.

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Transcript

Anthony: [00:00:00] In today's episode, we're going to share the guiding principle that has helped us prioritize our family over the years as we have raised our three kids. We'll talk about how you can apply this principle to become more present as a parent and have meaningful engagement with your family on a daily basis.

This is parents making time. The show that helps busy parents put family first without burning out. We are Anthony and Jennifer Craiker. We don't just give parenting tips. We help you become the parent you want to be.

So before we share the principle, I want to give a little bit of background on my own story because it's important to understand where I'm coming from and why this principle that we're gonna share with you in just a moment has become so important to our family. I grew up in, I think it's fair to say, a fairly dysfunctional family.

Mainly because of my dad. He, uh, suffered from mental illness. He had some character flaws and [00:01:00] it just created an environment in our home that wasn't the greatest growing up. He had, trouble holding down a job, which led to financial strain, which led to marital strain with my parents. They eventually divorced, , after I was already outta the house.

But it was difficult and, and at times my dad could be emotionally abusive. He since passed away. We, but we just didn't have a very great relationship and ended up estranged during the last few years of his life. And so when. We started our family. It was really important to me to change that story and to figure out a way to create a, a safe, loving home environment for my kids where they could be raised in a stable situation.

And where we could create a, legacy, if you will, a lasting legacy of love for our kids. And so there's a, a [00:02:00] principle that I learned several years ago, and it comes from a writer. His name was Jay McCulloch, and I don't know really know much about him, but this principle was later popularized by an American religious leader named David O.

McKay. But here's the principle. It's no other success can compensate for failure in the home. Now, that might sound a little controversial to some, we're gonna break it down, but that's the guiding principle that we've used to raise our family, and we're gonna tell you how we've done that and why it works.

No other success can compensate for failure in the home. 

Jennifer: Now lemme go back to what Anthony was saying about his family growing up. Honestly, it sounds like the kind of thing if your child is dating someone and you know that that's their family situation that you're wanna say run. It almost drew me to you because I saw your drive to change that.

I knew it was so important for you to have [00:03:00] a, a successful family where children are loved and good values are followed. I knew that was so ingrained in you because you'd experienced somewhat of the opposite that I knew that I wanted to make that family with you. 

Anthony: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I'm lucky that, you felt that way because it very much could have been the opposite.

So as we kind of break this down, one of the things to consider is, what is it That takes people away from putting their family first, from not living this principle and recognizing that no matter what other success you might have in life, nothing's going to make up or compensate for failure at home?

Jennifer: I think that the mistake really is not intentional. I think it has to do with prioritizing other things. Above your family, but I don't think we mean to, I think we in, and sometimes we think we are, we think in prioritizing work we're providing better for our family, which is [00:04:00] true. But if you prioritize it too much now you're doing it at the detriment of your family.

Anthony: Right. And, and we've had moments where we've done this. Right. I, I don't want to make it sound like , we've been perfect at living this principle, but. We've had this principle in mind right at, at least in the back of our minds over the years, so that we were able to recognize when we were off track, when we were focusing on things or putting other things ahead of our family, we were able to recalibrate and realign our actions with our values.

Right. Course correct. 

Jennifer: For sure. So, you know, we think, oh, we're chasing success, money, career advancement, all to help our family or home is always gonna be there. So I'm gonna go chase this right now and I'll come back to home when this is done. Or given myself so many demands that I'm completely distracted and exhausted and don't even have the energy to prioritize my family or be intentional with my kids.

Like, these are all things that are so easy to get caught up in. 

Anthony: Yeah. A lot of times the things that pull us away or distract us from our family just. [00:05:00] Feel more urgent. And we let the urgent take priority over the important a lot of times. 

Jennifer: Right. But there's consequences to that. Right. Like with our families, we have missed opportunities for engagement.

If we really let it go far. We have broken relationships. We won't have those relationships in the end that we wanted to have. Right? 

Anthony: Like, like with me and my dad. 

Jennifer: For sure, for sure. We also fail to leave a legacy, right? We're, we're teaching our kids. Things, no matter if we're doing it intentionally or not.

Anthony: Yeah. 

Jennifer: And so maybe we're always gonna leave a legacy, but it may not be the one you want to leave. 

Anthony: And at the end of the day you could end up at the end of your life feeling regret. Now that's hard to internalize right now when you're in the moment and it's hard to picture yourself at the end of your life thinking, oh, I wish I had done this thing called life totally differently and wish I'd focused on my family more.

And that's why it's so important to remind ourselves regularly, because when we're living the day to day, [00:06:00] we don't necessarily think about it in those terms. Like, oh, I'm gonna feel regret over the way that I am not prioritizing my family. But if we come back to this idea, this principle of no other success can compensate for failure in the home, that's going to help us recognize more frequently the importance of placing our family first so that we don't get to the end of our lives.

With regret. Nobody on their deathbed ever said, I wish I'd spent more time in the office. Right, 

Jennifer: right, right. I was just thinking as you were talking about this, do you remember several years ago we were talking with our kids and you had them do this exercise of considering their funeral? I think it came from a book.

Anthony: Yeah. That comes from the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. 

Jennifer: Right. So we did this exercise that seemed very morbid at the time, but Anthony had myself and our three kids. You know, imagine. Funeral. And what do you want people to say about you? What do you want? Who do you want there?

You know, what, what do you want that to be like? And you [00:07:00] know, this, this idea, like nobody at that point is ever gonna be on their deathbed saying, I, I wish I'd worked harder. Or at least I wish I'd work harder at work. It would be more like, I wish I worked harder with my family, 

Anthony: or I wish I had made more money so that I could have more stuff for a bigger house.

Right? None of that's gonna matter. When you're close to the end of your life, what is going to matter is your relationships with the people that you love the most in life. 

Jennifer: So with this principle, no other success can compensate for failure in the home. Maybe we need to define success. 

Anthony: Yeah, I think that's important.

Jennifer: So success, I, I think it that what we have come to is that success in a family situation is sustained effort to prioritize your family, to teach your values to your children and to leave a legacy of love, 

Anthony: right? And that word effort there is key 'cause. It's not really outcome determinative in the sense of how your kids end up doing in their lives or what choices they make, right?

Failure isn't defined by. [00:08:00] What your kids ultimately decide to do with their lives, failure and success have to do with your effort day to day as a parent. Have you done what you need to do to put your family first, to teach them your values, to leave that legacy? Or are you continually allowing other things to get in the way of putting your family first?

Jennifer: Because that would be failure, right? I will say that most parents probably are gonna have a moment where they think, did I fail? But in that moment, they're likely thinking of whatever the outcome is happening with their children. But we have to remember, our children get to make choices after we teach them.

And those choices aren't necessarily going to align with what we teach them. But if we can look back and realize, yes, I prioritize my family, yes, I taught my values, and yes, my children know that I love them. That is success. That's 

Anthony: success for sure. And we've seen that. I mean this, this has worked for our family.

Now. We're not perfect in any way, and we haven't always been [00:09:00] successful in the moment, but when we take a step back, I think you and I both feel like overall. We have been successful in striving to prioritize our family and, and putting forth that sustained effort to prioritize family, to teach our kids our values, and to leave that lasting legacy of love.

Do we have regrets in the plural? Sure. There have been plenty of moments where we've made mistakes. As parents, we've said the wrong things, we've lost our temper. Right? All of those things, those normal things that are part of the parenting experience, we've, been there, done that, but do we have regret singular, like, uh, like a overarching regret?

I don't think so. I, I don't really feel like we do. And our kids are pretty much raised. Our third kid is a senior in high school this year. So on the whole, I feel. Like this principle has really helped us to avoid that sense of regret in how we've raised our families. Hopefully we [00:10:00] feel that same way, you know, decades down the road, hopefully decades down the road when we're on our deathbed.

Uh, but I think we will, I, I really, really do. 

Jennifer: Just to reemphasize, we are not perfect parents. I don't think a perfect parent exists. And so be kind to yourself, like if you're recognizing maybe this is a pivotal moment to change, or to realign or to reconsider your priorities, that's okay. So long as you've.

Do it. Yeah. Right. The important thing is when you recognize the issue, you start to change. And we're gonna talk about a lot of different things over the course of this podcast, different topics that are gonna help you recognize change or the need for change and how to do that. But just to start, where are your priorities?

How do you wanna go from there? 

Anthony: Yeah. This podcast is about you, the parent. We're here to teach you, to help you, to mentor, to coach you, to encourage you, to inspire you, all of that. Each week in about 15 minutes or less, we're gonna give practical wisdom. We're gonna [00:11:00] share some stories. Some of 'em will be funny, some of 'em not so funny.

But we're going to share our own experience and the things that we've learned and, and help you to prioritize your family, to put your family first each and every day. 

Jennifer: Yeah, let me end today's podcast with just a little story about a time where I felt prioritizing our family. Um. Just a good example of a time where we needed to prioritize our family.

So several years ago, we were just at a place in our financial life where we were just really living paycheck to paycheck and kind of struggling along the way, and we realized all of our kids were now in school. And I had all this time where I had. Stayed home with our kids when they were small. I had some extra time and we collectively decided I needed to go and maybe make a contribution financially to the family.

So I was looking for a job. It took me some time, but I remember having a conversation with our second daughter in the car. She was a worrier and she was worried that mom having a job was going to take away. From [00:12:00] her, from from the family. And I said, oh, honey, don't you know how much you mean to us or to me?

And I would never do anything that's going to take my priority away from you. And so I was able in the moment to really reassure her that. Looking for a job and looking for a way to help our family financially. I wasn't going to put that above her, and I think it really, really eased her mind. I think it helped her understand where she stood in my heart and my life.

And then I was able to find a job that actually allowed me to take them to the bus stop and to be home before they returned. And it was a, it was a juggle and it was somewhat of a struggle for me, but I was able to make. That priority be in place so that it wasn't a juggle or struggle for them. 

Anthony: So as you're living the parenting life day to day going through the ups and downs, the struggles, the highs, the lows, the successes, the failures, remember that overarching principle, no other success in life can compensate for failure in the home.

If [00:13:00] you come back to that principle day in and day out. Your actions are going to be aligned with your values. You will put your family first,

Jennifer: So this reminds me of why we started our podcast in the first place. It's because life as a parent is busy and if we let it, time will just pass on and we'll miss out on opportunities to really connect with our kids. So to help with that, we put together a free resource. We are calling our 30-second micro moments of intention with your kids.

It's a simple list of things that you can do in less than a minute to really connect with your kids. Now, some of the suggestions on there are gonna seem very obvious. Because they are. But if you do them with intention, they really will help you to connect with your children. So how do you get it? You go to parentsmakingtime.com/freeresource.

Put in your email and we'll send it right to you. Print it or store it on your phone, wherever it is helpful to you, because those small, consistent moments, they really do add up and they're often what our kids remember most.

Anthony: and if you enjoyed this episode and you got something out of it, we would be so grateful if you'd leave a rating or [00:14:00] review on Apple or Spotify. That helps us get the show out there to more people.

It gets noticed by the algorithm and bonus points if you share the episode with a friend. 

Jennifer: So at our next episode, we're gonna talk about three big reasons keeping you from clocking out of work when you're at home, and what to do about it so that you can be more present with your kids and spouse.

Anthony: Until next time, make time to become the parent you want to be.